Lunch Box Chronicles: Day One Hundred Sixty One (Popeye Strikes Again!!)

Baked Farro with Fresh Ricotta and Mozzarella - Popeye Style - with Spinach

This weekend I visited one of my favorite stores in one of my favorite neighborhoods in one of my favorite cities....Teitels in Little Italy in the Bronx.  It was nice to have a new friend along - Tania - as we shared stories of parenting and the art of feeding our offspring.

As always, I loaded up on fresh made mozzarella (once you've had this stuff it is really hard to be satisfied by the mass produced supermarket variety), fresh ricotta, fresh parmesan and farro pasta.

I decided to make a new old time favorite - baked penne - but this time with a little influence from an old old time favorite - Popeye.   Baked pennette with spinach!

Ingredients:

One organic onion (finely chopped)


8-10 crimini mushrooms (thinly sliced)

4-5 cloves of garlic (finely chopped or minced with salt)

1/4 – 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Pomi – crushed tomatoes – all natural, no citric acid – in a carton (no BPA in packaging).  Soon you will be able to buy this on our website.

1-2 Teaspoons of Sea Salt (also soon to be available on our website)

Ground pepper to taste


1 TBL Organic sugar (optional)

1/2 bunch fresh spinach, carefully cleaned and rinsed with water and vinegar.  Coarsley chopped. 

One packages of FARRO pasta which you can now purchase at the Spelt Right store. 

1/2 small container of whole milk ricotta

One half to one pound of natural mozzarella (shredded or pulled apart)

Instructions:

Place chopped onion and garlic in olive oil in large stainless steel pan. Saute until onions are brown. Add mushrooms Saute until browned. Add Pomi tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste. Add one teaspoon of organic sugar if desired. Stir all ingredients. Cook on medium low for 20-25 minutes. Stirring occasionally. Add chopped basil.

In the meantime, boil and drain Farro Pasta according to instructions on panel. Rinse, and then toss with extra virgin olive oil to keep from sticking.

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a 9 inch glass baking dish, spread a little of the sauce on the bottom to keep the pasta from sticking. In the sauce pan, toss the pasta sauce and pasta. When thoroughly tossed, place the pasta in the baking dish. Fold in the ricotta.  Fold in the spinach. Then sprinkle with mozzarella. Bake until bubbling on top. 

This meal was DEVOURED.  Can you imagine if we had Popeye to dinner?

Lunch Box Chronicles: Day One Hundred Fifty-Six (On the Need for a Clean-Up Crew and Roasted Rosemary Chicken)

So, on this most recent Sunday, I did one of my all out baking bashes. The big difference, however, was that my husband was not home. He was traveling back from Maine with the kids. I foolishly thought to myself “What an opportunity! Cooking without distraction.” Indeed, I was without distraction, but I was also without my most faithful clean-up crew of one, my husband, Tim.

I expected the brood to be home 2 hours later than they arrived, but with a combination of no traffic and free sailing on their trek south, they traveled from Maine to NYC in a record 4.5 hours. When I heard the knock on the door, I was convinced it was a neighbor seeking spelt bread. But, no!! It was the family ready to be nourished after a long, but not long-enough trip.

“Yikes!” I said, “DO NOT go in the kitchen. It is a disaster!” My creations for the evening included meatballs, homemade sauce, farro pasta, Spelt Right Pizza Dough stuffed with the meatballs, and chicken stew. Definitely too much even for this mult-tasker.

I managed to trip over the table and chairs (which I moved for a food photo op) and meander around the pots, pans and half opened ingredients in order to throw together plates of homemade madness for the kids.

I was so exhausted from the making of the meals that I could barely partake in the eating of it. “Jees,” I said to Tim, with my feet up on the couch, “I don’t usually make such a mess!”

He gently corrected me. “Umm, maybe you do, but I’m usually right behind you cleaning up.”

By George! Tim is right! And, despite being exhausted from his trip from Maine (and his 2 hour round-trip within Maine to bring Emma back to college), Tim rolled up his sleeves and went to work unwinding the disaster I had created. There are many reasons to love this man and this is one of them.

Bon Appetit. Here is the recipe for chicken stew, one of the recipes of the night. Recommendation: do not attempt this without your clean-up crew.

Roasted Chicken

One Chicken Cut-Up

2 Potatoes cut in chunks (or in 1/4 longs)

2-3 Carrots cut in 3” pieces

1-2 Celery Stalks cut in 3” pieces

1 onion – cut in 1/6 wedges

Lemon juice (juice of 1-2 lemons)

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 cup of liquid (chicken stock or red or white wine)

3 gloves of garlic chopped finely and blended with sea salt

1/4 bunch fresh Italian parsley

rosemary, salt and pepper to taste

Place all solid ingredients in roasting pan. Cover with EVOO, hand rub seasonings. Add garlic. Add liquid (I had only red wine in the house and it worked fine, though I would have preferred a chicken stock or white wine).

Cover pan, and bake at 425 for 30 min – 1 hour until chicken is done and vegetables are soft.