In Purrsuit of Flavors ~ July 2020

We’re back today for the July edition of Blogville’s recipe share, “In Purrsuit of Flavour” with today’s selection being ‘your favorite summer dish’ and joining our hosts, the Weim boys over at Easy Rider and those great chef cats over at Canadian Cats. Truth be told my favorite summer dish is anything someone else cooks. I pretty much loathe cooking in general and the last thing I want to do is fire up the kitchen in summer and then spend loads of time cleaning it up afterwards but one should probably not live on cake and wine alone. #Sigh

Recently my sister shared a recipe with our family that is simple and easy to fix. Because its main ingredient is pasta, it may be more suitable for cooler temps, but it’s easy to throw together [heavy emphasis on the throw part]. Like all my shared recipes, there are ‘optionals’ to suit everyone’s taste or whatever is in your pantry. Martha Stewart no doubt despises cooks like me with our devil-may-care attitude but I’m more of a this-and-that kind of gal and work with what’s on hand. Yo, Martha…it’s called adaptation and that makes sense these days. Anyway, this recipe is one of those “dump” recipes where all the ingredients get dumped into a dish, then baked and served in the same dish. It’s perfect for serving a large crowd and easy to clean up afterwards.

Ok, cooks…let’s get started making a batch of “Firehouse Spaghetti.”

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground meat (may be omitted for us pesky vegetarians)
• ½ cup diced yellow onion
• Minced garlic (to taste)
• Salt and pepper (to taste)
• 2 cans (10 oz.) Rotel diced tomatoes & green chilies
• 2 cans (10 oz.) cream of mushroom soup
• 2 jars (5 oz. size) Old English Cheese (a processed cheese product found near the Chees Whiz and comes in small jars)
• 12 oz. spaghetti or linguine noodles
• Optional: Parmesan or shredded cheddar if desired on top (Parmesan is never optional at the Ranch but feel free to do your thing)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Spray a 13×9 inch dish with cooking spray. Brown ground meat with garlic and onions in large skillet. Drain fat and return to skillet. Set aside while you prepare noodles according to package instructions. At this point, I recommend opening a nice bottle of wine to drink when assembling breathe. Drain noodles (reserve some liquid in case you need to thin when assembling all ingredients). Add Rotel, cheese, and soup to meat mixture, heat over medium-low heat just to melt the cheese and soup. Pour meat mixture over the cooked noodles and mix well (add reserved liquid to thin if necessary). Sprinkle Parmesan/cheddar on top and bake for 20-25 minutes in large baking dish. Pass the wine and serve with a garden salad and crusty bread. Molto bene!

While I neglected to photograph our dish, here’s a photo from the ‘Net. This dish has a bit of a kick from the Rotel for a nice change of pace. Did I mention it’s easy to throw together and works great for a crowd?

Now if I could just get Norman to do all the cooking, I’d be happy as a clam at high tide. Till then…I’ll just have to kiss the cook-look alike.

Live, love, bark!  🐾