Baked Ziti

Now here's a classic midweek meal, or a hot dish to bring to a potluck. Baked ziti is a lot like American lasagna, but easier to make; it has practically the same ingredients but you don't have to fuss with lots of layers or broken noodles. This recipe is a pretty basic version, but everyone who makes baked ziti has their own unique tricks and twists to it. Some vary the cheeses, some the meat, some make meatless versions, and some people leave out the tomato sauce for a truly cheese-tastic casserole.

Baked Ziti Recipe

• Cook time: 55 minutes

If you don't have Italian seasoning in the pantry, use 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon dried basil and 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme.

Ingredients

• 1 pound ziti (can sub penne) pasta
• Olive oil
• 1 pound bulk Italian sausage or ground beef or pork
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3-4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary (or basil), minced
• 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 large jar of marinara sauce (about 32 ounces) or make your own tomato sauce
• 1/2 pound of mozzarella cheese, grated
• 1 heaping cup of ricotta cheese
• 1 cup grated parmesan or pecorino cheese

Method

1 Bring a large pot of water to a strong boil. Add about a tablespoon of salt for every 2 quarts of water. Add the pasta and boil, uncovered, until the pasta is al dente—edible but still a little firm. Drain the pasta through a colander. Toss with a little olive oil so the pasta does not stick together while you make the sauce.

2 Pour a tablespoon or so of olive oil into a large sauté pan on medium-high to heat. When the oil is hot, add the bulk sausage or ground meat. Do not crowd the pan (work in batches if needed). Break up any large chunks of sausage as it cooks. Brown well. Don't stir that often or it will be more difficult for the meat to brown. If you are using ground beef or pork instead of sausage, add a little salt.

3 When the meat is mostly browned, add the onions and stir well to combine. Sauté everything until the onions are translucent and beginning to brown, about 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic, rosemary or basil, Italian seasoning and red pepper flakes and stir to combine. Cook 1 minute, then add the tomato sauce and stir well. Bring to a simmer.

4 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a 9x13-inch casserole pan, then dot the surface with half the ricotta cheese. Ladle in some sauce with the pasta, mix it well and add the pasta into the casserole.

5 Pour the rest of the sauce over the pasta, dot the remaining ricotta cheese over the pasta, and sprinkle on top both the mozzarella and the Parmesan cheese. Bake in the oven until the top is nicely browned, about 20 minutes.

Yield: Serves at least 8

Braised Turkey Legs

Everybody loves turkey breast for their turkey sandwiches but the more flavorful meat comes from the dark meat found in turkey thighs and legs. These, by the way, are much less expensive than the breasts. Mom and dad have a great way of preparing braised turkey legs, perfect for a cold winter day.

Braised Turkey Legs Recipe

• Prep time: 10 minutes
• Cook time: 2 hours

Ingredients

• 2 turkey legs and 2 thighs, about 4 lbs
• Olive oil
• 1 cup finely chopped yellow onion
• 1 cup of finely chopped celery
• Salt, pepper, and cayenne
• Water or other braising liquid (dry wine or stock)
• Corn starch
• Parsley, chopped, about 1/4 cup

Optional winter vegetables such as:

• Potatoes, peeled and quartered
• Carrots, chopped
• Turnips, quartered
• Rutabagas, quartered
• Parsnips, chopped

Method

1 Sprinkle turkey thighs and legs with salt and pepper. Brown the turkey thighs and legs on medium high heat in a little bit of olive oil in a large sauté pan with high sides. Add chopped onion and celery to form a nest under the turkey pieces. Sauté an additional 5 minutes.

2 Add enough braising liquid - either water, stock, wine, or a combination - so that the liquid covers the bottom inch of the pan, about 1 cup. Bring to a simmer. Lower heat and simmer covered for an hour and a half, or until the turkey is so well cooked and tender that the meat easily falls off of the bones. Remove the turkey meat from the pan and remove the bones, taking special care to remove the many small narrow bones of the legs. Remove the skin.

Optional: At this point you can use the liquid remaining in the sauté pan to cook the potatoes, carrots and turnips. Add the vegetables to the pan and sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Cook covered until they are done, about 20 minutes. Remove from pan so you can reduce the remaining liquid without overcooking the vegetables.

3 Reduce the liquid remaining in the pan to intensify some of the meat juices for added flavor. Take a teaspoon of cornstarch and dissolve in a 1/2 cup of water. Add cornstarch mixture a little at a time to sauce, adding more liquid, until the sauce achieves the desired body. Adjust seasoning. Add salt and pepper if needed, add a little cayenne or Tabasco sauce. If the sauce is too sweet, add a little vinegar or lemon. Add parsley.

4 Add the turkey meat back in the pan with the sauce. Serve immediately over rice or bread or with the vegetables if you have chose to make them.

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Turkey Stew with Root Vegetables

Updated, from the recipe archive. First posted in 2005. ~Elise

One of my father's favorite dishes to make in the winter is a hearty turkey stew with lots of root vegetables like rutabagas, turnips, and carrots. It's warming, filling, and a big batch will last all week for several meals of leftovers. It's also very easy on the budget, which is probably why we had it so much growing up. You make it with turkey thighs (or legs), which, in addition to being the tastier dark meat, you can usually get for $1.50 per pound or less. Slow cooking the turkey thighs bone-in, you get all of the healthy goodness and flavor from the bone marrow. Cooking them with skin on also coats the turkey with flavor. Turnips and rutabagas, which can be rather strong tasting, hold up beautifully with the also strong-tasting dark turkey meat.

Turkey Stew with Root Vegetables Recipe

• Prep time: 10 minutes
• Cook time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Save time by prepping the root vegetables during the first stage of the stew's oven cooking.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 3 lbs turkey thighs (preferred) or legs (skin on, bone in)
• 1 medium-large yellow onion, peeled and roughly chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 2 stalks celery, roughly chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 quart chicken, turkey, or vegetable stock (use gluten-free stock if cooking gluten-free)
• 2 medium carrots, peeled, 1/4 inch slices (about 1 1 /4 cups)
• 2-3 medium turnips, peeled, 1/2 inch cubes
• 1 medium rutabaga, peeled, halved, cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
• 3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
• 1 teaspoon herbes de provence*
• Freshly ground black pepper

*Herbes de Provence is a delightful French blend of herbs - Winter savory, thyme, basil, tarragon, and lavender flowers.

Method

1 Preheat oven to 300°F. Heat olive oil on medium high heat in a Dutch oven on the stove top. Wash and pat dry turkey pieces. Working in batches if necessary, brown turkey pieces, first skin side down, 2-3 minutes on each side. Sprinkle the thighs with a little salt as you brown them.

2 Once the thighs have browned, remove them from the pan and set them in a bowl. Add the onions and celery to the pot. Cook for about 5 minutes or so, until the onions are translucent and starting to brown at the edges. Return the turkey thighs to the pot.

3 Add 2 teaspoons of salt and half of the stock. Bring to a simmer, remove from the stove top and put in the oven, covered, for an hour and fifteen minutes.

4 After an hour and fifteen minutes, remove from oven and add the rest of the vegetables - carrots, turnips, rutabaga, and potatoes, the herbs, and the rest of the stock. Return to the oven, covered, and cook until tender, another 45 minutes or more.

5 Remove the turkey thighs from the stew and place in a bowl to cool. When cool enough to handle, strip the meat off the bones. Discard the bones and skin. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces (1 1/2-inches or so chunks) and return to the pot.

Season the stew to taste.

Yield: Serves 6 to 8.

Albondigas Soup

Albondigas soup is a traditional Mexican meatball soup ("albondigas" means "meatballs" in Spanish) that my mother has cooked for our family for almost 50 years. It is our version of comfort food. What makes the flavor of albondigas soup distinctive is the chopped mint in the meatballs. I once complained to a Mexican chef about the lack of mint in his cookbook's albondigas soup recipe, and he looked at me with surprise and said, "my mother puts mint in her albondigas!" You can, of course, skip the mint, substitute with a little fresh oregano or some cilantro, but to me, the soup's not the same without it. You can also vary the vegetables added, depending on what you have on hand and what's in season.

Albondigas Soup Recipe

If fresh mint is not available, you can use a couple teaspoons of dried mint from herbal mint tea. You can also vary the vegetables depending on what you have on hand. Spring peas in their pods instead of shucked peas, for example. Or you could add some chopped fresh zucchini or corn. My mother often puts a couple extra tablespoons of chopped fresh mint directly into the soup. Feel free to substitute ground turkey for the ground beef, we do it often.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 3 quarts of chicken stock or beef stock OR water OR a mixture of both (we usually use half stock half water as the meatballs will create their own stock)*
• 1/2 cup of tomato sauce

• 1/2 lb of string beans, strings and ends removed, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 large carrots, peeled and sliced

• 1/3 cup of raw white rice
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/4 cup of chopped fresh mint leaves
• 1/4 cup of chopped parsley
• 1 raw egg
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• A dash of cayenne (optional)

• 1 1/2 cup of frozen or fresh peas
• 1 teaspoon of dried oregano, crumbled, or 1 Tbsp fresh chopped oregano
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

*If using prepared stock, be sure to use gluten-free stock if you are cooking gluten-free.

Method

1 Heat oil in large heavy-bottomed pot (5-qt) over medium heat. Add onion and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook a minute more. Add broth mixture and tomato sauce. Bring to boil and reduce heat to simmer. Add carrots and string beans.

2 Prepare the meatballs. Mix rice into meat, adding mint leaves and parsley, salt and pepper. Mix in raw egg. Form mixture into 1-inch meatballs.

3 Add the meatballs to the simmering soup, one at a time. Cover and let simmer for 1/2 hour. Add the peas towards the end of the 1/2 hour. Add a few pinches of oregano and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and a dash of cayenne, to taste.

Garnish with chopped fresh cilantro.

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Banana Bread

The best recipes come tried and true from friends who begged them from other friends and so on and so on. That's the wonderful thing about sharing recipes - the more good recipes we share, the better we all get to eat! This banana bread comes from my friend Heidi who years ago begged this recipe from a ski friend's mother - Mrs. Hockmeyer (parents of friends are always Mr. and Mrs. no matter how old we get). Mrs. Hockmeyer passed away years ago, but her simple but perfect banana bread lives on for all of us to enjoy.

Banana Bread Recipe

• Prep time: 5 minutes
• Cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

Method

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Yield: Makes one loaf.

Chicken Peanut Curry

The inspiration for this recipe comes from a West African soup recipe in Nancie McDermott's The Curry Book. With a little less broth and a lot more chicken you have a great peanut curry dish. Control the level of hotness you want with the amount of chili. We didn't have serranos when we made this, and we wanted it very spicy so we used 4 fresh large jalapeños instead of the 2 serranos called for in the following recipe. The lime, coriander seed, onion, cilantro, mint, ginger, chili, and peanut combine wonderfully.

Chicken Peanut Curry Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken pieces (or you can use bone-in for added flavor), cut into 1 1/2 inch wide chunks or strips
• 1/2 cup flour
• 4 Tbsp curry powder
• 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground peppercorns
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 Tbsp fresh ginger, minced
• 2 Tbsp garlic, minced
• 2 serrano chili peppers, seeded, de-veined, minced
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 cup peanut butter (if using freshly ground peanuts, add 2 teaspoons of sugar)
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
• 8 green onions, chopped, greens included
• 1/3 cup each finely chopped mint and cilantro
• 2 limes cut into wedges

Method

1 Rinse chicken and pat dry. In a small sturdy paper bag, combine the flour, curry powder, salt and pepper. Shake well. Add the chicken pieces and shake to coat well.

2 Heat oil in a large saucepan on medium high heat. Add chicken pieces. Cook 5-10 minutes (depending on size of chicken pieces) tossing occasionally to cook chicken evenly. Add the ginger, garlic, chili pepper and 1/2 cup of the chicken broth to the saucepan. Cook for 3 minutes, scraping the pan with a spatula and stirring to combine everything well.

3 Add the peanut butter, stirring quickly to incorporate it with the chicken. Add the remaining 3 1/2 cups of broth slowly, stirring continuously to maintain an even texture. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Right before serving, add the coriander and green onions. Salt to taste.

4 Serve with rice. Top each serving with fresh cilantro and mint. Squeeze a little lime juice over it as well.

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Red Beans and Rice

Something tells me we're not the only ones who get excited over beans and rice. Do you? Rarely a week goes by that we don't have beans of some sort or another, and my mother's chili beans with rice are a staple around here. My father found a recipe in our local grocery store (Raley's) circular for a Cajun red beans and rice using smoked pork shanks. Given my dad's love affair with all things pork, he couldn't wait to make it. Traditional Louisiana red beans and rice also uses Andouille sausage which we did not add, but you could if you wanted. There was plenty of flavor, and plenty of meat, with the smoked shanks.

Red Beans and Rice Recipe

If you have access to ham hocks and not shanks, you may want to make up the difference in meat (hocks have much less meat) with sausage. Just take 1/2 pound of Andouille sausage, slice, brown first before adding to the beans with the ham shanks. If you do not eat pork, you might try making this with smoked turkey sausage, in which case I would replace some of the water with chicken stock.

Ingredients

• 1 lb dry small red beans
• 1 1/2 to 2 lbs meaty ham shanks
• 4 cups water
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1 1/2 cups chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped green bell pepper
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons of Cajun or Creole seasoning (Tony Chachere's or Zatarains) or to taste*
• Tabasco sauce**
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Cooked white rice (from about 3 cups raw rice)

*If you don't have access to packaged seasoning, just skip it and add some thyme (fresh or dried), a bay leaf (in with the beans and shanks in step 2), and a little paprika
**We used a combo of Chipotle Tabasco sauce and regular Tabasco, could also use cayenne pepper

Method

1 Place dried beans in a large bowl and cover them with cold water by a couple of inches. Let soak for 8 hours or overnight. (You can quick soak them by putting them in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them, covering them by 2 inches, then letting them soak for two hours.) Drain.

2 Place beans, ham shanks, garlic, chopped onion, and water in a large (8-quart) pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cover, simmer for 1 1/2 hours or until beans are tender.

3 Remove ham shanks from the pot to a dish. Let cool slightly then shred the meat away from the bones. Return the meat back to the pot. Add the celery, bell peppers, Worcestershire and seasonings. Cover and cook for another hour or until the mixture gets thick. Season to taste with Tabasco sauce, salt and pepper.

Serve over rice.

Serves 8.