Chocolate pasta with mushrooms and Gorgonzola

This luxurious dish comes together in under 40 minutes.

Chocolate is not just for dessert. Italians have used chocolate in savory dishes for centuries. This recipe is a luxurious dish that combines the best of friends, chocolate and cheese, to create a memorable dinner.

As a chocolate lover, I was more than excited to find chocolate pasta in a specialty market years ago. At the time, I didn’t know what to do with my purchase, but I knew I had to have it.

Once I got home and started to research recipes, most were dessert dishes that combined chocolate pasta with fruits like strawberries. But I wanted something savory. Then I remembered some of the best meals I ever had while traveling often were finished simply with a board of fruit, fine cheese, nuts, and sometimes chunked dark chocolate. Now I was on to something.

Of course, Italians have known for centuries how to cook savory dishes using chocolate. Mine wasn’t a revolutionary idea, but it does create a crazy decadent Alfredo sauce using Gorgonzola instead of traditional Parmesan cheese. And the cocoa flavor in the pasta is just enough to say “hello” to your taste buds. Toasted walnuts stirred into the sauce at the end provide nice texture, and the shaved chocolate on top provides a great finish to this recipe. Give it a try for National Pasta Day on Oct. 17, an anniversary dinner, or anytime you want to make dinner special. A nice Merlot would pair well with this.

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Chocolate pasta with mushrooms and Gorgonzola

YIELD: 4 servings

Ingredients

1 16-ounce package chocolate linguine

1½ cups finely sliced crimini (baby bellas) mushrooms

6 ounces crumbled Gorgonzola cheese

½ cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons salted butter

1 cup heavy cream, warmed

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 to 3 ounce dark chocolate chunk for grating

Method

In a large stockpot, bring four quarts of salted water to a boil and cook linguine according to package directions.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add sliced mushrooms, but do not overcrowd. Do in batches if necessary to allow for proper browning. Remove finished mushrooms from skillet and reserve for later.

Using a paper towel, wipe out the skillet and over a medium-low heat, carefully toast the walnuts. Be careful not to burn. When you start to smell the nuts’ aroma, take off heat and set aside.

In a medium sauce pan, melt ¼ cup butter over medium-low heat. Add warmed cream and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes. Whisk in cheese and garlic and take off heat once cheese has melted.

Drain pasta and return to stockpot. Add mushrooms, walnuts, and sauce. Toss gently. Plate the pasta and, using a microplane (or fine grater), shave chocolate over pasta right before serving.

Mock Filet Mignon

There's nothing fake about the beefy taste this economical dish delivers.

The mock filet mignon was a recipe likely developed during World War II when food rations were commonplace. My mother lived through that war; maybe that's why this dish was one of her favorites.

You always knew where you stood with my mom because she’d tell you.

Mom spoke plainly, but honestly. She’d let you know if you’d disappointed her, but more importantly, she more often told you how much she loved you.

Catherine Elizabeth Brolaski Reinhardt adopted those principles in her cooking, too. Mom’s food wasn’t fancy, but it was honest and satisfying. And she had a gift of hospitality.

I always will remember a family friend, the Rev. Rick Oberle, sharing a story about that gift at her eulogy in 2006. Rick compared Mom to Jesus’ friend, Martha, who ministered through hospitality and food. Mom certainly did that, whether she was working alongside her friends in the kitchen at Trinity United Church of Christ for a fish fry or sauerkraut dinner, or feeding Rick supper once a week. In fact, he shared that it was during those suppers at my folks’ house when he decided to enter the seminary. Now that’s soul food.

Mom was born in 1928, one of Louis and Margaret Brolaski’s five children. Theirs was not an easy home to live in based on the stories I heard over the years, but my mother often talked about the generosity of my maternal grandmother. Maybe that’s where Mom got it from, or perhaps she knew what it felt like to go to bed without dinner, so she couldn’t bear the idea of someone going hungry.

My mom in photo that dates to the 1980s.

Her parents were 100 percent “old world Europe.” Theirs was an arranged marriage. My grandfather, a widower, emigrated from Hungary to the United States. When he could afford it, he sent for his much younger betrothed—a girl, really—to join him. By the time she was 30, Margaret had seven children (five survived).

This central European heritage was reflected in my mom’s recipe box: Hungarian goulash, chicken paprikash, and beef gaestle (gashtel) soup with shredded Hungarian noodles (reszelt teszta) were dishes we often enjoyed. Her holiday cheeseball is so good, it’s been known to make people weep in gratitude. Although she was an excellent savory cook, she and her mother-in-law Dorothy baked Christmas cookies every year, beginning just after Thanksgiving and continuing into mid-December. Our basement at this time looked like a small bakery.

And because Mom grew up during The Depression, she knew how to stretch a food budget and how to combine common ingredients into interesting meals. We didn’t waste food; leftovers were part of the weekly meal plan. And somehow, we always had more than enough to eat and to share.

So back to Mom’s volunteer kitchen work at Trinity UCC. Trinity was on South Grand Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri not far from Carondelet Park. Over the years, the church hosted hundreds of fund-raising dinners, from sauerkraut suppers and turkey dinners, to the fish fry Fridays and spaghetti nights. When Rick was called to his first congregation, Mom passed along the cole slaw recipe that was always on the fish fry menu at Trinity. I suspect it’s based on the recipe she left me.

And in the 1970s, Trinity published its cookbook to raise money for the church. Ladies of the congregation were asked to submit a couple of their favorite recipes, and one of Mom’s was mock filet mignon.

The mock filet, or “fake steak,” likely comes from the 1940s when food rations were again part of household life. In fact, Canadian cookbook author Kate Aitken, who included a mock filet recipe in her Canadian Cook Book (sic) from 1945, noted the recipe predates World War II.

And while some ingredients will vary between recipes, the common denominators are ground beef, bacon, and a starch to stretch the meat further. My mom’s recipe included mushrooms and shredded potatoes. It yields four really large “filets,” so you easily could make the patties slightly smaller if you have five or six people to feed.

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Mock Filet Mignon

Ingredients

4 ounces chopped mushrooms

1 medium onion, chopped

1 tablespoon butter

2 pounds ground beef

½ baking potato, shredded, and squeeze out excess moisture

1 egg

¼ cup ketchup

1 tablespoon flour

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon salt (sorry Mom, I added 2 teaspoons)

1 teaspoon pepper

4 to 8 slices bacon

Method

Sauté mushrooms and half of onion in butter. In a large bowl, mix the rest of onion and remaining ingredients. Shape into 8 large or 10 smaller patties. Top half of the patties with the onion and mushroom mixture. Cover with plain patties, pressing edges together to seal. Shape into the form of a filet (about 1½ inches thick) and wrap edges with bacon, fastening with toothpicks. Place on a broiler pan and broil six to 7 inches from heat for 10 to 13 minutes on each side (if you’re making smaller patties, the cook time will likely be around 10 minutes).

[Full disclosure: When I made this recipe, my oven smoked very hard and I had to open every window to avoid the smoke alarm going off! Maybe it’s my older oven or “pilot error,” but next time, I may grill these outside using a griddle pan.]

Ground Beef Casserole with Elbow Pasta

This comforting casserole features elbow pasta, ground beef and a cheese cracker topping for crunch.

A creamy sauce and macaroni will wrap you in a warm hug while crunchy cheese crackers deliver big smiles.

Casseroles get a bad wrap and I want to lead the charge to correct this. Let everybody else back a political candidate; I’m getting behind my favorite casserole, and I think this might be this one.

When you hear “casserole,” what comes to mind? Church potluck spreads with ingredients slathered in a variety of sauce. Vegetables swimming in cheese and cream, so much so that you can’t distinguish what vegetable you’re eating. (By the way, I think that may have been the point in the 1950s and ‘60s.)

But casseroles have been around for longer than you might think. Going to everybody’s favorite online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, the word casserole is from the French diminutive casse that describes a large, deep pan used for oven cooking. Somewhere in the 1870s, the casserole as we know it came to be, and while you might turn your nose up at any American casserole dish, would you do the same for a French cassoulet or Greek moussaka? I thought not.

By the 1970s, casseroles seemed to have lived our their usefulness. If you want more history, check out this article.

Should you instead want a recipe that the whole family will like (what kid won’t eat macaroni for crying out loud?) while also stretching a modest amount of ground beef, as Reba McEntire once said, “have I got a deal for you.”

This casserole was a staple in my Mom’s dinner arsenal. We were a family of four and we always had leftovers from this; it tastes better the next day for lunch. It’s a bit like the Johnny Marzetti baked Italian pasta dish that’s said to have originated in Columbus, Ohio near the turn of the century, but it’s the crunch of the Cheese-It® snack crackers that make this dish pop.

And let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Canned cream soups. I looked up nutritional info on Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup (what Mom always used in this recipe).

In 1/2 cup, there are 100 calories, and each can is 2.5 servings.

The 98-percent fat-free choice of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup has 60 calories per serving and slightly lower in the sodium department, too. Should you want to make your own, that’s certainly an option, (check out this recipe) but know that it’s about the same calories as the fat-free canned soup. This casserole will not suffer if you choose to go the fat-free route on soup.

Another more healthy swap for this dish is whole wheat macaroni. For the topping, use reduced-fat cheese crackers or another option are cauliflower cheddar crackers

; these are quite tasty.

My point: Comforting casseroles are great ways to stretch meat in a dish, while vegetable casseroles make tasty choices for Meatless Monday. For a supper that’s quick, budget-friendly, and so very satisfying, bake up a casserole this week.

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Ground Beef Casserole with Elbow Pasta

Ingredients:

1½ pounds ground beef (85 percent lean)

½ cup diced celery

1 medium onion, diced

1 can (10.5-ounce) cream of mushroom soup

1 can (6 ounce) tomato paste

1 ½ cups dry elbow pasta

1 can water

1½ cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup (approximately) crushed Cheez-It® snack crackers or enough to cover top of casserole

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a 6-quart pot about ¾ full with water. Salt well and bring to a boil. Cook pasta al dente (about 8 minutes).

2. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, brown ground beef, celery and onion. In a separate medium-sized mixing bowl, add the cream of mushroom soup and tomato paste. Rinse out the soup can with water and add to bowl, stirring mixture well.

3. When beef is browned and vegetables are softened, add the mixture and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper to your taste. Drain the pasta and fold into beef mixture in skillet.

4. Transfer the beef mixture into an 8x10 baking pan (you can also use a round casserole dish). Bake for 30-35 minutes. Remove from oven and top with shredded cheese and crushed cheese crackers. Return to oven and bake another 15 minutes. You’re looking for bubbly sauce, melted cheese, and slightly golden topping.

Yield: 6 servings