Baked Lamb & Spinach Manicotti Bundles + Awards!
While continuing my quest for unique Italian meals that aren’t pasta dishes, I came across an article in Clean Eating magazine on ways to make hearty Italian food a bit healthier. Although I didn’t take their advice on using fish instead of red meat, I did take their advice on using low-fat dairy products and whole wheat pasta. For this recipe I was sure to add lots of spinach for added nutrients.
Savory Pesto, Sausage & Spinach Turnovers
I will start this post by saying that I am aware of my pesto addiction. I find myself putting pesto on everything. The original recipe I found for these turnovers did not include pesto or cheese, but I felt that they would keep them from being too bland. My mom recently posted a recipe for Homemade Italian Sausage that had me intrigued. I was surprised how easy it was to make! I think if you are planning on dicing up your sausage, you might as well just make your own.
These turnovers are a perfect lunch or easy-to-eat dinner. They have lots of healthy veggies and delicious flavor all packed into one little turnover (or one large if you are me!). You want to be sure to strain out the excess liquid after cooking the filling, otherwise you will end up with a soggy turnover.
Also, you will notice that my recipe is in a new format. I finally got my new plugin, Easy Recipe, to work (HUGE thanks to my IT friend Cooper here in Cape Town!). If you are a food blogger you should definitely get this plugin, it helps your recipes get noticed on big search engines like Google by formatting them properly for the recipe search.
Throwback Thursday: Turkey & Spinach Stuffed Shells
Sometimes nothing can beat a home-cooked Italian meal. I don’t make pasta much after working at Noodles & Co. for a year, but oh man these were good. I would hardly put these into the pasta category; they are so rich and delicious!
For this week’s throwback recipe, I give you my turkey, spinach and cheese stuffed shells. Stuffing these bad boys was a bit of work, but it was totally worth it. Once they are done and you bite into their gooey, cheesy goodness you will understand.
Ritzy Spinach Artichoke Tartlets
The finalists were announced finally for the Ritz recipe contest, unfortunately I didn’t make finals. It’s okay though, there were over 1,400 entries… that is a lot of competition. Looks like I have to find another way to fund my culinary school. If anybody knows of any good scholarships or ways to get money for culinary school PLEASE let me know!
Here is my entry for the Ritz recipe challenge. I used crushed Ritz crackers in the tartlet dough to give it some extra flavor. These little bites will have your guests drooling over the appetizer table. I ended up eating the entire batch over a few days!
Pizza Party!
After cooking many meals for friends, I realized that nothing excites people more than a delicious pizza. This week I threw a pizza party with friends. We only had one oven and two pizza trays, so we could only cook two pizzas at a time. In the end, I made six 14″ pizzas. We cut each pizza into ten slices, one for each person, and sampled one slice of each pizza. We would decide which pizzas were coming next while the previous two were baking. By the sixth pizza, we could barely take another bite!
We made all sorts of pizzas- from BBQ Chicken to Chicken Alfredo to Meat Lovers all the way to Hawaiian. Each time a new pizza was taken out, everybody was riled up- “This one is my favorite!” “Wait, no, THIS one is my favorite!” “Ah, no, THIS one is definitely the best!” I have never seen my friends so excited about something I cooked. This made me being to think about the wondrous pizza pie. A fresh pizza crust is like a blank canvas for a chef. You can combine any flavors you want to create your own unique masterpiece. I suggest to all of you that you make homemade pizzas at some point. My advice? Be adventurous, take risks, mix unlikely combinations- you’ll be impressed with the outcome!
Throwback Thursday: Hot Spinach & Red Pepper Dip
This week’s Throwback Thursday recipe is a hearty spinach and pepper dip; great for a cold winter day. There is something nourishing about a warm cheesy dip with bread. This recipe is a great pick-me-up. It goes well with chips or bread and is a great recipe for a potluck or party, and can easily be doubled if need be.
Mahi Mahi Tostada w/ Roasted Red Pepper Aioli
I love reading food blogs; I find myself constantly reading through recipes during my free time. I think that is great to find recipes from other people, rather than a recipe website, because it gives life to the recipe and usually puts a story with each dish. I especially love trying recipes from my Mom’s food blog, Cooking With Michele. It is fun to chat about our posts and new recipes; our cooking has brought us much closer throughout the past year and I love it. With that said, here is my tweaked version of my Mom’s Mahi Mahi Tostada recipe.
Pizza Casserole
Recently, I have been thinking about how great it would be to do catering. I have also been cooking for friends quite a bit, which I love. Both things involve cooking for a crowd, which can be hard to do. The more I do it, the more fun it gets. It is hard to think up original recipes for large groups sometimes, so I am really excited to share this one. This week I needed a meal to feed 14 friends. I didn’t want to do chili again, so I began to brainstorm and search the web. Casserole recipes are great for large groups and pizza is great for parties, which makes this pizza casserole the ultimate party dish. The original recipe that I found, form Country Kitchen Cooking, used pasta instead of breadsticks. Since I work at Noodles & Company, I decided against using the pasta. I think the breadsticks give it much more flavor. I made my green bean casserole to go with the meal and help my ski bum friends get some nutrients into their dinner. This spin off pizza is easier to make and won’t keep you in the kitchen for the entire party!
Green Garlic Risotto w/ Parmesan Crisps
Now that the new year has started, I’m sure many of you are trying to eat healthier. I have personally been trying to eat more vegetables in my meals. I recently came across this recipe on the Gourmet Traveler blog. It uses a huge amount of spinach, which was great for me since I have a giant Costco bag of spinach at the moment. On a less healthy note, the Parmesan crisps are to die for, but beware they are super addicting! I ate this with my Broiled Lemon and Garlic Shrimp.
Spinach, Caramelized Onion, & Feta Quiche
Today I crossed another “Culinary To-Do” off of my list, bake a quiche. I think I ended up putting too many potatoes in mine, because I didn’t have room to add all of my egg mixture. I changed my recipe to fix this by reducing the amount of milk and potatoes. I was afraid that my quiche was going to spill over, but it turned out perfect! The breadsticks make the crust extra delicious. If you ever are going to make a quiche, this recipe is the one you need to try! (Original recipe from Cooking Light on MyRecipes)
