Becoming Foodies
Dinner
Indian Monday
0The Menu:
- Salad
- Hummus
- Pita Bread
- Chicken with Indian Rub
The Recipes:
First up, I used this mix as a guide and created a simple Indian Spice Rub from the menagerie of spices pictured below.
Rubbed that on some chicken breasts and mixed up some hummus, following this easy recipe from the Savory Sweet Life blog. It was so quick that the only picture I got was the final product.
That turned out delicious, although maybe a tad too garlicky.
To scoop up the hummus, I decided to try making some homemade pita bread, following the instructions in Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day.
 after about one minute -- the initial puffiness |
 five minutes later - whoa! |
The pita bread turned out GREAT! It was the easiest bread I’ve made so far. I mean, yes, there’s some rolling pin action involved, but there’s no steam in this recipe and the baking time is 5-7 minutes. I actually went ahead and made a second load of pita bread so we’ll have some extras to enjoy with the leftover hummus over the next couple of days.
The final product was a well-balanced, but relatively easy and quick dinner.
Seafood Sunday
1We’ve done the butcher shop for meat before, but we’ve never really purchased seafood from a quality fresh fish shop (a fish monger?). I’ve been meaning to check out Empire Fish for a long time, and I finally did on Saturday. Awesome store really — very friendly staff and a great collection of sea critters. Lots of fresh options and some frozen stuff available too. I may have been a little over-excited though because I left with some scallops, some shrimp and a haddock filet.
All of that led to Seafood Sunday!
Using recipes from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (btw, if you don’t own this cookbook, buy it from Amazon now — at less than $24, it’s a bargain) as a guide, our lunch meal consisted of a little Ginger-Hoisin Shrimp.
On the side, we ate some more of the quinoa, and enjoyed some European Peasant Bread from the Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day book. Overall it was a tasty, speedy, albeit slightly-more-extravagant-than-your-average-noontime-meal lunch.
Then, when it came to dinner time, I put the awesome Saints victory on hold to cook up the rest of the fishy stuff. With only about a single serving each of scallops and haddock, I decided to make both. For the scallops, I pan-seared them with the lemon, shallots and capers recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. For the haddock, I kept it simple. A little salt and pepper followed by a quick dredging in some flour. That’s just basic white rice on the side.
The lemon/caper/shallot combo was a little overpowering. I think we both ended up pushing most of it to the side and focusing on the scallop-ey goodness. As for the haddock, for such a simple preparation, it was quite tasty. I mean, Kelley, who doesn’t really like fish, gave it a favorable review. I believe her words were along the lines of : “I would go to a fish fry if they used this recipe.”
Quinoa
1Quinoa (pronounce keen-wah) is the seed of the Goosefoot plant. It cooks much like a grain and has a fantastic nutty flavor, with a little bit of a crunch (due to its seed nature). It’s also healthy:
The quinoa seed is high in protein, calcium and iron, a relatively good source of vitamin E and several of the B vitamins. It contains an almost perfect balance of all eight essential amino acids needed for tissue development in humans. It is exceptionally high in lysine, cystine and methionine-amino acids typically low in other grains. It is a good complement for legumes, which are often low in methionine and cystine. The protein in quinoa is considered to be a complete protein due to the presence of all 8 essential amino acids.
(from Chet Day’s Health & Beyond)
I owe this new discovery to this post on the kitchn blog, which led to a recipe for Quinoa and Avocado Salad with Dried Fruit, Toasted Almonds, and Lemon-Cumin Vinaigrette at Fine Cooking.
Note: The picture over there looks a little different than the ones at those two links. It’s not just the Polish pottery. Those linked-to photos used red quinoa, but all I could find was the white version.
If you’ve never tried quinoa, I can highly recommend it. Try the recipe here, it’s healthy (containing not only the benefits of quinoa, but also a healthy dose of the good fats in avocado). And it’s delicious.
Next step for us is finding more quinoa recipes to try.
Finally — that fruit you see on the left side of that photo over there? That’s the fruit of the pummelo, another new food we gave a try to. It’s like a grapefruit, but has a really thick, super-spongy membrane around the fruit, and it’s nowhere near as bitter as grapefruit.
Non-Bread Weekend Baking
4Greetings. It’s Kelley. I feel as though I had some ample time in front of recipes this weekend, and wanted to share some of my non-bread baking with you (I’ll leave the yeasty stuff up to Paul). First, I will say that I’m becoming smitten with America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Great recipes that are tested and tested and tested! Makes me feel like they are fail-proof. These next two recipes are taken from there.
Bake-Sale [German Chocolate] Brownies, p. 518-519
Saturday’s baking was for a simple brownie recipe to bring along to a dinner party at some friends house that night (tasty fajitas were the main course). Amazingly, we had all the ingredients for the brownies in our cupboard, which meant no special trips to the grocery store were necessary. To add to the amazement, we also had butterscotch chips and coconut flakes on hand, so those plain brownies quickly turned into German chocolate brownies (melted the butterscotch on top of the baked brownies and added toasted coconut flakes). The bars were a hit, and only two came home with me. Don’t they look pretty in my Polish pottery dish? Yes, they do!
Almond Biscotti, p. 516-517
As you can see, the biscotti recipe was just the flip of a page away from the brownie recipe – coincidence?
On Sunday after a hearty breakfast of turkey bacon, eggs and homemade bread with Keweenaw Kitchen thimbleberry jam, I flipped open the biscotti recipe. Again, all ingredients were readily available in the cupboard. My cupboard’s stock boy is amazing!
The first step was to toast the almonds. I had a mixture of sliced and whole, so I put them in a small skillet together and they toasted nicely in about 8 minutes. The recipe called for finely chopped almonds, and I found that our herb bowl and mezzaluna worked nicely in keeping the nuts contained without getting all over the counter or floor. Once the dough was mixed, the directions said to split the it in half and form two 13″x2″ logs on a baking sheet lined with parchment. The dough was sticky, and regardless of how floured my hands were it was important to act quickly while forming said logs. (By the way, as a beliver in the Silpat, our parchment paper once again stayed in the drawer for this project. If we end up getting a dog this Spring, the name Mr. Silpat has a nice ring to it.) The first round in the oven was about 35 minutes, which then came out to rest for 10. The logs were then cut into 1/2″ slices and put back in for another 15 minutes. The outcome was just what was expected – a little crunch to enjoy with tea or coffee. I forgot to mention that I added some orange peel to the dough, which gave it a very subtle flavor. I did indulge in some this morning with my coffee. Isn’t that a Polish pottery mug? Why, yes, it is!
I’m off to find a recipe for dinner. Pork chops are thawing, so probably will hunt down a sauce or marinade idea. Broccoli is in the crisper. Now, if I could just find a way to use that Silpat one more time…
Monday Night Lasagna Party
0857 days
by Paul
in Entertaining
Catching up a little bit here as we time travel back to Monday night’s dinner.
Our friends Ed & Carolyn were in town with their son Patrick, so we had them over for a little dinner party. Dinner was delicious if I may say so myself, but I think the highlight of the night for both Kelley and I was getting to meet little Patrick for the first time. He’s a pretty darn cute kid!
Our Dinner Menu
- Simple Meat Lasagna – from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
- Caesar Salad with homemade Garlic Croutons – from the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
- Baguette-shaped bread – from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
- Cardamom Pear Crisp – this recipe came from the Sunday Suppers blog
Mike and Jackie also brought over a tasty polenta dish with a ranch/bacon sauce. Ed & Carolyn added a bottle of wine and we all had a great time.
We couldn’t have pulled off the dinner on time if we didn’t make the bread and assemble the lasagna on Sunday night. That left us with the perfect amount of prep and oven time for the two of us to make the croutons, salad and dessert on Monday and bake everything, including the lasagna.
Click below to continue reading…
Chipotle Bean Burritos – from Cooking Light magazine
0On Tuesday night, we dined at Chipotle. It was ok, but it doesn’t match the flavors of a homemade dinner. Wednesday was bowling night, so I ate a big lunch and Kelley made a grilled cheese dinner that she hasn’t blogged about yet for some reason.
That takes us to Thursday, where we went vegetarian with homemade bean burritos.
The Menu: Chipotle Bean Burritos served with Guacamole and Chips, from Cooking Light Jan/Feb 2010 – also available at myRecipes.com
The Pictures:
The Verdict:
- Overall, a really simple, relatively inexpensive meal that only took about a half hour to prepare
- It’s the easiest part of this meal, and not exactly a ground-breaking recipe, but the guacamole was really good
- The recipe called for 10-inch tortillas, which I’m pretty sure I bought, but I don’t think I really over-stuffed these, so if you want to match the pictures at myRecipes/Cooking Light, I’d suggest getting a bigger tortilla.
Packer Playoff Loss Dinner: from Cooking Light magazine
0Quick weekend-closing post.
During halftime of a fairly exciting, but ultimately somewhat heartbreaking, Packer playoff loss, we whipped together a recipe from this month’s Cooking Light magazine.
The Menu (as suggested in the magazine – follow that link for a great picture)
Seared Lamb with Balsamic Sauce
Cracked Wheat–Currant Pilaf: Sauté 1½ cups quick-cooking bulgur in 2 teaspoons butter over medium-high heat for 1 minute. Add 1½ cups water and ½ teaspoon kosher salt. Bring to a boil; cook 2 minutes. Cover, remove from heat, and let stand 25 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Stir in 3 tablespoons dried currants and 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley.
Spicy Chard: Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper and 2 minced garlic cloves; sauté 30 seconds. Add 8 cups chopped Swiss chard and ¼ cup chicken broth; cover and cook 8 minutes.
The Verdict
This is probably only the third or fourth time that I’ve even cooked lamb chops, but given their ease of cooking and their great flavor (even without the sauce), I won’t hesitate to make them again. I will, however, wait until they’re on sale since this is not a cheap meat.
As for the side dishes, the cracked wheat-currant pilaf had a nice flavor, but it was definitely the base in this meal. The spicy chard, on the other hand, had a really nice kick to it.
Saturday Night Calzone
1What we ate: Spinach & Cheese Calzone from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
How it looked:
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| This is the calzone right out of the oven. It was huge! | A look inside. |
Thoughts:
- This recipe was EASY! Assuming you have some dough in the refrigerator, you can have this on the table in under an hour (roughly 15 minutes to prep, 25 minutes to cook, 10 minutes to cool)
- While mixing the filling, I kept thinking, “There’s no way this is going to be enough to serve 2-4 people” – mainly because it only called for 1/2 cup of spinach
- On the other hand, when it came out of the oven, I was stunned at how large it was. My first fear was that it was going to be too “bready,” and while the edges were maybe a little thicker than they needed to be, it certainly wasn’t the case flavor wise.
- Our main comment after dinner: “It would be interesting to make this with some other ingredients.”
Links:
The companion website for the book has this post from almost two years ago featuring a discussion about packing slices of these calzones in school lunches.
Would we make it again? Absolutely!
Snowy Dinner – Cauliflower, Bacon & Parmesan Frittata
1It’s been snowing all day in Milwaukee, so it seemed silly to make a trip to the grocery store for the final ingredients for the Cauliflower Soup we’ve been meaning to try. But, it also meant coming up with a dinner from random stuff in our refrigerator. The cauliflower was still there, and we had some eggs. Time for a frittata.
Based on our on-hand ingredients, I adjusted the recipe I found on MyRecipes.com. The key substitutions: turkey bacon for the bacon (beware, you won’t get much fat to cook the rest of the frittata in this way) and fat-free milk for the light cream.
It was a surprisingly tasty dinner. The cauliflower was nice and soft, more chewy than crunchy, and a slice of homemade bread made a fine side item.
Cauliflour, Bacon and Parmesan Frittata
Adapted from Food & Wine (via myRecipes.com)
Serves: 2
Ingredients
2.5 oz turkey bacon
5 large eggs
1/4 cup fat-free milk
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
pinch freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 small head cauliflower, chopped into small pieces
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
Instructions
- Cook bacon in a 10- or 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat, until cooked. Remove from pan and place on paper towels to cool. Pour off any grease in the pan (with turkey bacon, there may not be any grease to pour off, normal bacon would definitely be fattier)
- In a medium bowl, stir the eggs, milk, Parmesan, parsley and pepper with a whisk. Add the cooled bacon.
- In the same skillet, heat the oil and butter over medium high heat.
- Add the cauliflower and salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10-12 minutes, until cauliflower is golden and softened.
- Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute longer.
- Spread the cauliflower evenly across the pan and pour the egg mixture over the top. Tilt the pan to spread the egg mixture to all sides.
- Reduce heat to low. Cover and cook for 10-12 minutes, until bottom of frittata is golden brown and top is almost set.
- Heat broiler. Broil the frittata 6 inches from the heat, if possible, until eggs are set and beginning to brown, about 3 minutes.
- Lift up the edge of the frittata with a spatula and slide onto a plate. Cut into wedges and serve immediately.
