Seared Scallops followed by Cherry and Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken

For a special celebratory meal, last night I did two dishes.  An appetizer of seared sea scallops on a corn and bacon puree which was then followed up with a cherry and goat cheese stuffed chicken breast.  If I'm not mistaken, I've already done a seared scallop dish on the blog before, so I won't need to go into too much detail about the process of cooking those up.  The stuffed chicken was a fun idea, however mostly made due to the fact that I purchased entirely way too much goat cheese for last weeks dish...  Worked out well though.  For sides, I tried to keep the plates colorful by having creamed spinach as well as a mashed butternut squash.

Seared Scallop with Corn and Bacon Puree

• Large Sea Scallops
• Olive Oil
• 1 cup frozen Corn
• 1 small Jalapeno Pepper
• 1 strip of thick cut bacon
• Parsley for show

As mentioned above, I won't go over the process of cooking up the scallops, rather I'll focus on the puree, which actually won't take too much time at all.  First cut up the bacon into small pieces and fry on medium heat until the fat has melted down.  Then add the jalapeno pepper, which would be diced up prior to throwing in the pan.  I only use the flesh of the jalapeno, as I'm a heat wuss, but I'm sure if you were to add in the seeds it would give this a nice kick.   While this is going on, you sure be cooking up your corn in some boiling water.  Drain out the water, and add the bacon/pepper mixure with juices (aka fat drippings) with the corn into a food processor.  In this case a blender since we don't yet have a food processor (if my wife is reading... this would be a great fathers day gift... ;D).  Blend and add a bit of hot water until the desired consistency is reach.  I'm not too sure what a good consistency is, so I probably made it a bit too chunky, but I'm cool with that.   I dolloped the puree out onto a plate, and placed the seared scallops across adding a sprig of parsley (and a little straggler parsley as seen in the photo) and served.  Big fan of the puree to add a little extra to both the plating and the taste of the dishes.

Cherry and Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breast

• Chicken Breasts
• Goat Cheese
• Cherries
• Parsley
• Paprika

One of my favorite dishes to make is stuffed chicken breast.  You can literally make it like a million ways, switching out what you stuff it with, how you wrap it. it's just such a versatile dish.  For tonight's (aka last nights) rendition, I used some Maraschino cherries and goat cheese as the filling of choice.  Getting the chicken ready for stuffing for me is always the hardest part.  I tend to cut the breast too thin as I roll it out.  Basically you want to just cut the breast in half and pound it flat, but I always try to go fancy and do a half cut roll out method, which doesn't really make sense and/or work.  So my advice, is to turn the breast sideways, and cut length wise until about a quarter inch and then unfold and pound flat with a meat pounder (probably not the official term).  In the breast, I sprinkled some dry chopped parsley. chopped dried cherry pieces, and plenty of goat cheese.  When doing a stuffed chicken you can never have enough cheese. I then lighted dusted with some paprika and rolled the chickens and tied using some simple twine.  To cook, I seared the chicken in a frying pan to give it a nice color and then popped the pan in the oven until the chicken was cooked through.  I always give the chicken a sear in a frying pan first.  If you just cook straight in the oven, it comes out looking super white and looks like it's straight up under cooked.


Mashed Butternut Squash

• Butternut Squash
• Butter
• Maple Syrup
• Ground cinnamon

A very simple and quick side dish to make.  I cut the squash length wise and placed face down on a piece of parchment paper on a cooking sheet.  I popped the tray into the oven and baked at 375 until the squash was tender, usually about 45 minutes or so.  Once finished, I scooped out the cooked squash into a bowl and added some butter and maple syrup (I don't have the measurements because I didn't really measure.... just went with my gut.... poor choice if you're wanting to recreate something later).  Usually a potato masher, I mashed the squash into a nice consistency and it was ready to serve.  As you may note above, the ingredients list cinnamon as well.  I was planning to use some cinnamon to sprinkle on top to give a nice look and a little extra flavor, but I forgot about it.  Awkward.

Also included in the dish was a nice creamed spinach as well as a cauliflower puree.  I won't go into the details of these, as the post is already getting quite long, and I'm sure these will pop up on future blog posts.

Risotto Primavera

After years of thinking it was way to hard to make myself, I finally decided to try my hand at making risotto.  There are so many different ways to do it, but I finally landed on a vegetarian recipe so that my beautiful wife could also partake in this meal.  Chose a Risotto Primavera, which essentially boiled down (ha ha....foreshadowing) risotto with a bunch of veggies and cheese mixed into it.  Lots of consideration (I'll say too much) went into figuring out what type of rice I was supposed to use in order to make the risotta.  A quick google search will tell you any type of italian short grain rice will work, but I wanted the best.  I scoured the net for blog posts, discussion boards and recipe sites and finally landed on my rice type.  And then all that work went to waste went I went to the store and settled on Arborio because that's all they had......womp womp.   In hindsight, the rice type probably doesn't make that big of a difference (Sorry to any actual chefs who read this and whole wholeheartedly disagree).  End result was a gooey cheesy rice filled with fresh veggies, a dish that could easily serve as a main.  I'm definitely on board to start making more and more risottos.  I wouldn't be shocked it they become a standard side to some upcoming meals.

Risotto Primavera

• Butter
• Olive Oil
• 3 whole Carrots, peeled and diced
• 1/2 Yellow Onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup Cauliflower Pieces
• 1/2 cup Broccoli Pieces
• Salt
• 3/2 cups Arborio Rice
• 3/2 cups dry White Wine
• 5 cups Vegetable Broth
• 1/2 cup Frozen Peas
• 4 Green Onions, chopped
• 4 oz Goat Cheese
• 1/2 Parmesan Cheese, grated
• Sprig of Parsley, for show

This recipe starts with the slight cooking of all the vegetables.  The point is to start the veggies cooking, without fully cooking so that when they get added back in they don't just turn to straight mush in the risotto as it finishes.  Started with the cooking onions and carrots in some butter and a bit of oil, and then slowly added the cauliflower and broccoli pieces (And salt for seasoning) once they were about 1/2 way cooked.  Only cooked the full mixture of a couple minutes, just to get the cooking process started, keeping in mind that once they get hot and taken off the heat, they'll continue to cook and then some more once back in the rice.  I underestimated the cooking time of the veggies, so they turned out somewhat crunch, but I always think a little crunchy is better than a little soggy so I was happy.

Using the same pan, vegetables removed and put on a plate, I got some more butter (sensing a theme with risotto...more butter more butter) and oil going in a pan and threw in the rice.  Getting the rice mixed in and cooking until there was just little dots of white in the middle of the rice.  Then comes the wine, 1/2 cup into the rice, just to loosen things up a little.  After a bit of simmering, I started putting in the vegetable broth one cup at a time and let the mixture boil down (foreshadowing complete).  Kept reducing the broth, adding more, reducing again, until the 5 cups of broth were gone.  I should note here that during my research, I discovered for risotto you should add hot broth, what for I didn't figure out, but I made sure my broth was warming in a sauce pan before adding in.  After adding another 2 half cups of wine and letting reduce down, I added in my green onions, frozen peas and cheese and let it all set in, letting the rice really take shape.  I then added back in the cooked veggies, mixed it all together and let it sit for a couple minutes while I sat debating whether pouring a glass of wine late at night would be a good or bad thing.  Proactive Mark prevailed with a leading argument of work in the morning.

All in all, the dish was really simple to make, the hardest part being simply the waiting game, as getting the 5 cups of broth to absorb into the rice took a solid 45-50 minutes.  Should probably stop making such large portions when I do these blogs I guess.

Beef Rouladen with Shredded Cabbage and Roasted Potatoes

After a short (read: way too long) hiatus, I've finally returned to making some fancy weekend foods and sharing the results with the world.  To my loyal fan(s) out there, apologies for the delay.  This week I kicked off the blogging by preparing a neat German dish of Beef Rouladen.  Having never had or even seen this dish before, one might find themselves asking; why?  Well, short and simple, it popped up on a reddit feed a couple weeks ago, and looked cool while also looking super simple to make.  And I do like simple things that end up looking like they require a lot of work.  All in all, it was a fairly straight forward dish, and I think turned out looking fairly tasty.

Beef Rouladen
-2 slices of beef -Dijon Mustand-Bacon-Paprika-Sliced Onion-Sliced Dill Pickle-1 tbsp Vegetable Oil-2 tbsp Butter-1/4 Cup Flour-3 Cups Chicken Broth-Salt and Pepper

As I mentioned earlier, the beauty of this meal is in how easy it was to prepare.  For the meat, I simply laid the slices of beef out and seasoned with enough salt and pepper.  How much is enough you ask?  I have no idea.  I always seem to put enough that I know I put salt and pepper, without it looking like it's more seasoning than meat.  I then spread on the Dijon Mustard across the beef, and then layered on 2 strips of bacon along the meat making sure that the bacon ends just about a half inch before either side of the meat so that when I rolled the beef it didn't awkwardly stick out.  Next, I spread the sliced onions and dill pickle across the meat, making sure to leave only one slice of dill pickle at the beginning, middle and end.  Didn't want to overload with dill pickle, as I've heard dill can really over power a dish.  I then wrapped and tied the meat into a roll, and proceeded to sear the meat in a hot pot with vegetable oil, just to brown the outside.  Once browned, I then removed the meat and replaced with butter and flour in order to get a nice roux going.  I added in the broth and cranked up the heat to get a good simmer going  and let the gravy reduce just a bit.  I then popped the meat back into the gravy to let it cook for about 50-60 minutes.  

Roasted Potatoes

-2 cups diced potatoes

-Cinnamon

-Brown Sugar

-Avocado Oil

My favorite way to have potatoes.... smothered in sugar. haha.  Really easy recipe here, I simply turned the over up to 450F, tossed the potatoes into a roasting pan with some oil, sugar and cinnamon, and let the oven do it's thing for about an hour or so, or until the potatoes are cooked.  I did mix them around every 10-15 in order to make sure all the potatoes got coated in the sugar/spice mixture, but other than that, these potatoes are virtually hands off cooking.  And super tasty.

For the plating of the dish, I went "all out".  In the sense that I bought a fancy bowl to present it in.  That's right, no more simple plates for this blog.  I laid down a layer of the sauteed green cabbage (Yes, I know I didn't describe the cooking of the cabbage above.... nor will I.  Apparently this recipe stays a secret), and then placed to of the meat pieces front facing and smothered with the gravy it was cooked in.  I didn't know what to do with the potatoes, and I basically just dumped a bunch of them behind the meat.  Probably should have thought it out a little more, but I think the dish turned out looking half way decent. 

Poached Eggs with Potato Pancakes

It took some time, but I finally got around to cooking a breakfast for my blog.  I was feeling pretty lazy last night, and while at the store picking up some supplies for the evenings food creation, I decided I didn't really feel like making a big dinner.  Instead, I switched my shopping to some breakfast foods.  Originally I was going to make an omelet or crepes, but then came across some smoked salmon on sale, thus decided to make some poached eggs with smoked salmon.  As the side, I decided I finally wanted to try making some potato pancakes.  Turned out pretty good if you ask me. 

Poached Eggs

-2 large eggs
-Sliced smoked salmon
-English muffin
-Butter
-Dill
-Creole seasoning
-Vinegar

I've poached eggs a few times, and I've come across a few tricks which make the eggs turn out a little nicer.  Start off by bringing some water to a gentle boil with a little bit of vinegar in it.  I like to crack the egg into a small bowl prior to dropping into the water, just in case the yolk breaks.... it's easier to swap out the eggs from the bowl than if it's already in the water.  Also, I find it easier to dump into the water from the bowl as well.  Before adding the egg into the water, I take a plastic spoon and stir around the water to make a bit of a cyclone effect.  Then in one quick motion dump the entire egg right into the middle of the water.  The spinning water helps to keep the egg together so it doesn't separate too much in the water.  I left the egg in the water until it becomes slightly firm and then remove.  If done right, the outside will be firm however the yolk will be nice and runny.

Tricky thing about the english muffin is that I don't have a toaster.... makes things a little awkward.  Instead I buttered the muffin and then toasted it using a frying pan on high heat.  Turned out pretty decently actually.

Plating it up, I simply layer the salmon onto the english muffin, placed some poached eggs on top, sprinkled a little creole seasoning for flavouring and color, and then garnished with a bit of dill.


Potato Pancakes

-1 large russet potato
-1/4 of a white onion
-1 egg
-2 tbs of flour
-Salt and pepper

Now here's something I've never tried before and is apparently super easy.  Started off by peeling a large potato and then grating it into a bowl of cold water.  Then similarly grated a quarter of a white onion and mixed together into the bowl.  Then after letting it soak for about 20 minutes, I thoroughly drained all the water and squeezed out the mixture until it was as dry as I could get it.  Apparently excess water will ruin these, so definitely took my time to get it as dry as possible.  Some paper towel was involved.

While the potato was soaking, I make the batter by simply mixing together the egg, flour and salt/pepper.  In a clean bowl and mixed together the batter and potato/onion trying to coat every piece I cook.

I heated a large skillet to high with about 1/4 inch of oil, maybe a little less.  I then put in clumps of the battered potato and flattened out in the pan.  The mixture will fry up nicely and start to brown on the bottom, at which point I flipped them over and reduced down the heat.  I read that you need to reduce the heat in order to make sure the potato cooks all the way through before the outside get burnt.   All in all I think they cooked for about 8 minutes or so, and were well worth it.   Very tasty.  Although they soaked up a lot of that oil, so probably not an everyday type of meal haha.

Seared Scallops

I finally ventured out to a fresh seafood market around North Hollywood today.  I originally was on the hunt for a nice piece of swordfish to make a grilled swordfish steak for dinner this week, but once I got there I found the bay scallops were on a good sale at the market, so my plans were quickly changed.  I got home and quickly took to the interwebs to find a great new recipe to try out.  I found one that caught my eye for it's simplicity and rave reviews.  Simple seared scallops with a orange and jalapeno dressing.  Now, if you know me when, you'll know I can't eat spicy food at all.  The nice thing about this recipe is that it only uses the green of the jalapeno, no seeds or interior flesh.  This leaves the sauce having a very mild kick to it.  Tasty!

Orange-Jalapeno Dressing
-Small jalapeno
-Sweet orange
-1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
-1 tbsp olive oil

The first part of the recipe was probably the more crucial..... the cutting of the pepper.  Gotta make sure to not leave any of the white interior flesh or any of the seeds behind... thats what the heat is.  It was really simple to do. Made about 6 slices int the pepper to get all the green parts, and the sliced and diced it until all that remained was tiny little pepper cubes.  In a bowl I mixed in the diced pepper with the seasoned rice vinegar.  Next up, cutting the orange.  The recipe called for only the interior part of the fruit, cut into sections.  I started by skinning the orange down to the flesh of the orange taking off all the white of the fruit.  Next, using the the knife slitted the orange sections in between the tough parts of the fruit.  Helpful hint: do this over the bowl your using to capture all the juices the leak out of the orange.  Once I de-sectioned the orange, I gave it a good squeeze to get all the juice I could out of it.  The citrus of the orange I guess helps offset the heat from the pepper and combined with the vinegar leaves a really nice dressing.  Added in the olive oil to beef up the consistency of the sauce, and viola...finished.

I've already gone over how I like to sear my scallops, as demonstrated when I made the creole chicken. If you haven't already checked it out, you can do it now.... well in a minute or so once you finish with this recipe.

Rice
-1/2 cup white rice
-Chicken stock

In case you've never made rice before.... I'll throw down a pretty solid recipe for some tasty rice.  I mix in equal parts water and rice into a sauce pan.  Crank up the heat until it's boiling and once boiling, mix in a packet of chicken stock, stir it around until fully disolved and then remove from heat.  Keeping the rice covered, it will continue to cook until the water is all evaporated.  The rice will be nice and fluffy and ready to go.  Note, you should probably not always follow the whole equal parts rule, it'll probably depend on the brand of rice you buy, just fyi.


I wasn't too sure how to plate this meal.... I was tempted to keep the rice separate, but finally decided on bed of rice, smothered in the dressing, then layer the scallops on top and then another layer of the dressing.  Turned out to look pretty good in my opinion.

The meal itself was really tasty. Not crazy spicy despite the jalapeno.  There was a good bite to it, but no lingering heat.  Loved it.  Probably not enough for a full meal though.  I think when I make this again, I'll likely buy smaller sized scallops, cut the portion size down and serve it as an appetizer to a real meal haha.  Still, looks and tastes good.  Definitely a keeper.

Creamy Salmon and Leek Pasta

I found this recipe online during a rather slow evening at work (yes, I said evening.... lame work hours for the win).  Creamy Salmon and Leek Pasta for two....... but eaten by one.  The thing I liked about this recipe is that there were very few ingredients and minimal cooking time.  Two of my favorite things when cooking.  Also, salmon is tasty..... can't forget about that.

The Sauce

-Butter

-Large leek, diced

-Salt

-1/4 cup white wine

-Lemon juice

-1 cup cream

-Creole seasoning

-Basil

-Salmon

I started out by melting the butter over medium heat until fully liquid and bubbling.  I sauteed the diced leek for about five minutes or so, just until they started to brown around the edges.  Adding in the wine and lemon juice in order to deglaze the pan and get fullness of the butter flavour into the sauce.  I let the wine continue to bubble until fully evaporate before adding in the cream along with a pinch of salt and creole seasoning for some flavour.  I should note that the original recipe I found called for tarragon and dijon mustard, but I didn't have either or those nor do I really like them, so I decided to switch it up a little bit.

Now having the heat set on low, I waited until the cream just starts bubbling a little bit before adding in the salmon directly to the sauce.  I was a little wary about not pre-cooking the salmon before putting in it the sauce, but true to the recipe, the heat from the sauce was more than enough to fully cook it.  The salmon was finished cooking when it starts to become more firm and flakes apart when you move it.  To finish off the sauce I added in some basil to give the sauce a little more flavour and color.

I won't really go into the too much detail with the pasta I used, basically as the sauce was cooking I got some water boiling and tried to time the pasta to be finished around the same time as the sauce.  It was tough to gauge as I had no clue how long the salmon would take.

Tofu Wrap with Sweet Potato Fries

This weekend marks a very special edition of the blog.  This week I had a special sous chef assist me with the meal.  My wonderful girlfriend Pamela flew down to So Cal to visit me this weekend, so we decided to make a nice meal together.  There is one catch to making meals with Pamela however, she's a vegetarian.  Over the last two years I've come to rather enjoy some nice vegetarian meals, and today we made one of my favorites, a tofu wrap inspired by her favorite veg restaurant in Toronto.

Marinated Tofu Strips

-1 package extra firm tofu
-1/2 cup tamari
-2 tbs water
-1 tbs peanut oil
-1 cup nutritional yeast
-1/2 wheat germ
-2 tbs coriander
-4 tbs garlic powder

The marinade for the tofu was pretty simple.  Just mixed the wet ingredients (tamari, water and oil) in a sauce bowl.  Add in the tofu, which was drained and cut into thin strips, and let it marinade for about an hour or so.  While the tofu was marinating, we prepared the coating mixture with the remaining dry ingredients.  After the hour of marinating, the tofu was simply fully coating in the dry mixture and thrown into the over of a covered baking sheet.  We didn't really know how long we shoul cook the tofu for, and it turns out the answer is a really long time.  Seriously, we had checked it like 6 times before finally deciding the strips were cooked enough.


Wrap Fillings

-Whole grain tortilla wraps
-1/2 cup grated carrots
-1 Diced tomato
-Handful of baby spinach
-Sliced red onion
-Alfalfa sprouts
-Crumbled gorgonzola cheese
-Tofu strips (see above)

Pretty basic instructions here.  Just prepared the fillings while the tofu was cooking in the oven and then fill it into the shells.

Sweet Potato Fries

-1 large sweet potato
-Cinnamon
-Salt/Pepper

In addition to the tofu wrap, this particular restaurant was where I first tried sweet potato fries.  As such, I thought it would be fitting to also whip up a homemade batch of this delicious side.  We started off by peeling the sweet potato and cutting into long thin strips.  In a frying pan, I heated up some vegetable oil (way too much oil, but meh) and tossed in the fresh cut fries.  Cooking on medium heat, I made sure to cook the fries until they were nice and tender.  I then drained out the oil, dried off the oil from the fries on a paper towel, and then put back in the frying pan to try to brown up the fries.  At this point I seasoned the fries a bit with salt and pepper, and also at Pamela's suggestion, some cinnamon.  Wow, does cinnamon ever make these fries pop. So delicious.  Any time you work with sweet potato, I'd now recommend adding in some cinnamon, definitely worth.


Unfortunately I tried to make this meal super healthy and picked up some whole grain shells.... mistake.  The wraps were kinda stiff and broke a bit when folding.  You'll notice in the photo the edges of the wrap didn't hold up well.  Also, I shouldn't have used the big plates for the presentation, as most the plate was left unfilled... lessons learned.  But overall, a great vegetarian dish, a good saturday evening, and even better company.