I’ve been craving ravioli for at least a week now. Yes, I make pasta a lot, but ravioli is usually reserved for ‘special occasions’ as it’s much more work than regular pasta, and I love non-filled fresh pasta about as much. Having the day off today was enough of a special occasion to warrant making ravioli. Now the cool thing about ravioli is that you can make about a million different fillings. Whatever you think tastes good with fresh pasta, you can make ravioli out of. I’ve actually be wondering if I could make a slightly sweeter pasta dough (by adding some powdered sugar or something) and fill it with nuts and/or chocolate. I’m sure it’d work – not sure how great it’d taste. Must try out soon!
But I digress, I decided to make ravioli tonight. I’d recently bought a second ravioli mold, with smaller pouches, so I figured I should make a less lumpy filling than the napoletana. Sure, I could cut everything up a little finer than usually, but I actually love the lumpiness of the filling in that recipe, so why would I. Plus, what’s the fun in only making your staples every time. How are you supposed to develop new favorites, if you don’t try making them first.
Walking through the grocery store I did have my ravioli in mind. I figured I still had some veggies I could use, if all else failed, or cheese. Cheese ravioli is good, right? While I was thinking about the different cheese options, my eye caught a package of organic ground beef. Remember my rant about grocery store meats the other day. Well, organic meat doesn’t have that problem. About a nanosecond later I saw a box of fresh mixed italian herbs, and I was sold. Ground beef and fresh herbs, it would be. Yumm.
So that was our primo, our first course. As usual, I made a double serving of ravioli. When will I ever learn that filled pasta needs less, not more? Probably never. No problem though, we’ll always finish it, or if I really make too much, it’s easy enough to freeze. To make it a little different/more interesting with such a simple filling, I made a thyme pasta. I took a couple of springs of fresh thyme. Pulled the leaves off and added that to the flour before making the dough. When rolling the dough the leaves will break and spread out, so in the end you only have green specks left over, but oh the smell! (and taste!)
I made my easy peasy cheaty tomato sauce to serve with the ravioli and grated some parmesan cheese over it at the table. A big success, the entire dish! Very very nice combo!
Now for our secondo we needed something lighter. A small dish, as we had a double serving of ravioli already. So I made a simple salad (red pepper, tomato, red onion, cilanto and feta cheese with some salt and pepper and olive oil for dressing) and some bite size herb-hamburgers. The burgers were made with the leftover ravioli stuffing and some more herbs and seasoning. I grilled them for a short time on both sides (on a grill pan) and they came out wonderful. Just one bite a piece. As L said: nom nom nom!
Ground beef and herb ravioli (recipe for 4 as a starter, 2 as a main course)
- 1 batch of fresh pasta (made with 150 grams flour)
- a couple of sprigs of thyme
- a couple of sprigs of rosemary
- about 250 grams of ground beef (preferably organic)
- salt
- pepper
- 1 egg
- garlic powder
First off, you won’t be using all the ground beef for the ravioli, I used whatever was left after filling for the mini-burgers.
Start making your pasta dough, before you start kneading, add the thyme leaves, mix them in well. Roll the dough, don’t make it too thin, I go to setting 5 on my machine. Just 1 to 2 settings thicker than when making linguini or fettucini.
Combine the ground beef and egg and add rosemary, pepper, salt and garlic powder to taste. Take a good amount of rosemary! Mix well.
Place a sheet of pasta over your ravioli mold, fill with ground beef mixture, be sure not to overfill, place second sheet over filling, roll to close tight and remove ravioli’s from mold. (More detailed explanation in the first ravioli post.) Repeat until you’re out of pasta (or save some pasta and make it into another style. 1 mold full is a 2 person first course, or a 1 person main course).
Cook for 7 to 9 minutes in a large pot of hard boiling water. Serve with a simple sauce and some parmesan.Mini herb-hamburgers
- Leftover ground beef mixture from ravioli
- garlic powder
- pepper
- fresh sage
- fresh thyme
Combine the leftover meat mixture with some more pepper and garlic powder and add some more fresh herbs. I used thyme and sage (it already had rosemary in there). Form small patties and grill for 1 to 1,5 minutes on each side (Don’t leave them pink, they have raw egg in them!)
The weather has been sucky here the last week. While the last week of April had sunny, warm days, May so far has been dark and dreary. Perfect weather for chicory. Yes, I know, in other parts of the world chicory might not necessarily be a winter vegetable, and is used in salads and such, to me it’s a winter dish. Probably because of the way I prepare it.
The way I prepare chicory is derived from the way my mom does. She’d usually serve it, boiled, then rolled into slices of ham with cheese on top, from the oven. She’d usually serve boiled potatoes and some kind of meat and gravy with it. I’ve served it that way before, but during my single years it’s evolved to an all-in-one oven dish. A casserole without side dishes. I don’t have one fixed recipe for it, but generally it’ll be mashed potatoes, chicory, ham, cheese and egg. Add some herbs and it’s done.
See, winter dish!
So with the crappy weather I figured I could make it at least once more this year. And so I did. I know it doesn’t look all that appetizing, but it really, really is. I dare you to try it!
Chicory casserole
- chicory (1 big one per person)
- instant mashed potatoes (1 serving per person)
- Grated cheese
- Cubes or strips of ham (to taste)
- eggs (1 per 2 servings)
- Herbs to taste (I use herbes de provence)
- Water
Boil the chicory for 10 to 15 minutes, drain and cool a bit. In a large bowl add the instant mashed potatoes (powder), a good amount of grated cheese (a half cup per person or so), some dried herbs, some ham (as much as you want, to taste, I don’t serve meat separately, so I use quite a bit of ham) and the eggs. Stir thoroughly, so that everything is coated with the powdered potatoes. Pour in slightly less water than the mashed potatoes ask for (you want it to end up firm, and the egg, ham and cheese provide moisture as well). Stir until all the water is incorporated and you don’t have dry potato powder anymore.
Put the potato, egg, cheese, ham mixture in a casserole dish. Cut the chicory lengthwise. If you have big chicory, quarter it, so the end result isn’t too thick (about 2 fingers thick or so). Place the chicory over the mashed potatoes. Push in a little, so that the potato mixture sits all the way around it. Sprinkle a generous amount of grated cheese on top. Place in the oven for about 30 minutes on 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 celsius), until everything’s hot, the potatoes have set, and the top has browned to taste. Enjoy!!!
For those of you who visit here more regularly (and I know you’re out there, I can see it in the stats, make yourself known, will ya??!!) you probably know that my big cooking issue is the size of my kitchen. It’s just not big enough. Before I actually moved in with L, it was big enough. For him it was. When you’re main needs in a kitchen are a coffee maker, dischwasher and microwave, you’re not in need of crazy much space. If you want a huge stove, all sorts of gadgets and room to actually cook, you do need some place.
I like my gadgets!
So I’ve mentioned needing a bigger kitchen before. Heck, it’s the number 1 item on my kitchen wish list on here. And if you go and check that out now, you’ll see that the item’s changed :-)
Yes, I got my bigger kitchen. Or actually, I will get it, at the end of August. L and I bought a new home. A BIG new home. One of those ‘okay, yeah, I’m all grown-up now’ homes I didn’t realize I’d ever even want to own. Well, I did want that, and now we bought one!
We went to look at this listing some time in the beginning of March. We walked around, were impressed with the space, but weren’t sure of things. We thought and though and I went to re-visit the listing online about 9383736252 times and saw it hadn’t sold yet. More and more thinking led us to make an appointment with the realtor to go check out the house a second time. Long story short, we made an offer, signed some papers, got the mortgage and agreed on a date we’d get the keys.
So the pictures in this post… that’ll be my new kitchen. I love it! And I’ll love it even more when my big stove gets placed in there. Can’t wait for September, when I get to cook in there!
I haven’t been overly inspired in the kitchen the last couple of weeks. Can’t help it. I guess I’m just craving the nice spring and summer veggies, which are on hold since it’s still friggin cold here. I guess it’s a good thing it’s cold though. Garbage men are on strike and the city is starting to smell quite a bit. Especially in the touristy areas people don’t seem to understand that if they throw their trash on the street, it’s going to stay there.
Anyways, not much inspiration. Because of that lack of inspiration I’d bought a ratatouille package at the store this weekend. I figured all those different veggies might come in handy, even when not making ratatouille. And so I started thinking about my eggplant.
Lately I’ve been trying out some different eggplant recipes which reminded me of an old friend who used to always flame roast his eggplant. On the stovetop no less. The first time I saw him do that, it seamed weird to me, but after a while I got used to the sight and kind of forgot about it. Until today.
With the ratatouille package on hand, I had eggplant, so I figured I could give the flame roasting a try. I also had hummus in the fridge, so I could do something with that too. With the use of my good friend google I quickly found my inspiration. A recipe for a cold hummus and eggplant tortilla wrap. IT sounded tasty enough, but not quite dinner-like. I had to work on that. Fortunately all this dinner-planning took place in my mind while at work so I had more than enough time to figure things out. Replace the tortilla with something heavier (yeah, I know, shut up, tortilla’s are heavy!), maybe add some meat to it, oh, I still have a red pepper too…
And then it hit me, I could finally make naan. I’d been wanting to try to make naan at home for a while now, and since that’s a flatbread it could totally substitute the tortilla, right? And naan goes well with hummus, or so I think. I knew I had 2 pieces of turkey in the fridge too, so I could grill that, add the eggplant, red pepper for color (and taste)… Awesome meal!
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Recipe for the naan and the eggplant will follow. To make the entire combo, take a warm, freshly baked naan, spread some hummus over 1 half of the naan, add some eggplant, a couple of strips of roasted red pepper and a couple of strips of grilled turkey, fold over and enjoy!
About 10 years ago, during a family reunion, I discovered the magic, magic deliciousness of lemon-poppyseed muffins. Since I didn’t want the cereal that was offered, I went to the grocery store, saw those things and figured I’d give them a try. I figured they could never be worse than cereal.
I was right.
Right then and there in Kokomo Indiana I discovered my all-time favorite muffin.
In the years that followed, whenever I’d be in the US, the first thing I’d grab in the grocery store, would be lemon-poppyseed muffins. They weren’t available in Holland, so I’d have to get my fix when in the US. I have no idea why it never occurred to me to look up a recipe.
After a few years, for some odd reason which I still disagree with, they disappeared from grocery stores in the US as well. The only place I’d occasionally find them would be baker/deli counters in airports. Obviously I would buy them, as I needed my lemon-poppyseed fix, but it was never enough. That year I made them myself for the first time. From a package, just add water, that kind of stuff. Better than nothing, but not quite the same.
About 3 years ago I finally came to my senses and looked up a recipe. Since then I’ve tweaked and altered it, and made those muffins many times over. Either as actual muffins, or in loaf form, when I couldn’t find my muffin tins, or had too big a batch. Muffins in the shape of a loaf still taste awesome, after all.
This week I got my once-in-a-while craving for lemon and poppyseeds again. So I made a loaf. I altered and tweaked a little more (partially because I just grabbed the wrong bag of flour). They actually taste a little healthier made with 1/4 of the flour replaced with whole wheat instead of plain white. Still very tasty though!!!!
Lemon-poppyseed muffins (recipe for 1 loaf or a bunch of muffins)
- 1/2 cup (113 grams) of butter
- 1 tsp lemon zest
- lemon juice, to taste
- 2/3 cups of sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 5 tsp poppy seeds
- 2 cups flour (you can replace 1/2 cup with whole wheat)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup milk (any kind, 0% works fine as well)
Cream the butter, lemon zest, sugar and some lemon juice. Beat in the eggs. Stir in the poppy seeds. Add flour, baking powder and salt to the mixture and mix slowly. Add the milk while mixing until everything is incorporated and has become a smooth batter. If you don’t mind eating raw eggs taste now to see if you want more lemon juice, if you don’t, just go with your gut.
Bake in muffin tins of a loaf-type non-stick cake pan on 190 degrees celsius. Muffins take about 20 minutes, a loaf takes a while longer, test doneness, if no dough sticks to your toothpick (or whatever you prefer to use to test cakes) it’s done.
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