Caramelized Onions Fettuccini

22 Mar

This recipe was inspired by Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food Magazine December 2008 issue… 

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This issue had a section that highlighted pantry staples and how they can shine and help you in many quick weekday dishes.  This recipe highlighted onions and I already has a batch of caramelized onions in the fridge from making my French Onion dip, so I decided to give this recipe a try.

I switched things a bit to accommodate what I had in MY pantry at the time, so this is my very own version of…

 caramelized-onion-fettuccini-2

CARMELIZED ONION FETTUCCINI

¼ pack of whole-grain fettuccini
2 tbs of butter
1/3 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese
Half of this caramelized onion recipe
Salt and Pepper to taste, optional

 

  1. Boil pasta according to package directions in a big pot with boiling salted water.
  2. When pasta is done, drain the pasta while reserving 1 cup of the water used to boil.  Return the pasta to the pot, add the butter and caramelized onions.  Mix well to combine and to warm up the onions if they were refrigerated.
  3. Add some of the pasta water to loosen the mix and create a “sauce”.  Add half of the cheese and continue combining it all. Continue adding pasta water until the sauce reaches your desired consistency… mine is that all the pasta is lightly coated with a medium thickness sauce.  Add some additional salt or pepper according to your taste… you might not even need to add anything else.
  4. Plate and sprinkle the remaining cheese onto your plated pasta.

 

If you do the onions ahead of time, this recipe will take you about the time it takes to boil the pasta… if you make the onions for this dish in particular, it should be ready in approximately 40 minutes according to Everyday Food. 

Make a large batch of the onions and see how many recipes you can incorporate them in… I can give you some others besides this one already:

French Onion Soup

French Quesadillas

Stuffed Brie

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Stuffed Baked Brie

18 Mar

The other night we got together to watch the French film La faute à Fidel…  a very nice film showed in a French film festival recently at the University of Puerto Rico.  I was not able to attend the original showing, so my friend Laura’s mother, who’s a film buff and loves to buy films, lent it to us for a night of French movies and of course, French food…

I’ve been meaning to make a different version of the Camembert Chaud at the Bistro de Paris restaurant we love so much… where they take a round of camembert cheese, take the top off and warm it up in the oven and serve with French bread toasts, walnuts and sour apples.

I wanted to see if I could challenge myself and work with some phyllo dough I had bought and was always afraid of using.  I always do that, I like things at the market, but then leave them in the fridge or the pantry and do not use them immediately.   I built myself some courage and this is what turned out…

 

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STUFFED BAKED BRIE

A 4.5 ounce round of Brie cheese
2 tbs of guava jelly
1 ½ tbs toasted walnuts, cut into small pieces
2 tbs caramelized onions – recipe here
4 sheets of whole-wheat phyllo dough – defrosted
4 tbs of butter, melted
Canola spray

 

  1. Take a baking sheet and line with parchment paper.  Spray with canola oil.
  2. Take one piece of the phyllo dough and place on top of baking sheet.  Brush lightly but evenly with melted butter using a pastry brush.  Place the second sheet of phyllo crosswise, perpendicular to the first sheet.  Brush again with the melted butter.  Place the third sheet of phyllo diagonal to the frist two, as if covering the spaces left open by the first “cross”.  Brush again with melted butter and place the fourth and last phyllo sheet perpendicular to the 3rd sheet, therefore creating another cross with the sheets.  Spread  the last sheet with the remaining butter.
  3. Cut the brie cheese into two halves, creating a top and a bottom half.  We’ll be making a “sandwich” using the two brie halves.
  4. brie-relleno-por-dentro
  5. Place the bottom half of the cheese in the middle or the phyllo sheet stack.  Spread the caramelized onions on on top of the brie half.  Now, spread the guava jelly on top of the onions.  Place the walnuts pieces on top of the guava jelly. And now top everything off with the remaining half of brie cheese.  It may get a bit messy, but it’s all good.
  6. brie-relleno-antes-de-cerrar
  7. Now you’ll start wrapping the brie with the phyllo… take one section and fold it over the cheese.  Now try enveloping the cheese with another side… you’ll see you’ll have a lot of phyllo left over that you won’t know what to do with it.  Just take it all and gather it on top of the cheese like making a bun…  I just could not take pictures of this because my hands were so messy with melted butter.
  8. Place the stuffed brie in the fridge for about 30 minutes to set a bit… 
  9. After 15 minutes have passed, pre-heat the oven to 450 F.  When the oven is ready, bake the brie covered with a piece of parchment with a foil paper on top for about 10 minutes.  Then take off the parchment/foil covering and let the phyllo get golden brown.
  10. Take out of the oven and wait about 2-3 minutes for the cheese inside to adjust to the temperature and cut and serve immediately after.  We served them with water crackers and apple slices.

 

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We loved the mixture of the tangy brie with the sweet guava jelly and onions.  But I had a few mishaps and I want you to learn from my mistakes.  So here are some tips when making this Stuffed Brie:

  • Use the same baking sheet where you’ll bake the brie to set it up.  I transferred the brie from that baking sheet to something smaller to put it in the fridge and I almost lost the entire bottom when transferring it back to the baking sheet to bake.
  • The temperature of the oven is important… if the temperature is not that high, your phyllo dough takes longer to cook and get golden and might give your jelly an opportunity to seep out. 
  • This is not a good dish to assemble at home and transfer somewhere else to bake…  I suggest you assemble and bake in the same premises.  I have not tried yet the bake first and then transfer and reheat… if you do, let me know if it works better.

 

Hope you love it as much as we did…

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Undercover Potatoes

16 Mar

What to do when you have leftover sauce from your Undercover Carrot Mac  & Cheese??  Pour it on top of steamed potatoes… what else??

Another way to sneak in carrots into your kids meals…

 undercover-carrot-potatoes

UNDERCOVER POTATOES

About 10 fingerling potatoes, washed well and cut in half
About ½ cup of leftover sauce from this recipe here

 

  1. In a medium sauce pan place the fingerling potatoes.  Add enough water to the bottom of the pan, where about half of the potatoes are still exposed.  I find that potatoes cook better and faster when only a small amount of water is added to the pot.
  2. Salt the potatoes and swirl the water in the pan for the salt to combine with the water.
  3. Cover and let it boil/steam over medium heat for about 15 minutes.  Check the potatoes for doneness.  If they’re still underdone, let them go for about 2-3 minutes more and without uncovering, turn off the stove. 
  4. After about 10-15 minutes, the potatoes will be perfectly steamed and at the right temperature to handle.  I sometimes take the skin off after I steam them… but that’s entirely if to you.
  5. While the potatoes are resting, heat the leftover sauce.  After it’s warm, pour on top of potatoes. 

 

Serve with a nice side salad for a light dinner…

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Guava Paste and Cream Cheese

15 Mar

This has to be the first dessert I was taught how to make… besides opening a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, that is.

I grew up in a house where there always was guava paste and cream cheese, two if my dad’s passions.  I guess the passion rubbed off on me, because nowadays I heart anything with either guava or cream cheese, not to mention anything that combines the two.

This is just so simple that’s difficult to even call it a recipe…

 guayaba-con-queso-crema

GUAVA PASTE AND CREAM CHEESE

3 strips of guava paste
3 strips of cream cheese – you can use regular or the 1/3 less fat kind – the only difference is that the regular kind will hold its shape better when eating it…
  1. Place guava strips onto a plate and place the cream cheese strip on top.
  2. Take carefully with your fingers and enjoy the pleasure…

 

Read well the guava paste packages before buying.  Buy guava paste that’s free of additives or artificial colorants.  It should only contain guava, sugar and citric acid.  Anything else in there you do not want it or need it.

If you’re not into cream cheese, or do not have it in the house, just use any other cheese like queso blanco, cheddar or even muenster would work well here… it’s just something to cut the sweetness of the guava paste.

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Undercover Carrot Mac & Cheese

13 Mar

I am experimenting with ways to sneak in more vegetables into my nieces’ diet…  I know their moms try very hard, but they take the path of least resistance often to avoid confrontation.  Hey, I understand perfectly after spending 5 glorious 24-hour days with them.

Because they love macaroni and cheese, I thought I would try how it would taste “sneaking in” some carrots. I have done this with butternut squash and pumpkin in the past… so why not try with another orange vegetable?  And carrots are cheaper and more readily available in my fridge than those other options. 

I was fascinated by the concept of hiding vegetables and nutrients into kids’ diets when the book Deceptively Delicious came out.  I think it’s a great concept and one to try not only with kids, but for us as adults too.  Sometimes you know something is good for you, but you just don’t like to make it just for yourself… or you just like certain vegetables in certain preparations, not others.  What I also liked about the book is that besides “sneaking” vegetables into kids’ meals, it stressed you should always include a side of vegetables on your kids’ plates.  The fact that added veggies are hidden within the recipe does not excuse the fact we need to teach kids it’s important to eat salads and vegetables as part of a healthy diet.  The hidden veggies are just an insurance policy if they decide not to try the side of veggies that time around.

The mac and cheese turned out really nice… because I first tried it on myself and I was not too keen on dirtying my food processor, I just mashed the carrots into the sauce.  But the time I actually do make it for my nieces I will puree the carrots to make it blend in more with the rest of the cheese sauce.

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UNDERCOVER CARROT MAC & CHEESE

3 medium carrots, steamed and pureed
1 cup buttermilk
½ cup Cheez Whiz – I don’t normally use this ingredient, but I had it in the fridge and I felt bad just throwing it away.  You can substitute very well with cheddar cheese
½ cup cottage cheese
¼ cup parmesan cheese, divided
1/3 lbs of whole-grain pasta – I used whole wheat penne

 

  1. Pre-heat oven or toaster oven to 350 F.
  2. Bring a large pot filled with very salty water to a boil and cook pasta according to package directions.  I usually give it about 10-12 minutes.
  3. While the pasta water is coming to a boil, prepare the cheese sauce…   in a medium sauce pan over medium heat add the buttermilk and carrot puree.  When that is warm, add the cottage cheese, most of the parmesan, cheez whiz or cheddar and let it all melt together.  Watch out it does not boil because it will make the buttermilk runny/watery… just enough for all the cheeses to come together as a sauce.
  4. When the pasta and sauce are done, drain the pasta and combine it with the sauce.   Place them in a pyrex casserole dish, sprinkle with some of additional parmesan cheese and place in oven.
  5. It will take about 15-20 minutes for the cheese on top to brown… that’s when you take it out.
  6. Wait about 20 minutes for the cheese sauce to stop bubbling and dig in…

undercover-carrot-mac-cheese

 

When I make these recipes, I usually don’t measure and eye-ball the ingredients.  I had some extra sauce that did not fit the casserole dish and used it to top some steamed potatoes… they were extra delicious too.

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