Category Archives: Sauces

Walnut Pesto Grilled Chicken Thighs

Posted on July 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

Honestly, this did not turn out great but I am posting it for the basic idea and vision and as some pointers for myself and the readers. The idea was to grill chicken thighs with a thick walnut pesto paste that was almost like a jerk sauce. The first step was the sauce and I started that by prepping some garlic to be roasted in foil.

In some foil with a little oil, salt, and pepper

Into the over for about 15-20 minutes.

After the oven

While the garlic was roasting, I harvested some fresh basil from the garden.

Yep, thats basil

Now it was time to combine all of the ingredients and blend them into the paste.

The base ingredients

All of the ingredients

A side view of the many layers. Like a middle school science project

The final blended product which was not so pretty

Once the paste was prepared, I was ready to apply it to the chicken. I got bone in thighs and took the skin off of about 2/3 of them and left it on the rest.

Dressed up

Then onto the grilling and this is where things started to go astray. A combination of the oil in the sauce, the fat of the thighs, and the skin of some of the thighs led to the grill seriously flaming up. I had to turn the gas off and move the chicken to the other side for a bit until the flames died down. A dirty grill also contributed to the problem. I was able to save most of the thighs, but some did get pretty scorched. They were still edible, but some were a bit too blackened for my usual liking. So I would suggest to use this recipe and bake the thighs instead. I don’t think it was a flawed recipe, but a flawed method.

These flames are nothing compared to what was to come!

I threw some veggies in the grill basket as a side

We dressed them up with some fresh chopped tomatoes and basil and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. The meal was fine, but not one of our finest. As mentioned, I think that it would have been better prepared if it were baked and suggest trying that way instead of the grill.

Recipe for Walnut Pesto Paste

Roasted Corn Salsa Dressing on Peppercorn Steak Salad

Posted on June 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is Greg and this is my first Kitten post! A teacher has some summer time so you should be seeing me around here more often. The original idea for this was black and blue steak salad and I decided to really focus on the black part and made a peppercorn rub for the steak. I used a porterhouse cut of about 1.5 pounds which is not the typical or easiest cut for a steak salad, but they are always on sale at Giant in the summers and was a great deal for some quality meat. With the trimming off the bone, there were some convenient scraps that had to be tested too. When grabbing the blue cheese, Gorgonzola was right next to it and I decided to switch up the black and blue philosophy though it is not a major change as they are pretty similar.

: Filet on the right!

The rub was just a combination of some dried spices and whole peppercorns that I ground in our spice grinder. It was very loud at first and I ran it until itwas quieter but not fully ground. I wanted to keep the peppercorns a bit coarse.

: Preground peppercorns and spices

: Don’t be afraid to use your hands and get it well covered

It is called a rub because you are supposed to rub it into the meat, so pour half of it on and get to work! Flip it over and make sure that the whole piece is thoroughly covered. Grill it as you normally would a steak. If possible, it is best to plan some rest time once the steak is done to allow the juices to set and to allow it a bit of time to cool to cut it and serve on a cold salad.

: Where the term blackened comes from

Despite how it looks, the meat was cooked medium rare. The rub just really blackened it that much. It did not taste over spiced, again despite it’s appearance. I let it sit for about a half an hour and sliced it up. I kept the filet separate to make sure we got fair shares and as mentioned, many samples had to be had while carving it along with cleaning the bone.

Once the steak was sliced, I placed it on a bed or romaine lettuce and applied the salsa/dressing that I was simultaneously making.

: Could always stop here and add a premade dressing

I had a hard time naming the dressing because it is sort of a salsa mixture that we used as a dressing. There were so many important ingredients also that it was hard to focus on a few to give it an identity. No other dressing was added once we topped the salad with this. I first wrapped the peeled corn in foil with some butter and salt and pepper and roasted it on the grill for about 45 minutes or so turning once in a while.

: Good ol sweet summer white corn

: Double wrapped and ready for the grill

While the corn was roasting, I combined the remainder of the ingredients. The lemon juice, oil, and vinegar tied it together as a dressing consistency which spread well on the salad and held the whole thing together too.

: All of the ingredients for the dressing except for the corn

Once the corn was roasted, I let it cool until it could be handled and removed the kernels and mixed it in with the rest.

: Apparently the center was on the most intense heat

Once all of the dressing ingredients were combined and well mixed, we used it as you would a normal dressing on the steak salad and sprinkled a little bit of extra Gorgonzola on top and enjoyed.

: The final product!

It was sort of a lot of work but was well worth it and we really enjoyed it. The dressing was so good itself that salad bites without steak were still really fulfilling. An added bonus was that about half of the steak bites were filet mignon which most would consider a sin to be placed on a salad but the price was so great that it was just fine. Give some or all of it a try!

Recipe for Roasted Corn Salsa Salad Dressing

Recipe for Peppercorn Rub

Avocado Salad Dressing

Posted on June 9, 2010 | 2 comments

One of our friends from college is doing an internship in Maryland for the summer (yay!). He arrived a couple of weeks ago and to celebrate Ashley invited us over for chicken tacos. I offered to bring a salad, since all I had at home was some produce. I picked up a few extras, such as avocados, and decided to make a homemade salad dressing to jazz things up a bit (making homemade salad dressings is easy and they taste SO much better than store bought!). I wanted to stick to the taco theme and figured an avocado dressing would be fun and different.

This is about the best looking avocado you will find in Wheaton. It was certainly ripe and about a day away from being bad. At least they were ripe though, if not a little too ripe.

Limes are so pretty! I love them. They go hand in hand with avocados in my book and the citrus helps the avocado from turning brown. They also seem to help in the mashing process, as the acidity must break them down a bit.

So, after a good smashing, I added yogurt, half and half (you could use milk or cream if you prefer), garlic, onion, and salt and pepper. Oh, and a dash of cayenne. The onion was grated- which created an interesting consistency and also left the house smelling like onion for a few hours, FYI. It was almost like onion pulp and helped distribute the flavor evenly and without adding much texture.

I wanted to make a festive salad full of color. I included romaine lettuce, rainbow chard, grape tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, and green onions. Twas delicious.

The salad dressing tasted extremely fresh and the flavor was pretty mellow. It lasted for another 1-2 days, but did start to turn brown by that point. It’s probably best served on the day you make it.

Recipe for Avocado Salad Dressing

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Posted in Salads, Sauces

Tagged avocado, homemade, low carb, salad dressing, yogurt