Why I was thinking about Half Homemade tonight

[commodorified]

So I needed a really fast, everyone-is-tired-and-starving kind of supper tonight.

I made pasta with sauce, or, more accurately, Classico and I made pasta with sauce.

There are a lot of things I buy intending to adulterate them extensively before serving. Pasta sauce is a big one.

Making red sauce from scratch is possibly worth it if you have a huge tomato patch or a bushel from the market, or if you're an absolute wizard at Italian spicing, or if your honour is involved, but I suspect most people start a step or two along (and when they DO make sauce from scratch, make some to freeze and adulterate later).

Sometimes I start with plain tinned diced tomatoes.
More often, I start with spiced tinned diced tomatoes.
Mostly, I start with a jar of pasta sauce.

Tonight I started with a bottle of Classico Vodka and I:

1) Browned 2 mild Italian sausages and a chicken breast in a deepish frying pan,

2) Dumped the sauce over them,

3) Added 2 Tablespoons of diced dehydrated garlic, a heaping Tablespoon of Mexican oregano, sniffed it a bit, added a good pinch of adobo pepper and a good pinch of chipotle, tasted it, and added a good pinch of black pepper,

4) Added in about a cup of frozen chopped spinach,

5) Let it simmer while the noodles cooked, and served it with grated parmesan on top, garlic bread (split baguette, buttered and with more dehydrated garlic sprinkled on, then 15 minutes in a 350 F oven) on the side, and chopped tomato and cucumber salad heavily sprinkled with Penzey's Mural of Flavour.

It took about 30 minutes all in, and was good.

Comments

[seekergeek]

I don't think I've ever made spaghetti sauce from scratch. Like you, I find it rather more convenient to use a jarred sauce and doctor it up.

Another favorite get-it-on-the-table-fast dinner in my family is doctored up mac and cheese out of the box. The most common additions are hamburger or chicken and broccoli. Brown the meat, add water, boil, add broccoli, add noodles, cook, drain, add milk, butter and cheese powder. One pot, no muss, no fuss.

[reginagiraffe]

I always thought that that's what that show "Semi-Homemade" with Sandra Wassherface should have been.

And that's the way I mostly cook. A jar of this, a can of that, a spice packet, some meat, some carbs, some cheese.

[zingerella]

My veggie version of this is as follows.

Chop some onion (1/2 to 1 depending on number of hungry people), and sauté in some olive oil until clear.
Add 1 or 2 cloves minced garlic.
Chop 1 or 2 Tofurky Spicy Italian fake sausages, and brown in the pan with the onions.
Add a handful or two of sliced mushrooms (button are fine, cremini or portobello will give you a slightly different, but still yummy sauce), and some flaked red pepper.
Add any of the following: Some chopped red pepper (you can roast it first, if you want), some chopped sun-dried tomatoes, some canned or cooked chickpeas, some chopped fresh basil, anything else you think tastes good in pasta sauce (I can see adding black olives, for example, except that I hate olives. so I don't).
If you're using crushed tomatoes, you may wish, at this point, to add some oregano, or Italian seasoning.
Cover with your preferred sauce/crushed tomato solution and serve over pasta with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.

[indywind]

I think if you and I were to swap suppers on any random night, the rest of our families would probably not notice much difference.

[commodorified]

This is entirely possible. :-)

[commodorified]

I don't think I've ever made spaghetti sauce from scratch.

I have done: it involves scalding and peeling tomatoes, for which life is IME generally too short unless one is canning or freezing two or three bushels and can set up an assembly-line sort of approach, at which point the set-up and clean-up become a more tolerable percentage of your cooking time.

[seekergeek]

Argh, I've scalded and peeled tomatoes. No fun. No fun at all. I'll stick with jarred sauce.

[seekergeek]

I agree completely that that's how 'Semi-Homemade' should have been. My white-trash cooking background looks like haute cuisine in comparison to that show, ugh.

[auriaephiala]

Tonight's dinner was a family classic:

1. Remember to take the olive oil out of the fridge so it's warm enough to pour
2. Cook 2-3 sausages (in our case on the BBQ, but can be however works for you)
3. At the same time, chop a bunch of broccoli into bite-sized florets. Peel as much of the stems as you want to eat (just roughly with your knife, don't be fancy), and chop them into bite-sized pieces
4. Steam the broccoli
5. At the same time, boil a package of small pasta until al dente. Drain & return to pot.
6. Pour a glog of olive oil over the pasta. Add some dried oregano and dried chili flakes (1-2 tsp each or the inside dip of your palm), crushing them between your hands as you add them. Stir.
7. Stir in the steamed broccoli.
8. Slice cooked sausages into thin round slices. Add in and stir.
9. Serve with good grated Parmesan, Romano, or Asiago.

(It qualifies as half-homemade because of the sausages ... but it's close enough to homemade for me. Just about any sausage works for this. If you're vegetarian, skip the sausages or replace them with another veggie or protein of your choice.)

[krait]

This, for real. Life's too short for that even when tomatoes are not too expensive.

[krait]

I am addicted to 'doctoring' those seasoned rice packages from the grocery store brand. Put "Cajun rice" packet contents in pot, add extra Cajun seasoning (or something vaguely similar; Penzey's Northwoods or just some black pepper + cayenne pepper + oregano are common for me, too). Then follow the packet directions, and ~ ten minutes before it's done throw in whatever frozen vegetables you have and any fresh ones that need to get out of the fridge. (If you have any andouille, smoked sausage, or other meat, you can add that, too.)

Voila: one-pot cooking and one-bowl dining, virtually fat free (I do not add the recommended oil). Bonus: adding the veggies really stretches the yield, so instead of three meals you have five or six. (Meals = meals for one; I'm single and it shows.) Plus it's freezable if you get bored.