Not every day is accounted for since on 2/9 we celebrated our son’s birthday with a dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant and on 2/11 I just ate eggs and toast since we are busy packing for a quick Valentine’s Day trip. Hopefully I will have some yummy things to report on!
Sorry for the messy bowl picture! As usual when I get a bowl of pasta I want to jump right in so I had already started eating it before I was stopped to take a picture. This is another recipe executed by Sarah in her Thursday night dinners showcase. It was really good.
She found the recipe on a Finnish site which has been all the rage on TikTok. Apparently stores were running out of feta because everyone wanted to make it. I am not sure where she found the English translation but here it is.
Original #uunifetapasta recipe translated into english
for 4 persons
1 lb / 450 g italian durum wheat pasta
1 block (7 oz / 200 g) greek feta cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 red chili pepper
500 g cherry tomatoes
(4 garlic cloves if you wish)
black pepper
salt
bunch of fresh basil leaves
Pour some olive on the bottom of the baking dish. Place the whole feta block on top. Chop the red chili pepper and add on top of feta cheese. Pour more olive oil on top. Place the cherry tomatoes on the sides and roll around in oil. Grind some pepper and season with pinch of salt.
Bake in 400 F / 200 C for 15 minutes in the middle rack. Turn the heat to 440 F / 225 C, move the dish to the upper rack and use the grilling mode for another 10 minutes. Caution! This might cause the fire alarm to go off, mine does that every time 😀
Cook the pasta al dente according to cooking instructions. If you used cherry tomatoes with stems, remove them. The stems are there merely for the instagrammable look, so plein cherry tomatoes will do fine.
Break the feta a bit and mix with tomatoes. Mix the sauce with pasta and add plenty of basil leaves.
Tip! Garlic goes well with baked feta pasta. To add garlic cut four garlic cloves in half lenghtwise, toss them in same time as the tomatoes and roll in olive oil.
Sarah said she did not use as much oil as the recipe called for. She probably did that for me since I am constantly dieting. She did use quite a lot of cherry tomatoes which were pretty blah when eaten straight from their container but totally came to life when they were baked. Some of the best bits were small pieces of the feta which were browned under the broiler.
Here’s a pretty picture of the dish from the website—
And here it is with the served with the pasta —
We tried a new recipe for dinner and enjoyed it. I bought a bag of fresh chopped vegetables from Trader Joe’s which contained snow peas, Napa cabbage, broccoli, and bok choy. I added chopped carrots and bean sprouts. We adapted the recipe shown below to make it easier.
Our adaptations – First of all since we were making this for two people the amount of pasta used was 4oz. In step 1, we used thin spaghetti which we cooked until al dente and then set them aside. In step 2 we doubled the sauce. We eliminated step 3 by using a rotisserie chicken breast which I shredded up and seasoned with garlic powder and ginger powder. Steps 4, 5, and 6 were done as written.
Even though this was not true to the original recipe it turned out quite well. I think we will continue making it, tweaking it each time until we get the right combination of all the ingredients.
Scallops are one of my favorite things to eat. We used to get large ocean scallops from Costco but they have not been for sale for over six months. So we decided to try these smaller scallops also from Costco. Even though John does a super job searing them and not overcooking the scallops, they just are not as good as the previous ones. I think we will have to find a new source and hope that they go on sale occasionally.
Along with our scallops I made steamed new potatoes and broccoli. I squeezed some lemon over everything. It is surprising how lemon and salt on potatoes make them taste so good! All in all this was a pretty nice dinner which would have been spectacular with better scallops.
I probably could eat pasta almost every day of the week. I like it with meat sauces, meatballs, sausage, and all kinds of vegetables. Tonight’s pasta dish was made with fusilli cooked to al dente and then incorporated into a pan full of sautéed mushrooms, onions, and asparagus. I finished off the pasta cooking with about 1 cup of the pasta water, stirring the pasta and vegetables until a kind of thin sauce was created. The addition of olive oil completed the dish. John showered his with parmesan cheese but I decided to keep my dish vegan.
I know you are probably tired of classic chicken dinner appearing almost every week. So am I. We changed it a little this week with rice instead of mashed potatoes but our second dinner with a rotisserie chicken needs an updating. I found a recipe for Chicken Lo Mein that I think I will try the next time we go to Costco and buy a chicken.
As usual I sliced up one of the chicken breasts and warmed it gently in a pot of chicken gravy made from a packet. The rice was left over from an earlier dinner. I had 20 Brussels sprouts which turned into 40 when I sliced them in half. I start them cut side down in a large frying pan with a little water, a tablespoon of butter, and a sprinkling of sugar. After the water comes to a boil I turn it to simmer and cover the pan and let them cook for about 5ish minutes. Then I take off the cover and let the water steam off. When the water is almost gone I add a shot glass of dry sherry. The sherry cooks off leaving a nice nutty flavor. Then I just wait until the sprouts are browned in the remaining butter in the pan. They are really good. Trust me.
Except for chopping up potatoes, onions, leeks, and celery everything else is pretty much a pantry item. We used canned minced clams, clam juice, the liquid from the clams, and some heavy cream. We made a big pot of it in the hopes that there would be plenty left over. Only problem is that we all liked it so much that each of us had two bowls! There was only enough left for John’s lunch on Saturday.
Tonight Sarah made us a Mediterranean bowl. Loaded on top of rice were chickpeas, slivered red onions, hummus, tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, olives, and feta cheese. We gave it a drizzle of olive oil and it was ready to eat. It was tasty, healthy, and filling. I am really enjoying Sarah’s Thursday night creations.
Lots of folks here in Northern California are celebrating Lunar New Year. Since we are a family who likes to share in the celebrations of lots of cultures, we decide to make a holiday dinner of Asian treats. We started off with pot stickers. I cannot claim to have made them. The Ling Ling pork and vegetable pot stickers come in a frozen bag but I did have to follow directions and try to get them unstuck from the pan!
After our first course of pot stickers we completed cooking the Vietnamese soup, pho, with beef. I used a shortened recipe from Jet Tila of the Food Network. We started by enhancing some beef stock with spices, onions, ginger, and fish sauce. When the stock has cooked for a bit you sieve it and serve the soup with some cooked rice noodles, jalapeño, onion slices, bean sprouts, cilantro, basil, and some very thinly sliced beef. We took a short cut and used some rare beef sliced from the deli.
Here’s a link to Jet Tila’s recipe in case you would like to try making it.
Here’s a picture of how ours turned out. We had too many accompaniments for the amount of broth. Next time we will double the amount of beef broth.
We had fun trying some dishes that we don’t normally make. It was also pretty delicious!
Omnivore 