Weekend Cooking -- Weeknights with Giada: Quick and Simple Recipes to Revamp Dinner

Giada De Laurentiis is Food Network's tiny Italian fireball -- small in stature, but on fire in the kitchen. Her large personality fills the television screen each week during her latest cooking show Giada at Home, where she cooks delicious eats for her friends and family. She is also a coach for this season's Food Network Star, which debuted last Sunday.

Although primarily an expert in Italian food, Giada also throws other foods into the mix at times. Her newest cookbook, Weeknights with Giada: Quick and Simple Recipes to Revamp Dinner delivers exactly what it promises. Recipes with ten ingredients or less that busy families can cook during the week. As in her television show, Giada focuses on Italian, but includes a section titled "Change of Pace" where she features Asian, Spanish, and Greek cuisine, as well.

While included are photographs of Giada's food and family, the meat of this cookbook are the recipes themselves. This is not an ode to a television star, but a real cookbook that real people can use. Weighing in at 240 pages, there is a recipe for everyone in this cookbook. Giada divides the recipes in Weeknights with Giada into some basic sections (i.e., "Veggies & Sides" and "Dessert") but also some more innovative, personalized sections such as the aforementioned "Change of Pace" or "Breakfast for Dinner."

Several of the recipes from Weeknights with Giada will make it onto my table this summer, as they simply sound like warm-weather treats. I can't wait to make a version of Giada's Caramelized Onion, Chicken, and Grapefruit Salad, which sounds big on flavor without including soft cheeses. Finds like that are a plus for me as a pregnant woman struggling to enjoy salads without feta, bleu cheese, or some other forbidden-during-pregnancy cheeses. (The delicious-sounding Fig and Brie Panini will just have to wait until after October!) The Apricot Oat Bars (using both apricot preserves and dried apricots for ease and simplicity) sound like perfect summer-month treats, or even breakfast.

However, my instinct is to turn immediately in Weeknights with Giada to the "Pasta and Grains" section. Not only because Giada's Italian expertise makes this a no-brainer, but because I am a pasta lover. I could eat it almost every night (whole wheat, of course), but I get tired of the same old ingredients and preparations. Giada includes several easy, new takes on pasta that I'll be trying. Penne in Almond Sauce, for instance, which includes shredded rotisserie chicken, frozen peas, lemon, and basil, sounds delicious. So does the Sweet Corn and Basil Lasagna, the recipe for which you can find on Amazon's page for Weeknights with Giada.

The recipe I will probably make first, however, is one of the most simple. It just speaks to me for some reason:

Wagon Wheel Pasta with Pancetta and Peas, 

from Weeknights with Giada

Photo from Weeknights with Giada

1 lb wagon-wheel shaped pasta

1/4 c plus 1 T olive oil

8 oz pancetta (for which I will probably substitute bacon, as pancetta isn't readily available where I live)

2 large or 4 small shallots, chopped

1/2 c low-sodium chicken broth

1 1/2 c sugar snap peas, cut into 1-in pieces

1 1/2 c shelled edamame beans

1 c frozen peas, thawed

1 c grated Parmesan

1 t kosher salt

1/4 t freshly ground black pepper

1/4 c chopped fresh mint leaves

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain and reserve about 1 cup of the pasta water.

In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium-high heat. Add the pancetta and cook, stirring frequently, until golden and crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the pancetta and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. 

Add the shallots to the pan and cook until soft, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the broth and scrape up the brown bits that cling to the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Stir in the snap peas and simmer for 2 minutes, until tender.

Add the pasta, cooked pancetta, edamame, petite peas, Parmesan cheese, the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil, the salt, pepper, and mint. Toss until coated, adding the reserved pasta water, 1 tablespoon at a time, as needed to loosen the sauce. Transfer to a bowl and serve.

This is a post part of the Beth Fish Reads blog series Weekend Cooking, which is open to anyone with a food-related post, including: book and movie reviews, photography, recipes, and other items. To browse this week's posts from all over the web, click on over to her post from today, about the book Farmers' Markets of the Heartland. 

Weekend Cooking: Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table

New Orleans is my home away from home. I've been visiting since I was in high school, and frequently bring it up hopefully if friends or loved ones are trying to decide on a getaway. My husband and I went over this year over spring break; he had been wanting to plan a trip on a train, and I am always plotting to get to New Orleans.

This trip had been a long time coming. I went to New Orleans no fewer than a dozen times between 1997 and 2005. My friends and I went weeks before Katrina hit in 2005, but I hadn't been back until this year. Some people's memories of New Orleans are tied exclusively to partying on Bourbon Street, catching beads and drinking out of yard-long hurricane glasses. Mine are exclusively tied to food.

New Orleans introduced me to Cajun and Creole foods I'd never tasted before. I now count red beans & rice, gumbo, and etouffee among my favorite dishes. It also opened up a whole new realm of seafood: tuna steak and boiled crawfish, in particular. I recall eating crawfish by the five-pound tray on the shores of Lake Ponchairtrain, indulging in a stuffed artichoke at a Italian restaurant in Metairie, and inhaling beignets at Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter.

Before we left, I decided I needed some New Orleans reading to get me ready for our trip. I downloaded several Kindle samples, but ultimately bought Sara Roahen's Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table.

Roahen's book details her life as a transplant from Wisconsin who moved to New Orleans as a food writer. To almost anyone, much of New Orleans cuisine would seem odd. To a Midwesterner, raised on eggs, meat, and cheese, the food was even more foreign.

In Gumbo Tales, Roahen introduces readers to the foods that make New Orleans unique from the perspective of an outsider. She discusses the ins and outs of each food, sharing where and when she first experienced the dish, and writes about the tastes, textures, and smells with exquisite detail. She offers restaurant choices and specific home cooks whose versions of the dishes she raves about are worthy of deep praise. She also details her own forays into cooking the dishes, although her recipes are missing from the book.

Among the New Orleans foods she describes are gumbo, po-boys, king cake, red beans & rice, crawfish, stuffed artichokes, and chicory coffee. She relates meals both grand and not-so-grand (but delicious), from Galatoire's to shopping strip holes-in-the-wall.

Although Gumbo Tales lacks recipes, Roahen offers her own versions of New Orleans favorites on her website. Send her an email, and she'll send you some recipes! She also offers a large array of photographs linked to specific chapters in her book. Explore those for some mouth-watering pictures of food, plus plenty of New Orleans city shots, as well.

After finishing Gumbo Tales, I'm itching to go back and explore some of the restaurants Roahen describes. Let's be honest: anything for a return trip to New Orleans!