Donnie made some lobster ravioli the other night and we had some ricotta left over so I wanted to use it up before it went bad. I also had some lasagna noodles left over, but I didn't want to make a whole, big lasagna.

So I cooked the noodles, browned some meat, and made little individual lasagnas. I spread out the cheese, and then sprinkled the meat on top. Some I remembered to put a little dried basil & garlic powder on there too, but I think next time I'll just add all the seasoning to the meat.


Then I rolled it up.


I poured some sauce on the bottom of the dish I seem to use for everything & added some of the left over meat to it. Then I set each roll in the dish.


I poured more sauce over the top. If I had some mozzarella, I might have melted some of that on top too. But I didn't. So I put a little parmesan on at the end.




I had the oven pre-heated to 375 and then turned it up to 400 when I put them in. I left them in there for about 20 minutes. I think it was 20. :)


Donnie was hungry.

I think it turned out pretty well. I'm sure I'll make some up again. Definatly before I make another lasagna.

It's been a little while since I've posted anything. I don't think I've been cooking much actually. There have been a couple times where I just didn't take pictures because I wasn't in the mood to go find the camera. And I wasn't making anything spectacular. The last few weeks have been full of grilled cheese and snacking on whatever's in the cabinet.

Then I finally got around to stealing some more basil from my grandma's garden. There were three recipes I've been waiting to use fresh basil on and I can only remember two of them now. It's driving me crazy now trying to remember what the 3rd was. There was just a little basil in it. Hmmm.....

Oh, I also got some tomatoes from the garden. I'm not too crazy about tomatoes, but I'm trying to get better. So it's pretty important to work on liking a food more when it's from the garden and not park-n-shop.

So on to the food!

Here are the juicy tomatoes I spoke of:


And the basil.


2 halibut steaks
whole basil leaves (amount depends on the size)
4 tomato slices
4 1oz slices of mozzarella cheese
salt & pepper
vinegar & oil
(I just poured some in a bowl till I liked the way it looked. You just need roughly a couple tablespoons of each)
chopped basil for garnish

I used frozen halibut. It's the first time I cooked fish frozen. They turned out great though. I rinsed them over cold water to get rid of the ice chunks & patted them down with a paper towel.

Pre-heat the broiler to about 450

Line a baking sheet with foil & lay out the fish. Broil about 5 inches away from the heat source for about 4-6 minutes.

Take them out, sprinkle with salt & pepper and flip.
They'll go back under the broiler for around 5-7 minutes if you use frozen fish, but just about 1-2 min. if it was fresh. It should be opaque all through.

When they come out again, the toppings go on. I layered it cheese, basil, tomato.


They'll go back in for about 2 minutes, till the cheese is good & melty.

Put them on plates and drizzle the vinegar & oil mix over top & then sprinkle the chopped basil on & around it.

Yummy.

Donnie really liked it. There was something about it to me that didn't hit me quite right. It might have just been the tomatoes or the vinegar. I'll experiment with different vinegars & see if that does it. Or maybe I just won't eat all the tomatoes. :)

The fish was awesome though. I've never cooked halibut. There were a couple large bones, but it was so flakey & light. Not a concistency I'm used to with fish steaks. Juicy too I think. I don't know that I can think of the right word. But it was good.

I don't know if the cookie recipes on the back of morsel bags are the same or different. I'd like to think they're different. There's so many slight variations on chocolate chip cookie dough. I hadn't made this kind of cookie in a very long time & I didn't have a standard recipe for it. So I used the one on the back of the bag of baking pieces I hold close to my heart. They're little raspberry cream filled dark chocolates. Like you'd get in a heart shaped box, only much smaller. I think they've been discontinued though because I haven't seen them in a while. So the one bag I have left needs to be saved for a special occasion.

Anyway- I got off topic a little there. The cookie recipe on the back of this bag turned out so good it's become the one I always use & I've coppied it to my recipe book.

Now, through a series of circumstances I met a guy that had won a year supply of reeses peanut butter cups. He gave me a box. I believe the count is 36 packages of the two cup packs. Instead of just eating them I felt the need to make other stuff with them. So I chopped some up & put them in cookies. I knew I didn't want to do a peanut butter cookie. I thought that would be too much. I wanted the peanut butter cups to be more subtle & less overwhelming & heavy.

Ingredient list:

6 T butter
1/3 cup butter flavored shortening
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
3 packs of peanut butter cups

Preheat the oven to 350

Beat butter & shortening till well blended.
Add both sugars & beat throughly.
Add egg & vanilla. Beat till blended.
In a seperate bowl, stir together flour, baking soda & salt.
Gradully beat flour mix into the butter mix.


I know the reasons for doing it & I usually do. But this time I just dumped the stuff for the flour mix in the same bowl. I stirred it with a spoon before bringing in the mixer though. It was just fine. And I didn't have another bowl to wash.

The peanut butter cups are in the freezer & I'm sure that made the chopping much cleaner than it would've been otherwise. So I would definatly recomend it.


Dump the cup pieces into the dough & mix it up with a spoon.


drop clumps on an ungreased cookie sheet. I have one that I only use for cookies. These bake for about 10-12 minutes. I like to keep an eye on them though cause I don't always trust my oven 100%. When the edges are lightly browned it's time to come out.


I'm finding new and inventive ways to prop the camera up in my kitchen when the light's not so good. I hate using the flash.

I'm so happy with the way these turned out. Pulling them out of the oven at just the right time makes all the difference in the world. They're crispy and chewy. And wonderful. The flavor came out just the way I expected it to. There's no question that I'll be making these again.

Some people on flickr have already given me some ideas, but if any of you have anything you like to do with peanut butter cups I'm open to ideas for thing I can do with them. I have a freezer full. :)

So I'm trying to come up with more things to do with my pancetta before it goes bad. I don't really eat bacon asside from the occasional piece of pre-cooked stuff on a pizza or breakfast sammich. So there's not much substituting that comes to mind.
But I have had some scallops in the freezer for a little while. They're not very good for wrapping because of the size and shape. So I just added it to the mix.

I tore up pieces & left out some of the fat. I think if I did this again I might leave them in bigger pieces. Maybe. I might have made them this size because that's how it tore. I'd have to do it again to be sure.

So I browned them up just like the last time & then put them to the side.

I got a place to start with the sauce from here. and made some adjustments.

I poured a 1/4 cup of chichen broth (& then a little more) into a pan. Then I added some white wine. What I guessed would be around three tablespoons-ish. A squirt or two of lemon juice, a couple cloves of chopped garlic & some onion powder.
I let that cook on medium & added 2 tablespoons of butter. After the butter melted, I kept it on med-low for a bit & then turned it down to low when I was just finnishing up with the scallops.

I cooked the scallops the same as instructed in the link for the sauce. A little olive oil, some salt & pepper on a baking sheet that I lined with foil. I just eyeballed them & flipped um a couple times.

Half way through I added the pancetta to the sheet. I mixed it up some with the scallop juices & olive oil that was all around & let it heat up again in the oven with the scallops.

I thought of a few ways to do it, like adding the pancetta to the sauce or finnishing up cooking the scallops in the pan with the pacetta, but this way worked best with the way I had everything set up.

Here it is on plates, with the sauce poured over it.


Donnie liked it a lot.
I find it sad, but I think I'm loosing my taste for scallops. I used to love them but the last few times I've had them there's something about it that's not quite fufilling. Not bad by any means. Just not as good as they used to be to me. Maybe I just need to give it a long break before I try them again.

I got some spinach the other day to make some more pesto with a different recipe, but as it turns out all my basil had gone bad. :(
So I looked up something else to do with spinach & came across this.

I used bowties instead because well, that's what I had.

Though I did go out and find some pancetta because the closest thing we had to that around the house was pre-cooked bacon. I didn't figure that would be close enough.


I got a little worried because the woman at the meat department of my grocery store didn't know what I was talking about. Thankfully the girl in the deli did and pointed me to the fancy cheese & other specialty items cooler.

I happened to have just as much spinach as I needed. That was pretty cool.


These colors are so pretty when they're all together.


I started to get a little worried when I realized there wasn't actually much of a "sauce" to this. Donnie seems to be attached to the idea that pasta has to have a sauce (at least that's the impression I've got before) but even I was afraid the pasta might be too dry or not have enough flavor to it. But I didn't even have to add any extra pasta water.


I loved the way the strong flavor of the pancetta countered with the mildness of the egg and noodles. I thought it was a really great combination. And not too heavy. It filled me up but didn't leave me stuffed.


I have more pancetta left over, and while I plan on searching around for more recipes, I'd love to hear any sugestions anybody may have!

More Livejournal inspiration here. The first version of this was with left-over lasagna stuff.

I remembered seeing this before while I was killing time. I took my left over ground beef (which was seasoned with some garlic powder and cilantro) and reheated it in a pan with the unused lasagna noodles that I tore into smaller pieces. I also made some pesto loosely based on this resipe. and just mixed it all together. It was pretty great.

Then I went back to find the original recipe that inspired me and saw there was cheese. So I wanted to try it that way.

I put some cilantro into the meat (still using ground beef, not pork. I don't really like pork that much.) again and a little thyme. Less garlic powder this time because I knew there was already a lot in the pesto.


I also happened to have some penne sitting around, so I used up the rest of that. Although, I did like the lasagna noodles better.


Once they were done I drained and threw them in with the meat.


Once everything got a little mixed together, I dumped some mozzarella on top & let it get all melty, stirring it up some more.


All done!


Oh, and a little parmesan on top. :)

Thanks to What Recipe Today?
I got the recipe from this page and made just slight adjustments.


I've never made a cookie recipe quite like this before. I've pretty well stuck to the traditional safe recipes. Definatly never put pepper in cookies before. :)


I omitted the grapefruit zest because I don't like grapefruit. Instead I used some lemon zest. And I squirted a little lemon juice in as well.


I loved the way the green liquid part looked.



The dough was very thick, and the longer it set out, the more oily it got. When I left it in balls on the tray, they didn't expand out much. Some I spread out a little more.


They were both good, and not much different. I think the balls are a little more chewy.

Unless I mention otherwise, all my recipes are two servings-ish. A lot are roughly modified from larger serving recipes like this one.
I'm also getting better at not measuring exactly. Since most everything I did in the kitchen growing up was baking, that's a tough habit to break.


Angel hair pasta
1 lemon
1/2 cup of half & half
1/4 cup of grappa
parsley - maybe a 1/4 or 1/8 of a cup. I didn't measure.
salt
pepper
garlic powder

The water probably doesn't need to be put on right at the start. I didn't have any angel hair on hand (which surprised me) so I used spaghetti & even that was done before I was ready for it. Angel hair takes about two seconds to cook.

Zest the lemon & chop the parsley.


Cut the lemon in half & also cut the end off one half so it'll stand upright.
(upright if it were a whole lemon still)
You're going to get the segments out of there so you'll have to take a knife & cut the peel off (including the white part). Cut from top to bottom while it's standing up, or over a bowl if you're more talented than me so you can catch the juice.

When the peel's gone the membranes will need to be cut off of the segments so you're left with the pinwheel middle when it's all done. Set the segments aside & squeeze any juice left from the membranes into the juice bowl. Then take the other half of the lemon & squeeze it also.

heat up a pan and pour in the half & half, grappa and lemon segments. Bring it to a boil and then turn the heat down to a simmer. Let the sauce thicken some. If the pasta still needs to cook, remove the sauce from the heat.


When the pasta is ready (al dente for the angel hair. I thought the spaghetti could've used more time cause it didn't cook enough later) drain it and put it back in it's pan.

Return the sauce to the heat and add half of the zest and the lemon juice. You probably won't use all the juice you have. It should be about a tablespoon. I used more. I also threw in some of the parsley here.

Add the pasta to the sauce pan & mix it all together to coat the pasta well. Season with some salt, pepper and garlic powder.


[Oops. Oh, yeah. I'm totally smooth.]


After it goes on the plates, sprinkle it with the rest of the parsley and lemon zest.


It's funny how the lemon segments seem to just melt away into the pasta. I never noticed the texture of them. And that's great because I loathe pulpy texture.

Obviously, this has a very strong lemon flavor. Although, I still liked it & I'm not lemon's biggest fan. Or maybe I'm just not a fan of lemon showing up where I don't expect it to. Like in my cheesecake. If I want lemon flavor in cheesecake I'll get a lemon cheesecake. ....but I digress.

I've decided to do something with my livejournal, since I never really have.

I've got more into cooking and taking pictures of it.
There have been reasons to take pictures sometimes, like for Catherine's cookbook. And I've put a couple into Flickr's recipe group. But the rest just sit on my computer.

I think I've hesitated to put a lot of them up somewhere because I feel that if I'm going to take a picture of something, it ought to be good & my food photography is not so much. But I've come to terms with the facts that I don't have the time, lighting, or fancy plates to make it look really good. Maybe I will eventually if I start getting more into it. But for now the kitchen & window light will have to be good enough.

This is something Donnie actually made the other night. And each of us probably took half of the pictures. It was his thing, but it was my camera & I just can't keep my hands to myself sometimes.

Here's the link to the recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Lobster-Tails-Steamed-in-Beer/Detail.aspx

We used Sam Adams Summer Ale. We didn't pay attention for a minute & it boiled over. The kitchen still smells like beer. This is it getting back to normal.


It's the first time we've got to use our fancy steamer pot.


Here's the final product. With some bag salad & garlic french bread. Although, I don't think I liked the bread too much. It grew on me & was much better the next night when I topped it with butter & parmesan cheese but I don't think I'll get it again.


And a close-up.