Pumpkin Baked Ziti

For those of you who don't know me personally, I'm somewhat holiday-obsessed. Every Halloween, I carve pumpkins. Every Easter, I dye Easter eggs. And every time Christmas rolls around, you bet I'm sitting on the floor of my apartment cutting out paper snowflakes instead of studying for finals. Many of my friends say they hate holidays, and that after childhood the excitement wears away and the fun is gone. Maybe I'm just 9-years old at heart, but I think I will always perform these rituals because I grew up with them, they connect me to home, and make me feel closer to the people around me. Call me lame, but while the holiday naysayers are complaining, I'm skipping around having the time of my life!

I concocted this dish about two weeks in advance before my Halloween party, and it came out just as I'd hoped. I've never been a big marinara fan, so I created my own pasta sauce using organic pumpkin, vegetable broth, onion, cream, brown sugar, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper. I made 2 pounds of pasta to serve a big group of people, but scaled down the recipe for 1 pound which can easily feed a family, small group of friends, or a single person who loves leftovers! I guess cannibalistic pumpkins can eat it, too?

Pumpkin Baked Ziti
Serves: 4-6 people  Prep: 40 minutes  Total: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Ingredients
1 lb whole wheat rotini pasta
1 yellow onion
1/2 tbs brown sugar
1/2 tbs nutmeg
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 15-ounce can organic pumpkin
1 cup vegetable broth
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tbs fresh thyme
10-ounces gruyere cheese (shredded)
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs

Directions
Cook rotini in a large pot as directed until al dente. Strain and set aside.
Dice onion and saute in olive oil on medium heat until tender, about 3 minutes. Add brown sugar, nutmeg and cayenne pepper and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in pumpkin and vegetable broth, bring sauce to a boil and simmer uncovered on low heat for 15 minutes. Pour in heavy cream and stir well. Add thyme and simmer for another 20 minutes. When the sauce is done, remove from heat and let sit.
Begin assembling the zita by layering a greased baking dish with half of the rotini pasta, half of the sauce, and half of gruyere. Again, layer half the pasta, sauce and gruyere. Top with parmesan and bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the cheese is fully melted and the top is slightly browned.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Happy November, everyone! I can't believe how fast this semester is flying. In a little over 2 months I'll be moving out of Boston and working full time for Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey until July. So crazy how fast this is sneaking up on me! I had an amazing dinner party for Halloween with some girlfriends last night, and it made me even sadder to leave this city. I'm planning to squeeze in all the dinner parties I can before I move, so get excited for a lot more posts to come.

This was the main dish I served for the Halloween party my roommates and I threw yesterday evening. I woke up at 7 to put the pork in the slow cooker before my 8 am class, then took it out at 7 pm right before the party started to shred the meat and add the sauce. I swear by Dinosaur Bar-B-Que sauce, and since the original restaurant is in my hometown I'm a devoted fan.

Also, I definitely recommend cooking the pork for the full 12 hours because the meat literally melts in your mouth. Considering we fed about 12 girls (and 2 lucky boyfriends) I'd say this is the easiest and most delicious go-to party meal I can think of!

Here are some quick shots of the party:

Some of the girls

Snapshot of the dinner

Feeling a little full...

Dylan and me

Hope everyone else had a great Halloween weekend. Enjoy!

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Makes: 12 sandwiches  Prep: 20 minutes  Total: 12 hours, 20 minutes

Ingredients
5-6 lbs pork shoulder
1 large onion
4 tbs red pepper flakes
4 tbs paprika
3 tbs salt
3 tbs pepper
2 19-ounce bottles of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que sauce
Sandwich buns

Directions
Slice the onion through the center to create large rings of onion. Lay in the bottom of the slow cooker.
Prepare BBQ rub by combining red pepper flakes, paprika, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Pat the rub all over the pork shoulder, covering evenly. Place the pork on top of onion and fill the slow cooker two-thirds of the way with water.
Turn the slow cooker to low and leave on for 10-12 hours.
When the pork is done, remove from the slow cooker and shred with two forks. Place pulled pork in a large bowl and add 1 bottle of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que sauce. Mix well.
Dump most of the water and juice out of the cooker, leaving 1/4 cup and onions for flavor. Add the pulled pork back into the slow cooker and keep on low until ready to serve.

Chicken Tostadas with Tomatillo Salsa Verde and Spanish Rice

My farmers market trip last week was, more or less, an epic fail. I marched down in my rain gear with an empty backpack, ready to stock up on the first produce of the season. Sadly, there were about 10 tents set up in total, with an assortment of baked goods and planted herbs, but no produce. It could have been because it's still early in the season for most crops, or maybe the rain deterred most vendors from setting up shop, but regardless, I was disappointed. This is not to say that the Copley Square Farmers Market is a bust. In fact, I've only heard phenomenal things about it. I still have one month before I leave Boston for the summer, so I'm crossing my fingers to get some good trips in before then.

Instead of getting down on myself, I walked straight to the grocery store and bought ingredients for my Tex-Mex dinner party. It was a huge success, and probably the least time I've spent in the kitchen compared to dinner parties past. I threw some chicken thighs in my crock pot before heading to work in the morning, so by the time I got home the meat was ready to go. I made the same mango salsa I created for my Chicken and Squash Quesadillas, and also tried my hand at salsa verde with these beautifully roasted tomatillos. My friend Shannon, who had just come back from a trip home to Texas, bought me a beyond delicious raspberry cilantro salsa for my birthday. I'm saving the last bits in the jar so I can attempt to recreate it myself.

Because I have a few vegetarian friends, I added Spanish rice on the tostadas to make them hardier for those forgoing meat. I don't know why rice isn't an ingredient in a traditional tostada - it was delicious! Even though my friends ate enough chips and salsa to make themselves sick, they all managed to happily finish their meals before rolling on the floor in agony. (Overeating, aka "food coma", is a regular occurrence at our dinner parties.) All in all, great last dinner party with all of my girlfriends together in Boston. Next time, we'll have to visit Jess in Texas ourselves. We'll miss you, Jess!

Chicken Tostadas with Salsa Verde and Spanish Rice
Serves: 6  Prep: 2 hour  Total: 10 hours

Ingredients
Tomatillo Salsa Verde:
1 pound tomatillos
5 garlic cloves
1/2 cup cilantro
1/2 yellow onion
1 Serrano pepper

Chicken Tostadas:
6 chicken thighs
1/2 yellow onion
1 cup sour cream
1 package fajita spice mix
1 cup water
6 whole wheat tortillas
1 10-ounce package Spanish rice
1 can black beans
1 package shredded cheddar jack cheese
6 red Mexican peppers
Tomatillo Salsa Verde*

Directions
Tomatillo Salsa Verde:
Remove casing from tomatillos and set on a foil-covered baking dish, along with non-peeled garlic cloves. Set the oven to broil and cook for about 7 minutes until tomatillos begin to brown at the top. Remove and cool. Peel garlic and set aside.
Chop up cilantro, onion, and Serrano pepper. Add all ingredients into a blender and puree. Refrigerate until serving.

Chicken Tostadas:
Slice 1/2 yellow onion into rings and lay at the bottom of a crock pot. Place chicken thighs on top. Combine sour cream, water, and fajita mix in a bowl and mix well. Pour over chicken thighs. Cook on low for 8-9 hours. Using two forks, shred meat off the bones and wrap in aluminum foil to keep warm.
Following the directions on the package, cook the Spanish rice in a medium pot. Cook black beans over the stove in a small pot until soft.
In the meantime, heat olive oil in a large pan. Fry whole wheat tortillas 1-2 minutes on each side until lightly browned, and drain on paper towels to absorb excess oil. Dice red Mexican peppers.
When everything is finished, top the tostadas with chicken, Spanish rice, cheese, black beans, red Mexican peppers and salsa verde.

Interim Eats

This whole blogging thing is still relatively new to me, and this year so far I have obviously not done a good job of documenting my cooking. This is due to a new job, dead camera with mysterious missing charger, lack of money to buy ingredients, and a whole list of other excuses I'm sure I could think up.

Regardless, I am determined to get back on track. I want to prove to myself that cooking good food on a tight budget is possible. And believe me... no one has a tighter budget than a college student, especially when it comes to food. (Easy Mac, anyone?) While I gear up for this blogging revival, here is a photo gallery of just a few dishes I happened to document while on hiatus. Enjoy!

Twice Baked Potatoes - Yum! One of the holiday staples in my family. Simply bake the potatoes, remove filling and blend with milk, butter, cheddar cheese and horseradish. Sprinkle with cheese and chives, throw them in the oven and voila! Let's be honest, how can you go wrong with cheese and potato?

Homemade Pesto Linguine - This was my first attempt at real homemade pasta. For some insane reason, I decided that on New Years Eve I would make two pounds of fresh pasta for my best girl friends at our annual New Years party. I gotta say, five hours in the kitchen and racing to slip into my New Years dress was TOTALLY worth it. It took some trial and error but I will absolutely be making this again. Some photos of the process...

 

Making the dough was one of the easier parts of this adventure. It was all about finding the right balance between egg, flour, water and olive oil.

Flattening the dough into paper-thin sheet turned out to be way harder than I expected. About one hour in I found my groove, which made the rest of the process a lot faster.

Pressing the sheet into linguine noodles.

 

Drying the noodles on a pasta drying rack.

Pesto, pre-blend.

The finished product in action! And the perfect way to ring in the new year.

Valentine's Day Dinner - My boyfriend Dylan and I both love to cook, so we decided to stay in this Valentine's Day and make a gourmet meal of our own: filet mignon, slow roasted plum tomatoes and creamy spinach. This took maybe 40 minutes tops, with no hassle and plenty of time to enjoy our Bordeaux and delicious spread of cheeses. It was the perfect evening - we almost forgot we were in a dorm!

The set-up.

The meal.

To this day I still think this is the best, juiciest filet mignon I have ever tasted. (I left Dylan with this treacherous task, and he did better than I ever could. Thanks, love!)

Thursday Fiests: October

This year, my girlfriends and I started the tradition of Thursday night dinners. Sometimes we stay in and make food, and sometimes we go out in search of new restaurants in the city. This past Thursday, I wanted to try a recipe I found in October's Bon Appetit magazine. It looked a lot harder than anything I'd made before, but I really wanted to tackle it. Four hours and several sliced fingers later... ta-da!

Click Here to try it!

Ok, so this is clearly not my picture but I couldn't get a great one while cooking and I was having too good of a time with my friends to worry about capturing it. Even though I spent hours in the kitchen that I should have spent writing a paper, it was well worth it. My friends raved about this dish the entire evening, and not gonna lie I did a pretty damn good job. I think I'll appreciate homemade pasta way more now after making it myself. The only bad thing about this recipe when it comes to college cooking is it called for a potato ricer. (I still don't really know what that is.) But with a little Google searching I decided that it looked like a garlic press for turning potato into pasta, so I ended up chopping the potato into little cubes and pushing it through our garlic press. Time consuming but it got the job done. Another key to this recipe is in the Parmesan. I made sure to get the freshest grated Parm possible, and it definitely made a difference. So, if you have a day with not much to do and are feeling ambitious, I certainly recommend you try this out! The final product is rewarding and absolutely worth the effort.

Oh, and to top it all off, why not a four layer pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting?

We might need to institute Friday night gym dates next...