Archive for category Recipes
Very simple and delicious calamari
Posted by Van Santos in Main Course, Recipes on April 13th, 2009
The raw ingredients:
Simple ingredients: calamari, butter, garlic and parsley
The finished product:
I must confess, I am dealing with a sharp learning curve here. I’ve never photographed food and it’s not as easy as one might think and I am also dealing with the handicap of not having particularly presentable bowls and what not.
Presentation has, in general, not been my specialty. Taste and high quality ingredients are where I’ve mostly excelled. So this blog is challenging me because I do, in fact, have a strong aesthetic sense but have not invested in the sorts of bowls and dishes to make presentation really great. And my photographic skills are lacking. So hopefully all this will improve over time.
In any case the food!
I made a simple calamari dish which is comprised of butter, garlic, and parsley. Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste as well. You cook it about 5 minutes max. It’s really easy!!
This dish consisted of:
1 1/2 lbs of Calamari — bodies sliced in thirds and tentacles whole
2 tbls butter (you can go with more—even a lot more especially if you put this over pasta)
Parsley—the whole big mass of parsley in the picture chopped up (I go for lots of parsley–it’s an incredibly healthy herb that is very high in nutrients–but some may want to use about half the amount of parsley I used. I personally try to maximize nutritional value in my food)
Garlic—again I go very heavy on garlic, you do as you like!
Salt and pepper to taste.
Directions:
Melt butter in pan. Add chopped or pressed garlic and saute until very just shy of being browned.
Throw in the parsley and the calamari, salt and pepper at a high temperature and cover.
Cook at medium high for about 5 minutes. Stirring after about 3 minutes and covering again.
Do not overcook! Overcooked calamari can become unpleasantly rubbery!
Should make a nice, tasty broth which you can put over rice or pasta or eat it by itself in it’s soupy delight.
Bison Stew with fennel, mushrooms, tarragon and goat cheese
Posted by Van Santos in Main Course, Recipes on April 11th, 2009
The little bottle in the middle is truffle oil!!
And the finished product—not quite so beautiful.
Not as pretty perhaps, but much more yummy!!
So I’m a new contributor here and I will probably do things a little differently. I know not how to use a recipe. And therefore I cook with my gut and have no clue exactly what I do any given time I make something and everything is always a variation on the theme.
I enter the kitchen with the spirit of adventure and I do have some distinct “guts” that help me achieve exactly what I want often, but other times things turn out quite differently from what I intend—generally when I’m doing something I’ve never done before. So if you are experimenting with this “recipe” try to approach it with that spirit.
The secret to food always being tasty is the quality and combination of ingredients. Where things differ from my intent most often is in texture, which can be very annoying at times, but, nonetheless, I tend to end up with something edible.
So this is the recipe as best as I can describe being that I measured nothing! This, can, of course, be prepared with beef as well as bison.
The Recipe
3 lb bison roast (this of course can vary depending on your needs) I had to cut up the roast into chunks for stew as the market did not have stew meat. I had my husband and sous chef help with this.
one large onion (diced or slice in thin half circles)
2 or 3 large fennel roots (sliced in thin half circles)
2 lbs mushrooms (sliced thin)
1 cup of white wine
One large log of goat cheese
3 tablespoons dried tarragon (I’ve never cooked with fresh tarragon–if you can do that you’d probably use a lot less)
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste.
Slice the onions, fennel and mushrooms and saute on medium high heat to brown just a tad.
Brown the meat in some olive oil or organic butter in a separate pan–do not cook thoroughly, just brown it on high.
Combine the meat and the veggies and toss about in a large pot.
Pour the cup of wine over it and cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
Add salt and pepper anywhere along the way as needed. I do suggest you put at least some of the pepper in early on as it’s nice if it cooks with it for a while. You may find you need a bit more at the end.
After 20 minutes check and see how much liquid is there. You’ll want to uncover and simmer the liquid down to below the surface of all the goodies. (perhaps half way below or a little less–cook the meat up to an hour—if you use other cuts of meat or beef you may want to cook longer)
When it’s all done stir in the goat cheese and put in a teaspoon of truffle oil–more or less to taste. (this is optional—I only have truffle oil right now because my sister gave it to me as a gift. It’s outrageously expensive!)
Have fun!!
Pasta with Pesto Cream and Asparagus
Posted by Van Santos in Main Course, Recipes on April 9th, 2009
After my Chicken Pesto dish I had a plenty of pesto left over for future use. I had absolutely no desire to let it go to waste, so I decided to get creative – Pasta with Pesto Cream and Asparagus. It’s quite important to note that I’ve never – ever – made a cream sauce before and I decided to wing it.
So here goes.
Ingredients Needed
- ½ Cup Grated Parmesan Cheese
- 1 pint heavy cream
- 2 tbsp Butter
- 1 tsp corn starch
- 4 tbsp Pesto Sauce
- 1 Box Fusilli (well, whatever pasta you so desire)
- 1 Bunch Asparagus, cut
1)Begin Fusilli when you start your cream sauce
2)Heat the heavy cream until it starts to simmer, add butter and mix until it melts
3)Mix in corn starch, simmer for 2 minutes
4)Mix in the pesto sauce and and grated Parmesan cheese, simmer until for 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
5)Drain pasta, place into large skillet and add pesto cream sauce and asparagus. Heat over low flame until the asparagus is crisp
I was very, very surprised at how well this turned out. I had expected this to turn out like a really, really bad science experiment, but no! Depending on your taste, you may wish to hold off on the asparagus as it has the ability (especially on how fresh it is) to add a slight bitterness to the dish.
It is interesting to note they sauce is very, very lite in the end. The pesto is not overwhelming, actually it is quite subtile. A great adddition to the dish would be some chopped chicken and pine nuts or sliced almonds.
If you have another cream sauce recipe that you would like to suggest, please do. I’m more than willing to try others.
I hope you enjoy!
Parce que vous achetez les croutons
Posted by JT in Recipes, Side Dishes on April 9th, 2009
When asked why they hated Americans the French responded “parce que vous achetez les croutons.” (because you buy croutons)
I don’t know who to attribute that quote to, but I’ve always liked it as a statement on French vs American cooking. I usually make bread once a week, a boule or a loaf, but I don’t eat that much bread and it can go stale quickly. In trying to figure out what to do with a ½ a loaf of white bread I thought I would try to make some stuffing as a side dish with dinner. My wife loves stuffing and I have tried making stuffing (unsuccessfully) in the past. It always just tasted like wet bread. So to appease my wife I would buy and happily eat Stovetop stuffing from a box. Finally being ashamed enough that I couldn’t prepare what seemed to be a rather simple dish, and happening to have what I figured were the right ingredients on hand I tried again. This time successfully.
Homemade Stovetop Stuffing
2 cups of croutons
¾ cup chicken stock
Salt if your stock does not already contain it
Pat of butter
1 stalk celery diced
1 leek cut into rounds and separated
1 tablespoon garlic (or to taste)
1 tablespoon of sage
1. Make your croutons. For me all I had to do was cut ½ a loaf of white bread into the right shape and leave it out overnight, you may need to place yours in a low oven tossing regularly depending on how wet your bread it or how quickly you need your croutons.
2. In a sauce pot combine butter, leeks, garlic, celery and ½ the sage. Sautee until the celery and leeks get soft and aromatic.
3. Add your chicken stock and bring to a boil.
4. Add in your croutons
5. Add in the rest of the sage
6. Stir, mixing thoroughly, cover and let sit for a few minutes
7. Serve along side roasted anything
Sage is the secret that I had been missing and caused my previous incarnations to taste like wet bread (no matter how flavorful the stock.) I am now convinced I could add croutons, salt, water and sage to a pot and come out with acceptable stuffing.
Chicken Pesto Stuffed with Fresh Mozzarella and Steamed Vegetables
Posted by Van Santos in Main Course, Recipes on April 6th, 2009
For years I’ve enjoyed making pesto sauce. I remember on day simply thinking to myself “what would make a good pesto” and I started to experiment. I never used a recipe. this was one of the rare cases where my mind seemed to piece everything together. I had planned on making this dish Saturday evening but I was too sick, I just didn’t have the energy. Yesterday evening I found myself in a slightly better physical state so I decided to have a go at it.
For this dish you will need:
- 6 garlic cloves
- 1 bunch of fresh Basil
- 1 bunch of fresh Tarragon
- 1 bunch of fresh Radish greens
- 8 oz Grape Seed oil
- 4 oz Olive Oil
- 1 cup of fresh baby spinach
- 2 tbsp of hazelnuts, chopped
- pine nuts
- ½ cup grated asiago cheese
- 8 oz fresh mozzarella, cut into small cubes
- 3 boneless, skinless, thin sliced chicken breast
- 1 Head of broccoli
- 1 yellow squash
- 1 box Fettuccine
Pesto Sauce
- Put one 1 tsp of Olive Oil in a pan, heat, and roast the garlic cloves. You want these cloves to be BROWN. Not tan. Not lightly golden. BROWN on all sides.
- Take your Fresh Basil, Tarragon and Radish Greens and chop in a blender. I tend not to use the thick stems of the leafs, but some people opt to. To me the taste ends up being too bitter when the stems are included. After chopped, remove from blender.
- Put Grape Seed Oil, Olive Oil hazelnuts and asiago cheese in blender, mix.
- When nuts/cheese and oil have mixed where there are no large “chunks” add the previously mixed Greens as well as the garlic cloves and mix until you obtain the consistence you desire
Your pesto sauce is now done. You may be asking a number of questions about this, so let me try to head a few of them off to being. I use double the amount of Grape Seed oil as compared to Olive Oil because I have found that Olive Oil can be too strong at times. Yes, hazelnuts are used… Be careful not to overdo the usage as the flavor of hazelnut can overwhelm the sauce.
Stuffed Chicken with Mozzarella and Spinach
- Pre-heat oven to 350
- Transfer your pesto sauce out of your blender, if you have not done so already, and rinse out blender.
- Add Spinach, Mozzarella and blend together
- Lay out the chicken breast, add Mozzarella and Spinach filling to the breast, then spoon on desired amount of pesto sauce
- Roll the chicken breast lengthwise, tie with kitchen twine
- Place on foil covered baking sheet, spoon pesto over chicken
- Bake for 35 to 40 mins
While it is usually easy to dry out chicken breast rather quickly, especially thinly sliced breast, remember, as this bakes the cheese in the chicken will melt out. This will help keep the moisture in the chicken.
While the chicken is baking, boil up the Fettuccine. I would suggest you boil the pasta in saltwater (a technique I just learned from JT, one of the other writers on this blog). This will add a subtile taste to the dish. Also steam up the broccoli and squash for about 10 minutes in about an inch of water.
Once everything is ready to be served, drizzle on extra pesto sauce and sprinkle grated asiago cheese and pine nuts to the dish.
Expect to have plenty of pasta and pesto sauce left over as this recipe makes roughly 3 servings. The overall taste to this dish is very well balanced. No one thing out does the other, and there are plenty of flavors to go around. There you go… Enjoy!
Eggplant Parmesan, Salsa is not Spaghetti Sauce
Posted by JT in Main Course, Recipes on April 4th, 2009
I belong to a CSA, where every Saturday they drop of a bag of fresh produce from the farm at my front door. What I receive in that bag every Saturday informs what I will be cooking for the next week. I find that it forces me to be creative and use ingredients I wouldn’t normally use. Recently I got an eggplant, so my mind immediately went to either ratatouille or eggplant parmesan, since I had fresh pasta and some pecorino in my fridge I decided on eggplant parm.
The problem was I didn’t have spaghetti sauce or the ingredients to make it (I usually make it, garlic, basil, oregano, crushed tomatoes, red wine.) Looking in my fridge I realized that I did have an abundance of fresh salsa from the deli section of my grocery store. I looked at the ingredients, tomatoes, onion, green chile, then a bunch of, contains less than 2% of… I thought, mistakenly, that I would be able to transform this salsa into a pasta sauce. I sautéed onion, garlic and a little carrot, added the salsa, added massive amounts of basil, sundried tomatoes, oregano and garlic salt. Brought the whole thing to a boil then simmered for 45 minutes. The whole house had the wonderful smell of pasta sauce, but for some reason the tomatoes in the salsa never broke down, they stayed hard little dices (how unripe would they have to be to maintain this structure?) and most importantly they never lost their acidic zing that says “salsa.” It tasted like spaghetti sauce with a bunch of lime juice added. In the end I had to go out and buy the ingredients to make a fresh batch of sauce.
Eggplant Parmesan
1 Eggplant
Salt
8 oz pasta
Pasta sauce
2 Eggs
Breadcrumbs
Flour
Olive oil
Pecorino or Parmesan
Fresh parsley
1. 24 hours in advance slice your eggplant and salt liberally on both sides, place on a baking sheet with paper towels on both sides and place another baking sheet on top. This forces some of the liquid out of the eggplant and removes some of the bitter flavor it can have.
2. Fill a large pot with water and really salt the water. I always heard it should taste like sea water, and my pasta never tasted great until I realized just how salty the water should be. If you use enough salt then your pasta will taste great plain. Bring the water to a boil.
3. Set up a breading station. 1 plate with flour on it, 1 plate with the 2 eggs beaten, 1 plate with a mixture of the bread crumbs and some of the parmesan. Bread your eggplant slices, into the flour, into the egg into the breadcrumbs.
4. In a pan, pour enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. When the oil starts to shimmer add in the slices of eggplant. Cook until golden brown on one side, then flip. Once they are cooked on both sides set on paper towels to drain. They should be crunchy on the outside and creamy in the middle.
5. When your water is boiling add your pasta, I am lucky enough to get fresh pasta from a local source so the pasta cooks in 1 minute.
6. Drain the pasta
7. Assemble the dish – Pasta, Sauce, Eggplant, Cheese, Parsley
Crockpot Cornish Hens with Carrots and Potatoes
Posted by Van Santos in Main Course, Recipes on April 1st, 2009
There is just something about the magic of Crockpot cooking. Maybe it’s the meat falling off the bone tenderness or the set it and forget it attitude one can take when cooking…. I don’t know. With a recent post about Cornish Hens over at Tina Culbertson’s blog, I got the itch to make a Cornish Hen meal.
Here is the recipe:
- 3 Cups of Chicken Stock
- 2 Cornish Hens
- 1 Bunch of Parsley
- 4 Garlic cloves
- 8 Carrots, pealed and cut
- 6 Yukon Gold Potatoes, quartered
- 1 Onion, diced
- ½ tbsp black pepper
- ½ tsp salt
1)Stuff the Cornish Hens with the Parsley, Onions and garlic cloves (2 cloves per bird).
2)Place Hens in Crockpot, add Chicken Stock, Carrots, Potatoes
3)Set Crockpot on low, cook for 4 hours
4)At for hour mark add the salt and pepper, cook for another three hours
This is a very easy to make meal, if you don’t mind waiting the 7 hours. The carrots and potatoes capture the flavors of the Chicken stock, as well as the Hens, and is fantastic. The onion really didn’t have much of an impact on the overall flavor, but the garlic was subtlety noticeable.
To me, Cornish Hens have a unique taste. While they are not “game” hens, the flavor and texture does remind me of of game meats. When I make this dish again, I have the intent of complimenting the game aspect in some way. I’m not sure how, as of yet, but adding that little big of “something” has the ability to make this an outstanding dish.
Not there yet, but the potential is there.
Blueberry Muffins
Posted by Van Santos in Baking, Recipes on March 30th, 2009
About two weeks ago I started to get a baking itch. It started when I found the King Size Corn Muffins at ReTorte. I didn’t yet make the corn muffins, I opted for her blueberry muffins – with my own twist. I’m not saying my “twist” was the best choice, but I wanted to give it a try.
So, here is the recipe for Blueberries Muffins (based on ReTorte’s version)
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1 1/3 cups sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 3/4 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
- zest of one lemon
- Shaved chocolate (amount of your choice – and purely optional)
WARNING: Educational Content – “Zest” is the outer skin of the fruit. One can obtain the zest by using a fine peeler.
- Mix the butter and sugar together until you have a fine, light, mix batter.
- Add eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla.
- Mix in dry ingredients, alternating with buttermilk in 2 or 3 additions, to the butter/sugar/egg mixture.
- Add zest.
- Fold in blueberries.
- Scoop into muffin tins, greased or with papers, and bake at 350F for 25 – 30 minutes.
There is some debate around the house about the addition of the shaved chocolate. Personally, I like the taste of the chocolate and lemon. Others may not care for the the taste. It really depends on what your taste is.
Thoughts/tips to consider:
- Your oven will vary. I baked this batch for 28 mins, but on my next go around I will keep the muffins in for only 25.
- You can try different ingredients in place of the lemon. Let your imagination run wild.
- The addition of poppy seeds would be perfect for this.
Roast Chicken and Potatoes
Posted by JT in Main Course, Recipes on March 29th, 2009
Roasting a chicken is one of those quintessential things you are supposed to be able to do if you consider yourself a cook. I have a confession to make. I have been cooking for around 8 years now and I have never made a good roast chicken. That is until now.
One of my problems is that I refuse to use recipes. It feels like cheating to me. It doesn’t feel like you have learned anything, just memorized something. Because of that, the first few chickens I roasted came out sad and flabby and I stopped roasting chickens. Since then I have read a lot more about roasting chicken, and while this attempt still wasn’t perfect, it was a vast improvement and created the best potatoes I have ever had in my life.
Roast Chicken and Potatoes
1 chicken -unsure of weight
Potatoes -enough to create a bed for the chicken
Salt – 1 cup + 2 tablespoons
Baking Soda – 1 Tablespoon
Water – Enough to cover chicken
Pepper, Parsley, Lemon and Garlic – For stuffing the cavity and seasoning
1. Starting with the chicken, I buy my free range, organic chicken from a farmer. While the chicken does taste more “chicken-y” than the grocery store variety, the main difference I have found is the amount of fat. Farmer chicken has much more.
2. 48 hrs in advance, brine the chicken. I place the chicken in a pot, add water until chicken is covered, remove the chicken and mix in a cup (give or take) of salt, and then stir. No need to heat it, the salt dissolved just fine, and I don’t add any other flavors because I’m not really using this as a flavoring as much as to trap moisture in the cells and give me less of a chance of over cooking.
3. 24 hours in advance, remove chicken from brine and dry thoroughly. Once chicken is very dry create a rub of 2 Tblspns salt and 1 Tblspn baking soda. This is to desiccate the chicken skin and really give you thin, crispy skin. Rub this all over the chicken skin. Return to the fridge uncovered.
4. Preheat the oven to 375, remove the chicken from the fridge. Using a knife cut a bunch of slits in the chickens back to allow the fat to escape as the chicken cooks. Stuff the chicken cavity with a halved lemon, a few cloves of crushed garlic and a bunch of parsley.
5. Cut up your potatoes (I used fingerling because it is what I had) and create a bed for the chicken in your roasting pan. Place the chicken on its back on top of the potatoes
6. Roast chicken for 25 minutes at 375, turn up heat to 475 and roast for another 25 minutes, turn off heat and let cook for 10 more minutes or until the thigh registers 180.
7. Move the chicken to a carving board and let rest, move the potatoes (golden and crisp on the pan side) to a serving bowl add salt if desired, pepper and chopped parsley.
The brining plus salt rub results in a pretty salty chicken. That’s how I like my chicken, if you don’t I would reduce or eliminate the salt rub. Yes, this recipe involves a lot of advance prep, and not all of it is worth it. Going forward I will remove the baking soda, it left a little bit of a baking soda flavor, the skin on the back turns out soft from sitting on the potatoes, and I think that the salt plus 24 hours in the fridge uncovered will do enough to dry the skin. Finally, I’m not sure what I added by putting lemon, garlic and parsley inside, next time I’ll leave it out and see what type of difference it makes.
Here is a close up of the chicken skin where the thigh meets the body that shows the tissue paper like consistency the skin had.
Mom's Old Fashion Beef Stew
Posted by Van Santos in Recipes on March 28th, 2009
As a child, during winter, one of my favorite dinner treats was when my mother would make her been stew. Something about the contrast of the cold outside and the thought of a warm meal was comforting. Not only that, the carrots were soft and retained all flavors represented in the dish, the meat just fell apart with the touch of a fork and the potatoes were little bit of heaven. It was as if all the ingredients mixed together in such a way I was unable to deny this was my comfort food of the time.
With winter waining I wanted to make Mom’s Old Fashion Beef Stew so that I may enjoy the experience once more before spring comes to town.
Ingredients
- 2.5lbs Stew Meat (Pot roast, seven bone roast, etc.)
- ½ onion
- 1 celery stalk
- 6 carrots
- 4 potatoes (Yukon gold or Red)
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 c. V-8 juice
- 2 tlbs tapioca
- 1 tlbs sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
Directions:
- Heat oven to 250 degrees
- Cut meat into 1 ½ inch cubes and place in 3 or 4.4 qt oven safe Casserole
- Peel and slice onion
- Slice celery and cut potatoes and carrots into chunks
- Place vegetables in pan
- Blend salt with sugar and tapioca, Sprinkle over ingredients in pan
- Place cinnamon stick in dish
- Pour V-8 juice into pan
- Wrap dish in foil and Bake stew at 250 degrees for 4 hours
All said and done, it should look something like this when heading into the oven:
As the dish cooks in the oven the moisture in the meat will add to the V-8, creating more of a “gravy” for you to enjoy. This goes very well with Sourdough bread. I was going to make some, but didn’t plan that far ahead, so I ended up buying fresh baked instead.
A few things to note:
- The Tapioca can be found in the baking aisle
- If you cut the vegetable pieces larger, you will need to cook longer until they are tender
- Make sure the foil is sealed to the edge of the pan you are using so all the heat stays inside the dish while cooking
My dinner has roughly 3 ½ hours left to cook but rest assured I’ll post a picture or two once the finished product comes out of the oven.
And there is the final product, fresh from the oven.
Additional tips/pointers/thoughts:
- I suggest you cut the meat/veggies on the small side, allows for easier eathing and additional time in the oven is not needed
- Depending on your taste, you may wish to remove the cinnamon stick
- This makes for great leftovers
For me, it’s a classic! Enjoy!
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