Organic Sprouted Wheat Pappardelle Pasta with Salmon and Prosciutto

This dish sounds fancier than it is. I had bought this organic wheat pasta at Trader Joe's and had saved it for a creamy dish, since I think long, thick pastas go well with creamy sauces. And the other day I had nothing on my fridge but 2 small pieces of salmon that wouldn't be enough for one meal for us, nonetheless counting with left overs for lunches next day. So I went in the fridge and gathered everything that I could put together to make a nice pasta dish.
I cooked the salmon on a pan with olive oil and garlic, salt and pepper. Cut it in pieces and put over the cooked pasta. On the same pan, with the left over oil I cooked spinach and add to the pasta. Plus I mixed in some sliced prosciutto and mozzarella. On the side I made a creamy sauce and poured on top.
The end result was cheesy and rich. Hungry Dad that usually is not crazy about "creamy sauces" said this was delicious.


Cream sauce:
Warm milk on a small pot, add flour and continuously mix until it starts getting thick. (If the flour starts forming little balls, I simply use a blender to get rid of that).Once it starts forming a nice thick consistency, add butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, a touch of lemon juice.

Making Banana Bread

We eat banana bread a lot, since little assistant loves bananas and we always have them around. He's also crazy about bread, so it becames a great snack.
I have tried many different recipes of banana bread but always seem to go back to the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.
I do use less flour (only 1,5 cups) and less baking powder (1,5 tsp). Substitute the oil/margarine for olive oil and use brown sugar instead of white. I also process the walnuts really small so Diogo doesn't choke on them.

Fresh Cod with potatoes

This is such a simple dish to make. I place the cod on a tray with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper on top and add potatoes thinly sliced around it. To keep it interesting I change the type of potatoes I use. This time I mixed white and sweet potatoes.
Put it in the oven at 350º.

Lamb Soup

Lamb soup is a favorite at our house. It might take all afternoon to make a nice broth but it's not necessary to be around the kitchen during that time. This soup is very nutritious and a really nice change from the traditional chicken soup.
I do it the same exact way I would make a chicken soup, except I use lamb. Although it sounds fancier than chicken, it's actually much cheaper to make than chicken soup. Pretty much in any supermarket there are those packs of small lamb cuts with a lot of bone (I forget the name of that cut). The small packages usually cost less than $3 and is enough to make a good pot of soup that lasts in our house (2 adults, 1 toddler) for at least 2 or 3 meals.
It's comforting to know that when we are tight on the budget, we can still eat well and nutritiously, with so little money.

ThanksGiving - Stuffing and the turkey around it.

As strange as it may sound. I have not used a recipe for the stuffing. And it was the first time I ever made it. I remember watching my FIL all the previous years making the stuffing on the night before while we'd chit chat and I went from there.
It bought white bread which I cut in little cubes. Added celery, onions, scallions, and cooked sausage. Then combined with chicken broth and butter, salt, and pepper.
I kept it very simple, since I was not sure what I was doing, and it came out delicious and plenty for left overs!
I cooked some inside the turkey and the remain I cooked it inside aluminum foil for the last hour that the turkey was in, however, I think next time I'll put it in the oven earlier to make it a little darker in color.

The turkey was 19lbs and cooked covered in a butter herb paste, after a night in a brine. I brined it with salty water, flavored with lemons and oranges and a glass of "Agua Ardente" - the portuguese version of grapa. Although I was too excited to take a picture and too busy with all the dishes, the turkey came out looking beautiful and was very juicy and flavorful.

I cooked the neck and giblet and made a broth with onions, leek, carrots, and bay leaves. I let it cook for 3 hours and then used the liquid to make the gravy. My biggest mistakes was to add salt to the broth. Because I used the drippings from the turkey together with the broth to make the gravy, the end result was a hint of too much salt in it. It wasn't too strong that stopped us from enjoying it, but a it would have been even better with a little less.


I also made some home made bread, which always comes out perfectly crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. I'll share some recipes one of these days.

ThanksGiving - Cranberry Sauce

ThanksGiving is my favorite american holiday. It is a celebration of togetherness and appreciation for the little things in life. There's no gift exchange stress involved and no diet guilts. Since summer is far away and no one is going to see anyone in a bathing suit anytime soon, who cares if we eat 5 lbs worth of food in one day? It's all just about being together and eat good food. That's what life should always be about.
This year was my 11th ThanksGiving, which means it has been 11 years since I first met Matt. It was also the first year I cooked the whole ThanksGiving meal. It was very exciting.
At the beginning of the week I made the cranberry sauce. First I tested two different recipes in small quantities for us to choose which one we liked better. One was simply 1 lb of cranberries, 1 cup of sugar and zest of 1 orange in the oven for 45 minutes at 350º.

It comes out a beautiful, dark red colored sauce with a citrus hint that is perfect for those who prefer a sauce that is not so tart.

The second version requires more ingredients and more patient stirring it. It starts by cooking dried cranberries with and alcoholic drink of your choice, then adding fresh cranberries, water, and sugar and stir it for what it seems an eternity.

The result is a vibrant bright red sauce a bit more tart than the previous, yet with enough sugar to make it very tasty. The cognac makes it taste less fruity and much more interesting. And it cooks long enough for the alcohol to evaporate and make it safe for everyone to eat.

Needless to say the last version was the one we chose to make for the actual day - Cranberry Sauce with Cognac. I adapted adapted from a recipe on Bon appétit. Diogo loved it.

Beans

I've been trying to empty out the fridge so I can create some space for the ThanksGiving madness.
We reached a point that seemed that there was nothing in the fridge to eat besides a frozen bag of shrimp, a bag of dry beans that I brought from our farm in Portugal, and couple lost leaves of organic baby spinach. Well, the meal was done right there, I combined all of the ingredients (after boiling the beans for almost 1 hour and a half, since they were dry and I haven't soak them), on a skillet where I cooked a tomato base with onions and garlic in olive oil. It would have been lovely with a touch of hot sauce but was afraid that would be too much for my toddler assistant. Nonetheless it came out delicious.

Pear and walnut squares

This past week I went to Costco and they had some very attractive and juicy-looking pears. They were ripped to perfection and it reminded me of the pictures I see on the Harry & David catalogs, so I couldn't resist. I bought a whole box of pears. After me and Diogo ate couple pears, I just had to figure out something to do with the ripe pears before they go bad. So I looked up online and found this recipe of Pear and walnut squares. The walnuts make them crunchy while the pears make them smooth and moist. The dough underneath is buttery and sweet, and a hint of cinnamon makes it a comforting, and perfect fall desert, an afternoon snack, or a nutritious breakfast bar.
Hungry Dad gave his approval and said this is definitely a repeat.

Chicken with feta and raisins.

So before I go ahead, let me first introduce my assistant. He has an acquired taste and is an expert at mixing and pouring. He's also extremely hands on when it's time for washing the dishes, or doing anything related with water. Most importantly, he keeps the high spirits around the kitchen and doesn't allow for a dull moment.

Although I do not intend on posting here every night's dinner, I would like to share one of my few invented dishes - Chicken with feta and raisins. Nothing too fancy, yet it's one of those dishes that looks attractive on the plate, has interesting taste, can be eaten by a toddler, a hungry dad, and a weight-conscient mom, and is very simple and fast to cook. Therefore this is a winner at our house and what I do whenever I don't know what to do with chicken breasts. The dish can be fancier or simpler depending on my mood and who am I cooking for.
I start by letting some onions cook on butter (or sometimes Olive oil, depending on the mood or what I have around) and then add thinly sliced chicken breast, to which I add salt and pepper. After the chicken is cooked, I add either some water or white wine or milk or heavy cream, depending how thick or tasty or dull I want my sauce to be. And after I let the sauce cook for a bit I add on top raisins and feta cheese (In our house we believe "everything's betta with feta!") and whatever herbs I have around - parsley or rosemary, thyme or fresh oreganos. If you want an extra crunch add sliced almonds or walnuts to the mix. Done. It cooks in less than 15 minutes. And I can serve with either rice, mash potatoes or pasta and whatever vegetable on the side.

Sharing my cooking

I have been kicking around the idea of starting a food blog for about some time now. I love cooking, reading food blogs is entertaining to me, I get excited when I buy fresh produce, and worst of all, I have always enjoyed eating. I grew up with saturday and sunday afternoons spent around the table and today I believe a happy get together with friends and family has to involve food.
I was really not so interested in cooking while growing up. In fact, I was a bit of a tom-boy kinda girl that loved going camping, hiking with her friends, and could eat dirt for dinner that I wouldn't care. But one way or another, when I look back today, I almost always ate home made food. Even for those camping trips. We would buy potatoes and eggs on the local market, cut the potatoes in half, make a little hole in the middle and put the raw eggs in it, close the potatoes back with aluminum paper and roast them on the fire. They were simple, delicious, nutritious, healthy, and home-made. And that seems to be exactly how I like to cook today. I get lost and bored with complicated recipes and easily loose the patience if I need to mix or knead or refrigerate things for too long. I like to use the same philosophy on my cooking as I was taught on those advertising 101 classes I took in Art School - KISS: "Keep It Simple and Stupid" (or is it "Keep It Simple, Stupid!"?). Anyway, I never became that good at advertising (I'm an awful BSer!) but might let my old professor know how his theory applies great into my cooking. I'm sure he'll be proud!

I don't think of myself as a great cook. In fact, I think I'm still far from it, but I'd love to be as great of a cook as my mom always was. I admire her dedication to the kitchen and her passion for cooking, but most importantly, I truly admire her spontaneity, sense of improvising, and confidence that she has when she is in the kitchen.
This blog will be more of a personal journal for me. A gathering of recipes I like, notes and comments of things that I tried and the results. It's not a resource for original recipes, since aside from one or two dishes, I never invented anything. But I do improvise, modify, and experiment enough to keep things interesting, I hope.