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Sunday, May 31, 2009

Cheeseburger Update and Pics, Plus More...

I made the last 3 burgers for Ken and myself today for lunch. They were even better the next day. The spice had definitely incorporated into the meat more. Ken loved them as much as I did, which I always so appreciate. We agreed that these burgers are actually one of the better things I have ever experimented with. This recipe definitely goes into my daily repertoire. The ingredients are so inexpensive, and I also identified a few things I could do next time to make them even better. I think a crustier roll would add something, and I should try the muenster cheese the recipe asks for - it is in there for a reason. The jack was mild and I think I would enjoy a stronger cheese. This sounds like a great summer barbecue!

Oh delicious, juicy burger...

Tonight I made a great spur-of-the-moment pasta when Ken and I both sort of craved it. I had a can of diced tomatoes that needed to be used, and I'd just stocked up on onions and basil. While the spaghetti cooked, I sauteed some diced shallots I'd bought for another recipe that I didn't have plans to make anymore with some garlic. Then, I added the whole can of diced tomatoes, a hefty dose of salt and pepper, and some torn basil. I let it simmer while the pasta finished up and it turned out great. The pasta was fresh and light, perfect for a late spring night with the windows open. And I wondrously discovered, at the end of the night, I'd packed up two whole extra meals for the week - pasta with my tomato sauce for lunch tomorrow at work, and then the last pork cheeseburger and the other half of the pinto beans I'd had with it on Saturday. That's a great accomplishment for the weekend! Ken made out like a bandit - two homecooked meals in one day!

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Chipotle Pork Cheeseburgers

Straight up, these rock. They were so delicious! I found this recipe from Gourmet via The Kitchn and thought it was such a brilliant idea. I love all kinds of burgers and I couldn't think of a time that I'd tried one made of pork. I've eaten beef, turkey, veggie, and even bison burgers, but pork burgers are rare. These are pretty simple - the pork is mixed only with garlic, chipotle in adobo sauce, and some salt. If you aren't familiar with chipotle in adobo, is it smoked jalapenos in a tomato-based sauce. I looked at the ingredients on the side of the can and the best I could get was tomato sauce, vinegar, and "spices." It has become a very popular ingredient in the last couple of years, mostly in restaurants (I blame Bobby Flay), but it is still not in every market. I couldn't get it at Trader Joe's but found it in the Latin American aisle at Shaw's. The chipotles give the burgers a great bit of heat that doesn't overtake the meat, and you get little pretty flecks of dark red throughout the burgers.

I didn't really follow the cooking directions because I was using my trusty grill pan instead of an outdoor grill, but you do have to be careful with how you cook them because pork has to be cooked all of the way through. To facilitate that and not burn them, I tented the burger with a piece of foil for a few minutes. I ended up with a beautiful crust on the outside, and magically, the burgers were cooked through and juicy! Yay!

I had pepper jack cheese on hand so I used that instead of the recommended muenster. Any good melting cheese will do. I topped mine with avocado and red onion. Although the recipe specifically recommends the slice of tomatillo on top, I had to leave it out. Good luck finding a tomatillo in your local store unless you're in Texas, California, or you have access to a Latino market. But I can definitely see what they are saying - the tartness would go quite well with the smokey burgers. I also left off the cilantro because I hate it. But try these, they are delicious! All of the flavors go together so well and it is incredibly easy to make. A side of beans (throw in a bit of the adobo sauce!) is the perfect compliment, and you'll be done in a half hour tops. The best part is, I have 3 more in the fridge!


Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Darn Good Eats

Wow...I had not realized it had been so long since my last post! It's been a hectic but fun last few weeks not leaving a lot of time for cooking at home. That isn't to say I haven't been eating well...quite well really! Here are some highlights:
  • An incredible night in the North End at Cantina Italiana. I hadn't been to this restaurant since 2002 and it was as good as I remembered, though the service was a little iffy. I had an absolutely delicious simple salad of arugula, pine nuts, shaved Parmesan and aged balsamic that I think I literally inhaled. For my main dish I had the same thing I'd had years before and always remembered, the chicken saltimbocca, because I wanted to see if my food memory was accurate. It was indeed. And they make their own pasta. How can you argue with that? All of this was of course followed by a chocolate chip cannoli from Mike's Pastry.
  • A great new breakfast find in Harvard Square - Zoe's. It's a Greek diner in the purest sense and I don't think it requires any more explanation that that!
  • The discovery of Pita Pit delivery. Again, need I say more?
  • Mama's cooking. As she readily admits, none of us ever thought a highlight of being at home would be my mother's cooking but thanks to years of Food Network watching and a great food market (seriously next time I'm home I should count how many times the word "Wegman's" is uttered) she's quite the chef these days. Brunch on Saturday was my personal heaven - bagels, lox, whitefish that my mom picked straight off the whole fish, chocolate chip muffins, and fresh fruit salad. Later we had sausage and peppers and this incredible tomato salad from Giada DeLaurentiis that is probably one of my favorite salads ever. The next day we went to brunch at our favorite local diner (I had french toast, big shock) and then had barbecue chicken and grilled salmon for dinner. We tried a new potato salad recipe from Barefoot Contessa that I think we all agreed was one of the best we'd ever had! High recommendations.
So as you can gage, I am rolling back into home and I'll definitely be hitting the gym a little harder. As for tonight, I just made my basic tofu stir-fry. For dessert, I had a bowl of plain Greek yogurt with a bit of maple syrup and some cranberry nut granola I bought this week at the Copley Square Farmer's Market. Unfortunately it is a little early in the year for produce in New England. But I definitely hope the bakery I bought the granola from is back again! I love fresh granola but I'm not as much of a fan of the stuff you get in a box. Usually it's expensive but this bag was only $4!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Breakfast For Dinner Rocks

Doesn't it? I have to really be in the right mood to have it but when I feel it, there is something incredibly comforting about breakfast food at night. On the menu tonight was french toast with fresh bananas! I often start game-planning my dinner while at the gym (yes I know...what good does it do one to think about food while working out?) and it just hit me that I really, really, really wanted french toast. We had eggs, we had milk, we had syrup, and we had bread. Plus I knew I had one single banana left from the bunch that was on the verge of going bad, and bananas are my very favorite french toast topping.

French toast is one of my ultimate comfort foods. I like a good pancake every once in a while but I'm much more likely to go for the toast. It absolutely stems from eating many breakfasts with my mother, who I can confidently call a french toast connoisseur. This woman has eaten french toast at more restaurants than anyone I know. If I find a place that has it as a specialty (like 26 Beach Cafe in Venice
- Cali peeps do yourself a favor if you like this dish, they have a ton of options!), I automatically want to take her there. We used to make french toast for the random Sunday breakfast or even for dinner, and I always liked being the bread dipper. It was almost always the same way, the way I made it tonight - a couple eggs mixed with milk (and cinnamon and vanilla if I have it), with plain wheat sandwich bread. You would probably expect me to have some sort of fancy bread in the house but no, I had a loaf of Trader Joe's Organic Soft Wheat Bread, which I actually highly recommend. For the first time I tried out the griddle side of my grill pan, instead of using a skillet, and it worked wonderfully. The bread didn't stick at all and it was very evenly browned. I like my french toast soft but with crispy edges. The most important tip I can give for successful french toast making is to not turn up the heat on the stove too high. If you do, the outside burns quickly but the actual eggy bread does not firm up. I personally don't want mine soggy in the middle.

No picture tonight due to my randomly injured knee (I biked for 10 extra minutes at the gym and when I got off of it, the back of my knee had swollen up...great) but my french toast was golden brown and I topped it with slices of banana and maple syrup. Not the healthiest meal but I sure feel better now!

P.S. - A Dinner Blog shout-out to my dear friend Brynne, who left me the sweetest message today, saying that my wrap blog had inspired her to make her own! She wanted to recreate her favorite wrap from her days at the University of Delaware. I hope it turned out well and it is an honor to know I am inspiring you to cook!

Monday, May 11, 2009

The Best Wrap Ever

I always find it funny how good food can come out of nowhere. Sometimes you toast that bread to the exact right toastiness. Or even better, you put the perfect balance of milk and sugar into your coffee. There is nothing like that. I like to play around with whatever I have in the house, and sometimes you find a combination of ingredients that is so randomly good, it actually moves into your normal food making. Tonight, I made the best wrap I have ever made, and I can't wait to make it again.

It probably sounds like nothing special but there was just something about this wrap that I really liked. A huge part of that flavor was the new peach salsa I bought at TJ's - a salsa I'd heard from multiple people was incredible and probably proving them right, it had been out of stock the last two times I went to buy it. It is delicious - sweet and smokey just like it says on the bottle. The mix of the creamy avocado, the sweet salsa, and the cheese with a little spice is awesome. I made a big piece of chicken and only used half of it, same with the avocado, so I can (and plan to) make another wrap tomorrow night. This is one that can go on the menu of my future cafe/Mexican restaurant. Here's the recipe:

Peach Avocado Wraps
Serves 2

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, grilled and cut into strips
1 avocado, sliced
1 tbsp. Trader Joe's Peach Salsa
1 tbsp. low-fat sour cream
2 slices pepper jack cheese
2 wheat tortillas

In a pan or toaster oven, melt one slice of pepper jack cheese on each tortilla. Toward one side of the tortilla, place grilled chicken and avocado slices on the tortilla. Spread sour cream on other side of the tortilla. Top chicken and avocado with salsa. Pull in sides and roll, cut in half and serve.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mango Curry - Sorta, Kinda, Maybe

I've been trying to figure out what to do with some leftover curry powder and when I spotted some ripe mangoes for cheap, I thought I'd attempt to make a mango curry. How hard could it be? I've made curry before by just mixing curry paste with some coconut milk, so I didn't see why I couldn't do the same with the yellow curry powder. I sauteed some chicken, onions, and red bell peppers to go in the curry while I made some brown rice (what is curry without rice?). I poured out about half the can of coconut milk into a small bowl and whisked in some curry powder. I just kept adding it until I could taste it as strongly as I wanted. I poured it into the pan with the idea of simmering the meat and vegetables in the sauce for a little while, and added the mango in then. But when I put it all together, the curry sauce lost a lot of it's creaminess. I didn't want to put too much more coconut milk into it because the taste would be diluted, so I thought maybe it would thicken with some more simmering. It did but it just didn't look the way I wanted it to. It tasted, well, fine, I guess. It just lacked what chefs always refer to as "layers of flavor." I needed some ginger, some garlic maybe. It was good enough to eat, particularly with the very ripe mangoes, but it didn't come out how I planned. I need to figure out how to maintain the texture of the sauce. I'm interested to see what it tastes like tomorrow when I eat the leftovers for lunch. I think that if it has some time to meld and thicken a bit, it might taste better. I tasted a nibble of what I'd left sitting in the pan while I ate and it was already better. But basically, I tried to take a major shortcut and it didn't quite work. Oh well, we learn.

It sure looked pretty

Another thing I learned is that I am completely inept at making real rice. I have a huge bag of brown rice left over from my lentil debacle and I figured tonight I had enough time to cook it. Half of it was stuck to the bottom of the pot, and I can't explain why. I'll stick with microwave rice for now.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Serious Eats Weekend Cook-off: Cheap Cuts of Meat

This week on Serious Eats, I discovered a new concept they are trying called the Weekend Cook-off. They will be posting a new story each week from a magazine, newspaper, or blogger featuring a certain cooking concept. Then they are asking readers to make something related to this theme, get inspired, then write about what they did and share it with others on the discussion boards. I thought this sounded really fun and is a good way to decide what to cook. I also thought it might be fun to try to this at the same time as my mom, and she agreed. The first cook-off theme was cheap cuts of meat - the more inexpensive cuts of beef, pork, and lamb that are usually just as tasty - and how to use them. Obviously everyone is trying to save money right now, so this is a fun way to still get to eat meat and spend less. I know that I eat a very small amount of meat at home nowadays, and price certainly plays a part.

My initial plan was to make a pork loin, but as I suspected, my local market didn't carry that cut. The problem with the cheaper meats as that they are also less popular, and therefore not all stores carry them.
Right next to the pork, however, was lamb and I quickly zeroed in on a pack of two lamb shoulder blade chops for only $5! I love lamb but I've never bought it, and this seemed like the perfect chance to do so. I'm a huge fan of lamb - I go to steak houses and almost always order lamb chops instead of steak. A lamb shoulder blade chop is cut from the area under the shoulder blade I believe, and is a flatter piece with a bone through the middle. I think simple is always better when preparing meat, so I came up with a very basic marinade for the chops, roughly based off of a Bobby Flay lamb recipe I looked at online. I put about 1/2 cup of olive oil, the juice of one lemon, 3 cloves of chopped garlic, oregano, salt, and pepper in a shallow dish. I coated the lamb chops well in the mixture, covered it, and let it sit for about 2 hours. Then I grilled them on my indoor grill pan for about 8 minutes total.

A Sunday dinner in the spring

While I made the lamb, I also roasted some asparagus in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Right before I took them out, I sprinkled just a dash of Parmesan cheese over them. The lamb chops turned out very well. The marinade was subtle but really tenderized the meat and gave it a good flavor, and I think I did a pretty good job of cooking them to the right doneness. Lamb should be on the pink side, just cooked through but not bloody in the middle. The only part of the lamb I would like to get better next time is to get more of a crust on the outside of the meat. But I didn't mind the different style cut. The meat was still tender, and yes, there is some extra fat and connective tissue on it, but you don't eat it, it's no big deal. I couldn't believe how well we ate for well under $10 total! I certainly hope to try some more kinds of cheap cuts in the future!