Butternut Tagliatelle with Crispy Bacon and Mushrooms

Butternut Tagliatelle with Crispy Bacon and Mushrooms

from "Drizzle and Dip" blog. Recipe found here. 

If I could eat one food for the rest of my life... it'd be this. Okay, that might be a little extreme but this is amazing. As said in the original blog, this is a wonderful change from regular old tomato sauces and cream based sauces. When mixing it all together and adding the bacon it reminded me a little of pasta carbonera, but this was better (and healthier) then any carbonera i've ever had!  

• 1 medium butternut, peeled and diced (about 4 heaped cups)
• olive oil for drizzling
• salt & pepper
• 4 slices prosciutto or Parma ham
• 150g mascarpone cheese
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 100g bacon, cut its bite sized pieces
• 120g brown mushrooms, sliced
• 2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
• 2 cloves of garlic 
• pinch of hot pepper flakes
• tagliatelle pasta

Preheat the oven to 400. Place the cubed butternut squash on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive, salt and pepper. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until tender and caramelized. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly. Put the butternut squash into a food processor or blender. While the oven is still hot, put the slices of prosciutto on the baking tray used for the squash and roast for 5 to 10 minutes or until crispy and curly. When the prosciutto is ready, set aside. Blend the butternut squash, mascarpone cheese and chicken stock until smooth. Set aside. Heat a large frying pan and cook the bacon. Set aside. In the same pan, add butter and cook the mushrooms. When they start to get all nice and brown, add the thyme and garlic. Cook for another few minutes. Add the butternut squash mixture, the regular bacon and a pinch of hot pepper flakes to the pan and mix. Boil water, and a generous pinch of salt and cook the pasta according to instructions. Save some pasta water to thin down the butternut squash sauce in the pan (approx 60 ml). When the pasta is cooked, add to the sauce.

We garnished our with the prosciutto, fresh parsley, parmesan cheese and pumpkin seeds! Yum. Yum yum yum. Yum. I can't wait for lunch tomorrow because I'm eating left overs. 

FUN FACT: butternut squash is an excellent source of vitamin A and beta-carotene, power antioxidants. It also provides vitamin C and fiber and is an ample amount of potassium which helps regulate blood pressure. 

Risotto Stuffed Peppers

Had a ladies night last night and my girlfriends are hard to please! One is a vegetarian, an other can't eat gluten, and the other two are just kinda picky sometimes! I some how managed to please everybody! I used this recipe as a starting point. I've only ever made one other type of stuffed pepper that I liked, but this one was very good as well!

Instead of using water to cook the arborio rice, I used chicken broth and a splash of wine. (The vegetarian didn't end up coming for dinner). This gave the rice a nice flavour. I was chatting while cooking, so i'm not completely sure about timing, but I think the rice took 5-10 minutes less then it said it would.

I used butter to fry up the ingredients instead of oil. I also added garlic, mushrooms, and spinach. I didn't have any 'italian seasoning' so i just mixed up some thyme, oregano and basil.  I also used orange, yellow and red peppers instead of green... because green are yucky. Just kidding, they're fine. But I don't like them as much.

Sided it with some baked chicken for all the non-veggies.

Brunch Quesadilla

I'm calling this a brunch quesadilla because it could be eaten for breakfast or lunch. I was calling it my breakfast, then I realized I was eating it around lunch time and I'd technically already had a yogurt before my 10am class.

I fried up some mushroom and red pepper in butter. Added garlic and then a handful of spinach. Sautéed it until the spinach had wilted. Meanwhile I beat an egg with a little milk, salt, pepper and thyme in a bowl.

In the same pan where the vegetables were heating up I put two sliced of serrano ham and let them heat up/crisp up a little. I put goat cheese on a tomato-basil tortilla, covering the majority of the surface. I then put the serrano ham on the top and bottom (so when it was folded there would be some on the bottom and top). After the vegetables were ready I poured the egg over top to make a scrambled egg. When the egg was cooked I put it on one side of the tortilla and folded it over. I put it back in the pan for a few minutes a side to toast it up.

Tarragon Infused Cream Sauce Pasta

It sort of seems like pasta is the only thing I make... it's not I swear. I do however make it quite often. It's just so good! If someone told me I could never eat pasta again I'd probably shrivel up and die. Tonight for dinner I made up the recipe, as my sister and I quite often do for pasta dishes.

The ingredients are: spicy sausage (which was bbq'd and then put in), mushrooms, onions, red peppers, garlic, white wine, chicken stock, cream, tarragon (fresh and dried), thyme (dried), nutmeg, hot pepper flakes, s & p and spinach. One of the pictures show asparagus because I had cut it up with the intention of putting it in, but completely forgot.

The key with cream sauces is patience... thankfully my sister was here for that. Quite often when I'm at school I make myself pasta and then get to excited and eat it before the sauce has had time to thicken up... tonights sauce had a perfect consistency!

Porkchops in a Mushroom Cream Sauce

    I love it when the person I cook dinner for just starts washing the dishes. At home I grew up with the motto "She/He who cooks doesn't clean", so when I'm cooking dinner for myself I'm always waiting for someone to do my dishes, but I'm stuck doing them!
    Tonight I was talking out loud about how to cook my pork chop and my housemate pulled out a can of mushroom soup from her cupboard that had a recipe for pork chops. It was very simple and rather boring, but she said I could use it so I invited her to join me for dinner! Instead of following the instructions which were "Brown pork chop, set aside. Sauté onions, mushrooms and garlic in same pan. Add cream of mushroom soup and milk. Add pork chop back", I worked off them. I put salt, pepper and lemon juice on the pork chops and then browned them and set them aside. Added mushrooms and onion, sautéed for a bit, added garlic and a splash of sherry, then broccoli and fresh tarragon. Stirred that for a bit and then added the cream of mushroom soup and some water. Then I added some dry thyme, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper and lemon to taste. As Campbell's says it was "MM, MM, Good!"

Stuffed Chicken and French Onion Soup

Well I may be screwing myself over for my exam on Friday, but cooking is WAY more fun than studying. French onion soup: I'll admit, the french onion soup is store bought. They come in little individualized sized portions and you bake them. It was at 425 for 40 minutes. The soup was alright, obviously not restaurant good because it was frozen... but edible!
Stuffed chicken: Butterfly the chicken. Fry some mushrooms and spinach in some butter until soft. Put the roasted garlic in the chicken, then the mushrooms and spinach, then slices of gruyere cheese. Close the chicken and pin it so it doesn't pop open in the oven. If you want to bread it, as I did, mix some Panko bread crumbs, fresh thyme and s&p and put it on top. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes. The chicken was mmmmmm mmmm good.

Brie, Mushroom and Arugula Pasta

Dragon and Unicorn here mixing up a little saturday dinner in Toronto! Tonight we tried out the Brie, Mushroom and Arugula Pasta from the Smith and Ratliff blog. We were pretty excited about it because it sounded so delicious. Brie... good. Mushrooms... good. Arugula... good. What's not to like? It was good, however, not quite what we expected. It was super creamy, which we liked, but we thought the brie wasn't strong enough. We were thinking that another cheese with a stronger flavour would be good to add to this. Perhaps Gruyere or we don't know... just another cheese. We also think that the arugula was too strong for this, so we suggest spinach. Maybe more mushrooms, cause why not? We also added garlic because, again, why not? UPDATE: after an intense 5 minutes of contemplation, we have decided that it needed a meat. Sausage. Bam. Do it. Dragon and Unicorn, OUT!

Chili

Tonight I made chili. I looked at a few websites for recipe ideas, but didn't really use a recipe when I made it. I also didn't measure any of my ingredients because I did it by taste. The ingredients were: ground beef, onions, garlic, yellow bell peppers, mushrooms, diced tomatoes, kidney beans, corn, beer, chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper.
First I cooked the beef and once that was basically done I added the onions, peppers, mushrooms and garlic. Once those cooked for a bit I added chili powder, cumin, oregano and mixed it around. Then I tossed in about 2/3 of a beer that I found in my fridge and let that boil down a bit. Then I tossed in the beans (which were drained and rinsed first) and diced tomatoes. There was too much liquid at this point, so before adding the corn (which only needs to be heated up) I let it boil down for approximately 30 minutes. I tasted it and then added a little more of each of the spices to taste. I topped it off with some sour cream and some shredded cheddar cheese. It was pretty good! My housemate took a bite and then asked to have some herself! Definitely will make this again.