The Yum Yum Factor

So, recently, I finally made  Marcella Hazan's buttery tomato sauce and, unlike the other 98% of the food world, I didn't totally fall in love with it. I found it a bit too rich and buttery (if that can even happen) and missed the olive oil taste in my marinara. I didn't dislike it, I just didn't love it beyond all other sauces. What I did like was the silky texture the butter gave it and the ease of preparation and I wanted to try it again with less butter and some olive oil replacing the lost butter, finally settling on a ratio of 2 tbls butter/3 tbls of olive oil. This mix gave me the rich, silky texture but the olive oil flavour I was missing so much. Shack woke up on Sunday morning with a craving for cabbage rolls but, unfortunately, he didn't share that with me until early afternoon. Cabbage rolls are not something you can just whip on on a whim. My mom, who was famous in our family for a couple of dishes, made a mean cabbage roll and I miss them treme...

This weekend was the final week of  Love 4 Lasagna at Piccante Dolce  and I had decided that I was going to try to make some sort of Lasagna Carbonara for poor Shack. He liked the pastitsio alright but none of these lasagnas have really rocked his world and I am feeling a bit guilty. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage doing a carbonara because the eggs would scramble when baked and that would most likely NOT score me any brownie points with anyone. I was looking around and reading recipes when Food Network Canada announced a cooking club challenge in which you must make Bobby Flay's Macaroni and Cheese Carbonara  . Come on, now perfect is that timing?? I had already decided that I would also make the pasta from scratch this time so this is what i did today: I made a half batch of homemade pasta with italian parsely and mixed up some ricotta and swiss chard  and made a small lasagna with half the ingredients and I made a mac and cheese like in his recipe w...

This week's lasagna for the  Piccante Dolce Love 4 Lasagna Challenge  was something I wanted to try as soon as i read about this challenge. I will be honest with you, I don't make lasagna often. I don't make rich, cheesy, gooey food much although Shack would love me more if I did. When I make this sort of food, I do really enjoy it once it's out there but it just never occurs to me to make it in the first place, so I really appreciate this challenge. My thighs will not not appreciate this challenge if I am not careful, of course, but it's been fun to make food that is really out of my comfort zone. One of those comfort zones happens to be Mexican food so i knew right away that I was going to try to incorporate those flavours into this challenge. I am sure there is a restaurant chain in there somewhere,  "Paco and Pasquale's"?  Gnocchi a la Veracruz? Carnitas ravioli? One of my favorite stews to make is a green chile verde with pork. I would love to...

My friend, Jen, at  Piccante Dolce  has issued a lasagna challenge for November and I was so exited about joining in the fun that I started this blog so I could play along. I have some ideas floating around in my head for the next three weeks but I wanted to start simple for the first week. It also helped that I had a big bowl of meat sauce in the fridge that I had to use up. Since the three of us all have different needs in a lasagna, I was interested in making individual lasagnas. I thought about making three small lasagnas but i only have ramekins, which are too small or various mismatched casserole dishes of varying sizes.  To avoid a catfight over who got the biggest casserole, I decided to make lasagna roll ups and customize each roll up since I like spicy and bitter, Shack likes mushrooms and Little Shack doesn't like either. I sauted mushrooms in garlic, olive oil and a bit of butter for Shack and I. I sauteed some finely chopped kale for Little Shack and Rapini...