Artichoke Ricotta Tortellini with Saffron Cream Sauce and Roasted Potatoes with Asparagus

“If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?” — Martin Scorsese

I have wanted to make this recipe for ages, but I held off because I am always a bit intimidated by the idea of making fresh pasta. It is easy to make the dough, but it can be time-consuming to make individual, filled pastas like ravioli and tortellini. Fresh tortellini has always been my favorite type of pasta though, so I finally relented. The cream sauce for this recipe also contains saffron, one of my favorite flavors!

Making these tortellini actually wasn’t difficult at all. It was kind of fun. We doubled the recipe and ended up making 200 tortellini, so we were able to freeze some to enjoy later.

The filling mainly consisted of artickoke hearts, garlic, white wine, and cashew cream. The sauce was a rich combination of shallots, white wine, cashew cream, saffron, and Earth Balance dairy-free butter.

Served tossed with fresh arugula and tomatoes, with a side of roasted potatoes and asparagus with smoked salt and pepper. From Tal Ronnen’s The Conscious Cook, page 164.

Tortellini Fact: Because of it’s shape, tortellini is also called “belly button” pasta.

Oven-Roasted Banana Rum Cheesecake w/Spiced Pecan Crust & Maple Rum Sauce

Because you don’t live near a bakery doesn’t mean you have to go without cheesecake. — Hedy Lamarr

This is the hands down the tastiest cheesecake that I have ever had, besides my Mom’s! 😉 From the very talented chef Tal Ronnen’s book The Conscious Cook, page 198.

The rum sauce is pure heaven, the filling is a cheesy-banana-rum delight, and the crust is made using spelt flour and ground pecans, so it is low in gluten. This was really easy to make, and it was fun to roast whole bananas with their skins on in the oven for the filling.

Pine-Nut-&-Basil Seared Gardein “Chicken” w/Lobster Mushroom Buerre Blanc, Braised Greens, & Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

From Tal Ronnen’s phenomenal cookbook The Conscious Cook. We love you Tal! 🙂 This looks and sounds fancy, and it was, but it was actually quite easy to make.  Being a big mushroom fan I have been wanting to experiment with lobster mushrooms some more and this recipe provided the perfect opportunity to do so. This lobster mushroom buerre blanc is the richest, most decadent sauce in the known universe with flavors of shallots, white wine, dairy-free butter, and lobster mushrooms galore. We slathered it on top of the pine nut-&-basil-crusted fillets, thyme-roasted fingerling potatoes, and veggie stock-&-dairy-free butter-braised greens. A dinner to remember, for sure!

Gardein “Chicken” Piccata & Heirloom Tomato Salad

We used Gardein Chick’n Scalloppini for this mouth-watering dish. Gardein is an amazingly delicious meat substitute made from soy, which has no cholesterol, is rich in protein, and is egg and dairy-free. This piccata was so tender, with flavors of lemon, white wine. capers, garlic, and shallots. The zesty heirloom tomato salad was topped with crisped capers and a basil chiffonade. This looks fancy but it was ridiculously simple to make. From The Conscious Cook, by Tal Ronnen. The tomato salad appears on page 61, and the piccata is on page 85. Heaven on a plate.

Tropical Tapioca Pudding

Made with coconut milk, yummmmmm. From The Conscious Cook.