Gourmet at Home (It’s Easy, I Promise!)

It gets a lot of bad names – fussy, complicated, difficult – that really don't have to be true!

Gourmet cooking can be just as easy as preparing everyday food for your family – especially when you use some of the quality shortcuts available today.

Take, for example, a meal I made for Sunday lunch a couple of weeks ago – I paired Monterey Gourmet Foods' Fresh Spinach and Cheese Ravioli with a very simple roasted vegetable sauce. It was an absolute hit, and I promise I didn't work any harder at this meal than any other meal!

 

Here's the recipe for my Roasted Veggie Sauce…

Wash all veggies and cut into 1-2″ pieces. Spread on a large cookie sheet.

Toss in olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour to an hour and a half…veggies should start to shrivel a little and skin should get soft.

Take 2/3 of the veggies and puree in a blender (make sure all of the garlic cloves make it into the blender…nobody wants to bite down on one of those!). Mix the puree with the crushed tomatoes and add in the remaining roasted veggies.

This sauce paired wonderfully with Monterey Gourmet Foods’ Fresh Spinach and Cheese Ravioli. Their  entire line of Discovery Dishes are internationally inspired and all natural, as dictated by their strict Genuinely Natural Principles. It's so great to have a healthy meal and a delicious meal all in one!

I love that this line of pasta is so imaginative…everything from Korean-inspired Chicken Mandu dumplings to Polish inspired Potato and Cheese Pierogi. They really let you experience a world of flavors at home, whether you're feeding your family or entertaining!

Back to my gourmet-at-home meal…I served my roasted veggie sauce over the ravioli and added a tiny bit of shredded parmesan as an accent.

This dish was paired with a spinach salad – complete with goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and cranberries. I topped it with a balsamic vinaigrette. Yum! This would have been great with a sweeter berry (strawberries, raspberries) too. The spinach salad was the perfect accent to the spinach in the ravioli.

The entire family raved about my “gourmet” meal – and I promise it took no extra effort than any other meal I made that week! Even a certain 19 month old liked it, as referenced by her inability to keep her hands out of a picture. 🙂

A big thanks to Monterey Gourmet Foods for inspiring such an imaginative and delicious meal!