Braised Chicken Thighs

Braised Chicken Thighs

Weekends are great for meals that take longer to cook.  What's better than smelling a meal simmering on the stove for hours?  Eating it!  Lemon and soy sauce marinade worked wonders on the chicken thighs.  I only added black pepper for more seasoning.  I served the meat with a side of quinoa and spooned the onion and garlic mix on top.  The thighs were literally falling off the bones, but I don't mind.  I'm pretty sure that my Guinea Pig enjoyed.

Baked Scotch Eggs

Baked Scotch Eggs

Once in a while I do something totally stupid.  I attempt making a dish that I've never eaten, simply because I would like to taste it.  This time around the focus was a scotch egg.

Having never eaten one, I didn't realize that it was supposed to be deep fried.  I looked at a few recipes for ingredients, but never bothered to look at the directions.  When the realization hit, I started looking for alternatives.  None were too pleasing.  Pretty much every source I came upon told me that my experiment would not turn out so good and the meat would split away from the egg.  I decided I had to try anyway.

I strayed pretty far from most recipes I saw.  Instead of the pork sausage, I used regular ground pork and spiced it up with salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and lots of garlic.  Instead of coating the meat wrapped eggs in raw egg and bread crumbs, I added it to the meat mixture as well.  That was my secret weapon.

I thought that maybe the reason why the meat was splitting away was it's lack of a binder.  Once the fat got cooked off, there was nothing left holding it together.  I was hoping my instinct was right and would pay off.

I watched the eggs bake cautiously, like a hawk watches its prey.  Expecting the meat to split away from the egg inside every time I turned the oven light on, but it never happened.  When I took the cooked eggs out of the oven, not one was affected.  All came out perfectly wrapped in a meat blanket.

As to the taste of the dish, it was great!  The Guinea Pig is already coming up with other uses for the pork mixture, such as pork burgers.

Kale Soba Noodles

Kale Soba Noodles

Today I decided to serve a vegetarian meal.   This was one of the quickest meals I've ever made and super simple as well.  Take half a bunch of kale, saute it with garlic, add soba noodles, season, and top with fried egg.  I added a bit of spices to mine while leaving The Guinea Pig's plain.  I've already been informed I'm going to be making this dish again.

Beef with Bell Pepper

Beef with Bell Pepper

For dinner tonight I made us some beef with red bell peppers that was served over basmati rice.  I started off by getting ingredients for a recipe and then changing it drastically.  It was seasoned with dry mustard, cayenne pepper, chili powder, black pepper, and salt.  I was a bit worried that it might turn out spicy, but in the end it had a nice little bite and was well within the Guinea Pig's tolerance levels.

BBQ Chicken Crostini

BBQ Chicken Crostini

Sometimes I just want a simple, quick meal.  Last night was one of those times.  I threw together a sour dough crostini topped with BBQ chicken, guacamole, and shredded cheddar.

I wanted the texture of shredded chicken, but I didn't plan ahead enough to make it from scratch.  Canned chicken to the rescue!  By itself, canned chicken is pretty bland.  Add to it some BBQ sauce and it starts tasting pretty good.  For a quick meal, it's a real time saver.

To make up for the chicken, I did make the guacamole from scratch.  It came out delicious and served as a great topping for the crostini.  Luckily there was some left over to have as a dip for chips.

Eggplant Dip

Eggplant Dip

We are doing a pot-luck-like thing at work, where every two weeks someone brings a dish starting with the next letter of the alphabet.  My turn is the letter "E."  My first inclination was to make an egg salad with bacon and avocado, but after a trial run I was looking for something else to bring.  After being left on the counter for a little bit of time, the whole mixture turned an unappealing brown-ish color.  This didn't change the taste, but I was worried the color would be a prohibitive turn-off for most of my co-workers.

As I kept thinking of what I could do to improve the egg salad recipe appearance without changing the taste profile, I kept coming up with nothing.  Then I started thinking of what else I could make that started with "E" and would be more successful than the browning egg salad and came up with eggplant dip.

My family has a very delicious recipe for eggplant dip, but I wanted to create my own, as I usually do.  The dip dry run was a success and I will be bringing it in to work in another week or so.  I plan to serve the eggplant dip with some mini-toasts.  I hope that my co-workers enjoy it as much as The Guinea Pig has. 

Prosciutto and Fig on a Bed of Butter Lettuce

Prosciutto and Fig
on a Bed of Butter Lettuce

It's summer time and there is lots of fresh produce to enjoy.  Last night, I raided the fridge and through together a nice, light dinner.  All it took was a few leaves of butter lettuce, a slice of prosciutto, sliced figs, sliced tomatoes, sliced avocado, and a bit of goat cheese crumble on top.