Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Amazing lamb ragu

September 26, 2011 by Mary Frances 5 Comments

This dish is scrumptious!!! You have got to try it and see the look of love on the faces of your eaters!! Comforting and bursting with flavor, it’s a perfect Fall dish. This is the kind of dish that makes you want to crawl right inside of it, cuddle up and sigh. Really. And it’s quick, easy and special enough for guests!

PASTA WITH CREAMY LAMB RAGU & MINT
– serves 4

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound ground lamb
1 28-ounce can San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand, with liquid
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 pound dried penne pasta or Girelle as pictured
2 – 3 tbs. fresh chopped mint (or parsley if you don’t have mint)
Freshly grated Pecorino Romano

Warm olive oil in a medium skillet and turn heat to low. A minute later, add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until it becomes translucent, about 10 – 12 minutes. Meanwhile, set a pot of water to boil for pasta and salt it.

When onion is ready, add lamb and garlic to skillet and cook, stirring to break up any clumps, until all traces of red are gone, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and their juice to lamb mixture, then adjust heat so it simmers briskly, constantly. The sauce should thicken.

Put pasta in boiling water and cook to al dente – usually 1-2 minutes less than package directions.

Taste and salt and pepper your sauce. Take the sauce off the heat, add cream, stirring completely. When pasta is done, drain well, toss it with sauce, some grated Pecorino Romano cheese and half the mint or parsley. Sprinkle the remaining chopped mint or parsley on top to finish the dish. Pass more cheese at the table.

Lamb ragu with Girelle in a bowl with grated Romano cheese and cracked black pepper.

With more grated Pecorino Romano cheese and cracked black pepper

Veal stew with rosemary and lemon

September 22, 2011 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

I made this last night for dinner. It should serve 4 but it was so good we cleaned it all up. You really should make this ahead of time or on the weekend to have time to simmer the veal the full hour and 15 minutes. I rushed it and only simmered it 45 minutes and it was still so tasty and good. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

VEAL STEW WITH ROSEMARY AND LEMON – serves 4
2 tbs. olive oil
1.5 lbs. boneless veal shoulder, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tbs. unsalted butter
2 celery ribs, finely chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped
1.5 large carrots, finely chopped
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup tomato sauce, preferably homemade
1 heaping tbs. coarsely chopped rosemary
1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
2 tbs. chopped fresh basil
Polenta with Parmesan, for serving

In a large enameled cast-iron casserole, heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the veal, (use a paper towel to dry the meat first.) season with salt and pepper and cook over moderately high heat until browned all over, about 8 minutes. Transfer the veal to a plate.

In the same casserole, melt the butter in the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Add the celery, onion and carrot and cook over low heat until softened and golden, about 8 – 10 minutes. Add the wine and boil over moderately high heat until almost evaporated. Add the tomato sauce, rosemary and veal, along with any accumulated juices. Cover and simmer over low heat, stirring once or twice, until the veal is very tender, about 1 hour and 15 minutes, or you can rush this to 45 minutes. Stir in the lemon zest and season with salt and pepper, if necessary. Spoon the Polenta with Parmesan into bowls, top with the veal stew, finish with the chopped basil and serve.

Make Ahead The stew can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Sunday Night Stuffed Peppers

September 12, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

When I was a little girl, my mother made stuffed peppers as a special weeknight dinner. I always loved them and I’m not a green pepper fan. So I decided to try to recreate her recipe and use a combination of red and green peppers to stuff. (It’s an early Christmas!) I have all of her recipes, but I must admit, she’s been gone since 1995 and I have not ventured to try to find it. She was a wee bit organized but not much. I am terrible at keeping some sort of sense of my mass of recipes. (How should you categorize – main ingredient or meal part or when you served it?) Luckily I have a good memory (so far!) and there’s always the internet and online sources to go back to.

So I made this one up to the best of my memory of hers. My family thought I did a great job. I remember my Mom used to put an extra dab of tomato sauce (she used Hunt’s!) on top of the meat mixture in the peppers. I opted to put the cheese. I think here it’s better as the tomato sauce in the meat mixture is so rich with the wine, extra is not needed. I think she would think so too.

You let me know what you think.

SUNDAY NIGHT STUFFED PEPPERS – serves 4 – 6
2 tbs. olive oil
1 medium-large onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 28 oz. can San Marzano tomatoes, hand crushed, with juices
2 tsp. dried Greek oregano
10 thyme springs, leaves only
½ cup dry red wine
1+ lb. bulk sweet Italian sausage
1+ lb. bulk hot Italian sausage
¼ cup chopped parsley leaves
3 tbs. chopped tarragon leaves
½ -3/4 cup cooked white basmati rice
6 large peppers, red or green or a combo
9 tbs. grated parmesan cheese
1- 11/2 cups chicken broth

Pre-heat oven to 350 degree

Warm the olive oil on low heat, add onion and garlic, cover and sweat for 15 minutes. The onion and garlic will get sweet and soft, stir every once in a while to make sure it doesn’t brown. Add tomatoes and juices, oregano and thyme, raise heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add red wine and simmer for 15 more minutes until sauce is thickened. Salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, sauté the sausage meat together, breaking it up with a wooden spoon until all pink is gone. Line a large platter with 3 layers of paper towels. When meat is cooked, spread it out on the paper towels to drain the grease.

Prepare peppers. Wash and cut off the tops. Remove the stem, wrap in plastic and save for another use. Remove the seeds from the peppers so you have nice hallowed- out cups.

When the sauce is thickened, remove from heat and fold in the cooked rice, parsley and tarragon. Add the drained meat and combine well. Fill the peppers with this mixture and stand them upright in a baking pan. Top each pepper meat mixture with 1.5 tbs. grated parmesan cheese. Pour chicken broth in the bottom of the pan to a depth of 3/8” – ½”. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 – 35 minutes. Remove and serve.

Enjoy!!!

Smells

September 10, 2011 by Mary Frances 1 Comment

Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Our offices were located downtown near the towers at One Wall Street Court at the time. While our building was unharmed and all of our employees safe, we were not allowed in to the building or area for a full week. With all the horror with what happened down there, two things stick in my mind. The smell of burning flesh, plastics and toxins, and how long that lasted – about a year for me. It was acrid and burning in your nostrils. (I have an acute sense of smell which is sometimes not a very good thing. I had sinus surgery years ago to relive migraine headaches, which it didn’t do but it left me with this.) After about two weeks, if you were on the upper East or West side, it was as if nothing happened! While us downtowners dealt with everything for many many months. They are still dealing with it. I urge you to read Frank Rich’s article in New York Magazine – Day’s End – published Aug. 27.

I pray that nothing happens this weekend, with the heightened alerts from possible terrorists attacks again, which we all learned about on Thursday. The police are everywhere in Manhattan.

In 2006, we traveled to India. My husband was asked to give a speech at an international business conference in Calcutta. I got to travel along as the wife! We had to stop and spend the night in New Delhi, on the last leg of travel to our destination. New Delhi has that same acrid, burning smell which took me right back to 2001. Their burning smell is from the poor who live on the streets and build fires to cook and keep warm. No doubt they are burning plastics and toxic materials. I questioned the Indians about the smell – they said, “What smell?” My good friend Sumantra later explained it to me, but seriously, they don’t smell it.

Of all your senses, I believe smell is the most memorable. Which is why good smells wafting from your kitchen can create memories beyond belief for your family. We are in the country and last night I decided to make a new spice rub for pork chops. My husband called it smooth and “elegant.” Isn’t he cute? I called it very fragrant and delicious.

SPICE RUB FOR PORK CHOPS – for 6 pork chops
Make sure your spices are fresh!
1 tbs. cumin powder
1 tsp ground coriander (preferably Moroccan)
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp. ground Nigerian cayenne pepper
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. garlic powder.

Combine everything together very well – toss with a fork. Wash and dry your meat. Salt one side of each chop and spread rub on both sides and massage into the meat. Grill until temperature reaches 140 – 145 degrees. Let sit for at least 5 minutes before serving. They will continue cooking and this allows time for the juices to collect inside the meat and be totally yummy.

Let me know how you like this!

End of summer

September 6, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

Welcome to my blog about great food, cooking and sharing love. I love to eat. I love to cook. I love to feed people and share it all. I’d like to share some wonderful recipes and tips and stories that come from cooking and entertaining. We have a house in upstate New York and just this past weekend, it started raining leaves. : ( Summer is over. We had our friends Margaret and Wayne for dinner on Saturday night and I served my take on an “end of summer” meal. Watermelon salad with feta and Kalamata olives (the chopped olives look like watermelon seeds to fake you out!) and fresh mint leaves. grass-fed lamb and beef cheddar burgers with a caper remoulade sauce, served with tomato and thinly sliced English cucumber on toasted English muffins, wheatberry salad with dried cranberries (to introduce us to Fall) and roasted asparagus with lemon and olive oil. Our dessert was grilled peaches brushed with olive oil and fresh cracked black pepper with Ronnybrook Farms ice cream (chocolate chip and hazelnut crunch – yummy – the cows live down the street) and a chocolate biscotti. It was a hit!