1-31-13

So the other day the wife wasn't feeling good so I offered to make something with the chicken that we had. When I got home life got in the way and I had to run but not before giving her the recipe that I had thought about on the way home. I had her post it on her blog as she was the one that ended up making it but I thought about it and it WAS my idea so you can check it out here.

1-31-13

I got an e-mail today asking if I wanted Tuna something to eat this evening. I took it as a challenge as our boy doesn't like tuna at all. This is what my brain came up with.

You will need
3 cans tuna
1/2 c cheddar cheese
1/2 c mixed Mexican cheese
1/2 c bread crumbs
bread
2 eggs
1 tsp of oregano basil and garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste

For the sauce

Mix together in a small bowl
1/2 c ketchup
1Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2Tbsp Light Mayo

Mix together the tuna, Mexican cheese, bread crumbs, eggs, spices, salt and pepper in a bowl. Form burger patties. Place patties in a pan and use the broil feature on your oven. Bake for 4 minutes on one side and then flip. Cook for 3 minutes and then add the cheddar cheese and back for another minute. Toast your bread and place the done patties on the bread. Add the sauce to the top of the patty and top with another piece of bread.

Tonight we served these with potato smiles that were baked in the oven. It was super easy and pretty fast too. I think it took all of 20 minutes including cook time. The daughter loved it but she loved tuna and though the boy said he didn't like the burger he ended up eating the entire thing.

1-12-13

The other day I mentioned to the wife that the salmon fillets looked really good in the freezer at Walmart. A couple of days later, she came home with them. Good wife huh? Then my son says to us that he is so excited because he "loves salmon".  So being the weekend I decided what a perfect time to make another post here.
I searched the internet and found a nice maple glazed salmon on Food.com. I did make a couple of changes to the recipe listed in the link and I'll post what I did here. While I made the salmon my wife made us a wonderful side dish. It was Baked Parmesan Garlic Risotto with Peas and you can find it here at her blog, lunches fit for a kid.

3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch, dissolved in
1 tablespoon water
4 salmon fillets
1 scallion, sliced thin (white part plus about 2-3 inches of the green)

Directions:
In a small bowl whisk together the syrup through cornstarch solution until smooth.
Place the fillets skin-side-down in a large saute pan.
Pour the syrup mixture over the salmon.
Bake about 7 minutes at medium high heat until the fish flakes easily; baste with glaze halfway through cooking.
Sprinkle with scallion before serving.

Cornstarch added and mixed with water. Make sure to stir while adding to water or it will clump.

 

 

Basting ingredients all mixed together. Looks pretty good already.

 

Nothing looks better then fish cooking in a pan. Beautiful.

 

Fine sliced scallions. Working on the knife skills.

 

 

Fish has been flipped and basting process has been done

 

 

Added scallions while fish was still in the pan.

Removed fish from the plate to get ready to be served



Final plating. There is a second part of this meal but I didn't make it. The wife did.

 So that was the main course. It turned out pretty darn good. I dare say almost restaurant ready. My son ended up not liking the salmon after all but my daughter loved it! After we all got done eating our kids went down for a sleep over at my parents so I decided..  it's time for dessert! What would it be? What would make the wife happy...  Oh wait..  let's try this...

Chocolate Volcano Cakes! After watching a couple of videos on youtube I didn't think it would be all that bad. Again, I turned to food.com for the recipe. While watching the videos and reading the recipe I must have messed a couple of things up in my mind though. When it was all done it wasn't really a volcano it was more of a dried up puddle. Still the taste was wonderful and it really was asking for a scoop of ice cream. To bad we didn't have any.

4 tablespoons butter unsalted.

2 ounces chocolate (We used 90% unsweetened)
1 large egg yolk separated from egg white 
1 large eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour (we used king Arthur flour)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Powdered Sugar

 Preheat oven to 350
Melt butter and unsweetened chocolate together. You can use a double broiler or the microwave. Do this slow so you don't burn the chocolate.
Mix egg, yolk, and sugar together. No lumps. I did it all by hand. It didn't take too much work.
Butter the ramekins very well including the bottom and sides, all the way up and dust with some cocoa powder.
Sift the flour and cocoa into the egg and sugar mixture very slowly. Make sure to keep all the lumps out of it.
Add the melted butter and unsweetened to the mixture again stirring to smooth.
Pour mixture into a piping bag so that you don't make a big mess getting it into the ramekin and so that there is no air space. After about 3/4 full tap the ramekin on the counter to settle it.
Put ramekins in another dish and bake in the oven for 15-18 minutes. Remove them from the oven and let them sit for 5 minutes. Cut around the edges and place a plate over top. Turn the plate and ramekin over at the same time and dust the top with powdered sugar.

From what I understand you kind of have to play around with the time here. If you make them and they flow too much you didn't cook them long enough. If they don't flow at all you have to cook them less. It's too bad that this time we cooked them a little too long so we didn't get any flow when we cut into them but they were delish! I fully intend on making them again and possibly adding a little peppermint extract to the batter.

Mixing egg and sugar. Watch for the color change

looking good

Butter and unsweetened chocolate melted perfectly

Dusted and ready to go

Added the two mixes together.

Fresh out of the oven

First cut! No lava. Oh well, maybe next time!

 Over all, both of these recipes were pretty easy and quick.  The Salmon took less then 30 minutes and the cake was about an hour. Both were yummy.

-Chris

 

Fried mushrooms with spinach crescent rolls

How interesting is it that on the very day I decided to create this blog the wife decided that she was too tired to make dinner. She has been doing meatless Mondays as part of her blog for some time so she was going to make a mushroom soup that she had made in the past. It was a very good soup however, tonight became mine. With open mushrooms ready to go I had to use those. What to have with it? We had some frozen spinach in the freezer and we had some Pillsbury crescent rolls. The wheels started to turn and this is what I came up with.

1 container frozen spinach
1/2 cup feta cheese
crescent rolls
salt to taste
pepper to taste

First, I took the frozen spinach out and put it in a saute pan. I got the spinach separated and then added about 1/2 a cup of feta cheese, a pinch of salt and some fresh ground pepper to taste. I let it cook in the saute pan over a medium low heat. I popped open the crescent rolls and lay them flat on a sheet pan and put about a Tbsp and a half of my spinach feta mix in the crescent triangles and wrapped them up normally and baked using normal instructions. 375 degrees for 12 minutes and that part of the meal was done. It was like an ultra cheap Spanakopita without anything other then spinach and feta, salt and pepper. Still, it was pretty good and very easy. Best of all, there was enough left over in the pan to make some delicious lunch leftovers. :)

Crescent Rolls all cooked and ready to be served

about 8oz or 1 container mushrooms
1.5c flour
2-3 eggs
1.5-2cups breadcrumbs
salt to taste
pepper to taste
3/4 Tbsp garlic powder 
cooking oil


For the mushrooms, I had 3 bowls. In the first I added about 1.5c of flour, in the second I cracked open 3 eggs added about 1/4c of water and whisked together, and in the last, I added breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and about 3/4 Tbsp of garlic powder and mixed the dry ingredients together.
If needed clean the mushrooms and leave whole. Dry them off when your done cleaning them, no extra water will be needed as they will later go into a fry pan with hot oil. Add the mushrooms a few at a time to the flour and shake(with the lid on). Add to the egg and water bowl. Continue this until all mushrooms are coated in flour and in the egg and water bath. When they are all in, cover that bowl and shake to get the egg bath all over the mushrooms. Add mushrooms, only a few at a time to the bowl with the dry ingredient mix.

precooked but ready to go mushrooms

Be sure to coat the mushrooms as even as you can so that there are no bare spots. Place covered mushrooms in a bowl until ready to cook.

In a larger, deep fry pan add enough oil to cover about 1/2 of the mushroom height. Don't worry if you don't get it right, you can add a little at a time later if needed. I set our burner to about 3/4 heat and let the oil heat up so that if you drip a little water it pops a little but then relaxes again. When oil is to the proper heat, add mushrooms and let them sit for about 5 to 7 minutes and then turn over for another 5 to 7 minutes making sure to completely cook them. Take them out of the oil and set them on a paper towel to dry and serve.

This is how they looked after cooking

My wife added a ranch for dipping them into and the meal was complete for tonight. It was in no way a 5 star meal but it did it's job. The kids ate everything up and as I type this, I am pretty full having had 4 of the mushrooms and 2 of the crescent rolls.

Over all this entire meal was done in a little less then 30 minutes prep and cook time and I would rate it as easy.