The Easiest Most Delicious Pasta Sauce from Scratch

*oh look, my tomatoes from last summer! Yes, that's my picture. I ate that orange one about two seconds after snapping this photo. 

I've been feeling a little uninspired in the kitchen lately. My hubby has been out of town a lot, and it's hard to get back into "cooking for one" mode. Then again, last week I made that amazing, incredible cauliflower casserole... and that thing was inspired, man.

Anyway. The point is, when I got home tonight I had a few leftovers and absolutely no ambition whatsoever to make anything fancy, but I was craving pasta badly. Cue the carb-fest!

I adapted this recipe from my Simply Shrimply Spicy Pasta. You can, and probably will, adapt it to suit your taste and the contents of your fridge. My one regret tonight is that I didn't have any soft cheese to add to this in globs... ricotta or even goat cheese would have been welcome.

What you need:

1 28oz can of diced tomatoes (I am still using Meijer's "organic" petite diced ones.)
2 T olive oil
1 T butter
1 clove garlic (or 1 tsp of minced from the fridge, ya'll)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper, or to taste
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
+EITHER:
1 1/2 tsp dry basil
OR:
2 tsp minced fresh basil (or more? I LOVE basil...)
OR:
2 tsp Italian seasoning

Garnish: Fresh-grated Parmesan cheese, to taste

What you do:

If you're going to eat this now, start your water boiling first and get your pasta going. You'll want the pasta to be finished around the same time as the sauce. Tonight, I used elbow macaroni.

Set your skillet on medium and put the olive oil in to heat.

Add the butter.

Once the butter melts, add the garlic and stir slightly. Let the garlic soften but don't brown it.

Add the whole  can of tomatoes, juices and all. Add all the spices. Stir together well.

Let simmer for 5-8 minutes, until the sauce thickens slightly. Using a potato masher or some other method of your choosing, mash your tomatoes to a consistency you want to eat. If you like big chunks of tomato, don't mash. I prefer a more blended sauce, personally.

You should probably be ready to drain your pasta by now... please do. I'll wait.

Turn off the heat under your sauce, then toss your pasta into the skillet and stir it all up. The sauce probably won't coat the pasta very well but you still want to marry them together as much as you can.

Serve, preferably with Parmesan cheese all melty and gooey on top.

Seriously, this takes a total of maybe 10 minutes to do if you've got everything handy.

Shrimp Creole

*Yep, those are my images... of my dinner! 

Pinterest is taking up all my time but man is it tasty! I got this recipe via Pinterest, but it's posted by Never Enough Thyme... you can see it right here. The whole reason I started keeping this blog is that I often change recipes on the fly, and unless I write down my own little variations, I forget them and have to start over every time I want to make the dish. So in a rare twist, I didn't change one single thing about this recipe. Really! I followed Never Enough Thyme's recipe to the T, with amazing results. I've never cooked shrimp creole before but I guarantee I'll do it again. 

The author over at Never Enough Thyme specifically requests that if you want to re-print her recipe that you write it out in your own words or link to the original post. Obviously, I've already done the linking part, but I really don't want to make her mad because I will probably be going back to her site for more recipes... I'd hate to get blacklisted. So I'm going to write it out my own way and hope for her blessing, but please: visit her site to see the original... let this post just be a guide to Never Enough Thyme! :)

What you need:

1 lb Raw shrimp, peeled, and deveined. I used flash-frozen peeled / deveined / tail-off. 

2 Tbsp butter

3/4 C yellow onion, chopped (not as fine as dicing, but smallish pieces mmmkay?)

3 small celery ribs, chopped (see above.)

1 green pepper, cored, seeded, chopped (see above the above)

3 garlic cloves, minced. I used 3tsp of pre-minced garlic from a jar... you use what you like.

1 28oz can of diced tomatoes with juices (Oh, a variation! The original calls for 3C of diced tomato with juices, but the cans don't come in that size so I just approximated. I left a bit of tomato in the can but not much.)

3 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dried, but trust me, use fresh!)

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp grated lemon rind (Hubby did not like the lemon. May try without it next time)

12 dashes of Tabasco sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

2 servings of rice

Garnish:
Juice of 1/2 lemon (since you're already going to use the rind, why not juice that lemon?)
2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley. If you don't care about garnish, just skip this step... then you don't have to buy a whole pile of fresh parsley just for this recipe! I wouldn't repeat this next time. 

What you do:

Rinse your shrimp and set it aside. You'll want it to drain and be fairly dry when you add it at the end of the recipe. 

Boil water for your rice. You need the rice to be ready when the dish is finished cooking, so start both at the same time (or cook the rice ahead, whatever. You don't want to have to wait when the creole is done!)

Melt the butter in a large sautée pan, then add the onion. Cook until the onion is wilted, stirring often. Do not brown the onion! Add celery, green pepper, and garlic, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often, or until the veggies are softened.

Add the tomatoes, thyme, bay leaf, Tabasco, lemon rind, salt, and pepper. Simmer for 15 minutes uncovered, or until most of the liquid is gone. Mine took only about 12 minutes and then I had to cover it or I wouldn't have had any liquid left at all. So mind it carefully while its cooking! 

Add the shrimp. Stir it in well, then cover it. Set the timer for 5 minutes and DO NOT COOK FOR ANY LONGER. Seriously, don't do it. The worst thing is over-cooked shrimp. It will take no more than five minutes... trust me. 

Garnish with lemon juice, parsley, and whatever else you want. Serve over rice... because yum! 

The Prettiest little veggie dish in town

*These are my pics! 

I am a serious Pinterest addict. I know that the first step is admitting I have a problem, but whenever I do that people are like, "Oh really? Have you found any good recipes on there?" and I have to tell them YES!

Like this one by Just a Pinch Recipes. Seriously the best vegetable dish I've ever made, and the prettiest. It was a work of art to my eyes and my taste buds. The hubs and I have already talked about a bunch of ideas to vary the recipe and possibly even add a protein, but I'm not sure I want to mess with perfection.

What you need:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp minced garlic
1 medium yellow onion
1 medium zucchini
1 medium yellow squash
1 medium potato
1 medium tomato
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp kosher salt and pepper to taste
1/4 C shredded cheese (I used a colby jack this time)
2 Tbsp shredded aged parmesan

Update 1/19/2014: I made this recipe tonight with just yellow and zucchini squash. It was delicious. You definitely can vary the veggies if you're feeling adventurous!

Update 3/6/2015: I made this last night with only zucchini squash (4 medium). I also used fresh basil (about 1.5 TBSP), and kosher salt. Finally, I used a very mild Parmesan cheese (BelGioioso, comes in a shrink-wrapped triangle wedge, tastes more like a moderately aged asiago than a parm). I didn't change the cook time or anything, just the ingredients. It turned out amazing.

What you do:

First up, preheat your oven to 400F. Take your favorite 8x8 baking dish and spray it with a non-stick, or oil it up in your preferred method. I used olive oil and a paper towel. Do your own thing.

I will admit the prep for this recipe is kind of long... especially if you are hand-cutting all your veggies. If you have a mandolin or a food processor that will slice thinly (and very consistently), by all means, go for it!

If not, cut up your tomato, squash, zucchini, and potato into thin slices. Try to make the slices of each veggie consistent with each other.

Finely dice your yellow onion. Be anal about this: make the pieces very small! It will pay off.

Heat the oil in the pan. Toss in your onion and garlic and sautée until they soften... Probably about 3-5 minutes. Don't brown the onions... just soften them.

Once they're done, spread the onion and garlic into the bottom of your 8x8. Try to keep it even so the flavors will spread out through the whole dish.

Next is the artsy part: stand all your sliced veggies up vertically in an alternating pattern. You'll probably get 3-5 rows of veggies into your dish. I used a little less tomato than the other veggies, so when I got to my last row I had to re-arrange a few slices here and there to get everything spread out evenly. The pattern itself doesn't matter, by the way... but if you keep it consistent, the flavors will all blend together in layers of awesomeness.

Once all your veggies are standing up pretty, sprinkle the salt, pepper, and basil over the whole dish.

Wrap it in foil and bake for 30 minutes.

Once the time is up, take the foil off and inhale deeply. Once you've done that a few times, sprinkle the shredded cheese on top of the dish, trying to keep as much as possible over the rows of veggies. Repeat with the parm.

Throw it back in the over for another 15-20 minutes, or until your cheese looks brown and the bottom of the dish is bubbling. After the additional 15 minutes, I turned on the broiler and left the dish in there for another 2-3 minutes just to get it really brown at the top. This is optional of course.

Pull it out and let it rest for a few minutes. This would be great as a side, but we ate it as our main course and it was delicious and very satisfying. It was sad to break into the pretty rows to serve it (and messy too; we used a large spatula to select segments of the rows to serve them!), but oh em gee was it delicious!