Category: Italian Cooking

Honoring National Spaghetti Day with Spaghetti Milanaise

Today is National Spaghetti Day. According to Foodimentary, there are some very interesting facts surrounding spaghetti. Did you know that the average Italian eats more than fifty-one pounds of pasta a year and would never think to use a spoon to twirl spaghetti onto their fork? The side of their plate and an experienced wrist is all it takes. Me? I have a “pasta” spoon, sort of flat and round and looks a lot like a bouillon spoon with a long handle. My spoon is perfectly designed for twirling my sauce-saturated twines onto my pasta fork.

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Awesome Chicken Parmesan Crock Pot Style

Warning – this is one of those rare Crock Pot dishes that does require the meat to be thawed first. It is the only drawback to an otherwise fabulous dish. That one tiny step – thawing out the chicken – is the only step that requires you to think ahead rather than stagger into the kitchen in the morning and throw everything into the pot.

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Cheese-Stuffed Pasta Shells in a Meat Sauce

Today’s post is going to be simple and to the point. I love Italian Food. Northern Italian is my favorite, but anything Italian is great. While I prefer to stuff my own shells, a good quality frozen-stuffed shell can be just as delicious with a lot less effort. Skip cooking the shells, mixing the filling, letting the shells cool to the point that they can be easily handled, piping the filling into the shells – you get the picture. Using frozen shells allows you to skip over all of that and go straight to the sauce, the assemble and the bake. It lets kitchen clean up be a snap.

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Rigatoni and Chicken Bake with Artichokes

Did you know that the artichoke, specifically the globe artichoke, is actually the unopened flower bud of a thistle-like plant. These unopened flowers were a passion of Catherine de Medici in fifteenth-century Florence, Italy. Catherine became the wife of Henry II, king of France. King Henry excluded Catherine from the political arena. Upon his death, she became ruler of France through her sons, each of whom she outlived.

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Portobella Mushroom Ravioli

We all love the convenience of store-bought prepared foods – those heat and serve wonders that make life a little easier. With a little fuss; a store-bought Mushroom Stuffed Ravioli Pasta can be transformed into a flavorful; rich dish that is as attractive as it is yummy. When served with a tossed salad and warm garlic bread or Buttery-Chive Crescent Rolls the family can gather around the dinner table with lightening speed.

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Onions, Peppers and Italian Sausage over Linguine

This recipe came from Christina over at It’s a Keeper. She promotes products, (receiving samples and compensation for her endorsement). In the case of this recipe, Christina was promoting a particular brand of sausage. I chose to go with the best deal at the market rather than her recommended brand name. Whatever sausage you use is entirely up to you – just make sure it’s Italian Link Sausages in their casing.

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One-Skillet Ziti Bake with Cucumber Salad and Warm Bread

It’s been a while since I last shared a complete dinner menu. It’s been a while since we last indulged in one of my favorite cuisines – Italian. This one-skillet Pasta dish has been on the weekly menu for a while now, but you know how plans go – by the wayside. Especially during the holidays – last-minute shopping, errands and other distractions such as pot lucks and decorating and on it goes.

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Chicken and Italian Cheese Stuffed Lasagna Roll-Ups

Hi there everyone. How’s everything going? Before I get too deep in posting, let me take a moment to say thanks. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for taking an interest in what I’ve written. Most of all, thanks for simply being.

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Italian Red Potatoes with Fresh Green Beans

This is one of those dishes that is hard to classify. Is it a warm potato salad? A vegetable side dish? Yes, and yes. All I know for sure is that it’s delicious – anyway you want to serve it. These potatoes with green beans are colorful, easy to make and go great with a variety of Italian dishes when other starchy foods such as pasta are not being served. Awesome with Cuocere Stile Italiano or Italian Lemon Chicken Sauté. Popular at the family table, yet pretty enough for company. And such a snap to make. Once assembled, this dish will even hold well in the oven along side a platter of Savory Sensational Chicken Scaloppine. I could go on and on when it comes to Italian dishes. Hubby loves his Mexican; I adore my Italian and French. As for Kiddo, he’s not picky – he loves it all from Pizza and Burgers to Coq au Vin and everything in between.

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Awesome Spaghetti with Double the Meats

Hubby loves Spaghetti with Meat Balls – it’s one of his favorite ways to eat Spaghetti. I love Spaghetti with Italian Sausage in the tomato-based sauce. Kiddo isn’t particular – he loves Spaghetti any way you serve it. Hum, wonder what would happen if I made the sauce my way, rich in tomatoes with Italian sausage and invited meat balls to the mix . . .

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Lemon Parsley Chicken with Garlic

While reorganizing the chicken recipes in my yumprint file, I came across this yummy recipe that had a note “on blog”. Really? So I searched, and I searched – have I lost my mind? Was that note intended to remind me to share the recipe with you or had I truly shared this wonderful dish and now it was gone? It turns out, I had shared it in a way – as part of a collection of recipes. There it was, buried in part 7 of the Traveling Dinner Party series. If I had a hard time finding my recipe for this Chicken dish, how could I expect anyone else to find it? So I’ve pulled it out, shaken off the cobwebs and shared it once again.

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Orange-Scented Italian Olive Oil Cake

Have you seen this old-world Olive Oil Cake from Sauveur? It was first published back in January 2015. Even the name Olive Oil Cake sounds intriguingly old-world, doesn’t it? While a number of olive oil cakes are finished with a nice dusting of powdered sugar, this cake is finished with a sprinkling of sea salt. I like salt and orange together.

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Italian Chicken over Pasta with Parmesan Cream Sauce

One of the things I like about not being a novices cook is the ability to punt whenever necessary. Once upon a time I had Parmesan Crusted Chicken with Lemon Pasta on my menu. It was a lovely little recipe I picked up at Bakeatmidnite.com  – link below just in case you want to check it out.

http://bakeatmidnite.com/parmesan-crusted-chicken-with-lemon/

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Cheesy Baked Tortellini Casserole

This wonderful recipe was inspired by my  blogger-friend Jan over at Mommermon, who received her inspiration from no.2 pencil. Giving credit where credit is due; I have included links to both sites below.

Jan’s Kitchen

Number-2 Pencil

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Chicken Parmesano Vino Bianco

Chicken Parmesano Vino Bianco, also known as Chicken in a White Wine Parmesan Cream Sauce over Linguine. I know I have mentioned this like a zillion times, but what’s one more? My favorite, absolute gotta have favorite cuisine on the planet is Italian. And not just any style of Italy, but that which reflects the greatest Northern influence.

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