Fueling for Our Long Run

I'm always on the lookout for a good marinara sauce and since we really like spaghetti for our pre-long run dinner it gives me the excuse to try out new recipes.  I found tonight's recipe on Smitten Kitchen and the recipe has apparently made its way around the blogosphere.  When I first read through the recipe, I couldn't but help and agree with some of the comments on the blog.  I was skeptical.

 How can just these three ingredients make such a great tasting sauce?

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions (from Smitten Kitchen)
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking

Serves 4 as a main course; makes enough sauce to lightly coat most of a pound of spaghetti

28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled tomatoes from a can (San Marzano, if you can find them)
5 tablespoons (70 grams) unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan (it fit just right in a 3-quart) over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste (you might find, as I did, that your tomatoes came salted and that you didn’t need to add more) and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.

Serve with spaghetti, with or without grated parmesan cheese to pass.

I followed the recipe and the only change I made was adding lean ground beef and hot Italian sausage because Brian and I were in the mood for spaghetti with meat sauce. 

Meat!

The sauce was delicious and rich. The butter was a great addition to the sauce.  It would have definitely been fine on its own.  It is so simple and really easy to prepare.

Sauce just simmering away

Time to dig in

Now we are just staying in and out of the wind and cold. Hoping that the spring storm stays away from 7am - 10am while we are out doing our long run. 

Weeknight Dinner - Baked Salmon with Pesto

Wow. I can't believe that March is almost over. It has been one busy month. We have had an increase in our weekly mileage for marathon training (just ran 22 miles on Saturday) and Wallace family events the past few weekends.  FFDN has been put on hold for now because we have been using Friday nights as trial runs for pre-race carbo loading dinners to see what will work best to fuel our long runs. So far spaghetti with my slow cooker bolognese sauce and garlic bread is the winning combo.

I got a new kitchen gadget this past weekend that I have been itching to try and have been wanting for awhile.  The main reason I wanted it was for chopping up veggies when I make large batches of lumpia.

A food processor?!

As you can see Brian is just as excited as I am about the new gadget, maybe even more so. I think he's just happy that he doesn't have to really help with the chopping anymore.  Don't get too excited mister. That food processor can't help me wrap the lumpia =).  It isn't a fancy Cuisinart or Kitchen Aid food processor, but it still gets the job done. 

I have plans to make a big batch of lumpia this weekend for Easter so I decided to just bite the bullet and buy it this past weekend.  I wanted to test it out before making the lumpia so I decided to make pesto for dinner this week.  I made pesto in the blender before and it was fine but it didn't come out as smooth as I would have liked. It still had larger pieces of walnuts in it and the blender motor would start smoking.  That was not the case with the food processor! 

Check out that delicious pesto!

For dinner tonight salmon was the featured vehicle for that pesto. I made Foil Baked Salmon with Basil Pesto from Kalyn's Kitchen which she adapted from Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times. The pesto recipe came from this Cooking Light recipe (which I highly recommend).

Just before getting wrapped in foil and put in the oven.

Time to eat up!

This recipe was really good. The pesto and salmon worked really well together. Pesto has such a good flavor profile and is healthy and adds a flavorful punch to any dish.  I would definitely make this again and the food processor makes it even easier to have this as a weeknight dinner. 

This weekend has some good eats awaiting me. I can't wait! Just have to get my 18 miler done first (in my new shoes!).

Weeknight Dinner - Chicken Tamale Casserole

I don't have the luxury of time to whip up a great meal after work, especially during marathon training, so I'm always on the lookout for quick and healthy recipes. My go to resource for quick and healthy recipes is Cooking Light. They usually have healthy versions of classic favorites.

Crock pot roasted chicken is pretty much a weekly staple at our household. Season the chicken and place it in the crock pot on low for 8 hours as you leave for work. When you get back your chicken is ready for dinner. Pair it with a salad, veggie, and starch and you have a well balanced meal.

The only thing about cooking a whole chicken for two people is there is a lot of chicken left over. We even take the chicken for lunch the next day and still have plenty of leftovers. I have made plenty of different kinds of soup with the leftover chicken but this week I wanted to try something new. So I turned to my trusty stand by www.cookinglight.com.

Chicken Tamale Casserole

This was pretty good. I followed the recipe exactly. I wouldn't really recommend any changes except maybe add a little more enchilada sauce. We ate this with a side salad and a quarter of an avocado.  It was very filling and definitely hit the spot after our swim workout.

We had to take a day off from running today. We were scheduled to run 5 but our legs are dead tired from lifting legs with our trainer on Tuesday and running a combined 14 miles on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Swimming is such a good workout but I definitely am an inefficient swimmer. I expend way too much energy turning my head to take a breath which makes me out of breath easily. After the swim we sat in the hot tub for a little bit to soak our muscles. Hopefully our legs will be ready to rock for our next long run, 14 miles - gotta love a cut back week. weeknight

Beef Stroganoff

Growing up in a Filipino family, I didn't really associate Beef Stroganoff as comfort food. For comfort food I would probably think more along the lines of Kare Kare. I think the only times we had Beef Stroganoff in my childhood was from a combination of a mix and condensed cream of mushroom.  While it was tasty, there wasn't really much preparation that went into it nor was there anything gourmet about that preparation.

One Saturday night, I wanted to try another recipe from my Ad Hoc at Home cookbook so I told Brian to pick one out. He chose Beef Stroganoff. Thomas Keller put a great spin on the classic recipe by using braised short ribs. This tasted nothing like the Beef Stroganoff I had as a kid. The flavors were just a little more complex and the mushrooms really shined through. 

Beef Stroganoff

adapted from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home

Serves 4

Cream Sauce

1 lb cremini mushrooms, trimmed and cut in 3/4 inch pieces

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

3/4 cup chopped onion

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 cups heavy cream

1/3 creme fraiche

1 sachet - bay leaf, 3 thyme sprigs, 10 black peppercorns wrapped up in cheese cloth and tied with kitchen

   twine

Mushrooms

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 pound cremini mushrooms, sliced 1/4 inch thick

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Braised Beef Short Ribs

Pappardelle

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temp

coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Place mushrooms in food processor for cream sauce and finely chop. Place in a bowl.

Cook onion in melted butter over medium heat for 5 minutes and season with salt and pepper. Add chopped mushrooms and increase heat to medium high. Cook for about 10-15 minutes until the liquid has evaporated and stir occasionally.

Add in cream and sachet. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 35 minutes. Cream should reduce to about 1/3 of its original volume.

Meanwhile, add 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of canola oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add half of the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Cook for about 3 minutes. Turn the mushrooms over and cook for another minute or two until golden brown. Transfer to a paper towel lined baking sheet and do the same with the remaining batch of mushrooms.

When sauce is ready, discard the sachet, pour the sauce into a blender and blend until smooth. Strain the sauce into a medium saucepan, set over medium-low heat, and stir in creme fraiche. Reserve about 1/4 cup of the sauteed mushrooms. Add remaining mushrooms into the saucepan. Season to taste with salt and pepper.  

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook pasta according to package instructions.

Heat oil in an oven proof frying pan over medium high heat.  When the oil is hot, place meat presentation side down and brown for 2 to 3 minutes, until richly caramelized. Turn meat over and transfer to oven for 10 minutes.

Drain pasta when it is cooked and reserve about 1 cup of pasta water. Transfer noodles to a large bowl and toss with 2 tablespoons of butter.

Toss noodles with cream sauce.  If sauce seems too thick, add a bit of reserved pasta water to thin. Add half of sauteed mushrooms to the noodles and place on a platter. Arrange the short ribs and remaining mushrooms on the top. Garnish with parsley.