Showing posts with label Entree. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Entree. Show all posts

15 January 2013

Dinner for one (or two)

Back in November my ward hosted a Service Auction. Several of the committees in the ward banded together and put together a lovely dinner and silent auction. And many people in the ward (and the two other invited wards) contributed service items for the auction, myself included. I volunteered to cook dinner for someone--the catch was that it had to be on a weekend, since I work weeknights. At length, today I finally prepared this dinner for one of my good friends who won my service item. And since we're pretty good friends her dinner for one really turned into dinner for two, since she came over to the house and enjoyed a pleasant evening with me.

I spent quite a while trying to work out the menu and waffling back and forth on what to serve. They all happened to be new recipes (yeah, I know you're not supposed to use guests--and paying ones at that--as guinea pigs, but what can I say?). I got a couple marvelous vegetarian cookbooks over Christmas and I was just dying to try out some new recipes. More on those later.

So I got this far in writing this post last Friday. My plan had been to take a couple pictures and then post it that night. But you know how good I am at taking pictures. Despite the lack of photo-documentation my dinner was a success. I ended up making a frittata from my Vegetarian Kids' Cookbook, and an apple dessert pizza. They were both pretty delicious. In fact, I'm looking forward to making the frittata again this week. It featured potatoes, peas, and broccoli--three of my favorite vegetables. mmmm, broccoli.

20 September 2012

Peanut Curry Pizza!

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I think that everything tastes better when it's on a crust. I love my pizza. I think my favorite thing though is that when I order pizza I always get plain old pepperoni, but when I cook pizza I hardly ever put meat on at all. On Sunday I made a delicious Thai peanut curry that one of my former roommates taught me how to make. It's pretty delicious. She normally serves it over rice, but I'm still struggling with rice since the winter and so I've been eating it over rice noodles (because apparently my stomach thinks those are different enough). I ended up with lots of leftovers and so... peanut curry pizza! Today's pizza features:
  •  my favorite crust--I usually pre-bake it with a little olive oil and garlic
  • the peanut curry sauce--spread pretty thin
  • some leftover cooked rice stick noodles
  • chopped up steamed potatoes--I've decided that I like them best steamed (they seem to always be cooked enough that way)
  • a little bit more sauce on top
  • and some cheese to hold it all together--I just used cheddar because that's what I have.
I was a little worried about the cheese. I know it holds it all together well, but really, cheese? with curry? But I was pleasantly surprised. It worked great. Held it all together and you couldn't really taste it at all. Also, you could totally use any vegetables you normally have with curry and I think it'd be great. I mean, we already know that zucchini and broccoli are both good on crusts... Overall, I'm a fan of this pizza. Next time though, I might broil it for a minute just to brown up the potatoes a touch, they look a little anemic...


14 September 2012

Zucchini Bisque


I also made this delicious zucchini bisque. If you can't tell, I really love creamy soups. I feel like there isn't a much better way to make a soup delicious than to add cream. But then, cream is good in just about anything. And since this soup also needed something to go with it I tried my hand at a flatbread. This one is a green onion flatbread. It was good, but had pretty much no flavor. Next time I think I'll try a different flavor (maybe garlic??).
Zucchini bisque
Green onion flatbread


12 September 2012

Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

And lest you think that I haven't cooked in months... I made my own tomato soup. It was pretty delicious. I'm still learning about using cream in my soups. I have a little trouble with it separating because I add it when the soup is still too hot. 
 And nothing goes better with tomato soup than grilled cheese. Yum!



28 June 2012

Stir-fry

It has been a long time since I've posted something that I've cooked. In some cases that's because I've rediscovered sandwiches and thus haven't been cooking and in others it's because I've been too busy/lazy to upload pictures from my camera--I'm hoping to remedy this in the very near future. At any rate. Yesterday I cooked!

I had some broccoli in the fridge that was dying to be eaten and my favorite way to eat broccoli is stir-fryed. So, stir-fryed it was. While it was cooking I also found two baby carrots and part of an onion that looked like it was on its way out so I added those too, just for kicks and giggles. And since I didn't really want to eat my stir-fry over rice, as would be traditional, I ate it over a baked potato. I know it sounds a little weird. But broccoli goes on baked potatoes sometimes, and potatoes and carrots go well together, and onion goes with any of those. So why not stir-fry on a baked potato?  It was delicious.

Oh, and when I had the leftovers for dinner tonight they were delicious too.

28 April 2012

Potato Pizza

This seems like forever ago that I was on my pizza kick, but for a while I'm pretty sure I made pizza (usually with zuccini and squash on it) at least once a week and maybe more like twice. I'm not sure what happened. I guess I got busy (which I definitely did, if I look at my life in January and my life now they are completely different). But back when I ate pizza all the time I saw this recipe for potato pizza and thought it sounded pretty tasty. Though when I made it I admit that I made some changes because I had neither shallots nor gruyere (though if I did that would've been pretty fantastic). Sadly, it's a little hard to remember, but I'm pretty sure I used cheddar cheese. And I also learned that you definitely need to make sure the potatoes are cooked all the way through before you put them on the crust because they won't finish cooking in the oven. But other than that, the pizza turned out pretty fantastically. Writing this makes me want to make pizza again soon, maybe I'll get ingredients for one next time I do a shop.


27 February 2012

Creamed Eggs on Toast

When I was a little girl we used to have biscuits and gravy for dinner sometimes (actually we had it when I was home over Christmas last year too). My mom makes fantastic baking powder biscuits and her sausage gravy always turns out better than mine does. It's pretty fantastic. When I went away to college (and actually occasionally before that as well) I would make biscuits and gravy or talk about them and people would always give me the weirdest looks as if they had never heard of putting gravy on biscuits before. It turns out this is must be some kind of Mid-western food that people on the west coast don't eat that often, or something. Weird. But I've made my peace with it and I feel like more people are familiar with biscuits and gravy.

What continues to amaze me are the variations on this meal that people are missing out on. Yesterday I was in my kitchen trying to figure out what to cook for dinner and found out that it is that awkward time in fridge-land when I need to go shopping and thus have a limited selection of foodstuffs. So since about all I have in my fridge is eggs and milk I decided that some nice creamed eggs on toast would be the perfect meal. Except why would I eat my creamed eggs on toast when I can have them on biscuits? So I made biscuits and then proceeded to make me some creamed eggs. At this point my roommates all got super confused. Think--biscuits and gravy only with hard-boiled eggs instead of sausage. It's fantastic. You don't even know what you're missing out on. And after you get used to the idea of creamed eggs on toast we can expand your horizons even more to chipped beef on toast. Apparently I really am a girl from the Mid-west even though I haven't claimed that in more than a decade. My favorite though was when I could hear one of my roommates trying to explain to her boyfriend that I'd made creamed eggs on toast for dinner. She was just so incredulous. I assure you it's not that weird. 

11 January 2012

Zucchini Pizza

Normally I'm a pepperoni pizza person. Just plain old pepperoni (or occasionally Hawaiian), but this zucchini pizza is fantastic! One of my old roommates used to make it occasionally and it made the apartment smell so good. So today I tried it. And I tried a new crust recipe, which at least so far has passed muster. Admittedly, I didn't use goat's cheese, but that was more because it was too expensive to actually buy. But next time, I think I'll spend the extra money.

21 November 2011

Garlic Knots

I made these Garlic Knots a week or two ago (I can't remember now.) They are pretty delicious. And went very nicely with these meatballs. The meatballs are so easy. Just three ingredients. Meatballs, plum jam, and chili sauce. Throw it all in the crockpot and let it cook till the meatballs are all heated through. 

08 November 2011

BLT Wraps

So I was looking for a recipe for a simple, light, savory hors d' oeuvre that I can take for a work potluck and I ran across this recipe for BLT pitas. While I'm not sure they're quite what I'm looking for for my potluck they did sound quite delicious. So on my way home for work I stopped at the store and bought bacon, lettuce, tomato and completely managed to forget pitas. whoops. Luckily, I had thought that a nice wrap would be good sometime so I did have tortillas. And you know, a BLT makes a pretty awesome wrap. This recipe from Mel's Kitchen Cafe used avocado as well, which was delicious, and I think that it will become a regular guest in future BLTs. 

19 October 2011

Monday Roast

Apple Galette
You'll remember that last week I went apple picking in Damascus. So this week I cooked with apples (imagine that.) On Sunday my roommate cooked dinner for us and I contributed an Apple Galette. In essence a galette is an open-faced pie, that's flat. Therefore it is easier to make than pie and tastes the same. And it looks pretty cool too. It turned out quite nicely. The apples I had picked were a sweeter variety so I only lightly sprinkled cinnamon sugar on top (and mostly just because I wanted the cinnamon). I ate leftovers for a couple days. I will say though that this is definitely better warm. Even reheated.

Roast, Yorkshire Pudding, Sweet Potato Fries
Before my roommate offered to share her dinner with me on Sunday I had planned to make a roast. So instead I had that on Monday. Nothing like a good Monday roast. And I had a sweet potato so I sliced it up real nice and baked it into fries (nothing like the fries at Guru's  but then what is?) and really they turned out ok. I managed to eat almost all of them before my roast was even done cooking. Actually timing wise the whole meal struggled. Everything had to cook for about half an hour, mostly on the same temperature but the fires had to be turned half way through and you can't open the door to the oven while cooking Yorkshire Pudding or it will fall. So all three parts ended up being cooked separately and I don't think all the waiting would have flown if I had been cooking for someone else. But I will say that waiting was worth it. The pudding didn't stick to the pan at all! and it was nice and thick. It was fantastic. 

10 October 2011

Cafe Rio

So, hardly a month has gone by since I said I wanted to cook every week. Who would have thought that it would be so hard to prepare one meal in an entire week? Well, it is. This past week I was working a class in Palisades, NY, which is a "suburb" of New York that is in the middle of nowhere and isn't really a town at all, but the trees were lovely. So I ate there all week and then I fully intended to cook something (maybe even something new) when I got back to Maryland late last Friday. As luck would have it, it's been a busy weekend and the whole cooking thing flew out the window at the first opportunity.

On Saturday I went apple picking up in Damascus, Maryland (the cutest town ever!), so look for an apple recipe or two in the coming weeks. After picking my fill of apples one of my roommates and I drove up to the newest delicious "mexican" restaurant in Olney. Cafe Rio has finally come to the DC Metro area! There are now two locations--one in Maryland and one Virginia. And I'm pretty sure that it is the place for displaced Utahns to eat. And the food is just as good as it is in Provo.

I say that as if I actually liked Cafe Rio when I lived in Provo--that's not strictly speaking true. The first time I ate there was shortly after I'd moved to Provo, and being from Arizona just couldn't understand why a "Mexican" restaurant would put rice in their burritos; no self-respecting Mexican would ever do that. Somewhere along the way I realized that Cafe Rio falls into a category with Chipotle and Qdoba and all those other very delicious burrito-restaurants: not Mexican food, but delicious. After I made that realization everything changed. You just can't pass up that pork salad. It is definitely worth the half-hour drive each way to buy an $8 salad. Besides, I ate that salad for dinner on Saturday and finished it up for lunch on Sunday (hence why I didn't cook all weekend). So, if you're ever find yourself in the DC area looking for a good 'ole taste of Utah stop in at Cafe Rio. It's worth the drive.

22 September 2011

Soy Sauce and Star Anise Chicken

So my favorite cookbook in the world is called The Three Ingredient Cookbook by Jenny White. The recipes are super simple and the full-color, full page photos are amazing. One thing that I love about this book (besides the photography) is that every time I flip through it I find new recipes I swear I've never seen before. (of course it's unlikely that it's a magic cookbook, but it sure seems that way.) So I was looking through the cookbook looking for an English dessert I can make for a potluck this weekend when I stumbled across this recipe using star anise. (It was pure luck that I actually own star anise and so had all the ingredient for this--it's quite unusual.) I wish I could share with you the picture that was in the cookbook rather than the picture I took, because mine doesn't look nearly as delicious.

Soy Sauce and Star Anise Chicken
So the chicken was pretty good, though next time I make it I will use a higher proportion of star anise to soy sauce. I couldn't really taste the star anise at all. I'd also marinade it longer. And I think I'd actually try to grill it. The recipe said to, but with no grill that can be a bit tricky. But their was just so much prettier with the grill lines on it.

15 September 2011

Chicken Curry


In theory, when I said that I wanted to try new recipes and cook I suppose you imagined that I'd be cooking from scratch and things like that. I think that's what I'd imagined too. I do like cooking from scratch, but I also enjoy prepared things. Like curry sauces. I was at the grocery store yesterday getting ingredients for the dessert I made last night and I happened upon a display of Patak's curry sauces. After reading all the labels I settled on the Butter Chicken sauce. I've used the Tikka Masala before and I really like it. So I thought I'd try something new. And it was easy. Cook up some chicken. Add some sauce. Simmer. Eat. Delicious. I definitely don't find any problem with making cooking easy with prepared foods.

After eating my curry, I tried the S'mores Cookie Bars that I made. I found the recipe on one of my favorite food blogs. Mel's Kitchen Cafe has lots of delicious looking recipes. I am excited to try more of them. I haven't quite decided how I liked them. For sure I didn't put enough chocolate chips in, and I think I should have used more marshmallow too, but really they were just very, very sweet and I'm not sure how I felt about that. I brought some of them to work and my coworkers seemed to like them. I think I will have to make them again one day so that I can form a better opinion of them.

21 March 2010

Banoffee Pie and more

I find that once again I am behind on my posting. A few weeks ago I was flipping through a dessert cookbook that I picked up at a sale for 50% (because the dust jack has a tear in it) and I found a recipe for banoffee pie. Now, this recipe looked quite a bit more sophisticated than the banoffee that I'm used to, but for lack of any other recipe I decided to give it a shot. And, it even used my new tart pan--what could be better? When I made it, it certainly was more formal looking, and it didn't have quite the same flavour, but it was still delicious, and it tasted like banoffee. I will most definitely make this one again.

I also tried my hand at making calzones. They're not too hard. Pizza crust, pizza toppings, folded in half... They took forever to make. I guess all that dough rolling just took a long time. And it made about a billion calzones. I'll be eating them for a few more weeks. But, at least I don't have to cook as much now. I filled my calzones with ham, bell pepper, mozarella, and ricotta cheese. They were pretty tasty.

Then today, I was eating my grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and trying to decide what to make for dinner. I thought to myself--Mac and Cheese sounds good. I wonder if I have a recipe for that. or the ingredients. Turns out that I did find a recipe. It seemed simple enough, and I even had the ingredients; how rare is that? So, I made mac and cheese for dinner and also traditional Irish soda bread. I've made the soda bread before, and it turned out alright this time too. I haven't had mac and cheese in a long time, and this was way better than any box one I could have made.

20 February 2010

Souffles and Custards

I would be remiss if I didn't update soon. It appears that it has been quite a while since I have written.

Some number of weeks ago I tried my hand at a Chocolate-Banana Fool. The OED explains a fool as "A dish composed of fruit stewed, crushed, and mixed with milk, cream, or custard." The word was first used in this sense in the late 1500s and was spelled with an e (foole). So essentially, a chocolate-banana fool is a sort of chocolate-banana custard. It was quite delicious, though the I think that next time I'll use a little less chocolate because it didn't mix into my custard as smoothly as I would have liked and so was a little grainy. but the semi-sweet chocolate definitely was a good sweetness.

After the fool, I tried a Cheese Souffle. Now, I have always heard the souffles are quite difficult to make, and that anything much of a loud sound will make them fall. I don't know about the loud noise (though I suspect that's merely and old wives' tale) but I do know that souffles aren't really that hard to make. You mix the ingredients, whip the egg whites, fold them together, and bake. They are delicious. I've tried to describe what exactly a souffle is to a number of people, and I have yet to come up with a very good explanation. It's sort of like a cake, only spongy-er, and a cheese souffle is kind of like cheesy scrambled eggs, but not. They are extremely light, and moist, and delish.

The week after I made this cheese souffle, I decided that one good souffle deserved another so I made "Hot Berry Souffles with a Mixed-berry Coulis," you know I like coulis. Instead of making these souffles in a big souffle dish like the cheese souffle, these I made in individual ramekins, so they were delightfully easy and individually portioned. The berry souffles were a nice light shade of purple, and were light, and fruity, and a great dessert. The best desserts are the ones where you can eat just a little and feel satisifed, and this was just that way. The coulis on top looked nice, and gave the souffle just the right sauce to eat it with. I included a picture of them right after they came out of the oven. They are amazingly tall, and fell quickly. but they were good--if I'm allowed to say that.

Earlier this week, I had the responsibility of providing treats for our weekly staff meeting, and so I made a Lemon Cream Tart. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, so I have nothing to show for my work. Tarts are surprisingly easy to make, and quite tasty. The dough for the crust reminded me of the smell of cookie dough, (though the dough didn't taste like it. In fact it wasn't yummy at all). The lemon cream part was reminiscent of the filling that lemon meringue pies. I'll have to make it again sometime so that there can be a picture.

13 December 2009

Catching Up

Well, it has been a very long time since I have posted, so I will try to get myself caught up on all the cooking adventures that I have had in the last 3 months or so. First off, in October I tried my hand at making fortune cookies. They are surprisingly easy, and quite tasty. When I read the recipe it seemed weird that you can only cook 2 cookies at a time, but when I tried it myself, it is indeed a true statement. If you cook anymore than that there is no way that you'll get the cookies folded before they harden. It is so cool, when you first take the cookies out of the oven, they are soft and quite malleable, but they start to harden almost instantly; nevertheless, it is quite possible to fold them to actually look like fortune cookies.

Then, a little late in the month, I tried my hand at Portuguese Custard Tarts. They utilize two of my favorite ingredients: custard and puff pastry. And they cook in a muffin pan, so they are perfectly bite-sized. Finding the custard to fill the tarts with took a little doing, but eventually Macey's pulled through and helped me out. The tarts turned out so well, that I've made them once since my original attempt and took them to a party, where everyone loved them.

Then November came, This month I tried my hand at my first mousse, a White Chocolate Strawberry Mousse. It turned out quite nice. This time, I decided that instead of putting my dessert in the same old boring ramekins, that I would try putting it in a champagne flute so that you could get the nice effect of eating the mousse out of a nice dessert glass. Really, I suppose that I was envious of the pretty picture in the cookbook.

Finally, after thanksgiving, I decided to try my hand at cooking a pot roast. As you can probably tell, I mostly cook desserts, but man must not live by dessert alone, so I made my first pot roast. All my life my mother has made roasts sometimes for Sunday dinner, but she has always prepared hers in the crockpot while we were at church. I decided that I wanted to cook it in the oven, in preparation for a school project I was preparing for. The recipe that I was following didn't have much instruction regarding seasonings, so I just sort of made it up as I went. But if I do say so it turned out quite tasty. I also made some roasted potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding. My Yorkshire pudding even came out of the pan perfectly--nearly unheard of! My mother always served the juice that was left after the roast cooked as that--juice. But I decided that I would try and make a more proper gravy out of it, and it was to die for, I am so glad that I did. The gravy really made the roast, and with it poured over the potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, it was absolutely delightful! It is always fun to find out that you can cook regular food too, and not just desserts.

24 September 2009

Spongecakes and Turnovers

Well allow me to say that contrary to popular belief I have been cooking this last month, but what with school and the internet at home being totally unreliable I haven't been able to post. But an exciting month it has been. I started off the school year by making "Blueberry Spongecake" though since I made it with raspberries I suppose it would be better called "Raspberry Spongecake." The spongecake turned out really well, I found a recipe online and I really liked it, and the raspberries were really nice. If I could change one thing I'd vote on the raspberries not having seeds, but somehow I don't think I can change that.

Then about two weeks ago I had a Sunday afternoon where all I did was cook. I made Lasagna, French Bread, and Peach Turnovers. Of course I wasn't thinking and so only took pictures of the turnovers. I had never made french bread before but it's not any more difficult than making any other kind of bread. Spreading the egg white on top was a little bit of a challenge, but only because I was using the back of a spoon and not a pastry brush. Some things are simple fixes. The lasagna turned out, but I had made it before so I'm not too surprised that it worked out well. The turnovers were delicious. The recipe was for apricot turnovers, but finding cheap apricot jam turned out to be harder than you'd expect so I used peach. We served them to some boys who live nearby and they seemed to think they were delicious. This recipe uses frozen puff pastry, and I am a complete fan. Puff pastry is so incredibly easy to use, and it makes for such delicious desserts, I can't wait to make something else with it.

I've also made several batches of Zucchini Brownies this week. Zucchini brownies taste pretty much exactly like zucchini bread, only chocolatey and brownies. They're absolutely delicious. The first time I made them I followed the recipe and made chocolate frosting to go on top and everything. They were good. The second time I made them I ended up with 2/3 of a cup too much grated zucchini, and about half as much cocoa powder as I needed. So I made do the best I could, and since I didn't have frosting ingredients left I just dusted them with confectioner's sugar at the end. They still turned out amazing. Whoever thought to put zucchini in baked goods was brilliant. Though I think that whoever thought that we should spell zucchini with two C's wasn't thinking too well. Courgette is much easier to spell, and just sounds cooler too.

26 July 2009

Indian Curries from Scotland

Last time I visited my local Macey's I picked up a bottle of chicken tikka masala paste. my next door neighbor had made it a month or so prior and I felt that it was delicious enough for me to give it a go. At length I finally got around to defrosting my chicken and marinating it. I found it quite amusing that on the bottle of curry paste it says to marinate the chicken for "an hour or overnight." Apparently if you marinate for some length of time between one hour and twenty-four then it won't work. I decided to defy the directions and I marinated the chicken for something like five hours. The chicken tikka masala turned out quite well. I was glad, though next time I think I'll use a little less yogurt and a little more of the paste, it wasn't quite as picante as I might have liked.As it turns out, chicken tikka masala isn't really an Indian dish at all. According to legend it was it was conceived in a Bangladeshi restaurant in Glasgow in the '60s. While that can be neither confirmed nor denied it does appear that it originated in the British Isles. Though the article that I read mentioned that it's popularity has broadened and that it is even served in restaurants in India now. Which I think is quite comendable.

No matter that origins of the delicious dish I still think that it is delicious. And I am quite proud of this delightful tikka masala paste in a jar.

11 July 2009

Croque-Monsieur and Lemon Posset

It has been quite a while since last I wrote. Never fear, I have been cooking even in my long absence. My first new adventure was to make Croque-Monsieur. Essentially it is a hot, ham and cheese sandwich, though since it utilizes Gruyere cheese it tastes immeasurably better. This recipe uses the broiler part of your oven, to toast the bread. I found though that if I left the sandwich under the broiler only long enough to toast the bread then the sandwich wasn't warm and melty. So after initially toasting the bread I turned off the broiler and just let the sandwich sit in the oven to warm, before toasting the last slice. This made the sandwich nice and warm. Which is the way that all hot, ham and cheese sandwiches should be.

The next thing I experimented with was a Japanese recipe--chicken teriyaki. The sugar mixed with the soy sauce made for a delicious glaze on chicken, and served over Jasmine rice it was quite delicious. This recipe has you simply marinate your whole chicken in the teriyaki sauce, and I think that next time I will go ahead and cut my chicken up into smaller pieces before marinating so that I get more surface area, and also so that it doesn't take as long to cook.

I completed off my day with a new dessert recipe. Lemon Posset. A posset is a 16th and 17th century drink. A sort of drink that consists mainly of curdled milk and ale. Fortunately my posset really had neither, and due to the wonderful invention of the refrigerator my posset also had a consistency more like a custard than like a drink. This lemon posset is more than merely a pudding, it has a bit of grated lemon rind in it and so that makes it have a sort of satisfying crunch. The posset definitely fulfills the requirements of being cool and creamy, but it is also quite rich so you can't have more than a few spoonfuls at a time. Which I suppose isn't really a problem.

A few days after I made all of these wonderful dishes I made pretzels for one of my meetings at work. Pretzels are both surprisingly easy to make and extremely time consuming. I most certainly under estimated the time that I would need to prepare them, but they really were quite delicious, and use just regular ingredients that I had around. The pretzels went stale surprisingly fast but I suppose that if I had eaten them faster that wouldn't have been such a problem.

It has been a busy couple of weeks cooking-wise, but I am excited that all the things I made turned out so well, hopefully the luck will hold.