Beef Stroganoff and Black Bean & Corn Creamchiladas

Beef Stroganoff

• Yum! E loved this, and RatDog took his dinnertime begging to a new level when I made this.
• I didn't bother making the house seasoning, because I didn't want to have to store it. Instead, I just mixed up a little bit of salt, garlic powder and black pepper. Easy enough. Don't make the mistake that one commenter made; they used ALL of the house seasoning in this recipe, and ended up with a WAY over-salted (1 cup of salt) dish.
• We served the beef stroganoff over mashed potatoes instead of egg noodles, because after Thanksgiving a big bag of potatoes was on sale at Target for 50 cents. What a deal :)
• I also used low-sodium cream of mushroom soup.

Black Bean and Corn Creamchiladas

• This was an easy-to-prep recipe; it was great to make after work.
• I really liked the sharp flavor of the low-fat cream cheese. E didn't love it as much as I did, but he does not love cheese the way that I do.
• I forgot to cover it before baking it, so the tortillas got a little crispy and (lightly) browned. It was still good.
• I didn't love the taste of the roma tomatoes on the top. Next time I might just top them with pre-made (and probably less healthy) salsa.

Trying some recipes out for Christmas

E and I will be hosting Christmas for his family this year. We experimented with a couple of recipes to see if either one would work for Christmas dinner. It's going to be a tough decision :)

Turkey Lasagna

• E loves lasagna, and I love goat cheese, so this recipe was pretty much perfect for us.
• I followed the recipe almost exactly, except that I used dried parsley and basil instead of fresh, because I wanted to freeze half of the lasagna, and I don't think that fresh herbs always freeze that well. I've noticed that sometimes frozen basil in a tomato sauce gets a slight metallic flavor.

Crockpot Pulled Pork

• I followed the recipe exactly. I served it with extra barbecue sauce and thought it was delicious.
• Basically it's comfort food at its finest :)

We are leaning towards serving the crockpot pulled pork at our Christmas celebration because it definitely was less work than the turkey lasagna was, and it might be more kid-friendly than turkey lasagna. Also, we want to make things as simple as possible, because the holidays can be a lot of work :)

Indonesian Chicken Satays

This is another favorite recipe of ours; we actually like a lot of the recipes in this cookbook. I recommend mixing up the marinade before you head to work, and let the chicken and marinade work its magic in the fridge during the day. Also, you should serve it with a peanut sauce. I recommend making the peanut sauce the night before, just to make things easier. Here is a link to a peanut sauce recipe.

Indonesian Chicken Satays

Clare Ferguson

"Chicken: From Maryland to Kiev"

pg. 103

Ingredients:

• 1 TBSP. brown sugar
• freshly squeezed juice of 2 limes
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly cracked black pepper
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 TBSP. soy sauce
• 1/3 cup thick coconut milk, from the top of the can
• 1 TBSP. molasses
• a handful of cilantro roots and leaves, chopped
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, about 1 1/2 lb.
• 2 TBSP. peanut oil
• 16 bamboo satay sticks, soaked in water for 30 min.
• Peanut Sauce

Directions:

1) Put the brown sugar, lime juice, salt, pepper, garlic, soy sauce, coconut milk, molasses, and cilantro into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

2) Simmer for 3-4 minutes, then remove from the heat and cool quickly over ice.

3) Transfer to a shallow glass or china dish.

4) Slice the chicken lengthwise into even strips or ribbons. Add to the marinade. Stir well to cover. Marinate for 20 minutes or up to 8 hours in the refrigerator.

5) When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

6) Drain the chicken, then push an even number of strips onto each satay stick, threading them on in pleated waves.

7) Brush each satay with a little peanut oil.

8) Lay the bamboo satay sticks across a baking pan. (I use something like this)

9) Baste the chicken with the marinade

10) Cook for 15-20 minutes, turning over after 10 minutes.

11) Serve with peanut sauce.

Note: The recipe in the cookbook also provides instructions for making these on the grill, in a stove-top grill pan, or in the broiler. We have only made them in the oven so far.

Trinidadian Split Pea Soup

When I was in high school and as a freshman in college, I was a vegetarian. I ended the vegetarianism when I traveled to Cuba for two weeks. It seemed like it would be inappropriate of me to request special meals when people there were living off of rations.

My mom always worried about me getting enough nutrients. When I came home from college for winter break, my mom and I went to the book store, and bought this cookbook. My mom and I chose a recipe together, and then went to buy the ingredients. She wanted me to learn how to cook and eat a healthier vegetarian meal than what I had become accustomed to eating (I didn't really like vegetables back then). She and I made this soup together. I made it a few weeks ago, and it was still as good as I remembered it to be.

Trinidadian Split Pea Soup

from Madhur Jaffrey's "World Vegetarian"

Pg. 602-603

Ingredients:

• 3 TBSP peanut or canola oil (I used peanut oil)
• 1 "good-sized" onion, peeled and finely chopped (I used my special chopper to quickly chop the onion, celery stalk, garlic, and chile)
• 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 fresh hot green chile, finely chopped
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme (I used dried thyme)
• 1 TBSP. finely sliced chives (I used green onion)
• 1 cup coarsely grated peeled carrot
• 1 cup yellow split peas (picked over, rinsed, drained)
• 6 cups vegetable stock
• salt
• pepper
• 1 cup of diced yam (one large yam diced into 3/4 inch pieces)
• Tabasco sauce, or lime juice and cayenne pepper to season the soup.

Directions:

1) Put the oil in a large pan and set over medium-high heat. When hot, put in the onion, celery, garlic, green chile, thyme, and chives. Stir and saute for 5 minutes; a little browning should be encouraged.

2) Add the carrot and continue to stir and fry for another 3 minutes.

3) Add the split peas and stock and bring to a boil.

4) Cover partially, turn the heat down to low, and simmer gently for 1 1/4 hours.

5) Add the yams. Simmer for about 15-20 more minutes; until the yams are soft.

6) When done, taste for salt, adding as much as needed. Also add black pepper to taste.

7) Mix together lime juice and a little bit of dried cayenne. Use this to season the soup at the table. Be careful, because a little cayenne goes a long way. You could also set out Tabasco sauce or another pepper sauce for seasoning the soup at the table.

Recipes from October and November

Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies

• I made these on Halloween, in between groups of trick or treaters. A few times, E had to answer the door by himself because my hands were full of cookie dough. I also brought a few of these cookies to my grandpa while he was in the hospital.
• I highly recommend this recipe. We baked 2 dozen cookies that night, and I froze about 4 dozen cookie dough balls for later. Yummy!

Corn and Black Bean Quesadillas with Pepper Jack Cheese

• A couple of weeks ago, I bought a block of pepper jack cheese when it was on sale for 99 cents. We also had a lot of frozen corn, and some frozen crockpot black beans. This seemed like a good recipe for using them up.
• We made a double batch of these, because this recipe only serves 2, and we like to make at least 4 servings of a recipe so we can have leftovers for lunch.
• We both really liked these, and they were pretty easy to make.

Bacon Chicken Alfredo Pizza

• We had frozen rotisserie chicken, and quite a bit of bacon, and we didn't know what we were going to do with it. This was an easy recipe (nothing is from scratch) to make on a Monday night when we both worked during the day, and didn't feel like cooking a complicated dinner. It was good, too :)

Yam Fries

• I had an extra yam leftover after making Trinidadian Yellow Split Pea Soup (I will post the recipe soon). I made a half recipe of baked yam fries as a snack on Halloween. I thought that the color of the yam was very festive. And the fries were delicious :)

Updates

It's been a while since I've updated this blog. Things have been really busy at our house. First, a few weeks ago, we returned our original set of pots and pans to BB&B. Because I am a receipt saver, I still had the original receipt - and it wasn't that hard to find. We bought them (using gift cards from our wedding) when we returned from our honeymoon in August of 2008. Unfortunately, the pots and pans did not hold up as well as we had hoped. BB&B and Calphalon have great return policies (Calphalon has a lifetime guarantee), so it worked out fine for us. We ended up getting a set of stainless steel pots and pans, since we didn't want a whole set of non-stick pans. We really like this set; hopefully this one will hold up and be our set for a long long time. Because of the way BB&B calculates store credit (even with our receipt), we still had a decent chunk of store credit that we needed to spend there. We ended up applying the credit towards a breadmaker. I have not quite mastered the art of breadmaking yet, but hopefully it will happen soon :)

I was also sworn into the state bar a couple of weeks ago. That was exciting :)

Finally, today E and I ran a little over 2 miles without stopping. It was pretty windy and cold, but I was really proud of us. I keep thinking that we are on our last run outside for the season, but then the weather keeps tempting me. Especially since I prefer running outside to running on a treadmill.

Slow Cooker Cookbook

Last week when I was planning out our meals, I saw this book sitting on our bookshelf. I don't remember buying it, and neither does E.

This week, we tried 3 recipes from it:

• Pork, Pea, and Spinach Curry Soup
• Chicken Peanut Stew (we really like a non-slow cooker version of this recipe from this cookbook)
• Cuban Black Bean Stew

None of the recipes were bad, but they were all pretty average and somewhat bland. When I saw that this cookbook had a 2.5 star review on Amazon.com, I wasn't surprised. Again, the recipes weren't terrible, but they just weren't amazing.

We do really like this cookbook, though. It was one of the first cookbooks that E and I ever used together. Chicken is E's favorite meat, and I think that he borrowed the cookbook from his sister (and forgot to return it). It looks like we can buy it for a penny on Amazon.com now - maybe we should, so we can return "our" copy to E's sister :) Anyway, we've gotten some good use out of that cookbook. These are the recipes in that book that we really like:

• Indonesian chicken satays
• Jamaican jerk chicken
• Nigerian peanut and chicken stew
• jollof rice
• stir-fried chicken with greens
• chicken kabobs
• chicken with udon noodles

I get most of our recipes online, but sometimes it's nice to use a cookbook. Sometimes I will find myself making a lot of Italian and Tex-Mex recipes, and I forget about all of the other options that are out there. A cookbook allows you to browse without having to type anything into a search engine, so you might find yourself inspired to make something that you weren't originally planning on making.