"My Life Sucks" Salmon

There has been more drama in the past 24 hours than I would have liked. I came home emotionally and physically drained, and hungry. Yesterday I had pulled some salmon from the fridge and put it in the fridge to defrost. Knowing full well that I needed to cook the salmon, but having neither the patience, nor the materials to make another recipe I had in mind, I turned to my trusty BHG Cookbook, looking for something under the "fish and shellfish" tab.
Lo and behold, pesto something-or-other salmon. The biggest thing in its favor--ease of preparation. I washed and dried my salmon (ok, why?). I brushed it with a little EVOO, salt and pepper, and broiled it for about 7 minutes 4 inches from the heat source (4-6 min per half inch fillet [julia child pronounces it Fill-Ett]), or until it flaked easily with a fork.

While its doing that, mix together some pesto and mayonnaise in a bowl. In another bowl, mix together bread crumbs and parmesean cheese.

Pull the salmon out of the oven, dump the pesto on top, and the bread crumbs on top of that. Broil for another 1-2 minutes, and eat it. If you feel like it, make a side dish. I dumped spring greens and Soy Vay Cha-Cha Chinese Chicken Salad Dressing together on the side.

Good, easy, fast.

Restaurant Week

This week was restaurant week in Downtown Norfolk. Bailey and I went to dinner with a few friends at a relatively new restuarant called Vintage Kitchen. Check out the menu. I chose the mac and cheese, tuna and apple pie.
Each course was better than the next. The first course: macaroni noodles with parmeseano reggano, aged cheddar, truffle oil and shaved truffle. It was creamy and delicious and had a nice bite to it. I inhaled it.
The second course: Sashimi grade tuna, cooked rare, with green beans, asparagus and sweet potato. Ohhhh....so good.....It melted in my mouth. Phenomenal. Gone in minutes.
Dessert: A small apple pie on phyllo dough, with a dallop of amazing, clo-like vanilla ice cream. The pastery was flakey and delicious, the apples were done perfectly, and it was excellent ice cream. I chowed down.

It was an amazing meal, and coupled with a good bottle of one, and for one flat price it couldn't be beat. I look forward to future restuarant weeks in downtown.

Spaetzle

I love German food. This is because I lived there, and I grew accoustom to it. None the less whilst shopping at Cost Plus World Market for napkin rings, I stumbled upon a box of Spaetzle. I love Spaetzle. I cooked it and then once the noodles were cooked I fried them in butter and added them to sauteed veggies (zuchinni, carrots onions and green beans) and some ground turkey. This is what I ate for dinner last night. HMmm good. Tonight -- I had left overs so I decided to toast a whole wheat pita. I smothered the inside with hummus, added some cheddar cheese and heated up the mixture from last night. I ate two half pita sandwhiches. IT WAS GOOD.

I need to look up my own spaetzle recipe though because in the end - it wasn't.... I mean. It was OK - but it wasn't that great. I'll have to make it from scratch though.

Sombrero with a side of Pears, please!

Dutch Babies for Breakfast:








Preheat oven to 400.
Put 2 TBS butter into a cast iron skillet, or other oven going pan (OGP). Put the pan in the oven. While the butter is melting (3-5 minutes) whisk together 3 eggs. Add 1/2 c. milk, 1/2 cup flour and some salt. Beat together. Immediately pour into OGP, and stick back in the oven for 20-25 minutes until well done.





While the Dutch baby is cooking, prepare some sort of fruit. I had a bunch of pears, so I sliced those up, drizzled a little honey on them and mixed them with a little bit of raspberry preserves. I heated the whole thing up in a skillet, and just as the dutch baby came out of the oven, I dumped the fruit on top. Serve with something cold and white. The recipe recommends whipped cream, all I had was vanilla yogurt.

Momo-Killer of Crustaceans

I had lobster for dinner tonight.







It was awesome.








Death Chamber.








Ready to eat.

Casualties in the Kitchen

So, for those of you who have followed my posts throughout the day, you will remember that I had raspberry muffins for breakfast.


Sadly, due to a wee forgetfulness on my part (i.e. totally forgetting they were in the oven when I turned on the broiler), they are no longer.

Le French Onion Soup

See, I have made zee french onion suup, ok?

I make the onions small, like so: and in a pan, I made zem brown with zee butter and zee olive oil (dirty italians). After zey have been made brown, I add garleek and thyme and sugar. Well. Zee recipe calls for sugar, I had le honey.

So, ok, le onions are le browning, and zee recipe calls for beef stock. I do not have le beef stock. Zen I remember! Sacreblue! I have zee leftover gobblestock from zee...what do you call... le Thanksgiving. Frozen. In le freezer. Le Crap.

So I dump le frozen block of gobblejuice into le big pot, and turn on le burner in hopes that it returns to its liquid state before le onions burn. Zen I remember I need to add some fleur to le onions. Can't find le fleur. Add le Semolina. Same thing. Heehee.

Eventually I get all le pieces together and WALA! LE FRENCH ONION SOUP! (except instead of le french bread, I use le sourdough. And zee only fromage that I have is le parmesean.)

MWA! Bon Apetit!

Breffest

For breakfast today:

Mini muffins (i got a muffin mix and mini muffin pan as a christmas gift from extended family).
Side O' Butter
Side O' Blackberry Preserves

Glass O' Milk

MSGood

So, I know there are several people here who love MSG. I'd long been under the impression that it was some terrible cancer-causing indulgence that made snack foods so damn good. Turns out, it's more about Umami than anything else. You even have tastebuds specific to detecting glutamate...so lick those finegrs after you've devoured your favorite MSG laden snack!

Stupid

No one has posted anything in the last 13 days. This leads me to believe either 1 of 2 things.

1. Everyone on the list of posters has been eating out every meal since January 4th (I know I have - just ask me what I had for lunch today)

2. Everyone is dead.


I know 2 isn't true.............

So I will entertain you with Stupid Recipes that I have located on the Internets:

BUTTER MELTS
take a piece of butter and stick it in the oven at 50 degrees celcius and enjoy,

Sunless Tea

INGREDIENTS:
3 tea bags with strings
hot water
1 bottle
1 refrigerator

In light of today's diet awareness, we present this handy recipe, which,
though not earthshaking, provides a refreshing thing to reach for when
checking to see if the refrigerator light still operates.
Take a glass half-gallon bottle, like what apple juice comes in at the market.
Fill the bottle with hot tap water. (Don't get fussy and boil it or anything.)
Take three tea bags of anything, twist the strings together, push the bags into
the bottle, and screw the lid on so the strings stick out. (Don't let the tea bag
companies give you that bugle juice about ten tea bags per gallon. You
yourself may one day have children to put through college as they apparently
do.) Place the jar on the counter for about fifteen minutes, then take the tea
bags out. When the jar is cool enough so it doesn't melt the plastic shelf in
your refrigerator, put the jar in the frig.
You can make this tea with cold water and just put it in the frig, and this
works, but with hot water you can watch the tea leach out of the bags, form
little tea tendrils, drift down and form a gradient at the bottom of the bottle.
(If you often spend time observing such things, you should probably either get
a hobby or become a government worker.)

And this is not actually a recipe - but hysterical -
"The moral of the story is don’t get married when you’re 15 and strippers named Bobbi don’t know a damned thing about making fried chicken." as taken from a blog called Kat's Kitchen

I HAVE MADE PASTA!

It was a lot easier than I expected it to be, although I have to admit that I screwed up the first ball of dough.

If you have a mixer, put 1.5 cups semolina flour into the mixer. On top, add 2 eggs beaten with 2 tbsp water and 2 tbsp olive oil. If you are doing this by hand, make a mountain out of the flour, and put the mixture in the middle, like a volcano, and beat in the flour a bit at a time with a fork.

Once you have an elastic ball that doesn't stick to anything but itself, let it rest in a plastic bag for about 20 minutes.

Now, if you don't have a super sexy pasta machine, just roll out the dough to desired thickness and cut with a knife into whatever shapes.

If you DO have a super sexy pasta machine, roll the pasta, SUCKAS!!


And if you don't have a pasta drying rack, use what's on hand!