So I'm putting these both into one entry not only because I am lazy, but because the most cookingest part of both of these is the meat, and you can really add whatever and eat these in any way. The lamburger is a standard recipe I use for most any kind of ground meat (with at least 16% fat), and it is fantastic with most any stuffing, especially bleu cheese. The fishwich is another standard recipe that I use for not only large fish patties but homemade fish fingers/fish sticks, and can be applied to any good thick piece of fish with ease. I'll add my recipe for mayonnaise, which is the base for the aioli on the lamburger (while the aioli is the base of the "tartar sauce" I use on the fishwiches) in another post (sorry! it's a ton more writing! ^_^ ).

Continue reading "Lamburger and Fishwich Double-Feature!" »

Posted at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, that was an epic fail. See how I set myself up to do something I'm not sure I can do and see where it gets me. So let's start over again. I made a really tasty fish dish tonight (alliteration!) that I took no photos of, but I can sure write it down. For the porn part of the food blog, take a look at these photos, and maybe I'll grace the site with recipes for them soon as well.

(more after the link-jump)

Continue reading "Dinner tonight" »

Posted at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's not a whole helluva lot I can say about okonomiyaki besides it is the ultimate awesome-leftover killer. With a base of the disgusting-sounding batter with cabbage (added to flour, baking soda, dashi, water), this stuff is really quite amazingly good. Of course, at the end, it's covered in sauce and mayo, so who doesn't like that? Some important stuff to remember: the dashi really does make this stuff work. I had some homemade stock I made from leftover yellowtail tuna, bonito, and seaweed. My house stank for 3 days, but the stock is indispensible in Japanese cooking. You can pick up tiny bottles of the dry stuff, but I can't vouch for it (though that's what I do use for my tamagoyaki). I have not used the mountain yam, which is supposed to make this stuff extra-good, because I have been too lazy to have someone pick it up for me at one of the myriad of Asian food markets within a 2-mile radius my my house.

Continue reading "Okonomiyaki, fuck yeah" »

Posted at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I said, "I need to start blogging this shit again," and here I am. Nearly 2 years since I got just too damned lazy to blog about food, I'm starting it back up again. Moreso because I'm having a lot of fun actually making different recipes and baking. Yes, baking, something I'd been so scared to really experiment with, due to pretty much what happens nearly every time I bake - I end up disappointed. However, that is a tale for another post. This tale is about corned beef.

Continue reading "Corned Beef Hash" »

Posted at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My mom made gumbo every once in a while while I was growing up, and I still think that her gumbo is better than any I've ever had at any restaurant, no matter where that restaurant may be. Mom lived in the Virgin Islands for a while before I was born, which is where she learned this recipe. She gave me the info for the base, and I just added into it some southernish greens and made a couple of changes to make it kosher. The recipe is relatively simple, but takes time. Making the roux itself takes almost 40 minutes and should not be attempted by someone who has lack of stamina, heart palpatations, or is less than 50' tall, as it must be stirred constantly.

That warning aside, this gumbo will knock your southern socks off:

Continue reading "A return from haitus: Chicken Gumbo" »

Posted at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A lot, I'll bet. There is an amazing variety of lettuces out there, not to metion everything else with which a salad can be made. And, with all the dressings available these days... but lettuce and dressing does not a proper salad make. It takes... love... feeling... understanding the greens, the accoutrements, and above all, the dressing. The flavors must meld together perfectly, creating a balance of sweet, savory, sour, and salty. The texture should be varied - soft, crunchy, smooth, rough.

You know I'm totally full of shit, right? Salads are like the easiest thing to make next to pouring a glass of milk. While not necessarily something one would serve to guests at a non-vegetarian-un-hipster-non-minimalist dinnerparty, this first salad offering is easy to make and effing lovely to eat. I persent to you Steak'n Salad:

Continue reading "How much Lettuce can one eat?" »

Posted at 6:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The weather here in sunny Boise Idaho has turned for the worse. For the past 3 days, the heat (95°F!!!!) has been leaving me ignoring the kitchen, prefering to eat out than to deal with the heat. It looks like gazpacho and multitudes of cold salads are in my future, starting with this one.

The only "cooked" part is a piece of chicken, and one totally doesn't need to be in the kitchen to watch chicken cook in the oven. The finished product was exactly what I was hoping for, and I'm thinking about making the exact same thing tonight. So awesomely good!!

Continue reading "Ch-ch-chinese Chicken Salad, bitchez" »

Posted at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the husband out of the country for a while, I take opportunities to test out recipes and screw up things I cook a lot to hopefully make them more pleasing to the pallette. Most importantly, I get to eat a lot of fish.

Ben isn't much of a fish eater (ever since I almost killed him with some bad ahi 4 years ago), which is really rather disappointing, since I enjoy fish a lot, and would eat it more often if he was willing to put up with it. Salmon, on the other hand, is something he'll eat as long as he can't smell it cooking. While this has forced me into several situations where I am in need of coming up with clever ways to cook it, the recipes leave much to be desired, as they usually produce too much of a tender fish. I have been plotting (since hearing that Ben was leaving again on his globetrotting jaunts) a dinner night with my friend Amy, who seems to be one of the few friends I have that "do" fish. While looking at some recipes on the Food Network site, I found the one mentioned above in the subject line. It sounded too good to pass up. Therefore, may I present to you the following:

A happy fish-eater

Continue reading "Champagne-Poached Salmon with Champagne Vanilla Sauce" »

Posted at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The mom's birthday occurred on the 7th of April. Since I'm an awesome daughter, I invited her and the finacé over for a celebratory dinner that night - all of which was centered around the fact that she wanted cheesecake for dessert. Since I don't make all too many dairy meals, I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to try out the lasagna again. The dinner would be happening during shabbat, so I prepped everything the night before, including making the cheesecake, while I was also making Italian Wedding soup for Thursday night's dinner. The stove and oven were full, and I was harried, up until midnight, when everything was done enough for me to sleep. Enjoy the fruits of my labors: No-meat lasagna (based again off of the Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook) - the cheesecake will be in a seperate post:

Continue reading "The Lasagna: Part II" »

Posted at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

With the incredible business of cleaning for Passover, along with all of the friend-type activities going on, I haven't had a second to start thinking about what I'm going to put up here. Thankfully, I documented a 3-course night: my version of an Italian Wedding soup, Lasagna, and Cheesecake. I made all of these in one night to make sure I had time to prep a salad for my mom's dinner meal, which included the lasagna and the cheesecake. The Italian Wedding soup we ate that night. So, I'll beg forgiveness and wow you with 3 different recipes today. First up: the Italian Wedding soup:

Continue reading "Here come the excuses... Italian Wedding Soup" »

Posted at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After Havdalah on Saturday night, I had a hankerin' for some good roasted chicken. The problem is that I didn't have any accoutrements that would normally go on/in a roasted chicken - so I made this up:

Burnt Honey-Mustard Slow-roasted chicken with Garlic wilted spinach, Curry carrot puree, and a last-minute Crunchy green asian salad.

The origins of the chicken are simple: I'm not a fan of most chicken skin. Every once in a while, I'll roast a chicken perfectly, and will really enjoy eating the skin, but I tend to just peel it off and toss it to the side, like a used up kleenex. So, thought I, why not just burn the crap out of the skin, but make the insides all juicy and lovely (hopefully without making the fire alarm go off)?

The origins of the sides are also simple: I was out of most everything I normally have with which to accompany vegetables and the like. Nevertheless, they all turned out wonderfully, and my notoriously picky-eater husband went back for seconds. If that doesn't sound like the cheesy "Cook of the month" quote from Better Homes and Gardens magazine, I don't know what does. Here're the recipes:

Continue reading "Back on track: A lesson in improvisation" »

Posted at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most nights when I cook dinner, it's more of a somewhat random throw-together of ingredients that I come up with when I take a look at what I have in the pantry and the fridge. Last Wednesday (almost a week ago! Sorry!) I put together something I've kind of done before via recipe... Sweet Potato Chicken (not containing any real sweet potatoes).

This type of meal usually ends up a little sweet, but with a bit of spice too. If you're adverse to the spice, just leave it out.

Continue reading "Sweet Potato Chicken with Baby Spinach and Rice Pilaf" »

Posted at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I must say that I'm a lover of the curry. From Thailand to Japan, I have had curry in the most amazing number of ways, but I most often make Japanese chicken curry at home. So much, in fact, that I'm bored of it and am currently taking a haitus. So, when I was looking for a beef stew recipe (I've had some beef cubes thawed in my fridge for days), I came across this recipe on epicurious that looked tasty, and I tried it out last night.

Continue reading "Fragrant Beef Curry W/ Rice" »

Posted at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This lasagna had it coming for 5 years. My notoriously picky-eating husband proclaimed his hatred for lasagna as a whole when we first started dating, which didn't bother me too much; there are plenty of other pasta dishes one can prepare that include the same ingredients. However, after a recent trip to Italy, he returned a lasagna convert. "Do you want to make lasagna?" he asked, "I had some in Italy I really liked. I think I didn't like it before because of the hard noodles." Hard noodles? No lasagna I have ever made included hard noodles.
I took him up on the offer last Friday. I originally planned to make the entire thing from scratch (including noodles), but ran out of time. I did, however, make the tomato sauce from scratch, as I have been wont to do lately. I was a little nervous, as I hadn't made lasagna in a very long time, and decided to base the recipe off of the one in the Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook. The recipe includes meat and cheese, which together aren't kosher, so I got rid of the meat, added some veggies, and here's how it turned out:

Okay, so it may not be the most aesthetically pleasing lasagna, but it tasted wonderful. For the recipe, etc, keep reading...

Continue reading "The Lasagna: Part I" »

Posted at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)