This dish is really similar to the penne dish I posted about last Monday here. The taste was completely different though. Funny how a switch in cheese and a couple additional ingredients can make such a big difference, huh?
Spinach and Feta Pasta
8 ounces whole wheat pasta of your choice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
4 Roma tomatoes, chopped
8 ounces cremini mushrooms, sliced
2 cups spinach, roughly chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper
8 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
Cook pasta according to package directions.
Heat oil in large pan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until onions are translucent.
Stir in tomatoes and mushrooms. Cook until mushrooms are tender. Stir in spinach until wilted. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Between working at the bank and working on the house , I find myself with little energy left at the end of the day. It was hard enough to find the energy and motivation to cook for Mike, but now I have my younger brother to feed, too! No complaints, though!* Except for the fact that he eats enough for 3 people. I made this dish thinking there would be plenty of leftovers. Boy, was I wrong. So, in my case, this dish fed 3. I think that you could easily get away with making this for a group of 4 or 5, though! But hey, at least it was easy to make!
Lemon Chicken Piccata
5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, butterflied and then cut in half
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Whole wheat all purpose flour, for dredging
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large lemon, juiced
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup capers, drained and rinsed
1/3 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 pound pasta of choice
Cook pasta according to package directions.
Butterfly the chicken and then cut in half. Tenderize the chicken and season liberally with salt and pepper. Dredge through flour and shake off excess.
Heat 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large pan over medium-high heat.**When butter and oil start to sizzle, add chicken to pan. Cook until browned, flip and cook until other side is golden brown and chicken is fully cooked. Remove chicken to plate. Cook remaining chicken in same manner, using more butter and olive oil as needed before each.
Add lemon juice, broth and capers to pan. Bring to a simmer, scraping pan to release browned bits for more flavor. Add more salt and pepper if desired. Add 2 tablespoons butter and stir until melted.
Pour sauce over plated chicken and garnish with chopped parsley.
Serve immediately with pasta.
*Ok, I have one complaint – my parents didn’t take me to Italy with them. They get Italy, I get my brother.
**I have this Calphalon pan. I love love love it. It was big enough to cook 5 pieces of chicken at a time without over-crowding the pan.
This dish is super filling and easy to make. I mean, what could be easier than cooking up a dish in less than 10 minutes? Not to mention it only used 2 pots (and one colander). Ever since it warmed up I’ve been craving dishes with fresh ingredients. I can’t wait to make this again with fresh tomatoes from the garden!
Goat Cheese and Spinach Penne serves 4
1 pound whole wheat penne
1/4 cup garlic extra virgin olive oil, or plain olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups spinach, roughly chopped or torn
1 pint grape tomatoes
salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 ounces goat cheese
Cook pasta according to package directions.
Meanwhile, heat olive oil in large pan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and cook until golden brown. Stir in tomatoes and spinach and cook until wilted.
Add cooked pasta and goat cheese to vegetables in pan. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Stir to combine. Serve immediately.
Mike and I took advantage of the nice weather we had on Friday and decided to grill out! Yes, for the first time in what feels like months we had a gorgeous day. No rain, snow, hail, or wind. This salad really hit the spot. It was light, filling, and super easy to make. The charred vegetables? To die for. I loved that we were able to cook this meal together, too. I cut, marinated, and cooked the couscous, and Mike did the grilling. The only thing I love more than cooking in my very own kitchen is cooking in my own kitchen with my husband.
Israeli Couscous and Grilled Vegetable Salad
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
2 large cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup olive oil
salt and pepper
2 green zucchini, quartered lengthwise
1 yellow zucchini, quartered lengthwise
6 spears asparagus, trimmed
2 green bell peppers, seeded and quartered
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and quartered
1/2 pint grape tomatoes
1/4 cup basil chiffonade
2 teaspoons olive oil (I used garlic olive oil from a local store)
1 1/2 cups vegetable or chicken stock
8 ounces uncooked Israeli couscous (also called pearl couscous)
In a small bowl, whisk together balsamic vinegar, mustard, and garlic. Slowly add olive oil, whisking until incorporated.
Arrange vegetables in a 9×13 baking pan and pour vinaigrette over. Let sit for 20 minutes.
Remove vegetables from vinaigrette, and set vinaigrette aside. Grill vegetables until tender-crisp.
Meanwhile, heat 2 teaspoons olive oil over medium heat in a large pan. Add couscous and cook, stirring frequently, until a light golden-brown color.
Add stock to pan and bring couscous to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook until couscous is tender. Remove from heat and transfer to a large serving bowl.
Cut grilled vegetables into 1/2 – 1 inch pieces and place into serving bowl. Mix couscous and vegetables together with basil and vinaigrette. Serve immediately.
After we had grabbed a couple bowls, I decided to toss some feta cheese on top. It was pretty darn good. Next time, I’ll probably mix some feta in with the rest of the salad.
I set out looking for dishes I could make for Easter brunch. I found this one in one of the old cookbooks and couldn’t resist. I opted to use frozen tart cherries instead of blueberries though, since that’s what we had on hand. The cherries were picked by my in-laws during the summer and I thought that they would be perfect in coffee cake!
Here’s a snapshot of the original recipe:
Here’s the recipe with my modifications:
Cherry Coffee Cake
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
2 cups tart cherries, pitted
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon sugar
For the topping:
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated white sugar
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 13×9 pan with nonstick spray.
Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl.
In medium bowl, cream butter until smooth. Gradually add sugar and continue creaming until fluffy. Add egg, beating well.
Add dry ingredients alternately with milk, mixing after each addition until just smooth.
In small bowl, combine cherries, 1 tablespoon flour and 1 tablespoon sugar. Gently fold in cherries to batter.
Spread batter into greased pan.
To make topping: combine all dry ingredients and cut in butter until mixture in crumbly.*
Sprinkle topping evenly over coffee cake and bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes and enjoy!!
*I couldn’t find my pastry cutter and I never quite mastered the technique of cutting with a forks and/or knives, so I just used my fingers. I rubbed the butter into the dry ingredients until they became crumbly. It was pretty quick and easy!
This past weekend I was gifted something extraordinarily special: cookbooks. Not just any cookbooks, but cookbooks from my great-great-grandmother-in-law. Is that a mouthful or what?? I can’t explain why it’s so special to me, but maybe it’s because I could never read the Chinese cookbooks from my side of the family. But these? They’re in English, and that I can do.
I’m going to start a new string of blog posts featuring these recipes. I think that these books are just what I needed to motivate me to get out of my cooking rut. I can’t wait to dig in.
Here’s a sneak peek at just a couple of the books that I was given.
This one here is from the 11th Pillsbury Bake-off. I think they’re into there 40s now. I seriously cannot express my excitement.
I had been so, so good with making sure I had 2 posts going out a week. And then my life exploded (in a good way). How so? Well, first off, I found out I got into a dietetic internship. This means I’ll be back to school come August! Second, things at work are going really well. I’ll be sad to leave in August. Third, Mike and I officially have a house!! It’s a cute little 3 bedroom ranch in Appleton, WI. I love it a little more every day.
The house definitely needs work, and that is where all my time has been going. We’re painting, re-doing the bathroom, cleaning, tearing stuff apart and putting it back together. One project we haven’t really tackled yet? The kitchen. I removed the cabinet doors the day we were handed the keys, but that’s all we’ve done so far. The rest of the house is coming along quite nicely. The kitchen will definitely be the biggest and most important (to me) project. I’m still undecided on what color I want the walls to be.
Needless to say, I haven’t been cooking much (or at all). Between work, running, the house, and various other life events, I have set my cooking aside. Fingers crossed I get to cook up a storm this weekend.
So for now, I leave you with a photo of the kitchen. Here it is before. Hopefully I’ll have a much improved kitchen to show off in a couple weeks!
Caramel popcorn is one of my favorite foods. We had some around the house, but they were drizzled in one of my least favorite foods – chocolate. After staring at the bag for weeks, having it taunt me, I decided to make some of my own (untainted) caramel corn.
This stuff was seriously delicious. How delicious? It disappeared in 3 days. And this was a LOT of popcorn. Granted, I was kind enough to share with my in-laws and my parents and brother, but I was still in a sugar coma.
I will definitely make this again. Mike and I had a blast doing this together. Combining my two loves (husband and cooking) was a win for sure. Ok, three loves (can’t forget the dogs!) – the pups may have had a few pieces of plain popcorn. And by a few a mean a few handfuls 😉
Crunchy Caramel Popcorn
3/4 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 quarts air-popped popcorn
Preheat oven to 250°F. Line three baking pans with foil.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Allow to boil, unstirred, for 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in soda and vanilla.
Pour popcorn onto baking pans, dividing evenly between three pans.
Pour caramel in a thin stream over popcorn, stirring to coat.
Bake in preheated oven for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool completely. Stir gently, breaking up large pieces. Serve immediately or store in air-tight container.
Tips for clean up – soak the pot and utensils in hot water. The syrup will melt right off and there will be minimal scrubbing required. The foil in the pans will give you a quick, easy clean up. Just crumple up and toss!
My mom requested one thing from me for Christmas – biscotti. I didn’t make it (oops). She requested one thing from me for her birthday – biscotti. I made it 🙂
I used a different recipe this time, one without any butter. When I first started mixing everything together, I was unsure if it would turn out. I mean, the only ‘glue’ in the recipe are the eggs. To my surprise, the ingredients came together beautifully. You will want to arm yourself with a lot of flour though, and I mean a lot. Flour your surfaces when you roll out the biscotti very, very thoroughly. This is one sticky dough. I floured my hands well and the dough still stuck. Don’t worry, the results are completely worth it. These had the perfect snap and they’re great with coffee! *
Chocolate Walnut Biscotti adapted from joyofbaking.com
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup walnuts, chopped
Preheat oven to 300°F.
In a food processor, blend chocolate and brown sugar together until chocolate is very fine.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, coffee granules, baking soda and salt.
In a large bowl, beat eggs and vanilla with an electric mixer until combined, about 30 seconds.
Add in dry ingredients and beat until a stiff dough forms. Stir in walnuts.
Generously flour work surface and hands. Divide dough in half and roll each half into a log about 10 inches long and 3 inches wide. Place onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, about 3 – 4 inches apart.
Bake for 35 minutes, or until firm to touch. Remove from oven and let cook in pan for 10 minutes.
Using a long spatula, move logs to cutting board. Using a sharp serrated knife, cut the dough into slices 3/4-inch thick on the diagonal.
Arrange slices cut side down and bake for 15 minutes. Turn slices over and bake an additional 15 minutes.
Remove from oven and let cool completely before storing in an air-tight container.
*Ok, you got me. I’m not a coffee drinker. But, Mike says that they tasted pretty darn good with it. Me? I ate it plain. And I liked it.
I’m not a huge chocolate fan, but fruity desserts are some of my favorites. And there’s nothing like some oatmeal in a dessert to make it seem a little healthier…
If only, right??
These bars were a hit – the first pan disappeared in just a little over a day. They are definitely in my “keep” recipe pile.
Raspberry Oatmeal Bars from allrecipes.com
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup instant oatmeal
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup raspberry jam
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 8 inch square pan with foil and spray with cooking spray.
Combine brown sugar, flour, baking soda, and oatmeal. Rub in butter with your fingers until crumbly. Press 3/4 of mixture into bottom of pan.
Warm jam up slightly in microwave. Spread over crumb layer in pan. Sprinkle remaining crumb mixture on top, gently pressing into the jam.
Bake for 35 minutes in oven, or until lightly browned. Let cool before cutting into squares.
DoughSeeDough 