Pineapple Mint Agua Fresca

Hot summertime deserves lots of refreshing beverages. Last month I went to Austin for a work trip, and afterwards Jonathan and my parents met up with me for the weekend. That city is foodie heaven. There are great restaurants around every corner. And if there's one thing we do when traveling it's eat. Brunch on Saturday was at La Condesa on 2nd Street in downtown. While the food was great, what really did me in was their refreshing pineapple mint agua fresca. I tried recreating it once, and while it still needs some perfecting, here's what you need to know.

Pineapple Mint Agua Fresca 

(makes half a pitcher)

what you'll need:

• 1 large can of pineapple chunks (or go for the fresh stuff!)
• 1/4 cup of fresh mint leaves
• simple syrup (to taste)
• water (fill the empty pineapple can twice)
• juice from 1 lime

what you'll do:

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend well. If you don't mind bits of mint in your drink, you're done! Otherwise, pass the drink through a strainer to remove the bits of mint. Serve chilled and over ice. (Kick it up a notch with a splash of rum.)

(Fill in the Blank) Rice Bowl

Recently my good friend Leslie (aka macaron baker extraordinaire) told me, "Whenever you make a new recipe, just assume I want it and send it to me." Well I haven't been so good at following up on that request, but I also haven't made new "recipes" in a while, either. So the following is less a recipe and more a list of ingredients that when combined are likely to taste pretty great.

I used to shy away from making Asian dishes at home because the list of specialty ingredients required intimidated me and dissuaded me from making the commitment. But those days are gone! It began with lettuce wraps and there's been no turning back since. It's nice to have an entire new arsenal of ingredients in our kitchen to throw together spontaneously.

One of the Food Network Recipe of the Day emails I got this week was for this bacon and broccoli rice bowl. We had a half-used package of bacon (from a super yummy & easy shaved Brussels sprouts and bacon side dish we made) so I was intrigued. This became a "throw together stuff you have in your produce drawer" kind of meal, so my resourceful was happy.

Ingredients I threw together:

• brown rice
• leftover sugar snap peas
• shredded carrots
• bacon
• leftover shaved brussels sprouts
• cilantro
• fried egg
• soy sauce, garlic rice vinegar, mirin (the recipe only called for soy sauce so do whatever works for you!)

Pseudo-recipe: Cook the rice per directions. In a medium pan, simmer the sugar snap peas in water for 1-2 minutes. Drain and combine the peas with rice, along with shredded carrots. Cook bacon in the medium pan until browned; add shaved Brussels sprouts. Saute for 2 more minutes. Add the bacon and Brussels sprouts to the rice mixture, along with soy sauce (and any additional sauces you have). Cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring until sauces are well-combined and almost completely evaporated. Transfer to bowl. Fry egg and serve on top of rice bowl. Garnish with cilantro.

I'm not a big fried egg person (I always overcook them) so it's not the prettiest picture, but you get the idea. With the cilantro and combo of sauces, the taste was somewhere between pad thai and fried rice. Is that a weird description? Hope not, 'cause it was delicious! So go dig out your produce drawer goodies and get cookin'.

Mediterranean Diet

Happy Friday! Because it's Friday during Lent, that means meatless Friday for us Catholics. As much as I love veggies and meatless dishes, I admittedly always scratch my head when it comes to thinking of lunches and dinners for this time of year. My go-to meatless dish is usually my favorite creamy salmon pasta. We made that last week, and even though I could eat that every single week, we probably shouldn't... but it is so good! I've posted the recipe on blogs of years past, but I'll repost it sometime because it is beyond simple to make. So for dinner J suggested some sort of pasta and salad. So pesto pasta it is! Easy enough. That leaves me with lunch.

Because it's still very much winter here, soup comes to mind. Specifically lentil soup. There was a story in The New York Times this week about a study that the New England Journal of Medicine published about the heart-healthy benefits of a Mediterranean diet (it fights against heart attacks and strokes). The story appealed to me because I grew up on a fairly Mediterranean diet (how could Italians not?). The story mentioned ingredients that are staples in my family's kitchen: olive oil, legumes, nuts, fish, fresh produce and (my favorite) dark chocolate. I feel like most people recognize the health benefits of a majority of these ingredients, but whether or not they are implemented into our diets is another thing. [Wonder how well you fit into the Mediterranean approach? The NYTimes offers this quiz, which I took ... and failed. Looks like we could all use a little more olive oil and fish in our lives.]

I think the ingredient that is trickiest on that list is possibly legumes (aka beans!). Again, in my family it was just another main staple—pasta e fagioli (pasta & beans), pasta e ceci (pasta & chick peas), lenticchie (lentil soup). Come to think of it, a lot of what I consider "my comfort foods" are tied up in legumes. Bonus: they're rich in fiber, filling and so darn good for you! So here is my mom's recipe for lentil soup that is sure to keep you warm and full on a cold winter day (and get you one step closer to a Mediterranean-rich diet!)

Lenticchie

Prep + cooking time: Approx. 2 hours // Servings: at least 4

What you'll need:
2 large carrots
2 stalks of celery
1/2 white onion
2 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
8 oz. dried lentils
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
Chicken broth or 2 bouillon cubes boiled in 1-2 qts. water to dissolve
1 bay leaf

What you'll do:
First, you need to make a soffrito (the "holy trinity" of Italian cooking: chopped carrots, celery and onion). Put the three ingredients in a food processor and pulse to finely chop.

In a stock pot, heat olive oil and then add soffrito and cook until golden and onion is translucent. Add lentils and stir for a minute to coat with soffrito. Add diced tomatoes.

At this point, add 4 cups of chicken broth (make sure it's also warm so it doesn't stunt the cooking of everything). Allow to simmer. Add bay leaf. When the broth has been consumed, continue adding 1-2 cups at a time. Simmer for 1-1.5 hours, or until lentils are tender. Serve with bread.

Top off the meal with a glass of red wine and a piece of dark chocolate—doctor's orders!

One Ingredient ||| Three Ways

If you were around a few weeks ago you remember I made way too much food for a certain football game watch party. Well part of that spread was a 5-lb. pork butt that we cooked in the slow cooker for some carnitas nachos. One baking sheet of nachos proved to be more than enough for us, so we had a lot of shredded pork left over. One week later, I was happy proud to say we used the rest of the pork in three different dishes, making my resourceful and creative heart very happy (not to mention our stomachs).

So first comes the cooking of the pork. We altered this beer braised pork recipe from Bon Appetit so we could cook it in a slow cooker instead of in a pot, which really just meant increasing the liquid & cooking time. We cooked it on low for about six hours until the pork fell off the bone (our pork butt wasn't boneless). At this point, remove the meat from the pot and shred with a fork. Store in a container until it's time to make one, two or all three of the following:

1. CARNITAS NACHOS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Reheat desired amount of carnitas in a pan. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Layer tortilla chips, carnitas, 1 can rinsed black beans, 1 chopped onion and shredded cheese (we grated sharp cheddar and Monterrey Jack). Bake 20-25 minutes, or until cheese is melted. Serve with guacamole, salsa, sour cream or pico de gallo.

2. BBQ PORK SANDWICHES + SWEET POTATO FRIES
Place desired amount of carnitas in a pan on medium heat. Pour in your favorite barbeque sauce (for us, that's KC Masterpiece Original) and a few tablespoons of water so the sauce doesn't burn and the meat doesn't dry out. Serve on toasted burger buns alongside some sweet potato fries.

3. ASIAN PORK with NOODLES and SUGAR SNAP PEAS
(I adapted a recipe from Real Simple to be able to sub in a lot of the specialty ingredients I bought a few weeks ago for these chicken lettuce wraps. My resourceful heart was the happiest about this one.)  Place desired amount of carnitas in a pan on medium heat. Pour in 1-2 tbs. soy sauce, 1 tsp. chili garlic sauce, 1 tsp. chopped fresh ginger, 1 tbs. mirin and 1 tbs. garlic rice vinegar. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to a boil and add udon noodles. Cook 4-5 minutes, adding sugar snap peas during the last minute of cooking. Strain and combine in pan with pork. Toss to coat noodles and sugar snap peas. At this point you can add more soy sauce if needed.

Recipe Intimidation

As much as I love cooking, I get a little anxiety from overly complicated recipes. I tend to get easily worked up about difficult steps and techniques. Only recently have I started to grasp what my mom teaches me whenever I cook with her: the recipe is just a guide ... make your own rules and ad lib as you go! Her version of a recipe is "a little bit of this, a cup of that (but not a measuring cup, one of those little cups we use for coffee, you know?)"

Case in point: One time in college I decided to make her delicious coffee whiskey semifreddo. I called home to ask for the recipe (she does actually have a "recipe" written down for this). My dad read the recipe to me and I followed it to a T. Later that night I pulled it out of the freezer and served it up to all of our friends. Reactions: "Wow, this is strong!" "V, you don't like to drink, but you sure like it in your dessert!" The recipe called for a cup of whiskey, okay? When I told my mom how much stronger than usual it tasted she said, "No, not a measuring cup. One of those little coffee cups we use for espresso. You know?" Lesson learned. 

Anyway, this is all an extreme tangent to my initial point. Which is this: I shy away from difficult recipes, but I'm learning to loosen up. So I bit the bullet and made beef bourguignon Friday night. I wanted to turn on Julie & Julia and relive the joys and agonies of cooking Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon recipe. Instead, I researched a few recipes and chose a simple yet pretty authentic version. I admittedly shied away from Julia's original or even the million-step Martha Stewart recipe. There's no crime in making the recipe work for you.

A friendly heads up: The prep & cooking time for this is about 3.5 hours. If, like me, you get started on this recipe later than you planned, which means a late dinner, appease your hungry husband/roommate/friends/guests with some French-inspired munchies: bread, brie cheese and grapes. And wine. That always helps.

And if your husband brings home beautiful tulips, all the better.

Beef Bourguignon with Roasted Potatoes

Adapted from Jenna Weber's recipe on PBS Food

Prep + cooking time: Approx. 3.5 hours // Servings: 4

What you'll need:

1 1/2 lbs. stew meat, cubed

1/4 cup flour

2 tbs. vegetable oil

1 tbs. butter

8 oz. bag of pearl onions, peeled with ends cut off

2 carrots, chopped (or in my case, a handful of baby carrots, chopped)

3 celery stalks, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, minced

3 cups of dry red wine (I used Leese-Fitch's Pinot Noir; one bottle=3 cups)

1/3 tsp. dry thyme leaf

2 bay leaves

10 oz. sliced mushrooms

4 small yellow potatoes

1 tbs. olive oil

salt and pepper

What you'll do:

Use a paper towel to pat the meat dry before coating in flour. In a gallon Ziploc bag combine flour and pinch of salt and pepper. Add stew meat and toss to fully coat. Meanwhile, heat 1 tbs. vegetable oil and butter in a dutch oven or large pot on medium heat. {Confession: another reason I've been wanting to make this dish is to be able to use our beautiful Le Creuset}. When butter and oil are sizzling add meat and brown on all sides, approx. 4 minutes per side. Remove meat and place on a plate.

Add the rest of the vegetable oil to the pot and add the onions, celery and carrots. Saute the veggies, adding garlic after 5 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and cook until the carrots are tender, approx. 5 more minutes. Add thyme and stir.

At this point, put the meat back in the pot with the veggies. Pour in wine and add bay leaves. Allow to boil and then lower the heat to low. Partially cover the pot and simmer for 3 hours, or until wine has reduced into a thick sauce. Stir occasionally to make sure meat does not stick to bottom. 

For the potatoes:

When 45 minutes of cooking time remain, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut the potatoes into eight pieces each and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 35-45 minutes, tossing occasionally. 

When 15 minutes of cooking time remain, heat 1 tbs. of olive oil in a pan and saute the mushrooms for 10 minutes. Stir into the beef for remaining minutes of cooking.

Remove bay leaves and serve potatoes alongside beef.

Bon appétit!

On the Menu

Now that we're both home for a few weeks, I'm trying to plan out our week's dinner menu on Monday. I'm trying my best to keep our meals diverse and healthy (a good balance of meat, fish, veggies and carbs), cost-effective (only one meal that requires a lot of specialty ingredients) and creative (tasty and using up ingredients we have).

Monday - Wednesday (ravioli)

Monday's chicken lettuce wraps were our specialty meal for the week. I tend to shy away from cooking Asian food at home because I can never commit to buying the ingredients needed that I don't use on an everyday basis. Since I didn't have to buy too many other things for the rest of our meals this week, I bit the bullet and kind of splurged on buying everything needed for Monday's meal, which included rice vinegar, chili garlic sauce, mirin, hot Chinese mustard and rice sticks. I should have gone without the rice sticks because they really don't add too much to the already delicious chicken lettuce wraps recipe (I used this copycat version of P.F. Chang's beloved appetizer). The recipe turned out great, and now that we've committed to all of the ingredients needed, I'm sure this will become a regular in our recipe arsenal. All those ingredients also allow us to expand into other new-to-us dishes, which is always fun.

Wednesday's salmon is one of Real Simple's 10 ideas for salmon recipes. I add parsnips because, well, I just love parsnips, and I also want to use up the last few we have in our fridge. For those that shy away from fish because it seems daunting to cook, I encourage you to try this recipe. It really couldn't be any more simple and low stress.

Salmon with Fennel and Carrots (and Parsnips!)

from Real Simple

1 sliced bulb fennel

1 large carrot

1 parsnip

1 sliced shallot

1/4 white wine

2 fillets of salmon

1 sliced lemon

salt and pepper

In a baking dish, toss fennel bulb, carrot, parsnip, shallot and white wine. Top with salmon; season with salt and pepper and top with lemon slices. Cover with foil and roast at 400 degrees until salmon is opaque, 30—35 minutes. 

Repurposing Leftovers

After a weekend of cooking every night (stir fry and crab rangoon on Friday, lasagna on Saturday and tacos on Sunday) I faced a week of leftovers on Monday. I've learned that I get a little bit of anxiety knowing I have leftovers sitting in the fridge because I worry it's going to go bad quickly, and I hate throwing food away (I think I got this trait from my dad who tends to take all leftovers from the fridge and make a hodgepodge addition to any meal). But after a few days of doing nothing but reheating meals in the microwave, I missed cooking.

On a related note, I also worry about wasting specialty ingredients. Case in point: the wonton wrappers from last Friday's crab rangoon. We only used half the package for that recipe, and rather than making another batch of crab rangoon tonight, delicious as they were, I excitedly remembered running across a recipe in this month's Cooking Light that used wonton wrappers for homemade ravioli.

To be fair, the wonton wrappers don't completely measure up to fresh pasta. But they are a great shortcut option and the combination of flavors in the filling and pesto are terrific. I'll make these again for sure. Actually, I have about 20 currently setting up in the freezer because there was no way I was going to go through 30 leftover wonton wrappers on my own. The filling was also more than I needed, so I'll probably enjoy it as a side to some meat course this week. The leftovers continue! It's a vicious little cycle, but somebody's gotta eat it.

Shortcut Butternut Squash Ravioli with Pesto
(recipe adapted from Cooking Light)

What you'll need:
1 butternut squash, halved lengthwise and seeded (Easier said than done! This is an exercise all on its own.)
1 tsp. dried oregano
2 tbs. salted butter, melted
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt & pepper
30 wonton wrappers
1 egg, beaten
Pesto (1 tbs. per 6-8 ravioli)
Olive oil (2 tbs. per 6-8 ravioli)
Cooking spray

What you'll do:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat a foil-lined baking sheet with cooking spray and place squash halves cut sides down. Bake for 30 minutes (or until tender). Allow to cool before scooping out pulp. Mash the pulp and combine with oregano and butter in a bowl. Stir in Parmesan and salt and pepper to taste.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Spoon about 1 1/2 tsp. squash into center of each wrapper. Moisten edges of wrapper with the egg and fold in half to form triangle. Pinch edges together to assure a tight seal. Repeat with remaining wrappers.

When water comes to a boil, carefully drop 3-4 ravioli at a time into the pot. Cook 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat pesto and olive oil in a smaller pot. When ravioli are cooked, remove with slotted spoon and place gently into the pot with pesto and gently coat. Repeat with remaining ravioli. Arrange 6-8 ravioli on a plate and garnish with extra Parmesan, if desired. (**If, like me, you don't want to eat all of these at once, place single layer of uncooked ravioli in the freezer until frozen. Store in a plastic bag. Allow to thaw before cooking. Boil for 3-4 minutes.**)

Pic of the Week: His&Hers

*Every Friday I'll try to post a favorite photo that each of us snapped that week. They won't necessarily be feats of great photography. They're just snapshots (literally) of what we did any given week: a great meal we had, a funny circumstance that happened; nothing is off limits.*

HIS & HERS

We share the same favorite snapshot this week because we both love food and cooking, but even more, we love cooking together, which is exactly what we got to do tonight! Jonathan got back from his work travels yesterday, so it was nice to have a lazy night at home cooking and enjoying time together. I had already planned to make some teriyaki chicken and veggie stir fry, but Jonathan had the added brilliant idea of making homemade crab rangoon. They were quite easy to make, and because we baked them instead of frying, I'd like to think they were not terribly unhealthy. 

Crab Rangoon

1 8 oz. pkg 1/3 less fat cream cheese

1 4 oz. can crabmeat, drained (we used Chicken of the Sea brand)

2 green onions, green ends cut finely

2 tsps. Worcestshire sauce

1/2 tsp. light sodium soy sauce

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

36 wonton wrappers

Duck sauce, for dipping (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until creamy. Place 1 tsp. of filling onto the center of each wonton; moisten the corners with water and fold up opposite sides (we tried other shapes but this was the most successful one for us...plus it holds the most filling!). Arrange the rangoon on the baking sheet and spray with cooking spray. Bake until golden brown, approx. 15 minutes. Serve with duck sauce. 

Happy cooking!