Whiskey Sour

Tonight’s cocktail is one of the standards – a basis for many other cocktails and quite frankly I believe is often overlooked. Well, I think it is high time to get this beauty back into the public eye! This drink is simple to make and when made with a great tasting whiskey, the results are sublime. There is not much more to say about this cocktail, so let’s kick off this weekend! Save Print Whiskey Sour Prep time:  5 mins Total time:  5 mins Serves: 1   Ingredients 2…

Ravioli with Brown Butter and Sage

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…

Grilled Teriyaki Beef

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…

Palmetto

Happy Friday everyone!  Tonight’s cocktail is perfect for this wonderful Summer evening – the Palmetto. Typically this drink is made with white rum and dry vermouth… and from what my research found, the resulting drink is barely drinkable. Well, we can’t have that here on Cooking-4-One, can we? So I opted to follow the research and use an aged rum and sweet vermouth. The resulting rum variation of a Manhattan works nicely and I even give it a nice little tweak. I would have thought adding sweet vermouth to…

Experiment: Macaroni and Cheese

Last night I made an experimental macaroni and cheese that I just have to share with you. This recipe’s creation was based on what I had available. The adage ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ seems to apply here and I believe this scenario happens to everyone that cooks at some point. The key element here is the cheese sauce. I substituted sour cream and water for the milk and used creamy havarti and fontina cheeses. For seasonings, I added herbs de provence along with ground mustard and white pepper. This combination…

Pasta Puttanesca

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…

Ampersand

There are several recipes for this cocktail floating around the web, basically divided into two styles – include orange liqueur or not. The real keys to this negroni-like cocktail are in the style of gin used. This cocktail calls for Old Tom gin – a slightly sweeter variation.  I find the difference between Old Tom and Dry gin as being more floral and subtly herbaceous compared to the juniper forward dry gins that have staunch herbal notes to hold up to the ‘pine’ flavor of juniper. Based on that description of Old Tom…