Obsessed! In the best possible way!

I had a pin on Pinterest for a link to something called "quick ramen bowl."  It looked good, greens, mushrooms, scallions, sriracha, an egg, ramen.  All the stuff I love.  I never really looked at it, which I am kind of famous for when it comes to Pinterest.  I tend to go, "Ooh!" and forget to look at it again, unless it's one of my cake boards which I refer to almost daily when I'm at work.  I was thinning out a board that got bogged down with too many subjects and I came across the link.  I went to the blog and... it sounds crazy, but... my life is changed!

I have been trying to save money and cut down on my grocery bill in particular.  I burn a lot of calories at work.  Like in the "just ran a marathon" category.  I'm hungry All. The. Time.  Figuring this out has helped me realize what I need to do to lose weight (hello, starvation mode! eat more!) so lately, my grocery bill has become astronomical.  What to do?  What to do?  I've found some good resources for budgeting at meal time, but a lot of those folks don't eat like I do.  No offense, really!  It's just that the bulk of my groceries are from the produce department.  And I eat a lot of Asian food.  A lot.  I also don't have kids, and many of those blogs are geared towards family-friendly meal time.  Soooo, enter Budget Bytes.  What's the first thing I make?  The Dragon Noodles, of course!  I made a couple changes, but I don't think it got me too far off the $1.02 cost per serving!  (Whattt?)  I added a bag of frozen stir fry veggies that were $1 at Kroger and an extra egg.  I needed a bit more sauce, so when I made it the second time, I used a little fish sauce and and a little garlic chile sauce.  It gave it a little more of a Vietnamese flavor than just straight up "burn down the house."  I also used angel hair pasta because I had a half of a box which was perfect for this.  Dudes, this was easily one of the best things I've made recently.  And it took 10 minutes.  It had the perfect amount of heat for me and was filling!


Do yourself (and your wallet!) a favor and hit up Budget Bytes for a recipe or 15.

I was half way through the bowl of noodles before I realized I needed to document the deliciousness.

Linguine with White Clam Sauce In A Hurry

When I got home from work tonight, I was starving. As in, "feeling woozy and should have eaten a snack earlier" starving. I whipped this up in the blink of an eye. So easy, so good.

1 large or two small spicy Italian sausage
1 TSP minced garlic
1/2 medium white onion, fine dice
1 cup white wine
2 6.5oz of canned chopped clams, reserve the juice
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped fine
salt and pepper to taste
2 TBSP butter, cut in half
1/2 box linguine, cooked al dente

Brown sausage in pan, but do not cook completely. Let rest on cutting board for a few mintues. Add 1 TBSP butter and 1 TBSP olive oil to deep saute pan. Add garlic and onion and saute for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, slice sausage thin and add back to saute pan. Saute for 5 minutes. Add white wine to pan to deglaze. Add reserved clam juice. Stir well, scrape up the flavor bits from the bottom of the pan. Add clams and stir well, saute two minutes. Add parsley and remaining 1 TBSP of butter. Mix with linguine, serve, and enjoy!


Notes:

I bought my sausage from the Fresh Market. I believe they make their sausages in house. They are easily twice the size you'd expect. If you're near the Fresh Market, I would totally recommend them. They are $3.99 a pound. The one I bought was $1.54, or just under a half a pound!

I'm lazy these days, so I've been using minced garlic in a jar. So easy!

If your feelin' fancy, buy a nice bag of clams from your fishmonger (I love that word!) and toss them in the sauce. But save that for some night when you're not racing home to make dinner before you pass out and are trying to put on jammie pants while your pasta is cooking...or whatever it is that you might do after work. Ahem.

I like adding a bit more butter than usual to this. It adds a richness to the sauce that I like. I do not like cheese with seafood, generally speaking. I also don't want to add cream to this lest it taste like clam chowder on noodles.

Double this if you want two-er, four servings.

Fall Harvest Ravioli

This was inspired by a pack of mixed mushrooms at the Kroger. I saw them and instantly thought "ravioli!" As usual, the end result is far different from what I pictured, but very tasty all the same.

4 oz. mixed mushrooms I used oyster, shiitake, and white button
1 small apple, peeled
1 small fennel bulb
1/4 cup red onion
2 cloves garlic
12-15 fresh sage leaves
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
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1 egg
15 oz. whole milk ricotta
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
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1 package small wonton wrappers


Rough chop all ingredients. Don't worry how it looks, you're going to whiz it up in the food processor when it's cooked. Saute until soft, transfer to food processor and puree until fairly smooth. Mix egg, ricotta, salt and pepper together in bowl. Add mushroom mixture and mix well.

Lay out wonton wrappers on cutting board, working with a few at a time so they don't dry out. Place about a tablespoon of filling on a wonton square. Wet the sides of wonton and top with a second square. Press out air and press edges well to seal. Repeat untill all filling is used.

In pot of salty water, boil ravioli until they float to top. Drain and serve with sauce of choice.


Notes:

The filling has a delicate flavor, so I am imagining this served with a light sauce, like a white wine cream or a slightly thickened vegetable broth. I think it would be lost to a red sauce or a heavy alfredo.

I think I used a Gala apple. I bought a bag of apples for lunches and tossed out the bag when I brought them home. Use an "eating" apple rather than a "cooking" apple. In other words, stay away from Granny Smith or any other tart apple.

Even for those watching their weight, use the whole milk ricotta. It doesn't have that much more fat or calories than the skim milk variety but it does have a better flavor.

If you are adding the mushroom mix to the ricotta and egg while still hot, be sure to mix the egg and ricotta very well. You don't want scrambled egg ravioli. Well, maybe you do, but not here.

When making ravioli, you want the filling to be pretty smooth so that nothing pokes out of the pasta.

If you want to make your own pasta dough for this, knock yourself out. Me? I couldn't be bothered tonight. I feel okay with using the wonton wrappers since Giada did it on her show a couple weeks ago. If she says it's okay, then it's okay.

Rigatoni with Broccolini and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

1 bunch broccolini, cut into 1" pieces
2 TBSP sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella, cut in to 1/2" cubes
1/2 bag dried rigatoni pasta
olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Cook pasta in large pot in very salty water. (Salt=flavor people!)

Add olive oil to large saute pan, when hot, add broccolini and saute for 5 minutes. Add garlic, crushed red pepper and sun-dried tomatoes, continue to saute for another 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. When pasta is al dente, drain and add to pan with broccolini. Add mozzarella and toss all ingredients together.

Notes:
If you can't find broccolini, you could certainly substitute regular broccoli. If you use a whole head of broccoli, you may want to double the other ingredients.

I like my cooked broccoli and broccolini to be a little crunchy. You may want to cook this a little more.

This reheats very well. It should give about 4 servings for me.

Don't add your garlic, crushed red pepper or sun-dried tomatoes to the oil before the broccolini or they will burn.

I used oil cured sun-dried toms here and added a little of the oil to the pan for cooking. You could use any kind of sun-dried toms here.

I love rigatoni pasta because I think you get a lot of bang for your buck. It's a big pasta, which means I can eat a little less and be satisfied.

The Italian school of thought on cooking pasta is that it should be boiled in water that tastes like the sea. That's a bit much for me, but pasta does typically need a lot of salt to taste like anything.