recipeworld

Quesadillas are some of my favorite foods for clearing out the fridge. You can basically toss anything in a tortilla and add some cheese, and it becomes a delicious meal. I change it up: anything from leftover chicken and cheese to onions, mushrooms, leftover steak… anything is game if it’s hiding in the fridge. You don’t even have to use Mexican flavors: you can make a breakfast quesadilla with scrambled eggs and beans, or even a pizza-ish quesadilla with tomatoes, tomato paste, cheese and basil.

I like to make my quesadillas for one, which means that I only use one tortilla. This doesn’t mean that I skimp on the fillings, however: you can probably tell from the picture that I stuff them about as full as a regular burrito.

This quesadilla gets its protein from chicken and portabello mushrooms, with onions and cheese as well. I like to put a lot of hot sauce and sour cream on top, but serving options are up to you: guacamole, black beans, salsa or even just plain. The possibilities are endless.

Chicken Portabello Quesadilla

3 oz. cooked chicken, sliced

1 portabello mushroom cap, sliced

1/2 onion, diced

2 oz. shredded Mexican blend cheese

1 whole wheat tortilla

2 tsp. olive oil, separated

Heat 1 tsp. oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onions and mushrooms. Season with salt and sauté until the mushrooms have released all of their juices and cooked through and the onions are translucent and slightly browned. Add the chicken for a minute or two, until just heated through. Remove mixture from skillet to a plate.

Add the other teaspoon of oil to the skillet. Heat and spread evenly around the skillet. Add the tortilla, and then place the reserved filling on one half of the tortilla. Add the cheese on top, and fold the other side of the tortilla over, like an omelette. Press down to help the filling stick. Heat for one minute, and then flip to the other side. Cook until cheese is melted. Remove from heat and slice into two triangles. Serve with sour cream and hot sauce, or your choice of toppings.

This is a recipe from a long time ago. I was in the mood for pasta primavera, but since it wasn’t primavera yet, I had to improvise with what I had.

A grill-pan is great for bringing out the flavors in veggies, although a roasting pan will do the trick nicely. If you decide to go the roasting route, there’s no need to save the extra dressing: the veggies will release their juices, and you can just “rinse” the pan with a few tablespoons of pasta cooking water to make sure you get all the good flavors in your pasta instead of on your pan.

Pasta Primavera nel’Inverno

spinach spaghetti for two people

1 zucchini, sliced into rounds

1 red onion, sliced

salt and pepper

juice of one lemon

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

parmesan cheese for serving

Cook the pasta to al dente, reserving some of the pasta cooking water. Heat a grill pan over high heat. While the pan is heating, toss the remaining ingredients (except the cheese) in a large bowl, ensuring that the vegetables are well-coated. Using a spaghetti spoon, lift the veggies from the dressing, allowing excess to drip to the bottom of the bowl. Save this for later.

Grill the veggies until charred on one side, about two minutes, and then turn to cook the other side. When the vegetables have finished cooking, return them to the bowl of dressing along with the pasta. Toss with a few tablespoons of cooking water to ensure the dressing coats the pasta. Serve with parmesan cheese.

Note: You could marinate chicken in the same dressing and toss it with the pasta for more protein, but be sure not to return the final dish to the same bowl you marinated the raw chicken in.

Sometimes the best things are simple.

When I was younger, I had a good friend whose mother was from Italy. She used to invite groups of us over for long, multi-course lunches of real Italian food. One of my favorite things was a cucumber salad she used to make. She peeled cucumbers and sliced them very thin, or sometimes into long sticks, and then she salted them. I could never figure out why this was so good, until I bought some flaked sea salt. The crunchiness of the salt flakes really adds to the dish. You’d never expect something so simple (or so healthy) could be so good.

Cucumbers and Salt

1 English cucumber, sliced thin

2 teaspoons of flaked sea salt

Arrange the cucumbers on a plate and evenly distribute the salt over them. Allow to sit for 2-3 minutes so that the salt crystals begin to dissolve in the water.

Sorry the picture here is so screwy, but I had to share this recipe for Mexican eggs.

Two things that I always have in my fridge are eggs and potatoes. Both are cheap bases upon which to start a meal: they are like blank canvases to draw on, using different combinations of flavors to make them distinct each time.

I often make a big omelette for dinner by combining eggs, fromage frais (similar to crème fraiche, sour cream or strained yogurt) and a little bit of milk to form the base, and then adding different toppings, like a pizza or a frittata. This time, however, I had some frozen spinach and some shredded cheese and salsa from our Mexican party the night before. It was immediately apparent that the omelette wasn’t going to hold together, so I just scrambled everything. With some sweet cooked onions and some Mexican seasonings, this made a delicious breakfast.

Mexican Eggs (serves two)

1 tsp. canola oil

1/2 red onion, chopped

4 eggs

3/4 cup store-bought salsa

1/4 cup fromage frais

1/2 cup frozen spinach, thawed and drained

1/4 cup shredded cheese (cheddar, mozzarella… whatever you have)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp hot red pepper

In a large skillet, heat the canola oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onions. Cook until softened and sweet. Turn the heat down to low. Crack the eggs into the skillet and add the fromage frais, salsa, shredded cheese and spinach. Cook, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan with a spatula, until the eggs are cooked through but still loose. Add the seasonings and fold in. Serve with extra fromage frais or sour cream and hot sauce.

When I was 14 years old, I came to France for three months. I lived in the North, which is not a very touristy location. It gets dark early in the winter, and it rains almost every day. Luckily, I had a warm and welcoming host family who gave me fluffy slippers to wear around the house, lent me a rain jacket when I realized I had left mine at home and, maybe most importantly, introduced me to a recipe for gratin dauphinoise.

Gratin dauphinoise is real winter food. It warms you up and keeps you full. Since leaving the North, I only make it on special occasions, usually at Christmas. I tinkered with the recipe a bit… mostly because I forgot some of it, and partly because I’m not so picky about peeling potatoes first. My version may not be 100% authentic, but it’s the one that my aunt and uncle beg for every year at the holidays.

Gratin Dauphinoise

5 or 6 large yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed and thinly sliced (Note: you can keep the potato slices in a bowlful of warm water with a squeeze of lemon while you slice them all, so that they don’t become brown.)

3 cups of grated swiss or emmental cheese

1/2 cup of grated gruyère cheese (Note: you can use all gruyère if you want to. It will bring the best flavor, however emmental or swiss are tasty as well, and not quite as expensive.)

1 egg

1 cup each whole milk and heavy cream

nutmeg, salt and pepper

Grease a glass baking dish with butter. Place one layer of potatoes along the bottom of the dish. Overlap slightly so that the entire bottom of the dish is covered. Sprinkle salt, pepper and nutmeg over the potato layer, and top with a layer of grated swiss cheese.

Follow with another layer of potatoes, this time sprinkling the layer just with black pepper. Continue alternating layers (potato, pepper and cheese) until you reach the last layer of potatoes. Sprinkle salt, pepper and nutmeg over the top layer of potatoes. Set aside, keeping the grated gruyère for later.

In a saucepan, heat the cream and milk together until hot but not boiling, and add another sprinkle of nutmeg. Temper the liquid with the egg, and pour the entire contents of the pan over the gratin. Top the gratin with the reserved cheese. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 F until the potatoes are soft, about half an hour. Remove foil and turn up the oven to 425 F. Bake until the top layer of cheese is golden brown. Cool for half an hour before serving in order to make slicing easier.

Note: recipe can be prepared and baked at 350 and the last step can be reserved until just before serving.

Of all of my recipes, I am most often asked for two: lasagna and guacamole. I’m not sharing either of those with you today, but I’m not telling you this to torture you, rather to make a point. In generations past, what was cooked by a person was usually directly related to their family background. Italians knew how to make a mean pasta, but probably couldn’t roast a chicken to save their lives. The French, on the other hand, were all over roast chicken, but wouldn’t be able to make chicken fried rice to save their lives.

Today, a lot of that has changed. In my cooking repertoire, I have recipes from all over the world. However, at the end, the recipes that work best, the recipes that are trustworthy and go-to recipes, are usually those that are connected to my background as an Italian-American.

The odd thing is, none of the Italian recipes I make were passed through generations or anything like that. Maybe I just have an innate feel for the ingredients, for the technique, for the theory of Italian cooking. It is often said that French cooking is all about making something incredible with not-so-great ingredients, while Italian cooking is about bringing out the best in amazing ingredients: simple preparation is best. While I can make a bearnaise sauce with the rest of them, my heart lies in this simplistic theory of Italian food.

So here, I offer my recipe for eggplant rollatini, invented purely by yours truly with only the many, many eggplant rollatini I have tried in the past. It’s simple, but it’s tried and true, and truly incredible.

Eggplant Rollatini

three large eggplants

1 cup flour, for dredging

two eggs, beaten with a tablespoon of milk

1 cup Italian breadcrumbs (if you can’t find Italian breadcrumbs, then combine one part grated Parmegiano-Reggiano cheese to three parts regular breadcrumbs, and add one teaspoon each dried ground oregano, dried parsley, dried basil, and dried garlic powder)

2 cups ricotta cheese

2 cups grated mozzarella cheese

2-3 tablespoons grated Parmegiano-Reggiano cheese

ground black pepper

fresh basil

Slice three eggplants lengthwise into strips about a quarter inch to a half inch thick. Make sure they’re all the same size. Dredge each slice in flour, then beaten egg, then Italian breadcrumbs. Place the dredged slices on a greased baking sheet, and bake for ten minutes on each side at 375 degrees.

In a bowl, combine equal parts ricotta cheese and grated mozzarella. Add a few tablespoons of parmegiano reggiano to taste, and season with black pepper and a chiffonade of fresh basil. Line the eggplant slices up so that one of the narrow sides is facing you. Place about a tablespoon of the cheese mixture at the end of each of the eggplant slices, and roll. Place them, seam side down, in a glass baking dish. When all of the rollatini have been rolled, cover with tomato sauce and bake at 350 until the cheese is melted.

Hello out there!

I’m glad you stopped by. Some of you may know me already from my food blog, Tomato Kumato. Now, before you get all up in a huff about the fact that I’m now running two food blogs, let me explain. Tomato Kumato was my first food blog, and it grew as I learned how to cook. When I first started it, I was scared in the kitchen, and a lot of the recipes over there are recycled from other bloggers or else from food magazines.

The point of this blog is to share some of my own personal recipes with you. This means things I’ve made up entirely on my own. As far as food is concerned, I guess that’s a toughie… especially given as many food blogs and magazines I read, I suppose nothing could be entirely original. I’ll give credit where credit is due if I feel that the inspiration clearly came from someone else, but the rest of the stuff up here came from my pretty little head.

I’m not abandoning Tomato Kumato. I hope that these two blogs can grow together. I’ll be taking some recipes from Tomato Kumato and posting them here: what I want for this blog is a full collection of all of my original recipes. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ll be copy-pasting posts from there and moving them here… that’s pointless and pretty lame. All food has a story, and a lot of food has more than one story. If I rob Tomato Kumato of a recipe, I’ll post it here with a new story, and hopefully new pictures! As for Tomato Kumato, you’ll still be seeing all of your favorite shout out recipes and restaurant reviews, as well as some more original recipes.

I’m still fiddling with the formatting on this baby, but you can expect your very first brand-spankin’-new recipe bright and early tomorrow!