Dining out

Suds and spuds chips with triple dipping sauces (tomato relish, cheddar sour cream, spicy bacon ranch) and steak salad from the James Street Gastropub and Speakeasy. The beer list was great and the food was good. The atmosphere was really cool- loved the exposed brick and arches. They played the oldies soundtrack of my childhood all night upstairs. Definitely worth a return. 

Balsamic chicken from Penn Brewery. I love some good fresh mozzarella and this hit the spot after a long dat on the trails. Always a favorite spot for us. 

Sorta Caprese Chicken

Last week's impulse grocery buy was a ball of smoked mozzarella. It reminded me of the smoked string cheese I buy at the Mars Cheese Castle when I visit my parents, and tip it tastes just as good!  After I opened the package you could smell the smokiness wafting towards you. 

So this isn't a fancy meal or even real recipe. I took a checked breast and cut it into two servings and just pan fried them with a little oil from my misto and salt and pepper to taste.  Meanwhile, I wilted a bunch of spinach for me and sliced some summer garden tomatoes.  Then I just took the spinach and made a little mound on a backing sheet and covered with my sliced tomatoes. My chicken went over this  whole David's went straight onto the baking sheet. Covered with a couple of slices of mozzarella and broiled! We served this with son ricotta stuffed gnocchi from a local place. 

David was so impressed with my fancy food porn he almost posted it on the book!  I think he even liked the simple and tasty food. 

Grilled salmon with fresh rosemary and garlic

So this was an easy salmon find from skinnytaste.com that we made the other day. 

I took a sprig of rosemary from the garden and a couple of cloves of garlic from the farmers market and chopped them up.  I rinsed off a nice sized salmon portion and patted it dry. Salmon was sales and peppered to taste, followed by topping with the fresh herbs. I drizzled with the juice of half a lemon and David grilled to perfection. 

I enjoyed my portion with some steamed fresh great and yellow beans from the farmers market. Yum! Summer eating at its best. 

Grilled pizza - sausage and pepper

Not the most exciting of recipes, but its been a while since I posted. 

We did the grilled pizza thing for gratuitous food Sunday. Mine was delicious - slices of grilled chicken sausage with chopped up farmers market peppers and slices of tomatoes from our garden topped off with a little pizza blend and some ricotta. It was a nice departure from my normal pizza   marguerite (although I've for some delicious smoked mozzarella that I'm looking forward to using later this week).  We enjoyed with some of Pennsylvania's finest table wine :)

I love pizza and I love summer eating. 

Honey and spice sautéed pork hand tacos

Source:  porkbeinspired.com

So I have a pork problem. I'm not opposed to it. I just find it to be an awkward food. Growing up pork meant shake and bake on thick butterflies chops. Yum. That's a win in my book, even in my 30's. But that's not really my food style anymore. Now I do enjoy pork tenderloin, and hello pulled pork. We buy chips when they go on sale (hello buy one get one!), however the last several times they have seemed to be overlooked and dry. I was flipping through a magazine the other day and saw this recipe. I knew we had pork to use this week so I thought I would give it a try.  

Weather has been pretty rough here today. Like massive flooding shutting down streets. So when I came home I rushed to get dinner started and done before things got bad again. Fail. Meat was marinated but not cooked. I had electric stoves growing up and am never really comfortable but God bless gas. Out electric starter didn't work but a long lighter and the gas got us there. 

Ingredients

1 lb pork thinly sliced into strips (by the time I trimmed away the fat we had 12 oz)

1 tbl olive oil

1 tbl honey

1 tbl soy sauce

1 tbl lemon juice

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp chili powder

Methods

Mix the marinade ingredients well and add pork. Stir to coat and let it sit 15 min. Cook on the sautéed pan for a few min until cooked through (or throw on the grill in a grill pan) 

Serve taco style!

I actually ate mine with a bunch of farmers market veggies and a little cheese in classic fajita salad style. Easy. Fast. Tasty. David approved. Win. 

Sorry for the crap pic.... But we still have no power:(

Buffalo chicken enchiladas

Who doesn't live dome Mexican? Or buffalo chicken?  Why not combine them? EmilyBites did and I gave it a try. Turned out on, but I will stick with my normal Mexican. This was a but too much kick for me and really, I like my Mexican a little more traditional or just tex-mex fusiony. Even David thought these were too spicy. 

Adapted from Emilybites.com

materials

12 oz chicken, cooked and shredded  

8 oz can tomato sauce

1/4 cup buffalo sauce 

1/2 T chili powder

1/2 T cumin

1/2 T garlic powder 

1/8 t sugar

3/4 cup triple cheddar

1/4-1/2 cup minced celery

1 T blue cheese dressing 

8 small corn tortillas 

methods

Combine the tomato sauce, buffalo sauce, chili poser, cumin, garlic powder, and sugar. Take 1/2 cup sauce and mix well with chicken, cheese, and blue cheese dressing. At this point I stopped to make David's veggie free enchiladas. For mine I mixed in the celery and completed the enchiladas. Spray with a little oil and bake at 425F for 8-10 min to get crunchy. Then lower the heat to 400, top with the remaining sauce and bake for 18-20 min. 

David added plenty of extra blue cheese dressing to cool his down. Ill be using some yogurt with my leftovers for lunch.  And later this week we will just go back to old fashioned turkey and black bean enchiladas. 

Baked Cod

Nothing super special here. We bought a bunch of cod when it was on sale, but I had no idea what we were going to do with it since frying was out. I found this handy little method of cooking them in Cooking Light. It was pretty quick ad actually turned out crunchy!  I imagine we will use this method again.

Ingredients

2 cod fillets, approx 4 is apiece

2 egg whites, lightly beaten

1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs

1/4 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder 

Black pepper and salt to taste 

2 tbl oil (olive or canola)

Methods

Preheat oven to 450F.

I started out with mixing the panko, paprika, onion powder, and garlic powder in a bowl. Next, I rinsed the cod and patted it dry and salted and peppered to taste. Next step - obviously, dip the cod into the egg followed by the breadcrumbs. 

Add the oil to an ovenproof pan on medium/medium-high. Pan fry the cod pieces for about 3 minutes on one side (until brown and crispy). I flipped the fish over and then baked it for about 7-8 minutes in the preheated oven. 

I enjoyed with a sauce made of Greek yogurt, lemon juice, and fresh dill. Definitely the best fake fried fish I've made.