rustic chicken pasta bake

Paul and I make our own tomato sauce all the time - in fact, we've never purchased tomato sauce before and we have bought pesto sauce, but mainly because fresh basil is expensive and for some reason, basil is the only plant that refuses to grow in our garden. We have never, however, purchased or made rosee sauce. I've ordered pasta with rosee sauce in restaurants, but we've never had it at home.

Maison Le Grand recently sent me some samples of their sauces, including their new collection of rosee sauces, to create some recipes with. I didn't want to use them to make normal pasta dishes with (ie. make regular pasta, cover with sauce), so Paul and I brainstormed some more interesting dishes.

One pasta dish that I always want to make more often is a pasta bake (or skillet bake), so the first recipe we tried used Maison Le Grand's Rustic Rosee Tomato Sauce.

baked chicken ziti

Most of the time, I cook new things by choosing a recipe and then going to the grocery store and picking up the required ingredients. But once in awhile, I do things a little backwards. There was a sale on ricotta cheese earlier this week so we stocked up. Seriously, who stocks up on ricotta cheese (besides us, I mean)? But that meant we had all this ricotta cheese and no plans for it.

So, last night I had a brainstorm. I pulled some of the ricotta out of the fridge and tried my hand at making a baked chicken ziti. The pasta bake came out creamy and cheesy and is definitely going to be going into our regular dinner rotation.  :)

food fight! macaroni and cheese - paul

As mentioned in my previous post, Paul and I had a little competition to see who could make the better macaroni and cheese - me from a cookbook recipe or him just "winging it". Needless to say, my mac and cheese turned out to be a disaster, so I was pretty sure Paul would have to go that extra mile in order to lose this Food Fight.

Paul decided to go with penne pasta for his creation and used three cheeses: a bright yellow powdered cheese we got at the Healthy Planet bulk store (think Kraft Dinner powder), Marble and (for the top crust) Romano.

But do you know when I knew for certain I would lose this battle? When he tossed this onto the counter...

What little hope I had left that I might still eke out a victory when I saw him pull out the bacon. Yes, bacon. Lovely, delicious, flavour-giving bacon. Game over.

Luckily for me (and unluckily for Paul) he didn't use enough cheese, so his mac and cheese turned out almost as bland as mine. I say almost as bland, because those flecks of bacon scattered throughout did do their best to spread some flavour through the dish. I do have to admit that his dish had a really nice crust on the top (thanks to the Romano), so that's definitely something we'd repeat again.

Food Fight! Macaroni and Cheese Winner: Paul (by a teeny, tiny bit)

Lessons learned:
- Stephanie - cookbooks with better editors and recipe testers!
- Paul - more cheese (and more bacon!)

food fight! macaroni and cheese - stephanie

Anyone who knows Paul and me, knows that we can get pretty competitive. Most of the time, it's pretty harmless and sometimes it can even be productive...

Case in point - I'm innocently mentioning that I'll be making macaroni and cheese for dinner out of a cookbook that I've never used before, when Paul states that he could make a better one without the use of any cookbook! Has he gone mad? Keep in mind - we are both really new at this whole cooking thing and neither of us has ever made macaroni and cheese before. I just scoff and went on my merry way, planning my ingredients and reading the recipe numerous times to make sure I knew what I was doing. What could possibly go wrong? The book says this recipe is from a famous restaurant in New York City! It says no one ever refuses a second helping! I've got it made!

So, on the evening of my attempt, I pull out all the ingredients and diligently prepare them before I turn on the oven and stove to start the real cooking. I think Paul was napping somewhere.


After I start cooking what seems to be a very large amount of pasta (8 cups) into the boiling water, I was standing at the stove, stirring the cheese sauce, watching the pasta boil, when I glanced again at the cookbook and felt my heart drop. I looked again. Oh no. The book didn't say 8 CUPS of pasta. It said 8 OUNCES of pasta! No wonder it looked like too much!

But wait...8 ounces? That doesn't seem right either. In my shock, I actually went and measured out 8 ounces of the cooked pasta (which is pretty funny in hindsight) just to make sure that I wasn't dreaming. Yes, ok, that is definitely a SMALL amount of pasta. Can that be right? Hmm...the recipe says that it makes four servings as a main dish. Ok, there's no way 4 adults would survive on 2 ounces of pasta each.

Emergency situation. So, what do I do? I do the first thing that pops into my head - I text the competition. "Paul - I need your help and advice urgently."

Paul comes in and together, after some deliberation and re-reading of the recipe, we settle on 6 cups of pasta, because that's what looks like would fit comfortably in the bakeware dish size that was recommended.

I put together the macaroni and cheese, popped it into the oven, silently cursed the cookbook and crossed my fingers.

Soooooo....needless to say, my macaroni and cheese was a flop. There was way too much pasta and way too little cheese. Humph. And the white cheddar I had used wasn't strong enough so what cheesy flavour you could taste was very bland.

Of course, at this point, Paul re-iterates the fact that he could do a better macaroni and cheese without a cookbook so I tell him to go for it. (In my head, I'm thinking - "Yeah, like you can do better", but I'm also thinking "Great! That's one less night I have to worry about making dinner!"). Of course, I've already conceded the Macaroni and Cheese battle - Paul would have to do an absolutely horrific job in order to be worse than my attempt!

At which point we decide that a little friendly competition in the kitchen may not be a bad thing, as long as we were up to eating the same thing twice and sometimes really bad versions of the same thing twice. So the Kitchen Frolic Food Fight was born. It's basically Paul vs. Stephanie, beginner vs. beginner, husband vs. wife. Let the games begin!  :)

p.s. Apparently, Paul says my mac and cheese was a lot better with Sriracha sauce.

Watch for my write-up of Paul's take on macaroni and cheese coming soon!

linguine with shrimp for two

Paul and I love pasta - it's affordable and can be made in so many ways, but we almost always stick to the basic pasta and tomato sauce combination, which is fine (especially since Paul makes a great classic tomato sauce) but once in a while we like to try something new.

I saw this recipe on Kraft Canada but I didn't have some of the ingredients they called for so I adapted it to use the things I did have ready in my fridge instead of making a trip to the grocery store.

It turned out really well and is definitely something we'll be doing more often. This recipe is super easy and quick and perfect for beginner cooks (like me) who want to do something a little more fancy than the usual pasta and tomato sauce.

Plus, this recipe is perfect for two people. One of my pet peeves is that almost all the recipes I find and want to try serve a huge amount of people, which is such a waste. I know that I can adapt any recipe down to two servings, but once in a while, it's just nice to see something that's made with a couple in mind.  :)