Weekly Recap 1/27/08

Better late than never???

Sunday

*Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms and Mascarpone (new)
*roasted asparagus with olive, salt and pepper

Monday
*Curried Red Lentils with Caramelized Onions (new)
*Basmati Rice Pilaf (new)
*spinach and arugula salad

Tuesday
leftovers!

Wednesday
*Southwestern Cheese Soup (new)
*Salad

Thursday
leftovers again!

Friday
*Paninis on ciabatta with fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers,
pesto, spinach and arugula
*sliced pear

Saturday
pizza takeout

Hearty Sausage and Lentil Soup

Hearty indeed. This soup in flavorful, chock-full of all sorts of goodies and it's delicious. Any soup that gets my family to eat spinach without complaint gets a big old gold star in my book.

Hearty Sausage and Lentil Soup

This recipe was recommended by a member of the CLBB on the October Soup thread. It sounded like the perfect way to sneak some lentils and spinach past the wary and the skeptical - namely anybody in this family who is not me. At first glance the list of ingredients looks a bit long, but it really does go together pretty quickly, especially considering that everything you need for a complete meal is included in this soup: carrots, onion, celery, mushrooms, lentils, tomatoes, sausage. Truly a meal in one; just add some fresh fruit, some fresh bread and you're set.

This soup went over very well. Chopping the spinach was definitely key - the smaller the pieces, the smaller the objections. With so many different ingredients, this soup was a feast for the mouth (so many tastes and textures) and the eyes (lots of color). A great, hearty soup for a wintry day.

Stuffed Chicken and Roasted Cauliflower

Still getting caught up on recipes around here. I'm going to sneak this one in really quickly before I head off to bed.

We had these two dishes for dinner the other night. Both were delicious, but I served them with a whole grain rice mixture and it made for a rather bland-looking, but very tasty meal.

Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Madeira Sauce

This is another stuffed chicken breast recipe from Cooking Light. This recipes calls for creminie or button mushrooms, but I chose to use shiitake - hands down they are my favorite mushroom. I accidentally purchased far more than I needed for stuffing the chicken breasts, so I used put them in the sauce which I doubled since we are usually of the opinion that you can never have too much sauce.

This dish was very good, but I'm a little frustrated with the process. Technically, stuffed chicken breasts are really pretty easy, but I'm struggling a bit with the stuffing process; I often end up slicing through in the wrong spot, and even without the holes, the stuffing tends to ooze and leak out the sides during the cooking process. I noticed the other day that the stuffed chicken breasts that Wegmans sells are slit at the top, stuffed, and then baked - this would help eliminate a lot of the oozing problems and is something I will consider doing the next time.

Roasted Cauliflower

We've tried roasted cauliflower before with Indian spices, but I wanted to try a pure and simple version. There's not a whole lot to say about the cauliflower recipe - cauliflower, olive oil, salt and pepper - except that my son turned up his nose, took a bite, and then proceeded to beg some off of my plate. Now honestly I really didn't want to share because I was really enjoying it myself, but when your child asks for more vegetables, you DO NOT refuse him/her! Next time, I'll roast 2 heads - one just wasn't enough. I love simplicity!

Time for bed................

Mmmm....Mascarpone.

Mascrapone. That's how I keep typing this! Doesn't sound so appetizing, does it? MasCARpone, MasCARpone, MasCARpone.........I think I've got it now.

Anyway, this was a new food item for us this past week. I've heard of mascarpone (masCARpone, masCARpone) and have heard some say you can sub cream cheese in its place, but I am very glad that we were able to try the real thing. While its texture is similar to cream cheese, macarpone has a very rich, buttery flavor and feel - much more decadent than cream cheese.

Fettucine with Macarpone and Sage-Walnut Brown Butter

The first dish we tried was a recipe from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. It is a simple pasta dish with mascarpone, walnuts, sage and browned butter. Oh my goodness is this good. The recipe calls for tossing the pasta with the browned butter, sage and walnuts and then topping it off with a dollop of the macarpone/Parmesan mixture. Biting into larger amounts of marcarpone didn't appeal to me; I wanted it to be distributed evenly throughout, so I just mixed it in with everything else. This worked quite well and I was satisfied with my alteration. One note: As terrific as this was the first day, it did not reheat well the next day; it just didn't have much flavor. That's a shame - I love leftover pasta!

Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms and Macarpone

I was all set to make this pasta dish again to use up the leftover mascarpone - until I came across a this recipe from Cooking Light: Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms and Mascarpone. This sounded like a marriage made in heaven and it was. Delicious! And simple too. The beef broth and reserved liquid from the dried porcini mushrooms make a lovely, flavorful broth for stirring into the risotto. I had one moment of panic after starting the prep for this recipe - I only had a 1/2 cup of arborio rice left! Rather than abandoning efforts to make this recipe, I simply made up the difference with barley and it worked beautifully. Whew! If you would like to make this more nutritious by using all barley, I think it would turn out very well.

My only other change - in my efforts to use up the rest of the mascarpone, I went over the 1/4 cup called for in this recipe - it ended up somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 a cup. The only bad thing about this recipe? No leftovers (we served it as the main dish). One last note - this risotto dish stayed nice and fluid as we were eating it - it didn't get gummy as risottos often do as they cool down.

So, we tried a new food this week and ended up with 2 excellent recipes. The Jack Bishop dish is quite rich and will have to be a once in a while recipe, but I noticed that Cooking Light had another risotto recipe with macarpone and leeks.........going to have to give that one a try too!

Weekly Recap 1/20/08

Sunday
Mushroom-Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Madeira Sauce (new)
Roasted Cauliflower (new)
whole grain rice
Marcy's Legendary Chocolate Chip Cookies (new)

Monday
Fettucine with Mascarpone and Sage-Walnut Brown Butter (new)
mixed veggie salad

Tuesday
from the freezer: Creamy Tomato Soup
(this soup reheated very nicely)
grilled cheese on whole wheat
sliced pear

Wednesday
Mexican Polenta Stuffed Peppers with Black Bean Salsa (new)

Thursday
Sandwiches from Wegmans

Friday
Taco Salad
(Romaine lettuce, shredded cheddar cheese, tomatoes, black beans, avocado
crushed tortilla chips, 95% lean hamburger with taco seasoning and Cool Chipotle-Lime Dressing)

Saturday
Quesdillas made from taco salad leftovers
sliced apple

Featured Recipe:

Creamy Tomato Soup

Salmon recipe from Rachael Ray

One of these days I need to have a marathon blogging session to try to catch up on all the recipes we're making, but one quick post will have to do for tonight....

We tried this recipe a couple of weeks ago - it's from the 365: No Repeats cookbook. It's a very colorful dish and pretty easy to throw together. Although Rachael's recipes usually take me longer than the supposed 30 minutes, they do tend to be complete meals, evening things out in the end.

Lime and Honey Glazed Salmon with Warm Black Bean and Corn Salad

This salmon recipe was good, but not spectacular. The flavors on the salmon itself - lime, honey and chili powder - didn't do much for me, but then I tend to like very strong flavors on salmon. It wasn't bad by any means, it just didn't stand out. I did, however, very much enjoy the black bean salad. I'm not sure the spinach really belongs, but it melded nicely, added color and nutrition - all pluses in my book. And it certainly was healthful and summery - as much as I love wintry comfort food, it's nice to have a bit of summer in January.

Like I said, short and sweet. That's the only way I'm going to get it all done!

Yet another Chocolate Chip Cookie.....

I've said it before, but really, you can't ever try too many chocolate chip cookie recipes. This one caught my attention because the person who posted it on the CLBB said the cookies didn't spread as much as Toll House cookies do. I love Toll House, but they do indeed have a tendency to spread a bit too much at times.

Marcy's Legendary Chocolate Chip Cookies

As promised, and as you can see, they did not spread out thin as many buttery cookies can do but I could tell when I pulled them out of the oven and transferred them to the cooling rack that they were going to be a bit cakey. They are a bit chewy around the edges, but the middles are soft and cake-like; I tend to prefer a very chewy cookie, more like Toll House.

Other reviewers claimed this recipe did not turn out cakey for them, however, and at least one poster speculated that perhaps my leaving out the chopped chocolate was to blame. The recipe called for 2 cups of chocolate chips and 1 1/2 cups of chopped chocolate - I tend to like more cookie than chocolate, so I stuck with just the two cups of chocolate chips. So, it's possible that the adding more chocolate, especially smaller pieces that would have melted into the dough - might have lead to a chewier end product. I also used an off-brand of salted butter (all that could be found in a rush trip to the local convenience store), so that may also have been to blame.

In any case, these were very good cookies -buttery and delicious-tasting - and I certainly didn't have any problem eating 4 of them yesterday, cake-like or not.

Weekly Recap 1/13/08

This week in our kitchen:

Sunday
Work gave us a free turkey for Christmas, so we had a little mini-Thanksgiving...
*Turkey
*mashed potatoes
*stuffing
*green beans with roasted shallots and balsamic

Monday
*Hamburgers, bun, cheese
*sweet potatoes with olive oil, garlic and chipotle
*sliced pear

Tuesday
Leftovers!

Wednesday
*Very Creamy Vegetable Chowder
*whole grain sourdough bread

Thursday
*Baked Ravioli
(Wegmans ravioli baked in homemade marinara with fresh spinach, topped with
romano cheese)
*cucumber and tomato salad

Friday
*Turkey Jambalaya (see below)
*sliced apple

Saturday
*Hearty Sausage and Lentil Soup (new)
*roasted garlic bread from Wegmans



Featured Recipe: Turkey Jambalaya

This one is a family favorite. It's easy to throw together and is a great way to use up leftover turkey (which we had from our meal on Sunday). It may not be a totally authentic or traditional jambalaya - for one, it's missing the celery that's part of the holy trinity of Cajun cooking - but it's darned tasty for relatively little effort.

Skillet Pasta

This recipe is another skillet dish from The Best 30-Minute Recipe from Cook's Illustrated. I really love that they concentrate no only on dishes that are easy to prepare, but also on meals that are easy to clean up. Who cares if it only takes you 30 minutes to prepare if it takes you another 30 minutes to clean up? Main dishes that are prepared entirely in one dish certainly help to keep the overall time spent in the kitchen way down.

This dish is creamy and cheesy and delicious, but obviously rather high in fat and calories compared to what we normally cook here. Still, you can enjoy a dish like this as part of a healthful lifestyle if you keep the portion sizes down and pair it with a low-fat side dish like a nice tossed salad. This recipe claims 4 servings, but it made closer to 6 smallish servings for us - and a small serving is all you need as it is quite rich.

Skillet Pasta Quattro Formaggi

The major change I made to this recipe was to cut back the water by 3/4 cup. It was actually an accident - I discovered the mistake in time to correct it, but I decided that it looked like there was plenty of liquid already. Sure enough, there ended up being plenty of sauce - any more liquid and I think it would have been too runny. The blend of cheeses is quite nice - the Gorgonzola adds a nice sharpness and tang without overpowering the other cheeses.

This isn't something I would make all the time, but a rich, cheesy dish like this sure hits the spot once in a while.

Weekly Recap 1/6/08

This is what went on in my kitchen last week:

Sunday
*Polenta with Sausage Ragu
(made up on the fly - based on this recipe)
*tomato-cucumber salad

Monday
Our traditional New Year's Eve Appetizer Night!
*Sausage Stuffed French Bread (new)
*Pancette Crisps with Goat Cheese and Pear (new)
*Sea Scallops with Minted Pea Puree on Potato Chips (new)
*Crispy Cheese Rounds (t&t)
*Mushroom Crescents (t&t)

Tuesday
*Red Lentil and Basmati Rice Croquettes with Romaine-Mango Salad and Cucumber Raita (new)
*salad

Wednesday
Leftovers - time to clean out that fridge!

Thursday
*Wegmans cheese pierogies
*Wegmans tomato soup
*sliced pear

Friday
*Skillet Pasta Quattro Formaggi (new)
*salad

Saturday
*Lime-and-Honey-Glazed Salmon with Warm Black Bean and Corn Salad (new)
*jasmine rice

Simplicity Deconstructed

Okay, Erika, here they are! ;-) Finally......

This recipe is actually from the Spring part of A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, but what the heck - why not bring a little spring in? This recipe consists of 3 parts, the croquettes, the raita and the salad. As a whole, the recipe looks a little complicated, but each part is actually very simple and comes together quite quickly. It just takes a little planning since the lentil-rice mixture needs to be chill for 2 hours before hitting the pan.

The lentil-rice croquettes are seasoned with ginger and curry, but any combination of Indian-inspired spices would work well here. The croquettes were very good, but I thought they could use just a little more flavor and a little bit of heat (especially as a contrast to the cool raita). The raita is a simple combination of cucumber, garlic and yogurt.

Red Lentil and Basmati Rice Croquettes with Romaine-Mango Salad and Cucumber Raita

What really surprised me though, was the romaine-mango salad. It's simple combination of lettuce, mango, lime juice, EVOO and salt. I could have eaten an entire bowl of this salad alone - there was just something about the fresh, simple flavors that really won me over and reminded me that sometimes less is more.

The only thing that I did not like about this dish is how it's constructed. You pile the salad, croquettes and raita on a pita - it looks pretty, but then what? It's difficult to eat - trying to cut through the toasted pita with a fork and knife while also trying not to turn everything into a big pile of mush. I would serve the toasted pita on the side next time - brush it with a little olive oil and season it a bit - it just didn't work as a base for me. Or - stuff it all inside the pita as one would do with falafel - that might work as well.

I feel indebted to this recipe for showing me you don't have to be afraid to simply let the flavor of fresh ingredients stand on their own and hopefully I will be able to incorporate this principle into my cooking more and more.

Good old Meat and Potatoes!

Since my family has been so tolerant of my recent run on vegetarian recipes, I decided to "reward" them with a good old comfort food meal of meat and potatoes.

I read good reviews of a pot roast recipe on the CLBB, so I gave it a try. I used my Le Creuset Dutch oven - it's not oval, but the chuck roast (2.5-3 pounds) fit in it just fine. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, but I used little white creamer potatoes instead of Yukon gold.

Classic Beef Pot Roast

Once everything was finished cooking I had DH shred the meat while I dealt with the potatoes. Instead of eating the potatoes as is, I decided to mash them - along with a bit of light sour cream, a bit of cream cheese and a bit of butter. This was a great way to make mashed potatoes - cooking the potatoes right along with the roast allowed them to soak up a little more flavor and saved an extra cooking pot to wash later. They were delicious.

Overall, the recipe was very good, but I think we might prefer the Merlot Pot Roast. However, I'm glad we tried this recipe - I definitely will cook the potatoes like this again.

A few good recipes that got lost along the way....

There were a few recipes we tried and really liked that I never got around to getting a photo of, but I want to share them just the same. All of these recipes made our top 20 favorite new recipes of 2007.

The first recipe, Smokey Mushroom Ragout from Cooking Light, is a vegetarian dish with a layer of polenta that is topped with a tomato, mushroom and chipotle mixture and finished with a sprinkling of queso fresco. The polenta is baked in a 9x13-inch dish in the oven which takes more time than the more traditional stovetop method, but it does free you up to tackle the mushroom layer. I really enjoyed the flavor combinations in this dish. I used a combination of cremini and shiitake mushrooms which worked just fine in place of the harder-to-find oyster mushrooms. If at all possible, do not skip the queso fresco on top; this cheese was the perfect flavor complement to the spicy mushroom mixture - not too strong, not too salty, not too mild - just right.

A while back, I tried a stuffed chicken breast recipe from Cooking Light and was very pleased to discover just how easy they are to prepare - they always look and sound fancy or complicated. Encouraged, I have been meaning to try more recipes and finally tried Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Garlic and Goat Cheese. We had plain goat cheese on hand (I buy large logs and vacuum pack them), so instead of spending money on herbed goat cheese, I simply mashed our plain goat cheese with some dried Italian Herb seasoning. The only hard part about this recipe is remembering to start far enough in advance since the garlic needs to roast for an hour. I also love the flexibility of stuffed chicken breasts - it's very easy to accommodate my son who dislikes goat cheese - he can have provolone or mozzarella instead.

Over the holidays, we tried two new salads. For Thanksgiving, I was in charge of bringing the salad. I wanted to try something new and stumbled on one over at Epicurious - Mixed Green Salad with Oranges, Dried Cranberries and Pecans - that sounded perfect for a Thanksgiving meal. Not only did oranges, cranberries and pecans pair well with the rest of the meal, it was a nice, light complement to all of the other carb-heavy foods. The salad really couldn't be simpler - just a few ingredients and very little prep work, but lots of fresh flavors. This one will definitely stay on our repeater list. Note: I did not boil the dried cranberries - I agreed with the other reviewers who said they thought the dried cranberries would add more texture as is, rather than softened.

Right after Thanksgiving, we prepared dinner for family visiting from out of town and tried another Epicurious salad - Almond-Crusted Goat Cheese Salad with Raspberry Dressing. Another Epicurious salad, another winner. The goat cheese was luscious - warm and creamy with a pleasing crunch from the almonds. The raspberry dressing was a huge hit, especially with my youngest - he was dragging out the bag of mixed greens for several days afterward, just so he could have more dressing. The goat cheese rounds are a bit time-consuming and messy to assemble, but they can be done ahead of time and kept in the fridge until you are ready to bake them. Note: I added much less olive oil then the recipe indicates - I just added oil until I thought the dressing was thin enough.

I hate posts with no pictures, but these recipes were just too good not to share.

2 More Vegetarian Recipes....

Here are two more from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.....

My DH and kids have been liking these new recipes pretty well, but as they finish, they often say, "This would be really good with sausage." Ah well, at least they are adventurous and pretty willing to try it all. And they do like it, they just like a nice meat and potato dish better - but then again, sometimes, so do I!

Seared Tempeh Wraps with Thai-Style Peanut Sauce

These two dishes revolve around tempeh. The first is a wrap - the tempeh is marinated in a peanut sauce and then seared (though I cook it longer to get the bitter taste out) and is then paired with a simple salad tossed in the leftover peanut sauce. We liked it, but the peanut sauce is a bit gummy - I think it could use a tablespoon or two of oil to help make it more fluid. Jack Bishop doesn't tend to shy away from using oil in this cookbook, so I'm not sure why he didn't put a little in this sauce, I really think it would help. Of course I could always just use Cooking Light's Finger Lickin' Peanut Sauce instead - it's delicious. These wraps also made nice leftovers for bringing to work.

Curried Tempeh with Brown Rice and Peas

Next, it was a tempeh curry dish. I really liked the method of cooking the tempeh in this recipe. You boil the tempeh in a mixture of water, tamari and Indian spices. You could use any spices you like best here - again, a very adaptable recipe. The tempeh is then fried in a little canola oil for added flavor and even better texture. The tempeh is added to a mixture of rice, onions and peas. Nothing earth-shattering as far as flavors go in this recipe, just a nice mix of Indian spices and a method of cooking tempeh that really appeals to me - boiling it in the flavorful mixture really imparted great taste to the tempeh with little effort. And you could easily skip the frying and just add the tempeh as is if you are looking to reduce our fat intake - it would still be plenty flavorful enough.

Later this week, I will share a recipe we tried last night from this cookbook that was out of this world - Red Lentil and Basmati Rice Croquettes with Romaine-Mango Salad and Cucumber Raita........yum!

Vegetarian Recipes to Share....

DH decided that it was high time that our local library got their copy of A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen back, so he bought me my very own copy. As we joked, this purchase is something that he'll enjoy as much as I do because he gets to eat the results.

The biggest wow to come out of this cookbook so far for me, was the Creamy Tomato Soup (which really has no cream at all). All of the other recipes have been very good, but that one was truly stellar. Although I will say that the photography will not reflect the yummy tastes in some of these photos. I miss the summer when there is plenty of natural light - that and some foods, like tempeh, just don't tend to photograph all that well. But anyway......

It's been fun having lots of time to blog - even if I didn't get much of anything else done - but tomorrow it's back to work, so I'm going to knock off a couple recipes at a time here. The first two I'll share are Mexican-flavor inspired dishes.

The first recipe - Black Bean Chilaquiles - is one of those dishes where the photo doesn't translate so well. Chilaquiles are a Mexican dish where corn tortilla chips are simmered in a spicy sauce (chile, bean, etc.) and then topped with cheese. The resulting dish is flavorful and yummy, but it's sort of a mish-mosh and therefore not very easy to photograph.

Black Bean Chilaquiles
(It's hard to see through all of the cheese, sour cream and avocado,
but the black beans and tortillas are under there somewhere!)

In this version, you make your own corn tortilla chips by cutting corn tortillas into triangles, coating them with oil and baking them in the oven. As the tortillas bake, you start on the black bean sauce, adding the crisp tortillas in at the end to form a thick mixture. The black bean and tortilla mixure is topped with queso fresco, a sour cream-lime sauce and diced avocado.

We liked this dish quite well and it certainly has a lot of room for tinkering - you could use different sauces, veggies or meats and have a slightly different version every time. I kept everything in the skillet instead of transferring it to a platter (no need to dirty another dish when it's just us) and one other thing I'd do differently is to stick the skillet under the broiler briefly to melt the cheese before adding the sour cream and avocados.

Garlicky Mushroom Quesadillas with Tomatillo-Chile Salsa

Continuing on the Mexican theme, we also tried a recipe for mushroom quesadillas. These quesadillas pair garlicky cremini mushrooms with Monterey Jack cheese inside flour tortillas that are topped off with a tomatillo-chile salsa. A very simple dish that goes together quite quickly and reminds you that you don't need to get very fussy to produce yummy food.

Tune in tomorrow for tempeh...........