Dan is crazy for fish tacos. He has tried them at pretty much every restaurant that serves them, and it has been his ongoing quest to find the very best fish tacos in Dallas. We had never made them at home, but after seeing a show with “Sam the Cooking Guy” preparing this recipe, we were inspired to try making our own. While I’ve never been a huge fan of fish in any form, I love these fish tacos, and they are now one of my favorite ways to eat fish. They don’t have any “fishy” taste at all — just very fresh, spicy, tangy and delicious. Continue reading “Fish Tacos”
Category: Main Ingredient
Chicken Paillard with Spinach
We created this recipe based on a dish I had years ago at a local restaurant. “Paillard” refers to the technique of pounding the chicken flat before cooking it so that it cooks faster and more evenly. One of the reasons we love this recipe is that it incorporates the main course and side into a single dish, making it easy to prepare during a busy week. The recipe is also a good one because it uses fresh spinach, which is a “superfood.” And we balance out the healthy with a little bit of bacon, which of course makes everything better. Continue reading “Chicken Paillard with Spinach”
Chicken Cacciatore
This is delicious “comfort food” recipe that we found in Cook’s Illustrated Italian Classics, when we were looking for a way to use sage from our garden. This recipe isn’t as quick as some of our weeknight dishes, but you could easily make it on a weekend and have the leftovers (if there are any) the following week. We weren’t really sure if we would like this recipe the first time we made it, since we (I) aren’t huge fans of stew-like dishes, but we were pleasantly surprised. It has just the right amount of stew type ingredients (meat, tomatoes and mushrooms), and we love just about any recipe that includes chicken thighs. Continue reading “Chicken Cacciatore”
Potato Leek Pizza
We love pizza. As you may know, we recently discovered how easy it is to make pizza dough at home. Since then, we’ve made several different kinds of pizza, including this rather unusual Potato Leek Pizza from the Pioneer Woman’s cookbook. Leeks are in season around here and this is a really good way to use them. Think of the best loaded baked potato you’ve ever had, but even better because it’s in the form of a delicious thin-crust pizza. Continue reading “Potato Leek Pizza”
Guacamole Salad
If you’ve spent any time here at FoodieLawyer, you know we are big fans of Ina Garten. The woman is a genius when it comes to food. She came up with one of our favorite side dishes for homemade Tex-Mex: guacamole salad. It’s healthy, fresh and delicious. A friend of ours who first made this salad for us loves it so much that she would sometimes make a batch to eat for lunch all week. It’s that good! Continue reading “Guacamole Salad”
Korean Chicken
This is a great weeknight meal because it uses just a few simple ingredients, and you can do the majority of the cooking either the night before or the morning of your meal. The chicken cooks in less than an hour with very little attention, and the flavor is amazing – spicy yet tangy at the same time. This recipe is a good example of how easy it can be to cook Asian food at home that is as delicious (or even more delicious) than your favorite take-out. One of these days, we ought to throw a dinner party featuring this dish and some of our other home-cooked Asian specialties. Continue reading “Korean Chicken”
Pasta and Vegetables with Warm Lemon Vinaigrette
Since we still have a few Meyer lemons on our tree, we’ve been looking for good new recipes featuring lemon as a key ingredient. We came across this pasta recipe and decided to try it. We also like the fact that it is a vegetarian dish (and by “we,” I mean me. Dan is less enthusiastic about my one-vegetarian-meal-per-week initiative.) This recipe also meets our criteria of being easy for a weeknight. Although we served the pasta with a sauteed chicken dish, it could easily be its own main dish. Continue reading “Pasta and Vegetables with Warm Lemon Vinaigrette”
Pico de Gallo
If you’re familiar with Tex-Mex cooking at all, you know that pico de gallo is a staple of this type of cuisine. Even though we don’t cook Tex-Mex all that often at home, we certainly eat a lot of it at local restaurants. We never really considered making homemade pico, until we found the recipe for “Disappearing” Pork Tenderloin, which includes pico de gallo as a topping for the pork. One of the great things about pico is how versatile it is — you can use it with many different dishes (not all of which are traditionally Tex-Mex), from pork tenderloin, to tacos, to fish. Delicioso! Continue reading “Pico de Gallo”
“Disappearing” Pork Tenderloin with Pico de Gallo
Cooking pork tenderloin usually yields enough pork for two main dishes in one week, especially when you cook two tenderloins, which is how tenderloin is typically packaged. If you don’t want to cook both tenderloins, you can always separate them and freeze one for later. We found this grilled pork tenderloin recipe in Weber’s Big Book of Grilling, one of our favorite grilling cookbooks. We thought it would taste good on its own, and would be good as leftovers incorporated into a different dish later in the week. This recipe takes a little extra time because the pork requires a marinade, a rub and a pico de gallo topping. But the end result is worth your while. According to Weber, “after one bite you’ll know how we came up with the name for this recipe.” Continue reading ““Disappearing” Pork Tenderloin with Pico de Gallo”
Light Mac-and-Cheese
Who doesn’t love Macaroni and Cheese? We do, and a couple of our friends do as well. So, by special request, we are posting our favorite mac-n-cheese recipe. We found this recipe for a light version in Cook’s Illustrated’s “The Best Light Recipe.” It’s really good and more healthy than other recipes. According to Cook’s Illustrated, this version has 290 less calories than classic mac-and-cheese and 30 less grams of fat. The secrets are low-fat ingredients and using cornstarch to thicken the cheese rather than a buttery (and high-in-fat) roux. We have professed our love for Cook’s Illustrated cookbooks before, and likely will again. The best thing about them is that the folks at the Cook’s Illustrated test kitchens do all the work for you — testing all the different ingredients and variations to come up with the best possible recipe. We highly recommend all their books, including their Light Recipe book. Continue reading “Light Mac-and-Cheese”