Category Italian Dishes

I was watching Food Network’s The Best Thing I Ever Made: CHEESY episode right about the time I was thinking of a meatless dinner I could make tonight. All the ooey gooey creamy cheesy food they were showing made me crave for creamy baked mac and cheese. But then I thought I should come up with a new twist instead of the usual sauce where you melt cheese with milk after making the butter and flour roux. It would be something new to add into this blog archives that’s for sure. I thought about the cottage cheese and sour cream in the fridge. I figured that should work then I searched on Google just to make sure there is such a thing as baked mac ‘n’ cheese with cottage cheese and sour cream. Google didn’t disappoint. There are a lot of recipes actually, FIGURES!

I found A Duck’s Oven’s Not So Ordinary Mac N Cheese which after reading the recipe I knew I could easily modify. And here’s what I’ve come up with.

Pappardelle noodles are flat and wide noodles similar to fettuccine. I decided to use them for a Ricotta & Meat Sauce Lasagna dish. Please don’t get technical and start lecturing me on pasta shapes or whatever. I wanted to use the Pappardelle attachment for my pasta maker and figured they’re wide enough to pass along as lasagna.

This is a quick pasta and shrimp dish that I whipped up last night for dinner. Corabella tortellini, shrimp, butter, lemon juice, and seasoning that you’ll find in your pantry are all you need for this dish. Plus the water to boil the tortellini of course.

While meat shopping at Food Lion last Saturday we walked by the pasta aisle and saw these microwavable palm-sized bowl of meatballs. The picture of the meatballs with marinara sauce looked yummy. But I think everyone knows by now that in most grocery items, the real product is so much different than the pictured ad. Not to mention it’s $4 prize for a small package.

The meatballs swimming in yummy marinara sauce must have haunted my husband’s mind so once we got all the meat and other grocery items that we needed, we headed on to the frozen aisle to look for frozen cooked Italian meatballs, then went back to the pasta aisle to get a jar of marinara sauce because a regular spaghetti sauce that I already have in the pantry just wouldn’t do. Bertolli is delish, by the way. Then we went to the freshly baked bread section to get sub rolls.

As soon as we got home I dumped the entire bag of Farm Rich Italian style meatballs in a pot, then poured over the marinara sauce. I let that simmer while I put the groceries away.

This Shrimp & Penne W/ Lemon-Butter & Sour Cream Sauce is a variation of the Seafood Spaghetti except I’ve used just shrimp and penne for pasta, and added sour cream instead of grated Parmesan cheese. This variation could easily be added to the list of meatless dishes any day of the week.

Here’s another recipe using potato gnocchi from Corabella. It’s quite easy to work with the packed then boiled potato gnocchi once you get the hang of it. I haven’t ventured into making my own gnocchi like I have with fresh pasta and bread but that’s ok. I love cooking with the Corabella brand anyway.

After the hearty Christmas spread with all the yummy sides, then having leftovers for a couple of days, we’ve gone to a Mexican restaurant one night for dinner. Then we went grocery shopping to stock up the fridge. I was dying to bite into a seafood dish. I grabbed a pack of assorted seafood which has cuttlefish, shrimp, octopus, squid, and mussels. I thought it would be delicious with al dente spaghetti noodles, and butter-lemon sauce. I was right. This seafood spaghetti was easy and fast to make but soooo good.

When I make spaghetti meat sauce for a spaghetti dinner I always end up with more sauce than the noodles. Throughout the years I’ve always been making too much spaghetti that gives us leftovers for 2-3 days worth of lunch. Fortunately, I have learned to save spaghetti sauce for other pasta dishes for future dinners. Sometimes I just ladle them into a jar then store that in the fridge to use a few days later. For longer storage, it’s best to store the extra sauce in a ziploc bag, then into the freezer.

So to use up a bag of frozen spaghetti meat sauce, I decided to use it with Corabella’s Mezzaluna 4-Cheese Ravioli. To make the dish more exciting and filling, I also added ricotta cheese and shredded cheese before baking in the oven. This Baked Ravioli With Meat Sauce & Ricotta Cheese is almost like the Baked Potato Gnocchi W/ Spinach & Ricotta Cheese without the spinach.

Ever since I got the box of new batch of Corabella pasta products I have been itching to make something with the potato gnocchi. I could’ve made the Baked Potato Gnocchi W/ Spinach & Ricotta Cheese right away but I’m going to reserve that recipe for some other time. I want to make something new to present here in the foodblog. The new recipe presented itself the day after we had lemon chicken. There were 4 small slices left of the lemon chicken which I know would stay in the fridge for a week coz we’re all going to be too shy to touch them. I figured chopping the chicken up in small pieces will make a substantial winner when combined with the starchy potato gnocchi. A garlic infused butter sauce with capers just sounded so delicious so I decided to make that too.

to cut the story short, we had a lovely dinner of Potato Gnocchi With Leftover Lemon Chicken & Butter Garlic Caper Sauce while we watched The Amazing Spiderman on pay per view.