Cooking with wine

A.k.a... my kitchen smells REALLY good right now!
I love cooking with wine. It really brings out the flavors in food, and that's not just a snooty foodie opinion. It's fact, in the case of tomatoes, at least. I'd love to link to corroborating evidence, but you'll just have to trust me.

Tonight we had spaghetti (Tinkyada, of course), meatballs in marinara, and steamed green beans with butter and salt. Umma-num! And of course a few glasses of wine. Tonight's was Serengeti 2004 Pinotage, which also went in the marinara. I love Pinotage... it is dark and fruity without being cloying or harsh. I don't like Cabernets or some of the other, age-worthy snob wines. They're harsh in the mouth... unless you've been cellaring, them, apparently. I don't have a cellar. I ate mine on the drive home. *wink*

Anyone else think my dinner looks like it has a face? The green beans are the smile...

Bekki’s Best Marinara

Adapted from someone else’s… made it my own... never make it the same way twice.
Serves 4-6, freezes well

INGREDIENTS:

• Bacon fat (or bacon to produce said fat)

• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped

• ½ cup wine (or about 1/8 cup balsamic vinegar)

• 1 yellow onion, finely diced

• 1 28-oz can tomatoes, diced, whole, crushed, whatever

• 3 T tomato paste

• 4 T chopped fresh parsley (1 heaping T dried)

• 1 tsp dried oregano

• 3 shakes red pepper flakes (1 small pinch)

• freshly ground black pepper

PREPARATION:

1. Sauté onion and garlic in bacon fat until soft. Deglaze the pan with wine or vinegar, reduce a bit if using wine.

2. Combine half the tomatoes, herbs, and seasonings in blender with the sautéed aromatics. Process until smooth and return to saucepan.

3. Process remaining tomatoes, add to saucepan.

4. Simmer for about 30 minutes

The meatballs were also homemade... a few weeks ago. I love making extras of those, to have on hand. I made mine with grassfed ground beef, an egg, some Worcestershire, fresh ground pepper, Parmesan (because I was experimenting with my dairy allergy), and gluten-free bread crumbs. Very tasty and very easy. I didn't even bake/fry them before freezing... just flash-froze on a plate and then put in a baggie.

Soup and Salad

Yesterday's lunch. Yummy, and surprisingly, I wasn't hungry 5 minutes later. Maybe it's because I'm a Taurus, or perhaps it's due to being at least half Hobbitt, but I'm generally not convinced that soup and salad can, by themselves, comprise a meal. I grew up in meat-and-potatoes land. I think there's magic in homemade balsamic vinaigrette, though. Especially when it's accidentally too tart. It slams into the tastebuds so hard that your brain says "Ok, that's it, we're full!"

The soup was Potato and Leftovers Soup. Classy. But delicious. I won't bother calling it a "recipe", but the basic idea was: onions and celery in bacon fat until getting soft, some garlic and fresh-ground pepper, some chicken broth. Then a diced Russett potato and a small-chopped parsnip, simmered until soft. I put most of that in the blender, then back in the pot with some leftover steamed veggies and chopped chicken. Voila. Lunch.

Dinner last night was FIC: Fabulous Italian Creation. The nickname stuck a few years ago when I was planning the menu and didn't care specifically what would be served. The base ingredients were all the same. It's always pasta (rice pasta these days), with meat, marinara, sometimes a veggie, used to use lots of cheese, maybe pepperoni, mushrooms, and/or olives... pop it in the oven to meld together. Pretty fabulous.

Well... it was a lot more fabulous with cheese. But, it's still pretty good. Pretty Good Italian Creation doesn't have the same ring to it, though.

The greens there are mustard greens. I will never make mustard greens again as long as I live.

I love kale and collards and excel (if I may say so) in their preparation. I somehow went very, very wrong with the mustard greens. I didn't even finish them.

Sometimes I'm dumb

Ain't that pretty?
That's my banana bread. I get to eat that. I'm glad.
It actually rose a bit! I'm surprised by that... GF breads aren't very good at that. Maybe I'm just the GFCF baking goddess, or something. Hee hee

In other news... I made lasagna for dinner. And have since told my hubby that if I ever get the idea to make lasagna again (which I probably won't, but we'll get to that) on a day when I have done anything other than sit on my bottom, he is to intervene. He is to flatten me to the floor, if need be.
I was so tired and flustered and frustrated... I put so many bad thoughts into dinner it's no wonder I have indigestion now. I already had a mess from baking (made gluteny cookies for the kids before I made the banana bread), and I can NOT cook in a messy kitchen. Just can't do it. And as everyone surely knows, lasagna isn't quick. And I had to make two. No, I'm not masochistic... see... I had bought everything for lasagna right before I figured out I can't have gluten and dairy. It was sitting there, making me think of the wasted money... so I finally decided to make regular lasagna for hubby and freak-sagna for myself. And test my soy intolerance at the same time.

It was dumb. I won't do that again.


For one thing... too much work. For another thing... tofu-sagna is unappealing already. But if you spend 45 minutes smelling cheese melt... well... I very much almost ate the real lasagna. But I didn't. Yay me.

No, I didn't eat the good lasagna, because that would have made me sick. How so? Exhausted, moody, brain foggy, indigestion... stuff like that.
So, after eating the funky tofu-sagna, how do I feel? Exhausted, moody, brain foggy, indigestion... shit!


I'm still holding out hope that tamari (soy sauce for snobs) will be ok. Surely the fermentation process is akin to magic?

Oh, and if the banana bread tastes as good as it looks/smells, I'll share the recipe. I won't bother with the freak-sagna. You really don't want to make it.