Roley poley ravioli

Tags

dinner, Italian, pasta

Tortelloni with carmelized butternut squash and red onion

Tags

dinner, Italian, Noodle recipe, squash

This is a great noodle, perfect for stuffing:  7/8c semolina, 1/8c ground flax seed, 1/4c water plus a little more kneaded as needed and 1T olive oil.  Stood up and cooked up much better than the usual noodle.

For the Daiya, it does not squish well, so better off pre-melting and cutting into pieces for stuffing.

Tossed with the squash sauce these were especially good.

Italian style seitan sausage

Tags

Breakfast, dinner, Italian, Lunch, seitan

Curious rn’s distribute through this recipe over at Everyday Dish…  As with most seitan sort of things, this was easy but especially delicious:

The very bold spices nearly cloak the glutey flavor and the texture is perfect — not too chewy, perhaps the result of the gluten-less chickpea flour.

These were really good just alone, and combined into a breakfast burrito with some sautéed red onion, kale and garlic-(k?)ey scrambled curd.

)=D

The rn’s are gone..  fun never lasts..

Calzone, or stuffed roll..

Tags

dinner, Italian, Lunch

And what extremely delicious ones they were:

Using this recipe for the dough, though with whole wheat flour and 1/2 the salt — fantastic dough recipe.

Filled with chopped spinach, chopped yellow pepper, minced red onion, chopped mushroom and more of that cheese that is just so good heated, melted..  I can barely tolerate it cold but heated it is delicious.

The dough was enough for 10 tennis ball sized rolls.

-D

Fresh fettuccine with marsala mushroom

Tags

dinner, Italian, Mushroom

A simple and quick meal:

The usual noodle:  2 cups semolina, 1/2 cup water, 2 tablespoons olive oil and a little more water kneaded in to the desired consistency.

For sauce, 1 onion sautéed to golden brown then sprinkled with a tablespoon each of flour and cornstarch.  Chopped assorted mushrooms (oyster and crimini) added with about 1 or 2 tablespoons of fresh thyme, 1/2 cup marsala, about 3/4 cup broth and a couple pinches of sea salt, simmered down.

Served topped with chopped parsley and red pepper flakes.

-D

Butternut squash ravioli

Tags

Bread, Italian, Ravioli, spinach

A different filling would make this much better. 

The sauce was very simple and good:  Scallions sauteed in salted oil until they started to brown, then minced tomatoes, finely minced and washed calamata olives a dash of sugar and more olive oil, immediately removed from flame on addition.

The noodle was kept a little drier than the norm to help maintain form, rolled to a 7. 

The spinach, briefly bathed in a broth of browned, finely minced garlic, pinot grigio and miso (about 1/3 cup and 1 tablespoon) while the sauce was re-heated. 

After maybe 20 seconds, spinach was placed on the plates, topped with the ravioli, then the sauce and garnished with sliced red and orange peppers and minced raw spinach.

Served with these delicious rolls

(1/2 wheat flour) and a side spinach salad with sunflower seeds and blue berries, drizzled with tahini and grenadine.

-D

Pappardelle with eggplant ragu

Tags

dinner, eggplant, Italian, veggie

From Herbivoracious, pappardelle with eggplant ragu and fresh ricotta.  The dish is not nearly as difficult to assemble as we anticipated, the most difficult and time-consuming, the ragu, easily cooked and kept warm while preparing the noodle and toppings.

This is a really nice combination of flavors, a forward acrid bite from the ragu punctuated by the orange zest after a moment, all well complimented by the fresh ricotta, parsley, parmesan — and a few extra chili flakes:

The large, long noodles (rolled to a 7) were also a lot of fun and the kids voraciously got a kick out of them:

-D

Calzone, part ii

Tags

dinner, Italian, veggie

We wanted to try calzone-type thing over the fire again, this time, reducing the sauce within and instead of using fresh made dough, the pepperidge farm daugh in a tube, for facility.

The dough was definitely easier to work with, though, its flavor was so prominant, only the more pungent or salty innards poked through, the sublety of the mushrooms and spinach mostly washed out.

It was still good, just a bit too overbearing:  A tough call as ease of production plays a significant roll when camping.

Filled with:

• Spinach
• Mushroom
• Calamata olive
• Banana peppers
• Red onions
• Chihuahua cheese

-D

Camp fare

Tags

Breakfast, dinner, grill, Italian, Tofu, veggie

We’ve been away camping a bit recently.  We try to avoid the traditional minimalist fare stereotyped with camping, though, breakfasts often are — simply cereal, pancakes, waffles..  But always lots of fruit:

One really (sinfully!) good breakfast was an idea floated by the apparently now on haitus Lonely Bean, simply, Soysage rolls:

Cooked in the trailer’s little micro/convection oven, these turned out really well and did not last long!

A few of the dinners: 

Veggie skewers.  Grilled tofu, onion, pepper and squash skewers.  Barbecued bean curd is delicious, as are mushrooms.

We enjoyed these with ridiculously delicious potato packets — seasoned with the omnipresent McCormick’s garlic pepper and oleo — and fire warmed rolls.  One of the better camp meals we’ve made.

We also experimented with grilled pizzas. 

Definitely recommend using a pre-cooked bread for the base as it is difficult to get the top hot enough (even with cleverly fluted foil “lids”) to cook off the juices that accumulate.

Better success was had using fresh dough to make calzone-type things:

Stuffed with peppers, onion, zucchini and spinach, with sauce and a little mozzerella.  These are destined to be a regular menu feature when camping, fun to make, cook and delicious.  Jared said it was the best calzone he’s ever had!

-D

Pizza!

Tags

Italian, Lunch

I had planned to make some lentil patties for lunch today but after several a.m. delays that became obviously, obtusely optimistic.

So a quick pizza type concoction was concocted on a wheat tortilla, spread with tomato paste and topped with crumbled tempeh, purple onion, tomato, marinated baby eggplants (introduced and described by my father as toads), thinly sliced (1mm) tofu and green onion.

Baked at 350 for 10 minutes in an overly ambitious toaster oven then shaken with red pepper flakes and garlic pepper:

I would have loved for the tofu to bronze a bit but we were obviously pushing the edges of edibility so this sufficed and it was mighty good.  The only improvement in the future, perhaps push the toppings and tofu to the edge, or, trim.

Though, how unattractive that would be…

-D