Cooking (and eating) seafood in a broth sounds a little, um, crazy. But if you like delicate, perfectly cooked fish in a rich, slightly spicy yet sweet tomato sauce, then it’s actually very, very sane. Add a couple slices of grilled or toasted crusty bread to soak up the excess broth, and it couldn’t make more sense. We came across the recipe in a recent issue of Food & Wine magazine and were intrigued to try it, especially when we discovered that “fish in crazy water” is a translation of the Italian “pesce all’acqua pazza.” If you know us, you’re familiar with our motto that “Everything is better in (or from) Italy.” So we couldn’t NOT try this dish. And we weren’t disappointed. Not only was it delicious, but the recipe is also easy to make (provided you have the time required to simmer the broth — about 45 minutes) for a light and healthy Mediterranean-style dinner. Continue reading “Fish in Crazy Water”
Category: Main Ingredient
Butter Lettuce Salad w/ Blue Cheese Vinaigrette
Confession time: I used to scoff a bit at people who exclusively make their own salad dressing, especially those who insist that their homemade versions are so easy and soooo much better than the store-bought variety. Since I am more of a follow-the-recipe-and-measure-precisely type of cook, I figured it was a LOT easier to just buy dressings from the store — rather than research and find a recipe, procure the ingredients and execute the recipe — especially since the pre-made dressings taste just as good. Dan definitely disagrees with me on the latter point, and his (more discerning) palate can almost always detect an artificial quality in store-bought salad dressings. Considering the fact that many dressings have a (quite literal) shelf-life of many months — if not years — they likely contain a lot of preservatives that cause the artificial taste and aren’t the best things to be putting in our bodies. I’ll probably never get to the point of being a “glug of olive oil, splash of vinegar, dashes of spices, bit of this and bit of that” kind of dressing-maker, but I’m slowly coming around to using homemade vinaigrettes more often and we’ve tried a couple of recipes that are both easy and delicious. Don’t get me wrong — I still believe that a lot of store-bought salad dressings are great (we almost always have a bottle of this French vinaigrette in our fridge), but sometimes a homemade dressing really does make certain salads taste better. This is one of those times, and one of those salads.
Continue reading “Butter Lettuce Salad w/ Blue Cheese Vinaigrette”
Slow-Cooker Beef Burgundy
This is one of the more elaborate slow-cooker meals we’ve tried from the book “Slow Cooker Revolution” — the recipe involves a lot more prep work than the typical set-it-and-forget-it crock pot meal — but it’s well worth the time and effort. Beef burgundy (also called “beef bourguignon”) is a stew that originated in the Burgundy region of France (hence the name.) Its claim to fame is beef chuck roast (or similar cut of beef that lends itself well to braising) cooked slowly for hours in a red wine broth, then finished with a decadent sauce made with more red wine, mushrooms and pearl onions. Cooking a little bacon to provide the fat for sautéing the carrots and onions and toasting the aromatics (garlic, tomato paste and thyme) makes for a hearty and flavorful base of the stew, even before adding all the wine and beef. Although beef burgundy tastes similar to “company pot roast,” we found it to be more sophisticated (and even more worthy of company) with the rich sauce, earthy mushrooms and delicate, braised pearl onions. Both dishes are comfort food at its best, but we like to think of pot roast along the lines of a comfy jeans or sweatpants casual family dinner, while beef burgundy is more like the dressed up, serve with china and crystal for the fancy guests kind of a meal.
Old-Fashioned Potato Salad
We’re not exactly sure what qualifies this potato salad as “old-fashioned.” Perhaps it merits this distinction because it tastes like a family recipe that has been handed down through the ages — complicated and difficult to make, with well-kept secret ingredients? Or maybe it’s because, as recipe author Ina Garten points out in her book, “Barefoot Contessa at Home,” during the 18 years that she owned her namesake specialty food store, they “must have made millions of pounds of this classic potato salad.” No matter the reason, we’ve added this salad into our permanent side dish rotation, especially for the upcoming Spring/Summer grilling season. With complex, yet complimentary flavors from 2 types of mustard, fresh dill, red onion, celery and potato, the recipe is surprisingly simple to make, especially given how good it tastes. It can be made ahead (and should be, in order to give the flavors time to combine), making it even more ideal for the BBQ-friendly months of the year. We predict at least tens of pounds of this salad in our foreseeable side dish future.
Taco Mac (w/ leftover taco meat)
We have a crispy beef taco recipe that we absolutely adore, so much so that we purposely make the full recipe — even though it yields way more than enough for a two-person Taco Night — just so that we will have leftovers. The question is what to do with the extra taco meat. More tacos are good, easy and convenient. Nachos are a delicious and fun dinnertime alternative. And of course, there is the casserole — a layered, catch-all medium for transforming leftover protein into a one-dish wonder complete with pasta (or some other starch) and melted cheesy goodness. Channeling the (literal) king of all casseroles, king ranch chicken, and taking a nod from its East Coast casserole cousin, Johnny Marzetti — we adapted this recipe that uses tortilla chips for crunch and refried beans for a creamy layer and added enchilada sauce for extra Tex-Mex flavor and pasta to help bind it all together. We love the end-result casserole as much as (if not more than!) the original beef tacos and can pretty much guarantee that a “Taco Mac Night” will follow most of our Taco Nights from here on out.
Edamame Salad
If you frequent sushi restaurants, you’ve probably eaten a fair amount of edamame, where it is often served as an appetizer: still in the pod, steaming hot and sprinkled with kosher salt. Sushi places must keep giant vats of edamame ready for service each day because it almost always comes to your table about 2 minutes after you order it (my favorite kind of appetizer.) If you’ve never had it, edamame refers to green (as in not yet ripe) soybeans that have a mild, slightly nutty flavor that belies their high nutritional value. These little beans are packed with fiber, protein, iron and vitamins A and C. Any food this good for you ought to be consumed more often than the occasional sushi outing. So we found and adapted this recipe, for a fresh and tangy side dish that pairs especially well with most Asian main courses.
Turkey Burgers
We’ve always been interested in finding more healthy versions of favorite foods, but when it comes to burgers, we seldom encounter any better-for-you substitute that packs the same satisfying flavor and texture punch as the real thing. Shrimp burgers were interesting and tasty, but lacked any beefy flavor. Our one and only homemade veggie burger experiment was an epic fail that ended as garbage with a side order of pizza delivery. Enter the turkey burger. We adapted this recipe by adding a little ricotta cheese (to help keep the turkey from drying out) and omitting the egg and breadcrumbs (to keep the burgers from tasting like meatloaf patties.) The combination of Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, onion powder, garlic powder and cayenne pepper gave the burgers a nice, meaty flavor that makes you forget you’re eating healthy turkey. While there can be no true replacement for the genuinely beefy, red-meat variety of burger, this turkey version has a lot less calories and fat (and therefore, less guilt), and we’re happy to make and eat them instead of beef burgers now and then.
Slow-Cooker Chicken Provencal
On a recent cold day, we consulted what has become our crock-pot “bible” — America’s Test Kitchen’s “Slow Cooker Revolution” — for yet another delicious, set-it-and-forget-it, slow-cooked dish. We’re slowly (pun intended) working our way through the book, and pretty much everything we’ve tried has been good, if not great. The pork and ramen soup is a definite keeper, as is the recipe for smothered pork chops. And we can’t forget (or stop craving) the chicken and dirty rice. Now we can add the chicken provençal recipe to our list of favorites from this book. It doesn’t get much more flavorful than bone-in chicken thighs, cooked all day over low heat in a braise made with tomatoes, onions, garlic, oregano, white wine and bay leaves, then finished with freshly chopped olives, parsley and a drizzle of really good olive oil. Tastes like something you would enjoy after a long day of touring the French countryside.
Mushroom Stroganoff
One of the benefits (curses?) about having a food blog is that we tend to obsess about focus on our diet — specifically, what’s for dinner each week — a lot more than we would otherwise. Prior to starting this little blog, we still planned our weekly menus, but gravitated mostly toward easy favorites with convertible leftovers (we often had red meat twice per week, since beef is easily parlayed into two different meals.) These days, we tend to focus more on filling our weeks with variety, including at least one seafood and/or vegetarian dinner per week if possible. We still eat red meat (and likely always will) and appreciate getting two different and delicious dinners out of a single cut of beef, but we feel more healthy when we balance out the meaty side with fish and veggies. While we have many seafood favorites to choose from each week (parchment fish, shrimp & orzo, fish tacos and Cajun shrimp, to name a few), it can be difficult to find vegetarian dishes that are both delicious and filling, and don’t make us feel like we’ve just finished our salad course and are longing waiting for the (meat) entree. This hearty pasta dish is all the main course we could want, with earthy and “meaty” flavor from the mushrooms and a tangy, creamy sauce made with sour cream and goat cheese. Although, full disclosure — the recipe includes beef stock and therefore, it’s not strictly vegetarian — the dish has less calories and fat than the more traditional beef stroganoff, without sacrificing any of the flavor.
Beef Barley Soup with Mushrooms
We make (and eat) soup year-round, but appreciate it most during colder months, especially when it’s a soup that involves homemade broth and takes time to simmer away on the stove. This is not a quick and easy weeknight meal, but it’s perfect for a lazy Saturday or Sunday when your most pressing concerns are making this delicious soup, tending a fire in the fireplace, and maybe finding a good TV show or movie to watch while the soup cooks. The key to this soup is the homemade beef stock, recommended in the original recipe found in Cook’s Illustrated’s book, “The Best Recipe: Soups and Stews.” You could probably make beef barley soup with store-bought beef stock, but simmering the meat and bones with onion, red wine and water for several hours creates a rich and meaty broth far superior to the stuff available at the store. So if you have the time and inclination, homemade beef stock is worth the effort for this hearty, beefy soup.