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

Farro Pasta with Portobello Mushrooms, Chicken, Tomatoes, and Green Beans in a Sherry Cream Sauce

April 26, 2019 by Mary 14 Comments

I know it’s been a very long time. Too long in that I almost don’t know where to begin. I have a sister-in-law who has been begging me to write again, desperate for recipes. Since Steve passed, quite frankly I haven’t been making many worthy dishes. Not good enough to share. I make up very simple stuff on the fly with parchment paper being my best friend and roasting being my go-to method, therefore dirtying the least amount of dishes while still eating healthy. It’s pretty lazy. But last night, I had some energy and made this oh so delicious dish, Farro Pasta with Portobello Mushrooms, Chicken, Tomatoes, and Green Beans in a Sherry Cream Sauce. It’s not a very pretty dish as it’s rather brown, but it was so very yummy.

My good friend Margaret gave me this pasta, which is delicious! It’s made with farro, instead of flour and I do love farro. Margaret loves this too, but her husband, Wayne, not so much, which she forgot about and bought it again, so I got to be the lucky recipient of it!

Farro Pasta from Italy. — Delicious Farro Pasta

I made this combination, because that’s what I had around in the fridge and the tomatoes and green beans were added to give color. But they also added some super good flavor. The acid from the tomatoes cut the richness of the cream, while the green beans, lightly sautéed, gave it a nice crunch. The chicken was a smooth protein and I love using thighs as they are hard to overcook. The only way this dish could have been better is if I were in Tuscany and using fresh Porcini’s instead of Portobello’s. Now that would have been amazing and you probably wouldn’t even need chicken as those Porcini’s I cooked in Italy were To. Die. For. Seriously. I actually have never seen fresh porcini’s here, have you? Well if you do, buy them up and use, but they still probably won’t taste as good as they do in Tuscany.

WHAT DO WE DO TO OUR VEGETABLES?

Honestly, I don’t know what we do to our vegetables here but with all the gassing and packaging to make their shelf life longer, we must certainly lose nutrients too. We definitely lose taste. The best part of my time in Italy was being able to cook there with their ingredients. Every Saturday morning, I would start with a Porchetta sandwich, (yes! Even garlic in the morning, the porchetta was soooo good.), and then visit all the stalls for vegetables, cheeses and some very delicious pre-made dishes like round zucchini stuffed with bread crumbs, pancetta and vegetables – total yum!!

But here’s the thing, I had to learn to not buy too much, because the vegetables do not last long there. You have to be able to use most all of them within 2 – 3 days. Yes. That is certainly the maximum for leafy greens and maybe eggplant, zucchini or unripe tomatoes will keep longer. But their flavor is so much more intense, therefore more satisfying and much more delicious. And therefore, you don’t need to eat as much!

I do miss Italy. I miss my marvelous friends there. The pace is slower, taking in the enjoyment of each other’s company, coupled with the delicious food and wine, accompanied by the sexy lyrical sound of the language. Perhaps I will go back either this fall or next spring.

Back to reality, here is this simple but totally yummy dish of Farro Pasta with Portobello Mushrooms, Chicken, Tomatoes, and Green Beans in a Sherry Cream Sauce. This is a quick and easy one-dish meal, perfect for a weeknight dinner!

FARRO PASTA with PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS, CHICKEN, TOMATOES, and GREEN BEANS in a SHERRY CREAM SAUCE – serves 2

3 Tbs. unsalted butter
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 large Portobello mushrooms, cleaned and cut into chunks
1 – 2 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, washed, dried, and cut into strips
½ lb. green beans, ends removed, cut into 1.5” lengths
1 large tomato, cut into thick slices, and then chunks
¼ cup dry sherry
¼ cup of heavy cream
½ lb. farro pasta
Freshly grated Parmigiano and Pecorino cheeses

Place a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta. When boiled, salt liberally with coarse sea salt before adding pasta.

In a large skillet, melt the butter in the olive oil on medium-high heat and then add the mushrooms in a single layer and do not touch them for 8 minutes. They will soak up the oils and then release their own moisture and turn a nice golden brown, but you must resist the urge to stir them. After 8 minutes, stir and push them to the side of your skillet and add the chicken thigh strips in the center of your skillet to brown.

When the chicken is browned on one side, turn over to brown the other. Add the sherry and let that cook down and then stick your face in the skillet while you inhale the marvelous aromas! Then add the tomatoes and green beans, cooking until bright green and still crisp. Turn the heat to medium.

Meanwhile, cook your pasta until al dente. Drain and save some pasta water. Add the pasta to the mushroom chicken sauce in your skillet, along with the heavy cream and 2 – 3 Tbs. of pasta water.

Then grate the two cheeses on top, stir gently to combine and serve in warmed bowls, with love.

I hope you love this as much as I did!!

Going Through Everything – and Quick Pasta with a Sweet Sausage Bolognese

March 16, 2017 by Mary 4 Comments

This office move of going through everything after being in business for 38 years has been massive, to say the least. What a tumult of emotions I have been through! I found files where I had saved many keepsakes and thank you notes. I had no idea I had entertained so many people for lunch over the years, especially when we had our previous office for ten years, where we had a large terrace with a Hudson River view.

It was amazing to me that so many people wrote about it! Gathering around a table with food is what people remember. And the wine parties. And the birthday cakes. But after about 7 or 8 years there, the buildings started growing up all around, leaving us just a sliver of a river to see and creating a wind tunnel down 38^th Street to make it not so nice anymore.

Things change so. They can’t stay the same. And I feel a little like an outsider looking in now when I leave my home office for a meeting. Like I’m not part of the in-crowd work force anymore. Like I’m sneaking around.

My husband wanted to operate like this – virtually from the cloud – five years ago, but I resisted. Now, I pretty much like it. I’ll certainly save on make-up and even soap if I’m not careful because it is easy to roll from bed to desk and back again. But no, we must have some rules and we do have our weekly two meetings with our team members here.

Going through everything has sort made me feel like I’ve died already. You see, I saved all those things, thinking I would go through them right before I died. So I did it now. My friend Margaret said she still wouldn’t have thrown them away but I wanted to save that task from my boys. Lord knows I did it enough with my parents and then with Steve’s. I’m still washing his mother’s tablecloths and napkins from when she passed last May.

So needless to say, our meals have had to be super quick and easy for the weary hungry souls we’ve been. Once again, I have relied on some all natural, very flavorful sweet Italian sausage to give us the boost of flavor you can easily count on, as I did with the one-sheet-pan meal of sausage, potatoes and arugula.

I used a lot of red wine in this sauce, because I had an open bottle on the counter just begging to be put to use and I am in a “get rid of things” kind of mode. And adding the little bit of cream at the end smoothed out the ragged edges of the sauce, along with our emotions.

Make and serve with LOVE!

QUICK PASTA WITH SWEET SAUSAGE BOLOGNESE –serves 5 – 6

2 Tbs. coconut oil (better brain food!)
2 shallots, minced
1 lb. all natural sweet Italian sausages, meat removed from casings
1 28 oz. can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes
¾ cup dry red wine
1 ½ tsp. dried Greek oregano
¼ tsp. red chili flakes
Salt to taste – French Grey or Kosher
Pepper – fresh ground to taste
2 Tbs. heavy cream
1 lb. good quality dried pasta (I used Sfoglini from our box!)
Coarse sea salt

Put a large pot of cold water on to boil for your pasta.

Warm the coconut oil over low heat. Add minced shallots and cover to let them sweat and sweeten for 10 minutes.

Uncover and raise heat to medium and add the sausage meat, breaking it up into small pieces, tossing it to brown all over. Once browned, add the tomatoes and their juice to the sausage and shallots, crushing the tomatoes with your hands as you’re adding them. Turn heat to medium-high to bring the sauce to brisk simmer/low boil. Add the wine, oregano, chili flakes and salt and pepper to taste. Stir sauce every so often and keep the brisk simmer/low boil going, along with the stirring. The sauce needs to thicken quite a bit.

When the pasta water comes to a boil, add enough coarse sea salt to make it taste like the ocean. Add your pasta and check at 2 minutes less than the least amount of time they tell you on the package. When pasta is al dente, save some pasta water and drain the pasta.

Your sauce should be thickened by now. Remove from heat and stir in 2 Tbs. of heavy cream. Combine the sauce with the pasta in a warm wide bowl. Add 1 Tbs. pasta water, to help the sauce cling better to the noodles. Toss and serve!

You could add grated cheese but I think it’s not necessary. This dish, with the wine and cream, is nice and rich just by itself. Enjoy!!!

If there are only two of you eating, cook only 8 oz. of pasta and use only half of the sauce. You could then freeze the sauce for another meal later in the month or refrigerate for up to 5 days and cook your pasta fresh again. Always better to have fresh pasta than to rewarm it.

Make Nonna’s Pomarola Sauce Recipe Now!

October 3, 2016 by Mary 14 Comments

Tomatoes galore!! It’s the season and with the abundance of tomatoes from my garden, right now is the time to make Nonna’s Pomarola Sauce Recipe that I learned from my friends in Italy when we visited in July for Bianca’s wedding.

It was funny, when I first tried to make this, we were all texting back and forth running from Warsaw (with Agata) and Milano (with Bianca, the granddaughter) and Arezzo (with Tiziana, the daughter) on ingredients for the recipe but I had already started with carrots and onions before I learned from Tiziana, that Nonna only uses garlic, oil, tomatoes, salt, chili flakes and a little bit of butter at the end. That’s it! Simple is always best, isn’t it? Although I met Nonna at the wedding, she only speaks Italian, not my strong suit.

So make this simple clean tomato sauce, called Pomarola Sauce, that just lets the richness of the tomatoes shine through. Think of this as “summer in a jar” ‘cause that’s what it is!

Of course you skin the tomatoes easily after a dip in boiling water, but then you have to remove the seeds by hand. This takes time!! But it is worth it because I made it again this past week, cooking the tomatoes with skin and seeds and then putting it through the mill to remove it all and you know what? The resulting sauce was not as sweet and it was much thinner.

Woman deseeding fresh tomatoes outside in the yard.

Notice the wine to get through this process of deseeding the tomatoes. Luckily it was a beautiful day the weekend before last!

Deseeded tomatoes in a plastic bowl on the grass.

Here’s a whole bowlful of deseeded tomatoes!

So it’s up to you but the work beforehand does pay off.

Here you go with the official recipe from Nonna!

NONNA’S POMAROLA SAUCE – makes four 14 oz. jars of sauce

¼ cup of olive oil
5 large cloves of garlic, minced
11 lbs. tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped
Salt, preferable French Grey Salt, to taste
¼ – ½ tsp. red chili flakes
1 Tbs. unsalted butter

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Drop tomatoes in and leave in for one minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and let drain. When cool enough to handle, peel the tomatoes, remove all of the seeds (it is tedious but worth it) and chop.

Heat the olive oil and add the minced garlic and salt. Saute for just a minute and smash down the garlic with a fork, just like Nonna does it. Stick your nose in the pot and breathe in the delicious garlic aroma.

Add the chopped tomatoes and bring to a boil, lower to a simmer. Simmer slowly for two hours, uncovered, stirring every so often. When thick and lovely, or as Nonna says, “It is ready when the tomatoes are ready.” Ha!

Add the chili flakes and off-heat, stir in the butter until melted. That’s it!

Store in clean glass jars and freeze or you could actually can them if you want to. Follow the specific canning instructions for that.

Nonna's Pomarola Sauce on fusilli in white bowls.

Have a dinner like this in the winter – Pomarola Sauce on fusilli. Simple, clean and rich tasting all at once!

My apologies to you for being out of commission for a bit. Our son got married on September 9^th with a big reception at their house in Brooklyn on September 10^th!!! Here they are leaving City Hall in a rice shower.

It was quite the party, delicious cheeses and appetizers followed by Turkish food and a huge spread of homemade desserts. His new wife did such a sweet thing. She went on Facebook, found and printed photos of everyone who made a dessert and put it as a stand-up card next to their creation, so everyone knew who made what. Isn’t that so SWEET??!!

Hope you have a great week and get your tomato sauce made for a little summer in a jar this winter.

Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce and My Italian Dinner

September 3, 2016 by Mary 17 Comments

We are still basking in the memories of our European trip and this post is about the Italian part. Our friends in Italy are so generous. They are generous with their time, their attention and their gifts. Tiziana so graciously took me to buy the best cheeses in all of Italy – award-winning Pecorino’s in many different “flavors.” I bought two different kinds (now I wish I would have bought more…) plus some Parmigiano. I bought 3 large wedges but ended up giving two away to each of my kids. Why was I feeling so generous at that moment???

Tiziana was so gracious in equipping me with an insulated bag with a cold pack plus another suitcase that I could put all the cheeses in and check the bag for flying. And did I tell you about the olive oil? Every guest at the wedding got this can of olive oil pressed from olives from the olive trees in their yard!

This is THE BEST olive oil – so fruity, so pure, so DELICIOUS!! I wish to never run out of this but that is really wishful thinking since I only have two cans.

On Sunday night of that amazing weekend in Italy, if you can imagine, Andrea and Tiziana had yet another dinner party. These are the parents of the bride who held a party in their home for 50 people on Friday night, hosted the wedding on Saturday, which started at 5 pm and ended at 5:30 am and then had about 20 people for dinner on Sunday night, with Tiziana making yet another pasta dish – pici with her mother’s pomarola sauce – so delicious!! Not yet knowing how to make that, I came home and immediately made this pasta with fresh tomato sauce – twice already!

Super quick and easy Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce.

My Italian Dinner - bowl of fresh sunny gold pasta sauce

You can also use sunny gold tomatoes – super sweet and delicious.

The tomatoes are so abundant, fresh and flavorful this time of year, perfect to make this dish. It’s so darn easy and quick too. I didn’t have any basil in the city so I substituted sorrel in the first picture.

Parsley would have worked too – the little bit of green is nice.

Here is this very simple recipe to make a perfect and satisfying meatless meal:

PASTA WITH FRESH TOMATO SAUCE – serves 6 as a main course

1 lb. dried pasta – I used spaghetti
Coarse sea salt or Kosher salt to salt the pasta water

SAUCE:
2 lbs. fresh tomatoes – preferably heirloom or sunny gold, washed, dried, cored and chopped
¼ cup of olive oil
1 large clove of garlic, grated
Salt to taste – preferably French Grey
Black pepper – fresh ground to taste
Pinch of red chili flakes

Torn basil leaves or sorrel or flat leaf parsley for garnish

Combine all ingredients for the sauce in a large shallow bowl.

Cook the pasta in ample boiling water, salted to taste like the ocean. Start testing the pasta 2 minutes before the lesser time on the instructions. You must have the pasta al dente. No one likes overcooked pasta. Before draining, save some pasta water.

Immediately place drained pasta in the bowl with the sauce ingredients, adding 1 – 2 Tbs. of pasta water, to make the sauce adhere to the pasta better and toss all to combine. Garnish with torn basil leaves or sorrel or parsley. Serve immediately.

That same Sunday night in Italy, Cristina, Tiziana’s best friend and my sweet Prada buddy (she took me to the Prada store) came to dinner with a jar of her favorite Tuscan meat sauce – she said Tiziana knows cheese but she knows meat!! She brought the best bresaola I have ever tasted. And she brought her favorite Tuscan cookbook for me that is thankfully in English and Italian! I don’t know how she even found the time to go get these gifts in between the Prada trip and dinner that night. Everybody was so SWEET!! Cristina asked if I had room in my suitcase. Heck I’d find room come hell or highwater.

Just take a look at this book – beautiful and I want to make about 99.9% of the recipes…

Tuscan cookbook open to bean soup recipe.

I cannot wait for the weather to get a little cooler to make this soup!

Tuscan cookbook open to Pici pasta recipe.

This pasta dish sounds amazing too!!! Don’t worry, I will share!

And how sweet this is because every time I see the book, read or use a recipe, I think of Cristina and Tiziana and our amazing time in Italy. All the wonderful memories come flooding back – the scenes, the conversations, the sunsets, the lavender, the cypress trees, the food, the wine, our four kids all dressed up and bouncing around in an open jeep, hair flying, not caring, and the most beautiful wedding.

We all have been continuing the conversation via email, discussing our kids and recipes. Soon I’ll share with you Tiziana’s mother’s recipe for the Pomarola Sauce. I made it once already last weekend, but not the way Nonna makes hers so I want to make her recipe exactly and share that with you.

But for now, let me share with you a little dinner party we hosted for our good friends, Margaret and Wayne, the first Saturday we were back. My appetizers were the two different kinds of Pecorino along with some bruschetta with truffles that I bought at the airport. Super delish!

Then I served my gazpacho soup garnished with avocado.

Then I made some pici pasta I picked up at the Pisa airport and served it with Cristina’s sauce and OMG – it was sooooo good!! A garnish of basil was all that was needed. Dinner served!!

Then I served a salad of greens from my garden – lettuce, sorrel and basil with tomatoes, radishes and chives – tossed with a champagne vinaigrette. A good light clean palette cleanser,

and then we finished up with this strawberry rhubarb crisp with a little vanilla ice cream.

So don’t “labor” this weekend! Make this pasta with fresh tomato sauce, with LOVE, so super easy, and kick back and relax!

After the move.

March 3, 2012 by Mary Frances 4 Comments

We did it!!

We moved our offices on Thursday. Two trucks and 400 boxes later, we are in our new space in TriBeCa. We finished at 2:30 am on Friday morning. It’s going to be great but right now, my hands hurt so much I’ve been coating them with hand cream followed by a thick coating of Vaseline, and wearing an old pair of my Aunt Lu’s white gloves from the 50’s to sleep in. (Not exactly sexy since I also like to wear a pair of white socks because my feet get so cold – oh well!) My Mom always said that this was the best bet to treat badly damaged hands AND keep your sheets clean. Only now I think I’m going to have to start with some Neosporin on the cuticles first, then the rest of the program.

It is truly amazing how much stuff you can amass in 10 years, particularly in my business with all the printed samples we must have on hand to show to new prospective clients. And I did a lot of editing and throwing away before the movers came and we still have so much stuff.

So we were back in the office again today, working on the unpacking and arrived home at 6:30, starving, as we had no lunch. As I mentioned before, my husband has to be on this crazy diet of no garlic, onions, tomatoes, spicy things, or lemons.

So I wanted to make a shrimp and pasta dish and I’m thinking, what can I do here? It’s easy to make a shrimp and pasta dish with garlic and tomatoes. A little shallot wouldn’t hurt either, or lemon and garlic with white wine, but this! He can have ginger, so I’m considering it but then it’s just not sounding good to me.

So I sent him out to get some parsley (we fortunately have a grocery store right downstairs in our building) and this is what I came up with – and it was crazy delicious!! Simple, quick, clean tasting and it seemed to have a creamy lemony taste, which I’m not sure where that came from – maybe a residual taste from the Sauvignon? Try this and tell me what you think.

QUICK, EASY PASTA WITH SHRIMP – AND NO GARLIC
– serves 4

1.5 lbs. large shrimp, shelled and deveined
1 lb. spaghetti #3
1/3 cup olive oil plus more for finishing
1 cup chopped fresh parsley, washed and air dried before chopping
1/2 cup dry white wine
Salt
Pepper
3 – 4 tbs pasta water

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta. Thoroughly wash and pat dry the shrimp. Salt and pepper one side.

Heat the olive oil until very hot. Add the parsley carefully – it will pop and really sizzle because of the water in it hitting the oil. Stir and let it sizzle for 30 seconds to a minute and then add the shrimp and turn heat down slightly. Cook shrimp 1-2 minutes, add the wine and make sure it is bubbling. Turn the shrimp and cook another 1–2 minutes. When shrimp are pink on both sides, turn off heat but leave in pan.

Meanwhile, you should be cooking your pasta till al dente. Save some pasta water and drain.

In a large bowl layer in half of the pasta and half of the shrimp mixture. Repeat the layers. Drizzle on some additional oil and the pasta water. Toss and combine well. Serve and enjoy!

Remember, it’s always about the quality of ingredients you use. Find the freshest shrimp, the best olive oil, use French grey salt and Tellicherry fresh ground pepper for best results.

First course or a main meatless meal

October 29, 2011 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

Let’s bridge Greece and Italy – or let’s just use up things in my refrigerator that need using! This is fantastic and could be used as a great first course or a main meatless meal.

BUCATINI WITH EGGPLANT, FRESH TOMATOES, SPINACH AND FETA
Serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a first course

1/4 cup olive oil
5 large garlic cloves – peeled and thinly sliced on a mandoline
1 medium eggplant, cut in quarters lengthwise and then sliced 1/4” thick
1.5 lbs. fresh plum tomatoes – about 7, cored and cut into quarters lengthwise and then sliced into 1/4” slices
1/2 bunch or 4 oz. fresh tender spinach leaves, (or baby spinach) stems removed, washed and air-dried
2 oz. Greek feta cheese, cut in 1/4 cubes
1 lb. dried bucatini No 6 pasta or spaghetti or fettucini
Pecorino Romano cheese, freshly grated
Chiffonade of basil to garnish

Prepare the eggplant and salt layers of it in a mesh colander to draw out and drain the bitterness. Use fine sea salt. Let sit while you prepare everything else, the longer the better, but do this for at least 20 minutes.

Prepare the tomatoes and place in a separate large bowl and salt it as well with sea salt, toss with a spatula and let sit. This will intensify the tomato flavor.

Warm the olive oil and sauté the sliced garlic on very low heat for 10 – 15 minutes. Do not let it brown.

Start a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta.

Cut cheese and slice the basil leaves.

Take paper towels and squeeze and dry the eggplant and add to the skillet with the garlic and olive oil. Raise heat to medium and sauté until the eggplant is fork

tender. When the skillet becomes dry, drain the tomatoes in the same mesh colander and add their juices to the skillet.

Cook the pasta al dente and drain, saving some pasta water, just in case you need a little moisture.

In a large bowl you used for the tomatoes, layer 1/3 pasta, 1/3 fresh tomatoes, 1/3 eggplant mixture, 1/3 spinach, feta cheese and grate some pecorino on each layer. Continue until all is used up, pour in any extra tomato juice and toss and combine. The heat from the pasta and eggplant will warm the tomatoes, wilt the spinach and melt the feta. Garnish with more pecorino and the chiffonade of basil.

I hope you LOVE it!

cut salted eggplant

Chopped and salted tomatoes in a yellow bowl.

chopped salted tomatoes

Finished dish before basil garnish