Food, Food, and More Food
There has been a lot of cooking going on at our apartment over the last few weeks. Some have been great Pintrest Wins. Some have been Pinterest fails. Well one Pinterest fail anyway. It was bad. And some thrown together meals that turned out pretty well! I don't even know where to start! Ok let's start with the bad.
I was wanting to make crab cakes for like a long time. I finally planned it into the menu. I was excited. I was dreaming about crab cakes! I was ready! So we went grocery shopping and I got all the ingredients I needed to make these crab cakes that used canned crab. I was practically dancing in the kitchen as I was making these because I was so excited! I made them with these rosemary and sea salt sweet potato fries that I had made once before. Side note, I do NOT like sweet potatoes. Or sweet potato fries. At all. But I loved this recipe for sweet potato fries! Try it! Ok so everything was going great, I formed great crab cakes and I only broke 1/6 while I was shallow frying them so I was feeling on top of the world! And then we ate them. I don't know if there is anything as disappointing as being so excited for a new recipe only to have it fail miserably. I mean I felt depressed for the rest of the night. The taste was fine. I could taste the lemon and the parsley and the slight onion-y flavour. But the texture was bad. I just... I can't talk about it right now. I am getting upset again. Greg and I both felt a little blah the rest of the night. Whether it was from the crab cakes or from the sad disappointment of them, I'll never know.
Another disappointment is vegetables. I keep trying to be healthy trying to find yummy, healthy substitutes for things. Hence the sweet potato fries. I'm so glad I found a recipe I can tolerate. I much much much prefer regular potatoes for everything, but gotta be healthy sometimes! So I found Julia Child's Eggplant Pizza recipe and thought "Hey I like pizza! And I love Julia Child! Let's do it!" so I did it! But I didn't want it to be full on vegetarian so I did make a change. I added some ground turkey sausage to the sauce. I was excited to be healthy and excited to make Julia Child's recipe. But there was one major flaw... Turns out I don't like eggplant. Yeah... Greg liked them though! So it wasn't a total fail. But yeah... eggplant is not my favourite. They are pretty though! I love how they look! But taste wise, no thank you.
Now that I am bummed out, let's move on to some Pinterest wins! I found a recipe for Roasted Cauliflower and Mushroom Carbonara and had to try it! Greg said he has never like cauliflower so I haven't really cooked it for him. But I was going to make this one. He likes mushrooms and carbonara and he wants to be healthy like I do so more veggies couldn't be bad, right? At least that's what I told myself. And I'm glad I did! Greg loved the cauliflower and mushrooms roasted! Plus the carbonara! Oh man, it was delicious! Bacon-y, roasted veggie-y, and pasta-y... Loved it! It was a little crispy and there was some nice caramelization on the veggies. There was a great hear from all the black pepper. It was perfect! And easy!
This next Pinterest win is also a pasta dish. I love me some pasta! Now this is not a healthy meal. In anyway. I used about half the butter the recipe called for and it was still very rich. Delicious though! It was Cheese Ravioli with Lemon Basil Butter Sauce and I love it! I have actually made this one about 3 times now and I keep loving it! It was very bright and lemony but also rich and creamy and a little salty from the Parmesan. I am a big fan!
Not everything delicious comes from Pinterest though. I've created some recipes that I was really pleased with. Like adding to my favourite taco and pico de gallo recipe. Throw some corn on the cob on the grill, cut the corn off the cob and add it to the Pico and it is life changing. Like really. The corn has such a juicy sweetness that goes so well with the heat from the jalapeno, oh it is so good! Ant to make it a little healthier, I swapped out ground beef for ground turkey and I like it even more than when I used ground beef! I couldn't believe it!
Ok, I have saved the best for last. Greg found an amazing deal from Omaha Steaks for a ton of food and we jumped on it! Included in our package we got from them were 2 rib eye steaks. I love steak. I really don't think it can get any better than a properly cooked steak. I was pretty nervous to cook these because I have never cooked full steaks like these before. Only the cheap packages of stew meat you can get at the grocery store. That doesn't really compare to these babies though. So I was nervous about cooking them because even though it was a good deal, it was still more expensive than what we usually spend on meat. And who wants to ruin steak?? No one! But I'd seen it done a lot on Food Network so I thought, "What the heck? I'll just go for it!" So I did. I got my cast iron skillet really, really hot and added about 1 T of butter to it and it melted FAST. I put a lot of salt and freshly ground black pepper on both sides of the steak and very carefully put them into the skillet. Because the pan is so hot, you may want to open some windows and get a fan going if you try this method. It sears the steak beautifully, but the butter does smoke a little. I did only about 30 seconds on each side before putting them into a 400 degree oven. I only had them in there for about 3 minutes and my steaks came out to a nice medium. If you like them more rare, you really only need a minute or two in the oven to finish the cooking. As soon as I got them out of the oven I put them on a plate to rest for about 5 minutes. This helps all the juices in the steak get back into the meat and not ooze out everywhere if you cut it without resting it. I put a good 1/2 tablespoon or so of a compound butter I made on the steaks as they were resting. I made the compound butter by taking 1/2 a stick of softened butter, 1 tsp minced shallot, 1 minced clove of garlic, 3 large basil leaves finely chopped, and mixing it all together. All that buttery goodness melted onto the steaks while they rested and voila! I was so relieved I didn't ruin them! We had some corn on the cob (with the compound butter on top), steak fries, and some roasted mushrooms and cauliflower (I did them just like in the carbonara from above!). We only ended up eating half our steaks and we were still so full! I love that!
I was wanting to make crab cakes for like a long time. I finally planned it into the menu. I was excited. I was dreaming about crab cakes! I was ready! So we went grocery shopping and I got all the ingredients I needed to make these crab cakes that used canned crab. I was practically dancing in the kitchen as I was making these because I was so excited! I made them with these rosemary and sea salt sweet potato fries that I had made once before. Side note, I do NOT like sweet potatoes. Or sweet potato fries. At all. But I loved this recipe for sweet potato fries! Try it! Ok so everything was going great, I formed great crab cakes and I only broke 1/6 while I was shallow frying them so I was feeling on top of the world! And then we ate them. I don't know if there is anything as disappointing as being so excited for a new recipe only to have it fail miserably. I mean I felt depressed for the rest of the night. The taste was fine. I could taste the lemon and the parsley and the slight onion-y flavour. But the texture was bad. I just... I can't talk about it right now. I am getting upset again. Greg and I both felt a little blah the rest of the night. Whether it was from the crab cakes or from the sad disappointment of them, I'll never know.
Another disappointment is vegetables. I keep trying to be healthy trying to find yummy, healthy substitutes for things. Hence the sweet potato fries. I'm so glad I found a recipe I can tolerate. I much much much prefer regular potatoes for everything, but gotta be healthy sometimes! So I found Julia Child's Eggplant Pizza recipe and thought "Hey I like pizza! And I love Julia Child! Let's do it!" so I did it! But I didn't want it to be full on vegetarian so I did make a change. I added some ground turkey sausage to the sauce. I was excited to be healthy and excited to make Julia Child's recipe. But there was one major flaw... Turns out I don't like eggplant. Yeah... Greg liked them though! So it wasn't a total fail. But yeah... eggplant is not my favourite. They are pretty though! I love how they look! But taste wise, no thank you.
Now that I am bummed out, let's move on to some Pinterest wins! I found a recipe for Roasted Cauliflower and Mushroom Carbonara and had to try it! Greg said he has never like cauliflower so I haven't really cooked it for him. But I was going to make this one. He likes mushrooms and carbonara and he wants to be healthy like I do so more veggies couldn't be bad, right? At least that's what I told myself. And I'm glad I did! Greg loved the cauliflower and mushrooms roasted! Plus the carbonara! Oh man, it was delicious! Bacon-y, roasted veggie-y, and pasta-y... Loved it! It was a little crispy and there was some nice caramelization on the veggies. There was a great hear from all the black pepper. It was perfect! And easy!
This next Pinterest win is also a pasta dish. I love me some pasta! Now this is not a healthy meal. In anyway. I used about half the butter the recipe called for and it was still very rich. Delicious though! It was Cheese Ravioli with Lemon Basil Butter Sauce and I love it! I have actually made this one about 3 times now and I keep loving it! It was very bright and lemony but also rich and creamy and a little salty from the Parmesan. I am a big fan!
I had a wedge salad once at a restaurant and I loved it! Before I even liked salad! I don't know if it's just because they're fun or what, but I love a good wedge salad. We got some Romaine hearts on sale and I decided to make a Romaine wedge salad. But I took it one step further. I've been seeing on Food Network something amazing. Grilled salads! They actually grill the lettuce or other leafy greens that are going in the salad! I decided to just go for it! I cut the Romaine hearts into fours and drizzled just a little bit of olive oil on each wedge. I put them in the hot grill pan and let it go for just a minute or two before flipping to the other side. I pulled them off and let them cool before throwing some dressing on them. It might be hard to go back to not grilling the lettuce. It was really delicious! There was a little smoky flavour, some nice crispy bites, everything you don't expect to get from a salad!
Ok, I have saved the best for last. Greg found an amazing deal from Omaha Steaks for a ton of food and we jumped on it! Included in our package we got from them were 2 rib eye steaks. I love steak. I really don't think it can get any better than a properly cooked steak. I was pretty nervous to cook these because I have never cooked full steaks like these before. Only the cheap packages of stew meat you can get at the grocery store. That doesn't really compare to these babies though. So I was nervous about cooking them because even though it was a good deal, it was still more expensive than what we usually spend on meat. And who wants to ruin steak?? No one! But I'd seen it done a lot on Food Network so I thought, "What the heck? I'll just go for it!" So I did. I got my cast iron skillet really, really hot and added about 1 T of butter to it and it melted FAST. I put a lot of salt and freshly ground black pepper on both sides of the steak and very carefully put them into the skillet. Because the pan is so hot, you may want to open some windows and get a fan going if you try this method. It sears the steak beautifully, but the butter does smoke a little. I did only about 30 seconds on each side before putting them into a 400 degree oven. I only had them in there for about 3 minutes and my steaks came out to a nice medium. If you like them more rare, you really only need a minute or two in the oven to finish the cooking. As soon as I got them out of the oven I put them on a plate to rest for about 5 minutes. This helps all the juices in the steak get back into the meat and not ooze out everywhere if you cut it without resting it. I put a good 1/2 tablespoon or so of a compound butter I made on the steaks as they were resting. I made the compound butter by taking 1/2 a stick of softened butter, 1 tsp minced shallot, 1 minced clove of garlic, 3 large basil leaves finely chopped, and mixing it all together. All that buttery goodness melted onto the steaks while they rested and voila! I was so relieved I didn't ruin them! We had some corn on the cob (with the compound butter on top), steak fries, and some roasted mushrooms and cauliflower (I did them just like in the carbonara from above!). We only ended up eating half our steaks and we were still so full! I love that!
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