Scallops:
2 tbsp butter
1 small shallot, finely chopped (I omitted this ingredient - my bf hates any kind of onions)
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup sparkling wine (or if you're trashy and broke like me, use the champagne of ginger ales - Canada Dry!)
1/4 tsp paprika
cayenne, to taste
10-12 large scallops, patted dry
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tsp freshly chopped parsley
Potatoes:
3-4 red potatoes, sliced into rings
A bit of salt, pepper, and garlic powder
A bit of butter
A bit of shredded cheese
Normally, this kind of potato is made on the BBQ, but I live in an apartment with no balcony, so I had to use the next best thing:
It actually worked really well.
Chop up your potatoes and throw them in the microwave for 3-4 minutes, just to speed up the process. Most of the cooking should happen on the Foreman, but potatoes take a long-ass time to cook, and we're improvising and experimenting here, right?
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Melt the butter in a small pot over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic and cook 2 minutes. Mix in wine, paprika and cayenne and bring to a simmer, then remove from heat.
Put the scallops in a small baking dish, or if you're really adventurous, use large scallop shells.
Spoon or pour the butter mixture over the scallops.
Season with salt and pepper. As you can see, I like freshly ground pepper. As you can also see, I was in a real picture-taking mood this day. This goes in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the scallops are just cooked through.
Those potatoes are out of the microwave, so thrown them in some tinfoil (it has to be enough to go all the way around and make a little envelope) and put a bit of butter in there so they don't stick to each other, the foil, etc. Add your salt, pepper and garlic powder.
Hey, what's that in the background? Sparkling wine? Champagne? Canada Dry?
Fold the tinfoil over and put this on the Foreman for about 7 minutes.
When they come out, add a bit of shredded cheese and close the tinfoil again, so it melts. These are really like barbecued potatoes - they even have the crispy browned bits around the edges...
Just about now, your scallops should be done cooking....
There they are. Top them off with parsley and serve.
Yeah, show me the good stuff, baby.
- recipe for a pie crust, store bought pie crust, depends how much time you have.
- 1/2 cup butter
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
- Enough Granny Smith apples to fill a pie crust - I used about 4, but they were pretty big.
I was too lazy to make my own pie crust, even though I know they're easy. I used this:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour to form a paste.
Add water, white sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, and bring to a boil. I used about 1 tsp of nutmeg and maybe 1 tbsp of cinnamon... I didn't measure. Reduce temperature and let simmer.
Place the bottom crust in your pan. Fill with apples, mounded slightly. Cover with a lattice work of crust. I clearly suck at taking pictures, but my sister and friend are coming over today to make one of these with crabapples, so will try to do a little better...
Put this thing on a cookie tray or something! There is some runoff once it starts to bake and heat up and you don't want that in your oven.
Gently pour the sugar and butter liquid over the crust. Pour slowly so that it does not run off.
Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees. Continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes, until apples are soft.
This will make you a hit with the new in-laws, trust me.
This may not be the most helpful recipe in the world, because I've made it so many times, I don't measure anything anymore... But I'll try.
A couple of handfuls of bite-size pasta
3-4 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 an onion, finely chopped
2 cans of tuna
1 can of mushroom soup
cheese
salt & pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 350, put the pasta water on to boil and throw the celery in a bit of oil in your frying pan. Celery takes longer than it seems like it should. I usually salt & pepper this during cooking - it seems to help draw some of the water out.
Add the onion when the celery is bright green and mostly soft, cook both until they're soft.
The water will probably be boiling by now, throw in the pasta. Put the tuna and mushroom soup in a big bowl, add vegetables and salt & pepper. I use a lot of pepper, because I find it doesn't overwhelm the other ingredients and, well, I like pepper.
Add pasta.
Put in a casserole dish, cover with cheese and cook for 15-20 minutes.
Voila! Look at that cheesy, tuna-y goodness. Makes great leftovers too.
1 lb ground beef
1 pkg taco seasoning mix (Taco Time's is the best, but if you're not in Canada, you might have a hard time finding this...)
1 head shredded iceberg lettuce (I know, I have romaine, but I had some that needed to be used up!)
shredded cheese (I dunno, a couple of handfuls)
1 bag tortilla chips, crushed
Catalina dressing
Brown the meat in a frying pan. Add taco seasoning and cook according to directions on the package.
Put lettuce, cheese, meat and dressing in a big bowl, or big pot if you don't have a bowl, ha ha.
Add chips last - they get soggy!
Mix. That's it, not rocket science. Yummah. Or Yummo, if you prefer.
2 (8 ounce) packages angel hair pasta
7 tbsp butter
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
hot pepper sauce, to taste
jalapeno pepper sauce, to taste
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 tsp fine herbs
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/4 pounds large shrimp - peeled and deveined
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup white wine
1 tbsp corn starch
Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling water until done. Drain.
Meanwhile, melt butter in a small saucepan over very low heat. Add Worcestershire sauce, and hot sauces to taste; mix well. Stir in lemon juice, herb mix, bay leaf, and thyme. Keep warm, but do not simmer.
Heat oil in large skillet. Saute shrimp in oil for 3 to 4 minutes, or just until shrimp turn pink. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon liquid from skillet. Remove and discard bay leaf. Add butter sauce, and stir well. Stir in parsley.
I found the sauce to be too thin, so I took the shrimp out and added the wine mixed with corn starch and let it reduce for about 5 minutes.
Serve over angel hair pasta.
I have been trying to eat a lot more seafood as opposed to red meat, so I'm trying a bunch of new seafood recipes and have leftovers that aren't enough for a meal, so I threw everything together and made chowder.
*Update August 09 - I made this again and took pics! Hoorah!
4 pounds haddock fillets , cut into 3/4 inch pieces (I had miscellaneous fish pieces: orange roughy, monkfish, sole, halibut, basa - all white fish - but I just threw them all in)
1/4 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 pound bay scallops
4 bacon strips, diced
3 medium onions, quartered and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups diced peeled potatoes
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon-pepper seasoning
1/4 teaspoon pepper
maybe 1/2 cup cheddar (I used marble) cheese
Place fish in a Dutch oven; cover with water - like lots of water. I had to add more halfway through. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes longer. Drain, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid; set liquid and seafood aside.
In a soup kettle, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp; drain on paper towels.
In the drippings, saute onions until tender.
Since Anthony hates onions, I took them out and saved them to add later, then we could get the taste and he wouldn't have to *gasp* put an onion in his mouth.
Stir in flour until blended. Gradually stir in reserved cooking liquid. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Reduce heat.
Add potatoes; cover and cook for 15-20 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
Add the milk, seafood, butter, parsley, salt, lemon-pepper and pepper; heat through. Add most of the cheese and it will get nice and melty and thicken things up a bit.
Sprinkle with bacon and cheese.
2 litres (or quarts) broth
1 white onion, sliced into rings
a bunch of mushrooms, sliced (I usually quarter them)
3 slices fresh ginger root
1 lemongrass
1 cinnamon stick
1 or 2 star anise
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 package rice noodles
green onion
veeeeeerrrrry thinly sliced beef (I get this at my local Asian supermarket)
bean sprouts
basil leaves
lime, cut into wedges
chile peppers, sliced into rings
sriracha
In a large soup pot, combine broth, onion, mushroom, ginger, anise, lemongrass, cinnamon, fish sauce and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and cover. Simmer for 45-60 mins.
I
usually cook my rice noodles like regular noodles, but they don’t take
as long to cook. Just throw them on the stove in boiling water until
they’re soft.
I am kind of compulsive, so I layer mine like:
Noodles,
beef, then I ladle boiling broth over to cook the beef, then add green
onion and pepper rings to the bowl, then bring sprouts and basil to add
when you need more. Also, add as much sriracha as you like!
I
always have a broth-to-things-in-the-broth imbalance, but I feel like
it tastes so damn good I don’t care. Also, do yourself a favor and get
some of those flat spoons to eat with. Mine cost $1.19 each.
This is one of those indulgent recipes, but it's simple and so good...
I do things in a very specific order, so get ready for detailed instructions. You'll probably get your own rhythm going after a try or two, but it takes a little bit of trial and error to get down.
1/2 cup butter (no subs)
1/2 cup shredded Myzithra cheese
Spaghetti
I always make sure the water is boiling and chuck the spaghetti in to cook before I do anything else. It doesn't take long to brown butter, but it's labor intensive, so you need to make sure you can pay attention to it alone.
Melt the butter over medium heat. Seems obvious enough, right? I went with 5-6 on my stove.
When it gets just a little foamy, get ready to do some whisking! I had fun whisking constantly and taking pictures at the same time tonight :)
You just have to stand and whisk for a few minutes until the butter starts to change color. Once it starts to change, it goes fast, so pay attention.
I think it took me from 6:21 to 6:26 to get it the right color.
You'll notice it get darker, so keep it over heat until it gets just darker than the color of caramel - it should have a slightly nutty scent to it. Take it off the heat immediately!
Pour butter over drained spaghetti and drain once more, so you don't have a pool of butter at the bottom of your plate.
Sprinkle with myzithra - I sprinkle some on and stir, then sprinkle more on top. Some recipes call for the cheese to be added to the hot butter, but I've found it melts too fast and makes a gloppy mess, so I just add it after.
It actually worked really well.
Chop up your potatoes and throw them in the microwave for 3-4 minutes, just to speed up the process. Most of the cooking should happen on the Foreman, but potatoes take a long-ass time to cook, and we're improvising and experimenting here, right?
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Melt the butter in a small pot over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic and cook 2 minutes. Mix in wine, paprika and cayenne and bring to a simmer, then remove from heat.
Put the scallops in a small baking dish, or if you're really adventurous, use large scallop shells.
Spoon or pour the butter mixture over the scallops.
Season with salt and pepper. As you can see, I like freshly ground pepper. As you can also see, I was in a real picture-taking mood this day. This goes in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the scallops are just cooked through.
Those potatoes are out of the microwave, so thrown them in some tinfoil (it has to be enough to go all the way around and make a little envelope) and put a bit of butter in there so they don't stick to each other, the foil, etc. Add your salt, pepper and garlic powder.
When they come out, add a bit of shredded cheese and close the tinfoil again, so it melts. These are really like barbecued potatoes - they even have the crispy browned bits around the edges...
There they are. Top them off with parsley and serve.
Yeah, show me the good stuff, baby.
