Pasta e Fagioli

This recipe is one of my very favorites. Serves a small army (or gives lots of leftovers, which freeze very well) is surprisingly healthy, and easy to make.

I reverse-engineered this recipe from the Olive Garden's dish of the same name. When Rebecca was pregnant with Sydney she craved pasta e fagioli constantly, and I'm not really a big fan of Olive Garden. After several long waits for a table at the nearest franchise I said to myself 'surely I can figure out how to cook a soup' and after a couple of tries, I came up with this.

Hardware:
Large 12-quart stock pot with lid
cutting board
chef's knife
colander
garlic press (optional)

Software:
1lb ground beef
several stalks celery
several cloves of garlic
1 medium onion
1.5 cups matchsticked carrots (I buy them pre-cut in a bag)
1 cup orzo pasta
2 cans red kidney beans
1 large 28oz can diced tomatoes
1 jar marinara pasta sauce
1 quart beef broth
1 teaspoon tabasco pepper sauce (optional)
3 bay leaves
several pinches each dried basil and thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Dice the onion and celery, crush or mince the garlic, set aside. Pour a splash of oil in your stockpot and add the beef, garlic, salt, pepper. Brown over medium-high heat. Add celery, onion, carrot and continue cooking until slightly softened.

Drain and rinse the beans in a colander. Drain the tomatoes. Add beans, tomatoes, pasta, beef broth, and pasta sauce to the pot, stir to combine. Add bay leaves, tabasco sauce, other spices. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 1 to 2 hours. Serves 6-8 adults as a standalone dish, or serve as a soup course before your favorite Italian entree.

Surprisingly, a 1.5 cup (12oz) bowl of this only has about 300 calories, and it is VERY filling.

Baked Ziti

Unlike King Ranch Casserole, this is one my kids will actually eat. On the other hand, they can't do much of the work on it either...

This is a delicious, easy, fairly quick meal that serves a lot of people - easily 5 or 6, maybe more. It reheats best in the oven (cover with foil and bake at a low temp.)

Hardware:
9x13 baking dish
foil
large pasta pot
colander

Software:
1lb penne pasta
2 jars pasta sauce of your choice (I like to use a basil, garlic and olive oil tomato sauce, but any tomato-based sauce will work)
4 cups shredded italian cheeses (mozzarella, parmesan, asaigo, romano, etc)
(Optional) 1 cup ricotta cheese
(Optional) 1 teaspoon red pepper flake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large pasta pot, boil 6 quarts of water and a pinch of salt. Cook penne pasta, drain. Return to pot and stir in pasta sauce, 1/2 the shredded cheese, and the ricotta and/or red pepper flake (if using.) Spoon the pasta mixture into the 9x13 dish and cover with foil. Bake for 1 hour or until the center is thoroughly heated. Remove foil and top with remaining cheese; return to oven for 10-15 minutes. Allow to rest 15 minutes before serving.

Pro Tips:
I find that the ricotta adds calories, and little else.
The red pepper flake adds some needed zing to the dish, which can taste flat without it.
Some recipes for this use a ragu (meat sauce) or add finely diced pepperoni or some other cured meat to the dish. I have tried this but found the final product to be way too greasy.

Homemade Pizza Dough

The nice thing about homemade pizza dough is that it freezes really well! Pressed into a 3-4" disc in a ziploc bag, a pizza's worth of dough can be thawed out in about an hour on a countertop or overnight in a refrigerator.

We will address the baking of pizzas in a separate post :)

Best Pizza Dough

Wet Ingredients:
1 and 1/3 cups warm water (90-100 degrees F)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil

Dry ingredients:
4 cups bread flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast (i.e. 1 packet)

Hardware:
either a Bread Machine capable of handling 2 lbs of dough OR a Stand Mixer with a bread hook attachment.

Procedure:
Combine wet ingredients and dry ingredients in the pan of your bread machine (make sure the stirring paddle is in place.) Set to the 'dough' setting and for '2 pounds' if your model allows for varying recipe sizes. while the machine is mixing the dough, scrape down the sides of the pan occasionally. You may need to drizzle in a small amount (1 to 2 teaspoons) of additional water onto the dry flour if it is having trouble merging with the ball of dough.

Once the dough is mixed, either leave it to rise for 90 minutes in the machine, or if using a mixer, remove to a large bowl and cover at room temperature for 90 minutes.

After the first rise, punch the dough down (i.e. fold it in on itself several times, squeezing out the large bubbles of CO2 that have formed.) Form the dough into a tight ball, place in the large bowl used for the initial rise, toss in a drizzle of olive oil, cover, and place in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours. This stage is called the 'cold rise' and gives the dough its tangy, yeasty, chewy texture and flavor.

After the dough has cold risen you can either use immediately to make pizzas, leave in the fridge for another 2-3 days, or freeze. The recipe makes enough for 4 small (~10-12 inch) pizzas

For best results with freezing, separate the dough into portions, place in small ziploc bags, and press the dough into a flattened disc shape. This will make for MUCH faster thawing than a tight ball.

Pro Tips:
Use bottled or purified water if your tap water has a LOT of chlorine in it, as the chlorine will kill the yeast before they have a chance to chow down on the sugar.

You can substitute up to 1/2 the total flour with whole wheat flour, if that's your thing. I find it messes up the chewy, yeasty texture that I like, though.

I have had terrible luck over the years with the 'jars' of instant yeast - no matter how I store them, they seem to become ineffective very quickly after being opened. I have turned to buying the individual use packets as I have had very high rates of success with those, even though they are technically more expensive per usage.

King Ranch Casserole

Ah, King Ranch Casserole. My own earliest cooking memory is of using kitchen shears to cut yellow corn tortillas into triangles and helping my mom lay them out in a 9x13 pyrex baking dish. King Ranch Casserole is sort of a Nolen specialty - everyone in the family likes it, almost everyone in the family makes it, and everyone uses a slightly different approach.

I don't make it as often anymore since I started being more mindful of what I eat, but it's still great for potlucks, extended family dinners, and other gatherings.

Software:
Approximately 1 lb cooked chicken, cut or shredded into bite-size pieces
30 corn tortillas (yellow or white are fine, but you want the thin type, not the thick, pillowy 'homestyle' ones)
1 can (14.5 oz) chicken broth
1 can Ro-Tel tomatoes and green chiles, drained (not sure if this is available outside the southwest)
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
1 medium onion, diced
Approximately 4 cups shredded cheddar and jack cheeses

Hardware:
9x13 baking dish, the deeper the better
aluminum foil
large mixing bowl
ladle

Preparation:

My approach is to start by roasting 1lb of boneless chicken breasts in the oven. Preheat oven to 375 degrees, toss chicken breasts in olive oil, paprika, salt and pepper. Roast in baking dish until thoroughly cooked (internal temp 165-175 degrees) and let cool. Pour drippings into mixing bowl, dice chicken and add to mixing bowl.

Alternatively you can use a boiled & shredded whole chicken (my mom's method), a rotisserie chicken from your local mega-mart, leftover turkey meat (Uncle James' favorite) or if you lack functioning taste buds, canned cooked chicken.

Either way, add the tomatoes, condensed soups, broth, and 1/2 the cheese to the mixing bowl. Some Nolens sweat the onions before adding them (cook them over medium heat with a little oil and salt to soften them) but I like the crunch and stronger flavor of adding them straight in. Stir to combine the ingredients and set aside.

Now for construction! (You can either layer the whole tortillas or cut them into triangles, as my mother does, and layer those - as far as I can tell it doesn't significantly affect the final product.) Cover the bottom of the pan with tortillas (minimizing overlap) and ladle on approx 1/4 of the filling. Repeat until you have 5 layers of tortillas, the last of which will NOT be topped with filling. Top it with the remaining cheese and cover with foil.

Set aside in the refrigerator for a up to a couple of days, or bake immediately for 2 hours at 350 degrees. After 2 hours, remove the foil and continue baking until the top is beginning to brown.

Let rest at least 15 minutes before serving - even after 15 min, it will be hot under that insulating layer of cheese and tortillas!

When I was a teenager (and James and Jon were ~13-14 and 10, respectively) we would have to make 3 of these for family gatherings; James, Jon and I could eat two in a single sitting, and the third was for everyone else. I don't recommend this for adult metabolisms (a casserole contains about 4800 calories by my calculation) but it is wonderfully filling, delicious, relaxing home-style comfort food.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is essentially the 'Toll House' cookie recipe, with a couple of slight variations that I think result in a more consistent cookie.

Wet ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup white granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry ingredients:
2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Folding ingredients:
1 or 1.5 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Hardware:
Stand Mixer with paddle attachement OR large mixing bowl and heavy metal spoon
2-qt mixing bowl and whisk for dry ingredients
measuring cups / spoons
cookie sheet
cooling wire racks

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix together butter and sugar (using the medium setting on your stand mixer for 5 minutes, or by hand until well creamed.) Add vanilla and eggs, reduce speed to low, mix until combined.

In separate bowl, whisk together dry ingredients.

Add dry ingredients in several stages, mixing until combined (on the lowest 'stir' setting if using a stand mixer.) Once the dry ingredients are fully integrated, add the chocolate chips and stir until distributed evenly.

Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour.

For baking, place 1 inch balls of dough on a cookie sheet (most sheets will hold 12, or possibly 16 balls) and bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are golden, risen, and beginning to darken around their outer edges. Turning the pan 180 degrees at the halfway point will ensure even cooking.

Pro Tips:

Use real butter, not margarine or butter-flavored-shortening. Better flavor and browning result. To 'speed-soften' butter, microwave it for 30 to 45 seconds on high in a microwave safe container.

Proof your baking soda by testing it with vinegar - I have had batches fail to rise from old baking soda, as Rebecca keeps it around for 'science experiments' with the kids.

When adding flour, you may find that slightly more or less flour than the 2.5 cups listed above is the optimal amount for your cookies. This is based on the humidity, altitude, exact size of your eggs, etc. Eventually if you make these often enough you will get a feel for the 'right' consistency.

I prefer cookies with around 1 cup of chocolate chips as the caramelized goodness of the cookie really comes through.