Ready for Rib-Eye.

Mmmmmmmmmm... who doesn't love a good steak?

Rib-Eye Steak with Quick, Easy, Luxurious Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients:

1 Rib-Eye steak per person - bone-in or bone-out, whatever your preference is (I choose bone-in because if I'm going to eat steak, it has to be flavourful and succulent and meat on the bone is always of higher standard in terms of flavour)

8 Mushrooms per steak, sliced

1 onion, cut in half and sliced

1/2 cup cream

1/2 cup low sodium beef stock

2 garlic cloves, grated

Dash of Worcester sauce

Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Season your steak to your own taste. Sometimes I use Montreal Steak Spice and sometimes I use Seasoning Salt.

Method:

Cook the steak your favorite way. I grilled mine on an indoor grill until medium rare. About 8 minutes per side for a thicker steak.

In a skillet, sautee the sliced onions and mushrooms in a dash of olive oil on a medium heat until mushrooms are tender and onions are soft. A good 10 minutes. At the 5 minute mark, add your grated garlic.

Towards the end of cooking, I like to turn the heat up to medium-high and get everything browned up a bit too, around the edges. The garlic shouldn't burn if you keep your eye on it and move it around the pan some.

Add the stock, reduce by half.

Add the cream, reduce by half.

Add a dash of Worcestershire sauce and a pinch of pepper.

Finish with a small pat of cold butter for extra luxuriousness (optional)

Pour sauce over steak.

Enjoy!!!

Lazy.

I have been finally starting to take pictures of the food I am cooking again, so stay tuned!

Tomato Harvest

I picked a bunch of my ripe yellow pear-shaped cherry tomatoes and received a bag full of garden tomatoes (heirloom and roma) from the bf's Mom and Dad.

What to do...

What to do...

I like tomatoes fine, but sometimes when they are everywhere and coming from everywhere, it gets difficult being creative. I LOVE the thought of roasted tomatoes and had this fantastic idea that I would make a roasted tomato sauce of some sort... either straight tomato with herbs and garnishes or a rose sauce.

At lunchtime today I decided to go ahead and throw the tomatoes in the oven, and wow did the house smell good. I started off with sauce in mind and upon looking in the cupboard and finding NO PASTA!!??!!!??? I decided to try to make a soup.

I quartered the red tomatoes and left the yellow ones whole and tossed them with salt, pepper, olive oil and a little thyme (no fresh basil on hand, otherwise I would have used that) and roasted them for about an hour in a 350 degree oven. The juices came out, some evaporated and what came out of the oven at the end was a delicious mix of the sweetest roast tomatoes I ever tasted.

I threw the tomatoes into a sieve and pushed them through. I then put the smooth roasted tomato goodness into a saucepan and added a bit of half and half and some water (I prefer the creaminess of the half and half and the sodium free quality of the water) to thin it out and make it a cream soup. I added some more seasoning including a dash of white wine vinegar, which really did bring out some more of those flavours and balance out that sweetness. Oh my. I heated it up a bit more and it was just awesome. Like a bisque.

Plump, juicy breasts.

Lately I have been thinking lots about the tomatoes that I grew in my backyard this summer. Yellow pear-shaped cherry tomatoes. At the moment, they are ripening quickly, and I have not been able to stop thinking about fresh salsa.


So I made some.

In my quest to keep myself and my family eating healthy, I have been trying hard to create as many new dishes that I can using chicken breasts and other lean meats - and when I feel motivated, I have been trying to cook new vegetables in new ways each day.

I have issues with chicken breasts. I have issues with foods that lack flavour, would be a better way to put it. I don't feel like I can justify paying full price for them because they really mean that little to me. However, I understand that they are a good way for us omnivores to get some protein, and if I can apply some of my creative cookery juice to it, I might have some success. And I have!!

I made a Mexican inspired spice rub for these whole chicken breasts on the bone, and look how lovely and juicy and succulent and flavourful they look!

During the summer months I crave alot of Mexican flavours, Meditteranean flavours and really just anything fresh and delicious and easy to make at the same time. I need flavourful food, which isn't too spicy to accomodate two children, and I love it when I find success!

I shredded some of this chicken and made a filling for some delicious enchiladas, which everyone said were the best ever... so I did something right!! The rest, I just ate cold... they were that delicious! The chicken breasts are easy to prepare... just go into your spice cupboard and pick out any combination of what you think will taste good! I rubbed these with a blend of a bit of salt, pepper, chili powder, paprika and dried oregano. I put them on the bbq and cooked them until the perfect doneness, and then let them cool. I started them on the meaty side on high until it was well sealed and marked, as you can see above... then I flipped them over, turned the bbq to low and put the lid over it. In around 15 minutes, you have perfect, juicy, amazing, flavourful chicken.

Below is my finished dish with the enchiladas and fresh salsa.

The fresh salsa consists of chopped tomatoes (yellow cherry tomatoes from the garden and fresh alberta grown roma tomatoes on the vine), a handful of chopped cilantro, three whole green onions chopped, one whole jalapeno deseeded and chopped... then I just season with a splash of extra virgin olive oil to loosen it up and some salt and pepper and a tiny pinch of dried oregano.

I will post the enchiladas recipe another time when I have more pictures of the separate components, stay tuned!

/p>

Chicken Breast with Proscuitto and Parmesean

I love food and eating and gourmet cooking SO much. I went to cooking school. I have cooked as a hobby for gosh... 20 years now it seems. I love to explore new flavours and create new recipes, basically either from the top of my head or with a bit of inspiration from others. This recipe that I am sharing today is that chicken and proscuitto dish that I shared pictures of in my last post... I have a couple more that I will share with the recipe.

The following recipe is one that I replicated off of something that I saw on tv. I have only seen the show one time, but I am pretty sure that I have the recipe at least similar. The show was Jamie's Ministry of Food and the recipe was the one where he flattened the chicken breast with procuitto on top and showed a big group of men after a footie match that they could cook too! And they could! I couldn't stop salivating over the meal however, until the day that I made it for the first time.

I am going to list the recipe loosely here, in no real format, based on how I make it at home. Any questions? Just comment!

Chicken Breast with Procuitto and Parmesean

Preheat a skillet on medium-high heat.

Get out your plastic wrap.

Ingredients:

1 Chicken Breast Per Person

3 Slices of Proscuitto per chicken breast

Grated parmesean, enough for 1tbsp of grated cheese per chicken breast

Grated lemon zest, enough for 3/4 tsp per chicken breast

a few springs of fresh Thyme on hand

Fresh ground pepper on hand

Olive oil on hand

Method:

Tear off a piece of plastic wrap that is around a foot long. What you want, is to be able to bash your chicken breast out to about 1/4-1/2 inch thickness, with the plastic wrap underneath, and folded over on top.

Place your first chicken breast on the plastic wrap.

Season your chicken breast with a bit of pepper, a few thyme leaves and a pinch of lemon zest.

Sprinkle on the parmesean, then season again with a bit of pepper, another couple leaves of thyme and another small pinch of lemon zest.

Lay your sheets of proscuitto on top, covering it like its a blanket, as few holes as possible. Perpaps keep some extra ham on the side in case of holes, you can just patch them up.

Then, fold over the plastic wrap over top of the whole thing and get to flatting it out with a heavy based skillet or a pot. I would normally use a rolling pin or something to bash out chicken, but because of the delicate indredients on the top, something wider works better and stuff doesn't come out of the edges.

Lift off the plastic wrap, and then take your chicken and place it ham-side down in the skillet.

Cook for 3 minutes, flip over, then cook for another 3 minutes.

I then flip it back over to the ham side and cook for an additional minute, to make the ham extra crispy.

Serve with anything delicious and enjoy!!!

Balance of Flavours - Roasted Beet Salad

A few days ago I felt like I needed to get my ass down to the Calgary Farmer's Market. Ooh la la! There were tables upon tables upon tables of goodies for my eyes to feast upon and for my wallet to become emptied by.


I had it in mind that I was going to make borscht over the following few days, so my buying was themed as such. I bought a bunch of amazing, fresh, red beets and a bunch of onions from the Hutterite's table. I really wanted potatoes too. It seemed like everywhere I looked there were these bags of red potatoes, gold potatoes, mini purple potatoes, potatoes potatoes potatoes! I bought a bag of these red smallish potatoes which look kind of like the peel is coming off slightly. I am going to make some roasties and potato salad with those. I also bought some sausages from this dim sum shop, which were made with chicken, green onions and ginger - dim sum dumplings in sausage form, how utterly delicious and addictive does that sound? Hehe, I like a good sausage.

Anywho, back to those beets and onions. When I brought them home, I started getting cravings for roasted beets. Mostly out of the blue... I guess I got the idea when I was roasting some brocolli that night (it turned out ok... when I make it and it turns out GOOD, then I'll take some pictures and post what I did). So I got to thinking about different things that would taste good with beets and got to thinking about the whole balance thing... you know; salty, sweet, savoury, crunchy, soft.... all the contrasting things that go so well together when you combine them just right! I got the idea to boost the sweetness and savoury factor to a whole different level and I decided that those onions would do really well roasted too. I thought dressing them might be delicious too... like, a little pan sauce or something. Balsamic vinegar! Perfect! I thought I would add that and maybe a little olive oil and perhaps a few sprigs off of my new English Thyme plant I have living on my kitchen table.

Summer then came to mind... salads! Lets put those roasted, dressed vegetables on some leaves! I bought a bag of salad leaves which I think I recall were Romaine, Radicchio and Endive, which seemed like a good mix to me. Good crunch with some peppery flavour. Perfect with the tang of the balsamic and the sweetness of the veggies. In my storecupboard I had a half a bag of pecan pieces left from baking, so I decided some of those toasted, and perhaps some crumbles of a sharp flavoured cheese (in the form of Macedonian feta, what a creamy treat!) would garnish it perfectly!

Ta-da - that is exactly what I did.

Those pictures are something else, aren't they?!! The beets turned out sweet and almost candy-like, the onions as well - both taking on a tartness from the balsamic, but still deliciously sweet. The pecans, which I toasted in a skillet added a perfect earthiness and that cheese made it just that much more luxurious. Now that I have overdescribed the deliciousness of those fresh ingredients, I will submit some recipes. Keep in mind I come up with most recipes on my own, in my own head.

Enjoy!

Roasted Beet and Onion Salad with Warm Balsamic Vinegarette

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Serves 4 as a side dish, 2 as a meal (if you like a big, satisfying salad!)

Ingredients

4 medium beets, any colours you desire

3 medium Walla Walla sweet onions

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

A few sprigs of thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Bag of mixed greens of your choice

About 1/4 cup of sharp cheese of your choice (Feta goes perfectly, try new varieties!)

Handful of pecans, toasted for a couple minutes in a skillet on medium-high heat (don't look away!!)

Method

Set oven to 350 degrees

Wash, peel and cut the beets into 1/4" pieces (the smaller they are, the sweeter and more condensed their flavour becomes with less roasting time)

Wash and trim onions. Cut into wedges, leaving a bit of the bottom on, so they don't fall apart.

Scatter the vegetables in a roasting pan or dish and toss with about 2tsp of the balsamic vinegar (I just splash enough on to coat, using my thumb over the top of the vinegar bottle), and about the same amount of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper (about 1/4 - 1/2 tsp each, or to taste) and scatter fresh thyme leaves over top.

Roast in the oven until golden brown and tender - up to an hour. Check them every 10-15 minutes and give them a stir. That way, they will brown evenly on all sides without burning on the bottom.

While the vegetables bake, put the bagged salad onto a serving dish. Prepare your pecans, by toasting them in a skillet with no fat in it over medium high heat for a couple minutes. You will know they are done, because they will release their aroma, a delicious roasty nutty smell!

When the vegetables are done, set aside on a plate to cool. Splash about another tbsp or so of the vinegar into the roasting dish, where the sweet juices have stuck to the bottom, and deglaze the pan with this. Don't put it on the heat, you don't need to reduce this, as the pan drippings are super sweet. Add a bit of salt and pepper to taste and about a tbsp of extra virgin olive oil. Wisk together.

To assemble the salad, scatter the roasted veggies on top of the leaves, then top with the nuts and the crumbled cheese. Drizzle with the dressing and serve immediately so those greens don't wilt.

Bon apetit!!!

The picture I have added here is of the salad served with a procuitto crusted chicken breast, recipe to come eventually!!