Recipe: Almond Linguine Florentine

Back when my sisters and I had Sister Dinners, Older Sister made us Almond Linguine Florentine, a recipe she found in our paternal grandmother's cookbook.  CJ and I now have this pasta fairly regularly.

Grandma's note on the recipe: "Daughter" and her boyfriend fixed dinner for my birthday or mother's day.  He did the cooking and this is what he made. Very good!

I agree with Grandma, this is very good.  I don't follow her recipe exactly but it still turns out great.

Original Recipe and Directions:

1 cup chopped onion
3 Tbsp butter or margarine
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
3 Tbsp flour
3/4 tsp thyme
      salt and pepper to taste
1 can beef broth
3/4 cup whipping cream
3 Tbsp Dijon-style mustard
1/2 pound cooked ham, cut into strips
3/4 cup chopped parsley
3/4 cup toasted slivered almonds
1/2 pound cooked linguine noodles

In skillet saute onions in butter and oil until limp.  Blend in flour and seasonings; cook and stir over low heat until flour is well blended.  Gradually stir in broth and cream; cook and stir over medium heat until mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.  Stir in mustard, ham, parsley and almonds.  Toss hot linguine with sauce; serve on a bed of fresh spinach leaves.  Garnish with additional chopped parsley and almonds.

My Version:

1 cup chopped onion (or however much I have on hand if I even have some on hand; in the pictures for this blog I didn't use onion because I didn't have any)
3 Tbsp butter or margarine or vegetable oil (why use 6 Tbsp of fatty stuff when you can use only 3?)
3 Tbsp flour
3/4 tsp thyme (in all honesty, I don't usually measure herbs)
     pepper to taste (I leave out the salt because I figure the ham is going to be salty enough)
1 cup beef broth (I use bouillon cubes instead of canned and I don't know how many cups are in a can anyway)
3/4 cup whipping cream
1/2 pound cooked ham, cut up
3/4 cup slivered almonds
1/2 pound cooked noodles

My directions are pretty much the same as Grandmas:

Melt butter (with onion if using onion), add flour, thyme, and pepper, stir until well blended.  Add beef broth and cream, stir.  Let sit on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until thickish.  Add ham and almonds, stir.  Mix sauce with cooked noodles.

Serve however you like.  I think green beans are good with this pasta and I think diced tomatoes are good with just about any pasta.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Oven Pancakes

The recipe for Oven Pancakes comes courtesy of Stickboy, CJ's friend who lives in Sweden. Apparently CJ and Stickboy email pretty much every day, it is precious, and on one of those days Stickboy shared a recipe, so CJ tried it, and it was really good. Stickboy shared said recipe using the metric system, so we had to do some conversions but I think it turned out great.

Ingredients:
Bacon*
1 egg
2/5 cup flour*
4/5 cup milk*
salt

*No amount of bacon was included so I guess everyone is free to add as much as they'd like. The conversions came to fifths of cups, which is strange, so CJ rounded to fourths of cups.

Instructions:
Cook the bacon, set aside. Mix together the egg, flour, milk and salt. Add bacon. Pour into a greased baking dish (an 8 x 8 worked really well for us). Bake at 435 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes or until the outside is brown while the inside is still moist. Top with jam. Serves 2 - 3.


CJ and I love these. They are really easy to make and are really good. We've topped with strawberry, grape, raspberry, and apricot jam as well as almond butter and it seems as though you really can't go wrong.

Here is the nutritional information assuming 4 strips of bacon were added and it makes 2 servings. This does not include jam or other toppings. It is a safe bet to assume that every tablespoon of jam has about 50 calories, a ton of sugar, and not much else.