New Place, First Meal

Yes, we've moved since I last posted here. And last night, I got the kitchen unpacked, so tonight, I cooked dinner!

I've recently started using Ibotta and Cartwheel to save some money. (I mean very recently... so far I've saved a little over $5 with Cartwheel and before the receipt for this meal I had $2.50 on Ibotta.)

So today when I went grocery shopping on my lunch break, I tried to buy exclusively things that were on one app or both. Out of the whole receipt, the only things not on either app were potatoes, which I thought I would use in tonight's dinner but decided to go with pasta instead.

Which means this meal was made exclusively from items purchased cheaper or with rebates using those two apps. And I totally winged the whole meal. And it was pretty delicious.

To ease myself back into the food blogging thing, I'm not going to do formatted recipes, just a narrative of what I did.

Boneless Pork Chops, Onions, and Italian-Parmesan Pasta

First, I started the water boiling for the pasta, to give myself some time to figure out what else I wanted to do. Once it started boiling, I put in the pasta and cooked it about 7 minutes (I didn't use much). While that was boiling, I put Italian breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, garlic powder, and shallot-pepper seasoning in a bowl and mixed it up, and whisked an egg in another bowl. I also chopped up about half an onion. Once the pasta was done, I drained it in a colander and rinsed it with cold water. Then I put a skillet on the hot burner and melted about 1 Tbsp butter in it. I dredged the boneless center cut pork chops in the egg, then the breadcrumb mixture, coating them evenly, and put them in the skillet. I didn't time them, but a few minutes on each side? Part of the time it was covered, and part of the time it wasn't. Like I said, I winged it all. Once I cut into one and they were done, I moved them to a plate and put the pan lid over them to keep them warm. Then I put another 1/2 Tbsp or so of butter in the pan and put in the onions and maybe 1 tsp of minced garlic. I stirred them up to get the bits up from the pork in the pan mixed in with the onions, and I salted them a little. While they cooked, I put some zesty Italian dressing in the pasta and mixed it thoroughly, then did the same with some Parmesan.

Baked Ziti

Baked Ziti

Ingredients

pasta (I used penne rigate, making this actually "baked penne")

pasta sauce (whatever you like)

ricotta cheese

shredded mozzarella

Equipment

pot, oven, stove, baking dish

Instructions

Prepare the pasta according to package instructions. Preheat oven to 350F. Drain it and put it in the baking dish. Add sauce to your liking and stir until evenly coated. Add ricotta and stir until thoroughly incorporated. Top with mozzarella. Bake for about 30 minutes (until cheese is melted and bubbly).

Yields

as much as you make

Total time

about 45 minutes

Cleanup rating 3/10

If you stir the sauce and cheese in with everything already in the baking dish, you only have one thing to really clean. And if you wait too long to do it (or keep leftovers in the dish) it'll be harder to clean.

Difficulty rating 3/10

Other than just boiling pasta and adding sauce, this is almost the easiest pasta dish you could possibly make.

Flavor rating 8/10

Classic, simple, and delicious. I think of baked ziti as a wintry comfort food.

Adjustability: medium

Use whatever kind of pasta you want. Obviously it's intended to be ziti, but like I said in the "ingredients" section, I used penne rigate. I was looking for rigatoni, but couldn't find any. We also had rotini, which would work just fine. It only gets weird if you use long pasta like spaghetti or vermicelli, or small pasta like orzo. You can also use whatever sauce you like (I imagine it would be interesting to try an alfredo sauce or something) and any cheese. You could put veggies or meats in it, too.

Make it with...

I went super simple and just microwaved some frozen peas, but any green veggie goes really well with pasta. Salad is a good choice too. To make a more robust meal, you could make chicken or steak or pork chops or something like that with it.

Pasta and Cheese

I think it's unfair to call mac and cheese "mac and cheese." I don't think I've eaten an actual macaroni noodle since my freshman year of college (because Easy Mac is so quintessentially dorm food). The best "mac and cheese" is made from fancier noodles (my personal favorite is cavatappi, but rotini is a close second). Anyway, this is pasta and cheese, the recipe for which I took from here. (Basically, I cut it in half and added bacon.)

Pasta and Cheese

Ingredients

1/2 lb pasta (I used rotini)

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup flour

2 cups milk

3 cups shredded cheese (I used white Cheddar)

salt and pepper

another 1 T butter

1/4 cup panko crumbs

few Tbsp Parmesan

garlic powder

bacon

Equipment

saucepan, pot, pan, stove (and three burners that function at the same time), colander, 9"x13" pan, oven

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F. Cook pasta according to package instructions. Start cooking some bacon*. While that's happening, melt the 1/4 cup of butter in the saucepan, sprinkle in the flour and whisk it together. Let it cook for 2 minutes. In the meantime, start the 1 Tbsp butter melting in a pan. Once melted, add the panko crumbs, Parmesan, and a little garlic powder. Stir often until they get golden brown and toasted. Gradually add the milk, whisking as you go until it's smooth. Add the cheese a small handful at a time, letting each one melt before adding the next. Salt and pepper to taste. Drain the pasta and add it to the cheese mixture. Chop up your bacon and stir it in. Pour the whole thing into a greased 9"x 13" pan. Top with the toasted panko. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

*If you cook your bacon on the stove or in an oven, I would strongly recommend making the bacon beforehand. I was raised making bacon in the microwave so that's how I did it. If you try frying the bacon on the stove while you do everything else, you'll have four burners going at once and one of them will be spitting bacon grease at you. If you make it in the oven, you could throw off your oven preheating for baking the pasta at the end.

Yields

3-4 servings

Total time

About 30 minutes

Cleanup rating 6/10

What a pain. Pan, pot, another pan, plus a baking dish. Two of them with cheese all over the place.

Flavor rating 8/10

YUM. Delicious. I haven't eaten homemade pasta and cheese in a very long time. It's a bit of an ordeal to make compared to a lot of the stuff I post here, but totally worth it.

Difficulty rating 6/10

The difficult part of this recipe is doing many things at once. Boiling water for pasta and preheating an oven are easy enough, but you also have to make sure you don't burn flour, milk, cheese, or panko crumbs, while the pasta doesn't boil over. It's quite a bit to keep track of compared to what I normally do for dinner.

Adjustability: high

You can put just about anything you want in your pasta and cheese. I wanted bacon, so I used bacon. I considered broccoli but instead made peas to go with it. You could put other meats or vegetables or whatever in it. You could use any cheese you want. I had some Monterey Jack in the fridge too, and if I had more of it, I would have used Gouda. And, of course, use whatever pasta you want. I like rotini because it holds the cheese in the little grooves.

Make it with...

See the adjustability section, I guess. It's pasta and cheese... it goes with just about everything.

Simple Stuffed Shells

Can you believe it? I made a real dinner two nights in a row! Now, tonight's wasn't nearly as exciting or delicious as last night's but it was dinner.

In cleaning out and reorganizing the kitchen cabinets the other day, I found that we still had half a box of large shell pasta... not something we use often. (Pasta in general, that is; and especially large shells.) Since we also had a jar of sauce and a block of gruyere and all the seasonings we could ever need, I asked Birk to pick up some ricotta on his way home so I could make this!

Ingredients:
15-20 large pasta shells
1/2 jar of pasta sauce (ours was five-cheese Bertolli... not my favorite)
shredded Gruyere
ricotta cheese
Penzey's Brady Street cheese sprinkle (to taste)
Penzey's shallot-pepper seasoning (to taste)
frozen peas
butter
salt
granulated garlic

Equipment:
pot large enough for your pasta
colander
pan large enough to hold your pasta
microwave (for the peas)
stove
oven

Instructions:
Boil your pasta shells according to the package. (About 15 minutes.) Preheat the oven to 375F. Strain them and put them in a greased pan. Put a spoonful of ricotta inside each shell. Pour sauce over shells. Sprinkle with the cheese sprinkle and seasoning; cover with shredded Gruyere. Bake, uncovered, in oven for 10-15 minutes (until cheese is melted). Meanwhile, put peas in a bowl with butter and salt, and microwave about 90 seconds until cooked. Sprinkle with garlic. Enjoy!

Yields: 4 servings (but I only made 2 servings of peas... leftover peas are unnecessary when you can just make more while warming up your leftover shells)

Total time: about 30 minutes

Cleanup rating: 1/5
I lined the pan with foil so I don't even have to clean that up. Otherwise, you just have to rinse your colander and pasta pot.

Difficulty rating: 2/10
A beginner cook can make this easily. The hardest thing is knowing when your pasta is done (mine was a little underdone because I am an impatient cook).

Flavor rating: 5/10
To be fair, I wasn't very hungry because I had a late lunch (of leftovers from yesterday's Sausage & Veggie Bake). But also, I'm not a fan of the Bertolli sauce. I've yet to find a jar sauce I love... looks like I'll just have to start making my own sauce... look for that in the future!