Cherry Basil Salad

I had an exhausting day today, editing writing all day, so when I came home I wanted to make something easy and yummy. We had some leftover pasta sauce, so I wanted to make a salad to accompany. Then I remembered we have cherries and a yummy salad I had at Whole Foods.

I tossed some mesculan greens, with some cherries that I pitted, and some basil. For dressing a little lime juice and olive oil!

A nice refreshing summer salad. 

Smoked Paprika Shrimp

Last night we felt like having a homemade dinner after a weekend of fun and eating out, but I also had some work to do so I needed something easy.

Ingredients

- 2 packs of grape tomatoes

- a bunch of basil

- 6-8 garlic cloves

- pinch of smoked paprika

- red chilli pepper flakes

- pimente d'espellete (could use cayenne)

- linguini

- 1 lb shrimp cleaned and deveined

- leftover wine in a box (rose wine)

- parmesean cheese 

I had a bunch of grape tomatoes, of all different varieties, I laid them out on a baking sheet with olive oil and salt and left them in the middle rack of the oven roasting at 250celsius for 2 hours. During that time I did the work I had to do.

Then when the were almost done, I put on salted water to boil the linguini.  Then in a large 2 inch pan, I placed finely chopped garlic, and sautéed it in olive oil then adding the pinch of smoked paprika, red chilli flakes and piment d'espellete. If you choose to use cayenne because it can be really spicy. I then added the shrimp and tossed them into the spiced oil for about 2 minutes, not fully cooking them. Then I transferred the tomatoes from the oven tray to the pan. They were starting to stick to the pan, and I didn't want to add more oil, so I added a 1/4 cup of rose wine we had leftover in the fridge, and covered the pan to allow the shrimp and tomatoes to cook. You want the tomatoes to pop and explode under the light pressure of a fork, but otherwise appearing whole. Then I added chopped basil, grated pamesean and a little salt to my taste and removed from heat. 

I then added the linguini to the boiling water. The package said to cook for 11 minutes but I cooked for 9. After cooking for 9 minutes, I drained the pasta and added it to the sauce and let the whole thing cook on a low simmer for about 2 minutes. This helps to ensure the pasta absorbs the sauce and is perfectly al dente. 

I transferred to a bowl, added some freshly ground black pepper, and some coarse salt, and little parmesean.

It was the perfect home cooked meal after a weekend of bar crawling and camping. The two hours of roasting was great because it allowed me the time to do some work, and the rest of the assembly time was probably about 20 minutes. (I cooked the pasta while cooking the sauce, but for was of recipe writing did not write it that way, but that saves time!)

No picture sorry, but it was pretty!

The upside of being married to hot headed Persian Girl

So I worked all weekend... And had a bit of a rough day, and when I get mad one of my big ways to vent is to cook. Frittata is one of my favorite things to cook when I am in a bad mood because somehow all that veggie chopping makes me relaxed! Call me nuts, but my hubby sure benefits from it!

So I looked in my fridge this morning and saw I had half a red pepper, plenty of eggs, plenty of red onions, and some black trumpet and oyster mushrooms.
So I started by dicing two red onions, and dicing the peppers, cut up the mushrooms, and sautéed then in olive oil and spiced them with salt and fresh cracked pepper. Once the veggies were cooked, I removed them from the heat.

I then cracked 10 eggs in a separate bowl and shredded some parmesan cheese into the bowl, and added salt and pepper. I then whisked the eggs thoroughly.

I placed a layer of the veggies into a lightly greased mini loaf baking dish (it has separate mini loaves, but one could use a muffin dish). After placing the vegetables in I poured the egg mixture on top to fill each slot, grated a little more cheese on top and garnished with basil! Then baked it all for about 20 minutes at 350!