Love those Brussels Sprouts!

May 22, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Sides 3 Comments

If you are like me and long ago decided that you don’t like Brussels Sprouts, based on the boiled, mushy Brussels Sprouts your mother served once every six months (Sorry Mom! They looked kind of cute, but they smelled worse than the strongest cabbage ever. Thanks for not forcing me to eat them!), then you are in for a pleasant surprise. These are not your mother’s Brussels sprouts! They are salty and sweet. The nuts add a delicious crunch and yes, they still look cute (and they still smell like stinky cabbage)! But seriously, try them!

And ok, I did have to use Wikipedia to figure out why the “B” in Brussels sprouts is capitalized. It is because they have long been very popular in Brussels, Belgium and may have originated there (footnote-which I didn’t read). Now, you too, are in the know!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

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Ingredients

1 & 1/2lb Brussels sprouts
1 tablespoon Extra virgin olive oil
3 thick slices Pepper Bacon (cut into 1/2 inch pieces)
1/3 cup Sliced almonds
1/4 cup Pure maple syrup
Salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions

Step 1
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Step 2
Wash Brussels sprouts, cut off root ends and discard the ends. Then cut each sprout in half (you’ll have loose leaves. I throw them away). Place Brussels sprouts in a large bowl, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper, and toss to evenly coat. Set aside.
Step 3
Cook the bacon until nearly crisp in a large oven-proof skillet over medium heat. Add sliced almonds and cook an additional 2 minutes (if you don’t have an oven-proof skillet, use a regular skillet and instead of transferring Brussels Sprouts to oven in skillet as directed below, pour into rimmed baking sheet in a single layer and place the baking sheet in preheated oven).
Step 4
Transfer the bacon and almonds to a medium bowl and set aside.
Step 5
Keep the skillet on the heat and add the Brussels sprouts to the skillet (in bacon grease). Cook Brussels sprouts in the pan for about 5 minutes or until they become a bit caramelized and get a tiny bit golden brown. Drizzle maple syrup all over the Brussels sprouts and stir in the pan to evenly distribute the syrup over the sprouts.
Step 6
Put the skillet in the preheated oven and roast the Brussels sprouts for about 30 minutes (see notes above), then add the bacon and almonds to the pan and roast for another 10 minutes or until sprouts are caramelized and golden. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Eating our way around the Lake!

May 21, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Uncategorized 3 Comments

We are lucky enough to live, a good part of the time, at a tourist destination, Lake of the Ozarks, and we often have people ask us for recommendations about where to eat and what to do when they visit. We aren’t much help on recommending good fishing holes, hot spots for dancing or the best jogging trails, but we CAN tell you where we like to eat (and some in our family can tell you a lot about the golf courses! That someone isn’t me!) Here are a few of our favorite restaurants:

Best all around: The winner of the “most popular” award in our family – Ruthie D’s. Nice atmosphere-whether in the bar for appetizers (in the winter they have a great fireplace and in the summer lots of TVs to watch the Cardinal games) or in the main dining rooms with a sweet view of the lake. Nice staff and good service. AND, excellent food! Their onion strings, grouper bites, seared tuna and chicken strips are all terrific appetizers (get their before 6 and enjoy Happy Hour prices). They have a yummy chicken picatta, chicken marsala, great burgers and a couple of pasta dishes that look delicious. Oh, wait, I forgot the best part of the meal (at least for Sales Guy, SIL #1 and Sales Guy’s Lake Sis) – the side salad! What the heck? That’s right- the side salad! They include a couple of tasty pickled beets in their fresh, crunchy salad! A definite hit with some of our family. Our favorite spot!

Best Italian: Lil Rizzos (the one on HH – for some reason, the one at the Outlet Mall doesn’t live up to its sister restaurant). Nice Italian salad, nice little warm rolls, good pasta entrees and an amazing chicken speidini! Delicious! Daughter #1 likes the spinach dip appetizer.

Best Pizza: J J Twigs. They serve an all meat pizza called “Ozark Meat Fest” that is awesome! We laugh about SIL #1 who once “dreamed about” the J J Twigs pizza. You get a basket of peanuts in the shell to snack on when you are seated. It’s kind of an odd décor, rustic with an odd mixture of stuffed animals and old tricycles, signs and farm implements. Service is sometimes slow and their lunch buffet is just ok. Stick to an Ozark Meat Fest pizza you can dream about!

Best Pizza Buffet: Imo’s. It’s not a huge buffet, but it has a variety of pizza, good salad ingredients, fried raviolis and yummy little dessert breadsticks. If you don’t like thin pizza, you won’t like Imo’s but if you like bacon, their bacon pizza is the best!

Best Wings: Ok, this is a weird one! Who goes to a Mexican restaurant for wings? We do! Vista Grande has delicious wings! Spicy and crunchy, sauce clears your sinuses, delicious! Their chips and queso are very tasty and for lunch they have a grilled chicken, rice and salad dish that is just perfect (pollo lago is what it is called). My MIL loves their seafood chimis and Daughter 1 likes their quesadillas. Good food, great service!

Best Barbecue: Hands down, it’s Half Sauced BBQ and now that Mizzou is no longer in the Big XII conference, it is easier to overlook their KU roots! Sales Guy can only wish that I could make brisket like they do! Nice bark, tender, terrific! I have to order their smoked turkey every time we go there because it is so much better than anywhere else! The Pit Beans are great and the rest of the other sides are average but the meats are so superior and servings are so large, you won’t have room for the sides anyway.

Best Steak: There are several upscale steak restaurants at the lake, but our favorite is J Bruners. Their filet is outstanding and fellow diners say their rib eye is as well. Start out with some amazing onion rings, have their wedge salad (share it-it is truly a quarter of a lettuce head, plus toppings!), splurge on a steak and add a couple of fried shrimp-they are delicious too. Sales Guy recently had the lobster bisque and he gave it a thumbs up. Great service!

Best Frozen Custard: Absolutely, Randy’s Custard! Creamy, sweet and delicious. They have a huge selection of sundaes, concretes and shakes. Try a Turtle Sundae: frozen custard topped with caramel and chocolate sauce, topped with around 100 toasted pecans (more or less…) and a maraschino cherry. Just yum. Nothing else to say.

Best Gyro: Arris Pizza. They have a Gyro sandwich and a Gyro salad and Sales Guy loves both of them. They have a good pizza buffet at lunch too.

Best Potato Soup: Baxters. It is delicious! Thick, creamy, cheesy, bacon-ny. They have a wide variety of very good entrees and they serve a 1 to 2 pound baked potato ala carte! Huge!

Best View: J B Hooks. You overlook at least 10 miles of lake, a golf course, gorgeous mega-houses and the bridge to the West side of the lake. The food is good – and the view is definitely a winner!

Best Crab Cake: Shorty Pants. How is that for a restaurant name? I’m not asking! They have a crab cake app that is amazing! It is a fun indoor/outdoor restaurant on the lake with an industrial décor and they specialize in Cajun food. Lots of good (different) choices, but go with the crab cakes!!

Best Frou Frou Sandwich Shop (you know what I mean): On the Rise Bistro. They serve breakfast (can’t vouch for that) and lunch. They have a tasty club sandwich and some soups that are very nice, but what I go back for is the homemade black pepper potato chips. DE-LI-CIOUS…They also have a bakery (can’t vouch for that either). It’s a dining experience, so don’t go there in a hurry!

That is a quick synopsis of our favorites. We rarely eat breakfast out, so I can’t recommend any of the large number of breakfast restaurants at the lake. I also don’t eat desserts much, I’m too full when I get to dessert time, so I didn’t help much there. We have lots of chain restaurants in the area too, but I didn’t include them as they should be pretty much the same everywhere. Nearly all of the lake area restaurants are open year round, which is a change in the last ten years, however some are closed on Monday or Tuesday each week.

There are lots of great dining options – a week in the Ozarks is a guaranteed 5 pound weight gain, but it’s a lot of fun getting there! Enjoy!

Perfect Grilled Tenderloins (chicken or pork)

May 20, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Meat & Poultry 2 Comments

A tailgating friend introduced us to Andria’s Sauce several years ago. It is made in Western Illinois, so it’s a regional steak sauce, available in the St. Louis area and west as far as Lake of the Ozarks at least. We use it as a marinade on chicken and pork and love it. It tenderizes the meat and adds a tangy flavor. The bottle suggests that you use it as a steak sauce, but it is very strong and has almost a gritty texture, so I can’t imagine doing that. As a marinade though, delicious!! Use your meat thermometer so you don’t overcook the meat (150 degrees for pork and 165 degrees for chicken) and I guarantee, it will be moist and delicious, no additional sauce needed.

I use leftover cooked chicken breasts in salads, tacos and quesadillas. The pork, we just reheat and maybe add bbq sauce on the leftovers. Yummy!

Grilled Pork or Chicken Tenderloins

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Ingredients

Marinade

1/2 bottle Andria's Steak Sauce
1/2 bottle Zesty Italian Salad Dressing

Chicken Marinade

1/2 teaspoon Lemon Pepper
1 Lemon (Juice of)

Pork

2 to 3lb Pork Tenderloins (Trimmed of fat and silver skin)

Chicken

2 to 3lb Chicken Tenderloins (or Chicken Breasts (trimmed of fat))

Directions

Marinade
Step 1
Combine Andria's Sauce and Zesty Italian Dressing in large plastic, resealable bag.
Chicken Marinade
Step 2
If you are using chicken, add lemon pepper and lemon juice to Andria's Sauce & Zesty Italian Salad Dressing mixture in plastic bag.
Step 3
Place pork in marinade and refrigerate overnight or place chicken in marinade and refrigerate 4 to 6 hours, turning occasionally.
Step 4
Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes before grilling and grill on preheated grill (medium heat) until done.

Smoked Hot Wings

May 14, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Meat & Poultry Leave a Comment

Thirteen posts into this blog and not a healthy recipe among them (well, the grilled chicken probably qualifies). One fairly healthy habit we have is that we rarely fry. We occasionally pan fry, but hardly ever deep fry. Yay for us! Our cholesterol is plummeting! We also are a family of wing lovers and we do have a delicious fried wing recipe (that’s for another post) but we cook a mean smoked hot wing and we do it often! They are smoky, spicy, moist and delicious!

The recipe calls for smoking, then finishing at medium-high heat. We have an amazing grill that we can set to smoke and then crank it up to whatever temp we choose but I imagine you could smoke the wings on a smoker, meanwhile, heating up your regular grill to a higher temperature and transfer the wings to the grill after smoking for a couple of hours. That sounds like a lot more trouble than doing the whole process on our Traeger grill, but believe me, these wings are worth it!

Smoked Hot Wings

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Ingredients

2lb chicken wings (cut into 3 pieces, tips discarded)

Marinade

1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
8 dashes tabasco sauce (a few shakes)

Wing Sauce

1 bottle Frank's Hot Sauce (16 oz size; can use Louisiana or hot sauce of your choice)
1 bottle Tabasco sauce
1 stick butter
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/4 cup honey (1/4 to 1/3 cup)
1/2 can beer

Directions

Marinade
Step 1
Combine marinade dry ingredients in gallon size plastic bag. Add cut up wings and Tabasco sauce. Shake until wings are coated and refrigerate 3 to 6 hours, turning once or twice.
Wing Sauce
Step 2
Prepare wing sauce. Melt butter in large sauce pan. Add remaining ingredients and bring to boil. Simmer for 10 minutes
Step 3
Preheat grill to smoke. Add wings in a single layer and smoke 1 & 1/2 to 2 hours; dip wings in sauce and return to grill for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, turning once. Remove from grill and dip in wing sauce again. Serve with celery and ranch or blue cheese dressing.

FFA & Tater Tots

May 14, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Appetizers 2 Comments

Friday night was the annual FFA banquet at school. Current officers say goodbye. Next year’s officers say hello. Lots of food, fellowship and all of the FFA traditions. FFA has been important in our family for a long time. My dad was in FFA. My brother and four of our six kids have been involved in it, and in addition, a son-in-law was a National FFA officer and worked for the National FFA organization after graduating from college. It is a great group with dedicated, hard-working advisors, fosters leadership skills, communication skills, gives kids a chance to excel in something other than sports. Enough of the unsolicited endorsement of the FFA!

Friday’s banquet was a carry-in dinner. JR is a sophomore, so we are assigned to bring a vegetable dish. I always try to bring teenage-friendly dishes as so many of the foods are casseroles, of which kids are innately suspicious (some grown up kids too!). So I try to keep it simple and take foods that teens like. I kicked around mac n cheese, not a vegetable, but a side dish-always popular. Then I thought Texas potatoes with those delightful cornflake crunchies on top. Hmmm, how about cowboy beans? We haven’t had them in a while. Then I thought, hey, what about those Tater Tot & bacon things we had at my niece’s shower? JR loved them. They were gone in a flash. Great! Decision made!

So I threw together a couple of hundred Tater Tot Piggies.Did the kids enjoy them? I think so! By the time we made it through the food line, they were gone. I can’t wait to serve them at a tailgate next fall!

Tater Tot Piggies

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You’ll note in the pictures that I baked some on a rack. I wouldn’t do that again as I had to turn the ones on the rack as the bottoms didn’t brown, whereas the piggies laying directly on the baking sheet browned on the bottom.

Ingredients

1lb bacon (regular, not thick sliced)
1 bag Tater Tots (1 Package (contains approx 100))

Note

A dish with two ingredients can hardly be called a recipe, but here goes!

Directions

Step 1
Cut bacon into thirds, so you will have lots of short pieces of bacon. Separate the pieces and cut each one in half lengthwise so you have 2 thin slices of bacon, approximately 3 inches long (it gets easier from here!).
Step 2
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Step 3
Wrap each Tater Tot in a slice of bacon and place on a foil-covered baking sheet (with rim or you’ll have a mess), with the seam down. Continue until all of the Tots are rolled in bacon. Tots should not be touching each other on the baking sheet. Amazingly, the number of bacon strips equaled the number of Tots in the package (around 100).
Step 4
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Broil for 1 to 2 minutes if you want more crunch. Remove to plate and serve with ketchup or ranch dressing.

Herbs, Glorious Herbs!

May 10, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Uncategorized 1 Comment

Although spring officially started on March 21^st, we have had snow flurries as recently as last week (that’s here in eastern Missouri-western MO had much more than flurries!)! Nasty! So of course I have no flowers planted and my teeny-tiny garden was still empty (well both of my teeny-tiny gardens were empty except for some lovely asparagus spears in the middle of a weedy patch in one of them).

With three days in a row of sunshine, on Wednesday I decided it was finally time! I went out and bought some flowers, vegetable plants and onion bulbs and got started! My herb garden is my favorite part of the garden (probably because it is really the only successful part) so I started there. I was lucky that I had some parsley, cilantro, chives and thyme make it through the winter (and not so lucky that the running-rampant oregano also survived. It is a big, beautiful, fragrant bush, but the herb is so strong that more than half a teaspoon in any recipe dominates the whole dish. It is just such a healthy and pretty plant that I can’t bear to dig it up, so each year, it takes over more of the garden and I hack it back and it grows some more. Anyone who wants some oregano, please, come cut some anytime!)

Today, I planted more parsley, chives and thyme. I planted lots of basil (not including the basil I planted inside in little peat pots over two months ago, the stems of which I could still thread through the eye of an embroidery needle! We have a wonderful greenhouse here in town-I’m going to let them plant those seeds in the future!). I also planted some rosemary, a new one for me, but I have a roast beef recipe that calls for rosemary and the result is the most wonderful smelling (and tasting) gravy, ever!

All of the little plants smelled so good, I can’t wait for them to take hold so I can start using them!

Here are some of the dishes I use these herbs in:

Chives: I love chives with potatoes-baked potatoes, potato soup, mashed potato casseroles. Yum! They are more mild than regular or green onions, so I use them whenever I think other onions might be too strong and they also add a pretty bright green color. Chives are great in risottos, in addition to the white onions most recipes call for, with steamed carrots, in frittatas and in dips.

Basil: As chives are to potatoes, basil is to tomatoes I add basil to red Italian sauces, and soups that contain tomatoes. I love a basil-based pesto, with toasted nuts, delicious! Plus you get to “chiffonade” basil and that word is such a cool cooking term! (basically roll the leaves up and cut them into little strips).

Thyme: The go-to herb for poultry (along with sage, but it’s not one of my favorites-it’s fuzzy, like it’s the peach of the herb world – not an appealing texture to me). Anyway, stuff a brined chicken with lemons, onions, thyme and rosemary prior to roasting. Oh my, the chicken is flavorful and the gravy (strained) is delicious!

Rosemary: It is a strong herb that goes well in meat dishes. Roast chicken (see above in thyme paragraph) and roast beef are good with rosemary. Rosemary isn’t pleasant to eat (kind of crunchy and tough), so I always strain meat juices and discard the rosemary leaves before making gravy.

Parsley: The list of dishes you can’t use parsley in is shorter than those you should use it in! Parsley is a mild herb that I usually add near the end of cooking as it doesn’t stand up to long heat. Potatoes, risotto, soups, salads, tomato sauces and salad dressings all are tasty with the addition of parsley.

Cilantro: Ole! The herb used in many Mexican recipes. I love it in pico de gallo, guacamole, chicken tortilla soup and marinades. My problem growing cilantro is that it matures quickly, way before my tomatoes, peppers and onions are ready and by the time I’m ready to make salsa, I’m running to the store to buy cilantro. I might try planting some cilantro seeds this year as well as the plants from the nursery. Thanks for helping me think this through!

Note: We have had two days of rain since I started writing this post and my poor tomato plants are still sitting in their little plastic pots, looking enviously at their pepper friends who did get planted before the deluge. Maybe it will clear up over the weekend???

Strawberry Shortcake-to crush or not to crush, that is the question…

May 8, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Sweets 5 Comments

Strawberry season is not yet here in the Midwest but we have been getting some awfully pretty strawberries from California at our local grocery store. Nothing tastes like spring more than strawberry shortcake! It’s a long-time favorite in our family. In fact, my grandmother used to schedule her 2 week trip to visit my parents each spring to coincide with the strawberries in Dad’s bed ripening! She was disappointed if strawberry season came early or late and she missed it!

At our house, strawberry “shortcake” is not really a “cake” at all. Shortcake, instead, is a sweet biscuit, either homemade or using the recipe on the back of the Bisquick box. The consensus at our house is that those little dry, spongy cakes you buy just aren’t real “shortcake”. Not to say that crushed strawberries over angel food cake is not a delicious dessert, but it isn’t “shortcake” to us!

How to top that wonderful, warm biscuit? That’s where our family’s paths diverge. Most of the clan (the unenlightened part) top their shortcake with sweetened, crushed strawberries, the sweet juice of the strawberries and whipped cream, but the purists butter their warm shortcake and add sliced strawberries, sugar and milk. Any guess where my loyalties are in the great strawberry shortcake debate?

However you build this luscious dessert, I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Oh, PS, the squirting of the canned-whipped cream is almost as popular as the strawberry shortcake itself!

Strawberry Shortcake

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Ingredients

2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cups half & half (up to 3/4 cup)
2 quarts strawberries
1/2 cup sugar (for strawberries)
whipped cream topping

Directions

Step 1
Preheat oven to 425 degrees
Step 2
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. With fork or pastry blender, add butter, stirring until mixture forms small pea-sized balls. Add 2/3 cup of half & half and quickly stir, adding more if necessary to form a ball. Divide dough into 6 equal pieces and place on greased baking sheet. Bake 14 to 18 minutes until light brown.
Step 3
Clean and slice strawberries, crushing them. Add sugar and mix well. Or clean and slice strawberries for Option 2.
Step 4
Option 1: Top warm shortcakes with crushed strawberries and juice. Add whipped cream if desired. Option 2 (try it! It’ll change the way you eat strawberry shortcake forever!): Split and butter warm shortcake and add sliced strawberries (not crushed). Sprinkle with sugar as desired and pour milk over top. The butter melts into the biscuit. The sliced strawberries give you more substance than the crushed strawberries, you can choose how much sugar to add and the milk soaking into the crumbly biscuit is creamy and heavenly!

Beach time’s a good time.

May 4, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Uncategorized 6 Comments

We had a lot of fun with Cookbook Guy, his beautiful, sweet wife and really nice kids (who put up with a lot of crap from Cookbook Guy and his old pal, Sales Guy) this past week in their lovely new condo on the Florida beach (and awesome house near Orlando. They have the most gorgeous, lush landscaping that would never come close to surviving the cold, dreary Missouri winters. Beautiful! I’m jealous!). The Sunshine State didn’t completely live up to its billing since it rained part of the time we spent there, but, hey, it was 30 degrees warmer than the Midwest and we had enough sun that I got sunburned for the first time since high school! A great time!

Let me explain the name “Cookbook Guy”. Sales Guy’s oldest friend owns a book distributing company and he knows I love to cook, so he recently sent me a wonderful surprise-a box full of sample cookbooks! Around 20 of them! What a gift to a person who reads cookbooks like, well, you know, books! And this week, he sent me home with a few more! The suitcases were not overweight, unlike the suitcase owners after nearly a week of eating delicious Florida food! So, if I don’t take the time to write over the next few weeks, you know I am busy perusing my cookbooks!

Anyway, no new recipe posts this week as I didn’t cook so much as a cup of tea from Sunday noon until tonight! Except Shrimp Night, but more about that later!

I thought I would give a quick rundown of the best foods we had on our mini-vacation and where you can find it, should you ever go to the Orlando & Daytona Beach area. It was all great!

Best crab cakes (and I, along with one of my besties- Shelley and Daughters 1 & 2, are crab cake experts!) – Malibu Grill, Port Orange FL. I had them at 3 different restaurants on our trip (and every day on our short trip to California a couple of weeks ago-keep in mind, we are land-locked in Missouri and I love seafood) and these were hands-down, the best! Crabby, with not too much filler, but with a little spice and the mustard based sauce was tangy and delicious. I usually like a remoulade sauce with crab cakes, but this was different and yummy.

Best coconut shrimp – D J’s Deck, Port Orange FL. The shrimp were big and crunchy and the sauce was almost like a grape jelly, melted. The combination was awesome! Best coconut shrimp, not only of the trip, but probably that I’ve ever eaten! It was an outdoor restaurant, with picnic tables along the dock on the inlet where fishing boats come in. Fun atmosphere and super clean. Plus, great coconut shrimp!

Best breakfast – The Cracked Egg, Daytona Beach Shores, FL. Big omelets, some messy concoction with biscuits, sausage gravy, scrambled eggs and country-fried potatoes all piled up. I stuck with my go-to breakfast, sausage and potatoes, but my three fellow diners said it was all excellent.

Best brisket – Four Rivers Smokehouse, Longwood, FL. It was lean, smokey, delicious!! It rivals our favorite barbecue restaurant in Missouri, Half Sauced BBQ, in Osage Beach.

Best Slaw – Cole slaw can be dry or so soupy and runny that you need to drain it or eat it with a spoon. D.J.’s Deck wins its second category of the competition! It was not too dry, not too runny. Goldilocks, it was just the right consistency and very tasty.

Best Salad – Aunt Catfish’s on the River, Port Orange, FL. Actually, best salad bar. It’s huge and has some unusual things. Lots of fresh vegetables to add to your lettuce mixes, and also things like pepperoncini, which is always a hit with us and pickled beets which are a hit with Sales Guy. They had interesting salad toppers (I said interesting-not healthy) – those little canned French fried potato sticks I hadn’t seen in years, a crunchy mixture of different little cracker-type things, including wasabi peas and chow mein noodles. They also have a small hot bar with baked beans, grits, corn bread (and cole slaw that came in third. Sorry, Aunt Catfish). Interesting place. Touristy, but fun!

Best Hush Puppies – D.J.’s Deck wins again! A little jalapeno, a lot of taste!

Best Fried Shrimp & Best Boiled Shrimp – Home cooked by all of us! Our family has a tradition that whenever we go to Florida (we have taken the kids to the Florida panhandle 6 or 8 times over the years where we rent a condo on the beach-it’s a fun, relaxing trip) we go to a seafood market and buy a few pounds of raw shrimp and fry some and boil the rest and just pig out on it. No veggies, no salad, no bread, just shrimp (well, maybe hushpuppies or cheese and crackers too…) Even though our kids weren’t with us, we decided to keep the tradition alive and it was yummy. Sales Guy is still complaining about the taste of the brand of cocktail sauce he bought, but I say it was better than any shrimp we had in a restaurant (well, except for that delicious coconut shrimp!) the whole trip.

Now back to the real world! Steak, potatoes, salad and Aunt Louise’s chocolate chip cookies tonight.

Thanks so much, Florida friends, for a wonderful, delicious week!

Lahvosh(es)

April 27, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Appetizers 3 Comments

We go to Omaha to a food show at the Qwest Center twice a year and there is a cool
area very close to it called the Old Market. It is full of restaurants, bars,
little shops, street performers on the cobblestone streets. Fun! We have been to most of the restaurantsoften enough that we now have our favorites and one of them is M’s Pub. I havenot found an entrée at M’s that I love (sorry M’s) but they have some amazing appetizers, my favorite being a Thai Lahvosh. A lahvosh is a big cracker-like
bread, crunchy and pretty tasteless, but it is a perfect base for yummy
toppings. I experimented and came up with this recipe in an attempt to duplicate M’s delicious app. It’s close! They have a buffalo chicken lahvosh, not
my personal favorite, but pretty darn good too.

Thai Lahvosh

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Ingredients

1 Large Lahvosh (12)
1 & 1/2 Medium Grilled chicken breasts ((see Chipotle Lime Marinated Chicken Breasts posted today))
1/3 cup Thai peanut sauce
1 tablespoon Barbecue sauce
1 Medium Roma tomato (chopped and patted dry with paper towel)
4 Medium Green onions (chopped)
1/4 cup Cilantro (chopped)
1/2 cup Peanuts (chopped)
1/2 cup Monterrey jack cheese (shredded, or some other mild cheese)

Directions

Step 1
Preheat oven to 375 deg.
Step 2
Combine peanut sauce and barbecue sauce and spread lightly on lahvosh, reserving 1 Tbs (mixture won't cover entire surface, just be sure that each piece will have some).
Step 3
Top with sliced chicken and cheese and bake for 5 to 8 minutes.
Step 4
Remove from oven. Sprinkle with tomato, onions, cilantro and peanuts. Drizzle with reserved sauce.
Step 5
TRY to cut with a pizza cutter, but it won't work. You'll end up breaking it into serving-size pieces.

Buffalo Chicken Lavosh

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Ingredients

1 Large Lahvosh (12)
1 & 1/2 Medium Grilled chicken breast (see today's post for Chipotle Lime Marinated Chicken Breasts)
1/3 cup Ranch or blue cheese salad dressing
1 tablespoon Hot sauce (Frank's or Louisiana are our favorites)
1/2 cup Blue cheese
1/2 cup Monterrey Jack cheese (or some other mild cheese)
1/2 cup Celery, chopped
2 Medium Green onions, chopped

Note

The first time I made this, I used 1/3 cup of Frank's and 1 Tbs. of salad dressing. WOW! Was it hot!! I think this ratio will work much better. The image with this recipe does not show the celery or green onions because 1 of our guests is not a fan of celery.

Directions

Step 1
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Step 2
Combine salad dressing and hot sauce and spread lightly on lahvosh, reserving 1 Tbs. Top with sliced chicken, cheeses and bake for 5 to 8 minutes.
Step 3
Remove from oven, sprinkle with celery and onions. Drizzle with reserved sauce. Cut and serve.

Grilled Chicken in Chipotle-Lime Marinade

April 27, 2013 by debrarid Filed Under: Meat & Poultry 1 Comment

This turned into a multi-post day as integrating the marinated chicken breasts recipe with the Thai Lahvosh recipe was not working out. I failed once again in the photography department because I was planning on one finished product, the lahvosh-so I didn’t take a pic of the chicken breasts after they came off the grill. Let me just say, they were beautiful and brown, with wonderful grill marks and I had a hard time not eating one immediately.

Over the years, we have produced some of the driest, chewiest chicken breasts (even since we got the Traeger grill) in the history of grilling. No more! This marinade is the best thing that ever happened to our grilled chicken breasts. They are moist, have a great texture, a little kick from the chipotles and we love them. I’ve served them plain with a side of Spanish rice or fettucini alfredo, chilled and sliced on a salad and now on the lahvoshes. They are delicious!

Chipotle Lime Chicken Marinade

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Ingredients

3 tablespoons Extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon Honey
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Ground cumin
2 cloves Garlic (chopped)
2 Chipotle chiles in Adobo sauce (chopped)
1 teaspoon Adobo sauce from can of Chipotle Chiles
1 Medium Lime (juice of)
1 tablespoon Fresh cilantro or 1 tsp of dried cilantro
3 Medium Chicken breasts (trimmed)

Directions

Step 1
In a mini-food processor, add olive oil, honey, salt, pepper, cumin, garlic, chipotles and adobo & lime juice .Mix until marinade is thick and fairly smooth.
Step 2
Pour marinade over chicken breasts in gallon plastic bag and refrigerate for 2 to 4 hours. Turn once or twice.
Step 3
Remove from the refrigerator 30 minutes prior to grilling. Heat your grill to medium/medium high heat and grill until the internal temperature reaches 170 degrees. Let rest for 10 minutes before slicing. Eat immediately or chill to serve cold.