TNDAH: Chicken Breasts with Zucchini Pappardelle

This TNDAH selection is actually from last night (I must have instinctively known I'd be too lazy to make dinner tonight). While grocery shopping last week, I decided to cruise the Epicurious app on my phone for a tasty-looking dinner recipe.

After browsing for what felt like hours through several grocery aisles, I came across this recipe for Chicken Breasts with Zucchini Pappardelle. I was intrigued by the 'zucchini as pasta' prospect and the total prep time of only 30 minutes.

Here's a look at the 'zucchini pasta.' It really is impressive to see what you can do with a zucchini and a vegetable peeler. Looks so fancy.
Here's the chicken sauteing. The recipe called for chicken with skin, but I went with skinless instead (didn't seem to make much of a difference to me). I also replaced the water with chicken broth based on a couple of user reviews I read (very good choice).

And here's the completed dish with a side of garlic mashed potatoes and wheat garlic bread (that's right, lots o' garlic!).

I must admit, this turned out quite delicious and was very well-presented if I do say so myself. The broth, basil and garlic brought out great flavor in the chicken, and the zucchini was a light and refreshing addition. Given all of my experimenting in the kitchen as of late, it was great to finally make something that was spot on. Two cheers for me ;)

TNDAH: Lemon Penne with Ham and Escarole

This week's Tuesday Night Dinner at Home choice was Lemon Penne with Ham and Escarole (another selection from the Rachael Ray magazine).

After boiling the penne pasta, here it is mixed in with the sliced escarole.
Preparing the ham steak.

Whipping together the lemon sauce mixture.

Finished pasta.

All together now. Pasta with the mixed greens side salad.

This pasta was one of the most interesting I've ever had. For starters, I'd never heard of escarole before (a slightly bitter member of the endive family), but it brought a great uniqueness to the dish. The lemon zest and juice provided much of the flavor, which was at times slightly overwhelming. In hindsight, I think I could have cut back on the amount the recipe called for to balance the lemon with the other flavors. I also went with wheat pasta, which I still struggle with a bit, but overall, the recipe was a good one to try. Just another opportunity to branch out of my typical routine.

Lemon Penne with Ham and Escarole Recipe

1 lb. penne pasta

1 head escarole (about 1 lb.), sliced crosswise

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

5 ounces ham steak, coarsely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

3 large eggs

Grated peel and juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper

In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the pasta until al dente. Stir in the escarole and drain, reserving 1 cup pasta cooking water; return the pasta and escarole to the pot. Meanwhile, in a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the ham, garlic and crushed red pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. In a medium bowl, beat together the eggs, lemon peel, lemon juice and half of the cheese. Whisk in 1/2 cup reserved pasta water. Stir the egg mixture into the pasta and cook, stirring, over low heat, until the cheese is melted and the mixture is creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the ham mixture and the remaining 1/2 cup reserved pasta water; season with salt and pepper. Top with the remaining cheese.

Tuesday Night Dinner at Home: Taco Pie

Two weeks in a row! Look out...the kitchen is really heating up now ;)

Tonight I decided to try a recipe I found in a cookbook that my office put together to raise money for charity a couple of years ago. It includes recipes from many of my colleagues, and the one that caught my eye this week was for Taco Pie.

Here's a picture of the pie ready for the oven (assembled with help from my roommate).
And, here it is fresh out of the oven (tomatoes on just half since my other roommate isn't a fan).

Served up with a side of Zatarain's Spanish Rice. Probably not the healthiest thing ever invented, but tasty nonetheless.

The Taco Pie was spectacular and extremely quick and easy to prepare. Made with crescent rolls, it had a light and fluffy taste with the added crunch of crushed corn chips. Plus, the meat, cheese and sour cream all baked together was like heaven on a fork. I'll definitely be making this recipe again in the near future.

Taco Pie Recipe

1 lb. hamburger

1 pkg. taco seasoning

1/2 cup water

1 8 0z. can crescent dinner rolls

1 1/2 cups crushed corn chips

1 cup sour cream

1 cup shredded cheese

Brown hamburger, add seasoning and water. Form crust by putting crescent rolls in nine-inch pie pan. Sprinkle 1 cup corn chips over crust. Add meat. Top with sour cream and cheese. Sprinkle with remaining corn chips. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Serve with your favorite taco toppings (we went with black olives and tomatoes).

Tuesday Night Dinner with Black-Eyed Peas

With the new year well underway, I'm going to try to bring back the Tuesday Night Dinner at Home entries with some regularity. Despite the low frequency of these posts, I've actually been eating at home and cooking dinner with the roommates a lot lately...but I've lacked a little creativity, defaulting instead to several old favorites (read: lots of pasta and side salads).

So, the other day I was flipping through a recent issue of Rachael Ray's magazine and flagged a few recipes I thought sounded good. Wanting to add a little variety to this Tuesday dinner, I thought I'd try the "Pork Chops with Warm Black-Eyed Pea Salad." I'd never had black-eyed peas before, so I knew that I'd find it interesting at the very least.

Pork chop prep with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Warm black-eyed pea salad prep. I might as well go ahead and confess right here that I screwed up not once but twice with this part. First: I forgot to buy a red onion, so I had to swap it with yellow (I swear I must have walked right by the red onions at the grocery store earlier tonight while imagining myself adding one to the basket), and second: I read the recipe incorrectly and thought it only called for one can of black-eyed peas (although, it clearly states two).

Tasty side salad. Eating a salad with nearly every meal is my new thing. I like to buy the plastic containers of organic baby greens (or in this case spinach) and mix it with several other good-for-you ingredients. Lately, I've been adding the NUT-rition Digestive Health Mix of nuts, dried fruits and granola, along with parmesan cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.

Finished product.

Despite a few missteps with the black-eyed pea salad, it turned out quite well (I cut back on the amount of crushed red pepper and balsamic vinegar so as not to overdo it). It had a hearty, nutty flavor and was a good complement to the browned-just-right pork chop.

TNDAH: Crescent Chicken Squares and Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Tonight's Tuesday Night Dinner at Home paired together Crescent Chicken Squares (a recipe I got from my grandma) and garlic mashed potatoes (a basic recipe I found here).

I've made the chicken recipe before and enjoyed it each time. Tonight, I was looking for a good starch complement and decided to give the garlic mashed potatoes a try.

Preparing the chicken.
Chicken filling mixture.

Mixture placed on crescent squares.

Ready to bake!Chunks of red potatoes and slices of garlic ready to be boiled.

Boiled potatoes and garlic pre-mashing.

Mashed potatoes sprinkled with fresh parsley (ever noticed that one bunch of fresh parsley is never-ending? Seriously, I've been working on this same bunch for more than two weeks!).

And, finally, the finished product.

No surprises to report from the kitchen tonight. Unless you count the mistake-free preparation as a surprise. The Crescent Chicken Squares were moist and flavorful, with the pimento and cream cheese perfectly balanced. The potatoes were also yummy, offering the perfect mashed-by-hand-peel-still-on texture.

While tonight's cooking experience was a success, I did have a near-disastrous baking adventure on Saturday. I went home for the weekend and was charged with bringing dessert to a gathering. Handy iPhone in hand, I browsed Epicurious for the perfect cake and settled on spiced pumpkin layer cake with cream cheese frosting.

Long story short, I didn't allow enough time for the cake to cool before frosting. During transport the top layer slid and split in half and a chunk of the bottom layer broke off. Needless to say, we had spiced pumpkin crumble with cream cheese frosting for dessert. Thankfully, there were no pictures, and everyone still seemed to enjoy it. Until next time...

Crescent Chicken Squares Recipe
3 oz. package soft cream cheese
3 tablespoons melted butter
2 cups cooked cubed chicken
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon chopped onion
1 tablespoon chopped pimento
8 oz. can Pillsbury crescent rolls
3/4 cup seasoned crushed croutons

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In medium bowl, blend cream cheese and two tablespoons butter until smooth. Add next six ingredients, mix well. Separate crescent roll into four rectangles, seal perforations. Spoon 1/2 cup chicken mix into each rectangle. Pull four corners of dough to top of chicken mix. Pinch edges shut. Brush with melted butter. Sprinkle with crushed croutons. Bake on cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Tuesday Night Dinner at Home: Pasta and Its Accessories

Tonight's dinner was mostly about the accessories. I knew I was going to have spaghetti as the main dish, and while I'm certainly not adventurous enough to try making it from scratch, I've pretty much perfected the sauce-in-a-jar standard. Sure I infuse my own style: tri-colored rotini in place of traditional spaghetti noodles; garlic, onion and fresh mushrooms mixed in with ground beef; a sprinkle of cheese - but at the end of the day, it's still just your typical jar of red sauce (in this case: Newman's Own Five Cheese, which I love).

I decided the creativity would lie in the sides: garlic bread and dessert. Despite the simplicity of this Tuesday Night Dinner at Home, I still managed a couple of gaffes. This photo shows everything cooking at once: dessert prep on back left burner, noodles on front left burner, garlic bread prep on back right burner, spaghetti sauce prep on front right burner.
I grabbed the garlic bread recipe on my way out the door this morning from Rachael Ray on foodnetwork.com. Here's the garlic, butter and olive oil melting together in a small saucepan.

And here's the finished product with the garlic oil brushed on the bread my roommate made from scratch yesterday and topped with fresh parsley and Romano cheese. I know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to discern that it was a bit overdone. In fact, I needed help scraping off the blackened parts. Let's just say I haven't quite figured out how to use the broiler yet.

The good news is that you couldn't really even taste the burnt parts. The bad news is that it wasn't quite delicious. There was too much garlic...a strange comment coming from me because I love the stuff. I also wasn't all that impressed with the Romano cheese, but that could be because I didn't have the opportunity to put it back in the oven to fully melt (since I'd already started to burn it after all).

The picture below illustrates the finished product, complete with a side salad prepared by my roommate: baby greens, crumbled bleu cheese, salt and pepper. I used both French and Parmesan Romano dressing, because I wanted it extra fattening and delicious.

The real fun tonight came with dessert. I'd been craving "puppy chow" ever since I tried Chex Mix Select - Chocolate Peanut Butter.

Melting the chocolate and peanut butter.

Placing chocolate/peanut butter/cereal mixture into large plastic bag with powdered sugar for coating.

Letting the scrumptious treat cool.

The best part about puppy chow is that it's incredibly easy to make yet tastes like perfection.

Puppy Chow Recipe

1 12 oz. package semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup peanut butter

12 cups Crispix

desired amount of powdered sugar

Melt chocolate chips and peanut butter in large saucepan. Stir in Crispix. In large baggie, combine cereal mixture and powdered sugar; shake to coat cereal with sugar. Fan out on cookie sheet to cool.

TNDAH: Another Wednesday Edition

So it seems I can't quite get my act together with the "Tuesday Night Dinner at Home" entries, so this week brings another Wednesday version.

Tonight's dinner centered around using up the abundance of brown rice I have in the cupboard. Even though I know it's good for you, I still find brown rice to be quite bland. I thought I'd add a few things to spice it up tonight.

First, I sauteed fresh minced garlic with chopped onion and chopped green pepper (fresh from my mom and dad's garden).

Then, I cooked the rice as normal.

And added it to the sauteed vegetables. I topped it off with a dash of fresh ground pepper and sea salt.

I paired the rice with a grilled chicken breast (seasoned with pepper and Jane's Krazy Mixed-Up Salt), and a sliced tomato (again from my parents' garden and the most delicious I've had all season).

Altogether, pretty tasty. I still haven't reached a point where I'll gush about brown rice, but I'm getting there. At the very least, it's a perfect substitute for white rice when cooked/baked as part of a larger dish.

Tuesday Night Dinner at Home: Wednesday Version

Okay, so I admittedly cheated on this, the second occurence of Tuesday Night Dinner at Home. Truth is I was just too lazy last night and opted for a combination of cold leftover pizza, chips and queso and a salad (one out of three things being moderately healthy ain't bad).

So, for TNDAH - Wednesday version, I chose a quick and easy dinner: flatbread pizza and a ceasar salad. This has become a staple in my diet this summer ever since I saw the pizza picture on the Italian Herb flatrbread I use for wraps. Plus, I love Canadian bacon and mushrooms.

Before:
After:

The best thing about these flatbread pizzas is that they're perfect for one person and you don't feel as guilty about it when you assembe it yourself with fresh vegetables, cheese and meat. The complementary salad was fairly simple: Marzetti "Supreme Caesar" dressing (so good!), a mix of romaine hearts and baby greens, croutons and parmesan cheese lightly tossed.

For dessert, big news: Halloween Oreos have arrived! I know, it's hard to even think about summer being over let alone Halloween, but these really are just about the best thing on earth. Thank you, Target :)

Simple Flatbread Pizza Recipe
1 flatbread wrap
Pizza sauce (I like Ragu's Pizza Quick Traditional)
Desired meat and/or vegetables
Mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 375. Place flatbread on pizza stone. Spread pizza sauce to cover flatbread. Sprinkle with thin layer of mozzarella and add desired meat and/or vegetables. Cover with mozzarella. Bake for approximately 10 minutes or until cheese is fully melted.

Tuesday Night Dinner at Home: Manicotti

Tonight I decided Tuesdays would be a good day to chronicle my adventures in the kitchen (both disasterous and successful). So, for any Tuesday that I don't have other plans in the indefinite future, I will make a delightful dinner at home and live to tell about it here. On this, the first night of TNDAH (catchy, huh?), I've decided to go with a recipe aptly titled "Easy Baked Manicotti" that I received from a friend at work. I've already tried this recipe for dinner with a friend once before and was not entirely pleased with how it turned out. Tonight I learned maybe it was because I lack a certain cook's intuition. Suffice to say, it's important to actually cook the manicotti shells before baking them.

After preheating the oven, layering the bottom of the baking dish with spaghetti sauce and cooking the manicotti shells, I stuffed them with a mixture of egg, ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses and pesto. Then I poured the additional spaghetti sauce over the shells, covered it with tinfoil and baked for 35 minutes.

Before:

After:

Yummy. After 35 minutes, I sprinkled a little parmesan cheese on top of the manicotti and baked uncovered for an additional five minutes. To complement the manicotti, I assembled a quick and easy salad of organic baby greens, grape tomatoes, shredded colby-jack cheese, croutons and parmesan romano dressing (my new summer favorite). To drink, I had a tall glass of raspberry lemonade.

And, while unfortunately not homemade, I offer my thanks to Edy's for the delicious Slow Churned Caramel Delight ice cream.

Easy Baked Manicotti Recipe
2 1/2 cups spaghetti sauce, divided
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 3/4 cups ricotta cheese
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup pesto
12 manicotti shells, cooked al dente

Preheat oven to 350. Spread 3/4 cup of the spaghetti sauce on bottom of 13x9-inch baking dish. Mix egg, cheeses and pesto until well blended. Spoon cheese mixture into large resealable plastic bag. Using scissors, cut off small hole from one of the bottom corners of bag. Fill manicotti shells, one at a time, squeezing cheese mixture into both sides of each shell. Place manicotti over sauce in baking dish; pour remaining 1 3/4 cups spaghetti sauce over manicotti. Cover with foil. Bake 40 minutes or until heated through.