Thanksgiving was a wonderful holiday for Joy and me. Not only because it would be the first one where we are together, but it would also be the first one where we were requested to bring a dish to the host as a pot luck.
We wanted something new, something different, and something that we know everyone would enjoy. We found it in the form of a FoodNetwork.com dish. The best part about this dish is that it takes about 15-20 minutes to make to serve your family a hearty side dish. The shot above was taken while I was resting and Joy was preparing dinner for us.
GREEN BEANS WITH PANCETTA
Ingredients
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds green beans, stem end removed
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 pound pancetta, thinly sliced
1 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 to 5 small white button mushrooms, wiped of grit and sliced (You may also use crimini mushrooms)
Preparation
Fill 3/4 of a large pot with water and bring to boil over high heat. Add the green beans and a pinch of salt and boil for 5 minutes. Beans should still be crispy and half-cooked. It will be cooked further in the pan later. Drain and set aside.
Heat oil in a pan and add the garlic and pancetta. Cook until the pancetta is slightly crispy, then remove the pancetta and set aside. Add the butter to the fat from the pancetta and sauté the mushrooms in until golden. Add salt and pepper.
Put the cooked pancetta and green beans into the pan and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes for the flavors to seep through the green beans. Add salt and pepper to suit your taste. Serve hot. Great served on steamed rice
Simple enough, eh? To give it a nice shine, I used an olive oil sprayer at the end. Again, we never used sour cream and the dish still comes out perfectly. If you do use sour cream, will you let us know if it brings any different color or taste?
This is dish will be a definite crowd-pleaser. It is transposable, versatile, and above all, deliciously gourmet. Another good thing about this dish, if you have leftovers, it reheats extremely well. Enjoy!
I have a taste for seafood these days and it all began with the tuna stuffed portobellos. Yesterday, armed with leftover canned tuna, I made a tuna salad pasta. I know, it neither sounds enticing nor is it that pretty in the picture, but it was worth a try and something I’d make again.
I only used a few ingredients because I try to adhere to my holy trinity of lunch cooking: quick, tasty, and filling. I think the wine really cut down a lot of the ‘fishiness’. The celery added a nice crunch to each semi-mushy and firm bite of the creamy tuna with pasta. Yummy!
I thought I made just enough pasta for me, but I was so full after eating half of what I made…leaving me with more leftovers.
While we’re on the subject of Leftovers, I was checking mails and my numerous RSS reads this morning, and found someone participating in the Project Foodie site’s “Leftover Tuesdays” project:
Leftover Tuesdays is a great blogging event that recycles leftovers into wonderful and amazing new dishes.
Coincidence? Hah. I love the concept. I was raised with the Asian waste-not thinking. When it comes to food, we grew up being told: Finish your food. You are lucky to be eating and enjoying delicious meals…Don’t throw that away, shame on you…Think about the less fortunate! You’d be surprised at how many lives a dish can have. Haha.
Portobello, portabella…to-MAY-toe, to-MAH-to. However spelled, I love them. And tuna, too. When I was in highschool, and a geek to the core, I obsessed about eating tuna because it was considered “brain food”. Aside from the ‘benefits’ of the fish, I can’t get enough of the flavor.In this quick dish, I combined my favorites: tuna, mushroom, parmesan cheese, celery, Italian parsley, and olive oil.
Tuna Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms
Ingredients
2 tablespoons solid light tuna in olive oil
2-inch celery stalk, chopped
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon grated parmesan cheese
2 baby portobello mushrooms
a few leaves of chopped Italian parsley
salt
fresh ground pepper
olive oil
Preparation
1. Pre-heat oven (or oven toaster) to 350°F.
2. Combine all the ingredients, except for the mushrooms, in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper to suit your taste. The saltiness of the canned tuna might be enough for you.
3. Divide and spread the mixture on the bottoms of the two mushrooms. Placed mushrooms on an oven safe dish.
4. Bake at 350°F for 10 minutes. Take out and spray on, or drizzle over, some olive oil. Bake for another 5 minutes.
5. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with chopped parsley and tent with aluminum foil for 5 minutes.
6. Remove foil and serve. It’s fantastic to eat with rice, and can also complement a creamy and light pasta dish very well.
The weekends mark the few days in a week we get to sit down together to eat breakfast. We rarely go out to have Breakfast of Champions [i.e. McDonald's] because it feels so much better to have homemade breakfast.
Yesterday, Dan prepared this elaborate brunch of waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs, and hot chocolate:
The white thing in a jar with teaspoon is freshly whipped cream. The carafe contains freshly made hot chocolate, and the waffle behind it is what I’m devouring right now as I type this. There’s a jar of maple syrup, and beside that is the heavenly tub of my all-time favorite butter that isn’t really butter: Earth BalanceWhipped Buttery Spread.
Dan prepared everything, well except for the whipped cream, my contribution. I, on the other hand, took pictures. If staring out food pictures is right up your alley, feast on the pictures on the pictobrowser. Don’t let us make you feel jealous. We really were thinking of you during this delightful meal. ;-) We lit the fireplace, too!
After lounging for an eternity, we finally cleaned our apartment and took down and boxed up our holiday decorations. For shame! Haha. This is what I call ending the past week, and beginning a new one, right.
Taken from the Williams-Sonoma Sale post, I made two cups of the Peppermint Hot Chocolate for the first time while putting the finishing touches on my other webpage, Tech Hub. If you have picked up a tin after reading the post, the important thing to know is following the directions precisely. There is a little blurb about heated cups so microwave your cups for one minute.
One thing I noticed in the process, when heating the milk it says to watch for bubbles around the edges. There were bubbles when I poured the milk! So I waited for more bubbling to appear and by the time it happened, a thin layer of film was over the heated milk. I had to skim it off and put in the measured chocolate.
It says to use 5 tablespoons per 1 cup. I measured it out and in case you don’t feel like counting it out, the loose equivalant is about 1/4 cup. This makes for a really rich and creamy chocolate. It also makes for the best tasting hot chocolate you will ever drink. Joy made a comment after her first sip that the regular chocolate version would be perfect with churros.
We took the marshmallows to the concotion. The picture you see above was taken when a chocolate one was first dropped into the drink. Shortly after thereafter, the marshmallow started to melt, adding more goodness to the drink.
I made another couple of cups the following night. Instead of waiting for the bubbles to happen, I heated the milk at medium heat and waited for steam to come off the saucepan. This made for perfect temperature cocoa that could be enjoyed once it has been mixed. There was also no skimming needed!
If the tins are still available at your local Williams-Sonoma, I still recommend you get either of the chocolate variety the have available. Enjoy!
I was inspired to make this from Patricia’s Spaghetti with Garlic and Spinach post. Queen of substitutions that I am, I loosely followed the recipe that she found on delicious. magazine [A very good magazine, by the way, but I digress.] and made my own version with pancetta and linguine. Here’s the visual step-by-step guide:
I just fried 3 thinly sliced pancetta with a drizzle of olive oil till it’s almost crispy, added chopped garlic and cooked it for a minute or two until the garlic turns golden brown. Took out the pancetta, and splash and fizzle goes the dash of wine (ok, it was probably 1/8 cup) and reduced it to half. Tossed in the linguine, spinach and pancetta. Ground some fresh pepper and sprinkled salt. Tossed. Took out of the heat and served with grated parmesan cheese on top. Now this is where I followed the recipe: I served/ate it with lots of parmesan cheese. So simple. So delicious. It couldn’t get any easier than that.
We’re obviously not vegetarians. In fact, we eat vegetables mostly in the form of salads or appetizers and not like, “Oh, we’re going to have veggies tonight!” kinda thing. When we do have them, we make the best of the occasion both in flavor and in presentation. We are LOOKavores® after all: we eat with our eyes first. [Don't bother Googling the word, I just made it up.]
These days having food magazines at home is almost like having menus from restaurants at our coffee table and ordering cooking what we want. In the February Bon Appétit issue they have a salad called Asian Spinach Salad with Orange and Avocado, which we thought looked and sounded delicious. So we tried it.
You know us by now and our penchant for substituting what we have with what’s called for in the recipe. This time, I replaced the sesame oil with Liostasi** which is a soy/olive oil mix, and for the avocado we just got what was at the store, most probably a Haas avocado.
The results?
A very light and refreshing salad that is quite filling. [I can have this for dinner on its own.] Biting into the different textures and flavors of orange, avocado, and spinach is a wonderful experience in itself. Just imagine how good the oil-based dressing with shallots, ginger, and rice vinegar is. It’s absolutely delicious! And the good thing: you can have it in no time.
Dan made Herb Crusted Flat Iron Steak that night and it was perfect with the salad! Add wine. Voila! Homemade dinner that’s so satisfyingly good!
Next to the local movie theatre, there is a strip mall. Logic would say that with the proximity to the movie theatre, a resturant should be sustainable. This location in particular has changed 3 times since the area has been open. There is a lot of competition around the area, especially with Buffalo Wild Wings directly across from this location, but the latest resturant to reside is Cafepino.
Joy and I decided after watching Cloverfield if it was still open, we would visit. We crossed the threshold just shy of 11PM.
Last Saturday I suddenly had the urge to try making ginger chicken because we had ginger and I’ve never made that dish before. [How's that for cooking logic?] While Dan prepared the marinade and the meat for the herb crusted flat iron steak we were having for Sunday night, I cooked this for our late lunch.
It’s one of my Asian cooking experiments. I didn’t follow any recipe and just went ‘by taste’, so it could be very different from Chinese cookbook versions. [I haven't checked.]
I’m surprised and quite happy with the results: the chicken was tasty and perfectly tender; the sauce’s ginger taste was just right and it blended well with the onion flavor, plus it has a kick from the ground pepper; the mushrooms added a nice flavor and texture to the whole dish; and the carrots…are cute. This will surely be a repeat dish in our household. If you’d like to give it a shot, I’ve measured the ingredients and outlined the cooking steps below. Enjoy!
It is not every day you see things go on sale at Williams-Sonoma, but at this moment there are four products that are a divine addition to your cupboard. Peppermint flavored hot Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, Chocolate marshmallows, and vanilla marshmallows.
I am not sure why they are only available around the holidays because fine chocolate is something that can be savored year-round. When Joy got a package of this rich goodness for Christmas a few years ago, we tried to stretch the marshmallows further than the hot chocolate. It was a feeble attempt. When we ran out in late February, which was still cold in Phoenix and Vancouver, we were crushed when we found out that they were no longer selling the divinity.
Our eyes glazed over this past Thanksgiving when we saw the many stacks of marshmallows (The Cocoa was nowhere to be found, though.) The holidays passed in a blink of an eye and we found ourselves shopping for us again. When we entered W-S, I saw someone holding the brown tin of hot chocolate. I was on the prowl. I finally found what I was looking for, with this news on a laminated card nearby:
Holiday Sale: 50-75% off!
I looked at the marshmallows: 3.99 a box. Originally 19.00.
I looked at the hot chocolate: 14.99 a tin. Originally 19.50.
$40 of sugar later, I have restocked the cupboard with the best tasting hot chocolate and marshmallows available. If you have a Williams-Sonoma near you, go and get yourself a box and a tin. You will be glad you did.
Portobello, portabella…to-MAY-toe, to-MAH-to. However spelled, I love them. And tuna, too. When I was in highschool, and a geek to the core, I obsessed about eating tuna because it was considered “brain food”. Aside from the ‘benefits’ of the fish, I can’t get enough of the flavor.In this quick dish, I combined my favorites: tuna, mushroom, parmesan cheese, celery, Italian parsley, and olive oil.
