My Italian Roots

I grew up in New Jersey where I had the privilege of eating around my Italian grandfather’s table quite frequently. He was a hard-working man who came to this country and loved it for everything it stood for. He was proud to be an Italian – but just as proud to be an American!

Perhaps one of the reasons I still love Italian food as much as I do is because of those times spent around that table. I can still remember the smell of homemade sauce simmering on the stove that would greet us as we walked in the back door. It’s more than just the taste of delicious red sauce over perfectly al dente pasta… it’s the memories that go along with it.

On my refrigerator I have a saying that I absolutely love. When I first found it, I felt as though someone else had reached into my head, pulled the words out and placed them on paper.

“When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It’s also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been and who we want to be.” *

I read it often these days. I hope that one day my own kids will talk of the memories attached to the aromas in their mom’s kitchen… how warm chocolate chip cookies smelled of comfort and how, no matter where they go, the smell of garlic and tomato sauce always reminds them of home.

It would be a lovely legacy to pass on from my grandparents… through me… to my kids.

Gluten Free Baked Spaghetti

16oz gluten free spaghetti (I used Tinkyada)

1 lb ground beef

3 Tbsp dried minced onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 jar (24-26oz) meatless gluten free spaghetti sauce

½ tsp seasoned salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

½ cup parmesan cheese

5 Tbsp butter, melted

2 cups ricotta cheese

3-4 cups shredded mozzarella

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x13 baking pan with non-stick cooking spray. Boil a large pot of water and cook gluten free spaghetti according to package.

While the spaghetti cooks, cook the ground beef in a large skillet. When the beef is almost completely browned, drain the fat and add the minced garlic and dried onion. Stir in the spaghetti sauce and warm through.

Rinse cooked spaghetti thoroughly with cold water. In the emptied pot used to cook the pasta, add the melted butter and Parmesan cheese. Stir to combine. Add the pasta back into the pot and stir. Add the eggs and toss to coat pasta thoroughly.

Pour half of the pasta into the 9x13 baking pan and spread out into a thin layer. Top with half of the ricotta cheese (spread ricotta to cover), half of the meat sauce and half of the mozzarella cheese. Pour remaining pasta over the top and repeat the layers. Cover baking dish with foil and bake for 40 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

*Excerpt from “A Homemade Life” by Molly Wizenberg

Top 10 Comfort Foods

We all have our own personal versions of comfort food. Chocolate. Mashed Potatoes. Soup. Spaghetti and Meatballs. There is sometimes a memory attached, like a grandmother’s signature dish… or sometimes it’s just a warm concoction that soothes the soul. Few would say today’s recipe shouldn’t be in the Top 10 of Comfort Foods. In my eyes, it’s where comfort food begins. It’s your basic gentle, warm, creamy meal that is perfect in every season. You can serve it at a picnic, alongside your Thanksgiving turkey or curl up under a blanket on a snowy day with a bowlful. Can’t go wrong with that, right?

Any guesses? (If your eyes prematurely drifted to the paragraph below, you already know. I’m not too great at the concept of suspense. Ah, well.)

It’s Mac and Cheese. Yes, my gluten free friends, we can have creamy mac and cheese… and I bet no one will notice that it’s gluten free! As for my friends who still belong to the world of gluten, this recipe is for you, too. Just swap our rice noodles for some of your gluten packed ones! It gets better… this will be wonderfully creamy without heavy cream. Heck, it doesn’t even have whole milk in it! Just good ol’ 1% milk. OK, fine. There is a stick of butter in it. But I should add this feeds an army. A 9x13 pan filled to the top!

Since variety is the spice of life, add whatever you want! Diced tomatoes, bacon bits, broccoli crowns, cut up hot dogs… the possibilities are endless! You can also top the mac and cheese (before baking) with more cheese or bread crumbs. But before you start experimenting, give the basic recipe a try. Who needs that stuff in the blue box? Not us!

Gluten Free Mac and Cheese

1 stick of butter

1 small onion, chopped

3 ½ cups of 1% milk, divided

2 tsp prepared yellow mustard

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

¼ cup cornstarch

16 oz Colby jack cheese, cut into ½ inch cubes

1 Tbsp salt, for the noodle water

1 bag rice elbow noodles (I used Tinkyada), about 3 cups

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

To a large pot of boiling water, add the 1 Tbsp of salt and the rice elbow noodles. Cook until just shy of soft (they will finish cooking in the oven). Drain and immediately rinse with cold water (for gluten free noodles only).

While the noodles are cooking, melt butter in a large, deep skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until soft and translucent. Add 3 cups of milk (reserving ½ cup) and heat. Add the mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Stir to combine.

In a bowl, mix together the remaining ½ cup of milk and the cornstarch. Just prior to the milk beginning to boil, add the cornstarch milk to the pan. Stir and continue to heat until the milk begins to thicken.

Once the milk is thickened to a creamy sauce consistency, turn the heat to low and add the cubed cheese. Stir until the cheese cubes are melted into cheesy goodness. (At this point, you may want to taste the cheese sauce to see if salt or pepper is needed.)

Add the rice noodles to the pan and toss to combine. Pour into an ungreased 9x13 baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes until bubbly on the edges.

Serves: 8 people as a main dish, 12 people as a side dish

I'm on a Roll! (so to speak)

Lest you start to think that I spend my days baking sweet goodie after sweet goodie… I give you… Lasagna Rolls! This was a Giada DiLaurentiis recipe that I trimmed down. “Trimmed down” is my nice way of saying I lightened up on the fat! Giada called for loads of whole milk, whole milk mozzarella and whole milk ricotta… as well as prosciutto! YIKES. So I used 1% milk, part-skim everything else and eliminated the prosciutto altogether. I bumped up the garlic factor and used fresh spinach and made, quite honestly, one humdinger of a pasta dish. The best part is this recipe is great for non-gluten free people, too! Just substitute the GF lasagna noodles for your run-of-the-mill gluten-y ones! The recipe may look intimidating, but it was actually less work than traditional lasagna.

I will be entertaining some vegetarian friends in a few weeks and am pretty sure I’ll be making this recipe. Considering the meal will need to be peanut-free, potato-free, gluten-free AND meat-free, this one fits the bill perfectly!

Oh – one more thing. Did I mention that my kids ate spinach without complaining about it? For that matter, without even realizing it was in there? My daughter just assumed it was the Italian herbs I normally use. This one is looking better and better with every word I type, isn’t it?

Lasagna Rolls

1 Tbsp garlic, minced

4 Tbsp butter

1 ¼ cup milk plus ¼ cup, separated (I use 1%)

4 tsp cornstarch

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

Pinch of ground nutmeg

1 (15oz) container part-skim ricotta cheese

½ bag of fresh spinach, about 4-5 cups

1 cup plus 4 Tbsp grated Parmesan

1 egg

¾ tsp salt, plus more for salting pasta water

½ tsp pepper

2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

12 uncooked gluten free pasta noodles (I used Tinkyada), 8 for dinner and 4 extra in case any tear

2 cups marinara sauce

1 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

To make the béchamel sauce:

Melt 2 Tbsp butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and sauté lightly. Add the spinach and stir until wilted, but still nice and green. Remove spinach from pan onto a plastic cutting board. Chop the spinach into smaller pieces.

In the same pan, add the other 2 Tbsp of butter. Once melted, add the 1 ¼ cups of milk, stirring occasionally until heated. Stir together the other ¼ cup of milk and the cornstarch and pour into the hot milk. Stir until thickened. Add salt (to taste), pepper and 2 Tbsp of Parmesan. Stir to combine.

To prepare the pasta:

Add the olive oil to a large pot of boiling, salted water. Boil the noodles until just tender. Drain and rinse thoroughly with cold water.

To make the filling:

Whisk the ricotta, spinach, 1 cup of Parmesan, egg, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Set aside.

To put rolls together:

Spray a 13x9 glass baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Pour the béchamel sauce over the bottom of the baking dish. Lay out a lasagna noodle on a cutting board and spread about 3 Tbsp of the ricotta mixture over each noodle. Starting at one end, roll the noodle up. Lay each roll seam side down in the béchamel sauce, being careful not to let them touch each other. Spoon 1 cup of marinara sauce over the lasagna rolls. Sprinkle the remaining 2 Tbsp Parmesan and the mozzarella cheese over the rolls.

Cover tightly with foil. Bake until heated through and the sauce bubbles, about 20 minutes. Uncover and bake until the cheese on top becomes golden, about 15 minutes longer. Let stand for 10 minutes.

The additional 1 cup of marinara can be heated and served as an additional sauce for the rolls.