Hi lambs, just a quick update from my post yesterday…the countertops are in. We can’t put anything heavy on them for 24 hours…I will be counting the hours until I can place all of my cooking appliances on top. Look at all that space, YAY!
There are times after a meal, when you sit back and have loved the whole experience from start to finish. I chose this Roasted Lamb with Pomegranate Sauce from Cooking Light and Mixed Greens with Pears, Walnuts, Gorgonzola and Green-Tea Vinaigrette from Bon Appetit and we loved it.
The lamb was a simple sear and roast and then you let it stand for ten minutes to help all of the delicious juices redistribute. This is going to sound strange, but I liked that when measuring each liquid for the sauce the recipe used up my 1, 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 cups all at once so I could easily mise en place them all and pour as I go. Anal retentive much? Me thinks so. After resting, the lamb came out perfectly medium rare and juicy to boot plus pomegranate sauce rocked. The only thing I would change is using one teaspoon of flour instead of two, as it was slightly thicker than desired and I think reducing the amount would do the trick if you are into a thinner sauce.
Onto the salad…shockingly easy and the vinaigrette is AMAZING. I was so happy to see a second use of the green tea (matcha) powder I purchased for this dish last week. I feel like matcha is quickly becoming the flavor enhancer of the day. The vinaigrette mixed with the toasted walnuts, cheese and pears was so light and delicious and worked perfectly as an accompaniment to our lamb dish.
I highly suggest giving these two a try lambs! The salad recipe originates from SENCHA in Colorado Springs and I couldn’t find it online so here you go. Heart you!
Mixed Greens with Pears, Walnuts, Gorgonzola and Green-Tea Vinaigrette
Prep 25 minutes
Total 25 minutes
2 tablespoons of Champagne vinegar
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon match green-tea powder
3 tablespoons corn oil
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (thanks for the excellent olive oil Kari H.!)
6 cups (loosely packed) mixed greens
2 pears, peeled, halved lengthwise, cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
1/2 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
Puree vinegar, shallot, chives, mustard, basil, and matcha in processor. With machine running, gradually add corn oil and olive oil. Season vinaigrette to taste with salt and pepper. Place mixed greens, pear wedges, toasted walnuts, and Gorgonzola cheese in large bowl. Add 1/3 cup of vinaigrette to salad mixture and toss to coat evenly. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Divide salad among plates and serve, passing remaining vinaigrette alongside.
– Compiled by Zinzi Edmundson and Janet Taylor McCracken
And now, I leave this for David…the Brie/Gorgonzola line is just too appropriate…There’s Something About Mary
As I’ve mentioned before, we are renovating our kitchen and after countless hours installing new cabinets, sawing, hammering, sweating (but no tears!) and praying to the home gods, we finally get our new countertops in! Needless to say, my cooking will be a little quiet the next few days while we finalize but I did manage to create a menu plan for this week. I hope I get around to making them all but, hey, who cares, we are almost there lambs! Pictures to come, possibly one of me attempting to give the countertops a hug. 
Monday: Roast Lamb with Pomegranate Sauce and a Mixed Greens with Pears, Walnuts, Gorgonzola and Green-Tea Vinaigrette (Bon Appetit, not on the website yet)
Tuesday: Fish with Orange and Saffron Broth (Bon Appetit, not on the website yet)
Wednesday: Pan-Fried Chicken Fingers with Spicy Dipping Sauce and Bacon and Ranch Mac and Cheese
Thursday: Halibut Provencal with Mixed Greens
I’ve had this recipe on my radar since it appeared in the November issue of Cooking Light but for some strange reason every time I had it planned for dinner something would come up (friends showing up in town, last-minute errands etc). BUT the food gods were smiling upon me last night because I finally got around to it. I will say one thing, if you don’t have a specialty food store in your area finding matcha powder might be harder than finding a needle in a haystack. After a visit to HEB with no luck, David and I walked around Whole Foods Market looking everywhere, asked a staff member that led us to the wrong thing and then David suggested we look in the tea aisle…duh right? We found the glorious powder and I purchased the scallops last night.
Lord have mercy this was amazing. That cream was dyn-o-mite. Plus, it’s 10 ingredients long with just three steps so it came together in 15 minutes tops. I followed everything to the letter, but since this is meant for first course, I upped the amount of scallops and on the side we had sauteed baby bok choy with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, chile flakes and minced garlic. Simple, fresh, light and that sauce is crackalicious.
If you decide to make this I hope the food gods shine down upon you and nothing stands in your way, but hey I guess all good things do come to those who wait eh? I might start selling my leftover matcha powder to the highest bidder though.
Soup and bread – two food soul mates. I for one know I don’t like a yummy bowl of soup without some delicious crusty bread. Now kick that up a notch with this Tuscan version of soup known as Ribollita or in Italian Reboiled that has delicious crusty bread in it. Yep…IN IT. I’ve never heard of this soup but when I saw it in the Cooking Light November issue I thought I would save it for a cold, blustery day. Well, it’s here, right now actually, swishing the trees outside our windows and is very brisk indeed. A Ribollita is nothing fancy, just vegetable scraps and day-old bread but it does take time to make – three days from what I could find in my research. This one only took a few hours for chopping, baking, and of course building the soup so eh, that’s not so bad.
Y’all, this soup was super gentle. The flavors of the kale, tomatoes, beans, carrots, potatoes, yadda, yadda, yadda and yes, my delicious bread made this SUPER hearty. This bad boy is packed with good-for-youness and it’s vegetarian. We loved this for a gentle lunch on such a cold, windy day. Tonight, it’s Scallops with Green Tea Cream if I actually get around to making them this time. I swear, aliens are going to abduct me to ensure I don’t. More on this issue later and oh! if you haven’t yet, be sure to become a fan of Cooking Inside the Lines on Facebook today. Warm reboiled hugs.
Mark Bittman, famous cookbook author and well-known food writer of his weekly food and recipe column The Minimalist in the The New York Times can also add Cooking Light contributer to his already impressive list of accolades. Since his debut in the magazine, I’ve wanted to try one of his recipes and his Eggs Poached in Curried Tomato Sauce was a must. I’ve always loved the traditional version of this Israeli dish known as shakshuka, but Mr. Bittman’s version looked out of this world in the flavor category. Get this, it calls for fresh ginger and garlic, jalepeno – for a spicy kick, cilantro, curry powder, coconut milk and of course, diced tomatoes. Flavor to the Nth degree if you ask me.
For some reason I thought this would take longer than it did but it came along in a New York minute. Follow his advice and make sure the sauce is wet before placing the eggs in to ensure proper cooking. I toasted the English muffins, chopped the green onions, plated and bam, an extraordinary and unique breakfast dish. I could have eaten that sauce on anything or just had it alone. I loved the ooey gooey egg sitting on top of the toasted muffin that soaked up the yolk and rock star sauce. Try this for an amazing breakfast treat, or heck, any time of day.
It’s Thanksgiving or as I like to think of it, the warm-up for my most favorite time of year…Christmas! We have plans to deck the halls until it looks like the holidays threw-up in here and since this week is wonky due to travel, games and mucho decorating, I menu-planned out this week and into next (I have issues I know). You may notice that all of these recipes are from Cooking Light. There’s no question that I love that magazine, but I typically mix up my recipe choices from all of my favorites as much as I can. But, given that this week I typically let my diet go to hell in a hand basket I try to kick-start my diet back on a healthy eating plan. What better way than to choose recipes that automatically lend themselves towards that? I’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming afterwards, scouts honor.
I hope you have a very, very happy and safe holiday week with your loved ones and oh, yeah, TEXAS FIGHT!
Saturday: Oil-Poached Salmon with Fresh Cucumber Salad (Update: this dish was just fine…)
Sunday: Coconut Crusted Chicken with Cashew-Curry Sauce
Monday: Scallops with Green Tea Cream and Baby Bok Choy (I never got around to making this but make this I will)
Tuesday: Roasted Red Snapper and Herb Pasta with Shrimp (not on the website, will post later!)
Wednesday: Grilled Flank Steak with Avocado Relish, Cumin Scented Potatoes
Every month Bon Appetit does an At the Market section highlighting a particular piece of produce or food item, in this case dates, that are at the peak of its season. One recipe that jumped off the page was the Braised Chicken with Dates and Moroccan Spices. Isn’t she a beaut?
LOVE is the first word that comes to mind when I think about this dish. Holy smokes, I’m like Celine Dion pounding my chest saying “lurrrrvvee” loud and proud. This was quite simple to put together and the spices, oh my the spices, made this sauce absolutely incredible. The chicken was fall off the bone perfection. I loved the shallots, dates, cilantro and crunchy almonds. This was my first time actually cooking with dates and let me tell you those are sticky little suckers when I was pitting and cutting them but well worth it because it was an awesome addition to the dish.
I served this with mashed sweet potatoes and shazam, dinner was served. For the lurve people do not pass go, do not collect $200 just go to the store, get the ingredients and get home ASAP to make this. Hands down one of my favorites I’ve made on this blog.
So poodles, I tried one of my all-time favorites last night again, the Spaghetti and Meatballs All’Amerticiana (you should hear me say this out loud, it sounds like I’m having a seizure) from Bon Appetit . Now, I followed this recipe exactly as instructed again except we made the meatballs (as the recipe says you can do) the night before.
That’s it.
However our delicious meatballs as I cooked them fell apart and became a ground beef mixture with bacon paste…bacon paste, yes I’m still in awe thank you very much.
While this was good, it wasn’t as good as I recalled. I mean don’t get me wrong, it has delicious layers of flavor and the sauce rocked. I also noticed the marjoram this time around which gave it nice little floral notes if I do say so myself but it just wasn’t the same.
I’m getting all Sherlock Holmes about this because I can’t figure out why this failed this time. Could it be because I made them the night before? One would think that would hold them up even better due to the fridge/tightening up time. Could it be that I’m still practicing on the gas range and messed it up that way…most likely poppets. Either way it was delicious but in a less meatballish kind of way.
Oh well, onward and upward lambs, tonight it’s braised chicken with dates…fingers crossed!
Talk about an Emily favorite. I have made this soup since it’s debut three years ago in the September 2007 issue of Cooking Light. To me, this is a bowl of comfort that I’ve turned to year after year say when I’ve got a cold, it’s gloomy and gross outside or your favorite team ever (rhymes with Fonghorns) gets dismantled again. Bleeb to the blarb.
The flavors of this soup with the tender braised chicken, soft red potatoes, shallots, and white wine are a perfect combo and the tarragon broth provides the perfect balance to make a beautiful soup. Ahhh, the smell of the broth hooks you before you even begin to eat. Plus it has a short ingredient list and is undeniably easy to make…see why I love it so?
I just ate this for lunch and now I’m all comfy and cozy at my desk. Now if only I could be in my pajamas with my slippers I would be set…and then I would probably get fired…then I would just have to make more soup to comfort myself. Enjoy this y’all, it’s a good one.
