We love pizza of all kinds — whether it’s delivery, healthy(ish) homemade, or a pie with unusual toppings. Dan has recently been experimenting with baking bread, which means we often end up with dough remnants perfect for homemade pizza. One weekend we decided to put the leftover dough to good use by having it for breakfast. Turns out that thin pizza crust topped with cheesy scrambled eggs, bacon and cream gravy is a really nice way to start the day.
Category: Recipes
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.
Taco Pizza
Taco Pizza might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Independence Day, but isn’t freedom what America’s birthday is all about? We like to think so. July 4th has always been my favorite holiday, and this pizza is now one of my new favorite meals. I’m not sure what it is I love most about the 4th — fireworks and sparklers, neighborhood get-togethers, meeting new friends, barbeque and picnic food; or maybe that it marks the halfway point of summer, with the promise of several more weeks of fun, sun and good times. Whatever it is, I think of the Fourth of July as a magical wonderland, and I look forward to it every year. Happy Birthday America!
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.
Mac-N-Cheese with Beef (Johnny Marzetti)
Everyone has their own version (maybe even more than one) of comfort food. A dish that makes you feel better when you’re sick, lifts your spirits, or helps to soothe a hurting heart. It could be anything from your favorite meal that your mom used to make, to an inherited family recipe for chicken soup — the key is that just tasting it warms your soul. As self-described foodies, food is obviously important to us, and we often look to food as a form of therapy. Dan says that chopping ingredients and cooking a meal can be very relaxing for him. (Quite the opposite for me, hello stress! — but luckily he is the chef and I am the taster.) No matter what, sharing a meal together at the end of the day is our way to connect and decompress. (But let’s not get crazy about the togetherness — we still watch TV while we eat.) We recently found this recipe by Michael Ruhlman and love it for its cheesy, beefy, comforting pasta goodness.
Spinach Salad with Grilled Shrimp
Now that it is officially summer (although it has been full-on “summer” from a holy-crap-it’s-hot perspective around here for at least a month now), we find ourselves incorporating more salads into our meal routine. With temps in the high 90s, the last thing we want to do is heat up the kitchen with the oven or slave over a hot stove. Instead, I make Dan slave over a hot grill outside (where it is really hot) to cook up a delicious protein to add to our salad. This grilled shrimp salad is one of our new favorites, due in large part to the flavorful dressing that would work with many other types of salads as well. You could also make this dish with leftover shrimp, chicken or beef for an even easier (and cooler) summer weeknight meal.
Porterhouse Steak with Bourbon BBQ
In honor of Father’s Day this weekend, we grilled a couple of what Dan affectionately referred to as “Big Daddy Steaks.” Since we try not to indulge in too much red meat too often, we figured Father’s Day was the perfect occasion for this rare treat. There is something special about dads and grilling. Dan fondly remembers a hiking trip long ago with his dad, brothers and grandfather where they cooked steaks over a campfire. I recall my dad grilling something delicious nearly every weekend, and to this day he makes the best burger I’ve ever had. So grilling a couple of giant steaks seemed like the perfect tribute to our dads.
Sonoran Tilapia
In our ongoing quest to try to cook healthy meals, we attempt to incorporate fish into our weekly routine on a semi-regular basis. Note how I used the key words “attempt” and “semi-regular,” as opposed to “succeed” and “often.” The problem is that I don’t really like fish — mostly because it tastes like fish (and don’t even get me started on how much I dislike salmon…) So, when we do cook fish at home, the recipe usually involves a sauce of some sort (this is my favorite) and we almost always use a light, non-fishy fish like tilapia. Luckily, our local grocery store sells large bags of frozen tilapia fillets that are really easy to thaw and cook for a quick weeknight meal. I found this particular recipe when I was looking for a new fish dish that met my culinary criteria (sauce, non-fishy, healthy-ish) and called for an Anaheim chile pepper, since we happened to have a few ripe ones in our garden. Not only did this recipe meet these criteria for the most part, it also included TWO sauces — one for the fish while it cooked and another to spoon over the fish when it is done. (If you’re not a fish wimp like me, you might actually enjoy the fish without the second sauce, which would save a little time and effort if you’re looking for a really quick meal.)
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.
Lemon Chicken with Croutons
Ina Garten has a way with chicken and lemons. We previously tried another of Ina’s recipes using lemons and chicken, and we really liked it. So we figured we would probably also enjoy this “Lemon Chicken with Croutons” recipe from her “Barefoot in Paris” cookbook. We were even more interested in this dish because it uses a whole chicken (great to have for leftovers), and Ina refers to it as “the essence of French country cooking.” Adding homemade croutons and roasted onions to the mix doesn’t hurt either.