Baked Garlic Prawns

As you know, I love being in the kitchen and spend quite a bit of time there. For the last two weeks we have been waiting to get our range fixed due to a gas leak. Not having a stove has forced me to get creative in the kitchen! Finding some lovely prawns at the store, and having a hankering for them, I brought them home to join me at the dinner table. I have always done prawns on the stove top, and I had to get creative with baking!

I came up with a simple recipe that takes about an hour to prepare and cook! Want to see what I did? Let’s start with a list of the ingredients!

1# large prawns
2 TBS Sauvignon Blanc (do have a glass with dinner!)
5 cloves of garlic, chopped
Dash of salt
3 twists of the black pepper grinder
1/2 cup of panko (or you can use a garlic herb, or Italian seasoned breadcrumbs)
1/4 cup of butter
Cayenne pepper
Lemon pepper
Parsley

Peel and devein the prawns. Now I gently pull the tail shell off the prawns as I do not like having to deal with shells when I am getting down to business eating! Feel free to leave them on if you like messing with them at the table.

In a mixing bowl, add the prawns, garlic, wine and salt and pepper. I let them sit for about 30 minutes before doing anything else.

Prawns mixed with wine, garlic, salt and pepper

While this is sitting take out the butter to soften.

After the half hour, in a separate bowl add the butter and the panko. Using your hands, mix this together until you get a nice crumbly mixture.

Butter mixed with panko

Turn the oven to 425 degrees. Oh, I can hear you saying, “Really? That high?” Yes, that high. Assemble the dish by putting the prawns in a small casserole baking dish.

Prawns are added to pot

Now evenly spread the butter/panko crumbles over the prawns. Then sprinkle with a bit of the cayenne and the lemon pepper.

Panko added then topped with cayenne and lemon pepper

Bake this for 15 minutes only, then remove from the oven.

Right out of the oven!

Mmmmm….Smells so good!

Serve this up and then top with some fresh parsley. Don’t forget to have a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc!

Prawns served up!

When you bite into these lovelies, they will be perfectly cooked!

Please let me know if you try this dish! If you are having a dinner party, this would be a good appetizer served in shells!

Thanks for stopping by today, and celebrate the end of the work week!

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Chipotle Pork Ribs

On the weekends, I am all about easy in the kitchen! And, after having worked all day in the garden, I wanted to do something that I could let slow cook to really take it easy on myself. So I pulled some baby back ribs out of the freezer the day before and took out the crock pot in the morning. Plan on 10 hours on low heat, and do not remove the lid until the meat is done!

Ingredients
Baby back pork ribs
Chipotle sauce
Garlic Powder
Oregano
Cumin
Salt and Pepper

Spray the crock pot with a non-stick cooking spray. Place the ribs on foil and rub with the chipotle sauce. Then sprinkle with the remaining ingredients.

Ribs with sauce and herbs

After 10 hours in the crock pot, remove them to a cutting board and cover with foil. Let them sit for about 10 minutes. Then separate the ribs into two ribs.

Ribs are done

Serve this with my broccoli cole slaw. Click below for that recipe:

Broccoli Slaw

Don’t forget a really good beer or have a glass of Barbera!

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Pinot More

When my husband goes off to visit his Mother, I cook the stuff that I like to eat. He tells me that I can cook these things when he is home, but I want him to enjoy what I make, so I save these dishes for a night like tonight! I wanted to do something different with lamb. And I wanted to use some of the wine we have sitting around the house!

Ingredients
1 cup of Pinot Noir (I used 2010 Chateau Davell Delores Pinot Noir, Mendocino), plus 1/2 cup reserved
1/8 cup of extra virgin olive oil
8 fresh rosemary stems, leaves removed and chopped
8 cloves of garlic, minced
fresh ground salt and pepper, about 1/2 tsp of each
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 rack of lamb
1 TBS local honey

Marinade ingredients

Put the wine, olive oil, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper plus the balsamic vinegar into a bowl and mix it well. Place the lamb and the marinade in a zip lock bag, and shake it up.

Marinating lamb

Let this sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. One hour before you are ready to cook, take the lamb out of the refrigerator. After an hour, turn the oven on to 350 degrees. While the oven heats, place your lamb in a roasting pan.

Lamb ready for the oven

Reserve the marinade. Bake until the temperature of the meat reaches 135 degrees. Remove from the oven, cover and let sit. While this is resting, place the reserved marinade into a sauce pan, and add the honey. Heat to boiling. Reduce this to half. Check the flavor as you go. If needed use the reserved wine.

Pinot reduction

When reduce to half, turn down to warm. Slice up the resting lamb into chops.

Lamb cut into chops

Plate the meat, dress with some fresh rosemary, and drizzle the sauce over the meat.

Dinner is served!

And, dinner is served! Let me know how you like this recipe!

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Slow Roasted Beef

In thinking what I would make for dinner tonight, I rummaged once again through the freezer, and a couple of days ago I discovered the roast I had put away. I will be slow roasting this and will also feature roasted potatoes, carrots and parsnips to accompany this dish. Slow roasting of the meat will keep the “pink” color of the meat from side to side, and any leftovers will make great roast beef sandwiches. So let’s head off to the kitchen!

Ingredients
1 – 3 1/2# beef roast
Fresh ground salt and pepper
1 tsp each of rosemary, thyme and basil
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
Extra virgin olive oil
2 Yukon gold potatoes
A good handful of baby carrots
2 medium sized parsnips

Allow four hours for this to cook. Take the roast out of the refrigerator and let it warm up. If there is a nice layer of fat on the meat, score it.

Score the fat

While it is warming up rub with the fresh ground salt and pepper. Using a mortar and pestle, crush the herbs one at a time. Then combine in a bowl to blend evenly. Rub this on all sides of the roast. Slice the garlic into thin slices, and cut into the meat and insert the slices of garlic. Next using a slight bit of olive oil, rub this over the meat.

Rubbed with herbs and oil

Once the roast has sat out for about an hour or so, turn the heat up on your oven to 200 degrees. While this is heating up, get your pan ready, and include a roasting rack to set the roast on. When the oven is ready, place this in the oven on the 2nd rack from the bottom. Set the timer for four hours. Do not open the oven!

About an hour and a half before the roast is done get your vegetables ready. Although I really love veges cooked around the meat, for this recipe, you will have to cook these separately. I cut the potatoes into chunks, left the already peeled baby carrots whole, and the peeled the parsnips, and cut those into chunks too. Then I used about 1 tsp of rosemary, and parsley, a couple of dashes of onion powder, and 3 twists on the salt and pepper grinders. Then I used about 2 TBS of extra virgin olive oil. Using my hands I mixed it up.

Potatoes, carrots and parsnips

Set these aside. There are a couple of steps that you will need to do with the roast, so at the 50 minutes before the timer goes off, preheat the oven for the vegetables to 375 degrees. Place those in the oven. Stir these periodically during roasting.

Roasting vegetables

When the timer goes off for the meat, remove it from the oven and cover it with foil.

Before hitting it with high heat

Then turn the oven up to 500 degrees. When the oven is hot, place the roast back into the oven and cook for 5 minutes. Check the internal temperature at this point. I cooked this to medium rare and pulled this out of the oven when the temperature hit 132 degrees. Remove from the oven and cover with foil. The temperature will go up as the meat rests.

Let the roast sit

After about 10 minutes the veges should be done, and the meat ready to carve.

Slice up the meat - see the garlic?

Plate it up with your veges, and use some of the juices to pour over the meat.

Dinner is served!

Stay tuned as I will be fixing up Steve’s Baked Tilapia tomorrow!

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All Weather Pizza

We have been having a mixed bag of weather. Rain, sunshine, hail, thunder, lightning, and now snow! What could be better on a cold spring evening than a pizza? Again, this pizza does not use sauce but tomatoes in its place!

Ingredients
Pizza dough
Extra virgin olive oil
4 medium tomatoes, sliced thin
1 1/2 tsp basil leaves
1 1/2 tsp oregano leaves
3 cloves finely chopped fresh garlic
Mozzarella, cheddar and asiago to your liking
Pepperoni
Hard salami
Mushrooms
Chopped tomatoes, from the tops and bottoms of the tomatoes
black olives

Tomatoes sliced for the pizza

These tomatoes are not too bad for this time of year. Summer time tomatoes are best, but these will do!

Lay out your crust then let it rest. Turn the oven on to 425 degrees. When the oven is hot, place the pizza dough in the oven for about 8 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Then brush on the olive oil, lay out the sliced tomatoes, and add your herbs and the garlic.

Add the herbs and garlic

Top this with 2/3 of the cheese. Follow this with the pepperoni, salami, tomatoes, mushrooms and olives.

Add the toppings

Follow this with the remainder of the cheese. Then place this in the oven,

Pizza is in the oven

and set the timer for about 10 minutes. Check the crust to see how it is doing. I had to add another five minutes to the timer.

Pizza right out of the oven!

Let the pizza sit for about 5 minutes, then slice it up!

Pizza is served!

Serve this up with a hearty red wine or an ice cold beer!

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Chicken Saute Sec

On our return from Hawai’i, we were to eat at one of my favorite restaurants. However, our plane was late in taking off, and the airline was a bit disorganized with where our bag could be found. Needless to say, my favorite restaurant was closed by the time we got there. So we ended up eating at a place called “Original Joe’s.” I ordered their Chicken Saute Sec, and it was absolutely yummy! So, I had to try making this myself. Here is what I came up with!

Ingredients
4 chicken breasts
3/4 cup of flour
4 good shakes of garlic powder
2 good shakes of Hungarian paprika
2 good twists on your salt and pepper mills
1/2 cup butter, divided in half
1 shallot, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup white wine (I used the Lava Cap Chardonnay)
1 cup chicken broth
8 oz. thickly sliced mushrooms
2 good shakes of dried parsley flakes

Ingredients are ready

I started by pounding the chicken breasts to about 1/3 of an inch thick. Then I got my pan ready and added 1/2 of the butter. I put the flour, garlic powder, paprika, salt and pepper into a bag and then shook it to mix. The I added the chicken breasts. Heat up the pan until the butter has melted and make sure that you coat the pan. When the butter bubbles, add the chicken breasts. Cook until browned on both sides. Remove from the pan.

Browned chicken

Add the remaining butter to the pan along with the shallots and the garlic. Cook until just soft. Then deglaze the pan with the wine. Make sure you get up the bits left by the chicken. Let this cook down until it reduces by half. Then add the chicken broth.

Sauce is cooking

Bring this up to a boil, and then place the chicken back into the pan. Top with the mushrooms and parsley.

Add the mushrooms and parsley

Cover and turn the heat down to low. Let this cook for about 30 minutes.

Serve this with rice and a vegetable.

Dinner is served!

And, don’t forget the wine used in this recipe…pour a glass or two!

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Coho Croquettes

Want something different to do with salmon? Well, the other day while perusing one of my Mother’s old cookbooks, I came across her recipe for salmon croquettes tucked away between the well worn pages. Start this one earlier in the day so that you have time to let this sit and the flavors to permeate through the mixture before making the croquettes.

Ingredients
1 lb. fresh salmon, I am using Coho
4 cups of water
1 cup of Chardonnay
2 TBS Old Bay Seasoning
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups of Progresso garlic bread crumbs
1/2 onion chopped finely
3 green onions finely chopped
1 tsp dill weed
Dash of salt and a few grinds of pepper
1 1/2 TBS butter and extra virgin olive oil

Place the water, Chardonnay and the Old Bay Seasoning into a skillet. Heat this up to boiling.

Water, wine and Old Bay

While waiting for this to boil, wash off the fish and remove any fish scales that might be apparent. When the mixture boils, turn the heat down to low then add the fish with the pan, skin side down.

Add the salmon

Let the fish cook in the liquid for approximately 10 minutes.  Carefully remove this from the pan and place skin side up on a plate and let this cool. When cooled, slide off the skin and discard. On the salmon, you will notice a brown coloration under the skin.  I took most of that off too!  After this is done, flake the fish in a large mixing bowl. Then add the eggs, bread crumbs, the onion and green onion, dill weed and salt and pepper. Using your hands combine and then cover and let this sit in the refrigerator for an hour or more, so that the flavors meld together. Then using a 1/2 cup measuring cup, scoop into the mixture and form into patties, or the croquettes.

Croquettes are ready to cook

Lay each of these on a plate until ready to cook. While this recipe always served our family of five, if there are only two of you, allow two per person and freeze the rest. Next we will fry these up in butter and olive oil. Use about 1 1/2 TBS of butter and an equal amount of olive oil.

Croquettes starting to cook

Turn them over

When done drain on paper towel

Serve these with jasmine rice and a couple of slices of lemon! Don’t forget your green vegetable!

Dinner is served!

Enjoy!

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Hoison Beef Skewers

Can you imagine flank steak that melts in your mouth? And flavors that explode in your mouth? Well here is a recipe that explodes with flavor and melts in your mouth. The secret? Marinating the meat all day! Now let’s go off to the kitchen!

Ingredients
1 1/2 – 2#’s of flank steak
3 heaping soup spoon of hoisin sauce
6 capfuls of cooking sherry
1/4 cup of low sodium soy sauce
2 green onions, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 1/4″ thick pieces of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
wooden skewers – about 2 dozen

First, lay out the flank steak on your cutting board.

Lay out the flank steak

Slice this across the grain in strips about 1/4-1/2 inch thick.

Cut the flank steak across the grain

Place the meat in a ziplock bag.

Next, get your ingredients for the marinade ready.

Marinade ingredients

Combine the hoisin sauce, sherry, soy sauce, green onions, minced garlic and ginger in a bowl. The hoisin is a bit sticky so stir this up well as it will stick to the sides of the bowl.

Marinade

Pour this mixture into the bag of meat, zip the bag and then shake the bag really well to coat the meat. Set this in your refrigerator and turn the bag a few times during the day.

One half hour before you are ready to cook, place the skewers in a pan of water to soak. You do this so that they do not burn up on the grill. Also, take the meat out of the refrigerator. After the half hour, thread the meat on the skewers.

Skewer the meat

Next get your grill ready. Because the meat is thinly sliced these will cook rather fast. Once the grill is nice and hot, start adding your skewers

Set the skewers on the grill

Turn the skewers to cook evenly

Turn the skewers

until they are done!

until the meat is done!

Serve these with rice, or potatoes, and don’t forget a fresh steamed vegetable!

Dinner is served!

And, dinner is served! One note: This dish does not require any salt. So taste this before getting that shaker out! Enjoy!

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Chicken in Black Bean Sauce

Two of my most favorite Asian ingredients are black bean sauce and sesame oil! The flavors are comforting to me. I perused through the freezer and discovered that I had set aside some cut up chicken thighs, and it came to me to make this dish.

Ingredients
1/2 # boneless chicken thighs, cut up in chunks
3 TBS Sherry
dash of salt
2 tsp cornstarch
2 TBS water
1/3, + 3 TBS cup of low sodium chicken broth
2 TBS soy sauce
3 TBS black bean sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
3 TBS peanut oil
3 slices of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups thickly sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup frozen peas

Take the chicken and in a bowl combine with 1 TBS sherry and the dash of salt.

Chicken, salt and sherry

Set aside. Next combine the cornstarch with the water, then add 1/3 cup of chicken broth, remaining sherry, soy sauce along with the black bean sauce and sesame oil.

Cornstarch mixture

Set aside. Add 2 TBS peanut oil to your wok and heat until hot.

Oil is hot in the wok

Add the chicken

Chicken starts to cook

and stir fry until the chicken is no longer pink.

Chicken is cooked

Remove this from the wok. Add remaining peanut oil and heat until it is hot. While this is heating up, re-stir the cornstarch mixture so that it is ready to use.

Re-stir the cornstarch mixture

When the oil is hot add the ginger and garlic and stir fry for about one minute.

Garlic and ginger being stir fried

Add in the mushrooms and peas and stir fry for about one minute

Add the mushrooms and peas

and then add the remaining chicken broth.

Add the remaining broth

Next add in the cornstarch mixture slowly.

Add the cornstarch mixture

Add back the chicken and heat through.

Let the liquid thicken by cooking

The sauce thickens

Serve this over steaming hot jasmine rice.

Dinner is served!

I hope that you enjoy the subtle, savory flavors of this dish!

Savor the flavors and enjoy!

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Crockpot Braised Short Ribs

Temperatures are dropping, clouds are coming in and if we get any precipitation it will snow overnight. With the cold coming, I wanted to make an easy dish in the crockpot. I love the all in one dishes! This takes a bit of prepping, but it is well worth it!  Start this early in the day as cooking time is 9 hours, and prep time is about an hour.

Ingredients
4 cups of low sodium beef broth
1 onion, sliced and separated
8 beef short ribs
1 cup of flour
1 tsp fresh ground salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp rosemary leaves crushed
1 tsp thyme leaves crushed
1 tsp marjoram leaves crushed
1/2 tsp basil leaves crushed
2 TBS extra virgin olive oil
1 – 12 oz. bottle of a stout beer
1 TBS butter
5 cloves of garlic crushed
1 bay leaf

Get your ingredients ready…

Ingredients

Put the beef broth into a saucepan and heat to boiling. Reduce this to approximately a cup and a half.  This concentrates the beef flavor in the broth.

Cooking down the beef broth

While this is cooking down, slice the onion and lay the pieces in the crockpot making a “bed” for the short ribs. Next in a zip lock bag, add the flour along with the salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and basil. Shake the bag to mix up well. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. When the oil is hot dredge the short ribs and add to the pan.

Dredged short ribs added to the oil

Sear the meat on all sides.

Sear all sides of the short ribs

About half way through searing the ribs, the beef broth should be done. Turn off the heat and set aside. As the ribs get browned, move off the completed ones to the crockpot until all have been added. Try to get them in bone side down.  This will add the flavor of the bones to the juices that you will use to drizzle over the finished dish!  Next pour the beer over the short ribs. Dot them with the garlic. Add the bay leaf and butter. Then pour in the drippings from the pan. Then take the broth and pour a bit into the pan to knock up the bits that are stuck to the pan. Pour this and the broth into the crockpot.

Everything has been added to the crock pot

Cover the crockpot and turn the heat on low, and set the time for 9 hours. Do not lift the lid once this has started cooking!  I cannot possibly describe for you how wonderful the aromas are in the house!  If you want to impress folks and make them think that you spent all day in the kitchen slaving over the stove, this is the dish for you!

Tonight I will be serving these over jasmine rice, although mashed potatoes or buttered noodles are also good. Don’t forget to steam up a vegetable, and maybe a bit of crusty sour dough bread. Serve this up with a good stout ale, or try it with a Cabernet Franc.

Dinner is served!

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