Lemon Caper Pasta

It is a cold rainy evening here in Maine. Weather like this makes me want to curl up at home with a good book, a glass of wine, and comfort food. Tonight I was craving this amazing macaroni and cheese I have made before with capers. It is macaroni and cheese all grown up, with earthy mushrooms and salty capers and a mixture of cheddar and a hard sheep's milk cheese I discovered at my local Italian market. I will make it again sometime so that I can share the recipe with you. And by recipe, I mean that I will write down what I put in it that day. I rarely actually cook from a recipe. And when I post my recipes, I typically have only made them once or twice. I would like to think that eventually readers will get a feel for what they like and do not like in the way of ingredients, spices, and flavors so that they can adjust any recipe I post to their own personal tastes.

So, back to my craving (which is usually what drives my dinners). I was craving macaroni and cheese, but I decided to try something a little healthier. I hope what I created is, but I honestly have not estimated the nutritional value of it. In the end, I ruled out the cheese. Wandering into the grocery store, I was deciding what would complement the capers. I thought I would try my hand at making a lemony sauce, Lemons are like sunshine for your palate and I definitely needed some sun today. So, I grabbed some lemons. The garlic was right next to them, so I picked up a head. I made my way to the pastas and decided on what looked like a more rustic pasta (rustichella d'abruzzo's orecchiette del prete). When I got home, I started to pull the capers out of the refrigerator and noticed a package of baby portabella mushrooms I purchased a week ago and grabbed those too. In the end, I ended up with a tart, flavorful, and slightly spicy pasta that definitely satisfied me. I hope you enjoy it just as much.

Lemon Caper Pasta

water
250 g pasta of your choice (I used orecchiette del prete)
4 tbsp olive oil
6 cloves garlic, peeled, smashed, and roughly chopped
10 oz baby portabella mushrooms, sliced about 1/4 inch thick
pinch of salt
1 tsp chicken Better than Bouillon
juice of 2 lemons
1 tsp cornstarch
1/2 - 1 tsp sugar (to your taste, to cut the tartness of the lemon)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp Tabasco pepper sauce
4 tbsp capers
baby spinach

Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil.
Once boiling, add the pasta and cook as directed on the package.
While that is cooking, in a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat.
Add the garlic and saute until fragrant and just starting to brown.
Add the mushrooms and pinch of salt, stir and let cook for about a minute.
Carefully ladle out about a 1/2 cup of water from the boiling pasta and pour over the mushrooms.
Add the bouillon and lemon juice and stir.
Put the cornstarch in a measuring cup and add a few teaspoons of the liquid in the skillet. Stir until smooth and then slowly pour into the skillet and stir.
Add the sugar, salt, pepper, Tabasco sauce, and capers and simmer for a couple minutes. If this is done before the pasta, just turn it off and let it sit while the pasta finishes.
When the pasta is done cooking, drain it well and then pour it into the skillet. Stir well.
To serve, put about 1 cup of baby spinach in a bowl and then ladle your desired amount of pasta over it. It will wilt the spinach a bit while allowing it to keep some texture.

Pan Cooked Pork Chops with Cilantro Rice and Fresh Salsa

I had some unused ingredients from my Mango Jicama Salsa and some tomatoes in my kitchen, so this dinner started with the salsa. Then I decided to finally cook a couple pork chops I had in the freezer for a while and added the rice to round out the meal. I ate the salsa more like a side salad than a condiment.

Fresh Salsa

4 tomatoes, seeded, stemmed and chopped
2 thin slices of red onion, chopped fine
1 jalapeno, seeded, stemmed and minced
1/4 c chopped cilantro leaves
1 to 2 tsp tabasco sauce
juice from 1 lime
1 tsp salt, or to taste
1 tsp sugar

Place all ingredients in a medium bowl and mix.
Set aside while preparing the rest of the meal.

Cilantro Rice

1 c rice
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp cilantro, chopped

Fill a medium stock pot with water and bring to a boil over high heat.
Add salt, mix.
Add rice, stirring until water returns to a boil.
Boil rice until tender, about 10 to 12 minutes.
When rice is done, drain in a sieve.
Melt butter in empty, warm pan.
Add rice back to the pan and stir in the butter.
Sprinkle in cilantro and stir.

Pan Cooked Pork Chops

1 tbsp oil
2 boneless pork chops
adobo, to taste

Heat a cast iron pan over medium to medium high heat.
Sprinkle pork chops with adobo on both sides.
Add oil to hot pan.
Add pork chops and cook until browned well on one side.
Turn pork chops over and cook until done.

Mango and Jicama Salsa

Having a party to attend last night, I made this salsa to bring. At first it is a bit crunchy, but as the night went on the jicama became softer and the flavors melded a bit better. I would suggest making this in the morning or the day before.

Mango and Jicama Salsa

2 ripe mangoes, peeled, flesh cut from the pit and diced fine
1 jicama, peeled and diced fine
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded, stemmed and minced
1/4 c red onion, diced fine
1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 to 1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon tabasco sauce
juice from 2 limes
2 tablespoons minced cilantro

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and allow to sit a few hours before serving. If you're unsure about the salt and sugar amounts, add the smaller amount and add more later should the salsa require it.

Alternate Doctored Up Tomato Soup

Still feeling ill and still needing to go grocery shopping, I had tomato soup again tonight. I remembered a good recipe for homemade tomato soup in my Cooking From Quilt Country cookbook, so I found it again and used it to make my canned tomato soup a little more tasty. While the garlic powder was good, this version makes a more complexly flavored soup. I simply added 1/4 tsp black pepper, 1 whole clove, a couple dashes of cinnamon, a pinch of allspice, and a couple dashes of Tabasco sauce. It's amazing how well the spices blend with the tomato. Of course, I also make this with milk. No watery tomato soup for me. I'll settle on something like that when I'm a starving and struggling actress in New York City; at which point I will enter my local, shabby diner and order a mug of hot water into which I will pour a healthy amount of ketchup. But until that day, milk in my condensed tomato soup from a can.