The Perfect Lasagne

Jun 272012
 

I’ve fallen in love with the quirky cook­ing show, Extra Vir­gin, star­ring Debi Mazar and her Ital­ian native hus­band. I recently tried one of their mouth water­ing recipes, bolog­nese lasagne with a besci­amella sauce. It is divine! I’m going to be upfront with you, it’s a sim­ple yet time con­sum­ing recipe. How­ever, one bite and you’ll know it was worth all the effort.  The main thing you’ll notice that sets this recipe apart from most, is the lack of cheese. Instead you use a besci­amella sauce that is made from but­ter, flour and milk. It turns what would be an ordi­nary dish into an extra­or­di­nary one!

I fol­lowed the recipe as directed, except I omit­ted the nut­meg sim­ply because I don’t like it. If you need a meal to impress, look no fur­ther… Serve it with a sim­ple salad and rus­tic Ital­ian bread. Of course, don’t for­get the vino!

Recipe Here

(cour­tesy of Gabriele Cor­cos and Debi Mazar)

Share
 No Responses »

Caffeinated Cows

Nov 162011
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m shar­ing one of my secret steak mari­nades today! That’s right. It’ll be float­ing in cyber space for­ever now. I rarely order steak out at a restau­rant because I think my ver­sion tastes just as good, if not bet­ter. My secret ingre­di­ent is espresso. It adds a sub­tle earthy fla­vor, while ten­der­iz­ing the steak.

My first choice cut of meat would be a rib eye bone-in. Oth­er­wise, you can choose what­ever cut is your favorite, just be sure it is a high qual­ity choice. (no slow cook­ing beefs)

Mari­nade: (4 steaks)

  • ½ cup espresso (or really strong coffee)
  • ½ cup soy sauce
  • ½ cup red wine
  • 2 gar­lic cloves crushed
  • coarse salt
  • fresh ground pepper
  • red pep­per flakes (optional)

 What to do:

  1. Salt and pep­per your steaks generously.
  2. Mix all the other ingre­di­ents together in a shal­low pan (like a casse­role dish). Place your steaks in the mari­nade. The longer you let them sit, the bet­ter. I usu­ally mari­nade them 2–6 hours depend­ing on how pre­pared I was that day. At your halfway point, flip the steaks on their other side in the sauce. Note: If you’re let­ting them mari­nade for more than 2 hours, be sure to cover your pan and refrigerate.
  3. My pre­ferred method of cook­ing the steaks is on the bbq. Noth­ing can repli­cate that unadul­ter­ated smoky fla­vor. If you do not have access to a bar­be­cue, you can use the oven or stove top grill pan.
  4. It’s very impor­tant to let your steaks rest for ten min­utes after they’re done cook­ing. This allows the juices to stay in. I always fin­ish with a lit­tle bit of salt right before serv­ing. It melts per­fectly into the steaks. (My mouth is water­ing as I type this!)

How long to cook your steak:

Every bar­be­cue, oven, and stove work dif­fer­ently. These are just gen­eral guide­lines. Please adjust as nec­es­sary. For a 1 inch thick steak, 4 1/2 min­utes per side for rare, 6 1/2 min­utes per side for medium and 9 min­utes per side for well done. The more “give” or “bounce” you feel when press­ing into the steak with your fin­ger, the rarer it is. Try not to cut into the steak to check if it’s done. That will pro­vide an escape path for all those won­der­ful juices.

Buon Appetito!

 

PersonalWine.com

Share
 1 Response »

Beef With Broccoli Everyone Will Love!

Jun 222011
 

I love Chi­nese food but it doesn’t really love me. Okay, sorry TMI… The good news is I found a super healthy and easy beef with broc­coli recipe. I just made it the other night and even my “picky” 16 year old son said it was bet­ter than any restau­rant! It’s a sim­ple din­ner that is packed full of fla­vor. I think I’ve solved your “what’s for din­ner?” dilema for today. Find the recipe here.

Tips:

–Use brown rice to make it extra friendly on your waistline.

–I used a lit­tle more soy sauce then the recipe called for.

–Don’t over cook the broc­coli for bet­ter tex­ture and flavor.

–Dou­ble the recipe and have left overs for lunches or din­ner the next night. (that’s what I did)

–I don’t love gin­ger so next time I will cut the amount in half. How­ever I know it’s needed to add the nec­es­sary fla­vor pro­files. If you like it, don’t change a thing!

–Use chop­sticks to make din­ner seem a lit­tle extra special/authentic.

–If you want to make this for com­pany, a party or even a pic­nic, buy cool Chi­nese boxes and serve the beef with broc­coli in them indi­vid­u­ally. Attach chop­sticks and a cookie on top of the box with raffia/twine. You can find a large vari­ety of pat­terned and dif­fer­ent sizes of Chi­nese boxes at craft stores such as Michaels and party sup­ply stores like Party City.

 

 

 

 

 

Share
 1 Response »

“Think Outside The Bun”…and The Cow!

May 032011
 

Mahi Mahi fish tacos!

Sooo deli­cious and good for you too. A few weeks ago I decided to try to make a healthy ver­sion of fish tacos. I was pleas­antly sur­prised at the bold fla­vors you could get with­out the fat. So last night I decided to have a few of my friends over and treat them to some mahi mahi tacos. They were a hit! Unless of course they were hid­ing the tacos in their nap­kins on their laps, because their plates were licked clean. ;) Recipe here

 

 

 

 

Tip:

With sum­mer around the cor­ner, a lot of peo­ple are being health con­scious to fit into their itsy bitsy polka dot­ted bikini. Make an appe­tizer that has healthy options as well. Put out fresh salsa, gua­camole and chips. The healthy twist is to put a plate of raw veg­gies (car­rots, radishes, bell pep­per, cel­ery)  out as well. They can use the veg­gies in place of the tor­tilla chips to dip the gua­camole and salsa. There are always left over chips at my house, but never one car­rot left! ;)

 

 

 

 

Share
 4 Responses »

Brown Bag a Free Trip to Hawaii! (no joke!)

Apr 292011
 

What’s the catch? Here it goes and any­body can do it…Start pack­ing your lunches and start eat­ing din­ner at home more. Obvi­ously this con­cept isn’t new or rocket sci­ence. How­ever I promise the money you will save will get you a trip to Hawaii or what­ever des­ti­na­tion you’re dream­ing about. I stum­bled across this cool lunch sav­ings cal­cu­la­tor (why not use it for din­ner too) that opened my eyes to how much I could save by mak­ing bal­anced changes. Below is an exam­ple of how I can cut back and save. You will be shocked! This is a must read…

My Results–

LUNCH– Cur­rently I am eat­ing out 4 lunches a week at $10 a pop. If I just cut that in half (and my brown bag lunches are $3 a pop) to 2 lunches out a week I save $672 a year!

DINNER– Cur­rently I am eat­ing out 3 din­ners a week that vary from a quick run to Rubios or a relax­ing din­ner sip­ping saki and eat­ing Alba­core Spe­cial rolls. If I cut that back to eat­ing out just once a week I could pocket, drum roll please… $960.00 a year!

That’s a grand total of $1632.00 of sav­ings a year! Enough to get myself a ticket to Hawaii, stay at a great hotel, rent a car and drink plenty of Mai Tai’s!

Notice this cal­cu­lated just my own per­sonal sav­ings. The real­ity is my whole fam­ily (3 of us) would do it as well, and our sav­ings would be over $4,000.00.  Hav­ing gone to Maui this past fall, I can say that is plenty of money for a fam­ily of 3 to frolic on the white sands of Hawaii.

You Can Do It–

In order to actu­ally save the money, it would be wise to cal­cu­late your monthly sav­ings and actu­ally set it aside by deposit­ing it into your des­ig­nated vaca­tion sav­ings account. (for exam­ple on the last day of each month) Oth­er­wise the money might just get spent some­where else like going to the movies or buy­ing a cool gift for me. Do what­ever works for you, just be sure to do some­thing to put it aside as it’s being saved!

So if you are cut­ting back due to the econ­omy and are won­der­ing how you are ever going to get to go on vaca­tion again, maybe this could be your solution.We are going to put this to the test. I will give you updates now and then on our progress. More impor­tantly I will give tips and tricks to mak­ing great brown bag lunches! No peanut but­ter and jelly recipes here!! Stay tuned…

 

 

 

Share
 3 Responses »

What’s Better Than an Amazing Dinner?

Apr 272011
 
Ryan's chicken dinner

 

One you don’t have to make!

I arrived home last night to the most amaz­ing aro­mas of yum­mi­ness! (yes, I know that’s not a real word) As I walked into the kitchen I found my hus­band in a full bat­tle posi­tion in front of the stove chop­ping, toss­ing and flip­ping. My cranky mood instantly turned to hap­pi­ness. Let me tell you, that’s no small feat. (I have a size 10! haha­haha) Alright, enough of my silli­ness. Let’s get down to busi­ness. He made a fab­u­lous, gourmet 474 calo­rie meal, chicken with lemon-leek lin­guine. recipe here I am a self pro­claimed picky eater and I can hon­estly say this meal was fit for a princess! Sooooo if you want to be a lit­tle roman­tic, feel like mak­ing mom happy or you’re in the dog house, cook away…This is a healthy meal, packed with fla­vors that won’t break the bank. ($25 to feed 6 includ­ing a bot­tle of chilled vino) Buon Appetito!

Ryan cooking leeksRyan's ingredients

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ryan's chicken in the panRyan's pasta

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ryan's dinner gone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things my hubby learned:

- start drink­ing the wine BEFORE you cook instead of after

- don’t quit your day job

- appre­ci­ate what your wife does every other day

- it’s okay if the smoke alarm goes off once, but if it goes off twice, get the fire extin­guisher pronto ;)

 

 

 

 

 

Share
 7 Responses »