This is a great hot night dinner! The basics for the burrito bowl are on –https://www.budgetbytes.com/poor-mans-burrito-bowls/
This is super simple to make. We added rotisserie chicken and avocado. We spiced up the black beans with Rotel and added tortilla chips. It was great!
It is getting hot here so we are trying to keep the kitchen cool. Lots of our dinners will be grilled or be salad-y. We can also cook in the morning and reheat later in the microwave. (Unfortunately our microwave is broken and we are using a small cheap one while we are hoping ours can be fixed!)
Ah, a dinner like my mom used to make! Except for the fact that we never ate broccoli because my father did not like it. He was a green bean fan. Pretty much anything my father did not like we did not eat. He really liked mashed potatoes and my older sister and I learned how to make them at a young age. We had them with every dinner. It didn’t matter if we were having noodles we had to have mashed potatoes too. But no rice, never rice.
Anyway once in a while I like to have this throwback meal which is easy to make what with rotisserie chickens, packet gravy, and instant mashed potatoes. Only the broccoli needs cutting up and cooking.
Thursday is Sarah’s night for cooking. This week she made a pasta dish which was adapted from a recipe from Bon Appetit and then further modified by her and then discussed by the three of us as to what would make it better. The original recipe calls for fava beans which are a lot of work and not readily available. Sarah substituted edamame but we all agreed that the beans were kind of meh in the dish and that kale or spinach would be better. She also used linguine instead of fresh pasta sheets cut into strands or shapes. Dried pasta is much more economical than fresh pasta and less work than making your own. This was a pretty tasty, spicy pasta dish but needed some modification.
Fresh Pasta with Favas, Tomatoes and Sausage
Adapted from Bon Appetit and further modified by us
Serves four.
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1/8 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1/2 pound hot or mild Italian sausages, casings removed
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 3/4 cups chopped plum tomatoes or diced canned tomatoes
1 cup shelled fresh fava beans (from about 1 pound), we suggest kale or spinach
3/4 pound fresh pasta sheets cut as desired or strand pasta
2 tablespoons finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese plus additional for passing
Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add next onion, garlic and red pepper and sauté until onion is translucent, about six minutes. Add sausages; break up with fork or a flat-ended wooden spoon. Sauté until brown, about three minutes. Add wine; simmer one minute, scraping up browned bits. Add tomatoes and fava beans or greens. Sauté until tomatoes soften, about five minutes. Season sauce with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta cooking liquid. Return pasta to same pot.
Add sauce to pasta. Toss over medium heat until sauce coats pasta, adding reserved cooking liquid as needed if dry, about two minutes. Mix in two tablespoons cheese and transfer pasta to bowl. Serve, passing additional cheese.
As much as I dislike making salads, I did spend some time trying to make tonight’s tasty and appealing. Along with Romaine lettuce our salad included banana peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, and olives. Everyone enjoyed it and there were no leftovers.
Our main course was John’s always expertly grilled hamburgers cooked to medium rare. I think grilled hamburgers will appear at least every two weeks for the rest of the summer!
Tonight we had a lazy dinner. It was comprised of Barilla pasta (which we did have to cook), Rosina’s frozen meatballs, and Rao’s jarred vodka sauce. It turned out surprisingly good. I really enjoyed the Rao’s vodka sauce. The main reason that I bought it was because it was cheaper than Rao’s basil and tomato sauce which we usually buy. I think from now on I will stick with the vodka sauce, BTW there is no vodka flavor in the sauce.The meatballs were perfectly serviceable for frozen meatballs. We grated the parmesan cheese from a block I bought from Costco,
Agghiotta is a Sicilian manner of cooking fish, particularly swordfish. It leans heavily into the Mediterranean style using tomatoes, olives, and capers. I found a recipe for it on Serious Eats and what it boils down to is make the sauce, cook the fish, and then put the fish in the sauce. Since we only rarely have swordfish I made the recipe using tilapia. I constructed our plates by putting down some rice, followed by the sauce, and then the fish garnished with pine nuts. I also added some kale, garlic, fennel, and red bell pepper to my sauce since I had leftovers of them in the refrigerator. Here is the basic recipe for the sauce.
Tomato olive sauce for fish
Add 1 tablespoon of oil to the skillet along with the onion. Cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan, until onion has softened but not browned, about 4 minutes. Add tomatoes, capers, and olives and cook, stirring, until tomatoes have broken down and their liquid has thickened, about 5 minutes. Season with salt. If desired, add 1 or 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar and a pinch or two of sugar to balance the sauce’s flavor; whether or not you decide to do this will depend on the flavor of the tomatoes you’re using, and how far into agrodolce (“sweet-sour”) territory you want to push the sauce.
Reduce heat to medium. Stir in pine nuts and parsley, then return fish to the pan, nestling it into the sauce and cook until warmed through. Serve hot, warm, room temperature, or chilled.
I know this is not the healthiest dinner we could eat but sometimes Nathan’s hot dogs with sauerkraut just hits the spot! This tasted so good and we enjoyed it a lot.
Nothing says first day of summer like steak and potatoes cooked on the grill. It has actually been quite chilly here lately and last night John was buffeted by wind gusts and temperatures in the 50s while he cooked our dinner. I made the broccoli which lately I have rinsed off and then cooked in a little olive oil. The broccoli comes out crisper than steaming it in a bunch of water. The dinner was delish and caps off a week of some of our favorites.
Omnivore 