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.