Another Cooking Fear Bites the Dust

It’s Tuesday which has me excited for several reasons—

1.Glee comes on tonight! And this week it features guest star Neil Patrick Harris which I am very excited about.

2.Also coming on tonight—Lost! I have been a Lost fan since Season 1 (which is still, in my opinion, the best season ever) and even though I have not completely understood all of the series’ twists and turns, I have seen it through and I am really excited about the remaining two episodes and hopeful that it will all come together in the end.

3.I faced another one of my cooking fears in making dinner tonight….scallops. Now I am not really sure why I have been so reluctant to try my hand at this over the years…maybe because scallops done right are wonderful but scallops done poorly are just plain gross?

I decided to try a relatively simple preparation to start with—Seared Scallops with Spinach and Bacon.  I mean come on—scallops seared in bacon fat? How could you possibly go wrong with that?

Overall I would give the recipe and resulting dish a B. Definitely an A for presentation—Jason and I both thought it looked delightful. But I was a bit disappointed with the result. Part of it was certainly my fault—the scallops were not all the same size and I think the smaller ones ended up suffering in order for the larger ones to cook all the way through. In retrospect, I probably should have pulled the smaller ones off sooner. Also, I accidentally bought a pre-washed package of regular spinach instead of baby spinach and did not realize my mistake until I added the spinach to the pan. The baby spinach probably would have been a bit more tender. Overall, I’d say dinner was good, but not as great as I was hoping for.  But I was happy to have successfully faced down another cooking fear.

Seared Scallops with Spinach and Bacon
Adapted from Cooking Light

Ingredients:
3 slices of center-cut bacon
6 jumbo sea scallops (about 1 lb)
½ white onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
6 ounces fresh spinach
Salt and pepper

1.Cook bacon in large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp (do not use non-stick as it will prevent the scallops from properly searing). Remove back from pan and set aside, reserving 1 TBL drippings in the pan.  Increase heat to high.
2.Pat scallops dry with paper towels. Sprinkle scallops evenly with salt and pepper. Add scallops to pan, cooking 2-3 minutes per side or until done. Transfer to a plate and tent with foil to keep warm.
3.Reduce heat to medium-high. Add onion and garlic to pan and sauté for about three minutes, stirring frequently. Add half of spinach, cook 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add remaining spinach and cook until just wilted. Remove from heat.  Add salt and pepper.
4.Divide spinach mixture among plates and top with chopped bacon and scallops.

What a Good Day Looks Like

Yesterday, something amazing happened-- I woke up in my own bed!  I had a busy (but not overwhelmingly so) and productive day at work. I worked out. I made dinner (more on that in a minute). And I watched Glee.

It was a good day.

I decided to give myself a little bit of time to ease back into full blown cooking mode by making an easy dish that also happens to be a tried and true favorite—Thai Beef Salad.  This salad is something that Jason and I have made numerous times over the years; it is so familiar I barely need the recipe anymore!

You start by making a marinade/dressing from lime juice, soy sauce, canola oil, brown sugar, fresh ginger, and garlic-chili paste. Half of the mixture is poured over London broil which is then set aside to marinate for a couple of hours. The other half is reserved to be used as a salad dressing. It is a really flavorful mix that has just the right combination of salty, sweet, and spicy (if you like that sort of thing which we definitely do).

The salad part is even easier--- salad greens are tossed with fresh basil, cilantro, shallots and the reserved dressing.  In the past I have also included red or yellow pepper which can be a nice addition if you feel like jazzing things up. But it is pretty darn good on its own. Try it….I’ll bet you like it :)

Thai Beef Salad
Adapted from Ellie Krieger

Ingredients:
1 (1lb) piece of London broil (could also use flank steak)
3 TBL lime juice
3 TBL low-sodium soy sauce
3 TBL canola oil
2 TBL firmly packed brown sugar
1 ½ teaspoons minced or ground fresh ginger (since we make this salad fairly often, I tend to buy a jar of ground fresh ginger and keep it in the fridge—you can find it in the produce section).
1 ¼ teaspoons garlic-chili sauce (more or less depending on how spicy you like it)
Salad greens
1-2 shallots, thinly sliced (quantity depends on size…I had an enormous one yesterday so only used one)
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1 cup fresh basil leaves, sliced into ribbons

1.Make the marinade/dressing. Combine lime juice, soy sauce, canola oil, brown sugar, ginger, and garlic-chili sauce together in a small bowl. Place meat in a sealable bag and add half the mixture to the bag. Seal bag and marinate in the refrigerator for at least one hour (the longer the better—you could even do overnight). Cover the remaining mixture and stick in the fridge for later.
2.Preheat the oven to broil and line the bottom of the broiling tray with aluminum foil (it will help with clean up).  Place meat on the grated top of the broiling tray and broil about 8 minutes per side for medium (for medium rare, the recipe suggests 5 minutes per side; if you want it more like medium-well I’d go with 10 minutes). Let the meat rest for about 5 minutes and then slice thinly.
3.While the meat is cooking, combine the lettuce, shallots, cilantro and basil in a large bowl. Add the reserved dressing and toss to coat. Top with beef and serve.

A Very Merry Un-Birthday

My birthday is next week but since I am going to be spending the actual day of my birth traveling for work, we decided to do the “official” celebrating yesterday (although Jason has promised to make me French toast for breakfast on my actual bday…and even bought challah bread for it!).

Birthday French Toast Challah!

Birthdays have always been a big deal in my family which is why my parents drove down from PA to help me celebrate.  This year my “pretend birthday” (as Jason and I chose to call it all day) consisted of:

1) Glee-themed decorations (in honor of one of my fave TV shows). Backstory:  My mom loves holidays of any sort and she tends to go all out. To this day, she still likes to come up with a birthday “theme” every year and goes to great lengths to ensure that there are decorations to match.

2) Dinner at a restaurant of my choosing. As you might imagine, planning where to go for my birthday dinner is something I take very seriously these days (although for most of my childhood my restaurant of choice was always one of those Japanese steakhouses where they cook at your table …you can see I’ve been obsessed with food and cooking from an early age).  So it might surprise you to learn that I did not select a restaurant from my wish list. Instead we went to a place I have been many times before—The Liberty Tavern. Liberty happens to be my favorite all-around restaurant. It is the type of place where you could go for a nice meal out or for a pizza and a beer. The menu changes seasonally and the food is quite good. This year, my birthday dinner consisted of mussels in smoked tomato broth (so good I think I’d be happy to eat them every day) and scallops with a brown-butter sauce, fregola, and black trumpet mushrooms.

3) An ice cream cake (or frozen custard cake if you want to be precise about it) from The Dairy Godmother. This is another favorite of ours. They come up with the most interesting and delicious (and often seasonal) flavors of custard (which change every other day) and sorbets. Some of my favorite flavors include sweet potato pecan, cranberry crunch, salted caramel, and apple cider sorbet. This year, Jason got me a German chocolate custard cake and it was pretty darn good!

4) A number of food/cooking themed gifts. Although I have issued a "no kitchen items allowed" edict for gifts while we continue to live in our current apartment (where we are busting at the seams kitchen-wise...more on that at a later date), it does not currently apply to cookbooks (although perhaps not for much longer given that my cookbook shelf is about full now). Yesterday I received The Pioneer Woman Cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (both very blog-y choices), as well as the Top Chef Quickfire cookbook. Lots of new recipes to try!


All in all I’d say I had a very merry un-birthday indeed!