Italian Pasta Salad

I forgot how much I love this salad.

I got the recipe from my sister-in-law who got it from a friend.

The key to this salad - the secret is in the sauce!

Ken's Steakhouse Italian with Aged Romano Dressing

Go get some!!

Great things about this salad:

It's not an exact science

Always a hit at gatherings of all sorts

Simple

Easy

Quick

Need I say more?

Ingredients

Tri-Color Rotini

Black Olives

Cherub Grape Tomatoes

String Cheese, sliced in 1/4-1/2 inch pieces

Bell Pepper, chopped

Mini Pepperoni

Ken's Steakhouse Italian with Aged Romano Dressing

Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and rinse in cold water until pasta is cool to touch.

Toss all ingredients together and toss in a healthy dose of dressing.

Back when I only had one child, I would cut the tomatoes in half and slice the olives. Oh how things change!!!

Miss you Michelle!! Come visit me soon!

Chicken Saltimbocca

A good friend told me the secret to delicious food involves the three B's: Butter, Bacon & Booze.

Well, this recipe has it all: fresh herbs, butter, bacon, fresh mozzarella, butter, wine, butter....oh...and butter.

Ingredients:
Chicken breasts
Flour
Salt & Pepper
Olive Oil
Bacon (I prefer pre-cooked or you can use prosciutto - but who remembers to get prosciutto at the grocery store?)
Fresh Mozzarella, sliced
Fresh Sage, coarsely chopped
White Wine

Salt & Pepper both sides of the chicken breasts. Dredge each breast in flour.

In a heavy skillet over medium-high heat, heat olive oil. When hot, add about a tablespoon of butter. Cook chicken in oil until underside is golden brown. Turn breasts over and continue cooking. Meanwhile, sprinkle chopped sage leaves over each chicken breast. Lay strips of bacon over each chicken breast. Finally, cover bacon with slices of fresh mozzarella. Cover skillet and cook until chicken breasts are cooked through and cheese is melted. Remove the chicken from the skillet to a plate and keep warm.

Pour about a cup of white wine in the hot skillet, scraping up the brown bits from the chicken. Over medium heat, let wine reduce by half. Remove the skillet from the heat and add about 2-3 tablespoons of butter and mix until combined.

Serve chicken over pasta and spoon sauce over EVERYTHING.

Italian Cream Soda

This is such a refreshing drink! Even Alex thinks so and he's more of a plain Jane kind of guy.

Pour the following ingredients in a glass in the order listed:

Glassful of club soda (you could use sparkling water if you like)

A shot or so of flavored syrup, to taste (I like hazel nut)

A splash of half & half

Relax and enjoy!

Chicken Alfredo

WARNING! By no means is this dish healthy for you! It's got heavy cream and butter. But what this dish is is YUMMY. Alex loves alfredo sauce and it's just as easy to make the sauce than it is to buy it in a jar.

1 lb. any type of pasta
1/2 c. butter (that's one stick - yikes!)
1 c. heavy cream (double yikes!!)
1 c. grated parmesan (~4 oz.)
Salt & Pepper
Chicken (optional)
Peas or broccoli (optional)

Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and set aside.

In a large skillet, melt butter. Stir cooked pasta into butter. Add cream & parmesan. Toss over low heat until pasta is well coated and cheese is melted. Toss in chicken and peas and heat through.

Italian Meatballs

We kind of got tired of the same old spaghetti and meat sauce but didn't really want to sacrifice cost. So the new twist was meatballs, but we've never been really satisfied with the frozen ones we usually get from Costco. Instead we tried the homemade stuff which was much better. The only sacrifice here is it takes just a little longer to cook. The recipe we used was for Mama Iuliucci's Famous Meat-a-balls.

Let me know if you have/find a good recipe for Italian meatballs. We're always up for trying something different. For now, we might stick with this recipe and may try it with the Italian Spaghetti Sauce recipe Grandma Googie gave us.

Note: I didn't feel like frying anything and since it was soooooo cold, we baked them on a broiling rack (so the fat could drip away) at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Spicy Romano Chicken

Back when Alex and I used to eat out often, we loved going to Johnny Carino's. And one of my favorite dishes there was the Spicy Romano Chicken: Bowtie pasta, cayenne pepper romano cream sauce, artichokes, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and green onions. It has two of some of my favorite things, artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes! Turns out this dish is really easy to make. I made it using rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, without mushrooms and with Parmesan cheese instead. Here is the recipe courtesy of recipezaar.com.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (cooked, thinly sliced)
1/2 cuo sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup diced green onion
1/8 cup sliced sun-dried tomato

alfredo sauce (made from your favorite recipe or from a jar)
1/4 cup grated romano cheese 1 (12 ounce) can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
cayenne pepper
bow tie pasta, cooked

In pan melt butter, saute chicken, mushrooms, green onions, artichokes and sudried tomatoes until hot.

Add Alfredo sauce and Romano cheese. Simmer.

Add cayenne pepper to taste. Serve over bowtie pasta. ENJOY!

Chicken, Capers, and Garlic in a Butter Wine Sauce

This is one of our favorite meals for dinner. We got the idea for it from watching Lidia's Italy on PBS. She is one of our fave chefs and we hope to someday go to one of her restaurants (there's one in KC where are friends live). I missed the part of the episode where she actually named the dish, so the title of this recipe is basically what's in the dish. And when I say recipe, I mean that in the loose sense. We never wrote down all the ingredients or how much, so we kind of go by memory (surprising since I'm an engineer and a little bit of a control freak). Fortunately, we've made this dish enough times to have repeatability, not to mention the recipe is VERY forgiving.

Ingredients:

Chicken breast cutlets

Flour

Salt & Pepper (optional)

Olive oil

Garlic, sliced very thin

Capers

White Cooking Wine

Butter

Heat olive oil in large skillet or sauce pan over med-hi heat. Lightly salt and pepper the cutlets and lightly dredge them in the flour, shaking off excess flour. Cook chicken in oil until golden brown (if chicken sticks to pan when trying to flip over, it's probably not ready to turn). When second side of chicken is cooking add garlic and capers (I love capers so I put a couple spoonfools of them) to the skillet placing them in between the cutlets. When chicken is cooked through, you can remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm, but I just leave them in to keep from having to wash another dish). Add cooking wine to deglaze the pan and cook until reduced to half. I probably put 1 to 1 1/2 c of wine b/c we like ours saucy. Once reduced, add a tablespoon or so of butter and melt. Serve over cooked pasta.

The last time we had this for dinner we served it with some zucchini and yellow squash seasoned with pepper and sauteed in a little bit of butter. Yum!