Category: 10 Ingredient Meals

Beet Risotto

I love the taste of beets, but preparing them is so time consuming that I tend to avoid buying them. Most recipes involving beets require you to roast the beets and then peel them. I came across a recipe for beet risotto in Food and Wine that just cooked the beets on the stove top in significantly less time. This risotto recipe is supposed to turn a beautiful red color from the beets. I didn’t get the same bright red color but I still love how it looks!
Ingredients:
  • 3 cups chicken stock or water
  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 large shallot, finely chopped
  • 2 large beets peeled and finely chopped, plus thinly sliced beets for garnish
  • 1 cup arborio rice
  • 2 ounces young pecorino cheese, freshly grated
  • 1 teaspoon poppy seeds, plus more for garnish

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Butternut Squash Agnolotti with Toasted Hazelnut Cream Sauce

What is it about nuts that go so wonderfully with pumpkin and butternut squash dishes? Walnuts, pecans, and hazelnuts just pair so nicely with the flavors of squash. When I first received Buitoni’s Butternut Squash Agnolotti, I knew I wanted to make a hazelnut cream sauce with it. Hazelnuts, like most nuts, taste significantly better when toasted. I have no idea why this is, but I feel the need to always heat nuts for a little while to increase the flavor.
Ingredients:
  • 1 package of Buitoni’s Butternut Squash Agnolotti
  • 1/2 cup hazelnuts, blanched
  • 1 stick of butter
  • 1/4 cup sweet vermouth
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • a pinch each of ginger, allspice, and nutmeg (1/8 teaspoon or less)
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • Sage leaves, for garnish

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Butternut Squash Agnolotti Pasta Salad with Walnuts, Golden Raisins, and Snow Peas

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might have picked up on my obsession with pumpkin and butternut squash. I attempt to limit my gourd intake to the September and October months, but every now and then I still need my fix outside of those months. Butternut squash seems to be more socially acceptable, especially in pasta form. Buitoni’s Butternut Squash Agnolotti is the perfect way for me to have this delicious ingredient year-round.
Agnolotti is just a type of ravioli. This specific agnolotti is a “half-moon pasta filled with oven-roasted butternut squash, Impastata Ricotta, aged Parmesan and Grana Padano cheeses, accented with amoretti cookie crumbs.  I traditionally use a brown butter sage sauce with butternut squash ravioli because they are a perfect pair. I wanted to try something a little different with this agnolotti, so I instead made a cold pasta salad. It has been so unbearably hot in Philadelphia that I thought this would be a perfect (and timely) twist.Also, don’t forget to enter my giveaway to win a bunch of Buitoni goodies and free Buitoni pasta!
Ingredients:
  • 1 package of Buitoni’s Butternut Squash Agnolotti
  • ½ cup butter
  • 1 shallot, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon fresh sage leaves, roughly chopped
  • ½ cup walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
    A handful of golden raisins, or to taste
  • 1 cup snow peas
  • The juice of one lemon
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

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Chilled Creamy Cucumber Soup

Cucumbers are everywhere right now, and as much as I love just eating them raw, I thought it might be a nice change to try to use them cooked. Cucumber soup, chilled, sounds oh so refreshing doesn’t it? I found this recipe for Chilled Creamy Cucumber Soup from Eating Well.  It uses an avocado and some plain yogurt, making a really creamy delicious soup. Plus, it only takes 35 minutes to make (it is additional time to chill).
Ingredients:
  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 small onion, diced
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 4 cups peeled, seeded and thinly sliced cucumbers, divided
  • 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth, or reduced-sodium chicken broth
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • Pinch of cayenne pepper
  • 1 avocado, diced
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, plus more for garnish
  • 1/2 cup low-fat plain Greek yogurt

Begin by prepping all your ingredients. Mince the garlic, dice the onion, peel, seed, and slice the cucumber, and dice your avocado. (I added a squeeze of lemon juice over the avocado to keep it from browning).
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add your onion and garlic to the pot, stirring occasionally. Cook for 4 minutes.
Add the lemon juice and cook for another minute. Add the cucumber, broth, salt, pepper, and cayenne (optional) and bring to a simmer.
Reduce heat and simmer for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the cucumbers are soft.

Add thesoupto a blender (be careful), removing the center of the top of the blender. Add the avocado and parsley.

Place a paper towel over the open hole before blending.  Blend on low until smooth. (I just do all of this in the pot using an immersion blender, I find it less hazardous hehe).

If you want to eat the soup hot, pour into a serving bowl and stir in the yogurt. Top with cucumber slices and garnish with parsley. If chilling the soup, refrigerate for at least one hour, then stir in the yogurt and garnish before serving.

The soup is smooth, a little tangy from the Greek yogurt, and ends with a slight hint of spice. I like mixing in the parsley and chopped cucumbers into the soup to give it some texture.

I love what I call “after work recipes.” I can make this when I get home and can eat before 8 pm. For an even more refreshing soup, try substituting mint or dill for the parsley.

Lobster Ravioli with Saffron Cream Sauce

Everyone needs a quick but really impressive meal in their cooking arsenal. My go-to is usually ravioli; it cooks in a few minutes and all you really have to do is make an awesome sauce. This recipe for Lobster Ravioli with Saffron Cream Sauce is the definition of quick but really impressive!
You can make the meal in a half hour, and most of the ingredients are relatively easy to have on hand. (I know it’s a bit odd to have saffron threads in my spice collection but Trader Joe’s sells some that isn’t terribly expensive.) You can buy lobster ravioli if/when it goes on sale and store it in your fridge until needed which means this seemingly fancy recipe for Lobster Ravioli with Saffron Cream Sauce is actually a quick and easy dinner option!
I was pretty excited when I came across this recipe for Lobster Ravioli with Saffron Cream Sauce because it sounded amazing. Um, it was beyond amazing. Seriously. This is one of my favorite sauces I’ve ever made. Mmm. Ok, sorry. I should probably share it with you now.
Ingredients (get all ingredients here):
  • 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs, optional
  • 1 package lobster ravioli
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • ½ cup dry white wine
  • 2 cups whipping cream
  • 2 pinches saffron threads
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric, optional
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • lobster chunks, if desired
  • Fresh chives, for garnish

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Spinach Spaghetti with Salmon Cream Sauce

Have you ever bought a bunch of ingredients just because they sounded good? I try to stick to a list, but this time I couldn’t help myself. I found fresh spinach spaghetti and it just sounded so wonderful, I had to buy it. I wanted to make a simple but flavorful dish so I was pretty happy to find salmon as well. I already had heavy cream and parsley in my fridge so this recipe for Spinach Spaghetti with Salmon Cream Sauce was the result!
Ingredients:
  • 1 package fresh spinach spaghetti
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 8 oz fillet of salmon
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, roughly chopped
  • freshly grated Parmesan

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Smoky Asparagus and Mushroom Saute

The April 2011 Issue of Cooking Light included a seemingly simple side dish using a type of mushroom I have yet to work with: Smoky Asparagus and Mushroom Saute. Morels are a wild mushroom; efforts to cultivate this mushroom have been mostly unsuccessful. Because they need to be “hunted” (those that collect morels are called mushroom hunters, I kid you not), they are super expensive– the market I went to was selling them for $69.99/lb., ouch. So this recipe can get pricey fast. I substituted in some hen of the woods (“Maitake”) mushrooms to save my wallet a bit. I ended up spending about $4 on the morels and a $1 and some change on the hen of the woods.

I had some left over asparagus from making the Orzo Risotto with Buttery Shrimp dish a few days ago so this dish was perfect to use ingredients I mostly had on hand.

Ingredients:
  • 2 slices bacon
  • 1 tablespoon butter (omit to make dairy free)
  • 3 oz quartered fresh morel mushrooms
  • 3 oz chopped hen of the woods
  • 1 pound asparagus, cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoons chopped chives

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