Recipe per week, 3/20

As I said in THIS POST, I decided to make beer bread this weekend using a recipe from this great foodie blog, Honest Fare.

Not only did this blog provide a great recipe, but [he/she] also took it a step further by creating a Beer and Cheese Sandwich.

I followed the beer bread recipe and ended up with this yummy treat below:

In case your wondering I used Newcastle beer and found it to be a pretty dense textured bread. Not light and airy like a cheaper beer might provide.

Since my bread was a little thinner then the original recipe called for, I thought attempting to actually grill it, like I do a panini, might come out as sloppy disaster. So I went with a broiling method which proved very successful.

I caramelized the onions and loaded them onto my bread slices. Then I put sliced Irish cheddar and Fontana cheese on top

After a few minutes in the broiler, the cheese was gooey, warm and the meal was delicious

Oh the globs of cheese.

I’ve been all about the comfort food lately. Perhaps when they’re not calling for three inches of snow (like they are tonight!!) I can get back into my fish and veggie summer phase.

That will be nice.

Recipe of the week – well, not so much…

I’ve been a terrible blogger. And to be honest, I don’t actually see myself getting back into it anytime soon. I started blogging when I was at a pretty low point in my life; when I really, really needed to capture some inspiration.
Now life has gotten 300x better, maybe 543x better, and blogging is just more of a bother than anything else.
Recipes especially have been hard as this winter, I was completely uninspired to cook anything. I don’t even want to tell you how often I went with a frozen bag of pasta for dinner. Shameful.
But as the season changes, so does my excitement over food. I realized with happiness that I need to start planting some herbs soon in my kitchen and that farmers markets will soon be popping up again!
One thing that can certainly help with my cooking-inspiration is this fantastic site They Draw and Cook. They take the blandness of recipes and combine it with fun art. I was especially excited to see a recipe that I was already planning on baking this weekend, Beer Bread. Although I will be eliminating the cheese part.

While I would probably never in a million years make this, I love the illusion.

And in honor of the day after St. Patty’s, a recipe you may need

I love a good feasting for the eyes and stomach. Happy weekend!

Recipe of the week, 1/17/11

The topic of conversation that comes up every time I hang out with my friends is our incessant wanting of Summer.

Sun, warmth, the beach, outside activities. Sounds so much better than the slip-and-slide sidewalks I encountered endlessly during my walk to work this morning.

To help with this wanting, I decided to go tropical with my meal this week with a copycat of Red Lobster’s Coconut Shrimp and Pina Colada dipping sauce.

Believe it or not, there are no Red Lobster’s in New England. Or Bob Evans. It’s not a tragedy but it was a funny thing to realize.

Back to the topic at hand, here’s my cast of characters for the sauce:



Just mix and refrigerate so it’s nice and chilled while you prepare the shrimp.

Then onto the main course:



I accidentally cut off my flour in the picture. I also forgot that all I have is wheat flour in my apartment, I didn’t notice a difference though.



I butterfly-cut my shrimp by cutting them from end to tail. This let the whole area of the shrimp be coated. Leaving the tails on. It also gave me a good excuse to use the awesome new knife set I just purchased from Gilt.

Then I prepared my batter stations:



Dip your shrimp (starting left to right) and I would recommend coating all of your shrimp before deep frying.



I had a lot of left over mixture after I dipped all of the shrimp, as you can see



I would recommend cutting the recipe by at least a 1/3rd. I would especially decrease the amount of breadcrumbs, but that’s just because I like more coconut and found that it seemed to have a hard time clinging onto the shrimp.

Once fried, plate with the pina colada dipping sauce

Nothing like a taste of summer while it’s snowing outside.

Recipe of the Week, 1/11/11

When I was home for the holidays, I kept seeing these cookies everywhere. I know I had tasted them before, probably at some long ago school christmas-party function, and they just looked to good to pass up!

After I got back to Providence, I was checking one of my new fav blogs, Sweet Paul, and he had THIS recipe in which he donned these delicious cookies the name, Snowcaps. I knew then that fate wanted me to eat these cookies.

This was my cast of characters:

I hadn’t baked in a really long time and realized that I didn’t have any cocoa powder. I looked up whether you could substitute hot cocoa mix and the results where, “Better not.” Just an fyi.

I always get a little bit apprehensive about melting chocolate in the microwave (I’ve had too many disastrous run-ins) so I did the double boil technique and this really did work out perfectly

While the chocolate melted, I mixed up all of the other ingredients except the powder sugar. Then mix in the melted chocolate

blurry gooeyness

I followed his suggestion in the comments section of letting the batter refrigerate for a 1/2 hour, then form your cookie balls, then refrigerate for another 1/2 hour.

I can’t speak to whether this is actually easier or not, but it certainly still was a mess. Chocolate dough was all over my hands and the smell really let me know what I was dealing with – these were going to be good.

After your poop chocolate cookie balls are refrigerated, coat them in powder sugar.

snowballs!

Cook, transfer to a cooling rack and enjoy!

They’re so so tasty and so so rich. The perfect way to start off ruining of any “eat better” resolutions.

Recipe of the week, 12/12 duce

rTwo new recipes in one week! This will hopefully make up for the fact that in an attempt to eat the food that will spoil before I head home for the holidays, last night I ate bread and goat cheese for dinner with a side of cereal. Classy.

With that mentioned, I will be going on holiday hiatus. I’m leaving Rhode Island (where it’s just cold) to this:

Technically I live two hours south of Cleveland, but my area has had a lot of snow. I will be excited to have snow for the first time this winter, but I hope the weather doesn’t ruin my plans!

Anyway, onto food. I decided to make a very comforting meal for winter nights, Beef Stroganoff. I pretty much followed THIS recipe from the kitchn. My cast of characters:

I don’t buy meat very often and when I do its normally chicken breast. So instead of looking around the meat case for beef tenderloin, I pretty much grabbed the first beef package I saw that was already handily cut up into chunks.

I’ll admit, I think meat is kind of gross. Especially cooking with it, which is why I stick to a lot of vegetarian meals. I’ve contemplated going vegetarian a couple of times, but I, personally, don’t have any ethical or health objections to meat, so why deny myself?

I am getting all sorts of off-track. My brain is already on holiday hiatis, sorry about that. So anyway, start by boiling water for the egg noodles and by sautéing all of the mushrooms and onion in butter.

What a delicious combination – onion and mushroom! I need to do this a lot more often.

Once those have cooked for 5-6 minutes, put them in a bowl to cool and brown the beef.

Some recipes have you do this first, but I like the idea of the juices from the veggies infusing into the meat. Plus the meat put out a lot of grease that you will have to throw out, so better the veggies first then the meat.

Once the meat is cooked through, remove the meat from the pan and dispose of the grease. Then add a cup of sour cream to the pan over low heat.

Season as you see fit; I just added a good amount of salt and pepper. Then add the veggies and meat to the sour cream, coating everything in the sauce.

Then once your egg noodles are done, drain and you’re done!

Hearty meal. Hearty winter ale. Completely stuffed person.

Recipe of the week, 12/12

Depending on how tonight’s dinner pans out, I may have two recipes this week! This first one though is really simple, incorporates chocolate into breakfast, and finally gave me a reason to try nutella.

I found the recipe  HERE for Cinnamon-Nutella Croissants and I instantly added the easy ingredients to my grocery shopping list.

Easy right?! Sugar, cinnamon, croissant rolls, one egg and my new favorite, nutella.

I have always heard mixed reviews of nutella and frankly, never really had a reason to buy it. I love chocolate but a chocolate hazelnut spread was never really anything I thought I needed before. But how wrong I was! Now I’m searching for other recipes that I can use it in as I can’t bring myself to total shame by eating it by the spoonful (although as delicious as it is, I could!). So if you have any recipes incorporating this new love of mine, please share!

You simply roll out the croissant pieces on a baking pan. Mix together some cinnamon and sugar and beat the egg.

 

Put a spoonful of nutella in the wide-end of the croissant piece and roll up like you would normally.

Add just a bit of water to your beaten egg and brush it onto the rolled up croissant.

Then sprinkle each piece with the cinnamon-sugar.

And in less than 15 minutes of baking time, you have a delicious warm, slightly gooey breakfast treat.

I plan on making these again while my 15 year old cousin is visiting me in Providence. They just seem so perfect for the holidays!

Recipe of the week 12/5

I know I refer to this blog a lot, but I couldn’t resist fresh365’s Pear and Gruyere Panini recipe.

Here was my cast of characters:

I used the cheap, sugary honey in my cupboard, but I recently tried fresh, straight from the comb honey and I died and went to foodie heaven. There’s a local honey(…maker? cultivator? monger?) in RI who sells fresh honey comb and I’m keeping that gem in mind next time I have a fancy cheese smorgasbord.

Anyway, start with generously applying honey and thyme to eat side of your bread.

Thyme is also muy deliciousio by the way. It has such a great punch of flavor.

Add your sliced pears and top with slices of gruyere to each side of your panini. Combine and use your fancy panini press or whatever method works for you:

fancy!

Add a side salad and top with lettuce (if desired) and you’ve quickly got a delicious pear and gruyere panini!

***************

On an editing note, my recipe of the week is going to be much more scattered because of the holidays. I also keep finding that now when I come home at 5pm and it’s dark, I’m uninspired to cook a unique, fun meal. I’m thinking about petitioning my work to allow me to exchange maternity leave with a Hibernation leave. Six-weeks of lounging in my warm apartment cooking, reading, crafting and watching 30 Rock.

Yes, the winter slump is starting. I need to stay motivated and keep on putting inspiration into action! If you have any hearty winter meals, I would love to hear them! Beef stroganoff is on my list, but I need more to get me through this winter.

Carpe the winter blues!

Recipe of the week, Nov 14

Thanks to daylight “savings” time, the sun has already set when I leave work at 5:00pm everyday. Add that to the fact that this week was going to be crazy busy and I knew that my desire to cook would be minimal.

So I decided to make this delicious Asain noodle dish – which makes a lot and taste even better the next day (bonus!). I can’t find a link to the recipe anywhere and I certainly didn’t make it up myself, so hopefully my description will help.

Here’s my cast of characters. I couldn’t find fresh sugar snap peas because they’re not in season, but I found that the frozen ones already had the tips broken off – laziness rewarded.

Start by mixing the sauce in a small bowl:

1 clove of chopped garlic
3 tbsp of sesame oil
2 1/2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of ginger.

Then boil water for the vermicelli noodles. I used wheat ones because I love the taste of wheat noodles when you’re cooking with fresh(ish) vegetables.

While the noodles are cooking, heat 1 tbsp of sesame oil in your wok or large skillet (but seriously, get a wok) and cook your onions and asparagus for around 3 minutes on high heat.

Then add the sugar snap peas and the sauce you mixed up. Cook on HIGH for another minute, then lower to medium heat.

After your pasta is al dente, drain and add to your wok (see why you need a wok?). Let cook on medium heat, mixing for around 2 minutes.

Then I toasted walnuts by letting them sit in my conventional oven at around 300degrees for around 3-4 minutes. Top your delicious asian noodle dish with the toasted walnuts and your done!

While it sounds like there’s a lot involved, this dish only takes around 20 minutes to make because the vegetables cook rather quickly. And like I said, it’s great the next day when the flavors have really been able to mix together!

Recipe of the week, 10/24

This week was another one of those times where I didn’t have an exact recipe per say, so I pulled from a bunch of different sources.

Truly this is probably one of the easiest things to make and probably the most hearty – Pulled Pork Sandwiches. Oh yea!

I wanted to buy Pork shoulder/butt (I guess these things are interchangeable…I can tell you the meat on my shoulder versus my butt is not) but alas the butcher didn’t have anything smaller than 6 lbs. So I decided to get a nice manageable 3 lb pork roast. It didn’t yield that nice bone-in-taste but it was easier to shred.

I went home on my lunch break to start cooking the pork.

I began by trimming away that top layer of fat then I rubbed each side with cumin, salt and pepper.

I just happened to be wearing my favorite (faux)pearl necklace that day and was channeling a little Julia Child

After the rub, I placed it in the crockpot with some beef broth and water until it was submerged.

Then I set the crockpot on low and went back to work

When I came home four hours later, I shredded the entire roast and started to make my Pulled Pork sandwich.

I’m only using a small portion of the shredded pork for this sandwich as I have plans for the rest of it. I began by cut up an onion to put in with the pork and coated them both in Rich’s Sweet Heat (a delicious locally made BBQ sauce). I let this bake in the oven at 350F for around 15 minutes.

Then I served it with my favorite side dish – sweet potato fries (those are sweet potatoes in the photo above, already peeled).

These are easy to chop, season (with whatever your preference is), and bake for 30 minutes in the oven.

Then once everything is all baked and compiled, I had a delicious, hearty pulled pork sandwich with sweet potato fries

I’d love to hear if anyone else has some hearty meals to get them through the winter!

Recipe of the week, 10/17

I had initially planned on blogging about THIS recipe recreating a Top Chef hot and sour eggplant winning dish on the show. I don’t watch this show (or any reality TV, really) but I thought it’d be neat to try something gourmet.

So I bought the items, I made it and I didn’t like it.

I was just too spicy for my liking – I needed to cut the curry amount by half and that’s without even adding any red pepper flakes. I saved the rest of it because I think it’s salvageable paired with some Naan, but I just couldn’t eat it as is.

Happily, the next day I received my first CSA delivery

Fresh greens (which have turned me off bagged salad indefinitely), local coffee, bread from this great bakery in Providence and local goat cheese. It was all so marvelous!

Since I had leftover eggplant from this recipe, I decided to make myself an eggplant & goat cheese panini!

I included an onion and sun-dried tomatoes soaked in oil for some extra flavors.

I started by cooking the eggplant and onion in the oven for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. I lightly oiled and salted them before roasting.

  
While the onion and eggplant were in the oven, I covered one side of the pillow loaf with the goat cheese and topped it with some sun-dried tomatoes. Then I removed the onion and eggplant from the oven and compiled my sandwich.

You could just stop there, but I love panini’s and have always wanted to make my own, so while I was making my sandwich I heated up one side of my grill pan.

Then, because I don’t have a panini press, I filled a large pot with water to weight down the sandwich.

This picture makes me laugh, but it worked! I let it cook for a couple minutes on the grill like this, then flipped it and did cooked the other side.

Paired with a side salad and I had a delicious meal

This was super tasty and I really can’t stress how great it was that everything was fresh. I regret only getting the goat cheese every other week, but considering how much I gorged on it last night, it was probably a wise decision.

However I will be getting the pillow loaves and greens every week, so more panini’s are sure to come! I know I’m excited!