Spaghetti Squash & Meatball Parmigiana

First, I am offering my sincerest apologies that there are no pictures of this dish.  You see, it was originally inspired by Spaghetti Squash Lasagna over at Skinny Taste.  I intended to follow Gina's recipe to a "t," and not even bother posting it on my blog, so why would I have taken pictures?  My other idea: I was going to make meatballs and serve on the side.  As I was putting it all together though, it took on a life of its own!  I ended up layering the squash with the meatballs, and obviously tons of mozzarella cheese.   It came out of my oven a bubbly, gooey, melty combination of deliciousness.  I've been pretty much obsessing over it all week.  It came out so good that I've even forgiven it for making my apartment a sweltering 80 zillion degrees.  (And have decided to finally buy an air conditioner so I don't have to wait until October to make this again.)  Next time I make it, I promise to update this post with drool-inducing pictures.  Pinky swear!

I'm not going to lie to you.  This is is an intensive dish.  It requires a little elbow grease, and a good amount of time.  (And a cold day or a well air-conditioned home.)  I'll include some short cuts at the end, but expect this to take at least a solid hour with short cuts.  Closer to 1.5-2 hours without.

One last note: I'm not usually one who will substitute spaghetti squash for actual pasta.  I might make it once in a while, but I never expect it to satisfy like real pasta will.  However, I didn't even miss the pasta in this dish.   The squash was still squashy, but completely delectable.


Spaghetti Squash & Meatball Parmigana
inspired by Skinny Taste, meatballs adapted from Cook Yourself Thin (from Skinny Spaghetti & Meatballs in the first cookbook)
Serves 8, 10 WW P+ serving

Ingredients:

For Sauce:
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
28 oz crushed tomatoes
14 oz tomato sauce
1 Tbsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp garlic powder
2 tsp basil
dash parsely

For Meatballs:
2 slices of favorite sandwich bread, crusts removed
1/4 cup water
1 lb ground pork
1 egg
1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 Tbsp parsely
1 Tbsp oregano
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1 tsp red pepper flakes

Remaining Ingredients:
1 medium to large spaghetti squash (I got 4 cups of "spaghetti" from mine)
1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
6 oz part-skim mozzarella cheese, shredded

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  When oven is preheated, insert spaghetti squash and roast for 1 hour.

2. While squash is roasting, prepare sauce and meatballs.  Place bread and water in a large mixing bowl and set aside for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large pan. Once heated, add onions and garlic and cook until fragrant and just starting to brown.  Add crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce.  Allow to heat through on medium heat for a few minutes.  Then stir in spices, reduce to low heat, and allow to simmer while you prepare meatballs.  (Best to cover to avoid splatter.)

3. Go back to bread and water.  Squeeze out excess water and pour out of bowl.  To soggy bread, add remainder of meatball ingredients.  Mix together with your hands, making sure to keep a light touch, until all ingredients are well incorporated.  Then form balls (in this case, I made the more patties than balls for the sake of adding to the casserole without having to cut them) and add to sauce.  Allow to cook in the sauce about 20-30 minutes, until pork is cooked through - or longer if your squash is still cooking/cooling/being prepped for deliciousness.

4. When squash comes out of the oven, place aside to let it cool.  When it's cool enough to handle (I said I'd wait 20-30 minutes, but I doubt I waited more than 10), slice into it lengthwise with a big knife.  Remove the seeds and gook.  Then take a fork and start raking through the squash.  It will pull away from the skin and look like strands of spaghetti.

5. Now the fun part: Let's build this thing!  Take a couple spoonfuls of sauce from the pan and layer on the bottom of a 9x13 dish.  Add half the spaghetti.  Cover with half of remaining sauce and half of meatballs.  Top with ricotta (you can add just spoonfuls, no need to spread it evenly) and a thin layer of mozzarella.  Then add another layer of squash, topped with remainder of sauce and meatballs.  Cover with rest of mozzarella and sprinkle with parmesan.  Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until sauce is bubbly and cheese is melty and browned.

I know you're going to want to dive into this right away, but please don't burn yourself!  Give it a couple minutes to cool down.



Shortcuts:
1. Use pre-shredded or pre-grated cheeses.
2. Prepare spaghetti squash in microwave.
3. Prepare a double batch of sauce and meatballs when you have some time.  Eat half (perhaps over real spaghetti) and freeze remaining half.  When you want to make this dish, just thaw out frozen half.
4. Use jarred spaghetti sauce.
5. Use pre-made meatballs.


Updated 6/2/12 with additional shortcuts.

Wednesday Dinner

Might sound weird to have a "tradition" of Wednesday dinners, but that's what Hamad and I have set up.  This mostly happened because I was annoyed that I only get to see him on the weekends (my fault, totally for being so busy) and decided we needed to pick a weeknight that was just for us.  So we picked Wednesday.

Sometimes we don't know what will be for dinner until Wednesday afternoon, but since we both love food and coming up with food ideas, we usually start discussing it earlier.  We were e-mailing Tuesday and he made a few suggestions, one of which was chicken rollup with broccoli and cheddar.  I honed in on that!  I'd made it once before for a friend, and had modeled it on SkinnyTaste's Chicken Rollatini Stuffed with Zucchini and Mozzarella, simply switching out the type of cheese and veggie.  Poor Hamad thought he was inventing something new and was a bit surprised when I told him I had made it before.  Oops, should have kept that to myself.

Anyway, I thought he would object to the broccoli to cheddar ratio, but to my surprise, he said it was great! Even better was, since I used 2 cups broccoli and made 4 servings, each serving contained about a half cup of broccoli - or one full veggie serving!  At first, I thought I'd made too much filling and it wasn't going to fit in my chicken, but it ended up fitting perfectly!

Also noteworthy: If you don't have chicken cutlets, or need to get out some aggression, you can easily make your own with a plastic bag or plastic wrap and a good mallet.

(I apologize for the lack of pictures on this one.  I accidentally deleted them while transferring them from my camera.  Oops!)

Broccoli & Cheddar Stuffed Chicken Roll-ups

Inspired by SkinnyTaste

Serves 4    PointsPlus Value 7

Ingredients

1 lb chicken cutlets (4 cutlets)

2 cups broccoli florets (I used frozen - about 2/3 of a 16oz bag of florets)

3 oz cheddar cheese (I did half white cheddar, half yellow cheddar, both SHARP)

1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I was going to use regular, but pulled out the panko style, so I went with it)

1 egg, beaten

non-stick spray

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Coat small baking dish with non-stick spray.

2. Shred or grate cheese.  Put about 1/3 of cheese on a plate and the remainder in a mixing bowl.

3. Cook broccoli until bright green but not too tender.  Cut off stems (the "trunks," if you will) and chop up the florets ("treetops," as I like to call them) into itty bitty pieces and toss into mixing bowl with cheese.  Stir it up until broccoli and cheese are well combined.

4. In a small bowl, beat egg.  Add breadcrumbs to the plate with the cheese and mix together until cheese is incorporated into bread crumbs.

5. Lay out chicken cutlets on a plate.  Add about 1/4 of broccoli-cheese mix to each cutlet and roll up.  Dip each piece in egg and roll in breadcrumbs.  Place in baking dish, seam-side down.  Spray lightly with non-stick spray and bake at 450 for 25-30 min until chicken is cooked through.  

6. Enjoy!

Chicken Two Ways

Thanks to Ms. Gina at SkinnyTaste.com, I began experimenting with stuffed chicken breasts and chicken rollatini this year.  Gina has a fantastically delicious recipe for Chicken Rollatini with Spinach alla Parmagiana.
I'm pretty sure I've made it before, but I've made so many of her stuffed chicken/chicken rollatini recipes that it's hard to keep track of which ones I haven't or haven't made. With this one, I made a few minor changes.

Chicken Rollatini with Spinach alla Parmagiana, serves 4-8
inspired by SkinnyTaste.com

Ingredients:

• 1.25 lbs chicken cutlets, 8 cutlets overall
• 1/2 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs (I didn't use whole wheat)
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan (I usually have fresh, but I went Kraft this time)
• 1 egg
• about 2 cups fresh baby spinach, chopped or torn up (I didn't really measure, but it looked to be about 2 cups)
• 6 Tbsp part-skim ricotta
• 1 oz pecorino romano cheese, grated
• 4 oz part-skim mozzarella cheese
• non-stick cooking spray
• 1 cup marinara sauce (I went with Bertolli Vidalia Onion since I didn't have any already made)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Spray cooking pan with non-stick spray.
2. Chop or tear spinach into small pieces and place in bowl.  Add ricotta and grated pecorino romano and mix together.  In separate bowl, whisk egg.  In third bowl, mix combine breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese.
3. Spread cheese/spinach mix on each cutlet.  Roll each cutlet.  Dip in egg, and then roll in breadcrumbs.  Place in cooking pan, seem side down.  
4. Cover each chicken roll with some sauce and a mozzarella cheese.
5. Bake at 450 degrees for 30-40 minutes, until chicken is cooked through and cheeses are melted.

This was Wednesday night's delicious dinner.  But, I was lazy, and even though I had defrosted chicken breasts, I ended up buying cutlets because I didn't want to butcher the breasts to make cutlets.




On Friday, I was spending some time on the WeightWatchers message boards, my favorite place to "hang out" and chat with some wonderful people, many of whom have become my friends.  Well, one lovely lady was asking for some chicken recipes.  I had no idea what I was making for dinner, but I did know I still had that defrosted chicken in my fridge that had to get cooked or trashed.  And then came along Ms. Jamie (author of FoodFeminismLife) with an absolutely phenomenally delicious recipe. I searched her blog to give her proper credit, but I couldn't find this recipe.  Below is my re-creation, with very little adjustment to the original.  Fortunately, a bunch of us boardies from the NYC area were getting together Saturday evening so I was able to Jamie in person just how much I loved her dish!

We start by sauteing eggplant.

And I learned that sauteed eggplant is super delicious!

Dredge the chicken in flour, and then toss it in the pan and cook it up.

 

Top the chicken with eggplant, 

prosciutto, and fontina.

 

Broil until cheese is melted and everything looks delicious!

Mix up the sauce, 

 

toss together a salad,

and enjoy!

Chicken Sorrentino, serves 4
adapted from a recipe by Jamie, author of FoodFeminismLife
(Original recipe also called for chopped Roma tomatoes which I omitted, 1/2 stick unsalted butter which I replaced with 1/2 cup chicken broth, and 2Tbsp parsley for garnish which I just forgot to include in my finished dish.) 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 small eggplant
• 1/8 c flour
• 2 Tbsp vidalia onion, chopped
• 1/2 c marsala wine
• 1 oz prosciutto, sliced thin
• 1 oz fontina cheese
• 1 lb chicken cutlets
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• salt & pepper

Directions:

1.  Slice eggplant into thin slices.  (Original recipe calls for 1/2" circles, I went with thinner, lengthwise cuts, totally up to you.)  Heat oil in pan and saute eggplant until golden brown.  Remove from oil and set aside on paper towel covered plate.
2. Season chicken with salt and pepper.  Dredge in flour.  Re-heat oil, if necessary, and add chicken to pan.  Cook until browned on one side, and then flip over and continue to cook until heated through.  If oil gets used up, add water or chicken broth to unstick chicken from pan.  When chicken is finished, remove from pan and place on broiler pan.  (Hint: Cover top of broiler pan with foil for easy clean-up.)
3. In same pan, add marsala wine, onion (and tomato if using), and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Simmer and allow wine to reduce.  Add chicken broth to pan and continue to simmer until sauce thickens.
4. Meanwhile, top chicken with eggplant, prosciutto, and fontina cheese.  Place under broiler for a few minutes until cheese is melted and browned.
5. Spoon sauce over chicken (and parsley, if, unlike me, you remember) and viola!

For the Salad:

Chop up some romaine lettuce.  Add cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, banana peppers, a bit of red onion, and black olives.  Mix together some olive oil, red wine vinegar, oregano, garlic pepper, salt, and pepper.  (I threw it into my Magic Bullet for a few seconds to emulsify.)  Pour over salad.  Top salad with shaved cheese (I used pecorino romano).  Enjoy!

Forgive Me

Please forgive me for posting this absolutely emotional mouth vomit two week ago and then going into hiding.

I had basically retreated inside my head to do a lot of heavy thinking about the best course of action to treat the issues I posted about.

I decided it would be helpful for me to journal, but that maybe other people could relate or benefit from my experiences, so I decided to blog.  Which led me to question if I should blog here or elsewhere about recovering from those issues.  This blog was intended to discover new hobbies and passions, or rediscover old ones.  It was never intended to turn into a weight loss memoir.  So, I've started a new blog: Healing Hunger.  All of my weight loss/overeating/recovery musings will go there.  Here, at Passion & Zest, you'll continue to find recipes and recipe reviews, updates on new activities I've tried, and eventually a slew of photography.  (As I'll be getting a new camera for Christmas!) And maybe some random posts about fun, interesting, or miscellaneous topics.

It might sound a little confusing, or messy, but I'm confident it will all play out just fine soon enough.

As for what to expect to see here, well, with Thanksgiving coming I will be baking up a storm.  I'll be sure to take some pictures (via my phone) and post recipes while I work on those.  There may also be a few new recipes I'm trying for myself thanks to Emily Bites and SkinnyTaste.

I'll be making a variation on this delicious looking Chicken Rollatini tomorrow night.  It looks like the stuffed shells I made last week, but, with chicken instead of shells.  I will certainly let you know how it comes out!

Pumpkin Party, part 2

Remember all that pumpkin pancake goodness from yesterday?  It's time to fill you in the rest of the dishes from Sunday.

Dinner was fantastic!  I made Sausage and Pumpkin Pasta from Emily Bites.  I was going to make it on Saturday but realized I was out of chicken broth.  (Yes, I had pumpkin, but no chicken broth.  I had used it all up with some wonton soup on Friday night - recipe to come when perfected.)  So I made chicken broth.  But it had just finished brothesizing, when I was coerced into going out.  Then it got left for Sunday.

Okay, Sunday.  Lazy day of fakely being snowed in.  Time to whip out the broth and make some pumpkiny pasta.  I won't repost the recipe, as you can find it on Emily's blog.  However, I did make a few changes based on what I actually had on hand:

• rosé instead of  white wine
• regular pork sausage instead of turkey
• spinach instead of mushrooms

And, viola!

Emily says the original recipe from Taste of Home says you can substitute extra chicken broth for the wine, but she recommends not doing so because of the flavor profile the wine brought to the dish.  I almost made the substitution, thinking I didn't have any wine on hand.  (Travesty! I know.  I need to head to my local wine store and stock up.)  But then I remembered I had a couple of bottles from my trip to the vineyards.

I am so glad I used wine!

Emily knows what she's talking about.  The wine (even though I went with a dry rosé instead of a sweet wine) really helped make the flavor of the sauce.  I can't imagine not using it (though I'll try it again with different wines).  It gave it a nice tang to contrast the pumpkin.  The other essential part of this recipe, in my very humble opinion, is the sage.  Wow.  Seriously, just wow.  It just made the sauce.  And it made my taste buds very happy.

The final pumpkin dish of the day was from Skinny Taste: Low-fat Pumpkin Spiced Chocolate Chip Cookies.  One word: yum!  Okay, that was a pretty lame word.  I can't even begin to describe how good this cookie dough the cookies are.  I'm not sure how accurate Gina's serving count is because I doubled the recipe, made 25 cookies, and ate lots of cookie dough.  (I wanted to bring 2 dozen to work, and I ate 1 off the first batch, so I added an extra to the second batch.  But then I had 2 more before I came to work, so... whatever, there were still plenty!)

No pictures, sorry.  But my coworkers loved them.  Lots of happy tummies around here!

I'm So Domestic

A regular Suzie Homemaker.

(At least when it comes to cooking.  I definitely don't clean.)


Today was a free Saturday.  So I decided to take advantage by cooking up some food to have for the week.

I started with Cream of Broccoli soup from another favorite food blog, Skinny Taste.  Anything I've ever made from this site has been delicious.  I got nervous about this soup, though.  It seemed thin, and a bit runny, and I got nervous about what it would actually taste and feel like in my mouth.  It was a bit thin, but the flavor was fantastic!  Also, it's probably my fault.  Re-visitng the recipe, I see maybe the consistency was my fault.  Gina specifies 3 cans of chicken broth, which I interpreted at 6 cups.  So I used 6 cups from the cardboard containers.  Maybe it was too much?  Or maybe I didn't use enough broccoli, seeing as about 1/4 to 1/3 of what I cut up ended up on my floor and not in my soup pot.  Oops.

Regardless, the soup tastes great!  My only issue with Gina's recipe is she told me it makes 4 1.5 cup servings.  I measured out 10 cups of soup.  Which is why I think maybe I used too much broth.  No problem for me, because I ended up with about 4 more servings than I thought I would.  Score!

And then I topped it with a little sour cream and shredded cheddar.  The leftovers are currently occupying my freezer and fridge.

Yum!

I don't particularly love using store bought broth.  Even the reduced sodium version has way more sodium than it really should.  So, whenever I buy too much chicken, I make and freeze my own broth.  I just didn't have enough to make this soup.

Chicken breasts were on sale this past week for $1.99 per pound for the family packs.  So I bought 2.  Totaling about 7 pounds of chicken.  For me, myself, and I.  What to do?  Well, first, I tell my lovely boyfriend that we're having shredded chicken for dinner tonight.

I popped half a package into my handy dandy crock pot.

 

 This thing is invaluable to me.  It's had dinner ready and waiting for me after a long day at work.  If it could clean, I'd marry it.  I'll have to settle for just the cooking, though.

I topped the chicken breast with enough water to cover, added chopped onion, carrots, celery, scallions, a few bay leaves, pepper and a little sea salt.  

It's just about ready.  The chicken will shred easily.  What did the boyfriend and I decide on for dinner?  Chicken parm and/or chicken alfredo cupcakes.  (Did you know savory cupcakes are super trendy these days?  And wonton wrappers are totally fun to work with!)  I told him it depends on how many wonton wrappers I have left.  I'm hopping to make 6-8 of each type of cupcakes.  I'll guess you'll hear more about those when they've proven delicious.


How are you spending your Saturday?