I always consider it a personal triumph when I find a vegetarian recipe that Dan really enjoys. I scored big with this eggplant pasta. We both loved it, and we have officially added it to our recipe rotation. No offense to anyone who is vegetarian or adores vegetables, but I think the reason we liked this so much is that it doesn’t taste like vegetables. The eggplant is substantial and gives the pasta an almost meaty flavor. This pasta is a good one to try if you want to work more vegetarian meals into your routine but aren’t a big fan of veggies. Baby steps! Continue reading “Pasta alla Norma”
Category: Main Ingredient
“Pressed” Game Hen
One of the great things about enjoying food and cooking as much as we do is that we often get cool cooking-related tools and gadgets as gifts. For Dan’s birthday this year, his brother and sister-in-law gave him a “mattone chicken press” (thanks Jerry and Cary!) The mattone is a terra-cotta press used to cook Tuscan-style chicken that is crispy outside and juicy on the inside. Pressing the chicken down while it cooks also helps it to cook evenly. We had never cooked with a mattone before and were excited to try it. For our first attempt, we decided to do a game hen in the oven, although the mattone can also be used on the grill or the stove. The game hen was delicious, and the mattone was really easy to use. Next time we’re going to try a chicken on the grill!
Slow-Cooker Green Chile Pork Enchiladas
This is one of our favorite slow-cooker recipes. It has great Tex-Mex flavors, and you can make it as spicy as you like. The recipe makes enough for 2 pretty big pans of enchiladas, so we usually freeze half of the cooked enchilada filling to use later. I was in charge of preparing everything for the slow-cooker on the day we made these, which was a bit of a challenge for me since it involved trimming 2 pork tenderloins of their fat. Since Dan does pretty much all the cooking around here, he also takes care of the cooking steps that involve raw meat, something I’m not very experienced with and probably enjoy least about cooking. But, I decided to face my fear dislike of processing raw meat and take one for the team this time. (And I freely admit that I’m a wimp in the kitchen.)
Grilled Potato Salad with Watercress, Green Onions and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette
We don’t cook burgers at home all that often (not sure why — maybe because we don’t eat a lot of red meat, so when we do, we prefer to have steak.) But Spring is definitely in the air around here, which means the daylight lasts a little longer and we’re even more inclined to cook on the grill (not that darkness has ever stopped Dan from grilling. Or snow, wind, or rain for that matter), and we were in the mood for burgers. Dan asked me to find an interesting side dish, so I consulted one of our Bobby Flay grilling cookbooks. Whether you’re a fan of Mr. Flay or not (we are), he has created some of the widest varieties of side dishes in any grilling cookbook I’ve seen. It didn’t take long for me to choose this Grilled Potato Salad as the perfect accompaniment to our cheeseburgers. It sounds a little strange to have the “salad” (as in greens) part in the same dish as the potatoes, but the dressing really ties it all together and it works very well.
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Chicken and Shrimp Jambalaya
New Orleans is one of our favorite places to visit — with its impressive architecture, hidden courtyards, quaint local shops and art galleries, abundance of live music and, of course, entertaining nightlife. But one of the main reasons we love New Orleans is the food. There are so many amazing restaurants, especially if you like shrimp and other seafood. Jambalaya is just one of the many traditional dishes from The Big Easy. Jambalaya is a Creole dish with Spanish and French influence. There are two basic variations of the dish — “red” with tomatoes, or “brown” without tomatoes. Other ingredients vary depending on the recipe, what you have on hand, and what kinds of proteins you like — anything from chicken, sausage, ham, shrimp or fish. For our first foray into homemade jambalaya, we decided to try this basic recipe for (red) Chicken and Shrimp Jambalaya from Cook’s Illustrated’s website. It was delicious — rich and comforting with just the right amount of spice. Continue reading “Chicken and Shrimp Jambalaya”
Stir-Fried Pork with Cabbage in Hot-and-Sour Sauce (with leftover pork)
Whenever we cook pork tenderloin, we make sure our weekly menu includes a second meal using the leftover pork. For some reason, these leftover pork recipes almost always end up being Asian — Pork Fried Rice and Moo Shoo Pork, to name a few. Maybe it’s because pork takes on the Asian flavors so well. Or because these recipes are usually really fast and easy to prepare during the week. Whatever the reason, here’s another Asian dish using pork. We found this stir-fry recipe in Cook’s Illustrated’s “The Quick Recipe” cookbook. Although we chose the hot-and-sour sauce to go along with it, the book contains several other sauces that would also work well. Proteins other than pork would also be good in this recipe. We really like the versatility of stir-fry and will try some of the other flavor combinations when we need to use up some leftover pork, chicken or beef.
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Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup
We love a good slow-cooker recipe during an especially busy week, and this is one of our favorites. It’s so easy, I can actually make it by myself. And it’s so delicious that we usually try to make a big enough batch to ensure we have extra to freeze some for another time. (It thaws and re-heats really nicely.) This recipe is pretty much everything we look for in a dinner-time soup. The ingredients are very simple: chicken breasts, crushed tomatoes, enchilada sauce, chopped green chiles, garlic, onion, chicken broth, jalapenos, cumin, chili powder, bay leaf, salt & pepper. When I made this soup, I put all the ingredients together in the slow-cooker that morning. But one of the great things about this recipe is that you can mix together all the ingredients (other than the chicken) the night before and refrigerate the mixture overnight, if you want to save even more time. Just don’t add the chicken until the morning you are going to cook the soup (we’re probably overly cautious when it comes to bacteria and proteins, but better safe than food poisoned! Especially if I’m the one doing the cooking…) Continue reading “Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup”
Top Round Roast – Sous Vide Style
Dan has been interested in molecular gastronomy for a while. Who knows, maybe the science part of it appeals to the patent lawyer in him. Or it’s the prospect of new cooking tools. Or perhaps some combination of both. . . . He has particularly been wanting to try sous vide, which is a method of cooking food sealed in an airtight plastic bag in a water bath at a precise, low temperature for a long time. Part of the reason he is into this technique is because it is and has been used by up-and-coming chefs, and was recently translated to the home chef via a relatively new cooking toy tool. So I decided to surprise Dan with a sous vide machine for his birthday this year. For the inaugural use, Dan chose top round roast. It turned out great, and Dan looks forward to much more experimenting with his b-day gift. In case anyone is curious, I’m really interested in jewelry featuring various precious gems, and my birthday is in May. Continue reading “Top Round Roast – Sous Vide Style”
Grilled Lobster Tails
On certain holidays where many people like to go out to restaurants, we prefer to stay in and cook something a little out of the ordinary. For example, on New Year’s Eve, we had mussels. For Valentine’s Day this year, Dan grilled lobster tails, and we served them with pasta in a very nice setting at our dining room table (where we eat 2.5 meals per year, on average.) Grilled lobster is absolutely delicious and so easy to prepare — we should probably make it more often than we do. But we appreciate having a few special recipes that we save to celebrate important occasions, which is what we think Valentine’s Day is all about: a day to recognize and do a little something extra or different for the ones you love. Continue reading “Grilled Lobster Tails”
Potato Leek Soup
We have sung the praises of Cook’s Illustrated and their cookbooks before, and we consult them for recipes all the time. Since this winter in Dallas has been much, much colder than usual, we were in the mood for a hearty soup for dinner. We found the perfect recipe in Cook’s Illustrated’s “Soups & Stews.” I actually cooked this one on my own, and it was really easy. Really. I don’t like to cook by myself and am easily intimidated by complex (to me) recipes. But this one had relatively few ingredients and steps, so I decided to give it a shot. Continue reading “Potato Leek Soup”