Meal of the Day: Pastella

This dish I'm about to share with you has been created in the past, yet has never been given a proper name.  This dish encompasses different tastes and textures.  No matter how much of this dish you eat in one sitting or maybe two if daring, this leaves you full and definitely satisfied.  I guess you can say this dish is a mash up of 2 completely different dishes: pasta and paella.  Well, I don't think they're completely different because the only difference is the choice of carbs.  When I first made this dish, I had all the ingredients to make paella but had no yellow rice.  So instead I opted for whatever was in my pantry which was penne.  This dish turned out great the first time around.  For the second time around, I still had no yellow rice so I settled for penne again.

Now this time around, I just finished the yellow rice recently and purchased penne rigate during my latest trip to the supermarket.  The dish still came out great (the key is timing so everything doesn't overcook) and I have yet to name this dish.  My husband and I were throwing out ideas during dinner and came up with a few clever ones.  It's simple to just mash the ingredients together and come up with a nonsense word.  Or, call upon the Rachael Ray goddess and pick the first letter of each word to come up with a name (ie: extra virgin olive oil is now EVOO thanks to the goddess chef herself).  After much deliberation, we decided to keep it simple and mash up the common ingredient of pasta and paella.

So, I share with you pastella!  The ingredients in this dish can also be used to make paella, just swap out the penne for yellow rice.

Revamping Your Leftovers

Everyone has their likes and dislikes about leftovers.  Either it's enough to feed 1 mouth or not enough to feed 3 hungry mouths.  But this is where you dive into your creative side of cooking.  Even if you don't have that, everyone is creative with their appetite.  When your tummy starts grumbling and wants you to put something in your belly, you start to imagine what will satisfy your taste buds.  You want to fill that void of hunger and make some use of your leftovers before they get thrown into the garbage.  There's no need to waste food if there are people who can't afford to eat a meal everyday (just saying).

So, what I had in my fridge was roughly 2 cups of white rice and 1 strip of pork belly.  Luckily, I did a quick run to the supermarket to pick up some essential produce that I always have in stock.  I ended up making torta (tour-tah) or an omelette with ground beef and fried rice with vegetables.

Torta (on left) and fried rice with veggies (on right)