Late Summer BBQ

Ok yes, it's October now but the weather has been awesome so it still feels like summer.  This was actually done about a month ago so it really was summer then.  There was a big art fair going on in our neighborhood so we invited some friends over to check that out and then have a BBQ.  This is the food that we came up with.

First up, a salad.  I don't like salads but this combo I made up was actually good!  The greens were baby spinach leaves and there were chopped up sundried tomatoes and toasted pecans mixed throughout.  But the best part was the homemade salad dressing concocted with random things we had.  The base was olive oil and pomegranate balsamic vinegar to make a really good vinaigrette.  Also in the dressing was some minced garlic, salt, peppers, spicy mustard, and a little brown sugar.  It was really good!!

Here's the total meal with the salad, cornbread, kebabs, potato salad, and fruit.  The potato salad and fruit were brought in by friends but the rest we made.  I already talked about the salad, now for the cornbread.  I used a boxed mix but altered it a bit to make it delicious.  First off, I added more milk than it called for plus some melted butter to make it softer. Then I mixed in some jalepeno cheese and topped it with green onions. It was super good!

The kebabs were also great.  The basic structure was chicken, green pepper, and onions.  I made three kinds, one was gluten free for a friend of ours and it just had some olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Another was marinated in soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, and a bit of spicy mustard.  And the third was slathered in BBQ sauce from Oklahoma Joe's in KC. They were all great but the Asian style was my favorite.

And the best part? Leftovers to enjoy for dinner later in the week!

Seriously Good Tacos

There are two things that can happen when Ruchir gets hungry.  One: he makes a weird concoction - examples are grilled squirrel, octopus, beaver, etc.  Two: he makes something amazingly delicious!

This is chicken that has been stewing in a wonderful mix of all sorts of delicious things.

Serve with pepperjack cheese, cilantro, taco sauce, and  use Jarritos or Mexican Coke to wash it all down!

Fancy French Toast

I've always loved french toast. I'm not sure why but it is a supreme comfort food for me. Plus so easy to make - I just use 1 cup of milk, one egg, a few spoons of sugar and a bit of vanilla. In fact, in 6th grade we had to make a speech, on anything, and mine was how to make french toast. It was a hit. So anyway, I've been experimenting a little with other variations. None so far have beat Mom's delicious combo of cream cheese and brown sugar spread on them but they have all been good.

Here's one with blackberries (my second fav fruit after strawberries) and cream.

And this one, while it looks pretty normal, is actually quite weird. Ruchir makes these purees, usually of banana, that he mixes with milk to make an odd (to me) drink. Anyway, he had a banana and blueberry puree in the fridge that looked like it was starting to lose it's appeal. So i dumped it in with the leftover french toast mixture, stirred it up, dunked my bread, and cooked it like normal french toast. If you look closely, you might notice that its a little darker than normal and that's from the blueberries. Cover in syrup and add some pecans on top. It actually didn't taste too different from normal french toast, but it did have that certain something to it that couldn't be placed.

I'm going to keep thinking for other variations, but you know what, plain old french toast is usually good enough for me!

Cinzetti's!

Now time for a break from my cooking to discuss one of the best restaurants that I have ever been to in my life! The place is called Cinzetti's and it's in Overland Park, KS. (Basically a KC suburb). It's a buffet style restaurant but don't let that fool you. Everything on the buffet is fancy actual entrees that you would easily order separately from a fancy restaurant. Examples, chicken marsala, veal parmesean, baked tilapia, an array of gourmet pizzas, lasagna, seafood pasta, etc etc.

And then the desserts, oh the desserts! Tons of ice creams, cannolis, fruit tarts, bread pudding, molten chocolate cakes.....

All for the insane price of $9.99! Seriously, the best place ever!

Oh yeah Mussels

It's no secret that I love mussels! Any way, any type, yum yum yum! Bistro du Coin in DC serves up some deelicious mussels! We recently went to a restaurant where I had mussels as the appetizer and I expressed how I wish I knew how to make mussels so that I could have them all the time! Well, lo and behold, the next day Ruchir came home with a bag of live mussels from the seafood market. This was all his masterpiece.

White wine, garlic, lemon, parsley, maybe a little onion too? It cooked quickly and before long we were feasting!

And the bowl of finished shells, just looking at this makes me want to make some again!

Crawfish Etoufee

Here's what we made with the leftover crawfish tails from our Annual Crawfish Boil. This was mostly Ruchir's doing, but I helped quite a bit too. First he made a roux, and that's where I had to step in. It was mostly flour - and it became a dough. I managed to salvage it though sort of. I can't quite remember the rest of the ingredients exactly, but it definitely had a can of diced tomatoes, two cans of tomato sauce, green peppers, onions, and plenty of cajun spice mix and cayenne pepper. Wayyyy too much cayenne pepper. Seriously this thing is hot! then we added the tails that we had extracted from the crawfish and let it all simmer. Pictures speak better than words.

Yum!

1st Anniversary Cook Off!

This was actually done quite awhile ago (June 13th, 2010 to be exact) but I'm only just now getting around to posting it.  Basically we had an Iron Chef style cooking competition to honor our 1 year wedding anniversary.  (We also went to an insanely delicious fancy restaurant but I didn't take any pictures of that meal). Ruchir wants to make this a tradition, eventually involving our children to be sous chefs.

So first things first; what to use as the "secret" ingredient?  Well that comes back from when we went to the Horseradish Festival in Collinsville, IL.  (It was a spontaneous decision on a Sunday afternoon!).  Have you ever seen a whole horseradish root? Neither had I!

Ok so now that he had these two hulking roots (they look like a femur), we had to use them up.  The rules were simple, 1 hour, make as many dishes as you want, but they all have to feature horseradish.  The judging categories were taste - 10 points, plating - 5 points, and originality - 5 points.  We were originally just going to judge ourselves but then deciding to invite a few friends over for the judging since their softball game had been cancelled.

I didn't take any close up pictures of the individual foods, too much chaos I guess.  Seriously one hour is way shorter than you'd think! But I'll give the run down.  Ruchir made a sandwich, featuring beef, sauteed onions, mushrooms, and horseradish sauce topped with a fried horseradish chip.  He also made a drink(!) with orange juice, vodka, rum, and horseradish.  I made a sandwich with beef, deep fried onions, shredded cheese and horseradish sauce.  I also made a salad with romaine, bacon, pecans, and horseradish.  I also had a soup of chicken stock, horseradish, ginger, and green onions. And then finally I had potatoes three ways: mashed with horseradish, french fries with horseradish ketchup, and baked with horseradish sauce, bacon, cheese, and green onions.

The scoring was intense - and who came out victorious??  Me of course!  I won in every category except I think we tied on plating.  I think Ruchir's food tasted great but I edged out in taste and there was no catching me on originality!  (Although inexplicably, Ruchir ranked himself higher than me in that category thinking that a weird drink was more original than three other dishes combined - cheater?:) Anyway, I got an awesome trophy and we were all happy in the end!

We'll see what happens next year!

Strawberry!

I had a bunch of strawberries that I needed to use up so I experimented with a couple things.  First, I made a dough, basically butter, flour, a little sugar.  I wish I remembered the proportions because this dough actually turned out well!  But I don't.  D'oh!

Ok got the dough, now what?  I made this "rustic" pie.  Yum! Basically sliced strawberries and a little sugar.  That's powdered sugar on top.  This was actually pretty tasty!  I ate it for dinner. Ruchir got mad.  Ha!

And then I made these, little turnovers!  The color looks weird in this picture (all these pics on this blog are from my phone because I'm too lazy to actually upload pictures from my camera) but they were really good!  Just a dollop of homemade strawberry jam in the center.  They made a really good grab and go breakfast.  

Healthy Omelet

Ok so the problem with creme brulee is that is needs a bunch of egg yolks.  So what to do with all the egg whites?  Well two options really, the dessert route (meringues etc), or the healthy route.  And surprise! This time I went the healthy route!  Egg white omelet for two, coming up! 

I cleaned out the fridge and dumped it all in there.  Mostly green peppers, onions, mushrooms but a few other random things as well.  Sauté everything first in a little butter first.  Then add the egg whites, do the usual omelet swirl, poorly attempt to flip and spill a large chunk on the ground.  And then, voila!

Looks better when it's sliced doesn't it?  Actually for a healthy breakfast, this was pretty good. I'd make it again, if only so that I'd have leftover egg yolks to make creme brulee again!

Creme brûlée

I whipped these up for a dinner party that we were going to.  The recipe was pretty easy, 1 pint of cream, 4 egg yolks, 4 tbs sugar (I used two white and two brown), and 1 tsp of vanilla.  I scalded the cream with the sugar, then slowly tempered it with the egg yolks and then the vanilla at the end.  Bake in a water bath for about 40 minutes.  

This is a a version that I made for me and Ruchir using the leftover mix.  I added a bunch of mango puree to it, hence the orange-y color.  Unfortunately these did not turn out as good as the ones above because the puree made everything too liquidy and they never really set up.  Plus the crunchy top didn't really turn out on these - not sure why on that one.

But no worries, the ones that I took to the party set up great and turned out wonderfully!  The crunchy top was so good and topped with strawberries they looked very impressive! (Didn't hurt that they tasted great too!)

Friday Shrimp

The title of this shows you how long I've had this post in the queue waiting to be posted - it's back from Lent! Anyway, this was more or less Mom's food, with one addition by me.

Addition 1: Plenty of onions!

Add everything else.....

Top with yogurt and enjoy!

Mexican Lasagna

Ok this one is kind of a bad picture but a great meal! Ruchir was off barbecuing a squirrel (I wish I was joking) so I made this Mexican lasagna out of things I had on hand to feed me and a couple friends. I didn't follow a recipe but just threw in things that seemed like they would fit with the mexican theme.  This was awhile ago so I can't remember everything but the basics were ground beef, tomatoes, green chilis, and tortillas in alternating layers with plenty of colby jack shredded cheese.  Again, not the best picture, but it sure was tasty!

Ruchir's Brunch

Ok once again, I slipped quite a bit with the postings. But don't worry, I've been taking pictures! ANd now I have a delightful backlog of wonderful dishes to post. Here's a quick picture of a delicious brunch that Ruchir made awhile back. Gotta love avocados!

Google Food

I got the pleasure of visiting my dear sis at Google a little while back.  Not only is all the food free, but it's all delicious too!  Here's a weird watermelon honey drink that I had.

And oysters, I mean seriously??  I had to get them just because, free oysters right??

Oh yeah, I mean just look at that beautiful spread!! This is my plate after the first fill up. That fruit was scrumptious, the oysters yum, at the bottom right is some red thai chicken curry...man it was all just too good!  But it's all reasonably healthy too so huzzah, Pri can gorge without concern.  Thanks for the trip!

Chicken Curry made by myself!

My trip to Indiana this weekend also made me want to again try to re-create Mom's awesome chicken curry. This is an attempt I made a few months ago. Tasted good, but still not great. I think I need to tweak the ginger, garlic, green chili, onion ratio maybe? I had Mom tell me her process one more time, so I will attempt again soon and post back.

Hot Diggity Dog!

Well I just came back from an AMAZING weekend in Indiana where Mom made soo much good food that it makes my head spin. Seriously, I dream about that butter chicken! I didn't take any pictures of her food, but the tastiness of it all reminded me that I need to update this more often. Here are two different hotdogs they seemed to scream "America" so I felt like it was appropriate for a post July 4th weekend.

And some warmed up brownies and ice cream seems pretty American to me too!

Spinach Strawberry Mozzarella Salad

A delightful summer time salad (and I generally don't like salad unless I can somehow make it unhealthy). Fresh strawberries from the farmer's market, baby spinach, and cute tasty little mozzarella balls.

Anjali Day

I'm not really going to go back in order of all the postings that I've been stock piling, but this is one of the earlier ones that I haven't posted yet. This is the meal I had in honor of my graduation. All delicious! Again, I think I'll start keeping the words to a minimum and just let the pictures do the talking. Ruchir made most of this meal but I made the grilled asparagus, yum!

Super Dessert

Ok, it sure has been awhile since I last posted.  I knew I would start fading on the posting, I am actually surprised I made it 6 months.  But I have been cooking and taking pictures still, there is a big back log that I am planning to upload.  Especially since the month of June contained some delicious food adventures including a trip to Google and out 1st Anniversary Cook Off (which I won, of course:).  So more to come, but for now I will leave you with this.  Words are not necessary.

Puris and Potatoes

This was actually from way back near Easter but I never got around to posting it. I was reminded of it because I had been talking to Mom about getting her to bring me more of these when she visits STL. I basically did no cooking here, Mom gave me the puris in little dough balls to be fried and also gave me the potato masala. But the frying is kind of cool - so here are pictures!

First I had to roll them out and of course my awesome little Indian rolling pin is missing in action. Solution - use a water glass! It worked pretty excellently!

And here they are all fried up, yums!

The last step, as always, is to dig in!