Butter Chicken Lasagna {Catelli® Reinvent Gluten Free Lasagne Challenge}

Just when I thought Butter Chicken couldn't get any better!  Today I'm sharing with you a recipe for Butter Chicken Lasagna for Catelli's Blogger Challenge.  The challenge is to create an original recipe using their new Gluten Free Lasagna.  UPDATE: My Butter Chicken Lasagna won the contest!

One Pot Tomato Basil Pasta

One Pot Pasta dishes have been around for awhile now and I'm a little late in trying it.  I wasn't sure how it would turn out but I loved how simple it sounded.  The ingredients are things I usually have on hand.  We really enjoyed this pasta and it would go great with some grilled chicken or fish.

Lightened Up Spinach Lasagna Roll Ups #GayLeaMom

With the new year, many people make resolutions to eat healthier after over indulging during the holidays.  Gay Lea's Nordica Cottage Cheese is a great ingredient to use in your cooking to lighten meals up.  It is one item I always have in my fridge.  It is high in protein and a great source of calcium which is why I love having it as a snack.

Ginger Edamame Macaroni Salad with Catelli's Gluten Free Macaroni {Giveaway}

Recently I had the pleasure to attend an Exclusive Gluten Free Pasta Event at George Brown College sponsored by Catelli.  Back in September, Catelli had launched their Gluten Free Pasta line which included penne, fusilli and spaghetti.  You can read my review here.  With the success of the gluten free line, they recently added macaroni.  Our host for the evening was Chef John Higgins.  Chef Higgins is director of George Brown Chef School, former personal chef to the Queen Mother and a judge on Food Network's Chopped Canada.

Catelli Gluten Free Pasta Review & Giveaway {CAN only}

I've been seeing lots of people posting and writing about gluten free cooking and baking.  This is something totally new to me.  I've never had to look into gluten free cooking but have been curious about it.  People with celiac disease follow a gluten free diet.  Canadian Celiac Association defines "celiac disease as an autoimmune disease where the surface of the small intestines that absorbs nutrients from food is damaged by a substance called gluten.  As a result, the body has trouble absorbing nutrients from food including the protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, which are necessary for good health."  When baking, it is the gluten in the flour that binds the ingredients and prevents crumbling.  Gluten is found in all types of wheat.  Oats usually have contact with gluten so people must look for gluten free oats.  For those that are on a gluten free diet, they must read labels very carefully to ensure there is no gluten in the food.

15 Minute Creamy Avocado Pasta

This is probably the quickest pasta you will ever make from scratch.  The sauce can be whipped up while the pasta is cooking.  The avocado adds a wonderful creaminess to the sauce.  I love how there is no cooking involved in making the sauce.  I mix it up in my immersion blender but you can also use a regular blender or food processor.  This pasta is best served immediately.  If you aren't a big fan of garlic you can reduce the amount used.  This pasta had a lot of sauce.  You could probably increase the amount of pasta but I like a lot of sauce.  I prefer this with rotini or fussili.  I hope you will give this a try...you will be surprised how yummy it is for so little work!

Pasta with Spinach Pesto, Roasted Red Peppers and Sundried Tomatoes

I bought some spinach recently without even thinking about what I was going to do with it.  I have been wanting to make pesto for awhile but in the winter you just can't find good basil and when you do it's already going bad in the store.  Plus it's pretty expensive to buy enough to make pesto.  I'm looking forward to the summer when I will have fresh basil in the backyard and plenty of it too!

Lemon Herb Pasta

I really loved Baked Lemon Pasta but it just took too long to make for lunch.  So I wanted to make something similar but be quick to make.  I wish I had more fresh herbs to toss in.  I had  just a little leftover from making Pasta with Fresh Herbs.  I would recommend putting in more basil in this pasta.  I had bought some whole wheat rigatoni a while ago that I wanted to try out and I thought this would be a great dish for it.  I was low on sour cream so I mixed in some yogurt but if you have 1 cup of sour cream I would recommend using that.

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce Revisited

Recently I made Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce again.  This time I increased the garlic and reduced the tomato sauce.  I didn't have any Parmesan so I left that out and I used Rotini instead of Fettuccine.  It tasted great the first time I made it but this time it was even better!!!  My son loved it and calls it "Bahut Zyada Yummy Pasta" :).  You should definitely give this a try.  It doesn't take a long time to make.  The sauce is enough for 4 cups of Rotini pasta.  I've updated the post to reflect the changes I made this time.

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

I love pasta and I love it even more when it is so simple to make.  I really enjoyed this dish but next time I will use a different pasta than fettuccine.  It's not one of my favorites.  When making this make sure you add the fresh basil because that is what really makes this dish.  My main change to this recipe was to replace the heavy cream with sour cream. I always use low fat.  I love this substitution for heavy cream in pasta. 

 

Pasta with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

I am really enjoying all these pasta dishes from The Pioneer Woman.  I always thought making pasta sauces from scratch would be so time consuming but I was wrong.  This is a really easy pasta to make.  I liked it like this but next time I think i'm going to try to make it spicy.  It came together very quickly.  The original recipe said to roast your own peppers but I don't have that kind of time so I bought a couple of jars of roasted peppers.  I substituted low fat sour cream for the heavy cream.  This would taste even better with the heavy cream but I'll pass on all that fat.  My mom had this pasta.  She really liked it and she isn't a big fan of pasta.

Porcini and Cremini Mushroom Orzo "Risotto"

I have always wanted to try to make risotto but have always been so scared too.  It seemed like way too much work.  The first time I had it was at 3 Guys and a Stove in Collingwood, ON.  I had the mushroom risotto and it was amazing.  I loved that restaurant.  Everything I had there was so good and can't wait to go there again.  The second time I had risotto was at a big fancy restaurant and it was horrible.  So bland...it reminded me of gulati and it made gulati taste amazing.  (Gulati is something my mom would make if someone had diarrhea.  You cook basmati rice in a bunch of water and keep cooking until it's mush and then add some butter, salt and pepper).  After having that bland risotto I thought  I could cook better than this.  I found this recipe at Cookin' Canuck.  It looked so simple.  It wasn't traditional risotto but I wanted to give it a try.  The first time I made it it was a little bland for us so the next time I increased the onions, garlic and porcini mushrooms.  I only like to use whole wheat pasta so it took some searching to find whole wheat orzo and luckily at the same store I found porcini mushrooms.  Next time I would like to try it with arborio rice.  My four year old made a face as soon as he tried it since he doesn't like mushrooms but my 1 year old gobbled it up!

Baked Lemon Pasta

This is another simple pasta dish. It's very refreshing and I love the use of sour cream instead of heavy cream. It is such a nice change from the tomato based sauces.  If you would like just a hint of lemon add less.  If you would like a more powerful zing add the entire half a lemon.

My main change was to replace the butter with oil and use low fat sour cream.  I used Farro Fusilli but you can use whatever pasta you have on hand.

Sundried Tomato Pasta Salad

Recently we had a small gathering catered by Simply Halal.  The food was amazing.  The pasta in particular was so good.  We ate it for the following 2 days and I didn't get bored of it.  I realized how I suck at making pasta.  For years I've been making my mom's pasta sauce and I've gotten bored of it.  Lately I have been looking at The Pioneer Woman blog.  I've already tried a few recipes with great success.  So I started to take a look at her pasta recipes.  Why does she use so much cream and butter?????  I'm not trying to put on 20 pounds.  If I used that much fat my cooking would improve no doubt...but I have modified her recipes to reduce the fat with good results so I have hope for her pasta dishes too.  This recipe had no cream or butter!! Yeah!!! But it had a ton of parmesan cheese which I significantly reduced. It also used 1 cup of extra-virgin olive oil. There was no way I could use 1 cup of oil!!!  I don't think I use 1 cup of oil to make a huge pot of haleem..how could I use that much oil for a pasta salad!!  So I reduced it by half and was so glad I did.  I think it would have been way to greasy if I hadn't.  Also I don't like olives so I left those out and after making this recipe I realized I don't like cherry tomatoes either so next time I'm gonna leave those out too.  My 4 year old son loved this pasta and for him I added a bunch of olives..I like to say he is eating olives with a little bit of pasta because he likes A LOT of olives.

This recipe also has red wine vinegar.  I looked up on SunniPath if it was permissable to use vinegars that are alcohol based and it was okay.  I had bought the red wine vinegar but I was still feeling nervous about using something that had the word 'wine' in it.  So I looked it up again to ease my conscious.

This recipe was good hot or cold and I'm definitely going to make it again.  I used my immersion blender to blend all the ingredients which wasn't a very good idea because there wasn't a lot of space.  A blender would be a better way to go but I hate using the blender.  It's too noisy and would wake a napping 1 year old baby so I avoid using it.

Muhammara Pasta

This is a recipe I adapted from Aarti Paarti.  I like this pasta but I think I like saying "Muhammara" more.  This is very quick. It is based on the Syrian dip Muhammara which is comprised of roasted red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses.  You can find pomegranate molasses in Arab or Indian grocery stores.  I got mine from Iqbal in Thorncliffe.  This is a bit sour so if you want less of a sour bite you can reduce the lemon juice.  It is not a smooth pasta sauce.  If you would like it more smooth you can grind the walnuts in the spice grinder and then add it to the sauce.  The original recipe called for 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil which seemed like a crazy amount to add to me so I cut this in half.  In the video on the website, Aarti adds sundried tomatoes.  I only have the dried ones so I used those.  This made quite a lot of sauce.  You can use the leftovers as a dip.  Next time I'm going to reduce the amount of walnuts to try to reduce the fat. 

Spicy Egg Noodles with Shrimp

I made these egg noodles and my son loved them. The next day he was complaining that I haven't made them for a long time.  So I've been wanting to make them for awhile but I haven't been able to find broad egg noodles.  I could only find extra broad which I think is too wide.  So this week I found some and decided I would make these noodles.  I make my own zeera dhania (cumin coriander) powder and keep it in my pantry.  I used a 1.5 dhania : 1 zeera ratio.  I dry roast the spices and then grind them up.  This is turned out really spicy.  I used 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper.  Next time I would reduce it to 1/4 tsp.  Less Shan Masala Seekh Kabob can also be added to reduce the spiciness.  This Masala pack is not on the website but you should be able find it in your Indian grocery store.

Pasta with Fresh Herbs

I've been looking for a pasta recipe with a fresh herb and olive oil dressing.  This is an adaption of Fettuccine with Fresh Herbs from Joy of Cooking.  It was really good.  I didn't use Fettuccine because the recipes calls for 1 pound of fettuccine.  I was only making 1/4 of the recipe.  How do I measure 1/4 pound of fettuccine?  I was too lazy to look it up and more importantly I don't have fettuccine.  I know 4 cups of dried pasta is about 1 pound of pasta.  So I used a heaping cup of bowtie pasta.  I think I could have used 1 1/2 cups of bowtie pasta.  My changes were to add a minced garlic clove. I also significantly reduced the Parmesan cheese and used a little less basil.  Next time I'm going to try to make it without the cheese to eliminate a significant amount of the fat from this recipe.