Spaghetti bake. This is super, super simple, and also inexpensive -- cook enough spaghetti such that you wind up with about 2 cups cooked. Mix with a seasoned tomato sauce -- bottled spaghetti sauce is fine, or doctor up the plain stuff with a smidge of garlic and a touch of basil or oregano or both. (You can also doctor up a can of plain diced or crushed tomatoes if you don't have sauce.) Pour the sauce-noodle mixture into a pan. (An 8x8 inch pan is about right, but I've also used a loaf pan, and also even more oddly-shaped vessels. Just so it's oven safe.) Top with mozzarella (or any other cheese you like) and bake at 350F until the cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown, somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes. Let cool about 10 minutes, until it's closer to sliceable than scoopable, and serve.
I also like stew, which I make by browning chunks of beef or lamb on all sides, deglazing the pan with a cup of red wine, adding chunks of onion, potato and carrot, topping up with broth or water, and baking for 2-4 hours at 350F. (It might need more water added intermittently.)
I also love Tom Yum soup, served piping hot and as spicy as it can be and still be comfortable. Oh, and my mother's cauliflower curry, for which I do not have the recipe. And schnitzel with spaetzle....
And the legume soups -- split pea, black bean, white bean, lentil -- which I make without a recipe, starting with bacon and onions in a pot until the bacon has rendered and the onions are golden, adding garlic and a diced carrot (and, if I feel like it, maybe a diced bell pepper, or a can of crushed tomatoes, or a splash of white wine, or a diced potato, or...) and water and then the legumes, and cooking until they fall apart.
And parsnips and carrots tossed with sesame oil and coarse salt and baked at 350F until fork-tender, dressed with a mixture of lemon juice and honey.
And acorn squash split in half with the seeds scooped out, and butter and brown sugar put in the cavity, and then baked for an hour at 350F, and eaten like dessert.
Oh, and butternut squash soup (curried or not), with the seeds reserved, and toasted with oil and salt, and floated on top like croutons.
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Date: 2009-12-08 05:33 am (UTC)I also like stew, which I make by browning chunks of beef or lamb on all sides, deglazing the pan with a cup of red wine, adding chunks of onion, potato and carrot, topping up with broth or water, and baking for 2-4 hours at 350F. (It might need more water added intermittently.)
I also love Tom Yum soup, served piping hot and as spicy as it can be and still be comfortable. Oh, and my mother's cauliflower curry, for which I do not have the recipe. And schnitzel with spaetzle....
And the legume soups -- split pea, black bean, white bean, lentil -- which I make without a recipe, starting with bacon and onions in a pot until the bacon has rendered and the onions are golden, adding garlic and a diced carrot (and, if I feel like it, maybe a diced bell pepper, or a can of crushed tomatoes, or a splash of white wine, or a diced potato, or...) and water and then the legumes, and cooking until they fall apart.
And parsnips and carrots tossed with sesame oil and coarse salt and baked at 350F until fork-tender, dressed with a mixture of lemon juice and honey.
And acorn squash split in half with the seeds scooped out, and butter and brown sugar put in the cavity, and then baked for an hour at 350F, and eaten like dessert.
Oh, and butternut squash soup (curried or not), with the seeds reserved, and toasted with oil and salt, and floated on top like croutons.
Mmm.