My husband and I love what we call “pasta Fridays”. We sure have eaten a lot of Friday pasta over the years! Perhaps this is because it can be easily one of the more frugal dishes to enjoy, or maybe it is just a lovely way to enjoy a cozy “date night” without leaving home! Whatever the reason, it is really hard to find (or make) a pasta dish that doesn’t taste delicious! And, the best part about Refrigerator Lasagna on Friday? Plenty of leftovers for Lazy Saturday! Continue reading “Refrigerator Lasagna”
Category: Frugal Friday
Better-than-Mario’s Frugal Pasta
My husband and I love to cook. We watch as many cooking shows as possible, especially the competitions. We rarely copy recipes, however. It’s all about learning techniques we can adapt to our own lifestyle and culinary tastes. And, I have to admit, I have pretty much mastered this pasta technique that we learned from watching Mario Batali, among others. This frugal pasta dish was just about the best pasta dish I have ever tasted, and it was made entirely of bits from my pantry, fridge and garden.
Zesty Linguini with a Creamy Vegetable Sauce
- 1/3# whole grain linguini (for 2 servings)
- 4 slices bacon
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 small zucchinis, diced
- approx. 6-8 small heirloom tomatoes, diced
- approx. 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 c. Chardonnay
- 2 Tbl butter
- Parmesan cheese
- approx. 2 tsp red pepper flakes (I used 2 small packets, from takeout)
- dried oregano, 1-2 tsp
- Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
While the pasta was cooking, I diced the bacon and cooked it until the fat was rendered, just short of crisp. I removed it from the pan to cook the zucchini and garlic in the remaining bacon fat, seasoning the zucchini lightly with the salt, pepper and some of the oregano. I removed the zucchini from the pan and deglazed it with the white wine. When most of the wine was reduced, I added the tomatoes to the pan, seasoned them with salt, pepper and the rest of the oregano, and cooked them on high heat to reduce any excessive water. I then added a ladle of the pasta cooking water to the tomatoes, and cooked until the sauce began to thicken. It was still a bit thin, so I added 2 Tbl of butter, which thickened it nicely!
I drained the pasta and put it into the sauce. I then added the cream and, once the sauce came together, I turned off the heat and added a bit of Parmesan cheese. I served the dish with more cheese on top.
Delicious!!
Potato Skins with Corn Salsa
This recipe featured several garden-fresh ingredients, but it is a perfect choice for a Frugal Friday, because it can be adapted to whatever ingredients you have on hand. I usually always have potatoes, and frozen corn (but today I had a single leftover ear of fresh corn). I really love this meal, as I used the separate parts of the baked potato for two different dishes, which I tied together with an avocado aoili (which took care of an avocado in my fridge that was at the ‘use me now!’ stage). This meal was so fresh tasting and quick to make! I think I will be using many variations of this dish for many Frugal Fridays to come. Continue reading “Potato Skins with Corn Salsa”
Tomato Tart
‘The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summer day:
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them quite away!’
— Lewis Carroll
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I love parties. One of the best things about entertaining is all the wonderful leftovers! When I was a young girl, my favorite time of year was when it was my parents’ turn to host their monthly card club, because the special treats prepared for their 9:00 p.m. “lunch” were made exclusively for this occasion. We children, of course, had to wait until the following day to enjoy them, but it was always worth the wait!
My husband and I host several big parties a year, and I have never grown out of the thrill of discovering all the delicious leftover treats in my refrigerator the next day. This year, I also discovered something I rarely use — a single sheet of thawed puff pastry — so off I went to the internet to see what to do with it!
I had already used the other sheet to make simple tomato tartlets for the party brunch (I think it was à la Martha Stewart: rounds of puff pastry, pricked, brushed with olive oil, topped with 1/4″ Heirloom tomato slice, salt and pepper; after baking about 30 minutes, garnish with fresh basil and allow to cool to room temperature) — which were simply delicious! I found several similar tomato tart recipes on different sites, so I thought it would make perfect sense to adapt the tartlet recipe to a larger version.
Most of the recipes I found required some type of cheese mixture to be spread on the puff pastry, under the tomato slices, most commonly a combination of goat cheese and ricotta. But, cheese is cheese, in my book, and I had confidence that my juicy Heirloom tomato slices would carry any cheese right to the top. And, I was right! This was a wonderful, tasty and frugal dish! Continue reading “Tomato Tart”
Sassy Swiss Chard Pasta
Swiss chard really is the gift that keeps on giving. Even when I think I have nothing in the house to eat, I can pull together a delicious meal with just a few leaves of chard and a few pantry items. We usually always have some type of pasta on hand. As there are only two of us in the house, one package makes several meals quite easily. Tonight, it was whole wheat fusilli. I love this, as the curly shape helps to hug whatever sauce there is to the pasta dish. Continue reading “Sassy Swiss Chard Pasta”
Cheesy Carmelized Onion Pizza
I love Fridays! I always have, since I was a teenager. Then, it most likely had to do with the arrival of the weekend, and the opportunity to hang out, see my boyfriend, the usual teenage stuff. But, I admit that I still get that excited feeling in my stomach most every late Friday afternoon — and I’m usually doing nothing that evening different from any other!
Over the years, we’ve developed the same habits as many others, kicking off the weekend by going out for dinner, or enjoying takeout — most often, pizza. It was the perfect way to relax after a busy week, and for many, many years, it was, “PAYDAY!” Unfortunately, leaner, less profitable years happened, as well, and many weekends arrived without the Friday paycheck. Now, as small business owners, we are the last to be paid each week — and only after a long list of bills has been paid. So, Friday too often means, “we’ll eat what we have in the fridge”.
The good news is that I have become really good at making “something out of nothing”. I have developed a real talent for throwing together bits of this and bits of that and making something really delicious. The downside is that I can never duplicate the dish! When my children were young, I used to jokingly call this type of dinner “blue stew”. I confess that I loved to tease them by telling them I used all the unidentifiable “blue” items in the back of the fridge to create a new dish!
Maybe I can’t recreate the specific dishes, but I have decided to remember some of them in this blog. Being able to create interesting dishes using items I have on hand is really the secret to handling a bountiful garden. So, it seems appropriate to begin with a pizza … Continue reading “Cheesy Carmelized Onion Pizza”
Fusilli with Zucchini and Bacon
My first ripe zucchini of the season! Because it was “Pasta Friday” at our house, that’s what was for dinner! I like to cook with what I have on hand, using bits of this and that — whatever I find in the fridge or pantry that needs to be eaten. I’ve gotten very good at this, which is the Good News. The Bad News is that we probably won’t ever get to have it again, no matter how good it may taste.