Beef, vegetables, and spices wrapped in a flaky crust and baked. Not too hard to make and a good use of a mid-range piece of meat. I had about a 2 lb piece of London Broil (keeping with the British theme), some various veggies, and admittedly used a canister of store dough. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Beef, dough, garlic, London Broil, Mushroom, red onion, rosemary, spinach, Wellington
I was going to call this a white lasagna but as you will see there are plenty of ingredients that are not white. Alfredo sauce was involved and I called on a previous recipe (which we featured twice) of ours for that. I won’t say that this was that difficult, but it did take a while which was well worth it because it was “one of the best things I made in a while.” That was an actual quote from Eileen about this great dish and I think she was right!
We had pork chops on our menu the other night and I wanted to do something new to me and more exciting than my ole standby, shake n bake (which is still awesome). We had the ingredients for Romesco sauce, which I saw some other bloggers make here and here. I encouraged Greg to make it for us and he did. We enjoyed it a lot. So much so we made salad dressing with the leftover sauce, adding some plain yogurt and a little water the very next night. This was also very delicious!
Tilapia is always cheap when on sale or not. Accordingly, it is not the tastiest fish but is very versatile and can be doctored up pretty easily. This was a sauteed spinach stuffing rolled in tilapia filets that were then sprinkled with parmesan and panko before a quick bake.
I felt a bit like I was in a cooking rut and wanted to switch it up somehow. We hadn’t had pork in a while and I found an inspiration for spinach and feta stuffed pork chops rubbed with fresh sage.
Filet and some good friends
We had an absolute feast with some friends featuring grilled filet mignon with sauteed mushrooms and onions, spicy red pepper mac n cheese, rosemary and garlic mashed potatoes, and creamed spinach. The Strip District struck again! I had wanted to get a log of filet for quite some time because the price goes down as you buy a bigger cut, so we called on some friends to help us out.
Posted in Beef, Uncategorized
Tagged American, Beef, creamed spinach, dinner ideas, filet mignon, garlic, grilled, homemade, mac n cheese, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, Meat, mushrooms, onions, potatoes, rosemary, sauteed, spicy, spicy mac n cheese, spinach
You know that show on the food network called The Best Thing I Ever Ate where famous chefs tell you where they had the best whatever the theme happens to be that day? Well, if I were ever asked what the best mussels dish I ever ate was it would hands down be the moules fromage bleu from Granville Moore’s in DC. In fact, these mussels beat Bobby Flay’s in his mussels throw down episode! Yeah, I love the food network 🙂
I have recreated them several times at home, and it’s actually quite simple. The ingredients are the same, but just not of the same quality as GM’s. (Sorry Giant, but you lack gourmet ingredients). But that’s how it goes sometimes and that’s OK! This dish still tastes amazing, particularly if you are a fan of bacon and blue cheese (an unbeatable combo in my book).
The ingredients:
From top left to bottom left: Blue cheese, mussels, lemon juice, shallots, spinach, and bacon. MIA- the white wine and oil.
Once you get cooking here, the process is very quick. However, first, it’s a good idea to put the mussels in a bowl and fill it with water. This allows any sand in the mussels to fall to the bottom of the bowl. Just remember to not drain them by pouring them out as this will just dump all the sand back onto them. I used a plastic strainer/spatula to remove the mussels from the bowl.
Next, it’s bacon cooking time! The recipe calls for cooking the bacon IN oil. I was very hesitant to do this, but I went with it. It forms the basis of the broth, but I find it very understandable if you wish to omit cooking your BACON in OIL.
Once the fat was rendered, I added the sliced shallots.
Doesn’t that look divine? And you can imagine how great it smelled. How can a dish go wrong from here?
[The next sequence of events is done rather quickly. My sous chef/photographer was feeling a little under the weather, so I was on my own. I tried my best to capture each step!]
At this point you want to add the mussels, wine and lemon juice and stir ’em up.
Once they are about half way open you want to add half of the blue cheese. You want the blue cheese to melt into the broth. I tried to move the mussels to one side of the pan to achieve this.
Just keep stirring and incorporating everything together.
Once they are fully open, you want to add the spinach.
That’s pretty much it. Once you spoon them into the bowls, top with the remaining blue cheese.
SO GOOD!
Recipe for Teddy Folkman’s Moules Fromage Bleu
As I flipped through the May issue of Cooking Light I came across recipes for grilled balsamic skirt steak with accompanying sides of tomato, onion and blue cheese salad and garlic sauteed spinach. In! Love at first sight. I felt pretty confident this meal would be a winner and it really was! It’s a great summer time meal and has that complexity and flavor to it that would make any guest think you spent hours in the kitchen, though you secretly know just how easy it was.
For our version of this recipe, we used flank steak instead of skirt steak, since that was what we had in the freezer. For those keeping tabs, it was a beautiful grass-fed flank steak from Trader Joes, Yum.
The marinade for the steak was a little on the sweet side. The ingredients include balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire, brown sugar and garlic. The flavors of the marinade were probably my least favorite part of this meal, ironically though it was what drew me to the recipe in the first place. Next time I think I will go with a standard teriyaki or soy marinade. I like the salt, what can I say. Still though, steak is steak, and so it was still awesomely delicious. The great flavor was intensified by Greg’s masterful slicing- diagonal, across the grain, and very thin- which created extremely tender, melt in your mouth bites of steak. (A true testament to this was that the steak was even good and tender the next day, cold, on a salad!)
In addition to the mouth watering steak, were the fabulous sides that accompanied it. Simple, yet delicious.
The spinach, which I dubbed ‘garlicky spinach’ (so creative, I know), could not be easier to make but tasted so good. We have spinach pretty frequently and often saute it. But for some reason, this spinach was above and beyond what we typically have. It included thinly sliced garlic that first cooked in butter. mmm.
The other side was incredible and so easy to make! Some halved grape tomatoes….
…some minced vidalia onion…
…some vinaigrette…
…blue cheese…
…all stirred together. I make similar side with feta but the blue cheese was an ingenious addition. I really loved this! Next time I make it, I may add some lemon juice for a little more acidity. I used red wine vinegar, though the recipe called for white wine vinegar, which may be why it was quite as acidic as it should be. The vidalia onion was also a pleasant surprise, as I typically would use red onion in this type of side. It’s a much more mellow onion than the onions I typically use and worked nicely not to overpower the tomato and blue cheese.
Here are some more glamor shots of the meal 🙂
Needless to say I really liked this dinner. All the flavors, textures and temperatures of everything worked so well together. The sweetness of the steak was countered nicely by the sharpness of the blue cheese, the flavorful onions, and garlicky spinach. The soft texture of the steak balanced by the crunch of the salad and warmth of the spinach. I could really go on and on… try it and you’ll see!
Recipe for Grilled Balsamic Flank Steak
Recipe for Tomato, Onion, and Blue Cheese Salad
Tagged balsamic, blue cheese, dinner ideas, easy, flank steak, garlic, grilled, homemade, low carb, marinade, spinach, tomato, vidalia onion
Starving Kitten 