Broccolini is one of our (few) go-to vegetables. For me and my (child-like) palate, the beautiful thing about broccolini is that it does not have an overpowering vegetable flavor, unlike regular broccoli and other vegetables prepared in certain ways (looking at you, sauteed spinach). We have a quick and easy sauteed version of broccolini that we love so much and make so often that even I don’t need to consult the recipe anymore when cooking it. But they say that variety is the spice of life, so the time eventually came to try a new broccolini recipe. Trying new things can be difficult (says this Texas girl living outside her home state for the first time in more than 30 years), so we went with a broccolini recipe that not only incorporates several of our other favorite ingredients: mushrooms, wine and Parmesan, but also calls for the simple preparation method of roasting the broccolini. The rich flavor of the mushrooms and Parmesan pairs well but doesn’t overwhelm the fresh, light flavor of the more delicate broccolini. Sometimes change is good, and we appreciate putting an elevated, more fancy spin on an old favorite.
Category: Recipes
Roast Chicken Thighs w/ Pancetta and Olives
Are olives a food group? If not, I personally think they should be. I could incorporate olives into just about any dish and be happy (except for Asian food, that would be weird). Their briny flavor complements all kinds of main ingredients, including chicken, fish, beef and vegetables. My love of these little fruits compels me to try pretty much any recipe calling for olives, including this one, which was even more compelling because it also calls for pancetta (Can you tell I’m a fan of all things salty?) The olives and pancetta are enhanced by their Mediterranean food friends olive oil, garlic, thyme and oregano; the red pepper flakes add a nice kick; and all of the components combine to elevate otherwise bland roast chicken to a flavorful new level. The only change I would make is to add more olives. Just kidding. Not really.
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Crawfish Etouffee
Mark Twain probably said it best: “New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.” For us, one of the foods that most epitomizes The Big Easy is crawfish etouffee. Done right, it’s rich in a subtle yet complex way, with a nice amount of heat and a silky, comfort-food texture. And the fact that this Cajun specialty is made with the small crustacean also known as a “mudbug” gives the dish a gritty undertone evocative of Post-Katrina New Orleans. (“Gritty” in the conceptual sense, as in moxie or determination. If yours is literally gritty, then your crawfish probably weren’t cleaned properly and maybe you shouldn’t eat them.) There are a lot of different etouffee recipes out there, but this version seems to be the most authentic homemade interpretation of one of New Orleans’ most sinfully delicious favorites.
Mozzarella and Celery Salad
Has anyone in the history of cooking ever used up an entire bunch of celery before it spoils? Even considering how long it lasts (weeks!), we almost always end up with a sad, wilted collection of stalks that we throw away and replace with a fresh bunch every month or so. Celery is an under-used vegetable, is what I’m saying. Yet it’s one that we pretty much always have in the fridge — to flavor a soup or a stew, to make stock, or to chop up for a garden salad. Aside from this recipe that we love so much we always serve it at our Thanksgiving dinner (as well as other times throughout the year), we rarely come across a dish where celery gets to shine as the main ingredient. It’s a shame, since celery has many health benefits, including antioxidants and nutrients with anti-inflammatory effects. So we were pleased to see Lidia Bastianich’s take on caprese salad — with a celery twist — in her latest book, “Lidia’s Commonsense Italian Cooking.” We never would have thought of replacing the tomatoes in traditional caprese salad with celery, but it works and it’s genius; especially during the winter, when high-quality tomatoes can be hard to find, but good ole celery is as plentiful as always.
Lamb Kebabs
We seem to be having a lamb “moment” these days, cooking it much more often than we ever have in the past. So far, our favorite ways of preparing lamb are Guinness-glazed and Mediterranean-style. Who could blame us, really, when perfectly grilled lamb is so tender with just the right amount of richness. We also enjoy kebabs of many kinds (including beef, shrimp, pork, and more pork), so when we found Ina Garten’s recipe for lamb kebabs, we knew we had a winner. The lamb marinates in a simple mixture of garlic, thyme, rosemary (or oregano if you don’t prefer rosemary), red wine, red wine vinegar and salt for 8 hours or up to 2 days. Grill the lamb on skewers with onion and tomatoes, then serve over a bed of couscous with a lemony sauce on the side. The result is a surprisingly sophisticated meal, considering how easy it is to make. The marinade imparts complex flavor with minimal effort, and grilling the lamb kebab-style allows for uniform cooking to just the right doneness (the rare side of medium-rare is how we like our lamb.) The sauce requires all the skill of boiling a pot of water, and grilling skewers of onion and tomatoes with the meat incorporates vegetables without having to come up with a separate side dish. Couscous (or some other, similar granule-sized pasta or grain) provides nice texture, and the most basic version of it is as easy to make as the sauce (a/k/a bringing liquid to a boil.) You can fancy up the couscous with sauteed shallots, toasted pine nuts and chopped fresh parsley if you want (as Ina does), but the kebabs and sauce provide enough flavor that plain couscous works just as well. Looks like we’ve got ourselves another “keeper” lamb recipe. Too bad I won’t let us eat red meat more often!
Braciole
The English translation of this recipe for Braciole di Manza is “Italian beef rolls in tomato sauce.” Braciole (pronounced “bra-jule,” loosely and inexpertly if you are me) is a dish that Dan orders just about every time we go to one of our all-time favorite Italian restaurants in the town where he grew up. When researching recipes to attempt to recreate braciole at home, we found that while the cooking method is consistent across nearly all recipes — thinly pounded beef topped with filling ingredients, rolled up and tied, then slowly cooked in a simmering red sauce — the filling components vary widely (other than breadcrumbs and cheese, which are pretty standard), with everything from prosciutto, parsley and rosemary, to spinach and mushrooms, to pine nuts and raisins. Interestingly, my mom makes a similar style of dish, but with roots in Germany rather than Italy and totally different ingredients. Her “rollfleisch” as we call it (I found related recipes called “rouladen” online) uses bacon, celery, onion and bell pepper for the filling, then the rolled and tied beef is cooked in gravy (or broth, wine or water.) For our own, inaugural version of homemade rolled-meat-with-filling-cooked-in-liquid, we went with a basic braciole filled with breadcrumbs, Parmesan, garlic, parsley, oregano and Provolone, cooked in a simple red sauce. The finished dish was anything but basic or simple, with rich, beefy goodness that complemented and infused the sweetness of the tomato sauce. We’ll definitely make homemade braciole again, and maybe next time we’ll add prosciutto to the filling for another layer of meaty flavor. But first, we plan to try our hand at a FoodieLawyer interpretation of rollfleisch. Even better, we could take this slow-cooked, stuffed and rolled meat thing global, with versions inspired by all different types of cuisine — Mexican, Asian, Greek, Indian, French — so many possibilities!
“Your Dressing”
For the sake of variety, we generally try to branch out with our vegetable side dishes; yet for the sake of convenience, the regular old green salad appears on our weekly menu at least a couple of times per month. Lately I can almost always count on Dan to ask “Is this your dressing?” every time we have salad, no matter what combination of salad veggies and leafy greens we happen to be eating. By “your dressing” he means — in the most complimentary way — the homemade balsamic vinaigrette I make that we both love. I take his question as a compliment because I’m generally more of a recipe follower than creator and can count on one hand the number of recipes I feel like I created (and even then, they are based on researching and tweaking other people’s recipes for the same thing.) The vinaigrette is simple — honey, lemon juice, Dijon, garlic, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt & pepper — but goes really well with pretty much any green salad we’ve ever dressed with it, even as it tends to taste a bit different each time, depending on what’s in the salad. Basic and easy, yet consistently praise-worthy and versatile is my kind of recipe. Now it can be yours too.
Pasta with Arugula and Prosciutto
Time for a little guilty confession: we throw away stale, expired or otherwise past-their-prime fruits, vegetables and other foods more often than I like to admit. Cooking portion-friendly meals for just the two of us can be difficult at times, considering how many recipes are intended for at least four to six servings. We cut recipes in half often, freeze extra portions for later and/or reheat leftovers for lunch when we can, yet sometimes still end up with too much of a certain ingredient or leftover to use or consume before it goes bad. We feel terrible throwing away food, so this particular recipe is a direct result of making sure we used up a container of arugula before it spoiled. Whenever we have a particular ingredient in mind but can’t think of a recipe, Epicurious is our go-to site to begin researching. I found this recipe there by doing an initial search for “arugula,” then refining the results by specifying arugula as the main ingredient (the site also has several other very useful ways to refine the results, including by meal/course, cuisine and “dietary consideration.”) This pasta dish is a quick, easy and satisfying way to use up at least two cups of arugula, tossed with sauteed leeks, fettuccine, green onion, Parmesan, prosciutto and lemon zest. And it’s good enough to justify the purchase of arugula in its own right, rather than waiting until we have leftovers.
Slow-Cooker Italian-Style Pot Roast
Pot roast isn’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind when we think Italian food. (Come to think of it, neither is “slow-cooker.”) Instead, and perhaps stereotypically, our go-to Italian dishes usually involve some sort of pasta: lasagne, bolognese, meatballs and vodka sauce, to name just a few of our Italy-inspired comfort food favorites. Not surprisingly, creating richly complex dishes like those requires a fair amount of effort and time in the kitchen. We certainly don’t mind spending time in our kitchen, especially when the end result is so worthwhile, and we particularly enjoy how the cooking part of the meal becomes an event on its own when we make these dishes on the weekends. (It’s no coincidence that two of the recipes include the word “Sunday” in their names.) But we also appreciate easy weeknight meals that have all of the flavorful, comfort-food goodness, yet less of the work. So we were intrigued to try this recipe from the book “Slow Cooker Revolution” for pot roast that cooks (without any help from us) all day in the slow-cooker, with Italian flavors from red wine, oregano, tomato, red pepper flakes and dried porcini mushrooms. The recipe’s “Italian spin” goes right along with our philosophy that everything is better in Italy (or inspired by it.) If an Italian grandmother had a handed-down-through-generations recipe for pot roast that she lovingly spent hours in the kitchen preparing to serve as the secondi (main) course at a long and festive Sunday lunch gathering of multiple generations of family, we imagine it would taste a little something like this.
Mediterranean Grilled Lamb Chops
Hello? Is this thing on? Anybody out there? I seem to remember that, a long time ago, this used to be a place where we would write about some of our favorite recipes, including photos, instructions and maybe a little funny or interesting (to us) commentary. Now nearly two months after uprooting our entire lives starting a new adventure in Chicago, we hope to return this Internet space to all its former glory, and by “glory” I mean maybe one semi-decent recipe post per week, if we happen to get around to it. Although the current frigid temperatures here and around the country (keep it to yourselves, Hawaii and Southern California) don’t make for the most grill-friendly conditions, this lamb chop recipe is good enough to make us want to bundle up in a parka, clear a path through the snow and fire up the grill. The simple marinade made with basic ingredients of lemon zest and juice, olive oil, garlic, oregano and pepper yields surprisingly complex flavors when the lamb is grilled. If you’ve never cooked (or eaten) lamb before, this is a great introductory recipe because it’s so quick and easy, yet so delicious that it tastes like a fancy entree that took hours and hours to prepare.