Recipes From Kathy Flores

Homemade Marinara Sauce

This recipe can be doubled or tripled and saved in the freezer for recipes later in the week or month. Marinara sauce is very good to have on hand for any night you don’t want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

Ingredients

2 -14.5 oz cans tomato sauce
1 – 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes
1 – 8 oz can tomato paste
2 – large pinches sugar
*Large bunch of fresh basil chopped fine (approx. 2 tbls)
*Large bunch of fresh oregano chopped fine (approx 2 tbls)
1 – red pepper diced small
1 – onion diced small
2-3 cloves garlic minced (or smashed and cut real small)
2 – Tbsp olive oil

In a large saucepan mix first 6 ingredients.
Separately, in a hot small skillet add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, red pepper, onion and garlic. Cook on medium until contents are lucent (not charred black – as this will make the garlic bitter), approximately 2-3 minutes. When soft and lucent add to tomato mixture. Cook on low for 1-2 hours.

(* if you don’t have fresh substitute for 1 Tbsp of dry)

Semi-Homemade Marinara Sauce

Substitute the tomato mixture and tomato paste with your favorite store bought marinara sauce (mine is Barillo marinara sauce). Follow the rest of the recipe as listed above.

Barely Homemade Marinara Sauce

Substitute the tomato mixture and tomato paste with your favorite store bought marinara sauce (mine is Barillo marinara sauce). Add 2tbl each of dried oregano and basil. Call it done.

Meat Sauce
Pick the marinara sauce of choice (homemade, semi-homemade, barely homemade) Add either browned/drained hamburger meat, meatballs (store bought or homemade), and/or browned Italian sausage. The Italian sausage could be mild or hot, depending on your taste. The sausage can be browned in the casings in a little olive oil, or removed from the casing, browned and broken up, resembling hamburger meat.


Meatballs

Either 1lb of hamburger meat, or
½ lb hamburger meat & ½ lb ground pork
1 small can tomato sauce
½ medium onion diced fine
½ cup of bread crumbs or smashed saltine crackers
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp kosher salt (regular salt is good as well)
½ tsp fresh ground pepper (not fresh ground will do as well)
1-2 garlic cloves, minced (based on your preference with garlic taste)
1 egg beaten

Mix all ingredients together in bowl. Better to mix with hands until all ingredients are mixed well. Take a small pinch of the meat mixture and roll into a ball (1 – 1 ½ in diameter). The key is all the meatballs are made to be the same size, based on your preference of size.

The meatballs can either be put on a cooking sheet sprayed with non-stick cooking spray and put in the oven at 400 until browned (approximately 15 minutes). Or they may be browned in a skillet with 2 tbl cooking oil until browned, removed and put on paper towels to drain..


Kathy’s Mostacholli

Ingredients:

Prepared marinara sauce (with meat or without)
1 box mostacholli pasta
1- 8oz package of shredded mozzarella cheese

Prepare any one of the marinara sauces listed above. You may leave meatless or you may use any of the meat options given above.

Prepare mostacholli to al dente according to package directions. Drain and put pasta in 9 ½ x 13 x 1 baking dish. Pour prepared marinara sauce over pasta and mix until all the pasta has marinara sauce on it.

Sprinkle 8oz mozzarella cheese over pasta mixture. Cover with foil (be careful to tent the foil slightly so the cheese mixture does not melt on the foil) and cook at 350 for 30 minutes, or until hot and bubbly.


Parmesan Chicken

Prepared marinara sauce (meatless)
3-4 boneless/skinless chicken breasts (can also use frozen breasts or tenderloins)
6 slices Provolone cheese
¼ cup Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil (or just olive oil if that is what you have)
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 pkg. cooked spaghetti (according to package directions) and drained
2 beaten eggs

Coating for chicken:

1 1/2 cups of bread crumbs
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

In a large skillet, heat 2 tbsp olive oil. Drudge the chicken in the beaten egg mixture, then drudge chicken in the bread-crumb-and-parmesan-cheese coating before you brown it in the skillet. Salt and pepper the chicken breasts on both sides to taste and add to hot oil. Cook chicken almost through and remove from pan.

In a 9 x 13 inch baking dish put cooked spaghetti. Add ¾ of marinara sauce and mix to coat. Place chicken breasts on top of pasta mixture (if the breasts are large cut them into portion size). Pour remaining marinara sauce over chicken. Place provolone cheese slices evenly over the top of the chicken. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Cover with foil (tenting slightly so cheese does not melt onto foil while cooking) and cook in 350 oven for 30-40 minutes until hot and bubbly.