Here’s a simple little supper to get more vegetables in your life:
Grilled Cheese with Balsamic Roasted Vegetables | A Cup of Jo
Perfect for early suppers, especially as the weather gets chillier. Great way to use up any vegetables in your fridge, too. With this recipe — really a guide more than anything else — you can make all kinds of different sandwiches.
.. this: Minestrone Soup Recipe – Bon Appétit Recipe | Bon Appetit.
Purests would argue it isn’t minestrone at all. Let’s say it is in the style of a good minestrone, and it opens you up to make it with whatever you have and whatever you feel like.
This recipe calls for Sambal Oelek. If you don’t have it, but you have sriracha or chili-garlic sauce, then you are in business. (For a good run down on how each of those three sauces differ, see this.)
Enjoy!
… spatchcocking. Or specifically, brining in a full flavoured beer, spatchcocking, and then BBQing.
For more on this and how to do it — and it is no more difficult than beer can chicken — read this: Beer Can Chicken Is A Lie « Fiesta Farms.
This recipe for a Slow-cooked Asian Roast (from Chatelaine) is something easily adaptable to other dishes. Meat, onion and garlic aside, you can mix up the other ingredients use it for an overnight marinade for beef or pork or chicken that you quickly cook. You can also use it for things you want to simmer on the stove for awhile. And of course you can use it for roasts. It goes without saying you could use it for ribs. Whenever you need to impart those flavours you associate with Korean BBQ ribs, then you want this recipe.
A few tips: if you want to add some spice to it, try sriracha. Don’t worry if it doesn’t seem sweet enough at first: when I was braising some pork chops, I found it seemed sweeter the longer I cooked it, so best to leave it cook and then adjust for sweetness at the end. (That also goes for spiciness.)
BTW, if you want a straight up recipe for Korean BBQ ribs, I recommend this one (which is where the image comes from). Now you have options. 🙂
Food52 has a number of good guides to making dishes and sauces without a strict recipe, including this one: How to Make Any Pesto in 5 Steps.
Once you do it once or twice, you will more or less be making it without a recipe.
I’d encourage you to skip basil and pine nuts and go with other greens and nuts, especially greens you may have in your fridge that are about to give up the ghost. I found that the combination of the oil and the greens give the pesto it’s sauce quality, while the nuts and cheese and garlic give it the flavour. So if you don’t like garlic (really?), drop it. Likewise if you have nut allergies. For additional flavour, add some wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar or lemon juice to taste at the end. And of course, add salt to taste.
Why you should make pesto is easy: once you have it, you can add it to food in all kinds of ways to make your food tastier. It is a very versatile sauce.
Once you have pesto, you can add it to roast meats or vegetables. I opened up a boneless pork roast, spread it on the inside, and closed it up. You could do the same with a boneless chicken breast. (Or add some to just cooked fish.) I tossed my roasted vegetables in a bowl with some pesto until they were lightly and evenly coated.
Another idea is to make a pasta sauce with 2 parts pesto to 1 part cream and warm them in a pot while you cook some pasta until it is al dente. Then drain the pasta and toss it with the sauce until the pasta is covered.
If you have some tomatoes, quarter them and lightly toss them with some pesto for an easy salad.
Or take 1 part mayo and 1 part pesto, combine, and use as a sandwich spread.
Lots of ways to use pesto. Enjoy!
(Image via a link to the Food52 post.)
This looks fantastic:
A perfect recipe for Autumn.
The photo is from the Food52 blog. The recipe can be found here:
Butternut Squash and Saffron Risotto – Regional Italian Food.
Thanks, K! 🙂
Caramelized onions are a great thing to have: many basic dishes can be enhanced by adding these golden beauties. Sound good? If so, consider this: Why recipe writers lie and lie about how long they take to caramelize onions.
I recommend you read this before you try to make caramelized onions, otherwise you might wonder why the burned/undercooked ones you just whipped up don’t have the appeal you expected.
Stuck for a recipe to use them with? Consider this egg dish recipe from Martha Stewart: Caramelized Onion and Gorgonzola Quiche Recipe or this pasta recipe from: A CUP OF JO: Rigatoni with Caramelized Onions and Gorgonzola.
I honestly don’t have to do more to get you to go to this link than share that photo, do I? I didn’t think so. Recipe from A CUP OF JO (Homemade Nutella Crêpes).
Easy. Flavourful. Broadly appealing. Somewhat messy. 🙂 A good choice for Monday: sticky sesame chicken wings from smitten kitchen.
I am a fan of Michael Ruhlman in general, so I am happy to recommend this recipe of his: Pan-Fried Chicken Thighs. Three comments:
Ruhlman keeps it simple here, but you could easily add dry flavourings (i.e. herbs and spices) to the flour, or wet flavouring (e.g., hot sauces) to the dairy mix. Once you start doing that, you can vary this recipe in all kinds of ways.
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