Spaghetti Sauce

When I was in Italy in January, we went to this terrific restaurant in Florence. One item on the menu involved chili powder in pasta sauce. It sounds weird but it turned out to be really good. Since I've come back, I have yet to buy a single jar of premade pasta sauce.

INGREDIENTS:
28 oz. can diced tomatoes or equivalent amount of fresh, peeled, diced tomatoes
2 (give or take) cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
olive oil
cooking wine
rosemary
oregano
black pepper
chili powder
any other veggies you want to add

PROCEDURE:
Combine onion, garlic, and olive oil (enough to cover the onion and garlic, and then some) in a pot big enough to hold everything. Sautee the mixture until onions are soft. Put some of the tomatoes in a food processor (fewer tomatoes food processed gives chunkier sauce) and have that chop them up. Add processed tomatoes and diced tomatoes to pot. Add veggies, spices, and cooking wine to taste. Cook until significantly thicker. Serve over your favorite pasta or use to make pizza.

If I'm feeding several people or if I'm planning on eating pasta nonstop for the next week I double the recipe.

Holy Squash!

Well, it's harvest time and that means squash the size of rocket ships. When confronted with 2 of these squashes, enough to feed an army, one must come up with a stellar recipe, so none of it goes to waste. As I sit eating the leftovers for the fourth day in a row, I've come to realize that this was one of the best dishes I have ever cooked.

Ingredients:

2 (or more) yellow squash, cut into semi-thin cross section discs
Hawaiian marinade (or anything similar)
Orange Juice
Lemon Juice
Italian Dressing
Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing
Apple Cider Vinegar
Red Chili Sauce
Frank's Red Hot Sauce
Barbecue Sauce

Essentially, the marinade was a grab bag of ingredients. There was no pre-planning, but it turned out fantastic. I can't really tell you how much of everything was added, save that the Hawaiian marinade was an entire bottle while we added everything else to supplement it. Citrus-y, spicy, it was glorious. We marinated the slices in about 20 ziplock bags for about an hour before grilling them on various Foreman grills. Left with all the fantastic sauce, we decided to make a side:

Side dish:

Leftover marinade (after grilling)
2 c rice
1 c black beans
1 c kidney beans
1 diced tomato
1 diced jalapeno pepper

Mix that shit together and you've just doubled the deliciousness.

Hopefully I can get this rolling again now that school has kicked back in.

If you'd like to be a contributor, get in touch with me. We can always use more recipes.

Vegetarian Chili

I recently ventured into the world of homemade vegetarian chili. To start, I based my recipe off of the whole foods website recipe for vegetarian chili, but I changed some things (I forgot garlic, and as much as I like the stuff, it was fine) and made it more general.

As a side note, I've been trying to make basic things from scratch (recipes for bread and stuff coming soon). I don't usually measure things out when I cook, I just sort of eyeball it with the idea that good ingredients with thoughtful preparation will yield a good enough product, or at least a good and edible learning experience. Things have turned out well, so I guess it's a decent approach. Without further ado . . .

TOTAL COST: about $25
MAKES: enough servings to feed you and a few roommates or guests for a couple days at least, plus you'll have leftover fresh veggies.
TIME: 1-2 hours, but you will be able to check facebook while shit's cookin'.


INGREDIENTS
About 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
About 2 qt. crunchy veggies. I use:
    2 Stalks Celery
    1 Carrot
    1 Onion
    1/2 Green Pepper
    1/2 Red Pepper
2 x 28 oz. cans diced tomatoes
Spices. If in doubt, buy a new, full container. I use half of a McClanahan's container of cumin in a single batch. I use:
    Cumin (Sort of essential)
    Oregano
    Chili Powder (Again, sort of essential)
    Sea Salt
    Red/Cayenne Pepper (some like it hot)
Beans, etc. I use:
    1 x 15 oz. can kidney beans
    1 x 15 oz. can black beans
    1 x 15 oz. can corn
    1 x 15 oz. can garbanzo beans (chickpeas)


PROCEDURE (sorry, I was a chemistry major)

Combine olive oil and crunchy veggies (chopped finely or to your desired chunkiness) in a big pot. Mix well and apply low to medium heat until veggies are somewhat softened but nowhere near brown. Add canned tomatoes (include juice) and spices (munch on some of the mix as you're adding them to make sure you like it that way). Heat a little more (low to medium) until it's bubbling just a bit and starts to look like chili. Add beans and stuff. Cook until beans are soft enough that you're happy (I usually eat a few chickpeas . . . once they're not crunchy anymore, you're probably good).

Serve, share, refridgerate or freeze leftovers. Add some cheese (I'm a die-hard mozzarella guy) if you're not vegan and so inclined. Freshly baked bread (recipe coming soon, I swear) goes well also. Drink some milk if you overdid the cayenne pepper. Leftovers are probably good for burritos and stuff, though I've yet to muster the energy to do anything but scarf them down cold.