Lazy Saturday night

We went out for lunch, to a brewpub about an hour from our house. I had a burger, John had a pizza. And we each had two beers and shared a bread pudding dessert. It was all delicious! But I knew supper had to be on the lighter side to make up for these indulgences.

I saw on their menu a salad that appealed to me - a chicken salad with balsamic vinaigrette, bacon, egg, cheese, tomato, cuke and roasted bell pepper. I thought to myself that I have all those ingredients at home, so why not make that for tonight?

I cooked up 3 slices of bacon and hard-boiled 2 eggs (only used one of them) about an hour before suppertime. About 30 minutes later I cooked a single chicken breast; which I'd cut in half to make thinner, in a teaspoon of canola oil. When that had cooled, I sliced it up to put in the salad. Tear up some romaine leaves, cut the tomato, cuke, pepper, crumble the bacon - this couldn't be easier! And we both liked it!!

Dessert is something I bought around Easter time as a special treat at the wholesale club we belong to. It was a package of 60 pastry treats like vanilla napoleon and truffles, frozen, and cost $9.99. They're really good, and I had forgotten they were in the freezer, behind all my ice cream fixings. We're waiting for them to thaw now before we dig into them!

What's not to like?

Sometimes I take some flack for having extra time to produce pseudo-gourmet meals. Tonight, anyone can do it. It's my favorite go-to 20 minute meal - and the tastiest chicken marsala I've ever had (yes, even better than most restaurants)!

I found it in an old Weight Watchers "Make it in Minutes" cookbook. I also found it online here: http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Weight-Watchers-Chicken-Marsala-294720. Follow it exactly and you will have a very nice entree.

If I'm in a hurry, my favorite quickie vegetable to go with this is spinach. Buy a bag of baby spinach at the grocery store. Poke a few holes in the bag with a fork and nuke it for 2-3 minutes. Ta da. Some of them say to not nuke the bag of spinach. I do it anyway.

Tonight I made a side dish of broccoli with a soy-lemon-garlic dressing. I originally got it in the Washington Post many years ago. I found a copy of it here online: http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/RCP00259/broccoli-cauliflower-soy-lemon.html

It's a nice quick veggie dish, very easy and tasty, although not as fast to put together as the spinach.

I was out and about a lot today so didn't make up a new dessert. We still have a little mango sorbet and ricotta-lavender-honey ice cream so we'll choose what to have from those two things.

(btw, I felt under the weather all day Thursday due to only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep all night, so we got pizza carryout... yes we do that too from time to time).

Feliz Cinco de Mayo, part Dos

The bulk of the cooking of yesterday dinner's main course didn't take place yesterday, it took place the day before. None of the stores in my area, despite one of them having two huge aisles filled with "International" food - most of it Latino flavored - carry achiote paste. All of them, even the podunk one, carry annato seed or ground annato. Annato is the main color and flavor behind achiote paste.

I started with this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Traditional-Achiote-Recado-15385 . I didn't soak the annato seeds in water since I was starting with an already-ground spice. I did toast it, and the other spices. In the process of making this, I completely used up my ancho chile powder. It was worth it!

Once I made this sauce (it was really a marinade, not a paste) I put it into a zip-lock baggie where I had about a 3 1/2 lb pork butt roast waiting. It went into the fridge on Tuesday to wait for Wednesday morning.

Come the morning of Cinco de Mayo, I got the crock pot out and put the meat and marinade into it before I even had coffee. I gave it 12 hours. It did not need that much time. I went to turn over the roast at about the 8 hour mark and it fell apart on the end of my fork.

After having the previously-mentioned appetizers (a margarita and chips and some lovely salsa), I put on some yellow rice and made a salad. I was planning on making a dessert yesterday, but just didn't have room for it in the fridge until the pan of tres leches cake was gone. Now that's gone so I can play with desserts some.

Later today, one of my very favorite simple but yummy recipes that takes less than 30 minutes to make!

Feliz 5/5

This is just the warm-up...

The salsa is quite interesting. A bit hotter than I usual eat, but well within my tolerance level (which, incidentally, has increased somewhat in the past few years). I bought 4 good-sized tomatillos yesterday. Had never boughten one previously. Not sure I'd ever even held one before! But at least I've eaten them, in salsas. I washed them up and put them on the broiler pan along with two jalapenos and 3 garlic cloves. Broiled them for about 6 minutes and let them cool. The skin peeled right off the jalapenos easily.

I put those ingredients into the food processor along with a chopped up sweet onion and a large handful of dried cilantro (it called for a cup of fresh - I don't often have fresh herbs on hand as they go bad so quickly). Added a couple pinches of salt and blended. Then I tasted it. And I remembered the trip we took to Playa del Carmen last December and the terrific pumpkin seed salsas I had there.

I looked up pumpkin seed salsas, and the recipes I found called for tomatillos. Garlic. Chiles. So I said "why not" (heh - yes I do sail on Royal Caribbean) and toasted about a cup of those and threw them into the food processor too.

Yummy.

The margaritas are each:
3 parts tequila (Don Eduardo silver this time around)
2 parts sour mix
1 part Cointreau
1 part Rose's lime juice

Shaken, not stirred.

The tortilla chips are store-bought whole-wheat tortillas (forgive me, I don't own a tortilla press. Yet.) which are cut with a pizza cutter, put on a cookie sheet, sprayed with butter no-stick spray and sprinkled with salt and baked at 400 for about 8 minutes.

The typos and verbose-ness are courtesy of the tequila. Gracias.

Fresh Pasta = good

I made pasta yesterday, of the spinach and ricotta variety. The recipe was one I found in a cookbook I have entitled "Truly Madly Pasta". I haven't found the exact recipe online, but the four or five I looked at are all reasonably similar. I took a bag and a half (10 oz bag) of baby spinach and washed them, and put them in a pot with just the water still clinging to them from the washing. Put on the lid, turned up the burner to medium for 5-8 minutes, and the spinach was cooked. Then I let that drain for an hour in a colander and tried squeezing it between two matched plates to get excess water out. I don't know how successful that was. Maybe next time I'll just use my hands so I can feel if it's still too wet.

Then I chopped up the spinach and threw in a couple good-sized spoonfuls of ricotta, some kosher salt and grated some nutmeg on it. I got my nutmeg this past winter in Grenada - gotta love getting it right at the source!

Then I made the pasta. I use the recipe for egg pasta in my Stand Mixer Bible cookbook. It's just 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 4 eggs and a tsp salt. After letting that sit for half an hour I rolled out small sections of it. I rolled it to 6 this time instead of 5 so it was a little more delicate.

I let the rolled-out sheets dry just a little on the counter before filling them. I dropped small spoonfuls into the middle of each long sheet, wet the edges and the middle of the sheet and folded it in half, also pressing together in between the mounds of filling. I then made the mistake of taking them off the counter to clean it and putting all the pasta into the colander to await cooking. They were a bit wet and many of them stuck together. I won't make that mistake again.

I made a tossed salad while the water for the pasta heated up. Fresh pasta doesn't need to be boiled long - I think it was in there maybe 3-4 minutes tops. One of the raviolis exploded in the water. Actually I was surprised it was only one of them.

The sauce I used needs a bit more work I think. I toasted some pine nuts then removed them from the pan. Added half a stick of butter and melted that til it was nutty brown and added some sage. I would have liked to use fresh sage but I had none in the house.

It turned out pretty good, although I had hopes for better. For dessert we finished up the hazelnut ice cream I made last week.

Today is Cinco de Mayo, and I have cochinita pibil in the crock pot.

Feeling Krabby

No, no. I'm fine. I just wanted to use up some surimi last night. You know, the fish that's made to look (and taste, in theory) like crab. So some spell it krab to let you know they got the cheap stuff.

I got the recipe off Louis Kemp's website - http://www.louiskemp.com/recipes/seafood_enchiladas.php

I only used one package of krab since there are two of us and we are trying to cut back on meat portions. And I used the "Mexican cheese blend" instead of cheddar. It was okay, but I thought it was on the bland side. If I make it again, I will add some spice to it - paprika maybe, or crushed red pepper, or the jalapenos mentioned as a garnish.

A throw-together meal

But it tastes good. Back to cooking today after a couple nice nights off.

For lunch I roasted some veggies - a small eggplant, 8 baby bella mushrooms, half a red onion, a red pepper and some spinach - and made quesadillas. The spinach was a little dry. I'm not sure I'd do it that way again. And I forgot to put in a couple garlic cloves. And I forgot to take a picture of it.

Tonight's meal, it was time to use up some remnants. I had 10 shrimp, a small bunch of broccoli, and homemade pasta I'd put into the freezer when I didn't use it the day I made the batch. I cheated and used Knorr's Parma Rosa sauce, and sliced a clove of garlic and sauteed it along with the shrimp in olive oil.

The meal came together in about 20 minutes. One note to pass along - some of the pasta was clumped together like snarled hair. I guess I need to make sure it's a little drier next time before I put it in a zip-lock bag and stow it in the freezer.

This should be a fun week ahead!