Category: Main

Dishes that we think of as the main portion of the meal. You might be able to use some as sides, too.

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Polpette Casce e Ovo

Perhaps a meatless Monday meal?

Recently I’ve said that the French can make a great tasting dinner from anything, but Italians can make a great tasting dinner from nothing. With today’s recipe, that seems to be true. From the title, you can probably guess that it’s an Italian dish, and, as you’ll see, it’s made from practically nothing. Or at least from just a few staples, and perhaps something that you might otherwise toss into the trash. Well, not you, fellow scratcher; we’re sure, though, that there’s someone out there who throws away food items that might be a bit past their prime. With some creativity, those throw-away bits could make your next great meal.

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Mushroom Bourguignon

mushroom bourguinon
mushroom bourguinon
Hearty enough for a meal.

I have a hard time pronouncing bourguignon correctly, but, that’s okay. It’s a difficult word to get exactly right. Does that also describe you? If so, you can do as I do and simply call this dish mushroom boogeyman. It’s easier, and, if you’re like me, at least it’ll seem funny. Well, a little bit funny. A tiny bit?

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Portobello Stroganoff

mushroom stroganoff

mushroom stroganoff
Delicious, but save it for special occasions.

We’d wanted to make a version of this recipe for what may have been several years, but we hadn’t. It seemed too rich, too much cream, too many mushrooms –well, not really — but it did seem as if it would make a dish so rich in heavy cream that our arteries might harden just looking at it. Well, we went for it, and made it, anyway, and now you can try it, too.

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Pumpkin Gnocchi with Sage Butter Sauce

pumpkin gnocchi and Sage Butter Sauce

pumpkin gnocchi and Sage Butter Sauce
Perfect for Halloween!

We mentioned when we picked up our CSA share that included a pumpkin that we don’t carve it into a jack o’ lantern; instead, we eat it, by roasting it and scraping out the flesh. Sometimes we make Pumpkin Bread, sometimes Pumpkin Pie, and, sometimes, we have it as a main course in meals such as this one. (We actually use pumpkin a whole lot of ways, as you can see here).

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Broccoli and Asiago Agnolotti with Mushrooms

broccoli and Asiago agnolotti with mushrooms

broccoli and Asiago agnolotti with mushrooms
Perhaps this is a traditional Italian dinner.

We have no idea if this is anything close to a traditional Italian pasta; we’ve never seen pasta filled with broccoli and Asiago cheese. Even so, we think this dish fits the spirit of an Italian staple. It’s pasta, for one, but, more importantly, it happens to use a few other ingredients that we had in excess. From what we see in traditional Italian recipes, they make do with what they have and try not to waste food. To us, it sounds as if Italians might be the original scratchers.

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Gemelli with Glazed Delicata Squash and Hazelnuts

gemelli with glazed delicata squash and hazelnuts

gemelli with glazed delicata squash and hazelnuts
Super easy!

We were excited to see a Delicata squash as one of the items in our most recent CSA share pickup. For those who haven’t had one, these are a full-flavored winter squash, but the skin is very delicate and edible, making it an easy squash to prepare. Last time we had a Delicata  squash, we roasted it with spices and sesame seeds. You can read about that recipe in the Squash Half-Moons with Butter, Sesame, and Salt post. This time we needed to bulk up the amount of food as this would be our main course for dinner, so we put together a little dish that included pasta.

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Gemelli and Peas with Hazelnut Gremolata

gemelli and peas with hazelnut gremolata

gemelli and peas with hazelnut gremolata
As fast as cooking plain pasta!

We got a big bunch of parsley in our CSA share, and we generally don’t use a huge amount each week, so we were afraid that it might just go bad and we’d have to toss it. We didn’t want that, so we searched our memory banks and remembered that some sort of sauce or paste is made mainly from parsley. What is it? Oh yeah, gremolata. Naturally, we looked it up just to be sure, and, yes, it’s basically parsley, lemon zest, and garlic. Well, we can do that.

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