Meal Prep Week 3: Simple Sunday

Meal Prep Week 3 consisted of the following dishes:

• Truffle Mushroom Cheese Rigatoni, 
• Hickory Barbecue Bacon, 
• Roasted Zucchini, Bell Peppers, Cauliflower and Sweet Potato in Balsamic Dressing, 
• Spam Omelette, and 
• Steamed Rice

Simplicity was key this week. 

I felt like the dishes I cooked last week required a bit too much in preparation, so this time I scaled down and decided to cook simpler dishes. It also helped that my schedule this week called for less meals than last.

Like my first week of meal prepping, I decided to cook roasted vegetables again, only this time I remembered to add one of my favorite vegetables in the whole world: Zucchini. I've always wondered how anyone could not love Zucchini. It's perfect in its crunchy, light freshness in any dish. Zucchini is what cucumbers wish they could be (aka a TRUE vegetable). Basically, Zucchini haters can suck it.

I noticed that my roasted vegetables last time around were a bit too bitter, so I lessened the rosemary and thyme and upped the balsamic vinegar to olive oil ratio. It turned out much better this time. I should remember that less is more when it comes to dried herbs vs. fresh ones.

I also didn't have time to go meat shopping this week, hence the few strips of bacon and 1 can of spam that I had to incorporate into my meals since these were one of the only meat items left in my fridge and pantry. Spam is spam and goes great with eggs, so an omelette seemed like a great idea given the quick cooking time and un-messy nature of the dish. Bacon is also bacon, so I just drizzled it with some hickory barbecue sauce and popped it in the oven to bake. Easy peasy. 

As for my featured recipe this week, I decided to cook pasta again to break from the monotony of rice meals for the week, only this time I tried my hand at making a simple but complex tasting recipe using the least amount of ingredients possible. And thus, the Truffle Mushroom Cheese Rigatoni was born.

Not even cooked but the food looks delicious already. Yum.

Truffle Mushroom Cheese Rigatoni 

Ingredients:

• Rigatoni (you can use another kind of pasta, but then this wouldn't be a rigatoni recipe anymore. oh well.) - 500g
• Fresh Shiitake Mushrooms (Fresh only please. Canned or dried mushrooms don't have the same effect.) - 1 pack, sliced (Forgot to note the grams, but hopefully you could estimate based on the photo above)
• Fresh Korean Bunashimeji Mushrooms - 1 pack, chopped in half (Forgot to note the grams for this too, so hopefully the photo above helps you estimate again)
• Fresh Lemon Juice - Approx. 2 Tbsp (Protip: I normally buy 6 lemons at once, juice them, then pour the juice into an ice tray then freeze for easy storage. In this instance, 2 Tbsp translated to 2 ice cubes from the tray that I had prepped roughly 3 weeks before)
• Truffle Cheese - 1 standard block at your local deli, grated (It's always a pain in the wallet to buy truffle oil, so I got truffle cheese instead as it's easier on the wallet but still gives that great truffle taste in your pasta)
• All Purpose Cream - 1 cup
• Olive Oil - About 2 Tbsp

Instructions:

1. Boil a pot of water with a dash of salt and olive oil. Once boiling, add the rigatoni. Stir occasionally. After 6-7 minutes, empty the pot of pasta and water in a colander on the sink. Pour ice water (or tap water if you have clean tap water) over the pasta to shock it and stop it from cooking further. Set aside. 
2. Using the same pot where you cooked the pasta (or a different one if you have lots of pots and weirdly want to wash more dishes afterwards), add oil and sauté the shiitake and bunashimeji mushrooms with the lemon juice until they start to shrink slightly. Then add the 1 cup of cream and stir some more until the cream has that nice earthy mushroom taste when you taste test if off of your spoon or spatula. 
3. Add the rigatoni and mix evenly with the mushroom and cream. Then add half of the grated truffle cheese until thoroughly mixed with the pasta. Add the second half then stir some more until everything is coated in cheesy goodness. 
4. Add salt and pepper to taste if you want, but by now you should be all done! Cool and set aside in a separate container (or containers if you meal prep like I do), then eat away!

Like I mentioned in the caption of my first photo, simplicity was the key theme for this week. Because of that, I had a much easier time cooking this time around but the results were still very much delicious.

What about you? How's your meal prep journey been so far? What do you think of my simpler pasta recipe above versus last week's?

Let me know in the comments! I'd love to hear from you.