Rosemary Lemon Chicken Thighs with Roasted Cauliflower

Posted on March 15, 2010 | 1 comment

In certain circles, dark meat gets a bad reputation. I don’t really get it. Dark meat is much more juicy and flavorful than it’s white meat counterpart. A boneless, skinless chicken breast (about 4 ounces) has about 2.5 grams of fat and 110 calories. A 4 ounce thigh, with the bone and skin removed, has 4 grams of fat and  also 110 calories. (Nutritional info courtesy of a great website). So why not live on the wild side and make chicken thighs for dinner? Ok. done. Oh, and chicken thighs are also a LOT cheaper than breasts.

We bought a nice big tray of chicken thighs from Giant. These did have bones and skin on them, both which keep in a lot of flavor and natural juices. We started off by making a braising liquid, using the shallots, jalapenos, lemon and wine (unfortunately we only had red wine, which is why the chicken is purple/red hue).

we seasoned the thighs and sprinkled them with some ground rosemary (I used the bullet for this).

and in they went

just a few minutes on each side and into a baking dish

Now on to the roasted cauliflower. We first discovered roasted cauliflower from our friend Candace and it was love at first bite! We’ve made it several times now and usually marinate it in something different each time.

The marinade this time consisted of oil, hot sauce, lots of seasonings and some mustard.

The cauliflower roasted in the oven along with the chicken.

I like it really roasted, on the border between cooked and almost burned! It’s amazingly flavorful.

Recipe for Rosemary Lemon Chicken Thighs

Recipe for Roasted Cauliflower

1 Comment

Posted in Chicken, Sides

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Restaurant Review: Hong Kong Restaurant (Kensington)

Posted on March 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

You may have never noticed this place as it is in a little strip mall behind what used to be a bank (and is now an urgent care) and a gas station. It’s behind and to the right of the strip mall that houses continental subs and pizza, if you are familiar with that (if you are not familiar with that, you should be!). Anyway, Hong Kong, has pretty good, reliable Chinese food and on Sunday they have a “family buffet”. Now, it’s important to note that this is not your typical buffet where in the center of the restaurant there are large trays of food that you pick from. No, not here. This “buffet” is really food served family style, meaning that as you finish a dish, they will bring you more of the same. Each person gets tea, their choice of soup and an egg roll. They brought Greg and I three entrees- one chicken, one beef and one shrimp. We were simply told what they were and there was no choice in that department. Luckily, we were fine with just about anything they could have brought.

When we walked in we were the only customers in the restaurant. The decor is a mix of old and new and the waitress was a bit odd, but whatever. We were promptly served tea and crunchy noodles with duck sauce, mmm. (Pictures are from the iphone- sorry!)

and then like five seconds later we got our soups. I got hot and sour and Greg got wonton.I usually judge a Chinese place on their hot and sour soup. This soup was solidly good. Nothing to go crazy over, but good, standard hot and sour.

(note: steelers shirts make good backdrops for photos!)

Like I mentioned, we also got egg rolls (unpictured).The egg rolls were super good, deep fried, deliciousness.

Next, came our entrees.

More specifically, we got shrimp with vegetables, Hunan chicken, and beef with broccoli (I think).

Of the three dishes, ironically the chicken was the best! Usually I don’t order chicken when I am out because I eat so much of it at home. This dish was really excellent though and it was the only one we forced ourselves to finish so we could get another serving of it. It was really tough, let me tell you.  The beef and shrimp were pretty standard really. I can’t remember the exact pricing, but this deal is quite a steal. This place also delivers and we have had pretty good success with them. Again, it’s not gonna rock your world, but it should satisfy your Chinese food cravings!

Leave a comment

Posted in Restaurant Reviews

Tagged , , , ,

Pistachio crusted flounder with creamed veggies

Posted on March 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

We bought some fresh flounder at Giant the other day and decided to try it with a bread crumb-less pistachio coating. I perused the internet and found that most pistachio crusted protein recipes included bread crumbs in the breading (go figure!). I didn’t want to use them though, so I just left them out. I also did not dredge the fillets in flour prior to dipping them in egg either, aiming to keep this recipe as low carb as possible. I started off with about 6 flounder fillets.

I crushed the raw pistachio nuts in a food processor, but left them sort of “chunky”. I think next time around, I will just pulverize them into crumbs completely to try a different “breaded” texture than what I got this time. Really, it’s up to you how chunky you’d like it!  A dip in the egg and then they were covered on both sides with the pistachio “breading”.

Into the baking dish they went.

They cooked for about 12 minutes or so. I knew they were ready when I could break the meat apart with a fork.

Interestingly, Greg and I cooked in a rather unusual fashion for us for this meal. I was responsible for one thing and he the other. I had a vision for the fish that didn’t match his so I took over on that. He focused on the veggie side dish, which was pretty amazing! He started off by sauteing some carrots, onions, and broccoli and then made a decadent cream sauce to pour over top.

The flavors of this meal were very rich and decadent. A little went a long way here and it was very filling for being a fish and veggies dinner. The pistachio crust still needs a little perfecting, but I was intrigued by the prospects. I may incorporate some almond flour to make it more breaded than coated next time. We’ll see…

Recipe for pistachio crusted flounder

Recipe for creamed veggies

Leave a comment

Posted in Seafood

Tagged , , , , ,

Steak Chili

Posted on March 9, 2010 | 1 comment

I love making chili in the winter time and there are so many different styles to try. I asked Greg to make chili for us one weekend and he decided to make chili with steak (beef chuck roast) instead of traditional ground meat.  He began by trimming the meat and cutting down the 3 1/2 pound roast into cubes. Coincidentally, this occurred during Maryland’s nail biter against Virgina Tech and provided him with a good outlet for all that anxious energy. Maryland won by the way!

We used the dutch oven again for the chili, like we did with the Cincinnati Style Chili we made several weeks ago. For this chili version,  start off by browning the meat on the stove top and drain the excess liquid.

It does not have to be cooked all the way through at this point, because it will go in the oven for another 3+ hours.  However, once you get a nice brown coating, add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine.

At this point it is pretty chunky, but it will cook down over the next few hours and each part will be rather indistinguishable.

Before three plus hours in the oven (above) and after (below).

It thickened up quite a bit and all of the bug chunks of meat cooked down and became much smaller with an almost shredded like consistency.Similarly, most of the other ingredients (tomatoes, onions, peppers) also cooked down and created a thick sauce like texture.

We topped it with some shredded cheddar cheese, raw yellow onion, and avocado. YUM!

Chili is so good for leftovers too! Hope you like it!

Recipe for Steak Chili

1 Comment

Posted in Beef

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Flourless peanut butter cookies

Posted on March 8, 2010 | Leave a comment

My peanut butter obsession of late is clearly not going anywhere. I happened to be watching Paula Dean when she made a recipe that I would actually considering making. This cookie, which she deemed “magical”, is sugar free and is not made with flour, therefore it is very low carb! The ingredient list is short (only four ingredients) and I have all them in my pantry/fridge so it was just a matter of time… Well, the other night I decided to make her recipe.

I reduced the Splenda by nearly half because although I love sweets, Splenda is super sweet and artificial tasting and I prefer to have the peanut butter be the main thing I taste. I also did not dip my fork in Splenda when I flattened them nor did I sprinkle any Splenda on top.  Other than that, I did not make any changes to her recipe and believe me, they were sweet enough! Next time though, I will cook them for longer than the suggested cooking time of 12 minutes, since they did come out a little crumbly. Although the texture is a bit off and these cookies are very dense due to the lack of flour or baking powder, they taste pretty good! I will probably play around with this recipe a bit more in the future, but overall a decent recipe from the queen of all things butter.

Like I said, it’s a pretty simple recipe. First you combine peanut butter and Splenda. I have been into the Natural Jif lately, which does not have any added sugar.

and add the remaining two ingredients, an egg and some vanilla extract

roll into balls

flatten.

I baked them for 12 minutes at 350 degrees. Next time I’ll probably bake them for about 15 minutes.

These have been great with my morning cup of coffee or with milk. You will definitely need a beverage of some kind with these! Hope you like them.

Recipe for Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

Leave a comment

Posted in Desserts

Tagged , , , , , ,

Restaurant Review: Black Market Bistro

Posted on March 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

I have been talking about going to this restaurant for quite a while, but we finally made it there last night! I had the dubious honor of paying for the meal since I lost (on a technicality) our NFL playoff pool. For those of you who are unfamiliar, BMB is on the bottom level of a house in a residential area of Kensington. The neighborhood itself was quite astounding and we were quite awed by the million dollar homes we passed. The restaurant has a farm house or New England-esque feel to it, but it is certainly fine dining with a casual flare. The menu is rather small, with one dish for each type of protein (chicken, beef, pork, seafood, etc), with several appetizers and Italian style pizzas also on the menu.

They had very fresh and delicious bread on the table of two varieties, one sweet with raisins and one Italian style white. We started off our meal with two appetizers: the soup of the day, which was a tomato bisque with pesto creme fraiche and pine nuts, and the Thai style Prince Edward Island mussels, mussels in lemongrass, chiles, ginger, coconut and cilantro. What a great start! The flavors of both of these dishes were so intense and delightful. The soup was very rich, creamy, and hearty and the pesto creme fraiche and the pine nuts added that little something that made it amazing. The mussels were perfectly cooked and the broth was divine. I could have happily ate that broth as a soup by itself it had so much flavor.

For our entrees we decided to go with the special, which was braised veal shank with risotto, including kale, pearl onions, and crimini mushrooms and the Pineland Farms hangar steak, a hardwood grilled all-natural hanger steak with whipped potatoes, fresh vegetable of the day, chimichurri & crispy onions.

When the veal entree was placed before me, Greg thought that they would come running back to grab it as they had seemingly forgot to place the meat on top of the risotto. Well, that was not the case. Apparently, the meat had been shredded and mixed in with the risotto and there wasn’t very much of it.  We had envisioned a veal shank on top of some creamy risotto. No. This was risotto with the little bit of meat mixed in along with what appeared to be a brown gravy and it was very salty. I have to say this was a disappointing dish. It was all one texture, one note of flavor, and just wasn’t that interesting. Did I mention it was salty? I woke up several times last night with some serious thirst! Luckily, the hangar steak was PERFECT in every way. It was grilled exactly right with a nice crust on the outside and still red and juicy on the inside. The veggie of the day was kale, my new fave, and the potatoes were melt in your mouth good. They served it with a TON of fried onion rings, which were sliced very thin, so they were crispy and a good accompaniment to the other textures. This was a great dish. We did not have any room for dessert, but I did take a peek at the menu. Nothing too exciting, except for the root beer float, which a table near us got.

Overall, we were very pleased with our experience at BMB and would definitely go back for another special occasion. The staff were all very nice too, although our waitress went MIA after our meals were served, and it wasn’t really that expensive considering the quality and the portions (although we did not have any leftovers đŸ™‚ ). It was worth losing the playoff pool for, I will say that.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but this place was fancy!

Leave a comment

Posted in Restaurant Reviews

Tagged , , ,

Spaghetti (Squash) and meatballs!

Posted on March 4, 2010 | 1 comment

I have heard a lot about spaghetti squash throughout the winter on the many food blogs I read and I finally tried it a few weeks ago. I REALLY liked it and I found it to be a great alternative to pasta or rice, or really any starch you need to soak up some sauce. It’s almost like tofu in the sense that it has very little flavor of it’s own and conforms to whatever you want it to be. It is relatively easy to make and did I mention there are like 50 calories in the entire squash and very few carbs!

I decided to pair it with on of my favorite things to make and eat, meatballs!

First the making of the “spaghetti”.

Conveniently, the directions for how to cook the squash are on the sticker. I microwaved it for about 12 minutes and then baked it for an hour in the oven.

Now doesn’t this look scrumptous! Yeah, it’s pretty gross looking but forge ahead and it will be worth it!

Scrape out all the parts that remind you of a pumpkin, ie: the seeds and orange clumps. After that you basically just use a fork to pull out the strands.

Looks like pasta right?

It produces quite a bit of  “spaghetti”. I would say at least six servings, if not more.

On to the meatballs!

It’s all pretty self explanatory from here on out.

Yeah, enough meatballs to feed a small army. Leftovers!

Recipe for Meatballs

1 Comment

Posted in Beef

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Restaurant Review: The Big Greek Cafe (downtown Silver Spring)

Posted on March 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

We have been wanting Greek food for a few weeks now and decided to go out for lunch this weekend and try a new Greek place in the area. I remembered that there was a place in downtown silver spring that could possibly cure our gyro craving: The Big Greek Cafe.  We decided to go for it and give it a shot.

It was a little tough to find at first, as their sign is on the small side. I was pretty sure we passed it when we saw a blue and white facade. There is another Greek restaurant about two block north on Georgia Avenue as well, but we stuck to our original plan to go to this one.  The set up is such that you order at the counter and they have a good amount of seating for you to choose from. It was very clean and inviting and the guys behind the counter were really friendly and attentive.

and check out  my eating partner! Look at this guy…

Anyway, back to the food. The menu was nice and large but we both wanted gyros. I went with the gyro salad (a “big greek salad” with gyro meat) and Greg went with the Gyro platter- which came with a gyro, salad, and choice of sides (he picked fries). Once we sat down I took a further look at the menu and found another 5 or 6 things I wanted. Guess I will have to go back!

The food was as impressive as the menu.

Here is my salad. It was huge! It had so many herbs and spices and it was absolutely perfect. They served it with a house  “opa” dressing (which was garlicky delicious) and I also asked for tzaziki on the side, which was equally delightful and no extra charge. I saved the pita for the birds and squirrels in our backyard and ended up taking half of the salad home. I couldn’t finish this salad, despite my Saturday afternoon appetite, but it hit the spot!

Here is the gyro platter- also a nice, big serving. The fries were soooo good! They had that beer battered crunch on the outside and they put tzaziki on top, which is genius. Our only complaint was that the gyro meat was a little dry. Believe me, we still ate it, happily, but that would be the only critique. We assumed that maybe we got meat  from the end of the rotation and wasn’t as fresh as it could have been.  For both of our meals and two drinks it was $22.00, which is pretty ridiculous for the quality and size of the meal.

Overall we were pleasantly surprised by this place as we have sort of come to expect the worst from many local places we try. I would definitely come back here though and try some other menu items! Check it out and let me know what you think!

Leave a comment

Posted in Restaurant Reviews

Tagged ,

Pesto Shrimp Bake

Posted on March 1, 2010 | 1 comment

Recently, we hosted a dinner party in which we featured one of our best talents: cooking shrimp perfectly- of course!  Last summer, or fall actually, when the garden was reaching some of it’s last days, Greg whipped up some pesto and we froze several jars of it for occasions such as this. We did not want to be busy cooking when our guests arrived, so it was the perfect thing to use since it was already made.

First, check out the table scape complete with real dining room chairs! wahoo, we’re adults now!

For an appetizer we used our new cheese board to display four cheeses: parmesano reggiano, pecorino romano, some really sharp cheddar, and parano (my recent fave).

We also served a salad that if anything was Greek-esque: romaine, cucumber, tomato, feta and pine nuts.

Now on to the main event. Like I said we used some pre-made homemade pesto. When making pesto ahead of time, it is suggested that you add the cheese when you are ready to use it, versus adding the cheese before you freeze it.

The pesto as it dethawed:

and with a generous heap of cheese:

This thickens it up quite a bit and adds a ton of flavor.

The raw shrimp were peeled and placed in a casserole baking dish. The pesto went over top of the shrimp…

…and was thoroughly mixed in

Next, a layer of freshly grated cheese atop the scrimps.

Pine nuts! Whenever we make the trip to Pittsburgh, we always stock up on pine nuts. They are worth the price, but especially at the price Penn Mac sells them for! YUM.

This went into the oven and baked while we sampled the cheese and ate salad.

We topped it with fresh tomato once it was done baking and the shrimp were cooked through.

We had the romantic mood lighting going- sorry for the flashy picture!

We served it along side of some pasta… along side, not on top!

This was a key point Greg wanted me to stress. The dish is meant to stand alone and is not intended to be a pasta sauce per se, although it went quite well with the pasta.

This is the best picture I have of it– extreme closeup, ahh!

With the scent of basil in the air, this dish made me even more ready for summer! It was a crowd pleaser too, which is always good.

Recipe for Pesto Shrimp Bake

Recipe for our Simple Basil Pesto

1 Comment

Posted in Seafood

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Peanut Chicken and Broccoli

Posted on March 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

I have become slightly obsessed with peanut butter lately! So when we were wondering what to do with some leftover chicken the other night it only made sense to have it with said new obsession. We stir fried some broccoli and chicken in an Asian inspired peanut sauce. We topped it over some jasmine rice and garnished it with some (more!) chopped peanuts and green onion, mmm. We made it rather spicy by adding a diced jalapeno, but the spice level you desire is completely up to you.

Unfortunately, we did not take many pictures of the cooking process. Here is a shot of the peanut sauce, which is comprised of 2 types of oil, vinegar, soy sauce, peanut butter, and some chicken broth.

We added broccoli- actually cooking it in the sauce and some already cooked chicken.

This was an easy recipe that took very little time. It was a great way to utilize the leftover chicken to make an awesome new dish. I highly recommend this one!

Recipe for Peanut Chicken and Broccoli

Leave a comment

Posted in Chicken

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,