Ravioli Lasagne

This is pretty simple. The time-consuming part is assembling the ravioli. You could also make this infinitely faster and just use frozen ravioli. But there's something charming about hand-made ravioli, so if you have the time, try it! 

This serves four, but you could easily change the quantities by using a bigger pan and more ingredients, or a smaller pan and less ingredients.

Ravioli

1/2 lb ground beef

garlic powder

fresh basil

salt and pepper to taste

24 wonton wrappers

Brown beef, drain. Return to pan, mix in spices. Remove from heat. 

Assemble ravioli by placing a spoonful of the meat into the middle of one wonton wrapper. As shown above, dip your finger in water and wipe the edges with water (some people use egg, but water works just as well. why waste an egg?). 

Top with another wrapper. Press edges together with fingers and press a fork into the ends to seal and make a pretty pattern.

For the 'Lasagna'

1 24oz jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce

12 grape tomatoes (or 1 large tomato), sliced 

8oz or 1/2 a block of Mozzarella cheese, grated or sliced thinly

1/2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese

olive oil, salt, pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400. 

Pour in 1/3 of the sauce into the bottom of a small baking dish (mine is a 5x5 square brownie pan). Place 4 ravioli in the sauce, top with 1/4 of the cheese and 1/3 of the sliced fresh tomatoes. Repeat, this should give you 3 layers. Top with any remaining sauce, mozzarella and parmesan cheese. 

Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Serve with garlic bread:

1/3 of a thick french loaf, cut in half

drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with basil, oregano, salt and pepper. 

Toast in a pan on the top rack of the oven, while you cook the ravioli.

 Cook 10 minutes or so, till crisp on top. Slice. Use the slices to sop up the yummy sauce!

Bread Soup

This soup has such a wonderful flavor because I made my own chicken 'stock'. Trying to see how many meals I can get from $8 worth of ingredients, I used up the rotisserie chicken carcass leftover from my 'Quick, Cheap, Lunch' post, from yesterday. I still have enough chicken for chicken salad sandwiches!
This is sort of like Pappa Al Pomodoro (which is basically a fancy Italian name for 'bread soup with tomatoes'), because I use tomatoes, bread and basil. Thats probably the only similarity. Oh and its soup.

Anyway, here is my recipe:
(this is an amazing soup)

1 rotisserie chicken carcass
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 tsp of basil (i used the squeeze tube type)
1 large or 2 smaller carrots, large chunks
4-6 cups of water (to cover)

To make the 'stock'

Put the carcass in a pot, along with carrots, garlic and basil. Cover with water, bring to boil, then lower to simmer. Simmer for an hour to hour and a half, until it tastes yummy and has a nice toasty brown colour.
Strain the liquid over a mesh strainer into a bowl. Discard all the bones and bits.

If you don't have time to do this (because who, really, has time for this?) put all the ingredients in a slow cooker, on low for 3 or 4 hours. Strain, and you're ready to go.

For the soup:

4-6 cups of home made stock (you could do store bought but i guarantee it wont be as tasty!)
1-1.5 cups shredded rotisserie chicken
1 large or 2 small carrots, thickly sliced
1-1.5 cup tomatoes (i used whole tomatoes from a can)
1 tsp (or another squeeze) basil
a couple of thick slices of day-old french bread (mine were about 2 inches thick) chopped into bite size pieces
garlic salt, pepper and a splash of lemon juice to taste
oh and sriracha! I used just a small squeeze :) you could do red pepper too

Add in chicken, carrots, tomato and basil to stock. Bring to a medium boil and cook about 15 minutes, till the carrots soften where you can put a fork through them easily (not mushy though!). Stir in bread and spices to taste. Cook another 5 to 10 minutes until bread gets soft. I like French bread in this because the chewy crust keeps the bread from dissolving everywhere, but the inside of the bread gets all soft like a dumpling.

Serve. No frills. This soup speaks for itself.

Tips to try

• Try this with Sourdough! The tang gives the soup just the right kick
• Smoked sausage instead of chicken
• Tomato soup instead of chicken stock

Quick, Cheap, Lunch

I think the fancy word for this is 'crostini' but its basically chicken toast. I know, you've probably read over this and are like '8.00 for lunch isnt that cheap!' but considering it probably costs about 60cents worth of chicken to serve each person, and 20cents worth of bread... thats really 80cents a serving.

Whole Rotisserie Chicken (5.99)

French Bread (1.99)

Kalamata Olives, sliced (pantry)

Pickled Garlic, sliced (pantry)

Shredded cheese (optional)

Slice bread and toast in a skillet or under a broiler until brown and crispy (3 or 4 mins). 

Top with chicken, cheese, olive and garlic. 

Need I say more?

But wait... there is more!

• Make stock or soup from the leftover bones and bits
• Make french toast or croutons with the remaining bread (serve with soup or in salad)
• Any leftover chicken meat makes a wonderful chicken salad, great for sandwiches!
• Extra chicken also goes farther in pasta!

That is at least 3 other meals you can make, with one 5.99 chicken, considering you are serving two to three people. Are we thinking cheap yet?

Far-from-French Toast

This is a rolled sandwich bread "french toast" that I saw on pinterest. It's really easy and delicious.

I used 12 grain bread for this, which was really tasty because the grains got slightly toasted which gave them a nutty flavor. And its... y'know... healthy and stuff too. Do this with any sort of bread you have.
This recipe serves one, but with the amount of egg mixture, you could probably serve four people, so just use more bread.

Two pieces of bread

1 egg

1 TB (or a splash) of milk

cinnamon sugar

some butter 

You'll need a skillet and a rolling pin (or a smooth sided cup). 

Heat the skillet with butter until sizzling, on medium. 

Roll the bread out flat, to about 1/4 inch thickness. Butter one side and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Roll all that up inside the bread.

Beat egg in a bowl with milk, sprinkle in some cinnamon sugar.

Dip bread in egg mixture to coat, then drop in the pan, seam side down. Cook for 1 minute, turn and repeat for each side until its nice a toasty and golden brown on all sides.

Serve with syrup or honey.

Skillet Leftover Teriyaki Noodoe

Got enough leftovers for just one person? Make pasta and serve three! 

I made Teriyaki for lunch today and used the leftovers, plus some random stuff in my pantry, to make dinner. Win!

Ingredients:

Leftover Teriyaki (about 1.5 cups or 1 serving)

[Do not include rice, use that for Yaki Onigiri, Fried Rice, soup filler, etc]

1/2 can of pineapple (in pineapple juice) chopped [or buy chunks instead of rings 0.o]

4 cloves pickled garlic (or regular garlic), chopped

2 sheaths Soba noodles (or spaghetti if you don't have that)

Directions:

 In a hot skillet, drop in 1 tbs butter (or oil); cook garlic till toasted, 3-4 min. Put in pineapple, cook for another minute to caramelize a bit. Set mixture aside on a plate.

In the same skillet, bring about 2 cups water to boil and cook the Soba noodles till soft (only takes 3-4 min). Do not drain!

Add pineapple juice, garlic mixture and teriyaki mixture into the skillet with noodles. Stir, cook about 5 minutes. Turn heat off and let sit about 5 minutes so noodles absorb the liquid.

Top with Sriracha (optional). Serve!

Winner Winner, Mexican Dinner?

Sorry about the title - I cant resist, I've been watching too much Guy on Food Network.
One of the ways I like to save money on food is by only doing a few big 'recipes' each week, say three to four dinners a week, and work with leftovers and pantry staples for the rest. That way, I use up the food in the house so nothing goes to waste, it saves me a lot of extra work doing big 'meals', and saves me quite a bit at the grocery store.
This is a recipe I got off of Food Network as well. Its by Ree Drummond (the Pionneer Woman). This is a side dish she used in one of her episodes, that i decided to make into kind of a main course, since I had all the ingredients on hand.
The only changes I made - I halved her recipe and added some chopped smoked beef sausage.
This I served with refried beans and warm tortillas, which made a pretty yummy dinner. You could probably skip the sausage entirely and it'd be a vegetarian dinner (since people seem to like that kind of thing now days).
Note that the refried beans I use are always the 'vegetarian' marked ones - they're better for you with much simpler ingredients and, to me, more authentic tasting.
This is her recipe, with my personal changes:

Cheesy Mexican Style Rice
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 large onion, chopped
1/2 a 13oz smoked beef sausage, chopped into small peices
2 cups rice 
One 14.5-ounce can whole tomatoes
One 10-ounce can whole green chiles (chop them, optional)
1 teaspoon cumin (or more to taste)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 cups water, plus 4 beef bullion cubes (since I did beef sausage. you could do chicken)
1 1/2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

Directions
-Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
-Heat the oil in a large dutch oven and add the garlic and onions. Cook, 3 to 4 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and add the rice. Stir constantly, making sure the rice doesn't burn. Cook over low heat, about 3 minutes.
-Next, add the whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, cumin, salt, pepper and cayenne. Stir to combine and let cook, about 2 minutes. Finally, add the water/bullion mixture and stir. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then reduce heat to low. Cover, and simmer until the rice is not quite done, 10 to 15 minutes.
-Top with the cheese, and then bake with the lid off until the cheese is melted and the rice fully cooked, about 15 minutes. 

Tortillas
Warm small, flour tortillas on a nonstick skillet over medium heat, 30-45 seconds on each side, until warm and soft. Or cover the whole stack with paper towels, put on a plate and microwave for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes to warm. Cover with paper towels and a kitchen towel to keep warm.

Refried Refried Beans
For the refried beans - heat a saucepan or small skillet to medium heat. drop in the canned beans and cook, stirring regularly, until beans start to look more liquid and are heated through. Then add 1-2 teaspoons of oil, and cook a couple of minutes, stirring often, until beans absorb the oil and get a nice, almost liquid texture. Add salt to taste.

Assemble as you would any sort of taco - tortilla, a scoop of cheesy rice, a scoop of beans.
If you want to be really Tex-Mex, you can spoon sour cream over the top.

Tips and Ideas

• Assemble as many of these as you can, wrap them in aluminum foil and freeze for easy dinners or lunches.
• Make a Tex-Mex 'lasagna' by layering - tortillas, rice, beans, tortillas, rice, beans, etc. Top with cheese and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. 
• This would make a great filling for empanadas!