Pasta recipes

A slow-simmered meat sauce with ground beef, red wine, mushrooms, and Italian herbs ladled over spaghetti and showered with Parmesan. Two hours of simmering builds layers of deep, rich flavor.

This is an old Ruthenian peasant dish, very popular in the Carpathian Alps, as well as here in Fair Oaks, CA. Great for warming the tummy on a cold winter day. This is easy to prepare, and good as a luncheon dish served with salad, or as a first course soup prior to a lighter entree.

Hearty Italian sausage soup with hot sausage, tomato puree, red wine, bell peppers, and fresh herbs simmered in beef stock. Served over rotelli pasta with Parmesan.

Minnesota minestrone is a Midwestern take on the Italian classic, built with ground beef, kidney beans, cabbage, and corn. One Dutch oven, feeds ten, pantry friendly.

I love this sauce! The sodium in a whole pot is less than the amount in one serving of "heart healthy" jarred sauce.

In this fabulous recipe, we use several kinds of seasonal root vegetables, braising them with red wine, let the whole dish become more tasty, you can serve it as a vegetarian dish or a side-dish with turkey, chicken or beef.

Classic way to grill and serve a great sirloin steak. The mushroom red wine sauce had a perfect balance and was very easy to prepare. I grilled my steak in a cast iron grill pan to medium-rare and served with a stuffed tomato and a green salad.

Chock full of beef and loads of veggies that suck up the flavor of the red wine, herbs and garlic. Make up a large batch on the weekend and freeze in individual portions in zipper bags for up to 3 months.

Boneless beef short ribs, slow braised in a small crockpot (or pot if desired) perfectly sized for two servings.

Accompany with a Greek-style salad sprinkled with feta cheese and olives!

Indian gazpacho with hot green chiles, garlic, and dry red wine in a chilled tomato-based vegetable soup. The South Asian spin on Spanish gazpacho with a slow-burn heat.

So to start off with the first post, I decided to make a meal that screams of comfort food. Whilst it does take a bit of a while to get the meal done, once you take that first bite, heaven couldn’t seem closer if you were Adam trying to touch God’s finger in the “Creation of Adam” fresco created by Michaelangelo. The meal I speak of is Cottage Pie. There is much debate as to what exactly a cottage pie is and how it is different to a Shepherd’s pie...I don’t know. The dominant theory is that Sheperds pie uses lamb mince, whilst a cottage pie uses beef mince. I don’t know about you, but the term “Sheperds Pie” does not get my tastebuds going quite as well, so I prefer the term cottage pie. Besides, comparing the price of ground (mince) beef to ground lamb, a student would pick up the beef mince in a heartbeat without even so much as glancing at the lamb in the meat section. This cottage pie that I made is full of flavour, and just makes you want to cuddle up next to a fire and watch TCM movies all day either by yourself, or with a significant other. Here is the recipe:

Classic Greek moussaka with layers of browned eggplant, seasoned ground beef with red wine and cinnamon, and a rich bechamel sauce baked until golden and bubbling. A hearty Mediterranean casserole that serves 10.

We loved it and used it in the Turkey Lasagna recipe.

I've made this one for decades, and it is the one I keep going back to. More than one meat-lover has mistaken the bulgur for ground beef.

This delicious spaghetti sauce is loaded with heart healthy ingredients. After trying this sauce, you will always skip the store-bought ones.