Category: Main Ingredient

Tortellini with Sun-Dried Tomatoes & Prosciutto

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Pasta, Recipes

We’re always looking for new sources of recipes for easy but delicious weeknight meals.  On a recent trip to the grocery store, we found a magazine titled “30-Minute Suppers” by Cook’s Illustrated.  The source is an old favorite, but the magazine itself is new (and should still be available in stores until October, if you’re interested.)  Cook’s Illustrated’s cookbook “The Best 30-Minute Recipe” is one of our most-used books, so we figured the magazine would have lots of recipes we would enjoy as well.  So far, we have tried two recipes from the magazine and were happy with the resulting meals that tasted like they took a lot of effort, but were on the table in just half an hour.  We liked the combination of flavors and textures in this tortellini dish very much:  cheesy tortellini, peppery arugula, sweet and slightly chewy sun-dried tomatoes, crispy prosciutto, bright lemon and rich olive oil.  The only thing we would change is to create more of a sauce for the finished dish.  Next time we make it we’ll see if we can tweak the recipe a bit and post an update here.

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Lobster Cobb Salad (with leftover lobster)

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Seafood

We found this recipe in Ina Garten’s cookbook, “Barefoot Contessa Family Style,” and loved it.  Ina recommends that you “make this elegant salad when your mother-in-law comes for lunch,” but unfortunately, my mother-in-law doesn’t prefer lobster.  More for me!  Only kidding (Hi Elaine!) — you can also make this salad with chicken or shrimp and it will still be delicious and decadent.  We think it’s the combination of Dijon in the dressing, bacon and blue cheese topping, peppery arugula and creamy avocado that make this salad exceptional.  As Ina says, “this is a special meal for times when you really want to please someone.”

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Grilled Buffalo Wings

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Poultry, Recipes

Dan’s favorite season has finally begun.  No, not Fall — it’s Football Season!  While I don’t share Dan’s love of the NFL, his penchant for watching games allllllll day on Sunday, or his obsession with tracking the scores from BOTH of his fantasy football leagues, I will support the marriage team by watching Steeler games, and I do enjoy the food that comes with this time of year.  This season, we decided to cook some of our football-watching bar food favorites at home, starting with buffalo wings.  We researched several recipes, expecting to find at least one with some secret ingredient for making the buffalo sauce so delicious.  Turns out that there really is no secret, or if there is a special ingredient, it’s being kept secret.  Pretty much all the recipes we found called for the simple combination of “hot sauce,” butter and vinegar.  In some recipes, the wings were grilled, others called for frying them, and some required baking them in the oven.  In the interest of making them just a teeny bit more healthy, we decided to grill our wings.  The resulting grill flavor complemented the buffalo sauce nicely.  We’ll make these again and maybe tweak the sauce a bit to come up with our own secret ingredient. 

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“Italian Sub” Chop Salad

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Vegetable

Sub, hoagie, grinder, hero — whatever you like to call it, Dan is a big fan of this type of sandwich, especially when filled with Italian meats, a little provolone cheese, assorted veggies and accompanied by Italian dressing.  While he likes a good sub sandwich, I’m more of a salad girl.  I especially like a good chop salad, where all the ingredients are chopped up small enough that you get a little taste of each component in every bite.  This salad is a nice compromise between our taste preferences — I get the chop salad texture while Dan gets the Italian sub flavor.  Win win.  Even better, the chop salad is really versatile and can be made with whatever ingredients you prefer or happen to have on hand — no recipe required.  The ingredients that work to create a salad that tastes like a sandwich Dan would order from our local pizza joint include:  lettuce, celery, cucumber, red onion, pepperoncini, kalamata olives, provolone cheese, salami — all tossed with a creamy Italian dressing.

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Horseradish-Maple Glazed Pork Chops

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Pork, Recipes

We often use leftover pork for a second meal during the week, including such dishes as stir-fried pork, banh mi sandwiches and moo shoo pork.  Sometimes I prefer pork as a leftover because so many of these dishes have a sauce or other components to liven up the pork, which otherwise can be a little bland.  These chops are anything but bland, yet not too flavor-specific that they can’t be turned into a totally different second meal (we used our leftover chops in fried rice.)  I found the recipe in one of Bobby Flay’s cookbooks, “Boy Meets Grill.”  Chef Flay writes, “think about these three flavors going together — grilled pork chops, pungent horseradish, and sweet maple syrup — it makes sense.”  We initially thought that pairing horseradish with syrup actually does not make sense, but we are not accomplished chefs, nor Food Network stars.  So we took Bobby’s word for it and were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed the sweet, yet spicy flavor.

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Chicken Stew with Green Olives

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Poultry, Recipes

Now that it’s September, cooler weather is FINALLY on the way, and we could not be happier.  It’s been a brutal summer here, but we have been blessed with glorious temperatures in the low 80s for the last couple of days and we are excited for fall.  In addition to a break from the hot weather, fall means cooking more of our favorite soups, chili and other comfort-food dishes.  This stew, adapted from a recipe in Glamour magazine, is a great dish for the transition from summer to fall.  The olives and basil give it a bright, summery flavor, while the broth and tomatoes provide richness.  It’s also really easy to make with simple ingredients:  chicken, leeks, olive oil, garlic, white wine, tomatoes, chicken stock, green olives and basil.

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Pork Fried Rice (with leftover pork)

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Rice

As promised, here is another of our favorite uses of leftover pork, Asian style.  We adapted the recipe from “The Best 30-Minute Recipe” cookbook (which we can’t recommend highly enough), but the dish is pretty flexible in terms of both ingredients and sauce.  This version is what we prefer, but you can always put your own spin on it, which is one of the many reasons we like this recipe.  We also appreciate that it’s a quick, easy and delicious use of leftovers.

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Pasta alla Carbonara

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Pasta, Recipes

This is our second attempt at this pasta dish, which was originally inspired by the Rigatoni Alla Carbonara we had at Tra Vigne on our trip to Napa earlier this summer.  The pasta at Tra Vigne was one of the best meals of the trip, and we were excited to try to recreate it at home.  According to Tra Vigne’s menu, their rigatoni includes guanciale bacon, onion, eggs, cracked pepper and Parmesan.  Sounds easy enough.  So we made a special trip to Central Market to get the guanciale (Italian bacon made from the pig’s jowls or cheeks), researched some recipes and whipped up our first batch of Pasta alla Carbonara.  We used all the same carbonara ingredients as Tra Vigne and expected ours to taste at least similar to theirs, even if it didn’t turn out quite as delicious.  But ours wasn’t even close.  While the pasta at Tra Vigne had a rich and hearty bacon flavor, ours had a slightly gamey taste unlike any bacon we’ve had.  Carbonara Fail.  Since at first we did not succeed, we tried again — this time using pancetta instead of guanciale, and the result was much more successful.  Still not as good as the rigatoni at Tra Vigne, but our second batch was way better than the first — rich and creamy with nice bacon flavor. Continue reading “Pasta alla Carbonara”

London Broil

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Red Meat

For some people, including Dan, cooking a meal for someone can be a way to show love and affection, celebrate an achievement, or commemorate an important occasion.  For the Conrad family and many others, August 29 is a signifigant date that does not go unnoticed.  Three years ago today, Dan’s dad Tom passed away after a too-brief but valiant battle against a brain tumor.  It is a date upon which we struggle against the sadness and missing by instead focusing on the happy memories, joyful times and favorite moments.  One of Tom’s greatest joys was food — in a simple, meat & potatoes way, nothing too unusual or exotic.  Dan loves cooking for family and does so just about every time he goes home to Altoona.  During one visit years ago, as Dan was cooking dinner, his dad came in the kitchen to watch and keep Dan company.  While observing, Tom cautioned “not too spicy!” just as Dan was seasoning the chicken soup — with salt and pepper.  Although he didn’t have the most adventurous palate, Tom would have eaten just about anything Dan cooked and would have raved about it — such was Tom’s way of showing unwavering support to those he loved, no matter their endeavor.  One of Tom’s true favorite meals that Dan cooks is London Broil, which involves a simple marinade used to spice up (but not too much!) an inexpensive cut of beef and turn it into something special.  And it’s our way to claim this day and honor a great man who enjoyed nothing more than a delicious steak dinner.  Except maybe a turkey dinner.  Or dinner at Lena’s.  Or a sleeve of Oreo cookies… Continue reading “London Broil”

Banh Mi Sandwiches (with leftover pork)

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Pork, Recipes

Pork is a versatile protein when it comes to leftovers, especially in Asian dishes.  We have used leftover pork for stir fry, moo-shoo pork, and pork fried rice (post coming soon!), just to name a few.  This sandwich recipe is yet another good use of leftover pork, with an Asian flair.  I was inspired to try making Banh Mi sandwiches at home after having one from a little soup & sandwich shop in Brooklyn while visiting Dan’s brother, his lovely wife and adorable son earlier this year.  Although not authentically Vietnamese, the sandwich was delicious and didn’t seem like it would be all that difficult to make, especially using pork that had already been cooked.  There are a lot of Banh Mi recipes out there, but it seems like a common thread among most of them is pickled carrot and daikon (a type of radish.)  The remaining sandwich components vary and should depend on what you have on hand and your taste preferences.  The pickled veggies sound a little strange, but their sweet/sour flavor balances really well with salty pork, fresh lettuce and spicy jalapeno.  We’ll definitely make this sandwich again.

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