Dinner Tonight- Baked Pasta

Just before Christmas we had dear friends over for dinner and they requested this dish. It is supposed to be made with spaghetti, I decided to try something different and used spiral-shaped pasta instead, and it was not as good in my opinion. I will stick to spaghetti from now on.

Ingredients: 

1lbs. spaguetti

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 lbs. ground beef

1 teaspoon garlic salt

1 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper

6 button mushrooms, sliced ( clean mushrooms with damp paper towel before slicing)

2 minced cloves of garlic

2 (14.5oz) cans diced tomatoes

1 (15oz) can tomato sauce

2 teaspoons dried Italian seasoning

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 1/2 cups shredded Italian cheese blend

Directions: 

Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil. 

In a large Dutch oven, cook beef and garlic salt over medium-high heat until beef is browned and crumbly. Drain; set aside.

In the same pot, add remaining 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, bell pepper, mushroom, and garlic, saute until tender. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper. Add beef, bring to a boil. Remove from heat. 

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 13x9 baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Spread 1/2 cup sauce on bottom of prepared pan, Top with half of spaghetti noodles, half of spaghetti sauce, and 1 cup of cheese. Repeat layers with remaining ingredients, ending with cheese. Bake for 15 minutes, or until  cheese melts.

                                  The main dish.

We served it with a simple homemade white bread; and had tomato brushetta ( made by Dear Husband) and olive tapenade ( store bought) to top it up.

Dinner Tonight-Seafood Pasta

Both Dear Husband and I love seafood, so we decided to make seafood linguine. Dear Husband wanted mussels, but our fishmonger was out of it, so he settled for Littleneck Clams instead. And I chose huge sea scallops.

We did not use a recipe for this, but this is more or less what we did:

• Soaked the clams in water.
• Drained the clams and let them rest in the fridge for a bit.
• Made a sauce out of beer, finely diced shallots, onions, tomatoes, garlic, butter, thyme, banana peppers ( just because we had a ton in the yard) bay leaf, salt and pepper.
• We steamed the clams just until they opened, and got them out with a spider.
• Meanwhile, we cooked the linguine until it was al dente. We drained it and put it back in the pot.
• We took about half the clam sauce and dumped into the pasta, adding lemon zest and parsley. The rest of the sauce we poured over the clams. 
• As for the scallops, I rinsed them, patted them dry, and put them in a smoking hot cast-iron skillet along with some olive oil and butter. I added some kosher salt and let it cook for two minutes in one side, turned them over and cooked for an additional minute. They came out perfect!

To accompany the pasta we made some rustic Italian bread, so delicious and crunchy just the way you get at nice Italian bakeries, I will post that recipe separately.

                                      Scallops over seafood linguine.

                               Clams steaming in the sauce- it smelled GREAT!

 Clams ready to be served- the sauce was terrific for dumking a hot, buttered slice of bread in.

                               Our rustic Italian bread, made from scratch.