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

Super Quick Broccoli Rabe and Pasta Recipe

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Quick Broccoli Rabe and Pasta Recipe on a white bowl.We all have our little tricks in the kitchen, right? And many of us have our secret ingredients we always turn to.

Mine, of course, is LOVE. Cooking with the intention of LOVE – loving the dish you’re making or knowing that when you serve the food, your family and friends will LOVE it and you will make them happy, that’s what turns me on. And that’s why I always cook with LOVE. I just want to make people happy. Nothing makes me happier than to hear little murmurs of delight from folks while eating my food.

Our youngest son, Zachary, whose birthday is today, said he knew my food always tasted so good because of the LOVE I put into it while cooking. One sister-in-law of mine told me years ago that I was good at picking recipes. But then she asked, why di­­­d my food always taste so good. She had made some of the same recipes. I guess Zachary had the answer.

So I was talking to a new colleague about our MARY’s secret ingredients culinary subscription box and he told me his “secret ingredient” was capers.

I also love capers and caperberries even more! Roasted, they become that crunchy burst of saltiness that I just love. Anchovies are another – throw them into a dish and they melt and add that wonderful umami flavor. Pancetta is also another good one.

Back to the box, our summer box is hitting mailboxes right now and as usual, it has a great curated collection of new products, some are ready to eat and with all of them, I’ve created a delicious recipe to make meals special for you and your family. There are still a few summer boxes left and you can pick one up here. If you use the code SAVE20 you can save 20% on a full year subscription – that’s 4 seasonal boxes for about $87.00! And remember, we are a proud supporter of the worldwide organization combatting hunger, Feed The Children, so a portion of your box purchase goes to support them.

Back to this Super Quick Broccoli Rabe and Pasta Recipe, this is a great dish for a meatless night. Meatless Monday is tomorrow! My proportion of broccoli rabe to the pasta is great – a lot more broccoli rabe and depending on how big your eaters are, this can serve 2 or 3 with just 8 oz. of pasta. This comes together so quickly, using the already near boiling water from the broccoli rabe to cook the pasta in. Bringing the broccoli rabe to almost boiling removes the bitterness and starts to work on tenderizing those stems.

Super Quick Broccoli Rabe and Pasta Recipe in 2 bowls.

I was debating if it needed cheese and it didn’t!

Make this tomorrow night to start your week quick. Make it with LOVE and enjoy!!

SUPER QUICK BROCCOLI RABE AND PASTA RECIPE – serves 2 – 3

I bunch of broccoli rabe, ends trimmed, cut into 2” pieces, and washed in a bath of water to remove all grit. Never
    buy broccoli rabe that has blooming yellow flowers – that’s a message that it will be very bitter
1/2 lb. spaghetti or other dry pasta
3 Tbs. olive oil
7 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
5 anchovies, blotted dry of oil
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
Coarse sea salt – for cooking pasta and broccoli rabe
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

In a large pasta pot, place the washed broccoli rabe. Fill the pot with water to be at least 2 inches above the broccoli rabe. Add in the salt and stir to combine. Place the pot on high heat.

Meanwhile, warm the 3 Tbs. olive oil in a large skillet on low heat, (large enough to hold the broccoli rabe and pasta too), add the garlic and stir. Do not let it brown.

When small bubbles appear around the edges of the pot with the broccoli rabe, remove the rabe with a slotted spoon into a colander over a bowl and let drain. Let the water in the pot come back to a full boil. When that happens, add the pasta and cook for 2 minutes less than the lower number on the package directions.

While the pasta is cooking, (be sure to stir every once in a while), put the broccoli rabe in the skillet with the garlic and raise heat to medium – medium-high. Cook a bit more, and toss. Add in the anchovies and keep tossing and cooking.

When the pasta is near the end of cooking, take a large coffee mug and scoop out some pasta water. Drain the pasta and add it to the skillet with the broccoli rabe, stirring with tongs to combine. Add about ¼ cup of pasta water, the crushed red pepper flakes and toss to finish cooking the pasta just to al dente and be sure the broccoli rabe stems are crisp tender. Taste to your liking with more salt and some fresh ground black pepper.

Serve in warm bowls with LOVE!

EXCITING TRAVEL NEWS!

I want to tell you, I’m so excited, we’re heading to Poland and Italy in 11/2 weeks!!! We will celebrate Zach’s birthday in Warsaw with his fiancée, Agata. They have big plans to take us all over including visiting local farmer’s markets and a day trip to Krakow. Then we will fly to Milano, 2 days there, then train to Arezzo in Tuscany for Bianca’s wedding. Bianca is sort of my surrogate daughter. She is the daughter of the family our oldest son lived with for his semester abroad during his university years. She and her fiancé have visited us in NYC often. But, it has been 10 years since both families have been together and Tiziana, the mother, has asked me to help her cook the Friday night family dinner before the wedding on Saturday! I am SO excited and honored!!! We have been emailing. I will shop with her in the morning for her cheeses and she has asked me to come up with ideas for dessert. I’m thinking of big pans of rhubarb and strawberry crisps. What do you think?

So get ready for some great fun stories and photography from Poland and Italy!!! Is there anything specific you’d like to see? Let me know…

Pasta with Flounder in a Red Sauce and Roasted Broccoli with Radishes

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Feed the Children logoI’m so embarrassed, I forgot to mention in my last post that 10% of Mary’s secret ingredients’ annual profits will be donated to Feed the Children, a wonderful, worldwide organization that provides nourishing food, hygiene items, educational books and supplies for boys and girls in need.

I have always said that there is plenty of food in this world. It just needs to be redistributed and to not go to waste. Please take a look at these links and articles. No one should go hungry. I’m very excited to be able to give this non-profit a helping hand with MARY’s secret ingredients. Man, I would love to play a part in eradicating hunger in this world – it’s on my bucket list. You can help. All the more reason to order a box! Feed yourself and your family while feeding the needy children of the world.

This past week, the day after we arrived home from California, at around 5 pm, our youngest son informed me that he and his girlfriend would be home for dinner. That morning, I had taken two flounder fillets out of the freezer and had planned to roast them for Steve and me and make a simple vegetable for dinner. So now I only had a little over 1 lb. of fish for four people. I was tired and crabby from the travel and time change and had no desire to go to the fish store uptown to buy more fish and a decent vegetable. What to do?

Walking to the subway on the way home, while talking out loud to my husband, I decided to make it stretch. I called my son, Zach, and asked him to mince 5 cloves of garlic, pit and chop 15 olives, take the anchovies out of the fridge and make sure the flounder fillets had thawed. (They hadn’t.) I thought, let’s make a pasta dish with the flounder in a red sauce! Add some anchovies and olives for an extra boost of flavor! I stopped in the grocery store downstairs in my building and bought some broccoli and a beautiful bunch of large radishes. I tossed those with some olive oil and salt and pepper, and roasted them at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes, along with the recipe below and we had a super delicious, satisfying dinner for everyone; quick to boot, with everything ready in about 40 minutes. Suddenly I wasn’t crabby anymore! (A little food does wonders – think of what it could do for the world!)Red sauce with flounder

Now, because I only had buccatini in the apartment, which is a big noodle, I did not toss the sauce with the pasta, but served the pasta in a bowl, drizzled a tiny bit of olive oil on top and then ladled the red fish sauce on top. If I would have tossed it all together before serving, I would have broken up all those beautiful little pieces of flounder and made mush out of them. Not a good thing, nor pretty to serve. Now I know the true Italians would disagree with me here but that’s what I did, allowing each individual to mix it up in their own bowl.Pasta with a red sauce with flounder

PASTA WITH FLOUNDER IN A RED SAUCE – serves 4

2 tbs. olive oil
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 of bunch of parsley leaves, washed, dried and chopped
2 tsp. tomato paste
1 – 28 oz. can of whole San Marzano tomatoes, hand crushed, with the sauce
5 flat anchovy fillets, patted dry with a paper towel, chopped
Salt
Pepper
2 fillets of flounder, about 1.3 lbs., washed, dried, cut down the middle and then cut into 1/2” chunks
15 olives, black and green in oil, pitted and minced
1 lb. pasta – bucatini or fettuccine

Put a large pot on water on to boil for the pasta.

Warm olive oil in a large skillet. Add minced garlic on low heat and stir for 5 minutes. Raise heat to medium – medium high and add the chopped parsley and cook and stir for 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and stir for 1 – 2 minutes. You must always try to brown the tomato paste in order to get the most flavor out of it  – this is key!

Then add the hand crushed can of tomatoes with the juice along with the anchovies and let the whole thing vigorously simmer for about 10 minutes to thicken.

Meanwhile your pasta water has probably boiled. Salt with course sea salt to taste like ocean water (you know what that means, do not taste it and burn your tongue) and add your pasta. Stir and cook until al dente.

Salt and pepper the sauce to taste and add the cut up flounder fillets. Lower the heat a bit and stir gently, often. Fold over with a rubber spatula to stir so you don’t break up the pieces of fish. This will take about 7 minutes to cook the fish. Then taste the sauce to adjust salt and pepper and at the very end, add the chopped olives. Remember the olives will add more salt so take that into consideration. Turn your heat off.

Drain the pasta when done. Place pasta in bowls and drizzle a little olive oil on top so the noodles don’t stick together. Then ladle some beautiful sauce on top in the center. Serve immediately, with LOVE.Roasted broccoli and radishes on a glass plate

ROASTED BROCCOLI WITH RADISHES – serves 4

1 head of broccoli, washed, stems trimmed and peeled, each stalk quartered or even cut more
5 large radishes, scrubbed, dried and quartered
2 tbs. olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Toss broccoli and radishes with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast for 15 – 17 minutes until broccoli stems are fork tender to your liking. The broccoli heads will become a little charred, but I like them that way. They are so tasty. Serve immediately, very hot, on a side plate, with LOVE.

Enjoy!!

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