Best Tuna Melt EVER!

Best Tuna Melt EVER.  And delicious homemade tomato soup.

Yup.  Had to start that one right off with a picture so you all could get to drooling.  By the by, this awesome pic is courtesy of Dante.  Mine were all blurry... :-(

So yeah, we're kind of on a greens kick lately.  Dante's been making up lots of greens.  He uses a mix of collard greens, turnip greens, kale, and rainbow chard and cooks them down with some sauteed onions, garlic, bacon (if we have it), and other spices and they're AMAZING.  Very tasty.  The only other collard greens I'd had before he cooked these were from a can and were basically just salt.  lots of salt. 

As a result of all the greens-cooking going on, we have leftover greens in the fridge quite often, and have been playing with different things to do with them.  This is probably the biggest success yet.  After we made some DELICIOUS greens/cheddar/bacon/cheese sauce potato skins for brunch, Dante suggested that it could be good to make a tuna melt with greens in it.  I definitely agreed.  We both thought it could use something to dress it up a bit, so after watching a couple hours of The Chew (we have been recording it on the DVR and are currently playing catch-up), were inspired and decided on caramelized onions with balsamic vinegar.  That was a good choice........ a very good choice. I was afraid they might overpower the other flavors of the sandwich, but no such problem.  They were flavorful but not overly potent.  We made the sandwiches on wheat bread and I put provolone cheese on mine.  Dante put Smoked Cheddar on his, and we cooked em up on the electric griddle.  They were FAN-TAS-TIC!  For reals, if you're looking for a good sandwich, this is definitely the way to go. 

To go with our awesome sandwiches, we made Clinton's Creamy Tomato Soup from the Chew. We did use red onion in place of the white, and fat free half and half in place of the heavy cream.  It turned out super fresh and tasty, and I'm not even usually a tomato soup fan!  I like to dip my grilled cheese in it, but I rarely eat more than a couple spoonfuls of Campbell's plain (seriously, I'll put mine in an espresso cup when we have sandwiches because that's enough to dip, but I don't have to feel wasteful when I don't want to eat it).  This, I cleaned my bowl.  My big, real people sized bowl.

So next cool day, or just if you're feeling like some pure awesomeness for dinner, I highly recommend you try both of these.


Tuna Melt with Mixed Greens

Cooked Mixed Greens (recipe will be in next post)
Tuna Salad, seasoned to taste (I used miracle whip, garlic, onion, thyme, salt, pepper, and italian seasoning)
1 Red Onion
1 T Olive Oil
2 T Balsamic Vinegar
Provolone or Smoked Cheddar Cheese
Wheat Bread
Butter or Margarine

Caramelized Onions:
1. Slice red onion into thin half-moons.
2. Sautee onion in a medium pan with olive oil until onions soften and start to brown. 
3. Once onions start to brown, add Balsamic vinegar and stir. 
4. Cook another 2 minutes, stirring often. 

Sandwiches: (Note: all quantities are approximate.  I didn't measure.  Just eyeball it and adjust based on your tastes!  After all, it's your sandwich...)
1. For each sandwich, butter two slices of bread.  Tip: Put the two pieces of bread butter sides together and put your sandwich fillings on top, then when you're ready to cook them, lift the top piece of bread (with fillings) onto the griddle, butter side down, and top with the remaining piece of bread (butter side up).  This keeps you from somehow getting butter all over the kitchen during the sandwich prep.  I learned this from my mom, who's a genius. :-D
2. Drain/press as much liquid from the greens as possible.  Put 1/4-1/2 cup greens on one slice of bread, on the non-buttered side.
3. Add 1/2 c tuna salad on top of the greens and spread to cover evenly.
4. Add 2-4 T caramelized onions on top of the tuna and again, spread to cover evenly.
5. Top with cheese and transfer to hot griddle (I had ours at 350 and it worked beautifully).  Add second slice of bread, butter side up.
6. Cook until golden brown and delicious.  Flip and repeat.
7. Cut in half and serve with Clinton's Creamy Tomato Soup.  Enjoy!

The best chowder ever... and a darn good grilled cheese!

So, still behind.  Always behind.  le sigh.  BUT... Catching up!

A while back, despite the beautiful weather, a creamy chicken soup sounded good.  And if I remember correctly, the weather actually cooperated and cooled down a bit the day we made it.  Thanks, Mother Nature! (This was at the end of May, not terribly recently.)

A lot of this was "What do we have in the kitchen that would be good in this soup?"  But I was really REALLY happy with how it turned out.  It was DELICIOUS.  But it took us a while to figure out what to call it, so we're settling on "Earthy Chicken Chowder" for now.  If you make it and come up with something better, comment and let us know! (Also, not the best picture, but believe me, it tastes better than it looks.)

Earthy Chicken Chowder

3 Chicken Breasts

8-10 c. Water

4 Chicken Bouillon Cubes

2 Potatoes, Cubed

2 Carrots, Chopped

3 Stalks Celery, Chopped

3-4 Cloves Crushed Garlic

1/3 c. Green Onions, chopped

1-2 T. Olive Oil

1/2 c. Fresh Parsley, Chopped

1 large sprig Rosemary

1 pkg Dried Wild Mushroom Mix

1 T. Black Truffle Pieces in Oil

2 c. Fat Free Half and Half

1/4 c. Rosemary Asiago, shredded

4 T. Butter

1/4 c. Flour

1/2 c. Fat Free Half and Half (Yes, it's here twice on purpose!)

Salt and Pepper to Taste 

(1 T. Onion Powder)

1. Boil chicken in large pot.  Remove from water and dice. 
2. Put dried mushrooms and 1 cup of the water the chicken was cooked in into a bowl to soak.
3. Boil remaining broth to reduce to 4-6 cups.
4. Add bouillon and potatoes.
5. In skillet, sautee carrots, celery, onions, and garlic in olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter with salt.
6. Chop soaked mushrooms and add to soup.
7. Add sauteed vegetables, rosemary, parsley, truffles, and any other seasonings you desire (we added onion powder) and simmer until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally.
8. Add half and half and asiago.
9. In a small pan, melt 3 tablespoons butter.  When melted, add flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 3-5 minutes.  Add 1/2 c. Half and Half while stirring.
10. Add roux (flour mixture) to the large pot and stir in. 
11. Add chicken meat.
12. Remove rosemary stem (needles will have cooked off into the soup).
13. Warm through and serve.
 

SOOOoooooo worth making.  Really.  Would I lead you astray?

We had ours, as you might have noticed from the images above, with grilled cheese.  Cept our grilled cheese had a roquefort parsley butter (to be explained in a later post by Dante), Swiss cheese, and Morel and Leek Jack cheese.  It was a little rich, but very good.  Especially dipped in the soup.

So... there's an actual recipe for you to make up for not posting for so long!

Happy Cooking!

Cabbage, cabbage everywhere...

And so much stuff to eat!

So, given its versatility, amazing "healthiness", and super cheap price tag, we felt cabbage was something we should explore, since neither one of us really knew what to do with it beyond boiled dinner (which is also pretty amazing). 

So, we started with some awesome coleslaw which, due to the red cabbage in it, turned a pretty pink/purple color! lol.  But it was also quite tasty.  We blended a couple different recipes, though it was mostly based on Alton Brown's Coleslaw recipe, with a little tweaking here and there.

We then took said coleslaw and put it on the sandwiches in the above picture.  They were a grilled chicken breast with BBQ sauce (Sweet Baby Ray's, of course), Roasted Red Pepper, Coleslaw, and honey mustard on a pretzel roll.  We served these tasty, but super-messy, sandwiches up with the coleslaw and a home version of the Bavarian Inn's butter noodles.  Basically, homemade fettuccine with a sauce of melted butter and Frankenmuth chicken seasoning, topped with lightly-toasted pulverized Club crackers.  Dante says they're just like the ones from Bavarian Inn.

Our next use for the coleslaw (and one of the motivating factors for MAKING coleslaw) was Reubens.  MMMMmmmmmm Reubens.  I worked in a bakery/deli that served reubens and was never at all intrigued by them, but fortunately, Dante had me try one a while back, and I'm completely addicted.  Course, ours and the ones from the deli down the road are MUCH better looking than the ones I used to serve... Anywho... our reubens were on a rye/pumpernickel swirl bread with corned beef and Dante had pepper-crusted pastrami on his as well, with our fresh coleslaw (strained of some of its liquid), Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing, assembled and grilled on the Foreman.

Since we used less than half of each head of cabbage and made a  GIANT (and I mean Giant... largest one we have) mixing bowl FULL of coleslaw, we needed a good way to use up some more of the cabbage before it went bad (which fortunately, isn't too fast).  So we decided to try a beefy cabbage soup.  And oh my goodness did we have a lot of soup.  The picture below is the very pretty "before" picture, and that's an 8 Quart Stockpot.  Like I said, a lot of soup.

Our soup had red and green cabbage, carrots, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, baby bella mushrooms, celery, onion, and garlic with a little browned beef steak all cooked up in a beef broth base with two packets of Lipton Beefy Onion Soup mix and assorted spices.  Unfortunately, what started as this beautiful, colorful mass of vegetables cooked down to look rather less appealing and very ... brown (See below).  But it was VERY tasty.

 

We ate this with a slice of the leftover swiss melted on top and cheater (from a mix) biscuits.  YUM!



And that about wraps up the cabbage post, although we still have 6 pints of this soup in the freezer, so we'll be reliving it for a while! (In fact this may be dinner for tonight... hmm........)



Happy Cooking!

Fall Food Festival!

Also known as... I just found pics on my SD card from NOVEMBER!  yikes!  So, just to showcase the awesomeness, here goes!  Back to more detailed posts soon, I promise.  Playing MAJOR Catch-up right now.

#1: Gruyere potatoes with cream sauce and green onions

#2: Brunch, inspired by Geoffrey Zakarian's "Ballpark Brunch" on Next Iron Chef

Includes tomato and fresh mozzarella toast, Creamy avocado with egg yolk, and shrimp

#3: Sandwiches: Tomato, garlic, basil, and ham with fresh mozzarella on french rolls

#4: Pumpkin Apple Soup.  DELICIOUS. Not sure of the link,

but I can look it up if anyone wants the recipe.

...and we had just a little pumpkin to use up... I think there were 12 of these initially, though as I strained some of the water out, I think i cut it down to about half that.

So there are the lost food files from November.  Hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for more, because it's been a DELICIOUS week here, and I'm not even kidding...

Happy cooking!

CHOPPED CHAMPIONSHIP! (Home Version)

We watch too much TV.  And a lot of Food Network.  I should state that right up front.  Anyway.... we decided that it would be incredibly fun to do a "Home Version" of the Food Network show Chopped.  For those of you who haven't seen it, the chefs are given baskets containing a selection of "mystery ingredients" that they must use in some way in their dishes.  There are three rounds: appetizer, entree, and dessert.  Each round has a time limit (usually 20-30 minutes), and is judged by a panel of three "experts".  

For our home version, we dropped the time limits and cut the rounds down to entree and dessert.  We also allowed each other $20 to buy additional ingredients, since we don't have a fully stocked food network pantry.  We chose three mystery ingredients for each other, with one overlapping ingredient between courses. 

        

Dante's Ingredients

Entree: Beef Steak, Canned Pumpkin, "Brown Bread" (Pumpernickel)

Dessert: Canned Pumpkin, Mascarpone, Golden Grahams Cereal

My Ingredients

Entree: Cream Cheese, Catfish, and Funyuns (forgot a couple in the pic... oops)

Dessert: Cream Cheese, Apple, and Whole Nutmeg

We actually managed to stay out of one another's way shockingly well considering the space we were cooking in... Here's a progress shot: 

It was a crowded workspace.

Ready for the finished products?

Dante's Entree: Brown Bread and Steak Sandwich with Pumpkin Sauce and Bacon

(I'll let Dante add comments here in the morning!)

Dante's Dessert: Graham-crusted French Toast with Pumpkin Mascarpone Filling, Vanilla Curd, and Caramel Sauce

(Same here)

My Entree: Pan-fried Funyun-crusted Catfish and Catfish Mousse "Sushi"

For this, I breaded the catfish in crushed Funyun and pan-fried it with a little bit of olive oil, then served it on a bed of spring greens with a cream cheese/onion sauce.  For the "sushi", I sliced a cucumber thin, then topped it with sushi rice that I had pressed into a pan and cut into small rounds with a cookie cutter, with catfish and cream cheese mouse and the cream cheese/onion sauce (which also had funyuns in it) and Funyun crumbs. The sushi was fantastically fresh-tasting, which was a great contrast with the strong onion flavor of the sauce, if I do say so myself. ;-) (by the way, I totally stole the idea of a cucumber-bottomed faux-sushi from a foodie email newsletter I get.  Don't remember which one right now or I'd give them proper credit.) 

My Dessert: Caramel Apple Puff Pastry with Cream Cheese and Nutmeg Ice Cream

On this one, I overcooked the sauce with the apples and they got super chewy and almost non-existant, and my puff pastry got a tad overdone, but the ice cream was a fantastic success!! (although melting already in this shot)  Very easy too, though I'm blanking on the finer details right at the moment.  I believe it was cream cheese, sweetened condensed milk, half and half, and fresh-grated nutmeg, though I may be mistaken.  Unfortunately, I didn't write that one down either.  Oops. 

And here's a shot of the whole kit and caboodle out on the coffee table (our kitchen table MAY have been covered in cooling racks, mixing bowls, etc that overflowed the counter during our kitchen marathon...).

It was a LOT of food.  I don't think I finished a single item, but it was all SUPER-delicious.  And amazingly fun.  And will probably be repeated many times in the future (including possibly every year at my birthday.  This ended up being an AWESOMELY fun part of my birthday celebration this year, and I LOVED it!!).

btw, We didn't actually "judge" our foods or award points or a winner.  But I think we both won, since we ended up with an amazing meal and desserts, along with tons of fun in the kitchen, and ideas to use in the future! 

So... if you're looking for something fun to do this weekend, find a friend who likes to cook and challenge one another to a CHOPPED CHAMPIONSHIP!  It's a blast and a half. :-D

Happy Cooking!

Bentos #5 and 6: Eggs and chaos tots!

(So... in case anyone's confused by the numbering, if I pack the same thing for Dante and I, I call it one bento.  If I pack different things, I count it as two.)

So today was bento #5 and the end of a FULL WEEK OF BENTO AWESOMENESS!!!

Dante's bento: Top Layer: Hard boiled egg and egg salad sandwich on Pepperidge Farm Italian bread, which fit amazingly well in his box.  I was very surprised!  Bottom layer: Apple slices, tomato slices, tater tots, and ketchup.  If you look closely, you can see one of the carrot sauce bottles hiding in the bottom of the box.  It's actually full of salt, for sprinkling on the tomato and egg!  Dante said it worked very well, so score one for the creative repurposing!!  Woo hoo!

My bento: (I had an epiphany!  Just because the boxes CAME all blue/red doesn't mean they have to STAY that way!  I mean... they're the same size/shape, so I can mix and match!!) Tater tots, with a super-cute blue flower cup of pickles and tomatoes to use to make chaos tots (I picked up ketchup and mustard packets at the little cafe downstairs from my office).  The cheese for the tots is in the bottom layer, along with some salad, again with garlic powder and sea salt.  Slightly more colorful today, which is good!

We also did some experimenting this morning, since I worked a later shift today.  We made oat-nigiri (onigiri made with oatmeal instead of rice!  Idea courtesy of One More Bento Fan's Flickr page).  Basically, cooked oatmeal with a little less water than normal to make it super-sticky, draped a piece of plastic wrap over my pancake puff pan, put a spoonful of oatmeal in it and squished it into a cup-shape with wet fingers, put fillings in the well (PBJ, dried cranberries and pecans, apples pecans and brown sugar, and maple/brown sugar), put a bit more oatmeal on top, then used the plastic wrap to squish all the oatmeal into a solid blob and do some rough shaping and stuck them in the fridge.  Then, in an attempt to reduce the sticky texture, we fried them lightly in a skillet to give them just a bit of a crust.  Consensus was, though, that the texture was still less than ideal and maybe next time we'd try deep-frying them, donut hole style (Dante's suggestion).  And IMPORTANT NOTE: two of these is PLENTY.  Oh my goodness are they filling.  Neither one of us wanted to move after eating them.  I took a picture, but it seems to have been corrupted on my camera, so no pics of the oatnigiri.  Bummer.   

Anywho... Happy bento!

Rowan