Caprese Salad

I love May - October when the farmers markets are around and dread the other 6 months when there is none.  :o(  Saturday we went to the farmers market and bought this basil plant, some tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.  The hubs also got some applewood-smoked mozzarella, and can't stop sniffing it.  ;o)  Yesterday, I made a Caprese Salad with my market finds and the kitchen smelled so good!  I learned something, though - when working with fresh mozzarella, let it sit in a strainer for a bit before adding to a recipe.  The tomato is not as bright in the salad, because there was so much white water released from the mozzarella after I tossed it in.  Oh, well.  And although a Caprese Salad is fabulous on it's own, we went one step farther.

We made Giada De Laurentiis' Grilled Portobello Mushrooms with Tomatoes and Fresh Mozzarella.  Just one, grilled portobello cap for each of us, topped with the Caprese Salad was enough to fill our bellies at dinner last night.  So delicious!  Now I know why people grill portobellos as hamburger replacements.  We will be having this dish several more times this Summer.

B Taking on a Bigger Role in the Kitchen

This past weekend, the hubs decided that B should take a bigger role in the kitchen and help us cook dinner every night.  We started last night, Meatless Monday.  We made Creamy Portobello Pasta, my version of Food & Wine's Ziti with Portobello Mushrooms, Caramelized Onions and Goat Cheese. Once again, I just used what I had on hand and our finished product tasted fabulous but looked gross.  SMH  I don't know how Food & Wine get such a light colored finished product!  Portobellos release their liquid and it's dark, so it colors my pasta.  Oh, well.  Onto B cooking.

I wasn't ready for B to be using a knife, so I sliced up the onions.  But B turned on the heat under the pan and added the butter and oil.  This is him adding the sugar.

 Stirring the onions so they all get nice and caramelized.

The hubs said B should start learning to cut (my heart stopped) so he sliced up the portobellos.  And did a darn good job at it, too!

 

Leftover Wednesday - Creamy Portobello Pasta

I found this recipe for Ziti with Portobello Mushrooms, Caramelized Onions and Goat Cheese on Pinterest weeks ago.  *sigh* I wish I could take beautiful pictures of my food!  The picture of the recipe I pinned is very nice.  I showed the recipe to the hubs with such excitement, but my excitement went unmatched.  He is a rice man, I am a pasta woman.  Plus, there is no meat in this dish, either.  LOL

So yesterday, when I went searching through the fridges, freezers and pantries for Leftover Wednesday, I found a wonderful surprise!

 I'm ashamed to say I bought these beauties on June 29th, put them in the "overflow" fridge in the garage and then promptly forgot about them.  But I was so excited to see them!  I could make the Ziti with Portobello Mushrooms, Caramelized Onions and Goat Cheese now!  I immediately went to the computer, looked up the other ingredients needed and compared that to what I had: butter, olive oil, 3 onions, salt, sugar, pepper, parsley, 1 lb portobellos, ziti, goat cheese, parmesan.  Hm.  I'm allergic to olive oil and was a tad short on most of the rest.  But, I can be creative and this is what I pulled together:

I had less than a half of an onion, Laughing Cow Garlic and Herb Cheese to replace the goat cheese (hey, it's soft!), Parmesan cheese (phew!), Wegman's Basting Oil to replace the olive oil, butter, salt, sugar, pepper and leftover cooked lasagna noodles to replace the ziti.  Not bad in my book!  I cut the recipe down to approx 1/4 to accommodate the amount of onion I had in the house and I made it for myself for lunch (so embarrassed and frustrated to only have 1/3 of an onion, but trying to teach myself a lesson to buy everything I need at the store once or go without until the next bi-weekly shopping trip).  Here we go...

Saute onions in a little butter and Wegman's Basting Oil with a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar for 15 minutes.

While the onions were caramelizing, I sliced up the cooked lasagna noodles.

I removed the onions from the pan and added the sliced shrooms.  There was no need to add more butter nor oil.  While they cooked for approx 10 minutes, I boiled some water and dropped the noodles in it for a few minutes to heat up. 

Once the shrooms were done, I added everything to the pan - onions, 1 wedge of Laughing Cow Garlic and Herb cheese, the noodles, parmesan cheese and a little pasta water.  See? My food pictures do not look good.

It took longer than I thought it would for the Laughing Cow to melt and the noodles were in the pan so long they appear to have absorbed some of the mushroom's color.  Next time, I will remove the shrooms from the pan, add the cheese and some pasta water only and let those two melt together before adding the rest of the ingredients.  Regardless of how it looked it tasted wonderful!