Hello again internet universe. Tonight we will have an interesting combination, but one with a good message. Yes, you can turn frozen pizza into a gourmet meal AND you can make lunch in the morning that is a real meal and not a sandwich.
So, Thursday night in the Hammond Brown household was a late one. Upon arriving back home at 8pm the idea of cooking dinner was a rough one, especially since I also wanted to spend time with the Sydmeister before she crashed out a 9pm. Thus, when the hubs suggested I "just cook the pizza in the freezer," I was tempted. At first I refused, but then I thought to myself, if I pair it with a gourmet salad than maybe it is not so horrific of a family meal. Out comes Mr. Pizza and into the oven he goes. So my only real recipe was my salad and it was AWESOME. Baby arugula, check. Vine ripened tomato, check. I like my tomatoes in big square chunks, there is something about a big chunky bite of tomato that is delicious. No wimpy diced tomatoes in my salads. I also decide that hard boiled egg would be delicioso, so on goes a pot of water and in go 4 eggs and the burner goes to 'high.' Once this boils, I give it maybe 8-10 minutes and then they're done. Just enough time to finish everything else. By the way, 2 of these eggs are for the salad and 2 are for lunch tomorrow. Little things like this are good to make extra of. I am not a big fan of eating left overs from the night before for lunch. It is boring. But if I can do little things along the way for the next day I will.
And now for the piece de resistance, the dressing. I am kind of craving caesar dressing, homemade, but of course I don't have any anchovies. I will just see what I come up with. In the freezer I find pine nuts and pistachios. Yes, I keep my nuts in the freezer (hehe). Bust out the blender or food processor, I personally like my blender bc I keep losing the blades to any food processor that comes into my house. WHY couldn't cuisinart make a food processor with a fixed blade. I don't need to do 6,000 different things with it, I just need to not have 17 tiny parts to keep track of.
My apologies, back to business. In we go with the pine nuts, bout a palm full, then just enough olive oil to cover them. What else, what else? Oh I remember, big ole pinch of sea salt and lots of fresh ground pepper. Parmesan cheese... mmm... my favorite. And this time the good old grated kind in the green canister. Classy Classy! One egg. Raw and delicious. If you fear this part of the recipe than I would like to bring to your attention that every time you have ever ordered a caesar salad in your life you have been eating raw eggs. Same goes if you eat sorbet. Suck it up and drop the raw egg in. I promise that as soon as you blend it and it looks all nice and pretty you won't even remember about the egg. Add a decent sized splash of vinegar. I used balsamic, but sherry would work too. Whatever vinegar you have will work, but the darker the better. Now flip the switch. Please don't forget the lid. Sydney liked watching the blender. She would stare at it like it was magical.
Upon liquification of this loverly concoction, I opened the lid back up, added some pistachios and here is where you would add more olive oil if it was a bit dry. But go easy, this is supposed to resemble caesar dressing not vinaigrette, so it should be thicker. The reason you add the pistachios last is because you don't want them to fully blend and if your concoction is thick enough then some of the pistachios won't sink and hit the blender blades so you will still have chunky pistachios to add crunch to your salad. OR if you are using a food processor you can just hit it once really quick and then you still have chucks of pistachio. Yum!
Check the eggs. Well, honestly you should have checked the eggs already to see if the water was boiling, pulled the lid off the pot and let them boil until now-ish. Pull the eggs off and run cold water into the pot, for a while, to cool the water down. Throw a bunch of ice into the water to cool down the eggs quickly.
Pour the dressing over the arugula and tommy-toes and toss. Dice up a small shallot or a bit of red onion and throw that in as well. Take a breather, sip on some wine or do a shot of tequila or whatever floats your boat. Oh crap! The pizza! Miraculously I check the pizza and it is perfect. Pull it out, slice it up.
Now your eggs should be cool. Peel em and rough chop them into the salad. Toss again. Plate it up. LOTS of salad to make up for the fact that you are eating frozen pizza. Put some slices of pizza next it. Doesn't pizza look healthier and better next to this fabulous salad?! I almost feel as though I actually cooked something... almost.
For lunch the next day I make ground turkey bolognese. I make it in the morning before work. Yeah that' right!! It takes me 15-20 minutes and I do the whole thing with a baby in my arms. If I can do that, anyone can. I will save that story for tomorrow. Just so that I can keep my imaginary readers on the edge of their imaginary seats.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Wednesday! Wednesday! Wednesday!
When I think Wednesday, I think... fish tacos? Ok, so tonight was a grand experiment. My first time making fish tacos and I made the whole thing up as I went. I will admit from the get go that I learned two things tonight. 1 - once you get a good fish fry mix down, never stray from it. NEVER! 2 - salad in a bag may be a good idea, but shredded cabbage in a bag has a FUNKAY flavor. Never again will I buy bagged cabbage, had to toss out a whole thing of spicy cole slaw. Boo.
So the evening began with Syd and I making cole slaw together. I will say that over all the years that I have been cooking and the MANY times that I have made coleslaw, I have yet to find a coleslaw recipe that I truly love. I mean, my homemade fish fry, can't beat it. My chocolate mousse, took years to perfect. My souffles, unexplainably perfect every time. And the one thing that I can't get my own signature recipe down for is coleslaw? Really? Coleslaw. And every time I try it I convince myself that THIS will be the one that will be delicious. And so far... fail. The one good thing that came out of this coleslaw dish was that Syd and I had fun making it. She likes throwing cabbage on the floor and watching Iverson dive for it, which Iverson loves as well. It was a win win situation for everyone.
I am sparing everyone the coleslaw recipe, instead I recommend just doing more of the other accompaniments. More corn, more chopped lettuce, etc.
So fish tacos... E-A-S-Y. Love it. First thing down, make your sour cream. I juiced two tiny little limes into a bowl, added sour cream, salt, cayenne, paprika and dried cilantro to taste. Stir it and voila! Fancy sour cream. I pop this in the fridge so that it is nice and cool when dinner is ready. On to my corn. I got a fresh ear of sweet corn and cut the kernels off. This is something I love doing because it reminds me of being a kid in a way that nothing else can. I can even remember the first time I was allowed to cut the kernels off by myself. A very proud moment. So I cut the kernels off and toss them into a pan with a pat of butter and a drop of oil. I grate one clove of garlic and toss it in as well because I am feeling sassy tonight. As that warmed up I chopped up a tomato, finely sliced a big handful of romaine and sliced my fish into small strips. I do my fish pieces pretty small. I like the flavor of the batter and since I batter them extremely lightly you can barely taste it unless the piece are small. They also cook super fast which is nice. As you are slicing up your fish toss the corn around and turn off the heat if it is done.
Get a big pan and pour a bunch of oil in it. Enough to thickly coat the bottom. Medium/High heat.
Now I make a little bowl of milk and a little bowl of fish fry. My fish fry goes like this... millet flour, rice flour, pinch of cayenne, cajun seasoning, fresh black pepper (lots), sea salt, garlic powder, paprika. I will not even sit here and pretend to tell you how much i put in of each of these things, I have no clue. But I will tell you this, after you make it once you will taste any mistakes that you made and you can fix them the next time. That is the best part. It is dumb luck to get something perfect the first time, and nobody likes people who skate by on dumb luck. ;-) I mean.. When you hit the nail on the head with a dish the first time you make it you feel like you have done something great, but there is this great sense of knowing that you feel only when you have also learned how you can mess it up.
So after I make my fish fry bowl and my milk bowl, I organize my lettuce, tomato and corn onto a happy little condiment plate. You can also do diced red onion here, but I aint got none. Ya heard. Time to check dat oil. Now instead of a thermometer for oil I use this high tech device that you may or may not have heard of. I think the common term is "wooden spoon," but I am not really sure. And yes, I use this device whether I am cooking in just a little oil or a ton of oil. You stick your wooden spoon into the oil, if little bubbles start to appear around it slowly your oil is hot but not crazy hot, if lots of bubble form pretty quickly than you oil is crazy good hot. If you can actually hear a sizzle and there are bubbles that are causing oil to spurt up, turn the heat down, what you tryin' to do burn down the house?? And yes, this is a scientifically proven method, FDA, EPA, CIA and DEA approved.
Fish goes in milk, shake it off. Fish goes in fry mix, spin it round, shake it off. Toss it in the pan with the oil that bubbled around your wooden spoon. Milk, Fry, Toss, Repeat, Milk, Fry, Toss, Repeat. Load it up. Then flip it. Try to go in a clockwise pattern so that when you flip you can follow the order that you tossed in. My little fish pieces take only a couple minutes on each side, so once I am done flipping I can pretty much just start removing them in the same order that I flipped. I put my fish onto a plate with a dish cloth on it, not paper towels. I like how the cloth absorbs way more oil than the paper towel and I didn't have to kill any trees in the frying of my fish.
With the fish done I turn on a rogue burner and toss a tortilla straight onto the fire. Forget the pan, just slap that baby on there. After a few seconds flip it with tongs, and repeat this a few times until the tortilla is warm, not burnt.
All tortillas get a slather of spicy sour cream out of the fridge, a bunch of fishies, lettuce, corn and tomato. Sadly I would have loved to have coleslaw on this dish as well, but it was not meant to be.
These fish tacos rocked. Next time though, I want a different fish. Tilapia has great texture, but that's about it. To bad BP took away all my fish.
Until next time...
So the evening began with Syd and I making cole slaw together. I will say that over all the years that I have been cooking and the MANY times that I have made coleslaw, I have yet to find a coleslaw recipe that I truly love. I mean, my homemade fish fry, can't beat it. My chocolate mousse, took years to perfect. My souffles, unexplainably perfect every time. And the one thing that I can't get my own signature recipe down for is coleslaw? Really? Coleslaw. And every time I try it I convince myself that THIS will be the one that will be delicious. And so far... fail. The one good thing that came out of this coleslaw dish was that Syd and I had fun making it. She likes throwing cabbage on the floor and watching Iverson dive for it, which Iverson loves as well. It was a win win situation for everyone.
I am sparing everyone the coleslaw recipe, instead I recommend just doing more of the other accompaniments. More corn, more chopped lettuce, etc.
So fish tacos... E-A-S-Y. Love it. First thing down, make your sour cream. I juiced two tiny little limes into a bowl, added sour cream, salt, cayenne, paprika and dried cilantro to taste. Stir it and voila! Fancy sour cream. I pop this in the fridge so that it is nice and cool when dinner is ready. On to my corn. I got a fresh ear of sweet corn and cut the kernels off. This is something I love doing because it reminds me of being a kid in a way that nothing else can. I can even remember the first time I was allowed to cut the kernels off by myself. A very proud moment. So I cut the kernels off and toss them into a pan with a pat of butter and a drop of oil. I grate one clove of garlic and toss it in as well because I am feeling sassy tonight. As that warmed up I chopped up a tomato, finely sliced a big handful of romaine and sliced my fish into small strips. I do my fish pieces pretty small. I like the flavor of the batter and since I batter them extremely lightly you can barely taste it unless the piece are small. They also cook super fast which is nice. As you are slicing up your fish toss the corn around and turn off the heat if it is done.
Get a big pan and pour a bunch of oil in it. Enough to thickly coat the bottom. Medium/High heat.
Now I make a little bowl of milk and a little bowl of fish fry. My fish fry goes like this... millet flour, rice flour, pinch of cayenne, cajun seasoning, fresh black pepper (lots), sea salt, garlic powder, paprika. I will not even sit here and pretend to tell you how much i put in of each of these things, I have no clue. But I will tell you this, after you make it once you will taste any mistakes that you made and you can fix them the next time. That is the best part. It is dumb luck to get something perfect the first time, and nobody likes people who skate by on dumb luck. ;-) I mean.. When you hit the nail on the head with a dish the first time you make it you feel like you have done something great, but there is this great sense of knowing that you feel only when you have also learned how you can mess it up.
So after I make my fish fry bowl and my milk bowl, I organize my lettuce, tomato and corn onto a happy little condiment plate. You can also do diced red onion here, but I aint got none. Ya heard. Time to check dat oil. Now instead of a thermometer for oil I use this high tech device that you may or may not have heard of. I think the common term is "wooden spoon," but I am not really sure. And yes, I use this device whether I am cooking in just a little oil or a ton of oil. You stick your wooden spoon into the oil, if little bubbles start to appear around it slowly your oil is hot but not crazy hot, if lots of bubble form pretty quickly than you oil is crazy good hot. If you can actually hear a sizzle and there are bubbles that are causing oil to spurt up, turn the heat down, what you tryin' to do burn down the house?? And yes, this is a scientifically proven method, FDA, EPA, CIA and DEA approved.
Fish goes in milk, shake it off. Fish goes in fry mix, spin it round, shake it off. Toss it in the pan with the oil that bubbled around your wooden spoon. Milk, Fry, Toss, Repeat, Milk, Fry, Toss, Repeat. Load it up. Then flip it. Try to go in a clockwise pattern so that when you flip you can follow the order that you tossed in. My little fish pieces take only a couple minutes on each side, so once I am done flipping I can pretty much just start removing them in the same order that I flipped. I put my fish onto a plate with a dish cloth on it, not paper towels. I like how the cloth absorbs way more oil than the paper towel and I didn't have to kill any trees in the frying of my fish.
With the fish done I turn on a rogue burner and toss a tortilla straight onto the fire. Forget the pan, just slap that baby on there. After a few seconds flip it with tongs, and repeat this a few times until the tortilla is warm, not burnt.
All tortillas get a slather of spicy sour cream out of the fridge, a bunch of fishies, lettuce, corn and tomato. Sadly I would have loved to have coleslaw on this dish as well, but it was not meant to be.
These fish tacos rocked. Next time though, I want a different fish. Tilapia has great texture, but that's about it. To bad BP took away all my fish.
Until next time...
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Shrimp & Sweet Potato Rigatoni
Ok,so for my first night I took a recipe and ran with it. A sweet potato pasta sauce over rigatoni topped with sautéed shrimp. The recipe came from Giada De Laurentiis, but of course I followed it "loosely."
Here goes...
Peeled and chopped one medium sweet potato, chopped it up into small cubes and threw it in a big ole pan with some hot oil and salt and pepper. Let that sit on medium high and caramelize while I diced up a shallot, peeled 12 shrimp, threw some baby spinach into a bowl and chopped up one tomato (which ended up in the same bowl as the spinach).
Alright so now, if you've taken your sweet time and remembered to stir the sweet potatoes a couple times, you can throw in the diced shallot and a pinch of crushed red pepper with the potatoes. Stir it up and leave it. Add a splash of oil if the pan is getting dry. Spin yourself around and take 2 big garlic cloves and grate them, yes grate them. Super easy way to get a super fine dice on garlic. Just grate that bad boy. I have a micro-plane which is perfect, but the small side of a good old fashioned grater works perfectly. Now for my favorite part... homemade salad dressing. Warning, tangent ahead.
Store bought salad dressing is one of the saddest things that has happened to our society. Dressing is one of the simplest things to make, it lasts forever in your refrigerator once you make it and you can make it with things that you have in your house anyway! I am not making this up AT ALL. Do you have some type of oil? Some type of vinegar or a lemon? Perhaps a little salt and pepper? Mustard? Honey? Every bachelor with an empty fridge has mustard, but even if you don't have those last two, you can make salad dressing. Well, you can't make ranch dressing, but that is not a dressing, it is a dip. Yeah, I said it. Ranch is a dip, not a dressing. Get over it. Anyway, back to my rant. So you have all allowed the Krafts and Paul Newmans of the world to continuously sell you something you don't even need. Something that tastes like salty plastic. Gross, vomit. Store bought salad dressings are for the weak, the very weak. You take 2 parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice. If that is too complicated... put in some oil and then put in some vinegar, but less vinegar than oil. Add salt and pepper, add a squirt or spoonful of mustard, a big squirt of honey and shake/stir it up. Voila! Real, tasty salad dressing. Even if you left out mustard and honey, you are still good. And to close... if you hate raw vegetables so much that you have to slather them in things labeled "Thousand Island," "Chunky Blue Cheese," and "Catalina" then just get over it and stop eating salads. It's like watching someone swallow a raw oyster whole in .5 seconds and then swear that they love oysters. You eat salad because it is what the cool kids do, the "in" crowd. Just man up and say you hate raw veggies. It's lame to say, but not as lame as turning your delicious baby romaine organic salad mix pink with neon orange French "dressing."
Are we back? Ok, so if you read the rant then you know how I made the salad dressing. Put some water on to boil for the pasta, add oil and salt to this water. In a smaller pan, I got all whimsical tossed in a splash of oil, a pat of butter and a third of my grated garlic. I also threw in about a cup of chicken broth to my potatoes and stirred them around. Just as the butter in the little pan started to melt i threw in a few slices of yummy french bread and browned each side. Pulled them out of the pan and let them sit out on the counter until I was ready to plate. They became this indulgent cross between buttery garlic bread and a crunchy crouton. Yummmm.
Hopefully by now your potatoes are starting to get smushy. Just kind of squish them with your stirring utensil to see. If they aren't mushy enough keep cooking and adding a little bit of broth if the pan dries up. Hopefully your pasta water is starting to boil. Once your potatoes are smushy you want to scoop them into your blender or food processor and add about a half cup to a cup of milk. If you are using a blender, put a rag over the lid please. Or you could just be like the hubs and turn is on sans lid, but be prepared to burn your face off. Blend this up until smooth, maybe adding a little extra milk if you need to. You want it to be saucy. Ow Ow! Add salt and pepper to taste. Once you got it right, toss it back in the big pan and leave it there on super low heat.
Put yo rigatoni in da burlin' wata. Do it!
Drizzle that homemade dressing over your spinach and tomato salad. Use HALF of what you think you need. HALF!!!!!!!!! Then sprinkle a big pinch of parmesan cheese over it and toss. Resist the urge to pour dressing on your salad like it is A1. Plate up your salad, it's done. Plate up those yummy garlic toasts as well.
Now back to my small pan. Add some more oil and a pat of butter and the rest of the garlic. Once you can no longer see the "pat" of butter add in the shrimp. I only cook my shrimp a couple minute on both sides, but some people are weird about skrimps. So cook them however you like and then turn the heat off. Now, if you turn the heat off when they are almost done, they will continue to cook and be done when you need them. However, if you cook the crap out of them then at least move them to a plate so they don't turn into shrimp jerky. Personally if you can figure out how to get your shrimp a few minutes away from being done and then cut off the heat that is perfect. Then they will still be warm when you plate them.
Take the al dente pasta and strain and then dump into the big pan with the sweet potato sauce. Stir around and add parm cheese. I personally add tons of it, you add what you want, makes no difference to me.
I plated my noodles right up next to my salad and sprinkled them with more parm (if you know me this makes perfect sense) and a pinch of crushed red pepper. Topped it off with 6 shrimp each and voila! Dinner by Carly Brown.
Oh, and by the way I had tossed 4 chicken breasts into a baking pan before I started all of this, drizzled them with olive oil and red wine vinegar. I covered them in salt (lots), black pepper and dried parsley flakes and left them unattended the whole time at 375 degrees. I turned the oven off when I was done making dinner and there, right before my eyes, was lunch for the next couple of days. Some things in life are just easy. Cooking is one of them.
Here goes...
Peeled and chopped one medium sweet potato, chopped it up into small cubes and threw it in a big ole pan with some hot oil and salt and pepper. Let that sit on medium high and caramelize while I diced up a shallot, peeled 12 shrimp, threw some baby spinach into a bowl and chopped up one tomato (which ended up in the same bowl as the spinach).
Alright so now, if you've taken your sweet time and remembered to stir the sweet potatoes a couple times, you can throw in the diced shallot and a pinch of crushed red pepper with the potatoes. Stir it up and leave it. Add a splash of oil if the pan is getting dry. Spin yourself around and take 2 big garlic cloves and grate them, yes grate them. Super easy way to get a super fine dice on garlic. Just grate that bad boy. I have a micro-plane which is perfect, but the small side of a good old fashioned grater works perfectly. Now for my favorite part... homemade salad dressing. Warning, tangent ahead.
Store bought salad dressing is one of the saddest things that has happened to our society. Dressing is one of the simplest things to make, it lasts forever in your refrigerator once you make it and you can make it with things that you have in your house anyway! I am not making this up AT ALL. Do you have some type of oil? Some type of vinegar or a lemon? Perhaps a little salt and pepper? Mustard? Honey? Every bachelor with an empty fridge has mustard, but even if you don't have those last two, you can make salad dressing. Well, you can't make ranch dressing, but that is not a dressing, it is a dip. Yeah, I said it. Ranch is a dip, not a dressing. Get over it. Anyway, back to my rant. So you have all allowed the Krafts and Paul Newmans of the world to continuously sell you something you don't even need. Something that tastes like salty plastic. Gross, vomit. Store bought salad dressings are for the weak, the very weak. You take 2 parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice. If that is too complicated... put in some oil and then put in some vinegar, but less vinegar than oil. Add salt and pepper, add a squirt or spoonful of mustard, a big squirt of honey and shake/stir it up. Voila! Real, tasty salad dressing. Even if you left out mustard and honey, you are still good. And to close... if you hate raw vegetables so much that you have to slather them in things labeled "Thousand Island," "Chunky Blue Cheese," and "Catalina" then just get over it and stop eating salads. It's like watching someone swallow a raw oyster whole in .5 seconds and then swear that they love oysters. You eat salad because it is what the cool kids do, the "in" crowd. Just man up and say you hate raw veggies. It's lame to say, but not as lame as turning your delicious baby romaine organic salad mix pink with neon orange French "dressing."
Are we back? Ok, so if you read the rant then you know how I made the salad dressing. Put some water on to boil for the pasta, add oil and salt to this water. In a smaller pan, I got all whimsical tossed in a splash of oil, a pat of butter and a third of my grated garlic. I also threw in about a cup of chicken broth to my potatoes and stirred them around. Just as the butter in the little pan started to melt i threw in a few slices of yummy french bread and browned each side. Pulled them out of the pan and let them sit out on the counter until I was ready to plate. They became this indulgent cross between buttery garlic bread and a crunchy crouton. Yummmm.
Hopefully by now your potatoes are starting to get smushy. Just kind of squish them with your stirring utensil to see. If they aren't mushy enough keep cooking and adding a little bit of broth if the pan dries up. Hopefully your pasta water is starting to boil. Once your potatoes are smushy you want to scoop them into your blender or food processor and add about a half cup to a cup of milk. If you are using a blender, put a rag over the lid please. Or you could just be like the hubs and turn is on sans lid, but be prepared to burn your face off. Blend this up until smooth, maybe adding a little extra milk if you need to. You want it to be saucy. Ow Ow! Add salt and pepper to taste. Once you got it right, toss it back in the big pan and leave it there on super low heat.
Put yo rigatoni in da burlin' wata. Do it!
Drizzle that homemade dressing over your spinach and tomato salad. Use HALF of what you think you need. HALF!!!!!!!!! Then sprinkle a big pinch of parmesan cheese over it and toss. Resist the urge to pour dressing on your salad like it is A1. Plate up your salad, it's done. Plate up those yummy garlic toasts as well.
Now back to my small pan. Add some more oil and a pat of butter and the rest of the garlic. Once you can no longer see the "pat" of butter add in the shrimp. I only cook my shrimp a couple minute on both sides, but some people are weird about skrimps. So cook them however you like and then turn the heat off. Now, if you turn the heat off when they are almost done, they will continue to cook and be done when you need them. However, if you cook the crap out of them then at least move them to a plate so they don't turn into shrimp jerky. Personally if you can figure out how to get your shrimp a few minutes away from being done and then cut off the heat that is perfect. Then they will still be warm when you plate them.
Take the al dente pasta and strain and then dump into the big pan with the sweet potato sauce. Stir around and add parm cheese. I personally add tons of it, you add what you want, makes no difference to me.
I plated my noodles right up next to my salad and sprinkled them with more parm (if you know me this makes perfect sense) and a pinch of crushed red pepper. Topped it off with 6 shrimp each and voila! Dinner by Carly Brown.
Oh, and by the way I had tossed 4 chicken breasts into a baking pan before I started all of this, drizzled them with olive oil and red wine vinegar. I covered them in salt (lots), black pepper and dried parsley flakes and left them unattended the whole time at 375 degrees. I turned the oven off when I was done making dinner and there, right before my eyes, was lunch for the next couple of days. Some things in life are just easy. Cooking is one of them.
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