What You Should Have Eaten #37

Warm Tangerine and Grilled Chicken Salad served on Grilled Garlic Crisps

My ex-mother-in-law brought me some peaches yesterday (not necessarily out of the kindness of her heart. She was given some and didn’t think she’d be able to eat them all. Oh well, they smell wonderful.), so I decided to make a dessert. My son suggested peach cobbler, and I just happened to have all the ingredients, so that’s what I’m doing.

 

 

I was a little hesitant about this dish when I started slicing up the peaches. The first one I cut into was rotten in the middle. I was hoping this wasn’t a subtle message from the ex MiL (doubtful), and I was also hoping this wasn’t going to happen as I cut into the other three peaches (it didn’t). I tasted one of the slices, and it was delicious. If nothing else, the filling would be excellent.

 

 

And I say that because the topping gave me pause. The butter did not cut into the flour and sugar easily to make a crumb topping, and the milk/egg mixture did not just moisten the topping, it made it doughy. I just put some dough blobs on the filling and crossed my fingers when I put the stuff in the oven.

 

The drink is pink. Already, this is a bad sign. Meh, it’s passable but no great shakes. I think this is the most Galliano I’ve put into a drink. It’s usually a teaspoon or two, but this time it was ¾ of an ounce. Like I said, not bad, but not great.

After going through my cooking photos, it seems as if I already made this drink. I apologize for the double post

Let’s start out with changes to the ingredients. Apparently tangerines aren’t in season, so I had to substitute some generic oranges. I think they’re Minneolas. Also, I’m doing two pints of red grape tomatoes because my Kroger Marketplace didn’t have any yellow ones. And I actually bought olives for this. I didn’t with the last recipe that called for them, but I decided to try them. I did, however, but some green ones that were stuffed with blue cheese, so we’ll see how that affects the recipe. Also, no fennel bulb. I guess I’ll throw in a little bit of whatever is in my fennel spice jar…seeds?

Let’s do this!

I really need to read these recipes in advance…or pay attention to the recipe’s name. I didn’t realize I’d need to get my grill ready. Not a problem, though. The coals can heat up while I get everything chopped and prepared. This’ll be the first time I’ll be cooking chicken on the grill. Before it’s either been steak or hamburger. This should be interesting.

I couldn’t find any chicken cutlets, so I got some breasts and I’m going to cut them in half to make them a bit thinner.

My God, these olives smell nasty. I hope including them won’t come back to haunt me.

Fennel = licorice. I hate licorice.

 Yeah, there is no way I’m going to make my kids eat this. I don’t know if I want to eat it.

There is a better-than-good chance that I’m using a paint brush to brush the olive oil on the pita.

 This is by far one of the ugliest things I’ve cooked, and also one of the worst tasting. In the beginning, the orange tries to exert itself, but everything is overpowered by the olives. It’s awful. I tried to eat my entire serving, but all I could choke down were the pita and the chicken. I think I’m going to try and pick out the chicken and save it for lunch, maybe drown out the olive by bringing along some steak sauce or something. I hate to just throw it ALL away. I spent so much money on the ingredients, and that’s what I’m most disappointed about.

The cobbler was good.

Probably for the rest of the month I’m going to whore myself out with an impassioned plea: click on the ads. PLEASE click on the ads. I don’t care if you exit it out of it immediately or actually look around. This isn’t some professional blog where I believe in the products I’m shilling. These are automatic ads placed by Google. But my experiment this weekend proved to me that I actually AM making a spot of cash whenever the ads are clicked. So I’m going to put this little disclaimer on the bottom of all my posts for the next month or so, and I hope you’ll take an extra 10 seconds after reading my blog to click on an ad. Thanks so much!

What You Should Have Eaten #36

Sweet and Savory Stuffed Veal Rolls with a Mustard Pan Sauce

The night is already starting off poorly. The drink was supposed to be a Berlenga, which is port and gin. Could have been good, but it called for white port, and my port was not white. So the next section of the book was aniseed drinks. Yuck.

So here’s an explicably named Green Monkey. Galliano (1 1/2 oz.) and Pernod (2 tsp.), both of which are yellow. So the Green Monkey is actually yellow. And it has Pernod in it, so it’s already streets behind. My plan is to take a sip to get the taste, then down it and chase it with Magic Hat #9.

Awful. Awful awful awful. I’d throw out the bottle of Pernod, but I hate wasting money. Could there be any type of tasty drink that calls for this awful liquid? I’m cooking with lemon zest, so after I grated the peel, I squeezed some fresh lemon juice into the drink. It didn’t help.

The pine nuts I got weren’t toasted, so I threw them in the oven for a bit. I hope that helps. I also omitted the olives. Not my thing. I hope they aren’t integral to the stuffing. Judging from the smell, I toasted them up nicely.

Veal is expensive, so I’m only using five slices instead of eight. I got to the grocery store after the meat department had closed, so it was either buy five or buy 10. I went with spending $8 instead of $16. I also don’t have the qualms that some people have about eating veal. It’s yummy.

Does anybody else have a problem with fresh thyme? The leaves are so damn small, I just chop it up whole, stems and all.

Just like last week, I’m using dried instead of fresh parsley.

I realize that parmesan cheese is not the same as Parmigiano-Reggiano, but I’m not going to shell out for cheese and then grate it myself. This is close enough.

I’m confused about the filling. When I’ve done dishes like this before, the filling is a little bit squishy. It looks like it needs to go in the food processor for a bit, but I’m going to give Ray the benefit of the doubt and leave it as-is.

I started cooking later than usual, and I didn’t want the kids to wait (and I knew they wouldn’t eat this anyways), so they got chicken nuggets, veggies, grapes and potato chips. I’m okay with that.

I usually have a problem with tothpicked things that go in the skillet. We’ll see what happens here. I need to get some new tongs. I’ve only got one pair, and they’re in the dishwasher because I used them last night. I’d rather wash them through the dishwasher than give them a quick wash now and use them to flip the roll-ups.

Okay now, everybody at the same time…NO ONIONS!!!

I made some baked sweet potatoes last night that I didn’t eat, so this is going to be a full meal: the roll-ups, some harvest grain bread, baked sweet potatoes and salad. YUM!

This was a very tasty and well-rounded meal. The portions were perfect. I hope the roll-up last well, because I’m looking forward to having some for lunch this week.

What You Should Have Eaten #35

Southwestern Pasta Bake

Tonight’s drink is a St. Vincent, which has gin, Galliano, cream and grenadine in it. I used to really hate gin. It all tasted like rubbing alcohol to me. But then I found New Amsterdam Gin. It’s smooth with a really nice citrus aftertaste. Whereas I used to buy whatever liquor was on sale, I’m starting to find I’m brand loyal to some things, and New Amsterdam Gin is one of those things to which I’m brand loyal.

The drink is fine as a one-off, but it’s too creamy to really enjoy more than one at a time. When I’m done with this I’ll be enjoying a BBC (Bluegrass Brewing Company) American Pale Ale. It’s good, but I had their Nut Brown Ale last night, and it knocked my socks off. It was one of the best nut browns I’ve ever had, no lie.

Guess what? I’m leaving out the onions. Shocking, I know.

I’m using fresh cilantro but dried parsley. I’ve got a LOT of dried parsley, and this just seems like an opportune time to get rid of some.

This is a very easy recipe to make. Get everything prepped in advance and you’re set.

As with almost all of my Sunday night meals, I knew my kids wouldn’t touch this. They love plain pasta with parmesan cheese, so I held out a little bit of the penne and served it up with some oranges, carrots and celery. As long as I can give them a healthy alternative, I don’t feel the need to try and force them to eat something like this. Now, I might not be so accommodating if this were an every night sort of thing, but I’m only able to cook like this once a week, so it’s okay. Of course, they have to at least TRY the dish if they want dessert. I’m accommodating, but I’m not a total softy.

I enjoyed the meal, but it was rather bland for something calling itself a Southwest dish. But I’m okay with that since I don’t like spicy things. If you DO like spicy things, I’d suggest using a hotter type of pepper, using the onion I omitted, and maybe mixing in some cayenne pepper with the chili pepper.

What You Should Have Eaten #25

Lettillas (Mix-n-Match Lettuce Tacos)

Let me start off by saying I am neither mixing nor matching anything with this recipe. I’m forgoing the shrimp and sticking with the ground beef. I bet the shrimp tastes wonderful, though.

My drink tonight was not “scheduled” to be tequila based, but I made an executive decision to switch since I’m making tacos. A shot of Patron to begin with, but I’m mixing the drink with Cuervo. It’s good enough. Sweet. Too much lemon juice, though. I’d flip-flop the amounts of lemon and orange juice.

 

I’ve got season 4 of Doctor Who running on Netflix while I cook. I love that I’ve got a laptop that I can do this on. Typing, cooking AND watching TV. Heaven. I think George Costanza's three-pronged Heaven was a little better, though.

I’m chopping up a whole red bell pepper instead of half. I figure this’ll make up for not including any onion. I’m also chopping up a tomato. How can you have a taco without any tomato? I also added some ground cumin. Y’know, for that taco taste.

I’m a little bit surprised that I didn’t have to drain the cooked ground sirloin before adding the other ingredients. I guess I’m just used to doing that when making tacos from a kit.

I bought some taco shells, crunchy and soft, for the kids. I didn’t think they’d eat whole lettuce leaves…and they didn’t. My oldest refused to eat the tacos because of the red bell peppers that were chopped up and added to the meat. My daughter ate the cheese then also refused to eat the meat, same reason. My youngest son, however, wolfed them down.

I thought they were pretty much just run-of-the-mill tacos, but using lettuce leaves as shells was a novel approach. I’ve got enough to take to work for a couple of days, and using the leftover shells will allow me to make a nice taco salad.