Hello All

Hello Everyone!
Welcome to the Tasty Dinners blog. In this blog, I will share some of the recipes I concoct to come up with tasty dinners for my girlfriend and I.

First, a little bit of background: I'm a 26 year old, fifth year graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Over the past few years of living on my own, I've discovered a love of cooking (I discovered a love of eating much earlier). I have a wonderful girlfriend who is a vegetarian, so many of my recipes will be either totally or in part vegetarian. My cooking tends to be Italian inspired, simple and quick to make. For example, here's one I cooked up tonight:

Pasta in a Fire roasted tomato, red wine sauce

• 1 large can of diced tomatoes
• 1 small can of fire roasted diced tomatoes
• Olive oil
  
• 2 cups red wine
• 1/2 large onion
  
• 2 Tablespoons minced garlic (~6-7 cloves) <- I love garlic, so this could be cut down to personal taste
• 1/2 Roasted Jalapeno pepper
  
• 1 zucchini
• 1 cup fire roasted corn (we used frozen stuff from Trader Joe's)
• Several Handfuls frozen green beans
• 2 Hot Italian Sausage Links - removed from their casings and crumbled
  
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  
• 3-4 Tablespoons Oregano
• 3-4 Tablespoons Basil
• 1-2 Tablespoons Fennel
  
• 1-2 Tablespoons Rosemary
• 1-2 Tablespoons Parsley
• 1 Splash liquid smoke
  
• Salt and pepper

1) Dice the onion and roasted jalapeno. Saute these in olive oil with the garlic, oregano, basil, rosemary, and parsley (hold a bit of the garlic and onion back for use with the sausage). After a few minutes, slice and add the zucchini. Let cook for several minutes until the garlic browns and the onion becomes translucent.

2) Add the two cans of diced tomatoes, the red wine, and the vinegar to the mixture followed by the frozen vegetables, fennel, liquid smoke and salt and pepper (add to taste). Let simmer for ~10 minutes stirring occasionally.

3) In a separate pan, brown the sausage in olive oil with the remaining onion and garlic. Once browned, drain off most of the fat and add some of the sauce from step 2. Let simmer for ~5 minutes.

Serve over your favorite pasta with Parmesan cheese!
Note: If you're not cooking for vegetarians, the sausage could be browned along with the zucchini in the first step. For us, we used some of the vegetarian sauce to coat the pasta and served the sausage containing sauce on the side.

Not too hard, right?
I'll be updating this blog as I discover more interesting and tasty recipes, or just to share some random thoughts or stories.
Enjoy!
-Chris