Week 4 -- Seafood Lasagna

Week 4 = change of mind. Originally I wanted to do a dessert this week. That all changed when I offered my house for Sunday lunch with the family. So might as well use it to get a weekly meal out of the way. So about the meal. I've never made anything that I was so unsure about until now. All through the prep process... I was doubting that all the flavors would meld correctly. The recipe I used called for some herbs dry and others freshly chopped. I think the uncertainty made it even better when I took the first bite.

Sorry.... I'll make my own pasta next time!!!

MMMMMMMMushrooms!!!

Chopped mushrooms, onions and garlic....oh yeah....Pinot Grigio as well!! : )

Get back in the bowl mr!!!

Made my own shrimp stock with the shells of the raw shrimp

Feta and cottage cheese with fresh basil and lemon juice

Now do I have any volunteers for dishes???

Week 3 -- Shrimp Primavera

This week was super delicious! Shrimp primavera. It included shrimp, of course, penne pasta, and a bunch of sauteed veggies. As a last minute twist, I felt the sauce was lacking saucey-ness. It was more of a bunch of chopped veggies with a little buttery-sauce. So I added some Chardonnay to the mix and BOOM!!! Amazing-ness was the result.

Instead of a recipe, I'm just gonna say what I did. Skip all the boring stuff...

Cook some sort of pasta to taste. I used penne but I think it would have been much easier to eat with fettuccine. Steam/grill/boil large shrimp. Chop red and green bell peppers, half an onion, mushrooms, and tomatoes into cubes. Sautee the veggies in a butter-garlic-basil-marjoram-Bearnaise sauce. When veggies are cooked, throw in the cooked shrimp and a glass of Chardonnay and cook for a few minutes more. When everything smells amazing, mix in pasta and serve. MMMMMM.......

Oh yeah.... did I mention that this goes very well with oreo-peanut butter milkshakes?

Week 2 -- Steamed Mussels with Garlic and White Wine Sauce

So this meal was pretty fun to make. It involved shopping for a variety of fresh ingredients. I felt like a snob when asking for specific mussels at the store. Good quality mussels were pretty hard to come by. Of course, living in the desert, I had to expect that. It turns out that you buy mussels live. I imagined them clicking their shells all scary like. Trying to eat me and stuff. In reality, they move unbelievably slow. Something that I learned from my good buddy Chef Jean Pierre from YouTube (I consider him my buddy but he doesn't know I exist) is that if a mussel is partially open, they're just relaxed and sleeping. A gentle massage or tapping the shell will wake them up and they'll close. Who knew??

As for the taste of this dish..... it wasn't too bad. I have never cooked anything like this. At first we were a little bit apprehensive about eating. We weren't sure if they were cooked or not... But like any engineer knows, after a bit of nerdy research it turns out that everything was cooked properly. The mussels tasted amazing. The garlicy-oniony-winey taste was absorbed by the meat and was very juicy. I'm not normally a mussels fan but I gobbled down about 20 of them cause it was so delish...

Gotta practice my photography while I'm at it....

Ingredients:

1 large onion, diced

1 cup of diced tomato

1 small hand full of fresh herbs (parsley/basil)

4-5 cloves of garlic, pressed or finely chopped

1.5 pounds live mussels

1/2 bottle of dry white wine

Olive oil

Any kind of noodles

Step 1: The prep work

Dice up the onion and tomato. Finely chop the herbs and garlic. Set these things aside. Now for the mussels. You'll have to clean off the mussels by removing that weird hair and anything else that doesn't look appetizing. During this cleaning, any mussels that are partially open, try to click them together. They'll slowly close up. Any that are stubborn and won't close are dead. Go ahead and begin cooking the pasta at this point.

Step 2: The sauce
Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan. When hot, pile the onions, tomato, herbs, and garlic in the pan. After a couple minutes of cooking, stir in about half a bottle of good, dry white wine. Heat this to a boil. Taste it and if it needs any other seasonings like salt or pepper, add that now.

Step 3: Steaming the mussels
When the sauce is boiling, add the mussels and cover immediately. Cook these for 5-6 minutes WITHOUT PEEKING!!!! During this cooking time, since the mussels are alive ,they will get hot and open up. At this point, the mussels will absorb all the deliciousness and begin to cook. It only takes 6 minutes to fully cook them. Turn off the heat once you've verified that almost all of them have opened up.

Step 4: Presentation
Put the cooked noodles in a nice dish and top with 10-15 mussels. Drizzle on some leftover sauce onto the dish. Enjoy with the remaining wine. mmmmmmmmmmmmm...........

Week 1 -- The Spanglish Sandwich a.k.a. the BELT

As an easy start to my new years resolution/goal , I decided to recreate the sandwich from the movie Spanglish. In this movie, there's this somewhat romantic scene where Adam Sandler prepares what is said to be the most delicious sandwich ever for his love interest. I'm not so sure it's the most delicious..... but it is extremely tasty.

So in the movie, he makes only one sandwich. I noticed that this shouldn't be attempted to make in batches. Due to the ingredients cooling down, if you take too long on one step, the final product doesn't look as appealing.

Spanglish Sandwich

Ingredients:

Country White bread (2 slices)

Monterrey Jack cheese (1 slice)

Lean bacon (2-3 strips)

1 large egg prepared over easy

Large tomato (1-2 slices)

Butter Lettuce

Mayonnaise (1 Tbsp)

Butter (1 Tbsp)

Salt

Pepper

Step 1: Cook bacon and cheese toast

Place the Monterrey Jack cheese on a slice of bread and place in an oven or toaster on low heat. I used about 200 degrees. You don't want this to actually toast, but just melt the cheese. While this is heating, fry up the bacon. As in all cases, leaner bacon is better as it won't shrivel up so much. Do your best to keep the bacon flat. Place the cooked bacon on a paper towel to dry.

Step 2: Sandwich essentials

Spread the mayonnaise on the remaining slice of bread and top with healthy looking butter lettuce. Place the tomato slices on the lettuce. As a tip for slicing tomatoes, use a very sharp knife and cut thick slices. This reduces the tendency of the tomato squishing.

Step 3: Egg over easy

Prepare to fry an egg. First off, you want to be using good quality large eggs. Some eggs spread too quickly and the edges get a little too crispy. The egg also needs to be cooked over easy. Heat a tablespoon of butter on a skillet and wait for it to melt. At this time, remove the cheese/toast from the oven and place the “degreased” bacon on top. Once the butter is melted, swirl the butter around the pan and start cooking the egg. You’ll want the heat around medium with a cover on the pan. Once the egg is cooked enough to move around the pan when you lift the handle, add salt and pepper to the egg and finish cooking.

Step 4: Presentation

For this step, get a nice serving plate and place the cheese/toast/bacon slice on it. Put the hot egg on top and flip the tomato/lettuce/mayo slice on top to complete the sandwich. Make sure whoever you’re making this for is watching for the cut. Cut the sandwich in half width-wise making sure that the egg yolk was punctured. Don’t try and get all cutesie and go for a triangle, it will ruin the effect. Definitely eat this quickly as the tomato will cool down the egg fast.

A couple of notes on batch sandwich making. This requires an egg over easy. The butter is definitely the way to go with frying the egg for flavor but should be limited to 2 eggs at a time. I tried vegetable oil and the flavor wasn’t as good and it actually over cooked the eggs. The best way to go is have everything ready for all sandwiches and use as many pans as you can for the eggs. This way the eggs are cooked properly and don’t become medium cooked.  When cutting multiple sandwiches, wipe the knife off after each cut. The yolk from the previous sandwich gets all over the top slice of the new sandwich. Oh yeah,,,,the reason I called it a BELT is it's basically a BaconLettuceTomato with Egg... thus BELT

52 in 2012

The new years goal for 2012 is to make 52 new meals. One meal per week. The big challenge that I am placing on this goal is that every meal must be something that I've never attempted before. I've cooked quite a bit and have always wanted to do more cooking from scratch. For this challenge, I'm going to be preparing just about everything fresh with the exception of bread/cheese/growing my own veggies... That just seems to be going a tad overboard. A few weekly meals are going to be attempting to duplicate famous recipes from restaurants such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster... One thing that I am definately doing is creating my own dishes, just to see how crazy my creative side is.

To go along with these all of these meals, I'm going to  hone my photography skills. I want the pictures of the meals to be magazine/cookbook quality. Not just a picture from my phone or simple camera... But something where if I saw that picture in a magazine, I would try and eat it. I would definately love to put together a cookbook at the end of the year with the recipes and pictures.

Stay tuned for a weekly posting on the meal of the week!!
-Nathan