Breakfast Pizza

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Pork, Recipes

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.

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Mushroom Ragu

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Vegetable

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.

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Taco Pizza

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Red Meat

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!

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Hot and Sour Coleslaw

Posted By under Main Ingredient, Recipes, Side Dishes, Vegetable

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.

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Mac-N-Cheese with Beef (Johnny Marzetti)

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Pasta, Recipes

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.

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Spinach Salad with Grilled Shrimp

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Seafood

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.

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Porterhouse Steak with Bourbon BBQ

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Red Meat

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.

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