Cioppino

For dinner Friday night, my mom showed me how she makes her Cioppino, which is basically an Italian seafood stew.  Most recipes I've seen use a variety of different fish and shellfish, but we only used shellfish because I'm not a huge fan of salmon or cod (which is usually the fish my mom adds in I think).  This is definitely a dish for a special occasion since the seafood can make this an expensive meal, but this turned out really good and the broth was to die for!  The broth was just so flavorful that I think next time I decide to make mussels mariniere I'm going to use this broth with it.

Ingredients:

1 green bell pepper, finely diced

1 cup shallots, diced

1 bunch scallions, chopped

3 tablespoons minced garlic

salt, pepper, and italian seasoning to taste

3 cans italian flavored diced tomatoes

1 can beef broth

1 jar of clam juice

1 cup white wine (we used a Savignon Blanc)

2 sweet italian sausages

3/4 - 1 lb mussels

3/4 - 1 lb bottleneck clams

3/4 - 1 lb shrimp, peeled with tail removed

3/4 - 1 lb sea scallops

Directions:

1.  Steam and brown the italian sausages until almost cooked through.  Slice up and set aside.

2.  Sautee onions, green peppers, shallots, scallions, and garlic until translucent.  Season to taste with salt, pepper, and italian seasoning (be generous with your seasoning).  Add the white wine and let cook down a bit.

3.  In a large stockpot, heat up italian diced tomatoes, beef broth, claim juice, and slice italian sausage.

4.  Transfer the sauteed onion and pepper mix to the stockpot and heat over medium heat for 45 minutes to an hour.  At this time taste the broth and season as needed.

5.  Sautee the shrimp and scallops (seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic) in a little EVOO.  Be very careful not to overcook.  It's best to pull them off the head when they are just slightly underdone.

6.  When almost ready to eat add the bottleneck clams first, then mussels about 2 minutes later.  After clams and mussels open, stir the shrimp and scallops in the pot for just a minute and serve immediately.

We served the cioppino with crusty toasted bread on the side so we could use it to soak up all the yummy broth!

This was a great meal!  Just make sure the broth is seasoned the way you like it before you add any seafood in and be really careful not to overcook the seafood.

Apple Bread Pudding

This past weekend, we visited Kansas City (which is where I grew up) to celebrate my Grandpa Frank's 80th birthday.  For dessert on Friday night, my mom and I decided to make one of our favorite fall desserts - apple bread pudding.  It may not look very pretty in picures, but I am telling you.....this is SOOOO GOOD!  It's a great cold weather dessert that's easy to put together, and this one is definitely one of my favorites.  My mom got this recipe years and years ago when her and my dad visited New Orleans.

Ingredients:

Bread Pudding-

1 loaf of slightly stale french bread (the stale bread absorbs the liquid a little better than fresh bread)

1 quart half and half

3 eggs

3 apples, peeled and chopped

2 cups sugar

2-3 tablespoons vanilla extract (depending on how much vanilla you want)

half stick of butter, melted

Cinnamon sugar, to taste

Whiskey Sauce-

1 stick butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

whiskey to taste (we used a double shot)

Directions:

1.  Cut up your loaf of bread into cubes and place in a 9x13 casserole dish.

2.  Pour half and half over bread cubes and let soak.

3.  Meanwhile, mix together eggs, sugar, vanilla, and apples.

4.  Pour over your bread mixture, and mix through with your hands to make sure everything is distributed.  Then pour the melted butter over the top and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

5.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour until firm.  Here's what our's looked like after baking (again, it doesn't look that pretty but it is sooooo delicious).

6.  Make the whiskey sauce:  In a small saucepan, melt butter and sugar together.  Whip in egg very quickly.  Remove from heat and add in whiskey.  Serve sauce on top of each serving of bread pudding.

Cute Cupcakes!

Last week my sister, Kristen, and her roomate, Annie, made some really cute pig and frog cupcakes.  They gave us a couple of the pig ones so I had to take a pic and post it because I thought they were really cute.  I actually love making cupcakes, but I've never made the oversize ones (which is what these were), but next time I might try these and do something fun with the decorations :)

 

French Dip Sandwiches

Last night's dinner literally took me less than 15 minutes from the time I started slicing my onions to the time we sat down to eat.  This is a perfect weeknight meal to throw together with only 5 ingredients to buy from the grocery store.  Although I will say that I haven't bought deli meat in awhile and I didn't realize that a pound of roast beef was $11 at my grocery store (Dominicks)!  That seemed like a lot so I tried to cut a few bucks off by only getting 3/4 of a pound which worked out fine for us.  I adapted this recipe from http://www.allrecipes.com/.  The things that I changed from the original recipe are:  I added some sauteed sliced onions to the sandwiches, I seasoned the beef consomme with a little fresh cracked pepper and some garlic powder, and I only used 1 slice of provolone on each sandwich because my slices were pretty big and had a strong flavor.

Ingredients:

1 (10.5 ounce) can beef consomme

1 cup water
1 pound thinly sliced deli roast beef
8 slices provolone cheese
4 hoagie rolls, split lengthwise
1 white or yellow onion
EVOO to saute onion

Directions:

1.  Slice up an onion and saute in a little olive oil until softened (about 10-12 minutes)

 

2.  Meanwhile, heat your beef consumme and water in a saucepan over medium head until slightly boiling (at this time I seasoned with a little pepper and garlic powder).  Reduce heat to low, place the roast beef in the broth, and warm for about 3 minutes or so.

 

3.  Put the cheese slices on your hoagie rolls and broil on low for a few minutes until cheese is melted and bread is toasted.

 

4.  Add some roast beef to each sandwich and either drizzle with some of the broth or serve the broth on the side for dipping.

This was REALLY good.  The beef consumme gave the roast beef a great flavor.

Spaghetti, Meatballs, & Italian Sausage

So this recipe came from my mom who got it from my Great Grandma Jean. Grandma Jean came over to America from Italy was she was just a baby, and she had some great Italian recipes. I can't believe I haven't actually made this recipe myself before last night, but my mom would make this a lot for us when we were growing up. I promised Kevin last week that I would make spaghetti and meatballs for our Sunday dinner so yesterday I called my mom and she talked me through the recipe. It turned out really great and we have tons of leftovers.

Ingredients:

Meatballs -
1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork
3/4 cup grated romano cheese (or you could also use grated parmesan)
3 T minced garlic
1 onion, chopped very finely in the food processor
5 slices good italian bread with crust taken off and then soaked in warm water for a minute or so, then wring as much liquid out as you can once you are ready to use
2 eggs
1/4 cup fresh italian parsely, minced
salt and pepper to taste (but be generous)

Tomato Sauce -
3 (12 oz) cans tomato paste (you can adjust this amount depending on how much sauce you want and just also adjust the amount of water you add)
water (you will use a 3 to 1 ratio of water to tomato paste so since I used 3 cans of tomato paste, I used 9 cans of water)
1 onion, chopped
3 T minced garlic
1/4 cup sugar (can adjust to taste)
salt, pepper, and italian seasoning to taste (but again, be generous)

Other -
EVOO
1 lb spaghetti
1 package italian sausage (we used hot, but sweet would also be really good)

Directions:

1. Mix together all of your meatball ingredients with your hands and then form meatballs into about the size of golf balls.

2. In batches, brown meatballs in a little EVOO until almost cooked through. Set on paper towels to drain, but reserve the oil and meatball grease in the pan (at first, I had a little trouble with my meatballs falling apart when I tried to turn them so be gentle with them and make sure you have enough EVOO in the pan for the first batch.  Also, next time I make them I'll make a little smaller because I think that might help them hold together better.)

3. Meanwhile, cook italian sausages until almost cooked through (I boiled mine in a deep skillet for awhile, then drained the water and added some EVOO to brown on the outside). Set on paper towels to drain and then cut to desired size (I cut each sausage into thirds).

Here's what the meatballs and sausages looked like after browning:

4. In meatball skillet, saute your chopped onion, garlic, and italian seasoning until softened (about 5 minutes).

This is what my onions and garlic looked like:

5. In a large stockpot, mix together 3 cans of tomato paste and 9 cups of water and bring to a boil. Sauce will thicken a bit, but if it looks too thin or too thick you can add a little more tomato paste or water.

6. To the sauce, add the sauteed onions & garlic, sugar, and salt & pepper to taste. Keep seasoning until you are happy with the flavor of the sauce (make sure you add enough salt - when I first tasted my sauce it didn't taste good at all and then once I added quite a bit more salt it tasted amazing!).

7. Carefully add in the meatballs and italian sausages to the sauce and simmer over low heat for about an hour.

Here's what my sauce looked like:

8. Meanwhile, cook 1 lb of spaghetti according to the package directions.

9. Once you are ready to eat, serve each plate up with some spaghetti and top that with the sauce, meatballs, and italian sausage.

To serve, we grated a little parmesan on top and served with some garlic bread and a green salad. It was a perfect Sunday dinner!  The sauce was soooo good....awhile back I had made some of Giada's marinara sauce and wasn't that happy with the flavor of it so this is going to be my go-to tomato sauce.

Sweet and Sour Chicken

I haven't really made too many Asian dishes (well about a month ago I made mongolian beef but it didn't turn out like I thought it would), but this one turned out great! I found this recipe on this really great blog called My Kitchen Cafe that I came across while surfing the internet, and the recipe looked really tasty with not too many ingredients so I decided to give it a try. It was a winner with my husband so I'll definitely make it again. I didn't make any changes to the original recipe, but the only thing I may do next time is to make the sauce on the stovetop and then bake the chicken seperately for a little less time and then mix together at the end (just because a whole hour in the oven dried the chicken out a tad).

Ingredients:

Chicken -

3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

salt and pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

Sauce -

3/4 cup sugar

4 tablespoons ketchup

1/2 cup vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon garlic salt

Directions:

Cut the chicken breasts into chunks. Dip chicken in cornstarch first and then in eggs.

Fry in a little oil until golden brown but not cooked through. Place in a single layer in a baking dish. Whisk up the sauce ingredients and pour over the chicken.

Bake for 1 hour at 325 degrees. Turn chicken every 15 minutes.

If you like extra sauce, make another batch of sauce and bring it to a boil on the stovetop. Stir constantly and let cook over medium heat until thickened and reduced - about 6 to 8 minutes.

I served this over jasmine rice with a side of potstickers and it turned out to be a great meal!

A Couple of Weeknight Meals

We tried to use up some leftovers we had in the freezer so we had some sloppy joes with french fries.



We also had some more of the really good bratwurst we had in the freezer! This is a prettier picture with the onions than the one I took last time. It's getting much colder here so we probably won't be grilling as often but maybe every once in awhile :)

Here are some quesadillas we made using some leftover pepperocini beef that we froze (and of course lots of shredded cheese).