As you may be aware, one of us here at Foodie Lawyer is a big fan of football generally and the Pittsburgh Steelers in particular. We even got to see the Steelers play in the Super Bowl last year (note that I said “play,” and not “win.”) For this football season, we thought it would be fun to try out various “football foods” — dishes that are typically served at sports bars — but cook them ourselves at home, hopefully making them slightly more healthy yet just as tasty. Our first endeavor turned out really good, so we decided to tackle (get it?) potato skins next — typically one of the more unhealthy fried favorite sports bar foods. (Fun Fact: according to Wikipedia, the potato skins appetizer was created by T.G.I. Friday’s in 1963.) We baked ours instead of frying them and they turned out great. Not quite as crispy as the restaurant version, but crispy enough with a thin layer of creamy potato. These would be fun to serve at a football-watching party, with various toppings and dipping sauces to create your very own Potato Skins Bar.
Category: Vegetable
Black Beans Surprise
The surprising part of this side dish is how amazing it tastes, especially considering how simple it is to make. Whenever we cook Tex-Mex at home, we struggle a bit with what kind of side dish to serve. This rice is a good one, but it’s a bit complicated and takes a little longer to cook. Same with this salad. Sliced avocado with chips and salsa is an easy favorite, but it gets a little old if we serve it every time. (Although, I love avocado so much that I could eat it every day.) Beans are a staple at most Tex-Mex restaurants, where they are served in a variety of ways: regular beans refried, black beans refried and borracho beans — just to name a few. We like black beans, but had never previously served them solo as a side dish at home. So we researched some recipes online and decided to experiment with our own version, incorporating Tex-Mex ingredients we know and like from other dishes (onion, garlic, cayenne pepper, Cotija cheese and cilantro.) We figured the result would be a pretty basic black bean side dish, but were pleasantly surprised by the rich and complex layers of flavor in the finished product. Move over avocado, there’s a new favorite Tex-Mex sidekick in town. . .
Update: We made these the other night and just happened to have a jalapeno and a couple slices of leftover (cooked) bacon. We sauteed the jalapeno with the onion and crumbled the bacon and added it when we put in the beans. The spice from the jalapeno and the bacon flavor made these beans taste even better!
Black Olive-Cucumber Salad
We discovered this salad when we found the barbecued swordfish recipe in Mario Batali’s cookbook, “Simple Italian Food.” While both recipes are indeed simple, with flavors that complement each other nicely, we decided to post them separately since they are both delicious on their own as well. The ingredients for the salad include cucumber, black olives, tomatoes and fresh oregano. The salad dressing ingredients include olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, chives and salt & pepper. (The extra ingredients pictured here are for the barbecue sauce for the swordfish.) If you like olives and cucumbers at all, you’ll love this salad. It’s a great side dish, but might also be good all on its own — add a little leftover grilled shrimp and some feta cheese and you’ve got a meal.
“Italian Sub” Chop Salad
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.
Black Bean Soup
On our 34th (and counting) consecutive day of temperatures above 100 degrees, what sounds better than a big bowl of hot soup? It is counterintuitive, but this soup actually does sound good to me right now, even as hot as it is outside these days. Also counterintuitive? Wanting to beat the record of 42 consecutive days, even while complaining how ridiculously hot it is. It’s so hot that I don’t have the energy to make any “how hot is it” jokes. But it’s not too hot for this particular soup, which is lighter than you would expect, with southwest flavors and a creamy texture. We found the recipe in Cook’s Illustrated’s book “The Best 30-Minute Recipe” — making it even more appealing to cook on a hot summer night because the recipe is quick and means less time slaving over a hot stove or grill. Have I mentioned that it’s hot here? Continue reading “Black Bean Soup”
Grilled Corn
Corn is one of the quintessential summer foods. Although you can get corn year-round if you buy it frozen or canned, we think it tastes best fresh off the cob. It tastes even better if you can get it as freshly-picked as possible. Dan grew up with summers full of fresh (as in picked that morning) corn from a place called Barroner’s Farm in Pennsylvania, and it’s no coincidence that we almost always make a trip home to visit Dan’s mom during corn season (Hi Elaine!) Fresh corn conjures memories of childhood summers for me as well, since us kids used to spend a couple of weeks every summer with our grandparents in Ohio. After these visits, my parents were always happy to see us when they picked us up at the airport — no doubt they missed us, but I suspect that the big box of fresh corn coming off the baggage claim belt had something to do with their happy smiles as well. For years after moving to Texas, Dan wouldn’t even bother with the corn available here because it wasn’t as fresh as the corn from his childhood. But as his grilling repertoire has grown, he discovered a way to cook corn that, while not quite as good as fresh-picked, is still delicious and tastes like summer.
Mushroom Ragu
Prior to this recipe, Dan had never cooked with dried mushrooms, but had always been meaning to try them. We came across an online sale of a variety of dried mushrooms from a site that sells a lot of cooking stuff, so we decided to try them. I found a recipe in one of our Cook’s Illustrated magazines for this “Quick Mushroom Ragu,” under the byline asking “Is it possible to achieve deep, satisfying flavor in just 30 minutes?” The answer is a resounding yes, thanks to those talented folks at America’s Test Kitchen. This recipe achieves the rich flavor you would expect from a sauce made up of numerous complicated ingredients that cooked all day, yet it’s a relatively quick and easy dish to make with a reasonable amount of accessible ingredients — dried porcini mushrooms, portobello mushrooms, chicken broth, pancetta, olive oil, garlic, tomato paste, rosemary (or thyme for rosemary haters like me), tomatoes, and salt & pepper. Serve over spaghetti or whatever other pasta you like, and garnish with grated pecorino romano or parmesan cheese. Simple recipe with fancy flavor — one of my favorite combinations.
Hot and Sour Coleslaw
Dan recently decided he wanted to make homemade coleslaw, which to me just seemed like a lot of work for minimal return on the effort. Why go to all that trouble chopping everything and mixing up a dressing when you can just buy a tub of coleslaw at the grocery store? Coleslaw is coleslaw, right? Lucky for you, I was wrong (which Dan loves to hear me say — probably because it doesn’t happen very often), and he was right (I say this even less often.) He found this recipe on Epicurious, and not only is it quick and easy, but it tastes way better than store-bought coleslaw. This is a great side dish to serve at backyard BBQs or parties this upcoming holiday weekend.
Spicy Green Beans
We have several Asian dishes that we like to cook at home, and accordingly, we have more than a few cookbooks that focus on Asian food. I found this side dish recipe in one of our books — “Wok and Stir-Fry: A Collection of Easy and Elegant Recipes.” Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the book on Amazon; sorry, no link. I purchased the cookbook at HomeGoods a while ago for the low low price of $5.99. (Kitchen Shopping Tip: HomeGoods and stores like it — TJ Maxx, Ross, Marshalls, etc. — can be great sources for interesting (and possibly out of print) cookbooks on the cheap.) It’s a good book and we look forward to trying more recipes from it. The ingredients for this green bean recipe are simple: green beans, vegetable oil, dried chiles, garlic, ginger, and the white part of green onions.
Baked Beans
Homemade baked beans take a long time to prepare. A really, really long time. Sure, you could always opt for the canned baked beans available at the grocery store, but the homemade variety have a lot more flavor, and you have the satisfaction of making them from scratch (or so Dan tells me.) Because we had already set aside a Major Block of Cooking Time this recent Memorial Day for smoking BBQ ribs, we decided to make a batch of baked beans as well. The extra cooking time was well worth it. We might not reach the same conclusion in a blind taste test, but we thought the homemade beans tasted way better than any of the canned versions we’ve tried. (You may borrow the blind taste test idea as a party trick for your next cookout. You’re welcome.) Continue reading “Baked Beans”