On Wednesday I made Cooking Light’s Pecan-Crusted Trout. This was a hit with both Jeremy and Capri (I thought it was ok but I’m pregnant and fish doesn’t always appeal to me right now…). The recipe is pretty simple and we did it without any trouble. It cooked up really fast too. It was a good change up to our fish menu. We had it with mac n’ cheese and a side salad. 4 out of 5 stars.
Last night I made Cooking Light’s Blackened Tilapia Baja Tacos. These were very fast and easy and I really liked them. I wish the fish was grilled or baked instead of pan-fried but it really is an easy way to cook tilapia. The rub was really great. The only thing I would change is I wouldn’t mix the jalapeno sauce with the onions, I would serve those separately.
Cost: $6.31, $3.15/serving
4 out of 5 stars.
Last night I made Cooking Light’s Spicy Tortilla Soup with Shrimp and Avocado. This was fast, fresh, and easy! It took hardly any time to put together and it was very flavorful. There were no medium shrimp that weren’t frozen at our grocery store this week so I just got what they had which was extra jumbo or something like that. I only used half a lb of shrimp which was really only enough for 3 people but I still have at least 3 more servings of the rest of the soup left.
A new thing I’m going to try to do is see how much I’m spending on my meals. So far it makes me feel good about eating at home instead of going out!
Cost: $10.51, $2.62/serving (4 servings – although only 3 with shrimp but another 3 without shrimp)
4 out of 5 stars.
I made this recipe for Pollock with Avocado Relish and Carrot Puree last night. They didn’t have pollock at my grocery store so I used cod. I don’t know if I’d ever cooked cod before but I really liked it. I don’t really like olives but I used them anyway and I thought the avocado and cilantro tasted really great with the fish. The carrot puree was actually better than I thought it would be since I don’t really like cooked carrots. Jeremy also made us some great green beans to go with it – so 3 servings of vegetables and a piece of fish made a really great light dinner last night. I give this recipe 3 out of 5 stars and I will be cooking cod again soon!
I had planned on trying to make one of these menus once a week, but clearly things do not always work out as we plan! I made my second Winter Menu from Gourmet Today last Thursday night. One reason I wanted to try these menus out was because I wanted to use this cookbook more, but I also wanted to have at least a few meals a month that challenged me to try new things in the kitchen and added a little something to our everyday dinner fare. Normally my qualifications for planning my weekly meals is total time under 40 minutes and relatively healthy. I don’t necessarily hold myself to either of these rules when making one of these menus and it’s pretty fun.
Thursday’s dinner did take me more than 40 minutes and although not as healthy as I try to make our dinners, I did make an effort to cut down on some of the ‘bad’ things, but really, when you see bacon in the title of a recipe, it’s hard to cut back too much! Here’s the menu:
Seared Scallops with Brussels Sprouts and Bacon, featured in Gourmet Magazine in October of 2003
Herbed Jasmine Rice, featured in Gourmet Magazine in September 1999
Braised Carrots
Let’s start with the main dish – I had never cooked scallops or Brussels sprouts before… I loved the scallops, but as it turns out Jeremy and I don’t like Brussels sprouts – good to know for future cooking endeavors. I really thought all the bacon and butter would help mellow out the taste a little, but not really. I made sure I had a couple little pieces of bacon on my fork every time I put one in my mouth! I really enjoyed the scallops though – I was a little unsure in cooking them and they may have been a little overdone (but I felt like it was better to be safe than sorry while cooking seafood when pregnant). A word about scallops – expensive. They were $14/lb! Yikes! So instead of buying the 1 1/2 lbs the recipe called for, I just bought 1/2 pound which was more than enough for me and Jeremy (especially with all the rest of the food).
The Herbed Jasmine Rice really doesn’t even need a recipe – cook some rice, throw in some butter and some herbs. I used a brown Jasmine rice in an attempt to make it a little better. However, I neglected my rice and it overcooked a little (either that or the pot was just too small) but not a big deal. I just mixed in cilantro because that’s all I had on hand.
The Braised Carrots aren’t listed anywhere online, but really it was just carrots, water, oil, a little sugar, salt and pepper. I used to not like cooked carrots but I think I’m coming around on them. They were pretty good, although I wish I’d added a little more sugar!
Overall, probably not a menu I would repeat, but I would like to try some more scallop recipes in the future!
Another Real Simple recipe from their month of meals. Again, no picture – sorry, I’m lazy. I made the Creamy Rice with Roasted Shrimp. This is a recipe for someone who wants to make risotto but has no desire to stir for such a long time. The recipe uses arborio rice and after stirring in the wine until it is absorbed, you just add the water and let it simmer like regular rice. This was another very easy recipe, but I actually really liked it. I kept going back to get more shrimp and tomatoes and dipping them into the left over olive oil and garlic that was in the roasting pan! Easy and satisfying and a simple risotto fix (now, it does not taste like risotto that someone has stood over and stirred for long periods of time, but it was a really easy substitute – and more healthy – no cream).
This month’s issue of Gourmet had a page at the very back that had recipes for 4 different kinds of different types of dumplings! Dumplings or potstickers have always been one of my favorite things to eat we go out to eat Asian food and here was my chance to make them myself! So last week I made the Shrimp and Scallion Dumplings. The cool thing is that each recipe cooks the dumplings in a different way – boil, deep fried, and pan fried! The ones I made called to be boiled so they were a lot like dumplings you find in soups. I won’t lie, the texture of the shrimp was a little weird, but I thought they tasted really great! We topped ours with low-sodium soy sauce and hot mustard like the recipe suggested – yumm! They did take a little longer to make than I had anticipated – mostly chopping the shrimp and then folding the dumplings – oh, and it says to cook them in 2 batches in a medium pan, well, I must have a really small ‘medium’ pan because I had to do several batches! I’m excited to try the other recipes and I think I will try these again sometime!
Thursday night I made this Greek-Spiced Baked Shrimp from November’s issue of Gourmet (I don’t think I’ve ever made so many recipes out of one issue and I still have many more on my list!). I forgot to take a picture when it was on our plates, but I managed to snap a quick one after I put some leftovers in the tupperware. I was a little unsure if I would like this recipe because I wasn’t sure I liked Greek food, but I actually really enjoyed this. And the more of it I ate, the more I liked! I even though the fresh dill on top made it even better! It was a nice, cozy meal for a fall night. I asked Jeremy and he said he thought we should definately make it again! That’s always a good sign!
I think I may have written about this before, but i just had to share it again! Still loving my Fish Without A Doubt book! If you eat a lot of fish, I really think you should get it! The first recipe I used is the one I have gone back to time and again…I don’t even need the recipe anymore because it’s so easy! Before this week I had really only used it on tilapia and basa fillets, but when we went to the grocery store last week they didn’t have those, so we got a nice trout fillet…I haven’t cooked trout before. Anyway, but I went ahead and melted some butter and used my silicone pastry brush to put the butter on the fillet, add some salt and pepper. Then I added a couple different herbs (fresh are always better). Then I covered it with plain bread crumbs, patted it down, drizzled some more butter on top and popped it the oven on broil for 3 minutes (could be longer depending on how thick the fish is). It’s so fast and it tastes so good (may have something to do with the bread crumbs and the butter)! We loved it with the trout! It’s such a quick meal and pretty light. We had ours with some rice pilaf and steamed broccoli. (and I’m sorry, we ate it too fast so I didn’t get a picture!)
Well, last night I made the Broiled Fish with Chile-Cilantro compound butter. It was great! And so simple. I had made the butter ahead of time (but it didn’t take more than 15 minutes at the very most) and I just put the butter on the fillets and put them in the oven to broil…they were done literally 3 minutes later! Awesome and it really tasted great!
The only changes I made to the recipe was that I used a habanero instead of a serrano since you can’t get those right now (and the store I was at was out of jalapenos – dumb). I really like the taste of the habanero though. It was a tad spicy, but not too bad at all. Also when it said I could add additional salt, I didn’t. I generally don’t. If it says add salt to taste I generally don’t add any and if the final product is finished and it seems like it needs a little salt then I just let Jeremy add it himself…we really try to be careful when it comes to our sodium intake (which means eating anything pre-packaged pretty much out of the question and I’m really trying to make that transition. Where this is especially difficult is with rice. I love Rice-o-Roni and items like that but they are very salty and the low-sodium ones don’t taste very good. So last night I just made a pot of organic wild rice mixture and we just put a little salt and pepper on it).
Anyway, great recipe from a great book. If you would like the specifics for the compound butter, let me know and I’ll get it to you.
