You can't go wrong with pepperoni

Cavatappi with Pepperoni
Food and Wine Magazine’s Quick From Scratch Pasta Cookbook Copyright 1996,2001,2002,2004

4 ounces thin-sliced pepperoni, slices cut in half
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 red or green bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ½ cups canned tomatoes with their juices (one 16-ounce can)
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ pound cavatappi
3 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. In a large frying pan, sauté the pepperoni over moderate heat until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour off the fat from the pan and wipe the pan clean.

2. In the same pan, heat the oil over moderately low heat. Add the onion and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Stir in the tomatoes with their juice, breaking them up. Add the salt, cover and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.
3. In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the cavatappi until just done, about 13 minutes. Drain and toss with the sauce, the pepperoni and the parsley.

Serves 4.

*tap*tap*tap* Is this thing on??? Comments have all but dried up around here since I finished my Christmas baking. Oh well, that doesn't stop me. I know someone is probably reading this. That's what I tell myself anyway.

This dish was a winner in our house. All three of us scarfed it down, but my son just ate the noodles. It was economical too, if you can get pepperoni at a good sale price like I did. I only used a dollar's worth of pepperoni in this dish. The pepperoni packs so much flavor (and sodium) that I resisted the urge I had to sprinkle Parmesan on top of this and it really was fine on it's own, better than fine. I liked having a 'light' sauce on the pasta, it didn't feel too rich but it was very satisfying. I ate the leftovers for breakfast the next day. Cold. It was still yummy.

My first risotto

Mushroom and Chicken Risotto
Food and Wine Magazine’s Quick From Scratch Chicken Cookbook Copyright 1997, 2001, 2004

2 tablespoons butter
½ pound mushrooms, cut into thin slices
2/3 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 2) cut into ½-inch pieces
1 teaspoon salt
5 ½ cups canned low-sodium chicken broth or homemade stock, more if needed
1 tablespoon cooking oil
½ cup chopped onion
1 ½ cups aborio rice
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1. In a large pot, heat the butter over moderate heat. Add the mushrooms. Cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are browned, about 5 minutes. Add the chicken, ¼ teaspoon of the salt and the pepper. Cook until the chicken is just done, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove the mixture from the pan. In a medium saucepan, bring the broth to a simmer.
2. In a large pot, heat the oil over moderately low heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir until it begins to turn opaque, about 2 minutes.
3. Add the wine and the remaining ¾ teaspoon salt to the rice. Cook, stirring frequently, until all the wine has been absorbed. Add about ½ cup of the simmering broth and cook, stirring frequently, until it has been absorbed. The rice and broth should bubble gently; adjust the heat as needed. Continue cooking the rice, adding broth ½ cup at a time, allowing the rice to absorb it before adding the next ½ cup. Cook the rice in this way until tender, 25 to 30 minutes in all. The broth that hasn’t been absorbed should be thickened by the starch from the rice. You may not need to use all the liquid or you may need to add more broth or some water. I used almost all of a large can of chicken broth.
4. Stir in the chicken and mushrooms, the Parmesan, and the parsley and heat through. Serve the risotto with additional Parmesan.

I've never made risotto before and when I thought about it, I realized that I've never eaten risotto before now. How did I miss it? It's been quite popular for years but it's just not served in the fine restaurants my husband and I frequent (Applebee's, TGIF, Red Robin, etc). I wondered beforehand if it was going to be worth the effort and, yes, I think it was worth the effort. Even my two-year old scarfed this down. This is good stuff.

These cookbooks from Food and Wine Magazine are some of my favorites, out of my entire collection. After enjoying the first one (one-dish meals), I went looking for others in this series, in the same bookstore I bought the first one, discounted. Unfortunately the others weren't discounted and I hesitated on paying $14.95 for a cookbook. What do you know? Next time I went to Ollie's Bargain Outlet they had the chicken, pasta and Italian versions for only $3.99 each. I bought the pasta and chicken ones - I guess I wasn't in the mood for Italian that day but I'm going back to look for that one.

The last of the New Year's Eve Nibbles

Baked Cheddar Olives
The Gourmet Cookbook Copyright 2004

1 cup coarsely grated sharp Cheddar (about 4 ounces)
½ cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
20 small pimiento-stuffed green olives (from a 3-ounce jar), drained and patted dry

Put a rack in the middle of oven and preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Stir together cheese, flour, and cayenne in a bowl. Blend in butter with your fingertips until a dough forms. I had to add water for this to become a 'dough'.
Drop tablespoons of dough onto a sheet of wax paper and place 1 olive on each piece of dough. Lightly flour your hands and wrap dough around olives, enclosing each one completely. I just grabbed some dough and wrapped it around an olive, a tablespoon is probably too much, IMO. Transfer olives to a baking sheet with sides and bake until pastry is golden, about 15 minutes. Serve warm.

Cook’s Note: The dough-wrapped olives can be prepared up to 2 hours ahead and refrigerated on the baking sheet, covered with plastic wrap. Bring to room temperature before baking. I did refrigerate them for a couple of hours, and let them sit out a few minutes, but I didn't bring them back to room temp.

These were kind of a last minute decision for me. We like cheese. We like stuffed olives. It seemed like a nice, simple addition to the menu. I was satisfied with the end result and my husband and I finished them off pretty quickly. Even my two year old nibbled on one. I don't know if I would ever bother making these for a crowd, as I didn't think they were that 'special', to sit there and wrap olive after olive. But that's not to say they weren't very good, just not a showstopper.

Learning to listen to the kitchen gods

Glazed Chicken Wings
The Essential Appetizers Cookbook Copyright 1999

4 lb chicken wings
½ cup barbecue sauce
½ cup apricot jam
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed

1. Trim the excess far from the wings. Stir the barbecue sauce, jam, vinegar, soy sauce, tomato sauce, oil and garlic in a small pan over low heat until just combined. Cool slightly, pour over chicken wings and mix well. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator at least 2 hours.
2. Preheat the over to 350 degrees F. Drain the excess marinade from the wings and reserve. Bake the wings in a lightly greased baking dish for 45 minutes. To prevent sticking, you can add a little water. Turn halfway through the cooking time, brushing occasionally with the reserved marinade.

This recipe has been calling to me for years. Yes, they're just chicken wings but they look so nice in the picture in the cookbook. I thought they would be fruity, sweet and sticky. But I don't think this recipe was meant to be and I should have listened to the kitchen gods who tried to stop it from happening.

All was going well, except seeing 'barbecue sauce' in a recipe always makes me pause. (Do they mean sweet and spicy barbecue sauce? Sweet and tangy? Smokey? There are so many different barbecue sauces.) But I chose my most neutral barbecue sauce, whipped up the marinade in no time and set the wings to marinate for several hours. Then I put the wings in the oven and not long afterwards I heard the sound I knew I would someday hear. Glass breaking. Yes, my Pyrex dish exploded. It happened to my sister on Easter once and I've heard of it happening to others so I knew exactly what was happening without opening the oven door (good thing because the glass continued to 'pop'.

So here is was, New Year's Eve, and this was the main nibble we were having. So I sent hubby out for more chicken wings, a feat only slightly less daunting to this man than asking him to find Jimmy Hoffa. Two phone calls and a screaming match later, I had more chicken wings but there was no time to marinate them.

So maybe that was why these wings were lackluster but I don't think so. These were just chicken wings with sweet barbecue sauce. Edible but nothing special. I wanted the apricot jam to stand out but it didn't.

I hate that I was disappointed by the first recipe I've tried from this cookbook. This is from the same series as The Essential Pasta Cookbook and I've been drooling over the gorgeous pictures in this book for years, dreaming of the fancy cocktail parties I could have, if I was the type of person to throw cocktail parties, which I'm not. But I won't give up on this cookbook after just one so-so recipe. I'll give it another chance.

A New Year's Eve nibble

Sherried Shrimp
The New York Times Cookbook Copyright 1961

24 medium shrimp, shelled and deveined I used large shrimp
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup sherry
¼ cup salad oil
1 teaspoon powdered ginger or 1 tablespoon fresh ginger root, ground I used 1 tbsp of jarred, grated ginger
1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1. Marinate the raw shrimp in the remaining ingredients one hour or less.
2. Place the shrimp with a little of the marinade in a skillet and cook three or four minutes, until shrimp are done. If possible, use an electric skillet. I used my George Foreman grill and they were done almost instantaneously.

4 servings

On New Year’s Eve, I usually make a few different nibbles instead of a meal. This was one of the nibbles I made this year. It was easy to prepare and very good. It added flavor to the shrimp without overpowering it. (Excuse the blurry-looking pic - that's steam rising off the shrimp.)

This is probably the cookbook I've owned the longest. I picked it up the summer I worked in the warehouse of a book publisher and we could purchase returns for $1 (hardcover) or 50 cents (paperback). That was the summer I started my cookbook collection. This is a classic cookbook yet I haven't tried too many recipes from it but this one was so good (and so is the Butterscotch pie I made from this book), it has me thinking that I really need to take a closer look at this cookbook.