One of the main reasons we live in Texas is the weather, which we appreciate most in the Spring and Fall. Lots of people think that living in Texas, we don’t really get to experience the four traditional “seasons,” but we do. It’s just that two of them — Spring and Fall — happen to be rather short. Here in Dallas, we are lucky enough to still be having some Spring weather, unlike our poor friends and family further south, who are already experiencing the heat and humidity for which the Houston area is infamous. No matter the weather, we grill pretty much year-round. Yet the warm (but not too warm!) temps and sunny, cloud-free days definitely have me drawn to our grilling cookbooks when searching for recipes these days. This pork recipe is one we have had many times before, but for some reason we usually only cook it during warm weather months. Maybe it’s something about the kebab itself — perhaps the idea of grilling almost your entire meal on a “stick” evokes memories/thoughts of summer days and nights roasting hot dogs and marshmallows around a campfire. We decided to enjoy this nostalgic feeling and kick off our short window of Spring with pork kebabs. Check back in about a month (or less) for recipes involving refrigeration and bitching about how it’s already too hot to be outside.
Category: Main Ingredient
Hasselback Potatoes
As self-described foodies, we spend a lot of time looking for interesting recipes and different ways of cooking food. Dan recently came across a photo of “Hasselback Potatoes” and was immediately intrigued. We’d never seen or heard of this type of potato dish before, but liked how they looked and decided to research some recipes. We were surprised to discover how easy they are to make, considering how complicated and fancy they appear. And they taste as good as they look — sort of like gourmet home-fries.
Tuna Salad
This is not your typical tuna salad. The difference that sets this tuna apart (in our opinion) is the addition of lime and horseradish. And there are no pickles in this dish, which is one of the main ingredients we think of when we think tuna salad. Not that we think about or make tuna salad all that often, but when we do, we like to use this recipe from Cook’s Illustrated’s American Classics cookbook. The ingredients are simple: solid white tuna (packed in water), lime juice and lime zest, prepared horseradish, red onion, fresh parsley, salt and pepper, mayonnaise and Dijon mustard. Simple but tasty.
Red Beans and Rice
We’ve mentioned before that one of our favorite places we’ve ever visited is New Orleans. When we were there last May, we wandered around looking for a good place to have our final meal of the trip, hoping to make up for a surprisingly mediocre plate of etouffee from lunch the previous day. (The etouffee was so bad that a local guy dining next to us said it was the worst he’d ever had and he didn’t want to have to pay for his meal as a result.) We found a great little place in the French Quarter that more than made up for the not-so-good lunch. Dan ordered the meal featuring a trio of famous Cajun dishes — red beans and rice, etouffee and gumbo — and finally got to sample what authentic etouffee is really supposed to taste like. The other two dishes were authentically delicious as well. Ever since that meal, we’ve wanted to try making these dishes at home. We’ve already tried Seafood Gumbo (with rather successful results, if we do say so ourselves – and we do), so we decided to give red beans and rice a shot. Success Number Two!
Skirt Steak Tacos
This might be the most simple and easy recipe we have ever posted. It’s so basic that it doesn’t even require an actual recipe. All you do is roast some onion strips in the oven and grill a skirt steak, then put those ingredients in a taco. But the end result tastes a lot more complex — as if you marinated the steak for hours and meticulously carmelized the onions. This meal is perfect for a busy weeknight, or even a last-minute dinner party where you can fool your guests into thinking you spent way more time cooking for them than you actually did. (We won’t tell.)
Beef Stroganoff (with leftover beef)
One of the reasons we are able to cook as often during the week as we do is that we try to cook a protein that we can use in another dish later in the week — two meals out of one. I have mentioned before that I’m not a fan of leftovers, so transmogrifying the remaining protein into a different meal is my thing. As you may have seen, we recently made a delicious pot roast. It was a lot of beef for two people, so we needed a recipe for the leftover meat. I found one that was perfect for a weeknight and had the additional benefit of being reminiscent of a dish my Grandma used to make — Beef and Noodles. Grandma’s Beef and Noodles is not something we’ve ever attempted to make, and I’m not even sure an actual recipe exits. It’s one of those magical meals that the creator just knows how to make, and hopefully someone has been able to witness it enough times to re-create it. My mom watched and learned, but only makes it for special occasions because the men in our family have been known to gorge on it to the point of near-sickness. It’s seriously that good. This stroganoff recipe is a close enough second that it brought up many fond memories of Grandma (yet not SO good that Dan ate himself sick.) We’ll work on learning Grandma’s Beef and Noodles, but in the meantime, this stroganoff is a decent substitute and a great use of leftover pot roast.
Veal Chop Milanese with Arugula Salad
Whenever we have an exceptional and memorable meal at a restaurant, we like to attempt to recreate the dish at home. This recipe is one of our most successful attempts thus far. We discovered the dish at Vic and Anthony’s Steakhouse in Houston. Pretty much every summer for the past several years, we travel to Houston to attend what we affectionately dubbed the “Baseball Extravaganza” weekend with my parents, who are huge Astros fans. The Extravaganza involves a night game on Saturday and day game on Sunday, with two nights lodging at a wonderful hotel — the baseball-themed, but still-surprisingly-classy Inn at the Ballpark, which is located right across the street from Vic and Anthony’s. For many years, the steakhouse was not open on Sunday nights, so we would longingly pass it on our way to other restaurants downtown after the Sunday games. But the planets aligned for us a couple of Extravaganzas ago and we found ourselves lucky to finally be enjoying a meal at this elegant dining establishment. (FYI, their website now indicates they are open on Sundays, so this year’s Extravaganza will most likely include a visit.) It was a memorable meal — or at least mine was, to me — I don’t remember what anyone else had to eat, but my “veal chop milanese” was amazing. It was one of those dishes that is so good you insist everyone else at the table have a taste (but not too big of a bite!) So I was absolutely thrilled when Dan found a similar recipe in his Michael Symon cookbook. Symon’s recipe is a little more complex than the average weeknight dish, but it’s worth it on a weekend or weeknight when you are craving a unique presentation of baby cow.
Company Pot Roast
We’re not sure why, but pot roast is not something we cook very often. In fact, this may be the first time we’ve ever made it. Maybe it’s because we don’t eat a lot of red meat. Or because I never thought I really liked pot roast (turns out I do.) But I happened to catch an episode of the Barefoot Contessa’s cooking show when she made her “Company Pot Roast,” and I was intrigued. It seemed like a pretty easy recipe that would be perfect for a Sunday evening. We didn’t have any company to share the pot roast with us on the night we made it, so I thought the leftover beef would be good in another dish later that week (turns out I was right.) Hint: the dish involves beef, noodles and creamy sauce — stay tuned for the post later this week! Continue reading “Company Pot Roast”
Stuffed Pork Chops
I’m always looking for good pork chop recipes, probably because I seldom find any that we love enough to repeat. But I finally found one that could be a contender. We adapted this pork chop dish from this recipe on the Epicurious website. We’ve mentioned Epicurious before — it’s a great, user-friendly site with tons and tons of recipes. The “user rating” and review features of the site are so helpful and provide tips and feedback from other people who have cooked the recipes. For example, several reviewers of this pork chop recipe mentioned that they substituted panko for the cubed bread and suggested putting a little extra stuffing around the chops in the baking dish. We followed both of these tips and the pork chops turned out great.
Lemon Chicken
Earlier this fall, when we had lemons from our Meyer lemon tree, we experimented with recipes using lemons as one of the main ingredients. We consulted one of our cooking heroes’ most recent cookbooks — the Barefoot Contessa’s “How Easy is that?” and found a recipe that was as easy as it was lemony and delicious. (Bonus — the link to the recipe includes video of the Barefoot Contessa on the Today Show.) The original recipe calls for chicken breasts, but we usually prefer chicken thighs over breasts because we like the flavor better and thighs are almost impossible to overcook. Considering how the chicken got crispy on the outside without drying out on the inside, we may try this recipe with chicken breasts next time. Continue reading “Lemon Chicken”