Archive for the ‘Recipes’

Inaugural Issues, Inaugurations and Saying Goodbye to Bush…

January 20, 2009 By: monette Category: Recipes Comments Off

Last month at the supermarket, while waiting in line to pay for my groceries, staring at me was one of the most unflattering pictures of Tyler Florence that I’ve ever seen. Tyler (who usually makes me *swoon*), along with the Butter Queen Paula Deen and the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten, graced the cover of the premier (inaugural) issue of Food Network Magazine.

Despite the unflattering picture of my ultimate and favorite Food Network chef, I bought the magazine. And surprisingly, it’s a pretty good magazine. Lots of recipes and lots of food porn to go with the recipes – always a plus. I actually like it a lot better than that other magazine that features another Food Network personality.

So, in this issue, specifically on page 133, was a one-page (more like paragraph) article about M Street Bar & Grill in DC, that runs a “Presidential Burger Race” every four years. This year the two contenders were the John McCain Chicken Queso Burger (grilled chicken breast that’s been marinated in chili powder and citrus, topped with tomato salsa, pepper jack cheese and avocado, then sandwiched between a challah roll) and the Barack Obama Pizza Burger (Angus beef patty, smothered in marinara sauce, topped with mozzarella cheese and fresh basil and sandwiched between a grilled ciabatta roll smeared with roasted garlic butter).

Political views aside, I don’t know about you, but if I hear “burger”, visions of grilled chicken breast do not dance before my eyes. ME WANT BEEF!

So in honor of the inauguration of our 44th President, I gave the Barack Obama Pizza Burger a try. And it was really good…

Barack Obama Pizza Burger

Recipe courtesy the M Street Bar & Grill, Washington, DC for Food Network Magazine

Ingredients

For the Garlic Butter:

1 head garlic

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 teaspoon champagne vinegar * (see notes)

Kosher salt

For the Burgers:

6 8-ounce Angus beef patties **

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1/2 cup marinara sauce, plus more for serving

12 thin slices fresh mozzarella cheese (about 8 ounces)

6 crusty rolls, such as ciabatta, kaiser or Portuguese, halved ***

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350.

Make the butter:

Remove the papery outer layer from the head of garlic and slice off the top to expose the cloves slightly. Wrap the garlic in foil and roast in the oven until soft, about 45 minutes. Cool slightly, then squeeze the roasted pulp into a bowl. Whip with the butter, parsley, vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon salt; set aside.

Make the burgers:

Preheat a grill or grill pan to medium-high. Season the beef patties generously with salt and pepper and grill, about 3 minutes per side for medium-rare, turning once.

Move the burgers to the cooler side of the grill (or reduce the heat on the stove) and top each with some marinara sauce and 2 slices cheese. Spread the cut sides of each roll with some of the garlic butter and place facedown on the grill. Cover and cook until the cheese melts and the buns are toasted, 1 to 2 minutes. Place a burger on each roll bottom; add some chopped basil and the roll top. Serve with more marinara sauce, if desired.

Notes:

* I didn’t have any champagne vinegar on hand, nor did I have the urge to buy an entire bottle for this recipe, so I omitted this ingredient and the garlic butter turned out fine.  Not sure if the champagne vinegar would have made that big of a difference.

**I’m not a big fan of pre-made Angus beef patties, based on past experiences. I made my own beef patties using my basic burger recipe: 1 pound ground sirloin; ½ of a medium white onion, grated; 4 cloves of garlic, minced; 2 teaspoons of steak seasoning, 1 Tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce; 2 Tablespoons of unseasoned bread crumbs and an egg. This makes four ¼ pound burgers.

*** I couldn’t find ciabatta rolls, so I used a ciabatta loaf and cut it into 4 separate servings.

Here’s the burger again, sliced in half so that you can see the cross section… Messy, I know, but delicious, just the same…

This past weekend, a local radio station here in Las Vegas did their part in honor of the new President too… by running a promotion for a local business that does body waxing. The tagline or slogan for this special was “Say Goodbye to Bush” – literally and figuratively. The weekend special – a free bikini wax. Catchy, huh? Come on… Say Goodbye to Bush…. Get it?!  You can’t help but giggle and applaud the brilliant minds that came up with the concept of the ad.

Happy Spooning and Forking!

In the Kitchen: Pasta Carbonara

October 29, 2008 By: monette Category: Recipes Comments Off

I LOVE PASTA… Almost any pasta dish will suffice. With lots of garlic bread. And I enjoy cooking pasta dishes as they are quick, easy and sure to satisfy even the pickiest of all eaters.

I’ve been putting off doing the grocery shopping lately because I haven’t really had any pronounced cravings (oh, except Chinese food, which I had for dinner Friday night…) and I’m just too lazy today to get dressed to go to the grocery store. So I threw open the cupboards and found some angel hair pasta and some artichoke hearts. In the refrigerator, I found a wedge of parmesan cheese, garlic, bacon and eggs. WOO HOO! I had everything I needed to make Pasta Carbonara.

Yeah, I know you don’t usually put artichoke hearts in carbonara, but I’m not a big fan of peas, and I love artichoke hearts, so I’m putting artichoke hearts in my carbonara! You can put peas in yours, if you want. Or even mushrooms.

Recipes, in my opinion are merely guides and don’t need to be taken so seriously… unless you’re baking, then that’s a totally different story…

Here’s what you’ll need to make pasta carbonara for 4 to 6 people (depending on their appetites):

  • 1 pound dry pasta (angel hair, spaghetti, penne or even bowties will work)
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 package of bacon (or more), sliced into small pieces (you can also use pancetta if you prefer)
  • 4 cloves of garlic (or 6), minced
  • 1 jar artichoke hearts, drained and washed to get out the briney-ness, or 1 cup of peas
  • 2 larg eggs
  • 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup chopped parsley

So what you want to do is prepare the sauce while the pasta is cooking.

Timing is everything with this dish. You want the sauce and the pasta to be ready at about the same time as the heat from the pasta will help to cook the eggs in the sauce.

Ready… here’s how it’s done….

First, get a large pot of water boiling. Once it starts to boil, add some salt to the water, then add the pasta. Cook the pasta for about 10 minutes (depending on what type of pasta you use). Once the pasta is done, drain it, saving about a cup of the pasta water, just in case you might need it for the sauce.

Next, in a separate mixing bowl, scramble the eggs with a little bit of salt and pepper. Add the parmesan cheese to the eggs and mix well to spread out the cheese and break up clumps. Put this on the side while you work on the rest of the sauce.

In a pretty big pot (one that will able to accommodate the cooked pasta), heat the oil then add the bacon and cook the bacon until it is crisp but not burnt. Add the garlic and saute altogether for about a minute or so, until the garlic is soft, but not burnt – or else you’ll have to start all over again. Burnt garlic = yucky, bitter pasta. To this garlicky bacon, add the artichokes (or the peas if you prefer).

Next, add the hot, drained pasta to the pot with the bacon and garlic and toss the pasta in the bacon fat, making sure that everything is all bacony and greasy. Remove the pot from the heat and pour the cheesy egg mixture into the bacony garlicky pasta and STIR UNTIL YOUR ARM NEARLY FALLS OFF.

You need to keep on stirring to incorporate the cheesy egg mixture into the pasta to 1) “cook” the eggs and 2) prevent the eggs from becoming scrambled eggs. So stir until all the eggs are mixed in and forming the sauce. If the sauce is too dry to your liking, add the pasta water that you reserved, a little at a time until you get it how you like it. Add the chopped parsley and stir again, but not so vigorously. You just want to mix it all in. Unfortunately I didn’t have any parsley, and this made all the difference in flavor, but was good, just the same.

Serve with more cheese.

Enjoy!

In the Kitchen: Blueberry Cream Cheese Pie

October 20, 2008 By: monette Category: Recipes, Sweet Stuffs Comments Off

I’m still in the process of gathering my food porn from the trip, so in the meantime… thought I’d share a recipe with you. It’s probably my favorite recipe ever – a recipe that always seems to satisfy that sweet tooth craving. So as a somewhat farewell to summer… here’s my recipe for Blueberry Cream Cheese Pie (a wonderful summer dessert, especially if you opt to use fresh berries… but also yummy all year round…)

Enjoy!

For the crust, you will need:

1 cup flour
1 block butter, softened
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup macadamia nuts, chopped to your preferred “chunkiness”
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Place flour in a mixing bowl and cut in the butter, using a fork or better yet, your hands, add in sugar and nuts and mix until flour is crumbly.
Place flour mixture in an 8-inch pie pan , making sure to break up bigger crumbles. Do not press the mixture into the pie pan, as you want to bake it as a crumbled mixture.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to break up the crumbs even more. You want to bake it until it’s a “golden brown”. Be sure not to burn the crumbly crust.
Remove the crumbled crust from the oven , pat to the sides of the pan, using the back of a spoon or a spatula, whichever works for you, and cool.

In the meantime, for the filling you will need:

1 jar Avoset or 1 cup whipping cream
1 – 8 oz. block of cream cheese, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 can Comstock Blueberry Pie Filling/topping
Chill your mixing bowl and beaters for your electric mixer. Whip cream or Avoset until it forms stiff peaks.
In a separate bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Fold the cream cheese mixture into the whipped cream mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pie crust. Be careful as you spread the mixture into the crust. The filling is pretty thick and the crust is not set into the pan. What you want to try to do is drop the entire filling down the center of the pie crust and spread outward, so that none of the crumbly crust will end up in the filling.
Chill for 4 to 6 hours or overnight, if you have enough self control.
Top with your favorite fruit topping.
Canned pie filling works perfectly fine, or if you’re over-ambitious, you can make your own topping using fresh fruits. Some variations: sliced bananas drizzled with chocolate syrup, apple pie filling drizzled with caramel sauce, crumbled oreos, crumbled heath bars… The options are endless.

This recipe makes one 8-inch pie pan sized pie. I usually double the recipe and make it in a 9″x13″ cake pan.

In the Kitchen: Chili (by special request)

July 16, 2008 By: monette Category: Recipes Comments Off

OK – this one’s for DJ YELLOWJACKET… who always seems to ask for my chili, even though he knows that I don’t really like chili – well, the truth is, I don’t really care for the beans… and who requested it in May… Sorry it took so long…

Happy Birthday, by the way…

It’s my throw-everything-in-a-pot-and-let-it-cook recipe. SUPER EASY – hardest part should be opening up the cans…

You’ll need:

3 lbs. of ground sirloin (coarse ground or chili ground, if available at your supermarket)
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
salt
pepper
1 large onion, diced
1 large green bell pepper, diced
4 packets of Lawry’s Chili seasoning
1 (11 oz.) can of golden kernel corn, drained (optional
1 (14.5 oz.) can of Hunt’s Roasted Garlic diced tomatoes with liquid
2 (14.5 oz.) cans of Del Monte diced tomatoes with zesty mild green chiles with liquid
2 (8 oz.) cans tomato sauce + 1 can water
2 (16 oz.) cans of Bush’s Best Chili Beans (Pinto Beans in Mild Chili Sauce) with liquid
2 Tbsp. Best Foods mayonnaise (optional)

Directions:

Using medium high heat, brown the ground sirloin in a pot with the vegetable oil.

LIGHTLY SEASON the beef with a tiny bit of salt and pepper.

Let the meat cook and try not to stir it around so much so that you get nice, big, chunky pieces of beef. When the beef is cooked, drain most of the fat from the pot, leaving just enough so that the beef does not stick to the pot.

Lower the heat to medium and add the onions and bell peppers to the meat mixture at this time. (You would also add the corn at this time too.) Mix all together.

Add the chili seasoning and continue to mix to evenly distribute the seasoning. Let it cook for about 3 to 5 minutes, or until the onions get a bit translucent and limp.

Next, mix add the tomatoes, tomato sauce and water.

And finally, gently fold in the beans and try not to crush them.

Lower the heat to a simmer and cook for another 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

Turn off heat, then stir in the mayonnaise for “creamier” chili.

This recipe will make a pretty big pot, so call your friends over to help you finish it off.

I usually have a condiment bar or “add on” buffet on the side – shredded cheese, sour cream, HOT SAUCE, sliced hot dogs, tortilla chips, corn bread, toasted sourdough rolls, rice, etc. -so that everyone can customize and personalize their chili to their individual tastes.

In the Kitchen: Chicken in Riesling

June 23, 2008 By: monette Category: Recipes Comments Off

I remember the first time my parents took me to a French restaurant. I was probably 9 or 10 years old and the restaurant that we went to, Le Bon, no longer exists. But the experience and the food still lingers as a fond memory.

I opted to take the safe route and ordered a chicken dish that the waiter suggested I try, while my parents ordered dishes with funny sounding names such as foie gras, escargot, duck confit and steak au poivre. I’ve since acquired a taste for the funny sounding dishes as an adult and wish that I had tried these dishes at that dinner eons ago. Oh, if I knew then what I know now…

So on that fateful day, my first French food experience happened when a wonderful dish called coq au vin entered my life. Comfort food. The mere mention of coq au vin transports me to that night and I can’t help but smile and get all warm and tingly all over. I’ve been wanting to try to make coq au vin for a while, but I’ve always thought the process to be a bit overwhelming and time consuming. So I put it on the back burner, so to speak.

Then, while going through some old magazines, I came upon the March 2008 issue of Gourmet Magazine which featured French Bistro Cooking. And there it was – staring me in the face, again. A recipe for coq au vin, but altered a bit. The recipe was for Chicken in Riesling – where the red wine that is traditionally used in the recipe was substituted with Riesling, which I LOVE – but we’ll save that for another post altogether. I figured it was now or never and decided to give it a try.

Preparing this dish was easier than expected. As with most dishes, the most difficult part is in the preparation of the ingredients – the chopping, dicing and slicing. But once you get all of that done, its just a matter of putting all the parts together.

A link to the recipe for Chicken in Riesling can be found at the end of this post, but here are the basics.

You’ll need:

a whole chicken, cut French style into 8 pieces

carrots, leeks, flat leaf parsley, small red potatoes, shallot and lemon

Riesling (the recipe calls for Alsatian Riesling, but I had this German Riesling on hand)

You’ll also need vegetable oil, unsalted butter and creme fraiche or heavy cream. I used heavy cream. And salt and pepper.

Using an oven save pot, brown the chicken in the oil and butter, then transfer the pieces to a plate. Pour off the fat from the pot, then saute the leeks, shallots and salt in 2 Tablespoons of butter, cover and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a separate pot, boil the potatoes till they are just tender. Drain, then return to the pot. Add the parsley and shake or stir to coat the potatoes with the parsley.

Now, back to the pot of leeks that are cooking… Add the chicken, skin sides up, the carrots and wine and boil until the liquid is reduced by half. Cover and braise in the oven until the chicken is cooked all the way through.

Stir in the heavy cream. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice, then add potatoes.

ENJOY!

You can find the recipe here.

This dish came out pretty well. It seemed like it would be a pretty heavy dish because of the addition of cream, but because it wasn’t cooked more after the cream was added, the sauce is light and citrusy. I’d probably tweak it a bit next time I make it. Like maybe instead of whole potatoes, I’d probably do a bed of mash potatoes. Also, because I’m not a big fan of cooked carrots, I’d probably add whole mushrooms.

In the Kitchen: Shoyu Chicken

May 12, 2008 By: monette Category: Recipes 3 Comments →

Every now and then, I crave okazuya (Japanese delicatessen) food. Especially shoyu chicken and shoyu long rice. A couple of years ago, by accident, I concocted this recipe that satisfies both cravings, in one dish.

Here’s how it happened. We were moving into a new apartment, with the help of some of my brother’s college friends. To thank them for their help, I promised to make them a homemade, “local style” dinner. One of the requests was shoyu chicken.

So I made the shoyu chicken, but there was way too much liquid in the pot once the chicken was done. Not wanting to waste any of the sauce, I threw some long rice noodles to the pot to soak up the excess liquid. What initially was a MacGyver moment for me, ended up being quite a hit. I’m often asked for the recipe to this dish, even if it’s fairly simple to figure out by taste.

So, by special request… here’s my recipe for

Shoyu Chicken:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup Kikoman soy sauce

3/4 cup sake

1 cup water

3 pounds chicken thighs

2 thumb sized pieces ginger root, sliced about a quarter inch thick

2 stalks green onions, sliced (optional)

1 package long rice (optional)

Directions:

In a medium sized pot, mix sugar, soy sauce, sake and water. To this mixture, add the ginger root.

Add chicken thighs to the pot. Sauce should cover the chicken thighs.

Bring pot to a rolling boil, then cover pot and decrease heat to medium high heat.

Cook for 45 minutes.

Check on pot occasionally, turning chicken over every so often to disperse flavor to both sides of chicken and to keep chicken moist.

Optional:

Turn off heat, then mix in green onions to sauce.

Do not “cook” the green onions with the chicken as the green onions will eventually turn black if kept too long in the sauce.

Serve. (or go to next “Optional” step…)

Optional:

The sauce will eventually increase as water and oil is drawn out from the chicken.

To “soak up” some of the sauce, place 1 package of long rice in the sauce and cook, uncovered, until noodles are done (approximately 5 minutes).

There should still be enough sauce for your rice = ).

I made this for dinner tonight. Here’s how it turned out: