Sunday: Pot Roast with Carrots, Green Beans, and Mashed Potatoes
Monday: Grilled PB J
Tuesday: Rolled Chicken Tacos
Wednesday: Spaghetti with Italian Sausage
Thursday: Potato Casserole
Friday: Restaurant Review! Saffron Indian Bistro
Saturday: Split Pea Soup
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Restaurant Review El Sabor Norteno
Restaurant Review Time! Check out the tab to see my review!
El Sabor Norteno
Food Truck on the northeast corner of Los Reales and Cardinal!
El Sabor Norteno
Food Truck on the northeast corner of Los Reales and Cardinal!
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Chicken Salad
Recipe:
4 Servings
2 Chicken Breast, shredded (boil in salted water for 10-15 min and then shred with two forks)
1/2 cup Mayo
1/2 cup Red Grapes, cut in half (a medium size handful)
1/4 cup Apple, small dice (I really like gala for this salad and it's about 1/2 an apple)
1/2 Onion, finely diced
1/4 cup Green Onion, chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste
Mix the shredded meat and mayo together first, then add in the grapes, apple, and onions. Salt and pepper to taste and you're done. The double onion will leave you with bad breath, promise, but it will be soooooooooooo worth it! And Yeah, the recipe is that simple. Throw it on a few pieces of bread for a super tasty sandwich, or throw it on some chopped lettuce for a delicious salad *grin*
4 Servings
2 Chicken Breast, shredded (boil in salted water for 10-15 min and then shred with two forks)
1/2 cup Mayo
1/2 cup Red Grapes, cut in half (a medium size handful)
1/4 cup Apple, small dice (I really like gala for this salad and it's about 1/2 an apple)
1/2 Onion, finely diced
1/4 cup Green Onion, chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste
Mix the shredded meat and mayo together first, then add in the grapes, apple, and onions. Salt and pepper to taste and you're done. The double onion will leave you with bad breath, promise, but it will be soooooooooooo worth it! And Yeah, the recipe is that simple. Throw it on a few pieces of bread for a super tasty sandwich, or throw it on some chopped lettuce for a delicious salad *grin*
Homemade Sloppy Joes
Recipe:
Makes 6 full size sandwiches, 8 if you're using hamburger buns.
1 1/2 lbs Ground Beef (or Turkey)
1 16oz can Tomato Sauce
1/4 cup grated Carrot
1/2 cup dehydrated diced Green Bell Pepper
1/4 cup dehydrated diced Onion
3 tbs Sugar
2 tbs Distilled White Vinager
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper
1 tsp Granulated Garlic
1/8 tsp Chili Powder
Put all of the ingredients except the beef in a medium saucepan with a lid, bring to a boil. Once at a boil, turn heat down to medium/ medium-low and let simmer for 30-40 minutes. While the sauce is simmering, brown your ground beef, drain and set aside. Once the time is up, blend your sauce. You can use an immersion blender, regular blender, or food processor, just be careful since it's hot! This step is to chop up the carrot, green pepper, and onion even smaller. If you are not a big fan of texture, after you blend it all, put the sauce through a strainer and there you have some homemade sauce! Add the sauce to the Pre-cooked ground beef and there you have HOMEMADE SLOPPY JOES! Enjoy!
Makes 6 full size sandwiches, 8 if you're using hamburger buns.
1 1/2 lbs Ground Beef (or Turkey)
1 16oz can Tomato Sauce
1/4 cup grated Carrot
1/2 cup dehydrated diced Green Bell Pepper
1/4 cup dehydrated diced Onion
3 tbs Sugar
2 tbs Distilled White Vinager
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper
1 tsp Granulated Garlic
1/8 tsp Chili Powder
Put all of the ingredients except the beef in a medium saucepan with a lid, bring to a boil. Once at a boil, turn heat down to medium/ medium-low and let simmer for 30-40 minutes. While the sauce is simmering, brown your ground beef, drain and set aside. Once the time is up, blend your sauce. You can use an immersion blender, regular blender, or food processor, just be careful since it's hot! This step is to chop up the carrot, green pepper, and onion even smaller. If you are not a big fan of texture, after you blend it all, put the sauce through a strainer and there you have some homemade sauce! Add the sauce to the Pre-cooked ground beef and there you have HOMEMADE SLOPPY JOES! Enjoy!
Pork Chili Rojo with Homemade Tortillas
Flour Tortilla Recipe:
Servings 12-14 10" torillas
*Disclaimer: I like flat tortillas, like the kind they use at Chipotle. If you like thicker tortillas, you'll want to add 1tsp baking powder to the recipe.
2 cups All Purpose Flour plus a few tablespoons for rolling out the dough
6 tbs Lard (I've used vegetable shortening too, but they just don't come out tasting as good)
1/2 tsp - 1 tsp Kosher Salt
1/2-3/4 cup HOT Water (It depends on the humidity in the air, so I recommend heating up a 1 cup of water and adding it until you get the right consistency)
Directions:
Combine the flour, salt, and lard. The lard should be at room temperature, you don't want "flaky" tortillas, so you don't have to worry about the lard being cold because you want elasticity, not flaky. You want to "cut" the lard into the flour with a pastry cutter, or just "cut" up the lard with your fingers. Using a pinching motion with all of your fingers, rub the lard and flour between your fingers and thumb to break it all up. Make sure to spread the lard out evenly, you don't want any big chunks of it. The flour, salt, lard mixture should hold it's shape when you get a handful, but still be pretty dry. If it is either to dry or to moist, add more flour or more lard to get the right texture.
Once you have that mixture ready, mix in the hot water. The water being hot helps with the elasticity (gluten) of the flour and melts the lard at the same time. Be careful here though, use a spoon to do the initial mixing, slowly adding in the hot water until the dough starts to come together. As you stir, the hot dough should now be cool enough to touch and kneed with your hands. You don't need to put it out on the counter or anything, you can kneed the dough in the bowl. Just work the dough by moving the dough ball around, pushing it onto itself and repeating. (Your dough shouldn't be wet, so if this is the case, add more flour and work the dough a little more. If you don't know if it's to wet, it's better to add the flour after the resting stage, during the rolling out stage ;)
Once the dough stops sticking to your bowl, and to you, and also feels soft and smooth. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 15-30 minutes. After it rests, pinch off little dough balls, (the size should be smaller than a golf ball, but bigger than a large marble.) You should be able to get 12-14 dough balls. Then get your rolling pin and some flour out and start rolling. (I like to get all of the dough balls ready at once and do all of my rolling at once, but you can do whatever makes you happy.)
Put some flour down on the counter, flour your rolling pin and start rolling. I find it the easiest to start rolling from the center of the ball out, but do whatever works for you. I'll also give you a heads up, unless you roll dough all the time into a circular shape, you are going to have some odd shaped tortillas at first. I purposefully took pictures of one of my prettier ones ;) You want to roll them really thin. You'll be surprised how far you can stretch that dough, but you want it to take on a more transparent then opaque look to it. Test a few consistencies and see what you like the best. And don't really worry, if the shape and thickness are a little off, they still taste the same. *grin*
I also heat up my pan to medium while I am rolling out the first tortillas. I'll then do a trade off, roll, check tortilla in pan, roll some more, flip tortilla in pan, roll again, poke bubbles down on the tortilla in the pan, roll some more, and take out cooked tortilla. I'll then place the tortilla I just rolled out into the pan, and start the process again until all of my dough balls are tasty cooked tortillas!
The entire process from start to resting to finish is about an hour. It is sooooo worth it though! While the tortillas are cooking, I have the Pork Chili Rojo simmering away.
Recipe Pork Chili Rojo:
1 lb Pork Short Ribs (I had boneless, but bone it would be tasty and add tons of flavor)
1 tbs Oil
1 Onion, diced
2 Garlic Cloves, diced
1 16oz can El Pato Red Enchilada Sauce
1-2 small can Roasted Green Chili, diced If you like more heat, add the second can.
Salt and Pepper to taste
Directions:
In a medium saucepan, brown the pork, onion, and garlic on med-hi heat. Once browned, add the tomato sauce and green chili's, turn the heat down to medium-low, Cover and let it simmer for 1-2hrs. It's that easy.
Plate it family style and enjoy!
:
Servings 12-14 10" torillas
*Disclaimer: I like flat tortillas, like the kind they use at Chipotle. If you like thicker tortillas, you'll want to add 1tsp baking powder to the recipe.
2 cups All Purpose Flour plus a few tablespoons for rolling out the dough
6 tbs Lard (I've used vegetable shortening too, but they just don't come out tasting as good)
1/2 tsp - 1 tsp Kosher Salt
1/2-3/4 cup HOT Water (It depends on the humidity in the air, so I recommend heating up a 1 cup of water and adding it until you get the right consistency)
Directions:
Combine the flour, salt, and lard. The lard should be at room temperature, you don't want "flaky" tortillas, so you don't have to worry about the lard being cold because you want elasticity, not flaky. You want to "cut" the lard into the flour with a pastry cutter, or just "cut" up the lard with your fingers. Using a pinching motion with all of your fingers, rub the lard and flour between your fingers and thumb to break it all up. Make sure to spread the lard out evenly, you don't want any big chunks of it. The flour, salt, lard mixture should hold it's shape when you get a handful, but still be pretty dry. If it is either to dry or to moist, add more flour or more lard to get the right texture.
Once you have that mixture ready, mix in the hot water. The water being hot helps with the elasticity (gluten) of the flour and melts the lard at the same time. Be careful here though, use a spoon to do the initial mixing, slowly adding in the hot water until the dough starts to come together. As you stir, the hot dough should now be cool enough to touch and kneed with your hands. You don't need to put it out on the counter or anything, you can kneed the dough in the bowl. Just work the dough by moving the dough ball around, pushing it onto itself and repeating. (Your dough shouldn't be wet, so if this is the case, add more flour and work the dough a little more. If you don't know if it's to wet, it's better to add the flour after the resting stage, during the rolling out stage ;)
Once the dough stops sticking to your bowl, and to you, and also feels soft and smooth. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 15-30 minutes. After it rests, pinch off little dough balls, (the size should be smaller than a golf ball, but bigger than a large marble.) You should be able to get 12-14 dough balls. Then get your rolling pin and some flour out and start rolling. (I like to get all of the dough balls ready at once and do all of my rolling at once, but you can do whatever makes you happy.)
Put some flour down on the counter, flour your rolling pin and start rolling. I find it the easiest to start rolling from the center of the ball out, but do whatever works for you. I'll also give you a heads up, unless you roll dough all the time into a circular shape, you are going to have some odd shaped tortillas at first. I purposefully took pictures of one of my prettier ones ;) You want to roll them really thin. You'll be surprised how far you can stretch that dough, but you want it to take on a more transparent then opaque look to it. Test a few consistencies and see what you like the best. And don't really worry, if the shape and thickness are a little off, they still taste the same. *grin*
I also heat up my pan to medium while I am rolling out the first tortillas. I'll then do a trade off, roll, check tortilla in pan, roll some more, flip tortilla in pan, roll again, poke bubbles down on the tortilla in the pan, roll some more, and take out cooked tortilla. I'll then place the tortilla I just rolled out into the pan, and start the process again until all of my dough balls are tasty cooked tortillas!
The entire process from start to resting to finish is about an hour. It is sooooo worth it though! While the tortillas are cooking, I have the Pork Chili Rojo simmering away.
Recipe Pork Chili Rojo:
1 lb Pork Short Ribs (I had boneless, but bone it would be tasty and add tons of flavor)
1 tbs Oil
1 Onion, diced
2 Garlic Cloves, diced
1 16oz can El Pato Red Enchilada Sauce
1-2 small can Roasted Green Chili, diced If you like more heat, add the second can.
Salt and Pepper to taste
Directions:
In a medium saucepan, brown the pork, onion, and garlic on med-hi heat. Once browned, add the tomato sauce and green chili's, turn the heat down to medium-low, Cover and let it simmer for 1-2hrs. It's that easy.
Plate it family style and enjoy!
:
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Stuffed Cabbage, Turkey Club and Dill Potato Salad, and Red Beans and Rice
Stuffed Cabbage:
So this wasn't my favorite. I haven't ever made stuffed cabbage before and I didn't like my combo of sausage and veggies as the stuffing or the sauce I made up for the topping. It was tomato based and just kinda gross with the cabbage. Lesson learned though. I'm posting pics of the finished product, but not a recipe. Ya'll don't want to eat it, I promise. haha. I also want to give you the directions on how to prep the cabbage to be stuffed because I really do think that there is potential in it being really tasty. I now just have to go n a mission to find out what the "stuffed" part of the dish should be. Any recommendations or suggestions?
Prepping Cabbage:
1 Small head of cabbage made for 18-20 stuffed leafs (8-10 servings) varying in size as you get closer to the middle of the cabbage.
You'll need to have one pot of water boiling (with a little salt) on the stove with enough water for the leaves of the cabbage to be fully submerged.
You'll also need to have one large bowl of ice water near by so plunge the cooked cabbage into. This is called "shocking" and will retain the bright color of the cabbage leaf, keep it from becoming bitter, mushy, and smelling bad.
Once those things are in place, prep the cabbage. Cut off the bottom where the stem is and start taking off one leaf at a time. The leafs will probably tear a little, but that's okay, once they are cooked they will become pliable and it won't be a problem to fold the tears up.
Once you have your leaves ready, start by putting one in the boiling water. This will only take about 30 seconds. You'll see the cabbage become transparent in color, brighter green, and start to be able to bend on itself without tearing. Once you see it hit those three marks, you want to take the leaf out of the water with a pair of tongues and place the leaf in the ice water bath. Go ahead and repeat the process with all of the leaves of cabbage. Don't over crowd the boiling water (the cabbage can cook unevenly and you can get the bitter over cooked stuff with the perfectly cooked or under cooked leaves), but you can do multiple leaves at once, just be close enough to move the leaves around in the boiling water with a pair of tongues so you even out the heat distribution. You can however overcrowd the ice water bath all you want. Just if you notice it's not cold anymore, add more ice. Once all the cabbage leaves are cooked, drain them either in a colander and they are ready to be used.
Grilled Turkey and Cheese Club with Dill Potato Salad:
Ingredients per Sandwich:
2 slices of Bread
2 slices of Turkey (I like Oscar Mayer "Deli Fresh" Roasted Turkey)
2 slices of Bacon
2 tbs finely shredded Colby Jack Cheese (I find it melts better when it is shredded)
2-3 slices Tomato
1-2 leafs Romain Lettuce
1-2 tsp Butter
I know it's a simple recipe and you might not have needed the step by step for grilling a sandwich, but I thought, hey, why not. This is the same way I also grilled the "Turkey Reuben" (heating up the meats and toppings.)
Dill Potato Salad:
4 -6 medium cooked Red Potatoes, medium dice (throw them into a pot of boiling/salted water for 8-10 minutes after they are diced and it should give you a good potato salad potato. When in doubt, keep tasting and checking the texture of the potato as they are cooking. You don't want the raw flavor, crunchiness, or being to overcooked and falling apart)
1/2 medium Onion, finely diced
1/2 cup Mayo (again, ewe Miracle Whip or "salad dressing")
1-1 1/2 tbs dry Dill
1-2 tsp Kosher Salt (to taste) I recommend adding it after you have tasted it after adding the dill and mayo though
1/2-1 tsp Pepper (to taste)
Mix all of the ingredients together while the potatoes are still hot/warm, (this allows the mayo to spread and be soaked up, the flavor of the onion and dill to spread out pretty evenly.) Taste it at this point and decide if you want to add salt. Now you are ready to enjoy. It's awesome warm or awesome if you have time to let it cool down.
Red Beans and Rice with Sausage:
Recipe:
Coming soon! :)
So this wasn't my favorite. I haven't ever made stuffed cabbage before and I didn't like my combo of sausage and veggies as the stuffing or the sauce I made up for the topping. It was tomato based and just kinda gross with the cabbage. Lesson learned though. I'm posting pics of the finished product, but not a recipe. Ya'll don't want to eat it, I promise. haha. I also want to give you the directions on how to prep the cabbage to be stuffed because I really do think that there is potential in it being really tasty. I now just have to go n a mission to find out what the "stuffed" part of the dish should be. Any recommendations or suggestions?
Prepping Cabbage:
1 Small head of cabbage made for 18-20 stuffed leafs (8-10 servings) varying in size as you get closer to the middle of the cabbage.
You'll need to have one pot of water boiling (with a little salt) on the stove with enough water for the leaves of the cabbage to be fully submerged.
You'll also need to have one large bowl of ice water near by so plunge the cooked cabbage into. This is called "shocking" and will retain the bright color of the cabbage leaf, keep it from becoming bitter, mushy, and smelling bad.
Once those things are in place, prep the cabbage. Cut off the bottom where the stem is and start taking off one leaf at a time. The leafs will probably tear a little, but that's okay, once they are cooked they will become pliable and it won't be a problem to fold the tears up.
Once you have your leaves ready, start by putting one in the boiling water. This will only take about 30 seconds. You'll see the cabbage become transparent in color, brighter green, and start to be able to bend on itself without tearing. Once you see it hit those three marks, you want to take the leaf out of the water with a pair of tongues and place the leaf in the ice water bath. Go ahead and repeat the process with all of the leaves of cabbage. Don't over crowd the boiling water (the cabbage can cook unevenly and you can get the bitter over cooked stuff with the perfectly cooked or under cooked leaves), but you can do multiple leaves at once, just be close enough to move the leaves around in the boiling water with a pair of tongues so you even out the heat distribution. You can however overcrowd the ice water bath all you want. Just if you notice it's not cold anymore, add more ice. Once all the cabbage leaves are cooked, drain them either in a colander and they are ready to be used.
Grilled Turkey and Cheese Club with Dill Potato Salad:
Ingredients per Sandwich:
2 slices of Bread
2 slices of Turkey (I like Oscar Mayer "Deli Fresh" Roasted Turkey)
2 slices of Bacon
2 tbs finely shredded Colby Jack Cheese (I find it melts better when it is shredded)
2-3 slices Tomato
1-2 leafs Romain Lettuce
1-2 tsp Butter
I know it's a simple recipe and you might not have needed the step by step for grilling a sandwich, but I thought, hey, why not. This is the same way I also grilled the "Turkey Reuben" (heating up the meats and toppings.)
Dill Potato Salad:
4 -6 medium cooked Red Potatoes, medium dice (throw them into a pot of boiling/salted water for 8-10 minutes after they are diced and it should give you a good potato salad potato. When in doubt, keep tasting and checking the texture of the potato as they are cooking. You don't want the raw flavor, crunchiness, or being to overcooked and falling apart)
1/2 medium Onion, finely diced
1/2 cup Mayo (again, ewe Miracle Whip or "salad dressing")
1-1 1/2 tbs dry Dill
1-2 tsp Kosher Salt (to taste) I recommend adding it after you have tasted it after adding the dill and mayo though
1/2-1 tsp Pepper (to taste)
Mix all of the ingredients together while the potatoes are still hot/warm, (this allows the mayo to spread and be soaked up, the flavor of the onion and dill to spread out pretty evenly.) Taste it at this point and decide if you want to add salt. Now you are ready to enjoy. It's awesome warm or awesome if you have time to let it cool down.
Red Beans and Rice with Sausage:
Recipe:
Coming soon! :)
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