Not Just Another Squash Casserole

I went looking for a fast, easy, different take on squash for tonite's dinner. I found what felt like a million recipes on the same Ritz cracker casserole (you know, cooked in mushroom soup). Which is why i totally HATE casseroles, that and they take like 1.5 hours to cook.

i came across this recipe and it sounded somewhat interesting,
Cream Cheese Basil Summer Squash

so i changed it up a bit and here's what i came up with.

Not Just Another Squash Casserole
3 yellow squash, diced
4 oz crumbled goat cheese
3T pine nuts
Fresh oregano
Frsh parsley
Fresh basil, twice as much basil as the other herbs
Salt
Pepper

Steam squash (in corningware,covered in about 2Tbs of water micro for 3 minutes) and drain. Toast pine nuts over med high heat. Chop fresh herbs. Mix all together until creamy. S/P to taste. Enjoy!



I served it with Apricot Glazed Turkey Tenderloins and good ol' Stove Top Stuffing. I really liked the squash, but my hubby didn't. But he's really not a squash kind of guy anyway, anyday, anyhow. ;)

David Eyre’s Pancake

So there's this old pancake recipe that has been going around for the past couple months, it's vintage, yay! lol. As soon as i came across it, right before Easter, i was dying to make it. We got the chance to make it on Sunday. And boy it was BEAUTIFUL, but the monga that reprinted the oringinal 1966 recipe, reprinted the original ERROR in the recipe too. Man, what a disappointment.

1966: David Eyre’s Pancake

NOTE: DO NOT USE 4TBS OF BUTTER, THIS IS WRONG. The correct amount of butter to use is 2TBS or less.


Here's what it looked like as soon as it came out of the oven. We were shocked at the pool of butter but i was hoping that the extra 5 minutes in the oven would miraculously make that pool disappear. After dusting with powdered sugar and the juice of half a lemon, it went back into the oven and we had hoped it would come out tasting as good as it looked.

Sadly, the pool of butter was still there and all that extra butter made the inside of the pancake inedible. But we did eat the outside and it was very good. Shame on Amanda Hesser w/ the NY Times mag for reprinting the error, but kudos for finding a good recipe.

I will make this recipe again, using the correct amount of butter. It sure was impressive to look at and with the correct measurments, it should be impressive to our tastebuds as well. ;)

No Ricotta, no problem!

i got a HUGE herb garden from my mother in law on Sunday, so i was all inspired to use some of my fresh herbs and decided to make lasagna.

After a quick inventory of my fridge, i realized i didn't have any ricotta or cottage cheese. So i called my mom. the question of the day was: 'if i make a lasagna without goopy cheese will it fall apart?' my mom said it won't work, so just make it all in a pan on the stove. Um, not the answer i wanted to hear so i just kept looking for a ricotta-less lasagna recipe and came up with nothing. Damn.

Dinner time was fast approaching and i decided whatev, i'm just going to do it. and i did, and it came out fabulous! :) i used no boil lasagna noodles and used the baking times from the back of the box as a guideline, outside of that, it was my own recipe.

No Ricotta, No Problem Lasagna
Serves 6 hungry people, or 8 'i could eat' people

1tsp of olive oil
1/2 yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic
1.3 lbs lean ground beef
1 jar prepared tomato sauce (i used a mushroom, olive tomato sauce)
1/2 package of no boil lasagna noodles
12-14 fresh basil leaves
shredded mozzarella cheese
Parmesan/ Romano cheese
parsley, basil and oregano

Preheat Oven to 375.

In a pot saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil, when translucent add the ground beef. When the ground beef is brown, add a jar of tomato sauce. Simmer for a few minutes.

Now time to start layering. Add some sauce to the bottom of the baking dish. Put a layer of lasagna noodles down, then put the meat sauce, then the cheese (i didn't put amounts of cheese down, cause everyone likes their cheesiness in different degrees). Add another layer as written. Then on top of the cheese add a layer of fresh basil leaves. Continue to layer until you run out of meat sauce. Finishing with more cheese.

Cover with aluminium foil and pop into preheated oven for 55 minutes. Remove the foil and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving. Prior to serving, chop up herbs and sprinkle over the lasagna. Enjoy!

What happened to the roasted pepper?!

Duh! Ok, so i mentioned earlier that i was cooking up a storm on Sunday. I defrosted a couple of pork chops and went on a mission to find something good. I came across a good recipe at FoodNetwork.

Spanish Style Pork Chops with Chorizo and Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

But as i clicked, i noticed it was a Rachael Ray recipe (shudder), ok, i'm just going to say it, Rachael Ray annoys me. There i said it. And the very few other recipes i've made from her have been disastrous. But we love chorizo in this house, so what the hell, i decided to give it a shot.

I cooked the pork chops as written and they came out super SUPER dry. Damnit. The sauce was ok, but how can a Spanish stlye anything not have cumin in it? This recipe definitely needed that flavor.

Now onto the STELLAR part of the meal...the cheesy rice. as i was cooking it, i was like hmmm, homemade rice o roni, neat-o. When i told my hubby i was making cheesy rice, he said cool, when i told him, i was making it homemade, he say okay?! somewhat reluctantly. Well the only change i made was i used gruyere cheese instead of manchego, cause it's what i had in the fridge. This rice is super good. My hubby LOVED it.

Good job on the rice, ray ray... :P

Sometimes it's not how you cook it, but how you serve it

ok, so i've made variations of this recipe a couple of times. The first time i made it as written (cept without the green pepper), the potatos came out crunchy but the chicken came out perfect. The second time i made it, i left out the potatos and the chicken came out dry with a ton of sauce. boo. On Tuesday nite, i decided to throw caution to the wind and try again.
Pineapple Chicken Delight

Well as i was reading the new reviews, someone had suggested shredding it. hmmm... shredded chicken?! i've never tried it that way, but i'll give it a shot.

um, HELLO! The recipe SHOULD have called it to be shredded, cause it came out delicious!

I served with over mashed fingerling potatos and honey glazed carrots. This recipe is definitely a keeper! :)

Plumpy

While looking in my spice cabinet on Sunday, i saw a can of rolled oats and the Quaker dude staring at me and decided to make oatmeal cookies.

After looking over a TON of cookie recipes on allrecipes, i decided to give Bobbie's Oatmeal Cookies a try. Well I'm glad i only made half the cookie mix her way. They were blah. The only substitution i made was i used golden raisins instead of regular raisins and and butterscotch chips instead of chocolate chips. And when they came out of the oven in 10 minutes, they looked blah too. Check it out:

I was cooking up a storm on Sunday so the rest of the cookie mix went into the fridge. A couple days later, i pulled out the mix and started messing with it. I added an additional 1tsp of vanilla extract and a couple shakes of ground cinnamon and a handful of white chocolate chips and flattened the heaping spoonfuls of mix before baking, and what do you know, the recipe went from bland to grand!

A great tip i picked up from reading a ton of reviews was to soak the raisins, i did it and they came out AWESOME. I will never make anything with raisins without first soaking them. All you need to do is pour hot water over the raisins and let it cool. The raisins come out all plumpy...um, is plumpy even a word? Perhaps not, but i'm telling you plumpy raisins is where it's at. ;)

Broccoli's taller, thinner, sweeter cousin

Broccolini is actually a naturally-occurring cross between broccoli and Chinese kale. And i get really excited when i see it at Publix. i've only had broccolini a handful of times, but it is memorable. like broccoli, only sweeter. :)

i went looking for a recipe at allrecipes and came up empty-handed. I headed over to the ametuergourmet and he didn't have anything on it either. GASP! what?! after a little googling, i found this recipe and decided to give it a try.

Garlicky Broccolini

i felt a connection to this recipe cause '...extra-virgin olive oil, 2 turns of the pan' i knew what that meant, and i couldn't wait to get my swirl on! ;)

well, i had read on a previous website that broccolini can go from fab to soggy crap if left too long to simmer, so as soon as it turned bright green, i pulled the pan off the heat. i think it was a little too soon.



though the garlic flavor was great, I think that 2 turns of the pan was just a touch too much evoo, and next time i'll only swirl once. ;)

3 baby eggplants sliced = ALOT of eggplant

i do enjoy cooking, but grocery shopping, eh not so much. BUT the other day, i found myself on the other side of town in the best publix EVER, the one by dadeland. man, if that is your normal publix, i envy you, now THAT'S a produce section.

i was inspired by the cutest 3 pack of little eggplants i picked up there.

i woke up yesterday wanting eggplant parm, but i'm not big on frying, so i went on a mission to find a baked eggplant parm recipe. and what do you know? i found one...

Eggplant Parmesan II



ok, so i have to preface that this was a super involved, time consuming recipe, but hey i only needed to check the oven, not worry about splattering oil all over the place so i was a happy camper.

so after reading scores of reviews, i saw that i had to bake them at 425 for 10 min per side, but after i did that, the eggplant was nice and crispy but still wasn't fork tender, so i put them back in the oven for another 5 min and they came out good.

the assembly was fun, the only other change i made was instead of mozzarella, i used an aged provolone blend that had mozz in it and added some shredded Parmesan/Romano blend. when i popped this sucker into the oven for the last 35 minutes, the most delicious smell filled my home.

i never judge on smell alone, so i scrambled to make a side dish, i grabbed a 1/4 filled box of angel hair pasta and another 1/4 filled box of what i thought was more angel hair pasta (cause well, that's how i roll :P), but when i threw it into the pot it looked different. CRAP! i threw in half angel hair (cooking time 4 minutes) and half spaghetti (cooking time 11 min), ay ya yi! i threw some olive oil and some crushed garlic in a pan and heated on low while i tried to figure out how i was going to save the pasta.

save the pasta, save the dinner...

i really hoped my nose was predicting a really good dinner and decided to cook the pasta for 7 minutes, a little fuzzy math and a lot of trying to fish out one strand of spaghetti got me to this number. it worked...phew. tossed the oil/garlic in with the pasta and topped with the parm/romano and some 'fresh' basil.

served it up and viola!


served it to my hubby and as he inhaled it, i asked him, do you like it or did you just not eat lunch? lol. he said it's really good, cept the bigger slices have chewy skins is it supposed to be like that? um, yeah babe, it is. do you want more?! :P

so all in all a good dinner, a slight mishap on the pasta-front and on the chewy skins, but all is well.

next time i may sweat the eggplant or just cut more uniform slices, but it's definitely a keeper. ;)

***UPDATE***
ok, so this was so much better the next day. it's like the ingredients got to know each other better overnight -they had a few laughs and came out of the fridge much better the next day! :)

Off With His Head!

So Easter has come and gone and what's left? A chocolate bunny. hmmm... what should i do with this thing, i wonder. i can bite off it's head, but for some reason that weirds me out. what to do what to do...




So i made hot chocolate last nite, you know the one from the envelope with the miss from the neutral place?! When i walked into the office, i offered my hubby a sip. He's like i'd love a hot chocolate, i said too bad that's the last hot chocolate in the house. I tasted it, and thought, well that tastes like crap, actually more like dust, but you know, whatev. I handed it over and told him to enjoy it. Then a light bulb goes off in my head. DING! Oh Mr Easter bunny...

After scouring allrecipes.com for a decent hot chocolate recipe and turning up empty handed (ok, so there's a lot of recipes, but none of them were as easy as, warm up water in the micro, dump envelope, stir, enjoy), i found myself at the amateur gourmet searching for hot chocolate. If you've never been to this guy's site, make sure you go, it's well written, clever, funny, informative and well, inspired me to start up my own food blog! :)

And what do you know, he did make a fabulous hot chocolate durning the NYC blizzard of 2006 and you know what it IS as easy as heat, stir and enjoy! Here's where i found it:
http://www.amateurgourmet.com/the_amateur_gourmet/2006/02/how_i_survived_.html

So here's the lowdown. It will now forever be known to me as the best f*ckin hot chocolate EVER!

the best f*ckin hot chocolate
serves 1

1 cup milk
2 oz chocolate (i lobbed off the head of my dark chocolate easter bunny) roughly chopped

in a small saucepan, warm the milk over med/ high heat. add chocolate, stir till melted. bring to a boil, remove from heat and whisk the sh!t out of it. put it back on the stove, reboil, remove, rewhisk. pour and enjoy.

It was amazing! While i was waiting for it to cool (i still burned the sh!t out of my tounge), it got slightly thick, not too thick, but slightly and it was AWESOME!

And since it's uber-boring to read blogs with just text, i'll have to make it again to snap picts. darn. ;)