In the KitchenwithBella

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 03/17/10 at 08:52 PM

This is a very quick and easy meal I grabbed off a cooking blog (and now can’t remember where; sorry!) and then tweaked a bit to fit my taste and our needs. And this is yet another way to use up leftover chicken from our roast chicken the other night. Very yummy. I will definitely make this again.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 08/8/09 at 01:30 PM

Super easy and oh so tasty, I use this sauce on my version of pizza chez Darwin.

I’ve almost lost this recipe several times. And Katherine was looking for a good pizza sauce recipe. So I figured it was about time I wrote it up for the blog. So here you are.

Adapted from a recipe at Cook’s Country

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 06/22/09 at 07:32 PM

I love these hearty, filling muffins. A great grab and go breakfast. I make them ahead and stick them in the freezer (after eating some, of course).

The original recipe, a runner-up in a Cook’s Country recipe contest, called for mixing everything in the food processor at once. I guess the author had a larger food processor than I do. So I process it in batches and then mix by hand in a large bowl. Especially if I want to double the recipe!

Sometimes I substitute 1 cup of whole wheat flour and add a couple of tablespoons of ground flax seed for a healthier recipe. It doesn’t noticeably change the taste. I also reduced the amount of sugar. Not that there was much to begin with, but it seemed like I could do without.

When I double the recipe, as I did today, I don’t usually bother to quite double the sausage and cheese. I usually use a 10 oz package of bulk sausage and 12 ounces of cheese. A double recipe made 3 dozen muffins, though some of them were a bit small.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 06/5/09 at 08:48 PM

Tonight I decided to try something a little different to spice up a Friday night tuna salad. I sort of had a craving for olives so I googled tuna and olives and found a recipe at epicurious.com to adapt. I was very pleased with the way it came out and definitely plan to make it again.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 03/30/09 at 06:00 PM

The meatballs are based on this Cook’s Illustrated recipe with a few modifications, but the sauce is all mine. The addition of fennel seeds evokes the flavor that Italian sausage brings if you were to add it.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 03/29/09 at 08:24 PM

Recently I’ve been having good luck finding roasts on sale at a decent price in the supermarket. Roasts are really appealing to me right now. They take very little preparation and cook with little intervention from me. And a good roast can make quite a few meals. Especially for Sophie, the meatasaurus baby who can never seem to get enough protein.

But after a few days of roast beef sandwiches the leftovers can start to weigh on me and then I have to think outside the box. I thought I’d share a few of the things that have worked for getting rid of that last bit of beef:

1. Steak salad

Pile up a bunch of lettuce, top it with tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, thin sliced radishes, goat cheese crumbles or shredded cheddar, and thin slices of roast beef. Add your favorite dressing and a side of bread and you have a complete meal. (For extra fun heat up the meat with taco seasoning, see soft tacos at #2.)

2. Soft Tacos

Or call them burritos if you will. I thinly slice the roast beef and cut it into pieces that are about 1-2 inches long and about half an inch wide. Then I heat some taco seasoning* in a pan on medium heat for a minute or two to roast the spices a little and when it smells really fragrant toss the meat until it’s warmed through. Serve with flour tortillas, refried beans, diced tomatoes, sliced avocado, salsa and shredded cheese. Everyone puts together his own taco and preparation is pretty fast and painless, just chopping a few vegetables and opening and heating a can of beans.

*Taco Seasoning: 1-2 teaspoons cumin, 1 teaspoon chili powder, 1 teaspoon onion powder, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1 teaspoon salt, ground black pepper.

3. Shepherd’s Pie

This one is a little more work, but not much. Dice the roast beef finely. Mix with frozen veggies, especially peas corn and carrots. Add a few tablespoons of broth. Place in casserole and top with mashed potatoes and then sprinkle with shredded cheese. Bake in the oven until it’s heated through and the potatoes get golden in places. This recipe is especially tempting to make if you made a big pot of mashed potatoes to go with the beef in the first place and have a lot leftover. I suppose you could plan for the shepherd’s pie and make extra potatoes in the first place.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 09/16/08 at 07:33 PM

This is the latest in my attempts to find healthy muffins that will serve as breakfast for Dom and snacks for Bella. It’s my own mishmash of several recipes I found online.

“Bella, let’s go make muffins,” I announced this morning. 

“One teaspoon of baking soda. One teaspoon of baking powder. One teaspoon of cinnamon,” she declared.

Though I wouldn’t necessarily follow her measurements (everything is one teaspoon) Bella did help me in developing the recipe. She dumped cupsful and spoonsful of ingredients into the bowl and stirred everything vigorously and then made sure I greased every well in the muffin pan. She also insisted that I use vegetable oil rather than the butter that one recipe suggested. Rather than face meltdown, I acceded to her demands.

I’m still stumped as to what to do with the extra pumpkin in the can. I do wish I could find a recipe that calls for a whole can. I’m just not brave enough to experiment and figure out the proper proportions.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 09/15/08 at 05:07 PM

This is an adaptation of this recipe

I used tomatoes, purslane, fingerling potatoes and cilantro from Saturday’s foray to the farmer’s market. Since this was a last-minute dinner decision, I had to use canned tomatillos and dried thyme. Even with these substitutions, this was still one of the best soups I’ve ever made. I served it with toasted slices of my homemade honey whole wheat bread.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 09/1/08 at 08:04 PM

Following our plan to try something new from the farmer’s market each week, this week we bought a bunch of purslane, which is evidently something of a nutrition powerhouse, containing more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable and many other vitamins and minerals. And it is quite tasty too. I compiled a purslane potato salad by loosely combining several different recipes I found on the web. It was a huge hit and kept in the refrigerator for two days.

Other additions I might add if I make this again: cucumber, scallions.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 08/19/08 at 06:52 PM

Originally this recipe called for pears. I never have pears on hand so I’ve always substituted an apple instead. These are a great treat and pretty healthy. Bella loves them and so does Dom.

I sometimes substitute whole wheat flour for half of the all-purpose flour and add 1/4 cup of ground flax seeds to make them a little healthier still.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 08/17/08 at 07:05 PM

This recipe is adapted from a recipe in the Fonda San Miguel cookbook. I love the briny flavor of this sauce—from the olives, capers and pickled jalapenos. It perfectly complements a sweet, firm fish.

I use tilapia for this dish, though the original recipe called for red snapper. (You can also use shrimp sauteed in olive oil.) I often buy the individually wrapped frozen tilapia fillets and keep them in the freezer. The quality is indistinguishable from fresh fillets and they last much longer, of course.) I omit the garlic and I often substitute canned diced tomatoes for fresh. I also reduce the amount of capers. Generally I only make two fillets of fish rather than the 6 the recipe calls for. I reduce the sauce a little bit but we always have extra sauce to eat over the rice, which is very yummy.

This dish is a quick dinner to throw together and, if you use canned tomatoes rather than fresh, you can keep all the ingredients on hand for some time which makes it a great backup dish for when another plan falls through or I’m too tired for something more complicated. 

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 07/20/08 at 06:21 PM

Lettuce, tomato, cucumber: same salad different day. I know I should eat salads more often; but I get so tired of them. Every once in a while I get excited by a new combination of ingredients, eat it for a while and then get bored again. And I always forget that trying new combinations reinvigorates the whole salad experience.

So I’ve been on a salad strike for a while. But yesterday’s trip to the farmer’s market fetched home a handful of new ingredients that had me spending the day fantasizing about getting back home for a yummy salad.

I started with good leafy lettuce, added some nice crisp cucumbers and ripe red tomatoes as usual for my base. But then I also added:

1. Really good goat cheese. I love, love, love the goat cheese made by Ann & Eric Starbard of Crystal Brook Farm. (She’s also the nicest vendor at the Marblehead Farmer’s Market, always remembers us and oohs over the girls.) It’s very creamy and doesn’t have that strong gamy flavor. A little of the jalapeno and cilantro goat cheese sprinkled on a salad gives it a real zing. 

2. Fresh crisp radishes. I’ve never really eaten radishes. To me they were just colorful accessories that Peter Rabbit steals from Mr. McGregor. But thinly sliced they add a nice spicy crunch.

3. Fresh basil. A couple of leaves thinly sliced and sprinkled in a salad give it a fresh bright taste.

Tonight I also added leftover steak tips that Dom grilled for last night’s dinner. We only had a few ounces of meat left; but thinly sliced they are quite enough on top of a big salad.

Recently I’ve also discovered roasted pumpkin seeds.

Top it off with a homemade vinaigrette using a spice mix from Penzey’s—just add oil and vinegar and shake. (Though it’s also good with a bit of lime and orange juice for a citrus variation.)

Yes, summer salads are back. This time I’m going to try to remember to keep trying new ingredients and combinations so I don’t get bored.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 07/19/08 at 06:38 PM

Tonight’s menu had grilled steak tips on it. I love steak tips, but Melanie is not as a big of a fan. She likes her steak to have just stopped mooing, and steak tips tend to get a bit more well-done. Plus she doesn’t like the char.

So the marinade I had chosen for the tips was southwestern and a prime ingredient as chili powder. Unfortunately, when I went to the cupboard both our “in-use” jar and reserve stash were depleted. (Somebody forgot to put it on the spice shopping list.) What to do? Why, make our own of course!

I went online and looked at a bunch of recipes. Some were basically ground chili peppers and cumin and lacking in complexity, while others had everything from cinnamon to turmeric. However, I think what I eventually put together was just right and not too time-consuming to make.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 07/14/08 at 08:35 PM

Not too long ago Danielle Bean wrote about serving her children egg custard for breakfast and in the comments to that post someone added a recipe for rice custard. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but somehow it planted a seed of an idea that gradually grew bigger and bigger.

We frequently have leftover rice. Dom likes to make fried rice with it, but sometimes he just doesn’t get around to it and the rice goes bad. In fact I threw away three containers of it last week, such a shameful waste. But as I looked at various recipes, many of them called for shocking amounts of milk and eggs. With Bella’s new-found love of milk, we’ve been tearing through milk rather more rapidly than before so I was loathe to use four whole cups to make up a dessert I might or might not even enjoy. And many of them started with uncooked rice or used a scant half cup—hardly a way to use up our leftovers. I had to hunt a bit to find exactly what I wanted: a recipe that would maximize the rice and minimize the milk and eggs. I finally found just the thing in my trusty Joy of Cooking. (Although I cooked my rice pudding in one large casserole rather than the individual ramekins or custard cups the recipe called for, it came out just fine.)

So today I whipped up a batch of delicious rice pudding. The only snag: Bella wouldn’t even try a bite. Oh well, more for me! And Dom too, I suppose.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 07/14/08 at 07:17 PM

After I’d graduated from college but before moving to Massachusetts—when I was still living in Irving, Texas—some dear friends of mine, recently married with very little money, bought this cookbook, Mediterranean Hot and essentially taught themselves to cook from its pages. Night after night they’d create their own entertainment by cooking and eating and cooking and eating. And frequently they’d invite some of us over to share in their culinary discoveries and their joy. The food was so good I just had to buy the cookbook and make it for myself.

I’ve spent many a hot Texas summer night sipping wine and eating spicy food and watching the sun set from my friends’ deck as we talked and laughed and philosophized. Perhaps that’s why I tend to pull out this cook book when it gets hot, to me this food says summer. But most of the dishes would also be perfect for bringing that elusive taste of summer to a frosty evening and warming your bones on cold winter nights.

This chicken tagine is one of my favorite dishes. I present it here in a slightly modified form.