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.
Category: Main Courses
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”
Pasta alla Norma
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”
“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.)
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.
Continue reading “Stir-Fried Pork with Cabbage in Hot-and-Sour Sauce (with leftover pork)”
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”