Exhibit #5978b on why I’ve lived in suburbia for too long: I found it more than a little bit exciting that they recently redid our Target. New carts! Fresh groceries! (and the pièce de résistance) In-store Starbucks!

I pushed our cart up and down each aisle of the grocery section (which is a financially dangerous thing to do at Target) just to see what all they have now, hoping to find some potentially interesting on-the-package recipes to share here on this blog. I brought the cart to an abrupt halt when I saw Giada De Laurentiis‘ new line of pasta for Target. Hello, recipes!

Giada’s spaghetti was the first box I picked up and on the back was the recipe for Lemon Spaghetti that I’m sharing today. Spaghetti tossed in a light sauce of lemon, olive oil, parmigiano-reggiano and basil is absolutely as fresh-tasting as it sounds. The flavors really scream spring and summer lunch, but I love lemon so much that I wouldn’t dream of waiting till then to eat this. It is such a quintessential Giada recipe, with the bright flavors and simple ingredients. The whole family loved it!

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© Cooking On the Side, 2011. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/lemon-spaghetti/

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The panicked look on my face probably startled my husband into thinking something dire had taken place.

“Where’s the ricotta???”

Truthfully, for the first few seconds after I realized the stuffed shells recipe I was following seemed to have omitted the ricotta…well, I did have a minor momentary freakout. It shouldn’t have been a real showstopper, but when I’m racing against the sun to prepare and photograph a meal before putting it on the dinner table, the last thing I want to find out is that the recipe I’m following has flaws. Sometimes when you find one error in a recipe, others aren’t far behind.

I scanned over the recipe again and again, but there was no mention of ricotta cheese at all. Impossible! Stuffed shells are made with ricotta, or at least the kind I like to eat do. I wondered if I had mistakenly chosen a sausage-and-spinach-only version, but the photo on the side of the box where I found the recipe depicted shells just brimming with spinach-flecked ricotta. It was definitely supposed to be in there.

Fortunately, this recipe error seemed to be an isolated incident. Hoping I wouldn’t wind up with way too much filling I went ahead and added in a pound of ricotta anyway. I just couldn’t bear to make stuffed shells without it. They turned out just right – that classic, homey comfort dish I’ve known and loved for years, made a little healthier with a bag of baby spinach mixed in. And ricotta. Problem averted.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2011. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/sausage-spinach-stuffed-shells/

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How many times have you come across a recipe like the one below for Penne with Artichokes on a food label? A tiny 3″ square with no photo or headnotes, significantly truncated to fit on the box?

Recipes like this are kind of mysterious. You have no idea of what the dish looks like or how it tastes and it can be a challenge to decipher the oh-so-brief directions. It was mysterious little on-the-package recipes like these which sparked my interest in starting this blog two years ago. There were so many of them popping up on labels in my pantry, I became very curious to see how they actually came out and hoped to find some hidden gems along the way (which I have).

You guys know that when I say food packages I don’t mean “packaged food”, as in mixes and prepared or processed foods, right? Every once in a while someone will indicate to me that they think Cooking On the Side is about cooking with processed foods and I cringe. Yikes, it’s just the opposite!

Wherever possible, I like to cook from scratch. For this blog, I look for the recipes that appear on basic ingredients – flour, butter, fresh meats and vegetables, pasta, chocolate and so on. I have found a number of fabulous new recipes in the course of this little endeavor – and today’s easy, flavorful tomato and artichoke pasta dish is one of them.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2011. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/penne-with-artichokes-and-how-i-started-this-blog/

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Baked pasta – seriously??

I know that for a lot of folks the weather this week has been an absolute scorcher. But here in San Diego, we’ve kind of been experiencing the opposite (but not at all severe) phenomenon…it’s actually been a bit cold and blustery. In fact, I nearly turned the car around as I was taking my kids out to the Wild Animal Park – the fog was dense and drizzly on the way out there and my duo are still pretty little. Fortunately, the sky cleared up and we had a blast with the flamingos, meerkats and gorillas.

The brisk, gray weather put me in the mood for a good spinach lasagna, using the basil pesto I recently made. The recipe, from the back of a package of shredded cheese, uses no-boil noodles so it was actually easy to prepare on a weeknight. Although you can’t really see it in the photos, the pesto is prominent throughout the lasagna layers and full of flavor. There’s a fair amount of spinach in there as well so you can feel good about getting your veggies in.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2010. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/spinach-pesto-lasagna/

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I’m an Auntie! My sister and her husband welcomed their first child, a baby boy, earlier this week (with a rather quick labor for a first child, I might add – just 6 hours!) and we’re all overjoyed. They just brought him home from the hospital yesterday, so now the real fun begins. The “new guy” is just 11 weeks younger than my own little man – our family holiday gatherings will forever have a new “energy” with these two little boys running around!

My nephew is actually among a huge wave of births going on among my friends. There have been at least eight new babies since October (three just in the last week) and another five or six friends are due before June. It’s incredible! Everyone gives each other a lot of support, which is especially appreciated in those early days when you’re a zombified mess from lack of sleep. A number of fantastic ladies brought over homemade meals after I had my son in December and I’m excited to have the opportunity to “pay it forward”.

Which brings me to baked pasta…and this wonderful Shrimp with Orzo recipe, from inside the wrapper of a can of crushed tomatoes.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2010. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/shrimp-with-orzo/

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Once upon a time, years ago, we had a good friend over for dinner. It was the first time we’d ever hosted her so I wanted to roll out the red carpet, so to speak, with a delicious, hearty pasta carbonara. I’d never made it before, but it was pasta – how hard could it be?

And then I got to the last step where I was to add the sauce made of cheese, heavy cream and eggs. And serve.

Ummm…did this recipe get cut off? It wants me to serve this tossed in raw egg? I’m not gonna do that! That’s not safe! Not to mention disgusting! I’ve gotta serve something right now. Aaaahh…what do I do??!

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© Cooking On the Side, 2010. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/fettucine-carbonara/

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[tweetmeme] Is there anything more homey than a big ol’ broccoli casserole? Perhaps it’s a sign of my “settling down”, now that I’m married with two kids and live in the suburbs (when did this happen?) but I’ve rediscovered casseroles in the past year or so. You’ll almost never see one on a restaurant menu but so many of us grew up with them on our dinner tables at home. When that shallow 13 x 9″ dish comes out of the oven, with errant strands of cheese baked onto the sides, I just know I’m in for a treat.

I’d actually describe this casserole as “mac & cheese with broccoli”.  Steamed broccoli is tossed with spiral-y fusilli pasta in a creamy cheddar cheese sauce, topped with Parmesan and baked to bubbly deliciousness.  I’m pretty sure I found this recipe on the side of a package of broccoli florets, although unfortunately I forgot to save enough of the original package to know for sure. Two good things I do know: 1) it tastes great alongside ham and 2) even a two-year-old will eat it.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2010. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/broccoli-cheese-pasta-casserole/

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When I assemble a lasagna – or any layered dish, really – it feels a bit like an art project. Like a pasta-based mosaic, where you thoughtfully arrange all the individual components in such a way that when it all comes together you have something exciting to behold. It’s almost therapeutic.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2009. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/three-layer-lasagna/

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Rich, golden spinach-bacon macaroni and cheese is kind of like having a little angel and a little devil on each shoulder. It’s decadent for sure, but the spinach relieves just a touch of the guilt.

This was a rather simple recipe, from the back of a pouch of Kraft cheddar cheese, but the flavors were anything but basic. There’s no added seasoning whatsoever to this dish – all of the rich flavor comes from the ingredients themselves. The roux for the cheese sauce starts from the leftover bacon drippings, distributing a gentle bacony flavor throughout the pasta. The cheddar is both sharp and buttery and the parmesan is salty and a little nutty, so the combination is pretty robust and complex. And aside from a welcome color contrast, the spinach adds a nice herbiness to the mix.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2009. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/spinach-bacon-macaroni-cheese/

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I’ve seen other pasta dishes that are similar to this one, with thinly sliced caramelized onions intertwined with spaghetti. It’s almost as if they’re in camouflage, their lithe lankiness assimilating amongst the pasta.  My husband, alas, is no fan of onions so I usually end up choosing recipes where they’re not too prominent. But then I thought about that Jessica Seinfeld cookbook where she hides butternut squash in mac & cheese so the kids won’t know they’re eating vegetables. This recipe sounded so enticing and the onions had a rather stealth presence…perhaps my better half would enjoy the dish so much he wouldn’t mind?

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© Cooking On the Side, 2009. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/whole-grain-spaghetti-with-cherry-tomatoes-pecorino-romano-recipe/

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