November 5th, 2009
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Define an easy after work dinner….Shrimp Scampi! Who needs 30 minute meals when you can have a delicious 15 minute meal? Right on! This is so delicious and simple. Toss with pasta or rice or load on to grilled bread or go light as we did with a big salad.
- 1 lbs of medium shrimp–cleaned and deveined
- 2 cloves of garlic–minced
- 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon of fennel
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon of oregano
- 1/2 cup of white wine
Heat the olive oil on low heat and add the garlic. Stir the garlic and add the fennel seeds and let both cook for a few minutes. Add the shrimp and the other spices and cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes or until the shrimp are pink. Don’t overcook the shrimp. Add the white wine and stir for a minute or two to absorb the flavor. Dig in!
October 24th, 2009
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Well, why not pizza again? It is one of the easiest, quickest and most creative dishes I can think of. Christina and Jasmine came over after work and I have to tell you I was really excited to cook with them. We spend a lot of time at work talking about food and both gals have great food blogs (Fattened Calf & Glitter Shrimp) and food pedigree. Yaz went to culinary school and Christina’s fiance is a chef at Uchi, and they cook together all the time, so it’s food, food, food! They brought cheeses (goat and mozzerella), olives, arugula, salami, pesto, proscuitto and we doused one of the pizzas with truffle oil. I sauteed some onion with a fresh jalapeno and green pepper from Jaz’s mom’s garden until soft and fragrant and then threw in some fennel seed, salt & pepper and that is a pretty darn good pizza topping. We then assembled two store bought pizza doughs and had a feast. Don’t forgot the wine!
October 4th, 2009
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Boeuf Bourguignon and Beef Stew and are both homey, hearty, comforting and delicious dishes. They are similar, but Beef stew is more simple and American. Boeuf Bourguignon has a French name and it is a little more elegant with the addition of cognac, red wine and bacon and is famous because of Julia Child and the movie Julie & Julia. Boeuf Bourguignon has pearl onions and beef stew has an yellow onion. Of course you could add those fabulous ingredients to beef stew if you want to but I don’t or else it would be Boeuf Bourguignon. My mom likes simple food so I made her the beef stew this Sunday. However, last Sunday I made the Boeuf Bourguignon for Sara & Dan proud parents of Charlie. Sara is part of the book club that I mentioned a few posts ago. As a way to help the new parents out each of us brought a dish for them and my contribution was Boeuf Bourguignon.
I am including the beef stew recipe but you can easily find your favorite Boeuf Bourguignon recipe, hint Julia Child. Make both and decide which one your prefer. Beef Stew is fast and simple. Boeuf Bourguignon is a little more involved and it will have a deeper flavor but I’d eat either anytime.
Beef Stew
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 lb of beef stew meat, dredged in flour
- 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 carrot, chopped
- 1 stalk of celery, chopped
- 2 quarts of chicken broth
- 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of pepper
- 2 teaspoons of thyme
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a Dutch Oven, I use Le Creuset, heat the olive oil and saute the onions, carrots and celery, when they are tender add the garlic. Take the vegetables out and set aside add another tablespoon of olive oil and dd the beef and saute until brown. Add the chicken broth and tomatoe paste and the vegetables and cover tightly and place in the oven for 2 hours.
Boeuf Bourguignon
This recipe is everywhere so choose the one that you like. I like Ina Garten’s, the Barefoot Contessa, www.barefootcontessa.com, from her book “Barefood In Paris” or you could use Julia Child’s. Regardless it is basically beef stew with the addition of bacon, pearl onions, cognac and red wine. Ahhh….
September 25th, 2009
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Today is the 16th birthday of my beautiful, talented, smart and wonderful son, Dashiell. He loves chocolate so I wanted to bake a cake for him made with chocolate and lots of love. The best recipe that I’ve found for chocolate cake if by Nigella Lawson in her “Nigella Bites” cookbook. Check it out. I made the cake last night and it does have a lot of ingrediants but it is fairly easy. All of the steps make perfect sense. The cake came out beautiful and it is so moist and loaded with flavor without the heavy chocolate that some chocolate cakes have. The icing is the cat’s meow, so silky and smooth and decadent. Here’s to Dashiell on his special day! Love MOM.
September 13th, 2009
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Cabrito, kid, chevon, are all names for baby goat. And whatever you want to call it I don’t eat it or cook it. BUT our friend Mike McIntosh and his lovely wife Julie Wickett invited us over Sunday afternoon for a bbq and that is what they were serving. Jesse and Dashiell were up for it so off we went. I tasted a small bite of the cabrito and it was delicious. I know I just said that I don’t eat baby goats but I had to try it because Mike is so sweet. Mike smoked it for hours in a special smoker that you add water to so the meat was moist and succulant. Our friend Tim made the tastiest pinto beans I’ve ever had. He did not skimp on the salt pork and they were really a meal in themselves. Julie made a lovely peach sorbet for dessert that hit the spot on this summer evening. I made fatoush, a Lebonese bread salad. Fatoush can be made with lettuce or not and adding garbanzo beans works too. I did add the lettuce this time, however, I have made it in the past with just the tomatoes, cucumbers and spring onions.
Fatoush
- 1/2 head of romaine lettuce
- 1 container of grape tomatoes
- 2 cucumbers
- 4 spring onions
- 1/2 cup of mint
- 1/2 cup of flat leaf parsley
- 1/2 cup of olive oil
- 1/4 cup of lemon juice
- salt
- pepper
- pita bread, cut into triangles
Cut all of the vegetables into bite size pieces, chop the mint and parsley and add to the salad. Mix the olive oil and lemon juice together and season with salt and pepper. Toss with the vegetables. Toast the pita bread in the oven and toss with the salad.
September 6th, 2009
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Once a month I get together with 10 or so brilliant, witty and beautiful womem to discuss a book that we’ve read. We all bring wine and or an appetizer and some of the most delicious desserts I’ve ever tasted. This month it’s at my house so I’m serving an olive plate and roma tomatoes. I baked the tomatoes slowly for hours and then added some buffalo mozzerella and fresh basil. This is a good recipe for store bought tomatoes that don’t always have a lot of flavor. It’s kind of like making them into sun dried tomatoes but in the oven.
Tomatoes
- 10 roma tomatoes, cut in half
- Olive oil, about 2 tablespoons
- 1/4 pound of fresh buffallo mozzerella
Bake for 3 hours at 325 degrees or a little longer depending on your oven. You want the tomatoes to collapse and be all gushy. Let them cool and sprinkle with salt and pepper. You could then use oregano, or fresh basil or thyme. I like dried oregano because that is the way my mom and Aunt Angie would eat garden tomatoes in New York and the taste has stayed with me. FYI–I tried to lessen the three hour cooking process by turning on the confection oven and it dried the tomatoes out and made them like sun-dried. So if you want them to be like that; then go for the confection oven.
September 2nd, 2009
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With Labor Day around the corner my basil garden is almost finished. It lasted through the summer and actually seemed to thrive in the heat as long as I remembered to water it. To me biting into basil is summer. It’s fresh and green and kind of spicy and so versitile. There is pesto and fresh basil torn and tossed in a salad. Basil added to tomato sauce or basil on grilled fish or chicken and on and on…It’s also good for you with a lot of nutrients, especially Vitamin K! And it is an anti-inflammatory, too. Hooray for basil!! This is my favorite pesto recipe.
Pesto
2 cups of basil
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts
2 medium sized garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Combine the basil and pine nuts in a food processor, pulse and then add the garlic. When combined slowly add the olive oil. Add the cheese and combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Makes 1 cup.
August 26th, 2009
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My favorite grocery store Central Market had Choice Rib Eye steaks on sale for half price! That’s like two for the price of one. These are really big one pounders, some even bigger. Each steak can easily be split with someone or you could eat the whole steak as Dashiell does. I bought them and then contemplated going out in the heat to grill them and decided that the only civilized way to “grill” steaks was in the house. It’s been triple digit temperatures for 60 days straight here in Austin and going outside at 6 PM is really dumb. I also made some stove top mac & cheese because I didn’t want to bake it in the oven and heat the house up even more.
Grilled Rib Eye Steaks
- Heat an indoor grill pan or an outdoor grill
- Season the steaks with garlic powder, salt and pepper–use as much as you like
- When the grill is hot put the steaks on and grill for about 6 minutes on each side for medium
Stove top Mac & Cheese
- 1/4 lb of elbow macaroni
- 1/2 stick of butter
- 1/2 cup of grated cheddar cheese
- salt
- pepper
- Boil water for the macaroni
- Cook the macaroni in the boiling water until al dente
- Add the butter and cheese and mix
- Season with salt & pepper to taste
- Serves 2 generously
- Serve warm
August 18th, 2009
12 comments »
This is a delicious easy recipe that is gourmet but very easy because we are using store bought pizza dough. I do enjoy making my own dough when I have time but let’s get real when I come home from work I don’t have time. Period! Giada even uses store bought dough for some of her recipes. So let’s get started.
- I package pizza dough (in the section of your market that has biscuits in a tube)
- 1/4 cup of olive oil
- 6 ounces of goat cheese
- 6 ounces of mozzerella or fontina
- 1 (8 oz) package of arugula-washed and ready to go
- 1/2 teaspoon of fennel seed
- 1 teaspoon of ground pepper
- corn meal
Roll out the dough according to instructions on the package and place on a cookie sheet sprinkled with corn meal. Add the olive oil all over the dough, then season the dough with fennel seed and pepper. Add the cheeses and bake.
August 18th, 2009
1 comment »
I love this recipe because it’s a different way to cook a whole chicken and it’s easy and quick. Nigella calls it spatchcocked chicken and Ina calls it flattened chicken and I’m just going to name it Grilled Chicken! You should marinate it for a few hours or overnight and always buy a good chicken, preferrably organic. About the marinade you can use whatever you want. For Italian chicken use an olive oil with garlic and rosemary and for a Greek version marinate the chicken in yogurt and spices. For a Southern version how about buttermilk? You could also use some Indian curry and spices or a chili paste. The chicken can be seasoned almost any way you want and come out to be a delicious meal so here are the basics and use your imagination.
- 1 butterflied chicken about 3 or 3 1/2 pounds
- salt
- pepper
- 1/4 cup of olive oil
- 2 lemons
- 2 sprigs of rosemary
- 1 clove of garlic minced
To butterfly you have to cut the backbone out or ask the butcher to do it. Really simple to do–just lie the chicken on it breast side and cut the backbone out with scissors. Don’t cut all the way through but flatten it.
Mix the olive oil and squeezed lemons together and pour on the chicken. Season with salt and pepper on both sides. Pull the rosemary off of the stem and put that on the chicken. Put the chicken in a zip lock bag and put in the fridge for at least an hour. Let the chicken come to room temperture and either grill it or put it into the oven.
To grill: Heat the gas grill and cook on low about 15 minutes on each side. Or heat an oven to 425 degrees and cook the chicken about 45 minutes. Either way after the chicken is done let it rest and then cut into halfs or quarters.
