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Category: Main Dish
Here is the recipe for last night’s dinner which used up the leftovers from the Smoked Turkey Breast I recently made. This dish is a perfect example of how to enjoy one delicious meal that is nearly impossible to scale into a single serving and use the feast’s leftovers for a second, equally delicious meal. The concept is as old as the traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner that uses the leftovers for dishes like turkey pot pie and/or turkey tetrazzini and/or turkey noodle soup and others. This dish is also a fabulous comfort food experience that need not wait until Thanksgiving to enjoy. And surprisingly enough, it is not incredibly time-consuming and is quite flexible. So if you are looking to enjoy…
Here is the recipe for last night’s smoked turkey breast. I really enjoy the simplicity of this dish as a main course. I purchased a Foster Farms Turkey Breast Roast and brined it for a few hours with a simple mixture of salt and Spice Islands Smoky Mesquite Seasoning, before smoking it in my hot smoker over cherry wood chips until the internal temperature reached 165 degrees. Here is where my Loki Meat Thermometer comes in handy – it takes all the guess work out of cooking/smoking this turkey breast. And once rested and sliced, the turkey is tender and moist with a wonderfully light smoke flavor. All that is left is to enjoy this dish with whatever sides you desire. In my case, it…
Tonight’s dinner is an Italian classic – spaghetti alla carbonara. This dish of few ingredients produces a wonderfully robust meal. Like Pasta all’Amatriciana and Pasta Putannesca, this recipe is about quality ingredients and timing. I used David Leite’s recipe from his blog Leite’s Culinaria. He has an engaging post about the origins of this dish – rumored to have been created by coal miners – so I’ll defer to his research and expertise on that subject. But I will dive into this dish with enthusiasm. Getting the timing right on this recipe is not as hard as you may think if we use a little trick when cooking the noodles. I used a large skillet instead of a…
What? Did I just hear a collected groan and harrumph of disbelief in being able to make a delicious lasagna for one? Well, you are partially correct. This recipe is perfect for two… or one with a nice serving as leftovers. Normally I do not like leftovers, but there are a few dishes I make exceptions for – goulash, schnitzel, and lasagna among my favorites. This recipe is a little more involved than my typical quick and easy style, but this dish deserves the extra effort. But in all honesty, the toughest part may be finding a small baking dish. I use a 7x5x1.5 (3 cup) size Pyrex baking dish. Once you have that small baking dish, just think of how wonderful it will be to…
Here is a stir fry recipe showcasing green beans and prawns. The sauce in this dish is light and not the typical spicy style you probably have come to expect from me. See… I can throw you a curve once in a while! This dish is based on one I enjoy at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant and is perfect for a quick to prepare and light dinner. Need I say it is versatile? Like nearly all stir frys, you can tweak and twist the ingredients to suit your unique tastes and desires (and ingredients!). Substitute chicken for the prawns, no problem. Replace the green beans with broccoli, no worries. To add a bit more umami to the dish, I used rehydrated oyster mushrooms. They will also add…
Last night I threw a clambake party for some friends – sort of an end of the summer bash with a feast of seafood. In all actuality, the guys were here to help me with a foil packet clambake recipe I was working on… I needed taste testers. The party was a success as my friends devoured the results with everyone completely satisfied with the mixture of clams, prawns, lobster, linguiça, corn, and potatoes slathered in seasoned butter, aromatics, and fresh herbs. Here are the pictures – compliments of one of the guests! A deconstructed Caprese Salad Clambake Close-up Dessert – compliments of one of the guests (and Metropolitan Market) Yalumba Antique Tawny and Brown Butter Pear Tart. I hope to post the recipe at…
Tonight’s dinner is a quick and tasty dish – easy to prepare and enjoy. In this recipe, I used the Parmesan and Black Pepper fresh ravioli from Buitoni which I think worked perfectly. The rest of the ingredients are just fresh sage leaves, garlic, unsalted butter, and grape tomatoes. I also added a bit of diced prosciutto and red pepper flakes to my version, which is optional but highly recommended. This dish comes together quickly with the ravioli taking a mere 7 minutes and the rest taking less than 15 minutes. Quick, easy and tasty… here’s a dish that works for a busy weeknight or a busy weekend. That alone must be the reason this dish is so popular on restaurant menus! Save…
Wow, can you believe it has been one year and 255 posts since I began this blog? Happy 1 year anniversary to me! Summer weather is still here in the Pacific Northwest, so tonight I want to bring you another dish from the grill. Teriyaki Beef is actually an easy dish to make – cube up some ingredients, make a sauce, marinate the beef, assemble the skewers, and then grill. Since the dish is meat and vegetables on a stick, just add a simple starch like white rice and you are good to go for a complete meal. I used sirloin steak cut into cubes for this rendition to get that grilled steak experience with this dish. The rest is just fresh vegetables and a wonderful sauce; enhanced…
Here is another Italian restaurant staple – pasta puttanseca. This dish’s claim to fame is its pungency and how that relates to its origin – i.e. puttanesca meaning ‘from the prostitutes’ or ‘in the style of the prostitutes’. It is rumored that the dish was favored by Italian prostitutes to keep their clients from trying to kiss them. A girl’s got to have some boundaries right? Well upon further research, it seems there is little written documentation about this dish prior to the middle of the 20th century. Which means pasta puttanesca may have been a simple dish made only at home and not seen as restaurant fare (or fare an upstanding diner would want to be seen eating…
Tonight I made a dish found at nearly every Italian restaurant I can ever recall visiting. It is a simple, yet delicious scallopini style dish featuring Marsala wine as the primary ingredient in the sauce. If you do any research on this dish, you will find the variations for this recipe are widespread. Typical variations start with whether to use dry or sweet Marsala. Next there is the whole ‘should I include cream or not’ debate. And let’s not even begin the discussion on whether the chicken should be dredged in flour or not. So, after a lot of reading and contemplating on how I have made this dish in the past, I created this recipe as a compilation of what I learned through…