My older sister and her husband will be stopping by this week end. I want to make a nice dinner for them. I decided that my sweet pepper and fennel soup would be a good start.
Karl’s Sweet Pepper and Fennel Soup
with Italian Sausage Meat Balls II
Tag Archives: Italian cuisine
Karl’s Sweet Pepper and Fennel Soup with Italian Sausage Meat Balls II
Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Soups
Karl’s Caprese Salad
Jan likes caprese salad, which is tomatoes, mozzarella, onion, olives and basil in a light vinaigrette. Usually I go to La Villa, a very good Italian deli in Willow Glen and pay through the nose for a very small portion. While La Villa makes a good salad I could make it cheaper and fresher. Today I noticed that we had a lot of tomatoes in our garden that were just ripe, and I thought, “Gee, why don’t I make my own?”
Karl’s Caprese Salad
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Karl’s Chicken Pesto with Angel Hair Pasta
A week ago the basil in the garden was beginning to look sad. I harvested what I could and turned it into pesto to preserve it. Jan saw it in the refrigerator and asked for something made with the pesto tonight. I came up with this dish.
Karl’s Chicken Pesto with Angel Hair Pasta
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Filed under Main Dishes, Poultry
Karl’s Pesto
We have had a lot of trouble with bugs and pests in the garden this year. The basil was beginning to look sad. I salvaged what I could and made pesto to preserve what was left.
Karl’s Pesto
Filed under Sauces and Spices
Karl’s Garlic Oregano Green Beans
I am always experimenting with quick ways to spruce up plain steamed green beans. This one was to go with my Chicken Pesto with Angel Hair Pasta.
Karl’s Garlic Oregano Green Beans
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Filed under Side Dishes, Vegan, Vegetables
Karl’s Italian White Bean Dip
This Sunday we will be going over to the kids’ apartment, so I need to make my dishes transportable. Miriam is still on the soft food diet, so she has asked for bean dip. I think I will make two, a white bean dip and a black bean dip. I was thinking of finding a yin & yang serving dish, but I was not able to find one in time for dinner.
Karl’s Italian White Bean Dip
Filed under Side Dishes, Starches, Vegan
Karl’s Vegetarian Lasagna
Adapted from a Cook’s Illustrated recipe
A friend of ours had a reoccurrence of her cancer, an all too familiar event in our lives. She is so sick that it is hard for her to cook, so I am making one of my mitzvah lasagnas. When a person is on chemo they tend not to be concerned with eating. I unfortunately know this from personal experience. This dish is designed to tempt you into eating at least a bite or two to keep body and soul together.
Karl’s Vegetarian Lasagna
Filed under Main Dishes, Vegetarian MD
Karl’s Italian Wedding Soup
Jan asked for some comforting, warm Italian Wedding Soup. After a brief warm spell, winter just came back to San Jose with a vengeance and there is snow on the brown hills. San Jose is in the south of the Bay Area with hills on both sides, there is a reason they call it Silicon Valley. Locals orient themselves by the color of the hills. The green hills, the coastal range, are always green and west. The brown hills, the Diablo Range, are higher, dryer and east. If there is any snow near San Jose it will be at the top of Mount Diablo.
Karl’s Itallian Wedding Soup
I did not like any of the recipes on-line; they were either too simple or too complex. Although I generally avoid recipes that are “add can of A” to “can of B,” I am not a food-Nazi. I will use some shortcuts, especially if it is a weekday meal. I looked up what defines Italian Wedding Soup on Wikipedia. The basic ingredients are green vegetables, meat (usually meatballs), chicken broth, and usually some kind of small pasta. I decided to be creative.
Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Soups
Karl’s Lasagna
There are no bad lasagnas, only good and better lasagnas. This, and the fact that lasagna freezes well, keeps Stouffer’s in business. While each step of building a lasagna is not particularly difficult there are a lot of steps to the process. I use the term building, rather than making, because unlike most dishes where you put all of the ingredients in and stir, good lasagna is build layer by flavorful layer. While very delicious, lasagna should not be mistaken for a health food, even my low fat version is relatively high fat (lots of cheese and meat) and high in carbohydrates.
Karl’s Lasagna
This is one of those dishes from my youth. Lasagna was a dish that my mother would make very occasionally, because while being good it is also very labor intensive. In addition to everything you have to do today, in my mother’s day you had to boil and cool the noodles enough so you could handle them (but not over boil or break them). With the introduction of no-boil noodles the process is slightly easier.
I never made lasagna myself until Cook’s Illustrated printed “Faster Lasagna” in their Sept.-Oct. 2002 issue, where they passed a favorable judgment on no-boil noodles. Since that time I have used their recipe as a guide, but as usual I had some standard changes to what they consider perfect (lower fat and lower salt and with all that cheese why would you add cream?). When Myr asked for lasagna last week I decided to write up my changes to the C.I. recipe.
For me this is a dish usually I make for friends who are having a medical crisis. At my age, this has happened with uncomfortable regularity. After it has cooled Continue reading
Filed under Casseroles, Main Dishes, Pork, Vegetarian MD
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Miriam
Jabberwocky Stew 