I love to go into the kitchen and just let loose, and that is exactly what I did tonight. I knew I had to use up some of the fresh herbs on my deck, with that in mind I went into the grocery store and plotted as usual. I spotted some spinach and cheese ravioli on sale so I grabbed them and the wheel's started spinning. I immediately thought of a white lazy man lasagna. Simply what I did was make a basic pesto sauce:
1 part fresh basil to
1/2 part fresh parsley
5 cloves of garlic
a pinch of salt
a generous grinding of fresh pepper
and a big handful of grated parmesan
Next I made a white sauce:
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of flour
melted together and cooked for about 3 minutes, then I added
1 cup of heavy cream and whisked until thickened, then I added
2 giant tablespoons of the fresh pesto
Now I boiled the raviolis.
Then I tossed them with the sauce, some diced up fresh mozzarella and baked it until it was hot, bubbly and browned on top. It came out way yummier than I anticipated!!
*this is a good prepare ahead dinner for company with a nice salad, garlic bread, a bottle of wine and dessert
**really easy to prepare
***this cost me less than $20 to prepare and you can probably feed at least 8-10 people
I've been cooking dinner for my 82 year old mom who fell and broke her right arm, needless to say she can hardly do anything for herself and is feeling a little down so I wanted to cook her something extra special today. I decided on buttery New England style shrimp rolls and traditional macaroni and tuna salad. Really not that difficult to pull off. All I did was boil up some shrimp in water seasoned with a couple of slices of fresh lemon, a few whole pepper corns and a bay leaf. I drained them, rough chopped them and set them aside. Then I moved on to the macaroni salad. I set a pot of salted water on to boil then I diced up carrot, celery and onion about a 1/2 a cup of each. I tossed a box of elbow macaroni into the boiling water until cooked. I drained it and tossed it with the veggies, 2 cans of tuna fish and enough mayo to hold it all together. I plated up the macaroni salad in a serving bowl, topped it with paprika and put it in the fridge to chill. I did all this in the morning so at dinner time most of the work was done. When we were ready to eat I just heated up my cast iron griddle, tossed the chopped shrimp on with a good amount of butter and heated it through, toasted the buns and it was ready to enjoy!!!
*you can also do this with lobster or scallops
