Quick After Dinner Post

I just had an amazing mostly-homemade meal and I had to share it with my readers.  No original recipes this time...I finally got around to reading my July/August copy of Food Network magazine and found my dinner inside!

My husband and I made this recipe from the magazine and it was amazing!  Mike played grill master and I was queen of the knife and cutting board.  By the way, if you have a significant other and you don't already cook together...start!  Mike and I have wonderful nights in cooking dinner together: ) 

Anyway...back to the recipe.  I actually changed very very little in it.  Mainly I used around 2 teaspoons of minced garlic instead of one and ground red pepper instead of red pepper flakes.  Also, I picked shallots over red onion and used chicken breasts instead thighs.  After having made the recipe, I don't think I would change anything else!  It was fantastic!  Well, mike wasn't a huge fan of the grilled romaine but I was amazed I even got him to eat half a serving.  He's a meat and potatoes kind of guy.

I also think this recipe could be easily altered to work with different flavor profiles.  You could try changing the vinegar, herbs and/or vegetables used.  I was thinking of making this dish next time with green onions, sage and maybe rosemary(?) instead of shallots, oregano and red pepper.   I would also reduce the amount of garlic.

For dessert, we made ice cream sandwiches (another idea from the magazine).  We bought small cake doughnuts and light mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Not the most healthy dessert to follow up a healthy meal (oops...) but it was so good!!!  We used the tips from the magazine and they made it so easy! (1) Put the "bread" (in our case, doughnuts) in the freezer for a little while before cutting and/or assembling the sandwich.  (2) Use hard ice cream. (3) Freeze the whole sandwiches for about an hour before eating.

Well I just had to share this great meal.  I hope you can try it an enjoy it sometime: )

How-to: Onions and Garlic

I don't know about you guys but I used to have the worst time dicing onions.  It took forever, my cuts were never even...ugh!  I hated cooking with them for a long time.  Those days are over though!  I now know how to dice an onion and I'd like to pass that knowledge on.  One note: this technique does work and is quick but it may take a little while to get the hang of it: )

Start by cutting off the non-root end of the onion. 

Then set the onion cut side down and cut in half, through the root.  Make sure that part of the root is still attached to both halves of the onion.  The root holds the onion together while you make the remaining cuts.  Peel both halves of the onion.

Place half of the onion on the cutting board so that your first cut (where you cut the non-root end off) is facing you and the second cut (where you cut the onion in half, through the root) is face down on the cutting board.   Here is the most difficult cut (at least I think).  What you want to do here is make a couple evenly-spaced cuts parallel to the cutting board.  How many you make depends on how big you want your dice to be.  The bigger your dice, the less cuts you need.  Be sure to not cut all the way to the root.  Again, the root is holding the whole thing together and its a lot harder to dice an onion that is falling apart: )

I made two parallel cuts because I wanted a medium dice.  Unless you have a really large onion, 3 cuts is probably the most you're going to need at this stage, even for a small dice.

 Now you want to make evenly spaced cuts going across the top of the onion, perpendicular to the root.  They should be spaced the same as the previous set of cuts, so that your dice is even.  There are two things to be careful of here.  One, don't cut the root!: )  Two, start your cuts toward the middle of the onion so that you don't chop off the sides.

Once you've made the perpendicular cuts, you need to make evenly spaced (again, same spacing as previous cuts to ensure an even dice) cuts parallel to the root.  Stop your cuts just short of the root.

                                     
 Now you have a diced onion: )  Well, half of the onion is now diced.  Obviously, repeat the process for the other half of the onion.

Okay on to some tips for mincing garlic!

To peel the garlic: Place the garlic clove on your cutting board.  Use the flat side of a large knife and place it on top of the garlic clove.  Strike the knife with the heel of your hand (as shown above).  This will split the outer covering and make it easier to peel. Peeling garlic is still a pain though.

The main problem with mincing is that the garlic likes to stick to the knife.  It's so frustrating!  There are two ways to combat this.  One, buy (or use if you already have one) a santoku knife (pictured above).  The groves in the santoku knife help prevent sticking.  Two, wet the blade of your knife before you start cutting your peeled clove.  

To mince:  Mincing is just a word for "roughly chopping really really small".  Basically, I just cut the clove into slices, cut the slices into strips and cut the strips into really fine pieces.  Your cuts definitely don't need to be even for garlic...yay!

I hope all this made sense.  Let me know if you have any questions: )

Dairy Free Quiche

Hello!  So yesterday and today I have had to stay off my feet because I recently got a tattoo on my left foot.  Here's some pics of my new culinary tattoo. . .

So anyway, because I have had to stay off my feet, I figured I should write a blog.  But what to write?  This week I've made mostly easy recipes, last weekend I was on a float trip and I'm not going to blog about cooking hamburgers and hot dogs on the camp grill (especially when I didn't make the hamburgers).  So I settled on the dairy free quiche I made for my in-laws last week.  A little background real quick, my brother-in-law is an ovo-lacto-pescatarian (vegetarian who eats fish, eggs and dairy) and my sister in law is lactose intolerant.  Needless to say, I had a bit of a challenge figuring out what to make that both my in-laws could eat.  So I decided to make dairy free quiche for brunch one day: )  Here's the recipe!  (Basic recipe that I added to can be found here)

Dairy Free Quiche - makes 2, 9 inch quiche

- Dairy free frozen pie dough (if you can find one. I couldn't so I made one crustless quiche for my lactose intolerant sister-in-law and one quiche with crust for the rest of us)

- 9 large eggs

- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

- 3.5 cups unsweetened almond milk

- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast

- 2 teaspoons salt

- 10 oz package frozen spinach

- 3/4 cup onion, chopped

- 1 small garlic clove, minced or pressed

- 3/4 cup mushrooms, chopped

- olive oil (enough to cook veggies in)

Preheat oven to 375.  Grease one 9 inch pie pan (for the crustless quiche) and set out frozen pie dough for other quiche. Cook mushrooms, onions and garlic in olive oil until onions are tender.  Add spinach and cook for 2-3 minutes.  Remove from heat and set aside.  Beat one egg in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and frothy.  Add flour and beat until combined.  Add remaining eggs and beat until frothy and mixture has increased in volume by about a third.  Gradually add milk, nutritional yeast and salt and beat for 2 more minutes.  Stir in spinach, onion, mushroom and garlic mixture.  Pour into prepared pans and bake for 40 minutes or until quiche is no longer jiggly. 

Well I hope you enjoy the quiche as much as we did!

Veggies, Chicken Pasta and Wine

Hello again!  Two blogs in one day...I'm on fire!  So this past Sunday I decided to make Angel Chicken Pasta (recipe to come later in this blog) and was looking in my fridge for ideas for a side.  I wanted something fairly healthy to pair with the pasta and what did I happen to have in my fridge?  A bunch of uncooked, diced up veggies I had leftover from making veggie kabobs at my BBQ!  Awesome.  Roasted vegetables it is: )  Even more awesome, the chicken pasta recipe included wine so guess what the Hubby and I did while fixing dinner?  Lets just say I love to cook with wine...sometimes I even put it in the food: )

The wine may or may not have made it to dinner...oops.  Also, the beautiful wine coasters and jeweled decorations are courtesy of my awesome sister Audra.  Great birthday present sis!


Veggie Kabobs 

Your favorite veggies, diced or cut large enough to skewer on a kabob stick
Olive oil (how much you need depends on how many kabobs you are making, I made 22 kabobs and used about a half cup of oil)
2-3 garlic cloves
Your favorite herbs and spices


Instructions
The day before you want to make the kabobs (or at least several hours before), mince the garlic and add to olive oil.  Then add any seasonings you want to the oil.  I used some thyme, oregano, crushed red pepper, salt and black pepper.  Let the oil sit with seasonings overnight to flavor the oil.  Assemble the kabobs.  I used butternut squash, zucchini, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, and pearl onions.  I put roughly equal proportions or each veggie on each kabob.  (Actually, the wonderful hubby assembled the kabobs for me, I just did one example and he did the rest)  Using a silicone basting brush, brush the flavored oil onto the assembled kabob.  Grill kabob until veggies begin to brown and are heated through.


Roasted Veggies


Your favorite veggies, large dice (I added turnips and shallots to the leftover butternut squash, bell peppers and zucchini)
Your favorite herbs and spices (I used thyme, garlic salt and ground cayenne pepper)
Olive oil (enough to lightly coat veggies)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Toss cut up veggies in olive oil in a large bowl.  Sprinkle herbs and spices over veggies and toss again.  Arrange veggies on baking sheet in a single layer and bake for 45 min, or until veggies are cooked through and browned.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and enjoy!

Roasted veggies on the left and Angel Chicken Pasta on the right.  Sorry, the plate is a little messy.  I forgot to take a picture until I had already cut up the chicken and mixed up the pasta and sauce.



I also have an idea for the leftover cooked veggies.  Honestly, they don't reheat too well and I hate to waste food...what to do?  Well the reason they don't reheat too well is because they get mushy...mushy veggies?  Ugh!  Who wants those?  I thought about this for a while and finally had a sudden burst of inspiration.  Pureed veggies would make a great base for a spaghetti sauce!  So I pureed the veggies with some tomato sauce and later this week I will make a spaghetti sauce from that. I will let you all know how it turned out: )

Oh!  I almost forgot the recipe for the Angel Chicken Pasta.  It is actually a recipe from Allrecipes.com.  You can find it here.  It is a great recipe but I do make a few small changes.

1) Double the amount of sauce.  It is a great sauce and you will want a lot; )
2) I use 1 can condensed golden mushroom soup and 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup.  This is only because I am not a huge fan of mushrooms.
2) I use half the amount of wine and replace the other half with water.  You can also use all wine or all water depending on your personal tastes.  I feel using the full cup of wine gives the sauce too much wine flavor and it overpowers the other flavors of the dish.
3) I also flatten and tenderize the chicken before placing it in the baking dish.

I hope these recipes work as well for you as they have for me: )  Enjoy!

Bell Pepper Dice-up

Bah!  I'm a bad blogger. . . I promised last time that my blog would include instructions on the easiest way to dice a bell pepper and an onion.  Well, I have the bell pepper instructions but for once in my cooking life, I did not dice an onion recently and therefore could not take pictures.  Craziness!  Anyway, sorry faithful readers...I can only fulfill half of my promise.

Start by getting out your cutting board and favorite knife.  Personally, I use my chef knife to do all my chopping, dicing and other knife activities, but you should use whatever knife you are most comfortable with.  Also, if you find that your cutting board slips on your counter, put a damp washcloth underneath.  Your cutting board definitely won't slip anymore: )


Cut the top of the pepper off, like this:

If the whole top of the pepper comes off, stem and all, that is okay too.  Next, place the knife on the top of the pepper and slice in between two of the "veins" (white pith that attaches to the center of the pepper).

Repeat until you have cut between all the veins.

Then cut the pepper pieces into equal size strips, then cut across the strips into an equal size dice.  Make sure to keep your fingers curled under and your thumb tucked behind your fingers so you don't cut yourself.  I cut the pepper pieces into a large dice because I was using the peppers in a roasted veggie dish.

Hope this helps!  I know when a friend showed me this technique for dicing bell peppers, it made the process a lot easier/faster!


Also, big thanks to my wonderful husband Mike for taking the pictures: )

Veggie Burger Bliss

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day Weekend!  Thank you again to everyone that has served/is serving our country: )

I had a bit of a challenge this past weekend.  I wanted to throw a rockin party where I could utilize my grill and new fire pit to their full potential.  That would not usually be a challenge...except that I have several vegan and vegetarian friends.  I don't know if you realize this but BBQ cookouts are not exactly vegan/vegetarian friendly.  What to do, what to do? Hmmmm...tofurky?  No.  Vegan "chicken" drumsticks?  I don't think so.  Grilled tofu and cauliflower?  Too smelly.  Wait!  I know!  Veggie burgers!  I've been wanting to try and make veggie burgers...this is perfect!  Anyway...enough silliness, on with the veggie burger recipe. This recipe is based on a Food Network Magazine recipe in the June 2011 issue.


Blissful Veggie Burgers, Makes 8 burgers

1.5 cups cooked barley
 olive oil (enough to cook veggies in)
1 cup medium dice onion
3 small stalks celery, med. dice
1 red bell pepper, med. dice
kosher salt, to taste
2-3 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
3 tablespoons barbecue sauce (if you're serving vegans, make sure the sauce you use is vegan friendly!  I used Sweet Baby Ray's)
1 tablespoon chili garlic sauce (again, make sure its vegan friendly, I believe most chili garlic sauce is: )
2, 15 oz cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
salt, pepper, parsley, thyme and oregano to taste


Saute celery, onion, red bell pepper and pinch of salt in olive oil until golden brown, 12-14 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes longer.  Place veggies, breadcrumbs, barbecue sauce and chili garlic in food processor and pulse until combined and finely ground.  Here you would normally add 1 cup barley and black beans to the food processor and pulse again until combined and finely ground.  Unfortunately, my food processor is not big enough, so I removed the veggies, pulsed the black beans and barley together and then combined with the veggie mixture in a bowl.  After combining all ingredients, add the other half cup cooked barley and your seasonings.  Form into 8 patties and grill (I used my griddle because my grill was full of hamburgers and hot dogs).

Serve with your favorite hamburger buns ( I found vegan ones for the vegan friends) and condiments.  I put provolone cheese, romaine lettuce and some basil pesto on my veggie burger.

So what was the result of my foray into vegan cooking?  Well...they tasted fantabulous (yes I needed a fake word to describe their ridiculously awesome flavor) but the texture wasn't firm enough.  They were slightly mushy and I don't think I could have grilled them even if my grill wasn't full of meat: (

So again, what to do? What to do?  I talked to one of my lovely and wonderful vegetarian friends and between the two of us we came up with a couple ideas for future endeavors.
1)  Instead of pulsing some of the barley with the black beans, add all barley, whole, after everything else is combined
2) Add some steamed potatoes to burger mixture.  Starchy potatoes would probably yield the best results.
3) Do not rinse the black beans.  My wonderful friend had an excellent point that the liquid the beans come in has starch in it and would help thicken the mixture.  I will definitely still drain the beans because I don't want a lot of the starchy liquid.

I will try these changes and let you all know how they turn out.

Oh!  And I promise next blog will be about the easiest way to dice onions and bell peppers.

Chocolate Cookie Dough and Apple Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

Hello again!  The semester is finally over and I am going to get back on track with this blog!  I tried out two of my new recipes this week and I think they are pretty fantastic.  I forgot to take pictures, of course (sorry!  I am going to try to be better about that: ).  Anyway...here we go!

Chocolate Cookie Dough- makes 4 dozen cookies

3 and a half cups semisweet chocolate chips
2 sticks margarine or salted butter ( I use salted butter)
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 large eggs
4 and a half cups all purpose flour, sifted
2 pkgs 3.4 oz instant chocolate pudding mix
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt


Cream together margarine/butter, brown sugar and vanilla.  Melt the chocolate in a double boiler pan or in a metal bowl sitting over boiling water.  Beat in eggs and melted chocolate.  Make sure to let the chocolate cool (but not set) before combining it with the batter or the hot chocolate will cook the eggs (no one wants scrambled eggs in their cookies!: ).  With a wooden spoon, mix in flour, pudding mix, baking soda and salt.  I found that after a little while it was easier to mix the dough with clean, wet hands.


I think this dough would probably be fine on its own, but mixing in things is so much more fun!  When I made the dough this week I divided it in half and made two different varieties.  I put slivered almonds and butterscotch chips in one and macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips in the other.  Both delicious!  You could also try walnuts, pecans, dark chocolate chips, whatever you want!

Okay, on to recipe number two!

Apple Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

1 pork tenderloin

fresh rosemary

fresh thyme

salt

pepper

2 granny smith or your preferred baking apples ( tart apples work the best ), cored and cut into 1 inch pieces

1 small red onion, diced medium or julienned

1 box pork stuffing

The night before you want to make the tenderloin, rub fresh rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper on the tenderloin and let sit overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare stuffing as directed on box and let cool.  Saute onions in a small amount of olive oil and let cool.  Mix stuffing, onions and apples together and set aside.  Butterfly the pork tenderloin (don't know how?  This video should help!  Either method will work.  I used the first).  Place stuffing mixture in the pork tenderloin and fold.  Place in a baking dish sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.  Reserve any extra stuffing (I had a bunch).  Bake for 45 minutes, remove from oven and place extra stuffing mixture around tenderloin.  Bake for another 45 minutes or until the internal temperature of the tenderloin is 165 on an instant-read thermometer.

Enjoy!