Salmon and Rice

So this dish isn't that special, just salmon filet and wild rice. But I did want to share my secret for cooking really good salmon. What I do is that while I am seasoning and/or marinating the salmon, I turn on my grill to high and let it heat up to about 400 or 500 degrees. Then I will put the salmon on the grill and turn off all the burners. I just let the salmon sit in the grill for about half an hour as it slowly cools, and it makes for tender and delicious salmon every time. Try it sometime!

Pineapple-Marinara Tortellini

So I just returned from my trip around the Western United States. While I did not do any cooking while travelling for two weeks I did eat some great food. Just a sampler:

-Real Mexican food in the Arizona desert

-Chocolate Milkshake at Ghirardelli Square in San Francsisco

-A delicious fish taco from a taco truck at Off The Grid in San Francisco

-Buffalo Burger in Jackson Hole, WY

-Green Chili in Moab, UT

-A Navajo Taco on the Navajo Indian Reservation

So I ate well, but I still missed cooking, so I whipped up a fresh pasta concoction as soon as I got back. I wanted to make something with a classic marinara sauce, but I also wanted to make it a little exotic, so I threw some pineapple into the mix! I started out by sizzling some Italian sausage and pineapple chunks in a pan. I then added my marinara sauce (and some pine nuts of course!). I cooked some Tortellini on the side, and mixed it together. It tasted great with some fresh Parmesan on top. 

Kabobs

I love grilling. It is probably one of my favorite ways to cook food. Pretty much anything that has been a little charred tastes good in my book. Since everything tastes good grilled, I decided to cook as many different things as I could on the grill-chicken, steak, cherry tomatoes, onions, mushrooms-all on a kabob. I marinated each item in a different marinade. The steak and onions I cut up into cubes and marinaded in a leftover sauce that we had in our fridge. The chicken I marinaded in a mustard-white wine sauce. The mushrooms I marinaded in a raspberry vinagrette salad dressing. As I grilled the kabobs, I also kept brushing them with the leftover marinades.

For desert, I made pistachio pudding mixed with crushed pineapple, with whipped cream folded in.

Summer Cookout Casserole

Multi-tasking... I need an assistant!

So I got really creative and home-made with this recipe. Basically this is a casserole (or hot-dish for our friends from Minnesota) made with a layer of Mac and Cheese, followed by a layer of pulled pork barbecue, followed by a layer of sauteed broccoli, followed by another layer of Mac and Cheese topped with more cheese. In contrast to my days cooking in my dorm, almost everything in this recipe is home-made. For the Mac and Cheese, I cooked up Orzo pasta, made a homemade cheese sauce (by starting with a roux, adding milk and stirring in mozzarella and Mexican-mix cheese), and mixed them together. Put that off to the side to let the suace soak in. I sauteed up some broccoli in another pan and let that brown up a bit. We had some pulled pork (without sauce) in the freezer, which I thawed and threw in yet another pan (I was using all four of our burners at the same time-- a feat in itself).
      I searched around our cupboard for some Sweet Baby Ray's, but none was to be found, so I decided to make my own barbecue sauce from scratch. It was surprisingly easy, just threw a bunch of stuff in a blender. Scrapping together what we had in our kitchen, I may have discovered what may become my own secret barbecue sauce that I will use for many years to come. It turned out with a very unique and delicious flavor. Anyway, I stirred the sauce in with the pulled pork and let it cook.

I layered the Mac and cheese, pulled pork, broccoli and more Mac and Cheese in a casserole dish and topped it with more cheese. I threw that in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes and we were all ready to eat. It turned out great and was filling. Our family of four was only able to eat about half of it. Enjoy!

Balsamic Vinegar Pasta

So this recipe is made almost all from leftovers. I pulled some leftover butter noodles and the leftover carcass of one of those Sam's Club roasted chickens from the fridge and decided to make a light pasta out of it. First, I cut up some baby portobello mushrooms into slices and cooked those in a pan with some vegetable oil. Once those had been cooking for a few minutes, I threw in a bunch of handfulls of baby spinach (it shrivels up a lot). Finally, once the spinach had cooked down, I threw into what amounted to half a chicken, which I had pulled apart and shredded with my hands. I let the veggies cook with the chicken for a few minutes, and then threw the butter noodles into the pan. I then poured some balsamic vinegar (probably a half cup, but I'm only guessing) over top and stirred it up. I have never cooked pasta like this before, but it's how they cook pasta at Leo's at the make-your-own pasta station. So maybe I have learned some cooking tips from Leos after all....

Fried Green Tomoatoes

In my attempts to diversify, I decided to embrace our Southern heritage and cook up some fried green tomatoes. It was a learning experience for me, since I had never fried anything before (although I had seen it done many times on the EpicMealTime videos), but it turned out to not be that hard.

I started by cooking some bacon in a pan, and then using the bacon grease to fry the tomatoes. I cut up our tomatoes (two green and two red) into 1/2 inch slices, battered them up and fried them in the grease. We ate them in sandwich form with mayo, bacon and two slices of bread. It reminded me how much I miss southern cooking!

The red tomatoes weren't as flavorful as the green ones, but tasted delicious with a bit of sour cream and crumbled bacon on top.

Salad #2

Someone looked at a scale again. So I'm making salad...

I decided to use Tuna this time for our protein, so I cooked two cans of tuna with some garlic and pine nuts. Using spinach as the base again, I added sliced cucumber, shredded carrots, and canned green peas, and then added the tuna on top. I used some Asian Toasted Sesame Dressing that I found in the back of our cabinet (which I think expired in 2008), and it went well with the salad giving it an Asian feel. Hopefully salad dressing doesn't go bad... so far no one has dropped dead.