October 2011: Part One: Modena, Italy

It's been a long time in the making. Between working, dating, my new cat, writing other stuff, trying to assemble all my pictures, and my computer dying it's been a trying month or two to cook. I'll be back to my regular scheduled programming in December. Until then, please enjoy Part I of my trip to Italy.

Day 1:

Terrible Beef Stew

September Recipe #2: Terrible Beef Stew

One of my all time favorite things to make. You simply can't mess this up that much. Although, I sure did try on this one.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1 garlic sliced

2 lbs beef stew meat

3 medium onions, cut roughly

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 Bay leaf

1 teaspoon thyme

2 cans of sliced potatoes

1 package of frozen vegetable medley with green beans, carrots, corn and peas.

1 Crock-Pot

Italian Sausage and Peppers & Onions

September Recipe #1 Italian Sausage and Peppers & Onions

Ingredients:

3 Onions

3 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 Bell Peppers cut into strips

1 lb Italian sausage links

Salt and Pepper

Rolls or Italian Bread

Baking Sheet
Aluminium foil

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

August Recipe #5: Mark Bittman's Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients:

1/4 Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 lb Brussels Sprouts
10 cloves garlic, peeled
Salt and pepper
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 Ovenproof skillet

Chili with Tomatoes

August Recipe #4: 3 Bean Turkey Chili with Tomatoes

Ingredients:
1 can of each Goya Kidney, Pinto and black beans
1 lb ground turkey meat
1 onion minced
1 can Vegetable stock
1 or 2 chopped hot chiles (according to taste)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cans of peeled whole tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon

The Simplest and Best Shrimp Dish with Pasta

August Recipe #3: Mark Bittman's: The Simplest and Best Shrimp Dish with Pasta

Ingredients: 


1/3 cup of Extra Vigin Olive Oil
4 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 pounds of shrimp
1 tablespoon groung cumin
1 1/2 teaspoon hot paprika
1/2 pound whole wheat pasta
Salt and ground black pepper pepper

Gingerade

August Recipe #2: Gingerade

Ingredients: 

7-10 Lemons

2 limes

3/4 cup of Sugar

3 inches of Ginger root

2 cups of water

1 Bottle of San Peregrino Sparkling Water

1 Hammer

 

Mario Batali's Basic Tomato Sauce

Recipe #1: Mario Batali's Basic Tomato Sauce 

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 red onion diced
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tablespoon dried
• 1/2 medium carrot, finely grated
• 2 (28-ounce) cans peeled whole tomatoes, crushed by hand and juices reserved
• Spaghetti 

Maple-Glazed Salmon with Tomato-Dill Couscous

My mission: To cook 5 recipes each month.

This is recipe 5 of 5 for the month of July


Maple-Glazed Salmon

Ingredients:

• • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ancho chile powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/4 teaspoon brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 salmon fillets
  • Cooking spray
  • 2 tablespoons maple syrup

Directions:

• • 1. Preheat broiler.
  • 2. Combine first 6 ingredients; rub spice mixture evenly over flesh side of fillets. Place fish on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray; broil 6 minutes. Brush fillets evenly with syrup; broil 1 minute.

Tomato-Dill Couscous

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 cup uncooked couscous
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons chicken broth
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup quartered cherry tomatoes
• 1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

Blueberry Crisp

My mission: To cook 5 recipes each month.

This is recipe 4 of 5 for the month of July

Blueberry Crisp

Ingredients:

• Cooking spray
• 4 teaspoons cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pound fresh or frozen blueberries
• half a cup all-purpose flour 
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 3 tablespoons chopped walnuts
• 2 tablespoons cornmeal
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup chilled butter, cut into small pieces

Baked Mozzarella Bites

My mission: To cook 5 recipes each month*.

This is recipe 3 of 5 for the month of July.

Baked Mozzarella Bites



Ingredients:

1/3 cup of panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
3 tablespoons of egg substitute
3 sticks 2% mozzarella string cheese
1/4 a cup of marinara sauce

Ham, Egg and Cheese Breakfast Sandwich

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. 

This is recipe 2 of 5 for the month of July.

Ham, Egg and Cheese on an English Muffin

Ingredients

• 2 slices of deli ham
• 1 large eggs
• 1 English muffins, split and toasted
• 2 slices of cheddar cheese

Pork Tenderloin Medallions and Balsamic Reduction

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. 

This is recipe 1 of 5 for the month of July.

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon minced shallots
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin, cut into 12 slices
• 
  

Honey-Wine Braised Chicken Thighs with Spinach

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. 

This is recipe 5 of 5 for the month.

Ingredients:

1 Dutch Oven

2 1/2 teaspoons dark sesame oil

5 skinless, boneless chicken thighs (as many as Mr. Perdue gives you)

1 chopped red onion (Cooking Light says 2 cups of onions but I'm not putting onions in a measuring cup)

1 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

1/3 cup Shaoxing (Chinese rice wine) or dry sherry

2 1/2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger

3 tablespoons oyster sauce

2 tablespoons honey

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 bag of spinach

Beef and Mushroom Sloppy Joes

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. 

This is recipe 4 of 5 for the month. However, I should reexamine when I start these posts so they line up with the first of the month:

Beef and Mushroom Sloppy Joes

What you need:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 12 ounces ground sirloin
• 1 package presliced cremini mushrooms
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 can of tomato paste

2 pinches of cumin

• 1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce

I love sloppy joes! I haven't had a sloppy joe since I was 15 when my mom made a sloppy joe from the Manwich can. It's just how I grew up. This recipe took me back to all those happy childhood memories and yet made me feel good because it is slightly healthier from what I remember. 

I heated a skillet and tossed in some ground sirloin. As the meat browned I put in some cumin powder. I love cumin and since this isn't my mother's recipe I might as well put my stamp on this one. Cooking Light has a slightly different recipe. Check it out here. As the beef browns add the mushrooms, onion and garlic for a few minutes. I added a whole can of tomato paste instead of the "half a cup" the Cooking Light recipe says. It might be the same thing, but I'm not gonna measure tomato paste like a jerk. Once you add the tomato paste add the rest of the recipe except for the hot sauce. The molasses is the key ingredient here. As soon as I added it to the pan it felt like all I did was open up a Manwich can. It makes the whole dish. Once everything is mixed in together add the hot sauce and serve. It's that simple. 

Finished Product: 

Felt like I was back on Greencroft Avenue waiting for my mom to tell me dinner is served. The consistency is just like a manwich yet the mushrooms add more texture than I'm used to and I liked it.  I made a lot of this dish so I had some of it for dinner the night after and it heats up great. I'd make this again for sure. Maybe next time I will try to use lean turkey meat to cut down on the calories. 

4 out of 5 stars

Skillet Pork Chop Sauté with Peaches

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. So assemble all the ingredients, get out the measuring cups and wash your peaches because we're cooking pork chops with peaches! This bit is getting a bit played, isn't it?

This is recipe 3 of 5 for the month:

Skillet Pork Chop Sauté with Peaches

Tonight was pork chop night! Here's the recipe. This is the first time I'm cooking peaches on the stove and I'm really excited about it! Why haven't I done this earlier?! The recipe is pretty simple although I'm getting tired of using thyme and shallots. Is it really necessary for thyme in this dish? Why shallots? Why not an onion? It's fine, but I have lots of onions at home and rarely do I have shallots in the house. 

Anyway, the pork chops cook for 4 minutes on each side and then you take them off the pan. Throw in the peaches, shallots and the useless thyme and cook them for 2 minutes and then add the wine. Cook that for 2 minutes and then add the chicken broth and honey until it's syrupy. I turned the stove off and then added the butter and once it melted I added the pork chops back in and cooked it a little bit more. 

Final Product:

The best part of this dish is that I did it in about a half an hour. That's pretty important since I ran 5 miles when I got home from work and can't be bothered with anything too complicated. The peaches were sweet and the pork chops were cook just right. I would have liked some more sauce but it was pretty much perfect. I'm not sure how great the peaches will be tomorrow for lunch after being microwaved for a minute, but this is a great quick meal on a weekday.

Mushroom Frittata

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. So clean off your grill pan, dust off the spatula and grab some eggs because we're making some eggs!

This is recipe 2 of 5 for the month:

Mushroom Frittata

I'm on a breakfast kick! If you check out the recipe and glance at the photo you will see some slight differences. I went ahead and added zucchini and pancetta to my version of this dish. I also added this fun shaved Parmesan cheese at the last minute. I made this for dinner instead of breakfast. Who doesn't like a little breakfast for dinner?! I love recipes like this: place everything in a bowl and stir. You can't mess that up! However, I did cook the mushrooms and pancetta before I put them in the bowl. 

Once everything is mixed in I pour it all into my cast iron pan and slide it into the oven. It takes only 3 minutes with the broiler on high to make this! That's an incredibly short period of time. The hardest part of this dish is taking it out of the cast iron pan. Hint: You need two spatulas. NBD (No big deal).

Final Product: 

Yummy. Just really fluffy (thanks to the egg whites) and savory. It satisfies a lot of the taste buds. Add some hot sauce to punch up the flavor to another level. I will be adding the frittata to my breakfast arsenal. Plus, I'm told it makes a wonderful leftover. 

Coconut French Toast with Grilled Pineapple

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. Preheat the oven, get out the Pam and make some coffee because we're making some french toast!

This is recipe 1 of 5 for the month:

Coconut French Toast with Grilled Pineapple

I don't normally cook breakfast. I don't know the correct way to break an egg or even cook an egg. I usually end up burning them so the idea of french toast appeals to me since it requires a bit of burning. I substituted the sugar for Spleda because 1/4 of a cup of sugar makes me feel like I'm going to become a diabetic right after breakfast.  The recipe calls for you to mix everything together in a shallow dish but that seems insane since you have to stir everything together and that sounds like it can get messy. I put everything in a bowl and then transferred it to a dish although looking back I could have just left everything in the bowl and dipped the bread in there. 

Grilling the pineapple was fun. I didn't have a clean grill pan so I just used a regular pan and it worked out fine. There's really nothing to it. 

Finished Product: Fantastic! However, I feel a lot of the credit should go to the bread. I picked up a french loaf of bread in the morning and it's just so light and fluffy. It was perfect. The pineapple added some sweetness to the french toast that I rather enjoyed. I actually didn't even bother using maple syrup because the pineapple was just the right amount of sweet. If you don't like pineapple I'd recommend using some syrup but you would be missing out. The coconut at the end was another little twist that ensures I will make this one again and again. Everyone should try this one next weekend. 

Sautéed Shrimp with Sherry and Chilies

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. Clean out the dish washer, grab a knife and seriously clean out the dishwasher because it wasn't working properly. I pulled out a stray asparagus and I haven't had asparagus in weeks!

This is recipe 5 of 5 for the month:

Sautéed Shrimp with Sherry and Chilies

I don't cook seafood all that often. I should but I don't. Part of the reason is that I just dont know the difference between cooked and cooked to death so I was excited for this one. The recipe called for poblano chilies but I don't live near whole foods or any other market that knows what that is so I purchased these guys:

Now, I have no clue what these are called. When I was buying them I asked someone what the name of these peppers were and they couldn't tell me. All I knew was that they were peppers and I was assuming they were hot. So I chopped up three of these suckers and even though they didn't come close to a cup of peppers I figured this was enough. NOTE: I should have just googled the poblano chilies because I'm pretty sure my market has them although their signage told me otherwise.

I dump the chilies and the shallots into a large pan (I should have just used my wok. Woks are much cooler to use for dishes like this) and let it cook in the oil for a few minutes then I added the shrimp and paprika. I didn't measure this part because it's paprika and who cares? I'm not going to sit there and measure 2 teaspoons of paprika like a nerd. I just used enough to get on all the shrimps (NOTE: Since I had no date tonight I used half the desired amount of shrimp. I figure shrimp isn't that great reheated for lunch tomorrow). 

After the shrimp are cooking in there for a good 5 minutes I transfer everything to a dish and get started on the sauce. I dump the sherry and OJ in the same pan wait for it to boil then add the butter and oregano. Wait for the butter to melt then slide the shrimp back in there.

I served this dish with Goyas' black beans and rice and a beer.

Verdict: Spicy! Holy hell those chilies were intense! Other than that it was great! The sauce had a lot of heat but it wasn't overpowering. The shrimp were cooked well and the taste of shrimp wasn't hidden by the rich sauce. I'd make this one again with the right chilies.



Potatoes Two Ways

My mission: To cook 5 recipes from Cooking Light Magazine each month. Clean out the dish washer, grab a knife and put on some music because we're making potatoes!

Cooking Light Magazine is a great resource for anyone who wants to cook healthy and delicious food. I strongly recommend you bookmark their page (and this one!) and start cooking! If I can make edible food then everyone can.

Recipe 3 out of 5 for this month is: New Potatoes with Parsley and Saffron
I was excited to finally use some saffron threads I brought home from Egypt for this recipe. I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do with them until now.  This recipe is super easy. All you do is dump all the ingredients together in a pot and cook for 20 minutes. Pretty simple, right? Well I managed to fuck it up somehow. Either that of this is a terrible recipe.

Look how pretty that saffron is! I only used a pinch of these. Oh, I was supposed to use a dash apparently. What does that even mean? I will never know if I used too much or too little because I have no idea of what a dash of saffron is as opposed to a pinch. This is why I am not a chef. That and the fact that making the same dish over and over and over exactly the same way sounds so very difficult.

In the ingredients go! When they come out, nobody knows! Actually in twenty minutes.

Finished Product:

Remember how beautiful these potatoes looked in the pot? So full of life! So red! The parsley looked crisp and beautiful! Well that shit is over! We are here now! My potatoes are mushy and flavorless. Off the top of my head I can think of 7 better ways to make potatoes than this recipe.

Verdict: Bland, boring and borderline offensive. I will not be making this again and I wish I didn't waste beautiful potatoes on this recipe.

Recipe 4 out of 5 for this month is: Truffled Roasted Potatoes!

Another easy recipe! Pretty much just throw everything into a pan and throw it into an insanely hot 450 degree oven until browned! So easy! And this time? I didn't mess it up! I actually used a lot more garlic in this dish that was called for in the recipe. I love garlic and I wasn't going to be making out with anyone that night so it worked out. I put several cloves of garlic in the pan in addition to minced garlic. I love roasted garlic and I'm happy I did this because the minced garlic got kinda burnt in the 450 degree oven.

Note: The recipe calls for Truffle Oil. There are some things you should know about me. One of them is that I do not own truffle oil. Things I do own: Magic Bullet blender, stupidly big television and several Mets jerseys. Truffle oil is just not on my radar. I will substitute truffle oil with Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Before:

After: 

 

Note: The potatoes lost their red coloring but unlike the potato dish above it didn't matter because these potatoes are crispy and delicious.

Final Verdict: Outstanding! I will be making this dish many more times and maybe I'll pony up and get some Truffle Oil as well!