nachos: presentation (and fresh cilantro) is everything

Between my being sick and then getting literally snowed in over the weekend, we've been pretty lazy on the food-front. Somehow the combination of these factors has led us to only eating (because the craving has been insatiable) variations of cheese melted on something. But my boyfriend did a brilliant job of making a lazy excuse for dinner look gorgeous.

Nachos with chicken, cheddar cheese, tomato, red onion, jicama and cilantro

Served with sour cream and salsa verde

bite-size omelettes

To celebrate the return of my appetite, my boyfriend really outdid himself in terms of creativity: he cooked bite-size omelettes inside rings of onion. Where does he get these ideas?!?

Bite-size omelettes: garlic, olive and cheddar cheese omelette surrounded by an onion ring and topped with ricotta cheese

Served with a sweet potato, pork sausage and blue cheese casserole

i'm siiiiiiiick

I don't know what is going on, but ever since my boyfriend and I moved in together I have been getting way more colds than usual. My boyfriend sometimes shows signs of less-than-100% around the same time, but he'll maybe blow his nose a couple of times a day for a few days, whereas I end up with burny-tired eyes, completely congested, unable to breathe, just barely functioning, and on the verge of developing an addiction to tylenol. But this is probably a good thing, since every time I've been sick he has always been well enough to make me soup....awwwww....

Creamy cauliflower soup: cauliflower, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, beef bouillon, dill, a touch of cream, garnished with a dallop of sour cream and more dill

oddly colourless pasta sauce & camera mishap

It is an unfortunate coincidence when the day I accidentally have the exposure on my camera set to "over-expose" is the same day our pasta sauce is mysteriously colourless. So I did the best I could with photoshop, but it's still probably best if I keep this picture small. (Of course I couldn't just not post, this is for posterity, people!)

Spaghetti

Home-made creamy tomato sauce - red and yellow tomatoes, ricotta, pork sausage, garlic and green olives

close-up on tomatoes

Sometimes it happens: our meal is incredibly tasty, but not photogenic. Let me assure you this all tasted wonderful!

Pork chops baked with garlic, red onions, thyme, olive oil, white wine and chicken stock

Scalloped potato gratin with cheddar cheese and thyme (needless to say this cheesy goodness stole the show)

Tomato salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar

To compensate for the lackluster photo of dinner, allow me to present...TOMATOES!

The tomato salad made it on the plate tonight because I was oddly craving tomatoes (or maybe this isn't odd, since I spent all day Saturday taking pictures of them!) and insisted that we find a way to work them into our meal. Again here's a chance for my mom to laugh, since I refused to eat tomatoes - or lettuce that had been tainted by tomato-juice - until a little over a two years ago. What was I thinking?!?!

burger with mexican-inspired condiments

Yesterday while grocery shopping we randomly decided that this would be the week we try jicama. I would describe jicama as being light in flavor with a really nice crunch; my boyfriend would describe it as "a clear watery carrot with a note of apple".

Consulting our food reference books, On Food and Cooking informed us that jicama's "main virtue is its sturdy crispness", and The Flavor Bible explicitly listed Mexican cuisine as a flavor profile that jicama pairs well with. Combined with some of the specific ingredients listed there (avocado, radishes and cilantro), a vision for tonight's dinner began to come together. The final piece of the puzzle was deciding that, since we keep getting burger patties from our CSA, we need to be more adventurous and creative with burger toppings.

The final product was hamburgers with Mexican-inspired condiments. My boyfriend made the guacamole, and I created a jicama & radish slaw.

Hamburger patties

Guacamole

Jicama & Radish slaw - jicama, radish, sour cream, lemon juice, cilantro and salsa verde

Parsnip "fries" (aka roasted parsnips with horseradish-herb butter)

default pasta

A wonderful post on Sippity Sup about the rules for "default pasta" really made me think that my boyfriend and I need to be more creative when we make pasta. Up until now we have usually stuck with either tomato sauce or pesto. Unfortunately, the pasta in this post looked so good, that instead of taking the rules for default pasta and applying them ourselves, we ended up making the exact same dish! But don't worry, my boyfriend still found a way to exercise creativity by fashioning a pasta drying rack out of a paper towel roll, some random pottery (why did we even have that in our house?!?!) and chopsticks (see picture to the left).

Despite our best efforts to copy Sippity Sup exactly, we encountered huge issues with our pasta machine when trying to make spaghetti noodles. We aren't really sure what the problem was, since, after getting extremely frustrated and toying with the idea of just using dried pasta, we discovered that we could cut fettuccine noodles just fine. Anyone else have trouble making their own spaghetti noodles? Do we need to do something different with the pasta dough? Is there a secret we don't know about?

We also decided that while vegetarian pasta is just fine, why not sautee some diced salami with the bread crumbs? This was not a mistake!!!

Overall this was a truly delicious pasta dish, and I'm so glad we got around to trying it. Seriously, bread crumbs on pasta? Genius! Thanks Greg, and I promise we'll try to come up with our own default pasta next time...

Fettuccine with ricotta, radicchio, garlic, panko breadcrumbs, salami, parsley, red pepper flakes, olive oil and Parmesan cheese

every weekend should smell of baking bread

This was our second attempt at making bread. We followed the same recipe as last time, but used active dry yeast (instead of instant), and used twice as much (1/2 tsp vs. 1/4 tsp). This seemed to make a huge difference, and our bread was nice and airy all the way through. However, because of the pan we were using our bread expanded more outwards than upwards, so we are thinking that we will try a loaf pan (vs. pie pan) next time. But in general it is pretty awesome to wake up Saturday morning and bake fresh bread for breakfast!

Two over-easy eggs on home-made bread straight out of the oven with sauteed yellow tomatoes, crispy bacon and green onions

surf & turf

Tonight's cooking method involved repeatedly using the same pan so that none of the flavorful goodness was lost.

First, chuck steak was coated with a dry rub of salt, pepper, brown sugar and chili powder, then pan-fried

Next, shrimp were sauteed in the same pan

Finally the pan was deglazed. That is, tomato sauce and red wine were added to the pan to create a sauce with any dry-rub residue.

All this deliciousness was then served on mashed potatoes with radishes and blue cheese and garnished with green onion

keeping it simple

Stracciatella (aka Italian egg-drop soup)

Salmon poached in chicken stock

Jasmine rice with nori

White wine butter sauce

Green onions

best chicken ever

I can't stress it enough: get chicken from a local farm, and you really will taste the difference. These chicken breasts (carved from the whole chicken by my boyfriend) were incredibly moist, juicy and flavorful. Neither of us could stop commenting on how good they were. Of course it didn't hurt that they were cooked perfectly, too.

Chicken breasts coated with panko breadcrumbs and fried, served with carrots boiled in chicken stock with pepper and thyme, creamy leeks and sauteed spinach puree

E-Z bread

I've seen so many food bloggers post beautiful home-made breads, that I felt it was really about time my boyfriend and I jumped on the bandwagon and gave it a try ourselves. Plus my boyfriend likes bread and butter more than the average person, so the idea of bread fresh from the oven was enough to convince him that this was a worthwhile use of our time. He found these instructions on YouTube for "easy bread", so named because there is no kneading involved. In fact, once the dough is formed, it is barely handled at all.

Recipe courtesy of the YouTube video linked above:

1) combine 3 cups of flour, 1 & 1/2 cups of water, 1/4 tsp yeast and 2 tsp salt in a large bowl

2) cover bowl with plastic bag and let sit overnight

3) on a floured surface, stretch the dough in one direction then fold into thirds, repeat in the other direction (this is where the YouTube video will probably be helpful)

4) place in a pie pan, cover, and let rise for another 2 hours

5) bake 10 minutes at 500, 10 minutes at 450 then 10 minutes at 350 (crust should be browned and hard)

For our first go at this, I think our bread came out pretty good. It was a touch on the dense side, and would have been better if it had risen a bit more. We are thinking that we need to buy better yeast (not this sketchy instant yeast that comes in packets) and this will make all the difference next time.

More importantly, it tastes delicious, especially when accompanied by a generous helping of butter.

chicken fried steak

Tonight we tried a couple of new things:

1) we made chicken fried steak, because apparently cube steak, which we got from our CSA, is the most common cut of meat used to make this dish.

2) we used celery root for the first time.

For the chicken fried steak we roughly followed Alton Brown's recipe with the following changes: we added grated parmesean to the flour used for dredging the steak and we didn't use milk in the gravy. Interestingly, my boyfriend added a bouillon cube to the water in which we boiled the potatoes and celery root to make the chicken stock that ultimately made up the gravy. The gravy turned out really great, so I guess this was a good idea!

Overall we were both pleasantly surprised with how good the steak turned out. We will definitely make this again the next time we get cube steak. I also foresee more celery root in our future...

Chicken fried steak and gravy

Celery root & potato mash: celery root, potato, milk & wasabi mayo

Spinach sauteed with white wine

not pretty, but very tasty

Sometimes the simplest breakfasts are the most delicious...

Fried potato pancake with melted cheddar cheese

Two over-easy eggs

Bacon

Garnished with green onion

fajitas, by definition

I'm calling this a fajita, because even though we didn't go "traditional" (i.e. what you get in a restaurant when you order fajitas - bell peppers and onions), the term fajita is really a generic term for any grilled meat served in a tortilla, which is clearly what we have here.

Strips of cube steak served in a spinach tortilla with sauteed swiss chard, tomato, green onions and a cheddar-provolone cheese sauce.

shrimp & grits

Move over Fried Chicken, step aside Pork Barbecue, Shrimp & Grits is the Southern classic that has won my heart!

Shrimp sauteed with garlic and white wine on a bed of creamy cheddar cheese grits with bacon and green onions.

Served with a side of sauteed swiss chard

spinach + goat cheese + rutabaga + horseradish

Because we are having pork roast in our sandwiches this week, we planned to have steak for dinner tonight, so as to avoid "pork overload"...but then my boyfriend accidentally defrosted more pork. Interestingly, this particular cut (pork blade steak) was more similar to red meat than any other cut of pork I've had. (And please don't be fooled by the picture and think I'm a hypocrite after yesterday's post, there is a large bone in there plus most of the perimeter is fat, so there isn't an obscene amount of actual meat to be eaten here).

As for our sides, we were particularly thrilled with the flavor combination of everything together, and we hadn't even consulted The Flavor Bible. Actually, every time I talk about everything on the plate tasting really good (and sometimes better) all together, I want to laugh, and I'm sure my mom does too: as a kid I used to insist on eating every component of my meal separately and one at a time - so first all the veggies, to get the part I didn't like out of the way first, then all the meat, then all the potatoes (or whatever the other side was). So parents of picky eaters, don't worry, anything can happen!

Pork blade steak

Mashed rutabaga with horseradish

Sauteed spinach with garlic and goat cheese

(We also ate some of the leftover carrot soup, not shown here).

carrot soup & fancy toast

I was never the biggest fan of soup as a kid (then again, I was a very picky eater and wasn't a fan of most food), but lately all I want is to make soups....especially when we start to accumulate a surplus of one vegetable. This week it was carrots. I have no idea how it happened, but we somehow found ourselves with a lot of carrots (actually, ONLY carrots!) in our vegetable drawer. Suggesting soup for dinner also works out extremely well since soup is relatively easy to make, and my boyfriend loves any excuse to serve toast with a meal.

One of our food-goals this year is to eat only (or at least mostly, we are realists about our food budget and the shopping options available in our area) sustainable meat. One easy way for us to do this is to only eat the meat we get from our CSA. If we eat smaller portions of meat or don't have meat at dinner every night, this should be do-able. That being said, I think tonight was the first night we really embraced this goal - note the very small amount of meat on the plate. And the only reason we had this meat for dinner at all is that we were cooking up a pork roast to use as sandwich meat this week, so we decided to carve up a couple of slices for dinner, too.

Carrot soup: carrots, onions, spaghetti squash, maple syrup, mozzarella cheese, garlic, cumin, curry powder, chili powder, white wine

Toasted ciabatta with goat cheese, a slice of pork roast, and sauteed spinach

fluffy pancakes with maple syrup

what can't you put in an omelette?

Two-egg omelette with prosciutto, mozzarella cheese, shallots, kalamata olives and...wait for it...spaghetti squash(!)

turkey: not just for thanksgiving

In my mind turkey only comes in "whole bird" preparations for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or is smoked and thinly sliced for sandwich meat. Given that my family does not usually celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas, the latter covers the majority of my turkey experiences. But this week we got some lovely turkey breasts from our CSA, so I finally expanded my turkey-horizons.

What I liked most about this meal was that every component was prepared as simply as possible, so the natural flavors of the ingredients could really exert themselves. The best example of this was the spaghetti squash. Aside from some olive oil, absolutely nothing was added to the squash, and it tasted wonderful. This is probably why spaghetti squash is slowly becoming one of my favorites. I should also mention that I got the idea of adding mushrooms to the turkey from The Flavor Bible, and that combination was fantastic.

Tomato and roasted red pepper soup served with ciabatta toast with prosciutto and melted mozzarella

Turkey breast baked with onions, porcini mushrooms, white wine and tarragon

Spaghetti squash

20-minute meat and potatoes

Pork chop with a shallot and white wine sauce

Wasabi mayo mashed potatoes

Arugula and apple salad

chili-style stew just got better

Ok, I tried really hard, but it isn't easy making a bowl of brownish-orange mush look enticing, especially when it is served in my boyfriend's brownish-orange 1970's-ski-lodge bowls. (I mock the bowls, but I secretly love them for this kind of food. My boyfriend put one serving of tonight's dinner in one of our new square bowls, and it just seemed WRONG!). But don't let the picture deceive you: this was absolutely delicious, and perfect for the unseasonably cold weather we are having. (My boyfriend just read over my shoulder and said he wouldn't describe the cold as "unseasonable", but whatever, I'm freaking cold!!!!)

So how did this deliciousness come to be? My boyfriend defrosted our leftover chili-style stew from almost a month ago, and - at my brilliant suggestion - threw in the leftover rice we had in the fridge. The flavor of the stew was even better than I remembered, and the rice added a wonderful texture.

Stew with beef, carrots, butternut squash, turnips, radishes, purple cabbage and rice, topped with Mexican blend cheese and served with buttered toast

burger & fries

Beef burger topped with gruyere cheese, tomato, onion, arugula and wasabi mayonnaise on a ciabatta bun with a side of oven-baked fries

breakfast sandwich

Prosciutto, melted Mexican blend cheese, arugula and a fried egg on toasted ciabatta

rack of lamb, Italian-style

Rack of lamb served over arugula

Parmesean & pesto ravioli

Polenta discs topped with mozzarella cheese and sauteed grape tomatoes, olives and chopped salami

New Year's Eve

Rack of lamb served over parsnip puree with broccoli and a salad of arugula, grape tomatoes and mozzarella