Braised Beef Pasta Sauce

This is one meal I certainly didn't plan to make.  Sometimes it just happens that I have some items in the fridge that I need to clean out.  However, with good ingredients you are able to make any assortment of great meals.

I've had some frozen tomatoes in my freezer for about a year and I finally decided to do something with them.  So I simmer the tomatoes for only about 8 hours until they were completely broken down and I put them into a blender to create a tomato sauce.  Certainly most people won't be doing this so canned sauce would work just fine.

I started by sauteing a small onion until translucent.  Then, I add two diced green bell peppers and sliced mushrooms.

Note:  This vegetable mixture could be used to make a thousand different meals (and I considered changing what I was making).

I continue cooking these veggies for another 5 minutes or so just until everything was fully sauteed.  After it was done, I removed them from the pan and added a pound of thin pieces of bottom round steak.  I browned the steak at a very high temp.  You need to look for some carmalization on the bottom of the pan. If you don't have it, then you need to turn up the heat.  After the meat is browned, I added three cloves of diced garlic to pan and quickly added a cup of Chardonnay.  I then put the vegetable mixture and the tomato sauce in the pan and brought the entire mixture to a simmer.  I added a little bit dried parsley and oregano and bay leaf and salt and pepper of course.  

I only let this simmer for about 45 minutes, but letting it simmer longer would be better maybe about 2 hrs or so.

I topped some rigatonis with the sauce and garnished with fresh grated parmesan and some chopped fresh basil served with a side a garlic bread.

I haven't made pasta with tomato sauce in a long time since that meal in itself just doesn't appeal to me very much.  Any time I make pasta I try to mix up the recipes to not make it a plain marinara and pasta.  I have to say that this dish was really delicious and I wouldn't mind making it again.  The real key to the dish is the fresh tomatoes and the fresh basil at the end.  I just love fresh basil and I could put it on so many things.

I hope try this out and I know you'll love it as much as I did.

Guacamole

Guacamole is quickly becoming one of my favorite foods.  For the longest time, I've avoided it all costs. Mostly this was because I thought I was still allergic to avocados.  It took buying a couple containers of guacamole dip from Trader Joe's before I really starting becoming infatuated with it.  It's actually very simple to make and extremely delicious and addicting.

So here it is:
2 ripe avocados
1 tomato, seeded (preferably roma)
1/2 small onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1-2 jalapenos, to level of spicy tolerance
juice of one lime
app. 1-2 tbps of chopped fresh cilantro (or to taste)
salt and pepper to taste

All you need to do is take out the avocado, mash it slightly to desired level of chunkiness and add the lime juice to it.  Then, add all the other ingredients and stir, then you're done.  It's just that easy.

Stacy and I ate nearly the entire batch in about 5 minutes it was so good.  Probably one of the best things I've made.  If you haven't ate guacamole or think you don't like it, please try this recipe you'll be pining for more.

I would suggest refrigerating the mix for at least an hour and probably would be best overnight.  But if you can't wait that long, feel free to dig in right away.  The flavors will be able to develop more if you let it sit and chill though.

Please try it and let me know your thoughts.

Grilled swordfish with a sweet ginger balsamic vinegar sauce

This was a pretty basic meal other than the sauce I created.  Although I must admit that the sauce was not one of my best.  I think I often try to add too many ingredients into things and I end up creating a disaster.  I wouldn't call this one a disaster but I it definitely had room for improvement.

I started by marinating the swordfish in a mixture of:  oil, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, ginger, and lime juice.

The sauce is created by a mixture of (no measurements today as I don't really remember):  soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, ginger, garlic, lime zest, lime juice, and brown sugar.  I think I would have been better off eliminating the rice vinegar, soy sauce, and lime juice.  I realize this changes the entire sauce but I had too much acids in there.  I think it showed in the finished product.

I can't complain too much though.  It still turned out to be delicious piece of fish:

Lucky Yee review - Hot Pepper Chicken and Northstar Cafe - turkey and sweet potato hash

So here's my first review of a restaurant, might as make it a two-fer.  First, lets tackle Lucky Yee chinese restaurant in New Albany, OH.  We frequent this take out location quite often.  Usually, I order the General Tso's, but today I decided to go with something different.  I ordered the Hot Pepper Chicken.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take the picture on the day we ordered it.  This is my creation of the leftovers.  The dish is slices of chicken with julienne carrots and celery, green onions, jalapenos, ginger, and garlic served in a hot pepper sauce over a bed of rice (hopefully I didn't forget any ingredients here).

So all in all, a fairly good dish.  It was slightly spicy with a good hint of ginger.  Like many chinese sauces though, I thought this one was too runny.  A little more corn starch could help to thicken that sauce.  The chicken was tender the first day but pretty dry when reheated.  I'm usually a big fan of anything with jalapenos, but here I didn't really like the sliced jalapenos.  They just provide more spice and you don't really get any jalapeno flavor as the other ingredients over power them.  I think making more a red chili sauce and eliminating the jalapeno would work great.  The garlic was in fairly thick slices.  I'd like to see some minced garlic here to provide a little more garlic punch.

In the end, I'd say it was an above average chinese take-out meal.  On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best ever.  I'd say this was about a 7.

Come back later to see my recreation of this meal to see if it is worth ordering it or if you should make it yourself.


Next up, the turkey and sweet potato hash at Northstar Cafe at Easton in Columbus, OH.

This is a fairly simple recipe I think.  It just slices of turkey, sweet potatoes, red peppers, onions, green onion, and its supposed to come with two eggs but I subbed sausage (I think that's all anyway).  

The potatoes are sauteed and the onions are slightly caramelized.  This is very filling and it will hard to even finish it.  The dish is very plain to me.  While I imagine some that is due to the missing egg, but still there should be some other flavor around.  The onions and red peppers are so small that you hardly notice they are there.  I'd like to see a bigger influence of the caramelized onion and I'd like fire-roasted red peppers in some bigger chunks versus the very tiny sauteed red peppers.  The turkey is pretty much just thick sliced turkey lunch meat.  I'd suggest getting chunks of turkey meat similar in shape to the potatoes.  Not mention, maybe the turkey could be smoked (maybe it already is but I didn't taste it).  

Again, tune in later to see if my recreation will outshine Northstar's version.  

Quick Greek Pasta

This is my very first post with hopefully many more to follow.  I hope you keep coming back again and again.

This blog site will be a place you come to get my spur of the moment recipes and also get advice on dining out.  I'll be dining at restaurants throughout columbus ohio.  I'll give my review on what I ordered and then I'll try to recreate the dish later to determine whether it is worth it to order out or cook it at home.  

For my first post, I have a quick Greek inspired pasta dish that I definitely didn't prepare or photo perfectly, but it was delicious none the less.  

Ingredients: (Keep in mind I rarely measure)

1lb Penne Pasta

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 red bell pepper

1 can artichokes

1 jar of green olives

1 jar of navy beans

1 lemon

1 Tbsp dried oregano

1 package cherry tomatoes

12 oz. chicken broth

Bunch of fresh basil

Garlic to taste

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

Grated parmesano reggianio

Start by getting a pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil, be sure to add about a tablespoon of salt to the water.  While the water is coming to a boil, get all your other ingredients prepared. Dice the red pepper, quarter the artichokes, drain and rinse the navy beans, slice the cherry tomatoes in half, chifinad the basil.

In a large pan, saute the red pepper and artichoke in olive oil for about 5 minutes.  Then, add the beans and olives for a couple minutes.  Then, add the zest of the lemon, oregano, salt (careful as olives are salty), pepper, garlic, juice of the lemon and chicken broth.  Let simmer until pasta is ready.  

Once pasta is ready.  Add cherry tomatoes and basil (reserve some for garnish) to the pan.  Drain pasta and combine.  Plate and top with Parmesan Olive Oil and basil garnish. (Sorry for blurry photo)

Some notes on this dish:

Be very careful with the beans.  What happened to me is that the beans created a thick beany sauce that I didn't really want.  I rinsed the beans hoping to avoid this but you could cook the beans in some water briefly to extract that starchiness before adding to the pan.

I would have loved to have some goat or feta cheese to add but I didn't.  I think it would have tasted fantastic here.  

I also like to add some red pepper flake just to give it a bit of spice.  

I hope you try to make it yourself and let me know what you think.