Category Archives: Uncategorized

Jack is Cooking Baked Rigatoni with Herondale Farm Sausage

Posted on by under Uncategorized
Well Hello Internet!
I don’t normally like to eat pasta dishes with tomato sauce, but there are a few that i really like.  Normally i find that i like tomato sauces if they involve meat, like sausage or ground beef and also ricotta cheese.  So i made this delicious pasta dish which i suppose could be described as a baked ziti… but i don’t want to call it that as that conjures up many images of exactly what i don’t like.  
So this i call a Baked Rigatoni with lots of delicious sausage and Ricotta Cheese, to add a bit of greens i also included some kale, you know… just because.
Anyway, here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
Olive Oil 
4 Cloves Garlic (diced)
1 Onion (diced)
1 pound Herondale Farm Sweet Italian Sausage (removed from the casings)
1 bunch Kale (finely chopped)
2 14 oz cans of diced tomato
1 cup water
1 teaspoon Herbs de Provence
salt and pepper
1 lb of Rigatoni
1 lb of fresh Ricotta
2/4 lb fresh mozzarella
a handful of Parmesan cheese 
1. Preheat the Oven to 400°.  Meanwhile heat some olive oil in a pan on the stove.  Add the Garlic and Onion, and cook until slightly translucent.  Mix in the ground sausage and cook until it is nicely browned.  Once the sausage is browned, add the kale and toss to mix.  The kale will get nicely cooked throughout this, so cook it until it has only just begun to wilt.

2.  Add the diced tomato, the water, and the herbs de provence.  Season with Salt and pepper and bring it to a boil.  
3.  While this sauce is simmering, cook the pasta.  Cook it until it is very Al Dente, so its still just a little bit hard in the middle.  Its going to cook a lot longer in the oven, so the pasta will absorb the sauce and become nice and soft.  When the rigatoni is cooked add it into the sauce and mix it all together.

4. Put everything into a Baking dish, or as i have done – a trusty creuset.  Take the Ricotta cheese and add spoonfuls to the mix.  The trick here is not to mix it in entirely, but to rather leave pockets.  so take spoonfuls of it, and plunge it down, repeating over and over until you have injected all these bubbles of ricotta cheese.  Keep some leftover and put it all over the top.

5.  Top everything with the mozzarella cheese, and sprinkle the parmesan cheese over along with some salt and pepper.

6.  Place the dish in the oven, and bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until the cheese on top is starting to turn golden.

7.  Let the whole dish sit for a few minutes so the cheese solidifies, and gains a nice crust on top, and serve!

mmmm mmmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking Thanksgiving Dinner!

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Well Hello Internet!
I have dug up all the old posts that pertain to Christmas  Thanksgiving Dinner, and i made so many things, that they’ve been pushed off the main page here.  so i decided to make one conglomerate posting with everything i made!
Heres what Rosie and I made (if you click on the links you will be taken to the individual post):
and
Enjoy, and Happy Christmas Thanksgiving! to Everybody!
Jack

Jack is Cooking Stuffing!

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Well Hello Internet!
Another Huge part of any Christmas Thanksgiving! meal, or any meal involving turkey for that matter is the Stuffing.
Stuffing also contains a huge amount of Gluten, so my sister and I set out to make a gluten free stuffing.
We started with a recipe we saw on the food network, and then changed just about everything to make it far more delicious and far more Gluten Free.
Heres what you’ll need:
3 cloves garlic
6 tablespoons butter
8 oz pancetta diced
2 large onions chopped
2 carrots peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons chopped Fresh Rosemary
1 large jar of roasted whole peeled chestnuts (coarsely chopped)
1 lb of crusty gluten free baguettes chopped up into little cubes(you can often find these in the frozen section of fancy-ish grocery stores.  but if you are gluten-free you probably know where to get these kinds of things.  Whole foods definitely has it, as do more and more stores these days)
1 cup of chicken/turkey broth
salt and pepper
2 large eggs beaten
First!
take 2 tablepoons of the butter and melt in a pan.  fry up the pancetta until its kinda crispy.
drain all the grease out and put into a bowl
Next,
take the rest of the butter and melt into a pan.  cook the onions, carrots, rosemary, and garlic together until the onions are tender.
stir in the chestnuts.
put everything in the bowl with the pancetta and stir until mixed.
add in the bread chunksand toss to coat.  add the broth until its nice and moist, season with salt and pepper, and then mix in the beaten eggs.
pour into a baking pan
If you are cooking a huge meal (as we were) it is advisable to do this the day before, and refrigerate until the next day when you are ready to cook.
so
next day!
put some of this stuffing inside the turkey!  yum yum
the rest of the stuffing cover with tinfoil and bake at 350 for 30 minutes  then remove the tinfoil and bake another 15 minutes
Heres a tip:  if you are cooking this stuffing as part of a larger meal, remember this takes only 45 minutes to cook, and the turkey takes like 4 hours or something.  so cook this at the end!
in my larger conglomerate post about Christmas  Thanksgiving! Dinner i will talk about the timing of everything!
mmmm mmmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking Turkey!

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Well Hello Internet!
Today is thanksgiving so i am going to repost some of my older posts, that are extremely relevant to today!  About now you should definitely have started the turkey already, but in case you are having a last minute panic here are some great recipes!  These recipes originally were for christmas, so they may have a christmas theme, but i’ve tried to modify them a little bit
So the main event of the Christmas Thanksgiving! Dinner : Turkey!  well almost the main event, there is ham also.
But anyways, the Turkey!  this is actually pretty easy and almost impossible to screw up.
you can put whatever herbs and spices you want on it, but we had a heritage breed turkey, and honestly its so darn good that it doesn’t need anything except butter and stuffing!
So we took the turkey, and i put some of the delicious pancetta chestnut stuffing and i stuffed it in both ends.  then i took a whole lot of butter and rubbed it all over the turkey.
so somebody might notice that my turkey might be upside down.  however, i think its right side up.  and thats  because the skin on the breast is delicious, and if its in the bottom of the pan it gets soggy.  this way it gets really nice and crispy.  so BREAST UP!
after you’ve covered it in butter, put maybe an inch of water in the pan.  this is important.  very very important!  its the key to moist turkey!  then put tin foil over the whole thing.  but try to have it not touch the turkey.  imagine almost a tent of tinfoil.   this will contain some of the steam from the water, but let some out too.
Then roast it at 350 for about 20 minutes per pound, or until the internal temperature reaches 175°.  for our turkey it took 4.5 hours.  when there is going to be about 45 minutes to an hour left cooking, REMOVE THE TINFOIL  this will allow the skin to get crispy!
  take it out and let it sit for another 30 minutes to an hour
 it will eventually get to 180°
then get your carving tools out and carve away!  Save the pan and the drippings to make Gravy
mmmm mmmm delicious

Jack is Cooking a Documentary!

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Well Hello Internet!

As some of you know, when i am not cooking i am taking photos and making movies!  for the last year i have been working on a documentary about the Q’ero people of peru.  The time has come to ask for some support so i set up an Indiegogo project.  i have put it in the side bar so that if anybody wants to they can watch the trailer for the movie, and make a donation!  anybody who does so will get all sorts of cool stuff ranging from DVD of the finished movie, to super awesome hand made Peruvian Textiles!

for the purposes of this post i have put it here also:

Thanks everybody
Jack