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KitchenKatalog: Blog 338
Tuesday, February 22, 2011, 07:32 PM
We wanted a simple and fast meal and this is what we got. It was really easy. It was the Trader Joes red-pepper spread put on chicken and baked for about 20-30 minutes. And, we had steamed broccoli.
This was easy and good-enough. I want to make my own red pepper sauce next time. Also, maybe we will make a red pepper sauce and serve it on pasta. That could be good!
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1020, 2011-02-22_193202
Monday, February 21, 2011, 11:31 PM
This is based on the recipe below.I actually do not know much about it because Meredith did all of it because I was stuck on campus until around 10:00pm that night.
It was a bit dry and flavorless but we both really liked the idea of it so we may try again with more seasonings.
**Mexican Braised Beef ** (from Thekitchn)
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Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1018, 2011-02-21_233107
Monday, February 21, 2011, 08:10 AM
We saw this recipe a while ago and it sounded easy and fast. The only major changes was we used really light whole wheat bread instead of what they suggest. We found bread with great nutritional information that was still okay. The bread flavor was strong so that may have affected it. We also used a bit more so I added a tad more vinegar.
I liked that this recipe was really low in points and healthy. Plus totally vegetarian. We will probably make it again. Also, despite being "Moroccan", it was rather light on the spices which was interesting. Sadly, we had to use pre-made tomato sauce but next time, we will try to make our own.
Moroccan Spinach and Chickpeas (from SeriousEats)
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Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1015, 2011-02-21_081007
Saturday, February 19, 2011, 10:22 PM
This was a good meal largely inspired by this blog post but with some serious changes. The thing is that their pasta recipe calls for 7 egg yolks though we would have halved it anyway. And it just doesn't sound healthy at all. We made the concession of just using white flour but that was too much egg. So we used egg beaters. Also, even though we had beets (which we roasted later), we did not have time to roast them first so we used canned and then puréed them. Well, still, it all came together strangely. I had to play with the dough a lot to get it the right moistness but it was a very, very streachy dough. After letting it rest for about 35 minutes we started rolling and cutting.
This dough was okay to roll but it did not want to be cut. We had to manually tear the cuts apart. And it was still very, very streachy. I also thought it would all stick but thankfully, in the boiling water, it came apart. I used a lot of salt in the water which did add a nice flavor to the pasta. It ended up fine and tasted good.
We basically followed their lead on the cod but it came out a bit salty. Also, despite our best efforts, it stuck to the pan a little bit. It was thankfully not over cooked but it was salty. Meredith liked it more than I did. Also, we used chives as a garnish/side.
Meredith found a few recipes and made a white wine sauce sans cream/milk, etc. It was okay but very thin. I like the shallot and leak scraps in it. I though they were good even if the sauce was thin.
Finally, we combined the beets we were going to use with some purple majesty potatoes and roasted them with olive oil, garlic and seasonings. It was funny because they were very hard to tell apart until you were in a different light. They were also good.
I had an interesting observation when making this. I have noticed that every time I have made pasta (not including ravioli), the seemingly straight strands twist a lot after coming out of the water. If you look back, this is fairly evident from the pictures. Today, while eating, I remember reading a thing about different dough kneading techniques and one of the things they said about using the stand mixer (my preferred method), was that it creates twisted gluten strands. I wonder if that is what was happening in the pasta and the twists cause them to curl in the heat of the water. Of course, I could imagine the twists counter acting each other but maybe a trend prevails. Just a thought. Maybe next time I will just use the food processor and compare. In that case, it is fully kneaded in like 3 minutes which seems too fast but we will see.
Local copy of recipe copied from comments
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1006, 2011-02-19_222259
Saturday, February 19, 2011, 11:20 AM
These were pretty easy for breakfast. We basically sautéed onions, peppers, some low(er) fat bacon and anything else that sounded good. We then added it to a pammed pyrex dish and poured egg in it. We did it in the microwave until it was done. It made somewhat of a mess in the microwave but nothing too bad. We cut them in half when we took them out and made one regular and one open-face sandwich.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1002, 2011-02-19_112017
Thursday, February 17, 2011, 10:11 PM
This was roughly based on the recipe below but we made some major changes to make it healthy. First of all, we used almond milk instead of cream/milk. We also cut the butter and used Smart Balance (less of it too). Finally, we did it without a pie bottom and used Pillsbury reduced Fat crescents as a toping. We used lite Jarlsberg on top.
Honestly, it wasn't incredible. It just lacked some flavor. I do not think the missing flavor was butter but I do not know what it was. It just didn't taste like a "pot-pie". Oh well.
The artichokes were the canned ones we rinsed really well and topped with garlic, seasonings and a tad of bread crumbs. They were still rather salty
Point wise was okay. The mushroom stuff had very little points itself. The pillsbury was almost exactly 2.5 per sheet and there were 4 on the topping so it wasn't awful.
Torta Salata ai Funghi [Savory Mushroom Pie] (from Fresh mushrooms)
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Original Wordpress ID and Date: 999, 2011-02-17_221147
Thursday, February 17, 2011, 09:34 AM
We basically followed the recipe below on this one with only a few changes. I do not know the exact type of lentils we used but we used the ones with the lowest nutritional information. A few other changes were: Chopped the celery very fine and kept it, used some canned tomatoes (about half a can), used less pasta (about 4 oz) and it was whole wheat, skipped the parsley (forgot it), added chicken Better Than Bouillon to the water.
It was pretty good. I think it needs more tomatoes next time to help enhance the flavor. Other than that, I do not know what else we could add. It was not as good as our lentil soup last time.
Pasta e Lenticchie (From Mario Batali via The Food Network)
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Original Wordpress ID and Date: 996, 2011-02-17_093416
Thursday, February 17, 2011, 09:29 AM
The idea for this came from something Trader Joe's had but was very high in points. So, we decided to make our own. I read a bunch of recipes but most only called for buffalo sauce on top and not in the meatballs. Martha Stewart's recipe did have it in there so it is largely based on that.
We did not actually use butter but did just use Frank's Red Hot to get the same flavor. Also, we had to grind our own chicken. I read a few things on it and just used the food processor (and let the dishwasher clean the bowls afterwards.
I am not copying the recipe because I really didn't follow it very much. I cooked them at 400 for about 10-15 minutes.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 993, 2011-02-17_092919