I am all about cooking comfort food and for me, comfort food means pasta. I could eat it every day, all day. I had the opportunity to create a recipe using some of my favorite La Romanella products and decided I would literally use ALL my favorites in one hearty, delicious, comforting dish. If you haven’t heard of La Romanella products then you haven’t been shopping at Smart & Final lately. These fabulous, gourmet Italian food products rival any others that I have tried. Their product line encompasses everything from dried pastas to Italian cheeses. My mouth is watering just thinking about them all. Take a look at my shopping experience on Google+.

I will eat anything that has artichoke hearts and capers in it so when I thought about what fabulous dish I was going to make, I knew it had to include these. So here it is…

Lemon Chicken Pasta

Ingredients:

16 oz. package of La Romanella Organic Fettuccine
2 cups La Romanella Marinated Artichoke Hearts
1/4 cup La Romanella Capers
4 tbsp. butter
Olive Oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/2 cup flour
La Romanella Grated Parmesan Cheese
Salt & Pepper to taste

Boil the pasta according to directions on package.

Cut up the chicken breasts into small, bite-size chunks.

Heat a large frying pan with a thin layer of olive oil.

Prepare a plate or bowl with the flour and stir in salt & pepper to taste. Dredge each piece of chicken in the flour mixture and lay in the hot oil. DO NOT over crowd the pan or the chicken will not brown properly. You might have to do this in two or three batches depending on how large your frying pan is.

Cook until golden brown and then turn over to brown on the other side. You want to make sure the chicken is cooked through.

When the chicken is finished, remove from the frying pan and set aside. Keep the pan heated and you will deglaze the pan using about a 1/8 cup of olive oil, butter and lemon juice.

Add the artichokes and capers to the pan and stir well to mix the flavors.

Next you will add in the chicken you already browned. Mix in gently so until the chicken is heated through.

Plate your cooked fettuccine and top off with the chicken mixture, making sure to top with a little of the pan sauce just to wet the pasta. Add some shredded parmesan cheese on top and enjoy!

This dish is definitely restaurant-worthy. The flavors of the lemon and capers and artichokes blend really well together. This is a great comfort food dish and it’s also perfect for a dinner party.

If you purchase La Romanella products from Smart & Final, save your receipt and go to www.smartandfinal.com/LaRomanella2012 to enter the code on the receipt, you will be entered to win some of these amazing prizes (and let me tell you, I am *so* excited about the grand prize!).

First Prize: A weekend trip for 2 to an Italian-inspired resort in Las Vegas!

Additional prizes include: (8) $50 SmartCash cards (2 per week given away)

***PLUS***

Visitors to the www.smartandfinal.com/LaRomanella2012 site will be able to vote for their favorite La Romanella blogger recipe.
The blogger recipe with the most votes each week will win a $100 SmartCash card.
I KNOW YOU WILL ALL VOTE FOR ME, RIGHT????

This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for #collectivebias All opinions are my own. #CBias #LaRomanella

Welcome to the SoCal Lady Bloggers Online Progressive Dinner!

If you want to start at the beginning (with cocktails, of course) you can jump right to Chelsea’s Sparkling Pomegranate Jubilee. Or, if you are like me, you might just want to stay here, hang out and start with dessert. If you’ve come from trying Tonya’s Baked Mini Cheesecakes, then your mouth is already watering and my White Chocolate Creme Brulee will push you over the edge. Diet? What diet?

Ingredients for White Chocolate Creme Brulee:

4 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 - 4 oz. bar good white chocolate
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
additional sugar for top of custard

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Whisk together the egg whites and 1/3 cup sugar until silky smooth.

In a small saucepan, simmer the cream just until it starts to scorch, but not burn. Turn off the heat and add the chocolate bar broken up into smaller pieces. Mix until all the chocolate is melted and well blended with the cream.

Add a few drizzles of the cream mixture to the egg yolks while whisking continuously. You want to do this slowly so the eggs don’t cook and turn into scrambled eggs. Yuk! Once the mixture is blended well, add the remaining cream mixture and whisk it all together. It will have a soupy consistency. Add the vanilla and blend well.

Pour the mixture into ramekins. The original recipe I had called for 4 - 6″ ramekins. I used 5 - 4″ ramekins so use what you have and don’t stress over it. Ramekins are cheap and easy to find. I got mine in Home Goods (four for about $5).

Take the ramekins and place them in a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Add hot water to the pan until the ramekins are sitting in at least 1″ of water.

Bake for approximately 45 minutes or just until the custard is set. It won’t be thick yet, but when you wiggle the pan the custard shouldn’t move around.

Allow to cool on the counter. Once cool to the touch, refrigerate the custards until they are completely chilled.

Now the fun begins. Before serving, take the ramekins out of the refrigerator and sprinkle the top with a dusting of sugar.

The traditional way to caramelize the sugar is to use a blow torch (the cooking kind, not the welding kind) but even I don’t have a blow torch. The easy way to caramelize is to just turn on your broiler and sit the ramekins directly under it in the oven. It should take about 1 - 2 minutes to start to brown. Keep an eye on them because once they do start browning, the process goes really fast and you can burn the sugar very easily. Kind of like this…

Not so pretty is it?

How about this one?

Oh yes, much better. Once the sugar is looking yummy, put those ramekins back in the refrigerator for a few minutes and then serve. The perfect ending to a perfect meal.

If you started your dinner with dessert, why not start at the beginning and see all the amazing Progressive Dinner Recipes.

If I brew a pot of coffee at home every morning and drink several cups every day, does that make me a coffee addict? I think it does. It also makes me someone who has tried a lot of different kinds of coffee. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to their brew, but I can definitely tell the difference between a good cup of coffee and really bad one. Last year I was asked to try a new kind of coffee… Smart & Final’s Ambiance. I tried it. I loved it. Now that’s a great cup of coffee. So when I had the chance to go try out some more, I thought I would choose some of my favorite flavors of Ambiance. And… what goes better with coffee than something sweet? Nothing, which is why I decided to make some of my favorite cheese danish to go with it.

Take a look at my entire shopping experience here on Google +.

I love all kinds of baked goods and pastries, but cheese danish has always been my favorite. When I was a kid, it was always my choice of pastry when we walked into a bakery. After trying out several different recipes, I found that taking bits and pieces of different recipes worked best. This is pretty much my foolproof cheese danish recipe. Yum!

Ingredients:

2 - 10 oz. cans refrigerated crescent rolls
2 - 8 oz. packages of cream cheese
2/3 cup white sugar
4 large egg yolks
4 tbs. ricotta cheese
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
2 tbs. lemon zest (2 lemons)
Fruit filling (optional)

2 cup confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar)
2 tbs. milk
2 tbs. butter, softened

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly spray a 9 x 13 baking pan with cooking spray.

Mix together cream cheese, sugar, egg yolks, ricotta, vanilla extract, salt and lemon zest in an electric mixer at low speed. You want to blend all the ingredients, not completely whip them.

 

 

Open one roll of crescent rolls and lay flat in the bottom of the baking pan. Pinch seams together.

Spread the cheese mixture over the dough.

Now you can either move on to the top layer of crescent rolls or add your filling. I chose to add cherries because that’s what my family likes best.

Lay your second layer of crescent rolls over the top of your mixture.

Bake uncovered for 20 - 30 minutes, just until the top is golden brown.

While the pastry is cooling, mix the ingredients for the icing.

 

Spread the icing on top of the pastry. It’s okay if the pastry is still a little warm, it will make the icing spread easier.

I recommend covering the dish and putting it in the refrigerator for several hours so the cheese mixture can set. If you prefer a more creamy dessert, let cool on the counter and have at it. I have to warn you , however, that this stuff tastes out of this world. I dare you to have one piece.

If you want to give Ambiance coffee From Smart & Final a try, you can go to www.smartandfinal.com/Ambiance2012 and enter the code on your Smart & Final Ambiance purchase receipt to be entered to win some of these amazing prizes:

First Prize (one grand prize per week, 3 total over the campaign)
DeLonghi BCO264B Cafe Nero Combo Coffee/Espresso Maker, a $200 value!

or one of six $50 SmartCash cards (Two winners per week, 6 winners total)

Plus visitors to the www.smartandfinal.com/Ambiance2012 will be able to vote for their favorite Ambiance Coffee recipe and everyone who votes will be entered for a chance to win $50 worth of Ambiance products! (6 winners - Two winners per week over the campaign). If you love my cheese danish recipe… I’d love a vote… or two… or three.

This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. All opinions are my own. #CBias #MyBaristaMoment

Yadda, yadda, yadda… spaghetti squash is just like spaghetti. Oh really? How is that even possible? Have these people never had real spaghetti before? There is NOTHING that tastes as good as spaghetti.

Let’s try it out, shall we?

What the heck is spaghetti squash anyway?

So I bought this big, heavy, funny looking, yellow squash in the market. I had no idea whatsoever how to cook it or what I was even going to find when I got inside. The first thing I noticed is how super hard the squash is. You can’t really cut through it so you have to cook it first so the skin gets soft enough to cut. I put it on a baking tray and baked it in a 300 degree oven for about an hour. Turn it over once or twice while baking because it will start to brown a little.

I let it cool down for a while and then I was able to cut it open. So inside was pretty weird looking. It reminded me of a pumpkin because it has seeds that look just like pumpkin seeds. Remove those seeds.

The inside kind of does resemble a mish-mash of spaghetti, but when you take a fork to it… you will not be surprised why they call it spaghetti squash.

Pretty cool, isn’t it? But how will it taste?

My next step was to saute some garlic and shallots in a little bit of olive oil. I adore shallots, they smell amazing and I’m surprised more recipes don’t call for them.

Go ahead and dump all that spaghetti squash into the pan. Mix gently so it gets heated throughout.

I then added chopped parsley and shredded parmesan cheese and mixed it all together. You can use as little or as much as you want, because after all… cooking is all about what tastes good to YOU.

So THIS is spaghetti squash. While it doesn’t taste exactly like spaghetti, it’s pretty damn good. My kids even loved it. Seriously, when Amanda says, “Mom, you need to make this again”, you know you have a blog-worthy dish on your hands.

Yes, Amanda… I will make it again.