Enchilada Pasta Casserole

Manitoba weather sucks. It's April 15th today, and we're having a snow storm?? Jeepers. I'm stuck inside my house today so it's a perfect day to cook/blog so to cheer myself up despite the reeeeeeediculous "spring" weather I'm going to share another of my favorite ever recipes.

On a scale of one to shit your pants good, this is shit your pants. It's classic comfort food and it's Mexican!! yay! (disclaimer: this is the only picture I took of this delightful dish, I was very busy making other things as well so I only thought of it after it was all said and done.)

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef (in this picture I had used ground turkey, works good too)
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
5 ounces of cream cheese (a little more than half of a regular block)
1/4 cup sour cream
1 can (10 oz.) enchilada sauce (red sauce)
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1 cup shredded monterey jack cheese, divided
(I generally just use whatever cheese I have on hand, sometimes marble, sometimes jalapeno cheese, sometimes a mix of the two)
1 cup frozen corn kernels, thawed (yeah, I usually forget to thaw my corn kernels when I make this recipe so don't make yourself feel bad if you forgot too... we could make a support group for people that forget things... of that nature)
1 can (4 oz) green chiles
12 ounces egg noodles (I think it's a 280-ish gram bag? something like that)
salt and pepper, to taste.

Directions:

     Preheat over to 350 degrees. Boil noodles and set aside. Brown your beef in a large skillet and drain the fat. Then add the chili powder, cumin and cayenne and mix it up. Add in the cream cheese and mix it around until melted. You actually have to break up the cream cheese a bit and stir it around so it melts and combines with the meat properly. The first time I made this I just plopped the block into the pan thinking it would melt without any help and went about prepping other stuff. When I checked the pan again a minute or two later the cream cheese had actually started getting brown on the bottom, like a piece of Halloumi cheese, so yeah, mix that stuff up.
     Combine the sour cream, enchilada sauce, half of the cheddar and half of the monterey jack cheese, corn kernels, green chiles and mix that up. Pour it over the beef mixture and let that simmer for 2-3 minutes. You should have cooked and drained your pasta at this point so add the cooked pasta to the pan and mix it up until everything is nicely coated in the sauce.
     Add the pasta/beef mixture into a greased baking dish and top with the remaining cheese. Bake for 15 minutes or until cheese has melted. Serve with some chopped fresh parsley on top if you feel like it. I have served this with my cornbread (shared a while back on this blog, you can find it here) and with a nice salad.

You're welcome. Stay tuned for next week's DOUBLE FEATURE!!!

xoxo
Ash

Apple Bavarian Torte

Today I am going to share one of my all time favorite desserts. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com a few years ago and I've made it a million times since. It's been amazing each and every time. Simple and sweet and an apple lover's dream.

Ingredients: (divided into crust, filling, and topping, respectively)
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract, divided
1 cup all-purpose flour

1 package cream cheese (8 oz)
1/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 apples - peeled, cored and sliced (I like using Granny Smith apples because they are nice and tart)
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup sliced almonds

First, preheat your oven to 450 degrees F.
Next, cream together the butter and sugar, then add the vanilla and flour (this is the crust). Press the crust mixture into the bottom of a springform pan (I have a 10 inch, but you could also use a 9 inch).

Super easy. Now, with a hand mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer, blend cream cheese and sugar (this is the filling). Then beat in the egg and vanilla. Pour the cream cheese mixture over the crust.

There ya go. Next, toss your chopped up apples with the sugar and cinnamon (this is the topping).

Add these on top of the cream cheese. There's not enough cream cheese to bind all of these apples onto the dessert so they just sit nice and pretty on top of the torte.
Throw that (well, no, don't actually throw it) into the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 400 degrees F and bake for another 25 minutes. Then sprinkle some almonds over top of the torte and bake until just lightly browned. Let cool, then cut into slices.

Ta da! I served mine with some caramel sauce drizzled over top however the caramel recipe I used is one that I will not use again so I figured it's no use to share it! As soon as I find a caramel recipe that I like you bet your ass it'll be on here.

Also, just as a little FYI, I've been tinkering around with my blog a little more (you may notice the Pinterest button on the bottom, yay!) and I think I've changed the settings so that anyone can comment. So go ahead and comment away! You don't need a google account to do it! Please tell me what you think!

Until next time...

xoxo
Ash

Hot Italian Sausage Stuffed Shells

Happy Easter Monday everybody! I happen to have this day off (no, I don't work for the government, I work this Saturday so this is my "weekend" technically) and have been pretty productive today. My floors are all clean, furniture is dusted, and bathrooms are sparkling. I'm on my second load of laundry and started on my last bit of studying. My mind started to wander (naturally) and of course the thing I decided I wanted to do most right now was blog! So lucky you! Today I'm going to be sharing one of my original recipes. It was adapted from a recipe that my friend shared with me ages ago that I changed around and added a bunch of stuff too. I've started to make it a habit to write things down as I make stuff up because when something turns out great I want to share it exactly as I made it. Keep in mind that I'm a home cook with absolutely no training but a good imagination. So here goes...

Hot Italian Stuffed Shells

Ingredients:

Olive oil
2 Italian sausages, casings removed and crumbled (I used hot but you can use mild or whatever you feel like)
Box large pasta shells (I used exactly 27 of them in this recipe)
2 1/2ish cups tomato sauce, divided (I used my own homemade sauce, so go ahead and use whatever you want)
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tomato, diced
1 cup fresh spinach, chopped
4-6 fresh basil leaves
2-3 oz goat cheese (I used half of a 130 gram package)
White wine (just a splash)
1 cup Parmesan cheese, divided
1 cup Mozzarella cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Start by pre-heating your oven to 350 degrees and getting a large pot of salted water boiling. Once the water is boiling, add your pasta shells and cook just enough so that they are pliable but not all the way cooked through. This won't take very long. Drain the pasta shells and set aside. Next, heat some olive oil in a pan on medium-high heat. Add the garlic to the pan and saute for 1 minute. Then add the Italian sausage and saute until almost cooked through, not more than 5 minutes. Add some of the tomato sauce, chopped spinach, chopped basil, goat cheese, white wine and half of the Parmesan cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until cheese has melted and mixture is heated through.

You don't want this mixture to be too watery as this will be going inside the shells and you want it to stay there, so you can add less tomato sauce to start and then add more if you feel it's necessary. The amount of tomato sauce was the one thing I didn't write down as I just added as much as I thought it needed and didn't think about being specific. Once the mixture is heated through, spray a 9x13 inch (approximately) baking dish with cooking spray, spread the a good amount of tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish and start to fill your pasta shells. Remember that the pasta shells aren't totally cooked through at this point and you'll need enough sauce to essentially cook the pasta shells all the way through, I would say add anywhere from 1/2 cup to 1 cup of tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish. Place them in the baking dish and keep going until you don't have any filling and/or pasta shells left.

Cover this sucker with the rest of the Parmesan and the Mozzarella  and bake for 20-25 minutes or until cheese is melted.

And there you have it. You can serve this with a nice salad and some crusty garlic bread on the side.
Stay tuned next week for the next update of Food Talk at Five.

xoxo

Ash