Italian Herbed Shrimp Kebabs

Happy New Year! And with it come some delicious Italian Herbed Shrimp Kebabs. Because who doesn't enjoy a good shrimp kebab? These ones are juicy and delicious with a delicate seasoning that blends together perfectly and provides just the level of flavor that you are looking for. I promise!

I served the shrimp kebabs with my favorite Cajun Fingerling potatoes and some good ol' broccoli with cheese, both of which you will see pictured above. The Fingerling potatoes have been included on my blog previously. Not in the mood for potatoes? This meal would also pair excellently with rice and some steamed veggies.

Difficulty: Easy
Time: 25 minutes (with Fingerlings, 1 hr)
Drink: Gewurztraminer

Italian Herbed Shrimp Kebabs
Once again, this one largely comes from another source, I must admit. But true to form I branched out a bit too.

To start you'll prepare the herbs which is very similar to pesto without the pine nuts and lots of olive oil.. but hey, it still includes basil. I skipped the parsley since to me it's always been a space holder. I'd rather just include more basil and cilantro. I also totally skipped the "let stand at room temperature" step since to me that's rather useless... why do I need to let something stand at room temperature? I want to eat already!

The rest of the recipe is fairly straight forward. You'll prepare your kebabs and grill. As usual, as an apartment-bound girl I used my handy-dandy Foreman grill quite happily. Keep in mind shrimp cooks quickly and while you want it to cook all of the way through you also do not want to overcook or the shrimp will get rubbery. Keep an eye on them and watch for the translucent tinge to disappear. You can also add other veggies to the kebabs as well - red bell peppers and onions work particularly well here but go ahead and experiment if you have other favorites or other things look good. Enjoy!

Mushroom and Crab Shells with Basil Alfredo Sauce and Garlic Bread

Ready for a delicious pasta meal with a new-age twist? Then you've come to the right place! This meal calls for savory mushrooms paired with rich crab stuffed into shells with a light Alfredo sauce over top. That's right - I used light and Alfredo in the same sentence. But it really is just that! None of that heavy cream or caloric-rich sauce you are imagining. This one is light and delicate and hits the spot without adding to your waist. I paired the meal with fresh garlic bread as well as garlic-pesto bread that hit the spot as snow fell outside. (Yes, we actually did get snow in DC. Really!)

However, in addition to the recipe below I'd like to discuss this blog as a whole. How can it better serve you? What do you like? Dislike? Sadly, every day I feel a burst of loneliness that there are no comments. Is anyone reading this? My stat tracker seems to think so, but perhaps it is picking up quick hits when you aren't actually taking the time to read. So are you? And if so, why? What is it that draws you in? And if not, why not? What can I do to get you to read my blog and come back again as a repeat customer?

Did I mention my name is Julia? That's right. And I have a good friend with the last name Child. Does that make it any more enticing? :) I finally watched Julie and Julia for the first time a couple weeks ago and it has given me an intense, renewed interest in furthering my own blog. So please give me your input! Today I will be debuting two new features: for each post I will grade the difficulty of the recipe on a easy/medium/hard scale and also give an approximate time it takes to prepare from putting on your apron to sitting down. This includes all baking and cooking times so you might not be active during the entire process but you'll know when to start to finish on time! And, last but not least, a wine or drink suggestion for every meal.

So...

Difficulty: Easy/Medium (I couldn't decide)
Time: 45 minutes
Drink: Sauvignon Blanc

Mushroom and Crab Shells with Basil Alfredo Sauce
Although I am not normally a big fan of white sauce I felt that the Alfredo taste would pair better here than a heavy red sauce. Crab has a rather delicate taste that is brought out by the white. But, are you a vegetarian? Or just in the mood for vegetarian food? Well skip the crab! This will be a complete meal without it. Mushrooms are a flavorful, delicious food that can certainly stand-alone. I'd still recommend going with the white sauce but make sure you increase the amount of mushrooms called for below so that you can properly stuff your shells.

Ingredients:
jumbo shells
olive oil
shallots
garlic
mushrooms
green onions
roasted red bell pepper
crab meat
diced tomato
balsamic vinegar
oregano
thyme
shredded mozzarella (low-fat or fat-free)
parmesan
butter
half-and-half (fat-free)
whipping cream
black pepper

Whew, that is quite the ingredient list. But it all comes together so well! Get some water boiling and prepare your shells. I purchased the jumbo version so you have plenty of space to stuff but you can buy whichever ones you prefer. A good trick to keep them from sticking: after boiling rinse them with cold water when they're in a colander before setting aside.

Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add 2 tbsp diced shallots and 3 cloves of minced garlic. Stir frequently to keep from burning and saute for about 3 minutes or until garlic just lightly starts to brown, but make sure not to burn it. Add your mushrooms. I used a mix of portobello, shiitake, cremini, and oyster. You can choose to add in as many or as few varieties as you want. You'll probably want to use about 16 oz (1 lb in all.) Basic mushrooms usually come in 8 oz packages but fancier ones are often in 3 or 4 oz ones or else just loose for you to select your own. Stir the mushrooms somewhat often to keep them from burning and saute the mixture for 5-7 minutes or until liquid is evaporating and mushrooms have browned and wilted. At this point you'll probably want to preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

After the mushrooms have started to wilt add in 3/4 or 1 cup of diced green onions, 1 can of chopped roasted red peppers, 1 lb of crab meat, 2 cups diced plum tomatoes, and 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. Make sure to sift through the crab meat with your fingers before adding it to pick out any shell you can find. You might still end up missing a few pieces but the more you can take out now, the better. It might say the shell has been removed but it almost always still contains little pieces! Mix well to combine all of the ingredients and saute for about 5 minutes or until well heated and vegetables are wilting. Add a couple teaspoons of both oregano and thyme. Stir.

Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in roughly 1 cup of fat-free or low-fat shredded mozzarella cheese. It will most likely melt as you stir since the mixture will still be hot, which is just fine.

As your mixture is finishing up or just as it finishes you'll want to whip up your Alfredo sauce. Melt about 4 teaspoons of butter over medium heat in a small sauce pan, stirring as it melts. Add 1 1/2 cups fat-free half and half. Add 1/8 cup of heavy whipping cream. Typical Alfredo sauce uses all whipping cream but we're just using a dash (1/8 cup for a LOT of pasta) and mostly substituting fat-free half and half. This cuts the calories and fat astronomically - guilt away!

Add 1 cup grate fresh Parmesan cheese and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, stirring constantly. It should melt quickly, so just keep stirring for about 2 minutes until the cheese is melted and all of the ingredients are well mixed. Reduce heat as low as it goes. Add 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil, stir well, and let it sit for a minute as you prepare your shells.

Use cooking spray to grease a 9x13 glass baking dish. Take each shell and stuff it full with your mushroom-crab mixture. You have a lot of mixture so stuff them liberally so they are nearly overflowing. I had to place a few shells on top as a second layer, which is fine, but you do not want an entire second layer or the dish won't cook evenly. A few on top, especially when placed slightly offset of the ones below, is fine, however. If you run out of shells you can just pour the extra mushroom-crab mixture over the top.

Pour the Basil-Alfredo sauce over the shells evenly so it coats all of them lightly. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese and 2 tbsp of grated Parmesan cheese over the top of the shells. Bake at 325 for 20 minutes and serve hot.

Garlic Bread
And what pasta meal is complete without some garlic bread? I decided to make my own and attempt to make it healthier and less greasy than the delicious versions you can find at Italian restaurants. And let me tell you, it hit the spot. The warm, crunchy bread with its tantalizing garlic flavors (with a kick) was perfect on this cold winter day as we actually got some snow in DC. Make sure you buy your french bread fresh and make this before you're starving or it will be torture to inhale the smells as it cooks.

Ingredients:
french bread
fake butter
fresh garlic
Italian Seasoning
pesto (optional)
shredded mozzarella cheese (optional)

Cut your french bread in half lengthwise. I actually started with half of a french bread before cutting it in half lengthwise since I was only making this for 2 people. Make sure you choose the appropriate amount. Preheat your oven to 350. (If you are cooking this in the same oven as the pasta you can use 325 just fine as well.)

Spread the fake butter on the bread. Fake butter = no calories. Yay! Can you feel the healthiness already? Mince the garlic and spread it on the bread as well. I love garlic and put it on liberally, using about 2 cloves per quarter of french bread (cut in half in length and width) but you can use more or less. Mine was pretty garlicky! Sprinkle lightly with Italian Seasoning.

Your garlic bread is now complete if you would like a basic garlic bread. I did this for half and then decided to try a fancier version for the other half. If you are interested, after spreading the butter but before adding the garlic spread on pesto. I just had refrigerated pesto from Whole Foods which I used. Then add the garlic. Once again, you can stop here (do not add Italian Seasoning to this version) or you can sprinkle with fat-free or low-fat shredded mozzarella cheese. I did that for the fancy one but left the basic one without cheese to truly envelop the garlic flavor.

Bake the bread for 8-10 minutes. Broil for 2 minutes (make sure not to broil any more than 2 minutes or it will burn.) Enjoy immediately!

Thanksgiving Dinner with all the Fixin's!

Ready for that full Thanksgiving meal? I wasn't. In fact, this was the first time I had ever prepared one. Growing up it was my Grandmother. Then, as she got older and massive cooking became harder it turned into some combination of relatives and take-out. And then it became mostly catered from Whole Foods or Wegman's and then dumped into other dishes to look homemade. We've become adept at doing this very quickly.

However, this year turned out differently. Due to work schedules my boyfriend and I were unable to be with either of our families for actual Thanksgiving. Knowing how important the holiday is to him, I offered to make our own Thanksgiving in our apartment on the Wednesday before. Long story short, our schedules changed, we had many Thanksgivings that weren't on Thanksgiving, and it was beyond complicated. But our Thanksgiving happened about a week late and I cooked up a storm that took the two of us over a week to eat.

So do not worry if this is your first time! I'll walk you through step by step and soon you'll have a full Thanksgiving meal. It's not nearly as scary as it seems. I made the traditional dishes without going crazy since there were only two of us so below you will find: Turkey with Truffle Gravy, Butternut Squash and Leek Gratin, Bread Stuffing, Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, and Garlic Mashed Potatoes. I also simply microwaved frozen corn to complete the meal. Enjoy! And feel free to ask questions below - I love comments.

Turkey with Truffle Gravy
This was the part that scared me the most. After all, I had never made a turkey and I don't even like meat. This seemed gross and weird. But, I can hardly skip the turkey after promising a full Thanksgiving meal. I did some research and came up with a recipe to help me along my way. But first, I had to order my Turkey. Make sure you order in advance since the rest of the country is doing the same thing. I also strongly urge you to order a free-range turkey. Most of the meat in this country is treated horribly. Did you know they even cut the little curly tails off of pigs so they can pack them more tightly into pens? They do. Picture that next time you buy regular meat. But if you purchase free-range turkey (or pig or chicken or cow) then that means the animals were able to roam freely and were treated well during their life. So do the right thing and pay the extra buck!

And then you have to cook it. I followed the instructions rather broadly. First, you have to remove all of the stuff inside the turkey. To be honest, I wasn't 100% sure how to identify all of these pieces but basically just pull out everything that is inside the turkey. Then you can tie up the feet and follow the instructions for basting the turkey and sticking some herbs and onions inside. That's the easy part. Instead of following the cooking instructions given by this recipe, however, I went with the instructions printed on my turkey package. The turkey also came with a plastic pop-up temperature gauge but I still used a thermometer to make sure the turkey had reached the correct temperature. The good news is that once the turkey is in the oven, you are pretty much done with it!

But then you still have gravy. In this case I made the full-fledged turkey gravy... or mostly. I found myself staring in disgust at some of the innards. There were 2 pieces shaped a bit like wings that were okay, but then there was a gooey bloody mass. The neck, perhaps? Not sure, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I quickly tossed that and decided it wasn't necessary for the gravy!

Perhaps because I ditched the gross stuff or perhaps for some other reason, my gravy did not turn fatty. There was nothing to siphon off when I carefully let my gravy sit in the plastic bag, so I just used all of it. Not sure why that happened, but it worked out and tasted like gravy and didn't seem particularly fattening. So, um, good! The truffle oil definitely added a tasteful touch, however, and was worth $13 for a tiny bottle.

Butternut Squash and Leek Gratin
Ready for a delicious vegetable? My boyfriend, not always the biggest fan of vegetables, could not get enough of this. What was truly telling was that with so many favorites on the table, the first thing he wanted when he went for seconds was this squash. And if that's not a ringing endorsement then I don't know what is!

Ingredients:
butternut squash
butter
leek
sugar
black pepper
nutmeg
eggs
parmesan cheese

Preheat your oven to 375. Cut two butternut squash in half (long way of course so you have mirror image pieces) and cook for 45 minutes with the cut side down. When the 45 minutes are up they should be nice and soft. Cool just until you can touch them and then scoop out all of the squash yummy goodness inside and put in a large bowl.

While the squash is cooking you can saute the leek. Put a small amount of butter in a pan over medium heat. Cut up 4-5 leek (you want 4 cups) and add it to the pan. If you cut it in slices you can separate out the concentric circles as you dump it in the pan. Saute for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. The leek should be soft and browned by the end. Cool slightly and add the leek to the squash.

To the leek/squash mixture add: 1 tsp black pepper, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1 tbsp sugar, 4 eggs, 1 egg yolk. Mix well with a whisk until well combined. Using the whisk will help keep the gratin light and fluffy, incorporating some air.

Put the mixture into a greased glass baking dish. I used a 9x9 dish. Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes at 325. Uncover and bake another 15 min. Sprinkle the gratin with 1/2-1/3 cup of grated parmesan cheese. Broil on high for 2 minutes and then enjoy! The cheese should be browned on top.

Bread Stuffing
A lot of the time people make bread stuffing from a package, but of course we would have none of that! I searched and found a recipe to make my stuffing from scratch. I also figured this would be a good way to cut down on excess salt since while I love stuffing it usually leaves me gasping for water by the end.

You'll find the recipe exceedingly easy to follow. The hardest part for me was keeping my boyfriend from eating the fresh french bread I'd brought home the day before. After all, it makes it far more difficult to make bread stuffing if you do not have any bread.

You can just as easily substitute vegetable broth for chicken broth here if you are interested in keeping your stuffing vegetarian. Also, keep in mind for your gratin and stuffing that you can prepare them and have them in their dishes ready to go and then wait to bake until the end so everything is timed to come together at the end.

Apple Pie
What would Thanksgiving be without apple pie? I mean, as far as I'm concerned all desserts should be chocolate, but if they aren't chocolate than fruit pies/crisps do come in a close second, especially when served hot with cold ice cream. I love ice cream. I love lamp.

So here is the pie! Except I definitely had to make a few changes to this one. For one, I didn't have enough crust. Make at least 1.5 times the recipe. Despite efforts to roll the crust as thin as possible I didn't have enough dough to cover the sides so my pie had a top and bottom but no side. I declared it to be a modern side - like a sofa without arms at the end. (The kind I like, after all.)

But while the crust didn't provide enough, the apples provided far too many. I had two pies worth of apples. I'm not sure if my Braeburns were absurdly large or what, but it didn't work out and I had to make an extra pie and freeze it after lugging all of those apples home from Whole Foods in my backpack. My suggestion? Just buy 4-5 of them..

Get your apple pie all ready to go and then toss it in the oven as you sit down to eat your meal. That way it is hot and fresh for dessert!

Pumpkin Pie
Would you believe that I don't really like pumpkin pie? I don't - but it's part of Thanksgiving and my boyfriend loves it. Also, it's incredibly easy to make so you don't really have a good reason not to do it. This easy. You are literally dumping pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, and a few other things in a bowl and mixing it up. We don't get a lot easier than this. However, I really appreciated the amaretto whipped cream that they suggested in this recipe. It adds an interesting twist that made even me sample some pumpkin pie.

However, you'll see they tell you to buy a crust. What is with that? That's not how we do it in the Julia kitchen! I whipped up some pie crust that should look very similar to the one for the apple pie. And like the pie it also didn't provide enough, leaving me side-less. So again, make more than the recipe calls for!

Because pumpkin pies are served chilled anyway I made this the night before and put it in the fridge. This gave me one less thing to do on "Thanksgiving Day."

Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Last but not least, we come to the garlic mashed potatoes. A simple yet pivotal part of any Thanksgiving meal.

Ingredients:
garlic
olive oil
potatoes
milk
salt
pepper

If you've ever made mashed potatoes before, it's the same idea here but just healthier. Remove excess white papery skin from the garlic head and wrap it in foil. Bake at 375 for an hour. This provides delicious roasted garlic! Resist spreading it on bread and eating it immediately.

Wash your potatoes well and cut them into quarters. I enjoy the skin in my mashed potatoes and leave it on, but you could remove it if you prefer. Boil a large pot of water and dump them in. Boil the potatoes for 15 minutes (they should now be soft.) Drain and put in a large bowl.

Use a potato masher to mash your potatoes until they are the normal consistency for the dish. Heat 1/2 cup of milk over medium low heat in a small pan but do not let it boil. Add it to the potatoes. Stir well.

Separate each of the cloves of garlic and squeeze the roasted garlic into the potatoes. Add salt and pepper. Stir well and serve hot.

Slow Roasted Brown Sugar and Dill Cured Salmon with Pumpkin Ravioli with Gorgonzola Sauce and Crab Bisque

...and we're back! The blogging delay is over and I have missed it. In my absence I did finally watch Julie and Julia and it made me feel pretty bad about myself. So help me out - how can I make this blog better for you? More useful for you? Would it help if I married my friend with the last name 'Child' so I could be Julia Child too? I might need to grow about a foot as well but those are only minor details. I think most of my shoes get me halfway there. (Cooking in stilettos makes your food taste much better of course.)

To be fair, however, I do have a good excuse for the break. While cooking (of course) I managed to stab myself in my hand with my brand new knives (but they are such nice knives.) I am so talented I hit exactly the right spot, dinging the sheath around my tendon. Within an hour my left ring finger was easily twice as large as it should be and when moved left me in excruciating pain. It is now well on it's way to recovery, but let's say typing hasn't been particularly easy lately. So, um, don't do that when you are cooking.

But to the meal! So this is most certainly not a meal to make when you are pressed for time. I tried to squeeze it in before going out to a fundraiser (anyone want to support an awesome candidate for Congress?) which didn't work out well. Luckily, the food did. This menu pairs slow-roasted Salmon that positively melts in your mouth with homemade pumpkin ravioli and crab bisque. Intrigued enough to want to learn how to make fish melt and to make crab bisque healthy? Well come on in!

Slow Roasted Brown Sugar and Dill Cured Salmon
We'll have to start with how to make the fish since this is a loooooong recipe. The good news is that most of the long does not include any actual work. You're going to marinate the salmon in brown sugar and dill. The instructions tell you to do so for 8 hrs, but as someone who isn't at home 8 hrs before but at work I went for overnight. I feel the additional time certainly does no harm and allows the flavors to truly envelop the fish.

You'll also see they instruct you to wipe off the remaining sugar and dill. But where is the fun in that? I poured out a little excess liquid to keep it from burning while roasting but didn't touch the fish - any dill and sugar on the fish (and there was a lot) stayed put.

Finally, I skipped the mustard-mayo sauce. The slow-roasted fish, still covered in brown sugar and dill, was so incredibly flavorful I saw no reason to mess with it. I recommend leaving the marinade and skipping the mayo. The flavors melted in, the fish was beyond tender, and each bite left you wanting more. And who can resist that?

Pumpkin Ravioli with Gorgonzola Sauce
I have to admit - this wasn't quite how I expected this to go. The recipe and I diverged in more than a few instances. For instance, I skipped putting the pumpkin mixture on paper towels. Really? That just sounds tedious. Then, I ran into some wonton issues. Despite extensive searching at both my local Giant and Whole Foods I was unable to locate any wonton wrappers. No problem, I thought, I'd just buy that nice looking rice paper. Turns out you can't boil rice paper, but at least I only tested one to see. I then decided to go for my own and mix up some water and flour to make my own.

Well, pasta is flour and EGG and my flour and water was more like a gyoza skin. Still, that would have worked most likely. But as someone without a pasta maker (hint hint) I had to simply form ravioli with my fingers. This meant the folded part, while mushed together, would most likely not withstand boiling. Rather than ruining another ravioli I just went for pumpkin gyoza. I put a small amount of olive oil in a pan and pan-sauteed my ravioli. Just think of them as crispy ravioli!

At least at that point they still tasted delicious. I then learned another valuable lesson: I don't like gorgonzola. I knew I wasn't a fan of blue cheese but I thought gorgonzola might be different, or at least different when given in a different form. Nope. To be fair, the sauce came together excellently and would be delicious for those who like gorgonzola...but it's just not me. We live and learn!

Crab Bisque
Now this was amazing. A-may-zing. Seriously. Sear-ee-yeah I'll stop that now. :) I got a little carried away remembering how delicious and guilt-free this soup was. Crab (and lobster) Bisque have always been some of my favorites but usually they are full of cream. Well this recipe helps keep the pounds off while still letting you indulge.

And as someone who wasn't entirely sure how to make Crab Bisque, I largely followed the recipe and only have a few changes. For one, I skipped the celery. It just didn't seem like something I would want in my soup, and I also didn't want to buy a ton of celery for only a little. But when I think bisque I think creamy smoothness, not crunchy.

I also added the chives, lemon juice, and remaining crab meat while the soup was still in the pan. I know when you go to a restaurant they bring out the bowl with the meat in it and then pour in the bisque, but as someone preparing a lot of it that didn't make sense. With crab at the bottom of a giant bowl it seemed to me that when ladling it would stay sitting there and people would get less meat. I dumped it all in right at the end, mixed it up, and then removed the pan from the heat. And we all had lots of crab in our soup.

This turned out beautifully. Make it when you have someone to impress. And pair it with the melt-in-your-mouth salmon and you'll be set!

Beer Battered Fish and Chips

Fish and chips is one of my favorites. It's also one of the only things that I'll eat (other than Indian food) when I'm in England. Well, that and strawberries with clotted cream and sugar. Nothing says health better than a cream that advertises that your arteries are clogging right as you eat it. So why not go all out and enjoy the fish and chips instead?

For this dinner of fish and chips, however, I actually tried to go the healthy route. You'll find the same beer-battered fish, but sauteed rather than fried. And the chips? Well, they're baked and broiled with just a smattering of oil. While this might not 100% replace the true fish and chips you buy in newspaper on the streets of London it's a fair substitute that won't send you to the hospital anytime soon.

Beer-Battered Fish...
Both pieces of this recipe come straight from a single page of Cooking Light. You'll marinate your fish to get it nice and soaked in beer and then slather on a mix of beer and flour. I don't have a scale so I went with the 3/4 cup measurement that the recipe offers, but my batter came out very thick. I found it wasn't sticking to the fish at all but rather falling off in globs. I would use just 1/2 a cup of flour to start and see how it goes. It's always easier to add than to subtract!

...and Chips
In the meantime you'll also want to get your chips going since they take a little longer to prepare. Cut your potatoes into fry-sized pieces and toss them in some oil, salt, and pepper. Make sure that they are in a single layer on a cookie sheet or baking dish of some sort or else they will not be very crispy. I actually baked my fries for longer - about 30 minutes - and then broiled them for two minutes. You do not want to broil them for long for risk of burning, but I found just a couple minutes makes them crispier. And who wants soggy fries?

I served the fish and chips with a Pesto Caesar salad. I've featured that before on this blog and absolutely love it. I figured the (healthier) Caesar salad would pair well with such a pub-based food. Just a suggestion though, feel free to accentuate with any vegetable you please.

Potato Leek Gratin and Green Beans with Toasted Hazelnut-Lemon Butter

This meal was all about simple foods made anew without a lot of fuss. Potato leek gratin, the definition of comfort, is featured here. The familiarity of potatoes blends with the mild onion taste of leek and is topped with cheese to make everyone happy. Then, I whipped up some green beans with butter and hazelnuts to embark a nutty taste to this common vegetable. Finally, I served these sides with some Macadamia crusted Tilapia purchased at Whole Foods to round out the meal.

If you are short on time you can actually prepare the gratin the night before and keep it covered in your refrigerator. Then, simply bake it when you are ready for dinner. You'll need to either let it come slowly to room temperature on its own or bake it a bit longer than normal, however, since you'll be starting out with it cold.

Potato-Leek Gratin
You'll find this to be a very simple recipe. The only true time involved is the baking for an hour - and also you'll need to factor in enough time to wash and dice all of those potatoes and leeks. They are both notoriously hard to properly clean.

Follow along with the recipe and enjoy! However, also feel free to substitute. While Gruyere is perfectly acceptable it's not my favorite so I decided to substitute Asiago cheese instead. I grated it right before mixing it in for the freshest option. This worked out very well but I'm sure you could just as easily substitute your favorite cheese in here as well.

Green Beans with Toasted Hazelnut-Lemon Butter
And now for the vegetable! I'm not always the biggest green bean fan but I decided the combination of hazelnut and lemon-butter was too tempting not to give it a whirl. And it worked out.

Follow along with this simple recipe to create a savory vegetable dish very quickly. You are boiling the green beans then mixing in some hazelnuts, lemon rind, and butter. I used fake butter here to make the meal even healthier.

The combination of hazelnuts and green beans works out excellently. The nutty and savory yet firm textures work very well together, complementing one another to produce a wonderful side dish. Make this when you don't have a ton of time but you want something original and healthy.

Grilled Salmon w/ Roasted Corn Relish with Bakery Dinner Rolls w/ Maple Butter and Leek & Garlic Soup

I have to admit - I try not to pick favorites but this meal definitely ranks up there. Sometimes I love one piece of a meal but another is not quite what I expected. With these 3 dishes everything was perfect. The fish grilled beautifully and paired perfectly with the roasted corn. The dinner rolls were light and flaky and the maple butter melted into them effortlessly. The leek and garlic soup was thick and warm and perfectly tasty.

This meal is perfect for a cool day. The thick soup and hot rolls help to chase away the cold and rain to keep you warm, cozy, and full while staying healthy. Keep in mind, however, that soup and bread takes a little longer to prepare. While not overly complicated, this meal does need some prep time. Make this when you have the time to dedicate to cooking and still plenty leftover to savor your delicious creations.

Bakery Dinner Rolls with Maple Butter
Let's get started with the rolls since they'll need some time to rise. I wasn't sure what to expect from this recipe when I first came across it but these will definitely be made again. I went ahead with the egg yolk on top and you'll see the top of my rolls are a little shiny and yellow in the picture. This adds an extra crispness to the top. However, this is hardly essential and the rolls would have worked quite well without it as well. It is a personal preference! But keep in mind it also won't save that many calories since you use just one egg yolk for 12 rolls (and I still had a little leftover.)

I prepared maple butter to go with the rolls. The sugary maple flavor is reminiscent of cold New England winters.. and I just like it! I had never made flavored butter before but this recipe is about as easy as they come. You're just mixing maple syrup and butter. I skipped the salt. Unfortunately, once this sits in the fridge for a night or two the syrup tends to seep back out. You can let the butter soften and mix it again but this might work best if you just make the amount of butter you want when you start.

Leek and Garlic Soup
And now for the soup! I had not made a lot of soups before this year but have truly been trying to branch out and try some more. This one definitely ranks up there as one of my new favorites. Thank you, Cooking Light! Anything that starts with roasted garlic is always a good thing. This recipe starts by wanting you to make a bag with herbs in it. You can certainly follow that route but I decided to simplify things. I skipped the parsley and leek leaves and instead put the bay leaves and thyme directly into the soup. Then, because those are large, you can simply scoop them out with a slotted spoon when you would remove the herb packet.

After that I pretty much followed the recipe as instructed. However, rather than buying vegetable or chicken broth continually for all of these recipes I instead just buy bouillon cubes and then make broth with hot water. Buying a jar of bouillon cubes is far less expensive than the number of cans of broth it takes to get to the same amount.

Grilled Salmon with Roasted Corn Relish
And finally for the entree! You'll see I have another picture of the salmon. The one up top represents the salmon just when it is taken off the grill while this one shows it with the corn topping on it. It's the same fillet underneath!

I have to credit this final portion of the meal to Cooking Light as well. However, to make this recipe during the winter in an apartment I had to make a few changes. First, I don't have a grill as mentioned before. I used my Foreman grill to prepare the Salmon however, and that worked out extremely well. In addition to a lack of a grill, I also used frozen corn rather than corn on the cob since it was out of season and no longer available. This meant it was a little hard to use my Foreman grill or the kernels simply slid down the sloped surface. So for this part of the recipe, out came my grill pan instead. The combination of the two surfaces for different pieces of the meal worked out very well. Finally, I skipped the Anaheim chiles since I'm not a fan of spicy.

Grill your corn and Salmon when your soup and bread are almost done for a complete meal that exactly hits the spot. Did you enjoy it as much as I did?

Chipotle Shrimp Tacos and Chile Con Queso

Another taco night! These are just too good to pass up when it comes to having groups over. Everyone gets to customize, no one dislikes tacos, and I get to make hoards of guacamole and eat all of the leftovers. What's not to love? This time, I chose to focus my efforts on shrimp tacos, but I also included the buffalo tacos blogged about previously and the standard sauteed onions and peppers and fresh guacamole.

Make this when you're having a group and prepare anywhere from 1 to 4 fillings to satisfy everyone. Set the tacos up as a buffet and let guests build their own. This way everyone is happy! You can serve chips with salsa and guacamole to start, and also my newly presented Chile Con Queso below. This was my first time trying to make the popular cheese dip but it turned out to be the hit of the night so dig in and enjoy.

Chipotle Shrimp Tacos
None of these items take long to prepare so your best bet is to get all of the prep work of dicing, etc, out of the way for everything and then try to cook it all at once.

Ingredients:
Shrimp
Lime Juice
Chipotle Powder
Salt
Cumin
Sugar
Olive Oil

I started with raw peeled and deveined shrimp with their tail still on. Pull the tails off all of your shrimp and toss them in a bowl with about a tablespoon of lime juice for a pound of shrimp until they are well coated. Mix up sugar (about 3/4 of a teaspoon for a pound of shrimp) with half as much cumin, a sprinkle of salt, and 1/2 a teaspoon of chipotle power. Toss the shrimp in and shake well to get your shrimp coated with the spices.

Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium to medium high heat. Toss the shrimp in and stir regularly to keep from over-cooking. Flip shrimp and move them around the pan as they cook. They should only take about 4-5 minutes total to be done. Make sure that as soon as they are pink and lose the translucent color you remove them from the heat to avoid cooking them for too long or else they will get rubbery.

Chile Con Queso
And now for the dip! Since this was a new one for me I went straight to my good ol' Cooking Light to ensure that I found a good recipe. And it worked out well on many levels. Not only did my guests absolutely adore the dip, they ate it so eagerly they filled up on Queso and were not able to ever turn their full attention to the fresh guacamole... leaving more leftovers than I probably should have enjoyed!

You can mostly follow along with this recipe. The spice comes from two places - the chili powder and the chiles in one of the cans of tomatoes. I skipped out on the chili powder but still used the tomatoes with chiles. This gave it a mild spice; some bites had a kick if you ate a chile but overall it was not a particularly spicy meal. You could substitute a can of diced tomatoes without chiles instead (so use two total cans of diced tomatoes) for a very mild version of the dip.

I also found it somewhat useless to drain the tomatoes if you were going to simply add the liquid back in at the same time. I skipped that step and simply dumped the can in all at once.

If you have leftovers keep them refrigerated and when heating them scoop out what you want and put it in a bowl before microwaving. This way you avoid continually reheating and cooling the original cheese mixture several times.

Zesty Swordfish Kabobs with Latkes

Mmmmmmmmmm! I know I just had my regular fruit breakfast, but I'm ready for dinner whenever I look at this picture and remember this meal. Delicious! I paired savory Swordfish kabobs prepared with a slightly citrus marinade with the warmth and (unhealthy) flavors of latkes. To top it all off I served up some Zucchini Sticks that have been featured before. This savory meal hit the spot and left me wishing I could whip this up every day.

As you read ahead I must warn you that latkes are far from healthy. While delicious, these potato pancakes can only be made to their full taste when they are fried. There is simply no way to duplicate the taste. So rather than spend your hours making baked latkes that simply fall flat, go for the full-fat fried version but eat them in limited quantity. Think of it as splurging on a dessert! I only whip up these pancakes a few times each year, but when I do I know I can enjoy them to their full extent.

Zesty Swordfish Kabobs
We'll start with the fish since you'll want to get it marinading with plenty of time to spare. You'll find the recipe very easy to follow. Most of the work is combining all of the ingredients in the marinade. Make sure you cut up your swordfish into the 1 inch cubes before putting them in with the marinade sauce. This allows them to coat all the sides of their cubes for full flavor and also keeps you from making a huge mess later.

Cut up the green onions and red peppers while the swordfish marinates. Then string everything together, stick it on a kabob stick, and you're ready to go. I used my indoor Foreman Grill since I lack a backyard, but the real thing is always preferred when possible. Just toss it on for a short while and enjoy! And doesn't it look pretty?

Note: Citrus flavors will actually start to cook the fish (think Seviche) so you should not leave the Swordfish marinating for longer than the instructed 30 minutes. Plan your meal ahead of time so you can follow that timeline and still have everything finish at least roughly together.

Latkes
And now it's time for one of my favorite foods of all time - latkes! Traditionally enjoyed on Hanukkah by Ashkenazi Jews (hey, that's half of me) these fried potato pancakes are delicious all days of the year. Random trivia: they are enjoyed on Hanukkah because the oil they are fried in represents the oil that burned for 8 days in the first Hanukkah miracle. And that is why you still must fry them today...!

Ingredients:
Potatoes
Onions
Eggs
Kosher salt
Black pepper
Matzah
Vegetable Oil

Tools:
Cheese Cloth

First, wash your potatoes but leave the skin on. Next you'll need to shred them. The easiest way to do this is if you have a food processor, such as Cuisinart, that has a shredding blade. Keep in mind you don't want to use a typical metal blade that will puree these potatoes but rather shred them in short strings like you would see carrots look like in a salad. My food processor has a metal plate that goes in almost upside down to be used as a shredder. If you don't have a machine, I've done this by hand before, but you might want to invite some friends to avoid taking all day. Shred the onions in the same way at the same time as the potatoes. I use 5 lbs of potatoes (one bag) and 1 large or 2 medium onions. This makes plenty of latkes for 4-5 people.

Place a large piece of cheese cloth in a colander and dump the shredded potato and onion into it. Pull up the corners of the cheesecloth so the potato and onion are encased in the mesh cloth. Now squeeze all over, for quite a while, to remove all of the moisture. This can be a pain, but take care to perform this part correctly to save you problems later. All of the moisture must be removed so that the latkes stick together later on when they are formed into patties.

Once all of the moisture has been squeezed out of the potatoes and onions dump them into a large bowl. You can now discard the used cheesecloth. Put a single sheet of matzah into a plastic bag and use a rolling pan to mash it into crumbs. Add the matzah crumbs to the mixture. Add two eggs to the mixture. Add as much kosher salt and black pepper as you'd like, remembering that salt may taste good here but it's not great for you. You can use other salt if you prefer but I believe kosher salt tastes best in latkes.

Get your oil heating. Pour vegetable oil into a large frying pan to a depth of about 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch. Cover the oil and turn the heat to medium or medium high. As the oil is heating, mix everything together. It is easiest to use your hands. Just make sure they are clean and don't worry about the mess. Use your hands to mix the egg, potato, onion, matzah, and spices together.

You can see if your oil is ready for frying by dropping one or two small drops of water into it. If it spurts and sizzles then it's ready - but be careful because hot oil is not fun when it touches your skin. Use the lid to shield yourself as you test the oil and make sure to wear an apron or old clothes throughout this entire process. You want to keep the oil hot so that it sizzles when a latke is place into it but you do not want it to be actively boiling at any point.

Once your oil is ready, use your hands to make a patty out of the latke mixture. Place it gently into the hot oil to avoid splatter. Place as many patties as fit into the pan, leaving room to be able to flip them. The oil should sizzle around the latkes. When the side facing down is browned and the brown has creeped at least halfway up the latke's sides (you can see this without flipping) then flip the latkes. Let them brown evenly on the other side as well. Once they are cooked remove them with a slotted spatula, shaking gently to remove excess oil. Continue with the mixture until all of the latkes are fried.

I put paper towels on a plate before placing the latkes on them to help soak up extra oil and then use paper towels between every layer. This might not be perfect but hopefully it helps.

Serve your latkes with apple sauce (my favorite) or sour cream and enjoy!