Tag: spinach

After seeing this completely and totally awesome page for minestrone linked off of wikipedia, I felt it was my patriotic duty to make minestrone. After all, I do live in Las Vegas, and anybody who lives here knows that italian restaurants outnumber any other kind of restaurant by a factor of approximately thirty-seven to three. I especially liked the basic assumption- that you can pretty much just buy seasonal vegetables, completely at random, throw them all together, and make some soup. I mean, you basically don't need to know how to do anything. How could this possibly go wrong?

So I went to Sunflower Market, since they sell local produce, and bought twelve of every vegetable they had. If you could screw up minestrone, I was going to figure out how. I came home, got a big stock pot out, and started my soffrito- a fancy word to say I rendered the fat out of some bacon and then threw in some onions, leeks, and shallots.

I also didn't have pig trotters or marrow bones or anything like that, so for thickening I waited until my 'soffrito' was pretty much sweated, then threw in some flour, like a roux. Then I spent TWO. HOURS. cutting up vegetables and throwing them in. I cubed the turnips. I chopped up the zucchini, summer squash, celery root, spinach leaves, potatoes, and carrots. It looked like I was carving up the grisly aftermath of a war against the vegetables, a war which I handily won. All of it drowning in six cans of chicken broth and a pitcher of water, with a sprig of rosemary (I fished that out after everything started smelling like rosemary), a bay leaf, and a parmesan crust. Then, because I was pretty much throwing in everything I had, I put in two cans of kidney beans and a cup of orzo. By this point I was in such a rut that I might have diced my children and thrown them in, had they wandered into the kitchen.

It cooked for HOURS. Three and a half hours. I felt like a witch, sitting there and stirring my massive cauldron of stuff. And then something magical happened. It started to smell like delicious.

So, basically, you'd have to try way harder than I did to screw up minestrone.

I have always made my own bread crumbs for this recipe. In my opinion the larger crumbs work better than the small size of a prepared bread crumb. You can use any flavor of bread (white, wheat, french bread), day old bread works great, as does the heel of the bread. If you would like to use a prepared breadcrumb rather than crumbling up some bread you might consider using some panko style crumbs

Creamy Spinach

• 2 package (10 oz each) frozen chopped spinach
• 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup small bits of torn up bread (about 2 slices)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• seasonings of your choice. (I use 2-3 tsp Italian Seasoning).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook the spinach according to the package directions and drain well. Combine the spinach, cream cheese, butter, and salt. Pour into a greased or buttered 8in by 8in baking dish.

Topping: Pour the melted butter over the top of bread crumbs. Use a fork to stir well making sure to moisten all of the crumbs. Add in the salt, pepper and seasonings. Spread out evenly over the top of the spinach mixture.

Bake uncovered for 30 minutes or until lightly browned and heated through.

(Note: If you double this recipe, bake it in a 9 in by 13 in dish following the same cooking time.)

This one starts off as a bit of a disaster.

I had four great tastes that I figured would taste great together- spinach, salt pork, artichoke hearts, and mushrooms. Unfortunately, my quantites were a bit off, and the cumin I added really didn't help the dish much; in addition, the artichokes were marinated in a bit saltier liquid than I'd hoped for.

Were I to do it again, my next recipe would look more like this:

• 1 lb bacon, cooked on low until all the fat is gone
• 2 cups chopped mushrooms, cooked in the bacon grease
• 1 lb sauteed spinach, seasoned with garlic and onion powder
• 1 can of artichoke hearts

After cooking all these and putting them in the food processor, I believe this simpler pate would fix the saltiness of the original recipe, where the entire dish was dominated by the 2 cans of artichoke hearts I added. I'll let you know how this revised recipe turns out.

Romano's Macaroni Grill 2001 N Rainbow Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89108

Teleolurian It must have been a busy night.

When we got to the Macaroni Grill, we faced the usual line-out-the-door setting that you get when you decide to go to a popular restaurant on the spur of the moment. Since I wanted to review the food, I decided to forego showing off my crayoned press pass and instead settled in for the half-hour wait.

In recent years, the Grill has gotten quite the menu facelift. Dining here is now more in the vein of classical Italian signature dishes and less of an upscale Olive Garden; however, the prices are still decent, with most dishes in the $10-$20 range.

Upon reaching our table, the server informed us that they were out of bread dishes and wine glasses, finding us some tumblers for drinking the house Red. Luckily, I'm not a bouquet snob, so I used the wine for fuel as I wrote scathing commentary ("she's just using you for your bed") on the paper tablecloth. With a communal bread plate, oil and balsamic vinegar, and an unspoken no-double-dipping rule, we sat around and chatted while our dishes came out.

For me, it was chicken scallopine ($9.49)- a bit heavy, but absolutely superb. The lemon-butter sauce didn't wimp out on the lemons, and the capers were heavily drenched and therefore delicious. Tender was the chicken, and tasty; the leftovers were even rather tender the next day (something you don't get in, say, a country steakhouse).

Tele's Ratings
Taste	7/10
Value	6.5/10
Service	4.5/10

Savory Masochist

Ding dong the traditional dish is dead. Wait. no. I just didn't get one.

After we got our red wine in tumblers and tore off a few chunks of bread, I decided to go with a build-your-own pasta deal. Macaroni Grill offers these little checklists that you insidiously mark as if you were building your own Frankenstein. I decided on a Penne, with Tomato Cream sauce, and Sun Dried Tomatoes, Roasted Red Peppers, Pine Nuts, and Chicken. It was pretty good, although I can't say as I would get it again. It's my own fault really, for just hitting rand when I was looking at the menu. Oh well. The company was good and we hadn't had a date night in near a decade, so it made up for my pasta. After that, we wrote some generally strange things on the table paper, and we were off! to another crazy adventure.

Oh, I would write a longer review, however Tele pegged most of it in his.

Savory Masochist's Ratings
Taste	5/10
Value	7/10
Service	3.5/10

Queen of Tarts
Okay, so when Macaroni Grill opened they had food that was so-so. In recent years the flavors had been stepped up and they redeemed themselves, until...that fateful night. If we offered to do the dishes I think they might have allowed us to do so. They were obviously understaffed being the day after Christmas, but no bread plates and no wine glasses wasn't the end of it. When the SM put in his original order it included artichokes. The waiter had to come back and let us know that they were out of those too. Apparantly not only did we need to do our own dishes, but we needed to go do our own grocery shopping for the ingredients before arriving at the resturaunt. Crazy!

Usually if I am at an Italian place I automatically order manicotti (if its Mexican then it is a bean and cheese burrito enchilada style), but I am trying to branch out a bit. So, on this evening I ordered Chicken Cannelloni (Hand-rolled pasta stuffed with oven-roasted chicken, melted cheese and spinach, then baked in an Asiago cream sauce. Topped with tomato sauce) for $9.99. The dish smelled and looked wonderful. I immediatly dug in and ate one out of the three stuffed pastas. Half way through the second shell I started to wonder "Where is the chicken?" I am a "recovering vegitarian" (as Tele calls it) so it really didn't bother me that I couldn't taste it or find it until I realized I am paying for chicken I can't find. Must find the chicken. So I tore apart the third shell in search for chicken. I eventually found a small sliver of shredded chicken. If this was Iron Chef the plate wouldn't have gotten high marks for the "theme ingredient" being the dominant flavor. Overall the taste of my dish was excellent, but I was dissapointed that with the name Chicken Cannelloni the chicken was not easy to find in the dish.

I have not given up on the Macaroni Grill yet because I must say that there bread rocks (mmm, bread), but I hope to never have the lack of service that we had that night again.

Queen of Tarts Ratings
Taste	8/10
Value	7/10
Service	4/10