Pasta Genovese/Beef and Onion Ragu

This is kind of a franken-recipe. Cook's Country adapted this stove top recipe for the slow cooker and then I moved it back to the stove top.

Pasta Genovese
Adapted from Cook's Country June/July 2016
1 lb. boneless beef chuck-eye roast, cut into 1 1/2" pieces¹
2 lbs. onions, sliced
150g pancetta or bacon, chopped²
100g salami, minced³
1 carrot, chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
1/3 - 2/3 c. dry white wine
1/3 c. water
1/4 c. olive oil
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 Tbsp. dried basil (or 2 Tbsp. fresh)
1 lb. pasta of choice
50g Pecorino Romano or Parmesan

1. Season beef with salt and pepper and set aside.
2. Fry pancetta and salami in 2 Tbsp. olive oil.
3. Add carrot and celery. (I just let them sizzle for a bit while I chopped the onions.)
4. Add the beef and onions.
5. Toss in 1/3 c. wine, 1/3 c. water, a bit more salt and pepper (maybe 3/4 tsp. coarse salt, I didn't measure), tomato paste, and basil.
6. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for a couple hours, stirring occasionally. Mine started to look a bit dry before I was ready to stop the simmer, so I tossed in another 1/3 c. wine.
7. Try to mash or shred the beef a bit if you can. (Mine wouldn't shred, so I just kept it as an extra-chunky sauce.)
8. Boil and drain your pasta.
9. Stir cheese and remaining olive oil into sauce. Toss with pasta and enjoy!

---

¹ I substituted stewing beef, but was still pretty tough at the end of cooking. Next time I'd either do it in the slow cooker, pick a more tender cut, or both.
² This was supposed to be closer to 50g of pancetta,but I made an error when converting to metric and thought I needed 100g. And since I didn't want to keep the last 50g of pancetta from the 150g-pack hanging around in the fridge, I decided to just put it all in. It was delicious!
³ Same thing happened again here.

Gnocchi with Creamy Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

• 64mL olive oil
• 500g vacuum-packed gnocchi
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 4 garlic cloves, minced, or garlic paste
• 1 (~800mL) can crushed tomatoes
• 128mL water
• salt and pepper
• 128mL heavy cream
• 256mL freshly grated parmesan
• 128mL chopped fresh basil

Procedure

1. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and preheat oven to 475°F.
2. Heat half the oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add gnocchi and cook until lightly browned, ~4 minutes; transfer to plate.
3. Add remaining oil and onion to skillet and cook until onion softens, ~3 minutes.
4. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, ~30 seconds.
5. Add tomatoes, water, ~2mL salt, and ~2mL pepper and cook until slightly thickened, ~5 minutes.
6. Add cream and gnocchi to pan. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until gnocchi are tender, 5-7 minutes.
7. Transfer to casserole dish. Sprinkle with parmesan and bake until cheese is well-browned, ~8 minutes.
8. Top with basil and serve.

Strip Steaks with Horseradish Butter

Ingredients

• 45mL unsalted butter, softened
• 30mL minced fresh chives
• 5mL prepared horseradish
• 5mL grated lemon zest
• 15mL lemon juice
• salt and pepper
• cayenne pepper
• 2 (500g) boneless strip or ribeye steaks, ~2cm thick, trimmed and halved crosswise
• canola oil

Procedure

1. Whisk together butter, chives, horseradish, lemon zest, juice, ~2mL each salt and pepper, and cayenne to taste in a bowl; set aside.
2. Season steaks with salt and pepper.
3. Oil a large skillet and bring to medium-high heat. Cook steaks until well browned, 3-5 minutes/side.
4. Transfer to plate, let rest for 10 minutes, and serve with butter.

Skillet Pork Chops with Apples and Maple-Sage Butter

Hey, it's a 30 minute recipe card that actually comes together in 30 minutes on the first try! Tasty, too.

Ingredients

• 60mL unsalted butter, softened
• 30mL unsalted butter
• 30mL maple syrup
• 15mL minced fresh sage
• salt and pepper
• 4 ~200g boneless pork chops
• 2 granny smith apples, cored and cut into wedges
• 1 onion, halved and sliced thin
• 15mL red wine vinegar

Procedure

1. Combine softened butter, 15mL of the maple syrup, and the sage in a small bowl. Set aside.
2. Melt 15mL of the remaining butter in a large skillet over medium high heat.
3. Season pork chops with salt and pepper. Cook in the skillet until cooked through and browned on both sides, ~5 minutes per side. Remove from the skillet.
4. Add butter as needed to get ~15mL of butter and/or pork fat in the skillet -- if your pork chops are particularly fatty you may need to drain some off instead, but ours were quite lean.
5. Add the apples, onion, and ~4mL salt and cook, covered, until softened, ~6 minutes.
6. Stir in the vinegar and remaining maple syrup and cook, uncovered, until the apples start to brown, 2-4 minutes.
7. Stir accumulated pork juices into the apple-onion mixture, remove from heat, and serve alongside the pork chops. Top the pork chops with the maple-sage butter.

Cuban Quesadillas

Ingredients

• 125mL dill pickles, sliced, patted dry, and chopped fine
• 64mL pickled banana pepper rings, patted dry and chopped fine
• 45mL yellow mustard
• 30mL mayo
• black pepper
• 4 25cm flour tortillas
• 250g thinly sliced deli ham
• 250g thinly sliced deli turkey
• 125g sliced swiss cheese
• canola oil

Procedure

1. Combine pickles, banana peppers, mustard, mayo, and pepper in bowl to form relish.
2. Set aside 30mL of relish; spread the rest over half of each tortilla.
3. Top the relished side of each tortilla with ham, turkey, and swiss cheese; fold tortilla shut.
4. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Cook quesadillas, two at a time, until golden brown and crispy, 1-2 minutes/side.
5. Slice into wedges and serve with remaining relish.

Pastrami Cheeseburgers

We have a backlog of Cook's Country 30-minute recipe cards to write up; I'll be trying to work through those over the next little while.

In my experience few of these are actually 30-minute, although a faster cook with a more organized kitchen who's better at multitasking may disagree.

Ingredients

• 90mL mayonnaise
• 45mL ketchup
• 30mL sweet pickle relish
• salt and pepper
• 4 kaiser rolls, split and toasted
• 500g lean ground beef
• 200g thinly sliced deli pastrami
• 375mL sauerkraut, drained and pressed dry
• 8 slices swiss cheese

Procedure

1. Whisk together mayo, ketchup, relish, and some pepper. Spread sauce evenly on inside faces of kaiser rolls. Set aside.
2. Shape beef into four patties. Season with salt and pepper (and garlic paste, hot chili flakes, whatever else you put in your burgers...)
3. Cook patties in a skillet. Remove to a plate.
4. Add pastrami to skillet and cook over medium-high heat until lightly browned, ~3 minutes.
5. Stir in sauerkraut and cook until heated through, ~2 minutes.
6. Divide pastrami mix into four piles. Top each pile with two slices of swiss cheese. Cover skillet until cheese melts.
7. Assemble burgers and pastrami mix into buns. Eat.

One-Pot Baked Ziti

Easy, tasty, true one-pot, and doesn't take too long to prepare. What's not to love? It even has some veg in it so you can pretend like it's a balanced meal!

One-Pot Baked Ziti
Slightly adapted from Cook's Country December/January 2016
450g Italian sausage meat
3 Tbsp. garlic paste (or minced garlic)
1 (680mL) can tomato sauce + 1 (200mL) can pizza sauce
1 (small) can diced tomatoes (I think it was 300-ish mL)
1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (I'd double this next time)
2 c. water
450g penne/ziti
6 Tbsp. fresh basil (or basil paste)
300g baby spinach
1 1/2 c. cubed mozzarella (1/4" cubes)
1 c. Parmesan cheese
1 c. ricotta

1. Brown the sausage over medium-high heat.
2. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds or so.
3. Add the tomato sauce(s), diced tomatoes, salt, oregano, sugar, and pepper flakes.
4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium low and simmer for ~10 minutes.
5. Add water, pasta, and 1/4 c. of basil. (I goofed and added all the basil here instead of saving some for the end, but it was still plenty tasty.)
6. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook, uncovered, stirring often until pasta is slightly softened, but not done.
7. While pasta is cooking, preheat broiler.
8. Once pasta is nearly done, remove from heat and stir in 3/4 c. mozzarella and 1/2 c. Parmesan.
9. Dot the top with ricotta and top with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan.
10. Broil until cheese starts to brown.
11. Transfer to wire rack to cool for 10-ish minutes.
12. Sprinkle with remaining basil and serve!

Migas

This recipe is listed as a breakfast (as scrambled egg dishes tend to be), and I think it would be fine as one, but it's also substantial enough to serve as lunch.

symbol's notes: half a cup of frozen corn added as the onions and peppers are cooking would be tasty. Also, 30mL jalapenos are not enough; it needs at least twice that.

Ingredients

• 8 large eggs
• salt and pepper
• canola oil
• 6 15cm corn tortillas, cut into 1x2cm strips
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and chopped fine
• 30mL minced jarred jalapeños
• ~100mL grated cheddar cheese
• ~15mL chopped fresh cilantro
• salsa for serving

Procedure

1. Whisk eggs, 1mL salt, and 1mL pepper together in a large bowl; set aside.
2. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add tortillas and 1mL salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, 4-6 minutes.
3. Add onion, bell pepper, and jalapeños and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened, 5-7 minutes.
4. Add eggs and, using heat-resistant spatula, constantly and firmly scrape along the bottom of the skillet until eggs begin to clump, 30-60 seconds.
5. Reduce heat to low and gently but constantly fold egg mixture until clumped and still slightly wet, 30-60 seconds.
6. Remove from heat and fold in cheese and cilantro.
7. Serve with salsa and extra cheese to taste.

(Not Actually) One-Pot Ramen

A Cook's Country recipe, this is "one-pot" in the sense that it wants you to cook most of the ingredients, empty out the pot, then cook the rest -- which is fine if you have enough people to empty the whole pot into serving bowls, but it makes 4-6 servings depending on how hungry people are, and if you have fewer people you're going to need to buffer it somewhere anyways. I worked around this by cooking everything in the one pot and using a skillet for the pork.

Ingredients

• 60mL hoisin sauce
• 45mL soy sauce
• 10mL cornstarch
• 1 ~350g pork tenderloin, halved lengthwise and then cut into 5mm slices
• 550mL chicken broth
• canola oil
• 125g cremini mushrooms, sliced
• 15mL ginger paste
• 30mL garlic paste
• 3 packages instant ramen noodles -- just the noodles, we won't use the seasoning packets
• 350g broccoli florets, cut into ~2cm pieces
• 3 scallions, sliced thinly

Procedure

1. Whisk together 15mL of hoisin sauce, 15mL of soy sauce, and the cornstarch in a bowl. Add the pork and toss to cover. Set aside.
2. Whisk together the broth and the remaining hoisin and soy sauces in another bowl. Set aside.
3. Heat oil in a pot or deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook until browned, ~5 minutes.
4. Add the ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant, ~30 seconds.
5. Add the broth mixture and bring to a boil. Add the noodle bricks in a single layer. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook until the bottoms of the bricks are softening and the tops are still hard, 1-2 minutes.
6. Using tongs, flip and break apart the noodles and stir them into the remaining broth. Add the broccoli overtop and cover again. Cook until noodles and broccoli are tender, ~3 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, in a small skillet, cook the pork over medium-high heat until it is browned and the marinade has cooked to it, 1-2 minutes.
8. Add the pork to the main pot, toss all contents together, and serve.