Category: Dinner

Pasta Puttanesca with Canned Salmon

8/31/2014

This recipe comes from Kathy's kitchen. We have adapted it from the original Martha Stewart recipe. It makes for a great weeknight, very fast meal.

Ingredients

8 oz whole wheat spaghetti noodles, cooked al dente
3 tbls olive oil
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp red-pepper flakes
10 anchovies, crushed
Two 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes
3 tbls capers
1/2 cup kalamata olives, chopped
1 jar of salmon, drained

Instructions

Cook pasta in boiling, salted water until it's almost done; drain. We finish cooking it in the pasta sauce. While the pasta is cooking, heat the olive oil in a large skillet and cook the garlic, red-pepper flakes, and anchovies for 1-2 minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato juice, capers, olives, and salmon. Lower heat to simmer and cook, until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Stir the pasta into the sauce and finish cooking, 2 minutes. Serve and enjoy.

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Adam's Salmon Dip

8/31/2014

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This is my favorite salmon dip. It makes great a brewing snack. Sometimes we eat it with a salad for dinner. Like a good dinner party, it's fantastic after the ingredients mingle for a few hours.

Ingredients

Four half-pint jars of salmon
Grate a medium onion using a box grater
3-4 dill pickles, grated
1/3 cup mayo
1/3 cup yellow mustard
2 tsp liquid smoke
Dried dill
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper

Instructions

Drain the liquid from 3 of the 4 cans of salmon.
Drain half of the liquid from the grated onion.
Mix ingredients from salmon to liquid smoke together. Add dill, cayenne, and pepper to taste.

Take the dip to the
next level,
and make a tuna melt:

Sough dough bread
Broccoli or spiced clover sprouts
Tomato
Cheddar cheese
Salmon dip

Cook this in a skillet as if you were making a grilled cheese sandwich. It's good.

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The dark days are over

3/8/2014

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This winter was dark and mild, and we were inside a lot. Adam served up a tasty Vietnamese noodle soup time and again over the months. Here is a post dedicated to the juxtaposition of Alaskan winter days and Vietnamese beef broth soup.

Matt's ice candles are the last vestiges of the glowing sun,
illuminating the impassive dusk that shrouds us
all from the convalescent, radiating warmth of a far-away season.

Pho	…and then there is Pho, the belly-warming, soul-soothing broth soup, which is offered as compensation.

Adam has adapted his recipe from Cook's Illustrated Vietnamese Beef Pho recipe, which was published this winter. We do a few things differently:

Roll the ground beef into meat balls and keep them to serve in the final dish instead of throwing them away.
We add cilantro and jalapeños to the bowl.
We double the amount of vegetables in the bowl that we add the broth to.

This quick, at-home broth is what I prefer to any kind of Pho I've had in restaurants. It warmed us up, and we must have served it for dinner and get-togethers for 10 meals.

Not that we won't have it again anytime soon, but I'm ready to say thank you and good-bye to the recompensing soup and hello to the stalwart sun of spring.

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Thanksgiving

12/8/2013

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Adam and I were really excited to funkify our own Thanksgiving meal. We started planning about two weeks in advance. Early planning would establish that:

Matt would create a brothy mushroom soup to replace the traditional dressing.
There would be sausage.
The mash potatoes would be sweet potatoes.
There would be brussel sprouts.

This story has two parts:

Part 1

In a trial run on the Saturday before, we decided to have a free-style cooking session to learn a few lessons before T-day.

So, we were sitting around the kitchen at the Vogel's house and we started throwing out ideas... Asian was an easy first commitment. Then, some one threw out, "Hot dogs?" ...and it was on.

Mike and Erika made steam buns from scratch.

Adam worked on pork prep, and I whipped up a mixture of herbs and spices to flavor the dogs.

Asian-style hot dog
2 lbs pork
1/2 cup shallots
2-4 chiles
1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 cup cilantro
1 1/2 tbls ginger

White fungus mushroom salad from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet was reminiscent of sauerkraut. Delicious.

Mike and Erika had made it for lunch that day, and we liked it so much we had it again for dinner. It's a must try.

Test-meal conclusions:

We tasted, tested, shifted gears. We even made a delicious Asain style mayonnaise. And the dish wouldn't have been complete without Sirracha.

From this awesome trial-and-error meal we learned a few lessons along the way:

1. Add fat.
2. Don't boil the sausage; they burst.
3. We want to do this more often.

Part 2

Adam tracked down some goose and pheasant to compose a sausage.

T-day

We were small, but mighty… Kathy, Matt, Jason, and Adam and I set out to funkify a holiday.

Luckily, we would have redemption on the actual Thanksgiving, but on this day it was about marching to the beat of our own drum, it was about reinventing everything, it was about gettin' funky.

Arctic sunset

Do you believe in magic?

I do. I do when it comes in the form of this mushroom soup. Matt worked this on the stove the whole day. The alchemy that resulted was a magnificent, earthy, rich yet refreshing soup that was deeply satisfying. I don't know what went into it, and it feels right to leave it a mystery...

Goose and Pheasant Sausage

1 cup Lexington Brewing Co. Kentucky Bourbon Ale
4 tbls kosher salt
5 tbls garlic
3 1/2 tbls pepper
4 tsp dried sage (from Uncle Eddie's garden)
1 1/2 tsp ground dried thyme
1 tsp store-bought sage

The goose had plenty of fat, but the pheasant was much more lean, so we added olive oil to the pheasant sausage.

Sides

Instead of potatoes, I thought a sweet potato and cauliflower puree would be a nice twist. I undercooked them at first, and underestimated how long to cook/how small to cut the cauliflower. So Kathy had a hell of a time, but she was MVP for side dishes that night.

Roasted brussel sprouts

As the sun retreated, we finished the meal.

Adam prepared the sausage in a beer and onion sauté.

We have so much to be grateful for. Blessings abound this year, and I am truly truly thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Bourbon Glazed Smoked Short Ribs

8/18/2013

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Laura and Shane are leaving the state, so Laura's last supper request was, "those ribs you guys made that time you put bacon on top."

This time, the idea was to use the drippings from the sous vide bags as a base for a pumped up barbecue sauce.

The Drippings

The Rub

Reduce

Strain

The Sauce

Party Time

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Goat Cheese and Vegetable Risotto

6/1/2013

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This is pretty indulgent. We are talking mac and cheese for grown ups here. It was perfection on this cloudy day along with a buffalo sirloin that we threw in the sous vide for a couple of hours and finished on the grill. This recipe is unchanged from Simply Organic.

Ingredients

4 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons evoo
1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves
1 cup Arborio rice
4 oz goat cheese
1 bag frozen peas
2 tomatoes chopped
2 tablespoons fresh basil

Instructions

Heat broth in a sauce pan to a simmer.
Heat evoo in heavy pot and add fennel, garlic, and rice; cook for 5 minutes.
Add the broth 1/2 cup at a time for 20 minutes.
Stir remaining ingredients and cook for 2 minutes.

Buffalo Sirloin

Right out of the sous vide at 132 degrees for 2.5 hours

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Jambalaya

3/13/2013

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I spent the morning reading about the fundamentals of a good jambalaya. This was what Adam and I came up with after a morning of research and brewing.

When we got to the business of cooking up this recipe, I set this scene...

New cocktail: Gumbo Fizz
Music: Alabama Shakes (Thanks Shane and Laura for the music find, so good)

Cocktail

Gumbo Fizz

2 oz gin
1 teaspoon cointreau or triple sec
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz cream (next time: coconut milk?)
3 oz club soda

In a shaker, combine the gin, lemon juice, triple sec, and cream; shake well. Strain into a glass filled with ice. Add the club soda and stir well.

Ingredients

Fresh Veggie Mix:
1 spanish onion
3 celery stalk
1 green bell pepper

Chipotle Mix:
2 red bell peppers
5 garlic cloves
1/4 cup chipotle peppers in adobo

Rice:
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs
12 oz andouille sausage, 1/2 sliced on the bias
1/2 cup vodka
1 can fire roasted tomatoes
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 cup clam juice
2 tsp fresh thyme
1 tbls fresh oregano
2 bay leaves
1 pound crab legs

Garnish:
3 tbls fresh basil
green onions

Instructions

Dice fresh veggie mix in the food processor, transfer to a bowl.
Prepare the chipotle mix by placing the red bell peppers and garlic on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and broil until nicely charred. Transfer to the food processor and add chipotle, puree until smooth.
Salt, pepper, and olive oil chicken thighs. Brown in the dutch oven, but be careful not to overcook. Set aside.
Add andouille sausage, brown, set aside.
Add vodka and fire roasted tomatoes and cook until reduced.
Add fresh veggie mix and red pepper flakes, cook until softened.
Add the chipotle mix, clam stock, water, herbs, rice, chicken, and chorizo. Cover and cook in oven for 45 minutes or until the majority of the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender.
Remove from oven, fluff the rice and add the crab meat.*
Garnish with fresh basil and green onions.

*Note: The first time we cooked this, we forgot to cook the crab legs while the rice was in the oven, so Adam added the crab legs right to the pot of rices after we pulled it out of the oven. 15 minutes later we sliced the crab legs open and mixed it in.

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Pasta Puttanesca with Canned Salmon

Ingredients

Instructions

Adam's Salmon Dip

Ingredients

Instructions

Take the dip to the
next level,
and make a tuna melt:

The dark days are over

Pho

Thanksgiving

Part 1

Part 2

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bourbon Glazed Smoked Short Ribs

The Drippings

The Rub

Reduce

Strain

The Sauce

Party Time

Goat Cheese and Vegetable Risotto

Ingredients

Instructions

Buffalo Sirloin

Jambalaya

Cocktail

Ingredients

Instructions

Archives

Categories

Pasta Puttanesca with Canned Salmon

Ingredients

Instructions

Adam's Salmon Dip

Ingredients

Instructions

Take the dip to the next level, and make a tuna melt:

The dark days are over

Pho

Thanksgiving

Part 1

Part 2

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bourbon Glazed Smoked Short Ribs

The Drippings

The Rub

Reduce

Strain

The Sauce

Party Time

Goat Cheese and Vegetable Risotto

Ingredients

Instructions

Buffalo Sirloin

Jambalaya

Cocktail

Ingredients

Instructions

Archives

Categories

Take the dip to the
next level,
and make a tuna melt: