Fillet Mignon with Orzo

I often buy at Costco a big pack of their Fillet Mignon, that I find to be so tender and flavorful. When I get home I divide the meat in smaller quantities to make a variety of dishes. The other day I cut the fillet mignon into tiny cubes and made an orzo dish with it, using red peppers and spinach to give texture to the dish. It came out so delicious!

Pear and walnut tartlettes

Just for fun the other day we made some tartlettes and then shared the goods with the neighbors.







Here's the recipe:

1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
3 ripe Bartlett pears, peeled, cored and sliced
3 large eggs
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, confectioners' sugar, butter, 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon and salt; mix well. Press into the bottom of a greased 11 x 7-inch baking dish. Top with nuts and pear slices.
In the same mixing bowl, beat together eggs, brown sugar, vanilla extract and remaining 1 teaspoon cinnamon until well combined; pour over pears. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. (Because I made little tartlettes on muffin pans, I reduced the baking time to 10 minutes, but could have done 15 minutes at 325º also.)

Sardines and Chouriço

June is, in my mind, the month to eat sardines.
In Portugal, people eat them all summer long, however there's always a lot of festivals in June where sardines are the chosen food.
To celebrate, we went to a portuguese festival and ate grilled sardines and chouriço with bread and drank beer.
So good!

Empadao de Arroz

In portuguese cooking, Empadão is something similar to a lasagna but made with mashed potatoes (mashed potatoes on top and bottom and cooked ground beef with tomato sauce in the middle).
On this recipe, I added some vegetables in the meat mix and substituted the mashed potatoes for some rice.
It was delicious and very moist. My little assistant loved it and ate a lot of it!

Salads

The summer has arrived (unofficially) and time for salads is here!
Salads are healthy, lightly, refreshing, and very low in calories and it seems the perfect meal to have once the weather starts warming up. The tomatoes are starting to taste really good, but I also try to have a variety of different greens so that the salads are somehow different every night.

Cherry tomatoes:

Spinach salad with fruit and almonds:

Baby lettuce, spinach, cucumber, tomatoes, and cheese:

Lettuce, pea sprouts, cucumbers, and carrots:

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

This has been my favorite cookie of my whole american life.
I haven't made these in a very long time and I usually use a portuguese recipe that is very simple and uses much less sugar and fat than the well known cookies here.
The other day, as a treat to my assistant, I decided to make the actual american recipe. They were chewy and moist and as sweet as they are known for.
I was disappointed to realize my assistant is not crazy about these cookies and got tired of them a day later and preferred his trusted animal crackers to one of these.
(of course, I ate them all - this is how I gain weight!)

Baked Fish

We have one friend that is a dedicated fisherman. When I say dedicated, I mean, he's been known to drag the whole family out of the house at 3am to go fishing. But the rest of the family goes with it and they all have a great time.
We have gone fishing with them couple times (not at 3 o'clock in the morning!) but they never caught anything when we were with them, so we (and I mean, I) started teasing them and saying all the fish they say they fish, is all bought down the road at the fish market.
To prove me wrong, the other day, our friend caught a really big fish - a bass that was almost as long as his 3 y.o.. They took pictures of it and brought us some nice fillets of it. I cooked it with red onions, garlic, parsley, olive oil, and paprika. It was delicious.