Lamb is not something we eat very often, and this is the first time we’ve ever cooked it at home.  But Dan has a very good, and very persuasive, friend who has been requesting a lamb recipe, so we were happy to oblige.  We decided to do rack of lamb because that is what was available in our grocery store.  Dan researched several recipes and combined certain components from each to come up with this particular dish.  It turned out great, and we enjoyed experimenting with a new (to us) protein.  This one’s for you, Dr. Z!

Continue reading “Rack of Lamb”

This might be the most simple and easy recipe we have ever posted. It’s so basic that it doesn’t even require an actual recipe. All you do is roast some onion strips in the oven and grill a skirt steak, then put those ingredients in a taco. But the end result tastes a lot more complex — as if you marinated the steak for hours and meticulously carmelized the onions.  This meal is perfect for a busy weeknight, or even a last-minute dinner party where you can fool your guests into thinking you spent way more time cooking for them than you actually did.  (We won’t tell.)

Continue reading “Skirt Steak Tacos”

One of the reasons we are able to cook as often during the week as we do is that we try to cook a protein that we can use in another dish later in the week — two meals out of one.  I have mentioned before that I’m not a fan of leftovers, so transmogrifying the remaining protein into a different meal is my thing.  As you may have seen, we recently made a delicious pot roast. It was a lot of beef for two people, so we needed a recipe for the leftover meat. I found one that was perfect for a weeknight and had the additional benefit of being reminiscent of a dish my Grandma used to make — Beef and Noodles. Grandma’s Beef and Noodles is not something we’ve ever attempted to make, and I’m not even sure an actual recipe exits.  It’s one of those magical meals that the creator just knows how to make, and hopefully someone has been able to witness it enough times to re-create it.   My mom watched and learned, but only makes it for special occasions because the men in our family have been known to gorge on it to the point of near-sickness. It’s seriously that good.  This stroganoff recipe is a close enough second that it brought up many fond memories of Grandma (yet not SO good that Dan ate himself sick.)  We’ll work on learning Grandma’s Beef and Noodles, but in the meantime, this stroganoff is a decent substitute and a great use of leftover pot roast.

Continue reading “Beef Stroganoff (with leftover beef)”

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.

Continue reading “Veal Chop Milanese with Arugula Salad”