Something we've been having fun with recently is New Recipe Saturday. Brandon was going to be writing these up as we made them, but as it turns out, he's much happier cooking than blogging so the writing falls to me.
In our family, we each have one magazine subscription. Being the pop culture junkie that I am, I get Entertainment Weekly. Brandon gets Cooks Illustrated. For the past few weeks, he's chosen a recipe mostly at random from one of his old issues that he wants to make, and then I pick up the ingredients on Saturday and we make it for dinner that night. It's been fun!
Note: I'd link to the recipes, but I'm afraid the site requires a log-in in order to access them. In future, I'll try to include photos of the finished product! If you're a friend and interested in making any of these, get in touch with me and I'd be happy to send a copy of the recipe.
Recipe 1: Crispy Orange Beef
This was actually the first (and last) time we tried doing a new recipe on a weeknight. It did not work out well! With the baby's evening schedule, it's much easier to do the recipe on Saturday so we can start earlier and hopefully eat before I start Lucas's bedtime routine at 6:30pm. So the main con for this recipe was it took about two hours to make from start to finish. Also there were a lot of ingredients needed in small amounts, so prepping everything to be cooked took quite a while. This always seems to be the case for us when we choose Asian recipes -- maybe a characteristic of this type of cuisine?
The recipe called for dredging strips of flank steak in cornstarch and frying them crispy, then mixing them into an orange ginger sauce. Because of the cornstarch coating, the beef was perfectly cooked and not greasy at all, even for being deep fried. It had a tasty crunch and I loved the strong sauce, which had fried citrus peel and jalapeño strips in it. We served it with brown rice and broccoli.
The main two drawbacks of this recipe was the time required to make it, and I would have liked a little more of the sauce to eat with my food. This is probably the first time we've made Asian food that turned out this delicious though, so I'm calling it a success! 8/10
Recipe 2: Toasted Spanish Pasta with Shrimp
The dish that Brandon is probably best known for among our friends is his paella, a Spanish dish made with saffron, rice, and (in our case) seafood. This dish is a variation on paella that used toasted pasta instead of rice. It was a much quicker and simpler recipe. I'm afraid I was in charge of watching the baby while it was being made, but Brandon didn't seem to have much trouble with it. He toasted the noodles with some oil, then added seafood broth, tomatoes, and the shrimp and cooked it all under the broiler.
We, and the friends we had over to try it, thought the dish was good but not spectacular. I found it a little bland, frankly, and wish there had been a bit more seasoning involved. We served it with some roasted veggies and French bread. A fine meal, but nothing we'll likely make again. 5/10
Recipe 3: Chicken Parmesan
Last night we tried a "best" version of a dish that we already like, and I thought it turned out great! Essentially it's just the same Chicken Parmesan you get at a restaurant -- a panko-breaded chicken cutlet with mozzarella/Parmesan, served with marinara and pasta. Brandon chose to cook the chicken in our cast-iron skillet, which always makes things turn out better, in my opinion.
Randomly, we served it with roasted Brussels sprouts and leeks, because those were the veggies I had on hand. I would definitely make this recipe again, it used mainly ingredients we keep around already and was simple and straight-forward. I'd even make it, which is saying something for its simplicity. 9/10
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