Beef and Potato Gratin
Main dish for six, or four lumberjacks. Sticks to your ribs and tastes so good goin’ down. Just a hardy easily prepared weekday meal. Careful, it may become a family favorite.
Stovetop Pot Roast
If you’re into Pot Roast you won’t cook any other recipe after trying this one. Seriously! A one pot stovetop meal with little prep and 5 hours undisturbed cooking. The meat is beyond juicy, and vegetables so savory delicious with just a bit of carrot sweetness. I love the seasonings used in the Mississippi Pot Roast Recipe. So, I’ve duplicated to some degree. I’m not sure why but cooking stovetop makes it so much easier. Here’s an oven version but this stovetop is so much more. It just can’t be beat. Delicious enough to serve a holiday crowd without apology!
Skillet Spaghetti
One skillet spaghetti recipe and you have dinner for 6 hearty eaters in 30 minutes! Hey, this is a great Super Bowl dish. It tastes great, and who doesn’t like spaghetti! And another plus, it’s not messy to serve … just spoon it up.
Portuguese Festa Sopas
We’re passionate about our Portuguese Festa Sopas! This typically once a year Festa is celebrated throughout the San Joaquin Valley (and many other locations). BUT we love to make Portuguese Sopas at home throughout the whole year. The recipe varies a bit from place to place but the basic ingredients remain the same. When I posted our family’s recipe some years ago passions ran high. Others’ remembered differing recipes. I can assure you the Willitts’ (Perry-Freitas) recipe is authentic. This hearty dish has a unique flavor and is not always successfully duplicated at home. Dan (my brother), who put the recipe together for my post, helped with the cooking for these Portuguese Festas in Visalia for a number of years. It’s one thing helping to put food together for hundreds, and then another converting to a small dish accurately just by taste testing. He has completed many taste tests in creating this dish. I’ve tested this latest recipe. It’s exactly as I remember!
Basic Marsala Sauce Makes 3 Dinners
Filet Mignon with Marsala Sauce
Meatballs Cooked in Marsala Sauce
Chicken Marsala
This simple recipe makes up beautifully. I’ve plated two Marsala Sauce Dinners to reveal the diversity of this recipe. Change two ingredients and it becomes Chicken Marsala. This recipe is one to put to memory.
Working 14 hour days as a single parent leaves little time for cooking. Creating a repertoire especially of versatile recipes like this one makes perfect sense. Don’t get me wrong, we had plenty of fast food in those days. Just ask my youngest ones. I wanted to cook but after hours of treating patients I just didn’t have the energy. Luckily we all survived but I would say not without some earmarks. Isn’t that what gives us character! Truly looking to help those parents out there that find themselves in my old shoes.
We all know now that wine doesn’t burn off during cooking at least not all of it. The shorter cooking times can guarantee you’re going to be consuming some alcohol. If you are concerned there are some things you can do with this recipe. A substitute for Marsala is very difficult to accomplish. You might try adding a little white grape juice and lemon juice or vinegar. Adding fruit such as grapes or figs sounds delicious. In a pinch the Marsala can be eliminated and broth substituted.
I hope you’ll enjoy this delicious recipe over and over.
When you can’t wait 8 hours for the traditional Slow Cooker Mississippi Pot Roast and you want all the fixings to caramelize the oven is your best bet. My family loves my Pot Roast and this brings the old recipe to extraordinary.
Braciole Recipe 2
When a Rizzo birthday happens at my home Braciole is always the main dish. It’s his favorite! This year I wanted to try something a little different. Just a change up in the stuffing … like a bread stuffing. My use of flank steak is a favorite but other meats work too, such as round steak, pork, veal. You still can’t beat flank steak for its flavor and tenderness in this recipe.
If you’d like to try my Braciole Recipe 1 click here.
Lasagna Soup
Have you seen a Lasagna Soup Recipe circulating social media in the last month? I have but not this recipe. I thought, how difficult would it be to change up my all time Lasagna into a soup! As it turns out, not difficult at all. The perfect answer to a quick dinner especially if lasagna is what you’re craving.
Smoked Brisket Dan’s Style
Didn’t get a taste but I’m betting this tastes as good as my recipe if not better. My recipe here. My brother is the family barbecue and meat smoking expert. We were introduced early on to the smoky flavor of barbecued steaks and smoked Portuguese Sausage. We just can’t help ourselves when it comes to the taste.
This recipe is an all day activity but most of this is observing … A great dinner for that special picnic and all day swim party. You must try my brother’s pit meat recipe too, here.
Mississippi Roast-My Version
Love my hairstylist, Melissa, for more than taming my hair … a real time consuming task, believe me. We share interests … our love for family, cleaning (ha), and food. Melissa recently tried a version of this recipe, apparently Mississippi Roast has been around, (who knew?), and said it was amazing. It sounded really tasty as she gave me the list of the few ingredients without much in directions. Melissa is considerably younger than I … In fact, she’s younger than my youngest child. What does this have to do with anything? I like to get ideas of what young mother’s & dad’s cook for their families. Yep, I have several of her recipes on this blog, some of Portuguese origin. Just plug her name, MELISSA, in the search box above to see what happens. Thank you Melissa!
Enjoy this amazingly simple recipe with a few extra steps thanks to me. Oops.
Want to know the scoop on Mississippi Roast, see it here.