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Quickie Cooking: Turkey Pastrami on Ciabatta

As promised, here is the recipe for using the NewZealand Cheddar I wrote about yesterday in a quick sandwich. To be honest, the sandwich is so quick and easy to put together that it hardly qualifies as a recipe – but then again, that is what sandwiches are intended to be, aren’t they? A quick and easy meal to put together, especially for lunch on a weekend when you’ve already had a heavy breakfast and need just a small snack to hold you over till dinner.

I am also a firm believer that if you use good quality ingredients, you don’t need a whole lot more to gussy up your meals, especially something that involves no cooking and just merely assembling the ingredients, like sandwiches. For this sandwich, I used organic ciabatta bread from Whole Foods, turkey pastrami from my local deli, and the cheddar – that’s it. A few slices of the pastrami, topped with a couple of slivers of the cheese , thrown into the toaster over for a few mins to warm up and melt the cheese, and viola, my light lunch was ready! The fresh bread crisped up beautifully, and as you can see from the picture, the slices were nice and airy enough to ensure the base didn’t overwhelm the fillings. The cheese added a nice tangy undertaste to the meaty pastrami while allowing the smokiness of the turkey meat to shine through.

If you have your ciabatta sliced thin like I did, you can use this to serve up some nice open-faced sandwiches for a crowd; with football playoff season upon us, this can be your take on home-made panini to serve up! The turkey pastrami offers a nice change from the traditional red meats, and you can throw in a few veggies (I like cucumber slices) to hearten up the sandwiches.

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Filed under American, Lunch, Quick and Easy

Posted on January 20th, 2010 |

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Quickie Cooking: Pan Fried Flounder

Fish is one of the healthiest foods around, as long as it is fresh, lightly seasoned, and not coated in ton’s of breading (Long John’s Silver – I’m looking at you). I used to fear any fish other than Salmon or Tuna, but one of my resolution’s for this year was to each more fish, so I figured I’d begin by trying some fresh fish fillet’s from my local seafood mart to begin with.

This week, they said the flounder was fresh (and usually, fresh fish from local sources is pretty cheap also) – so I bought a pound! If you’re in the market and see something fresh but worry about not knowing what to cook with them – don’t fret! In this day of plentiful internet recipes, within minutes of coming home you can find a quick and easy recipe That’s exactly what I did – looked up a few recipes, picked up some easy tips from them, and proceeded to do a quick pan fry of the fillets for a wonderful, crispy coating with minimal effort and minimal fat.

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Filed under American, Dinner, Quick and Easy

Posted on January 12th, 2010 |

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Hearty Healthy Waffles with Wheatgerm

Since I have designated the first month of this new decade to discovering healthy sources of energy, it is only natural I start with the first and most important (atleast it should be) meal of the day – breakfast. Very often in this hectic world, we reduce breakfast to a rushed, on-the-go chore that we try to finish as efficiently / quickly / cheaply as possible. We don’t realize that this is the first chance we get to refuel our bodies after what in essence is a 6-8 hr fast (you ARE getting atleast that much sleep most nights, aren’t you?). Following some simple make-ahead steps can help you ensure you get a healthy, quick breakfast during the weekdays without resorting to packaged foods or drive-through junk – more about those in a future post.

For now, lets think about the weekend breakfast. The one time you get some time to put together a tasty, wholesome breakfast and actually enjoy eating it. It is the meal to put back some much needed nutrition in your body after a tough week – but you also want it to be tasty enough to look forward to. Make it hearty and healthy enough, and you will be rewarded with enough energy to whatever your weekend has in store for you – a great workout, grocery shopping, household chores, shopping trips – or just channel surfing from your couch.

I found a great recipe to make waffles, my favorite weekend breakfast item, much healthier and tastier than those frozen Eggo’s. Using wheatgerm, a top 10 health food, really ups the nutritional factor – and you can still use butter in the recipe to ensure they stay delicious. Though light and fluffy, they are hearty enough by themselves, but can form a perfect foundation for a lazy weekend brunch – because lets admit it, most weekend breakfast’s really turn into brunches, dont they?

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Filed under American, Breakfast

Posted on January 4th, 2010 |

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Christmas cheater Pumpkin Pie

Christmas is the last true time in the year when we all get to cheat on our little personal food promises, before the week of the Resolutions is upon us. These can be little promises like “I will eat only one slice of pie for dessert”, or “I will not drink an alcoholic beverage before 5pm”, or “I will limit myself to just a little of that delicious, artery clogging stuffing that Aunt Edna prepared”. Or they can be bigger ones like “I will never use ready-made pie filling”.

Confession time – I broke that last one because I really wanted pumpkin pie for Christmas, and since we were only cooking for a small, intimate gathering of exactly 3 and already had 6 dishes lined up – I just didnt think whipping up a pie from scratch was worth it; and in the end, since I got an extra hour to join in a game of Monopoly with the wifey and the little brother (the other guests at this cozy little celebration) it definitely was the right decision I would say!

Since I had the oven cranked up to prepare some of the other items, it didn’t take much time to throw in this pie (actually got TWO pies from the one can) at the beginning of the evening – allowing for the couple of hours needed to fully cool ensure we had a perfectly set, delicious dessert at the end of gorging on the other items. A couple of homemade touches ensured the pie did not taste like it just came out of a can!

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Filed under American, Dessert, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 28th, 2009 |

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Ridiculously easy Goat Cheese-filled Puff Pastry

Puff pastry is one of the most delicious things in this world – crispy, flaky, buttery, and filled with goodness. At times when we crave the puffs but are too lazy to pull out the pastry sheets and roll them out, etc., we turn to the Pepperidge Farm puff pastry shells. And at times when we are too lazy to even whip up a quick filling for the shells, be it savory or sweet, we stick a hunk of whatever soft cheese we have on hand and end up with a deliciously decadent, ridiculously easy-to-make appetizer.

This is a simple, straightforward recipe for days when you want to just pop a couple of these in the toaster oven for a quick snack, or for when you have the oven cranked up for a day of baking and want a bonus appetizer without any extra effort. This can also stand in as a deceptively sophisticated-looking Hors d’oeuvre, and you could easily kick it up a notch by just mixing a few spices, herbs or veggies in with the cheese. Over the weekend, the wife and I just wanted to snuggle in and not do too much cooking, so we kept it simple and used up a dollop of some flavored goat-cheese that we had on hand to enjoy a hot snack on a cold Sunday night.

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Filed under American, Appetizers, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 21st, 2009 |

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Snowy Chicken and Mushroom soup

The north-east was hit with a massive snowstorm tonight, and since we live in an apartment with wall-to-wall french windows that means being free to enjoy the beauty of the falling snow without worrying about shoveling! It is also a perfect night for a bright and fresh soup that warms you up but is not too heavy. This chicken and mushroom soup has a clean cream background, classic Mirepoix flavors kicked up with some spice, and a punch of fresh thyme to really brighten it up. This isn’t your depressing, monotone, blended ‘cream of’ winter soup; a snowy white night deserves a colorful soup like this!

Now, I have nothing against homemade ‘Cream of’ soups, but there is something about simmering everything to a colorless muddle and blending it till not an ounce of texture is left (often involving the thrilling and dangerous act of transferring hot liquid from the pot to the blender back to the pot) that just seems to go against the spirit of a snowy day. When you sit back to enjoy the beauty of nature, you want to partake in the enjoyment of earthy flavors in a whole form. A rough chop on the vegetables, a light hand on the spices, half the usual cooking time of regular soup-making will leave you with a mouthful of flavor with enjoy time to lay back and enjoy the wondrous snowflakes as the wifey and I did tonight.

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Filed under American, Soups

Posted on December 19th, 2009 |

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Toasted bread with Bitter-sweet Gananche

On days when you want a quick and easy dessert, but something a bit more sophisticated than just a scoop of the Haagen-Dazs from your freezer - well, nothing beats a hot toasted slice of crusty bread draped with warm chocolate ganache. It’s not a traditional combination, but one that really works because of the splendid contrast in textures and flavors of the bread and chocolate.

A few weeks ago, the La Maison Du Chocolat store near my workplace had a ganache tasting. The wife and I first fell in love with Maison chocolates during our trip to Paris last year, and I was elated when a branch opened up right on Wall Street soon after - I never miss any of their tasting events. At the ganache event, I was greeted with two chocolatiers (that word exists, right?) melting thick ganache in sparkling white ceramic bowl. The surprise was that instead of a plate of strawberries or marshmallows to dip in the ganache, they put out plates covered with small pieces of various bread – the regular savory breads, mind you, not any sweetened ones. The ganache was slowly drizzled over the piece of bread and handed over to the guests.

When I admitted that I’d never encountered this combination before, the lady reassured me that this was the best way to enjoy the flavors of the rich ganache. One bite and I understood exactly why – the hearty flavor of the bread stood up quite well to the richness of the chocolate, acting as the foundation for the deep flavor of the cocoa to shine through. The rough and crumbly texture of the toasted bread melded well with the velvety creaminess of the ganache, providing a little crunch at the end of the luscious chocolate. ♥ Continue reading Toasted bread with Bitter-sweet Gananche

Filed under American, Dessert, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 18th, 2009 |

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Light and Buttery Waffles

Waffles were made for cold, wintry Sunday morning breakfasts. Nothing beats the crispy, golden brown warmth of a home-made waffle on such mornings; yes, I said homemade – not those ice-puck eggo’s from the freezer. Who wants to open up the freezer when it’s chilly enough anyways?! Plus, making waffles at home is such a snap that all you need is 4-5 pantry essentials, a simple waffle maker and some maple syrup to top them off.

The recipe below is the waffle batter in its simplest form - it will produce some very nice, light buttery waffles with just a hint of sweetness. You can use this as the base to flavor them up as you like – some chopped nuts, a little vanilla, some berries to top it perhaps? We use buttermilk in our waffle batter at times, and there are some very fancy things you can do like folding in whipped egg whites separately - I will experiment with these over the next few months and see how they turn out. For now, a simple recipe to start off with will show you that making waffles at home is not much more difficult than popping a frozen one into the toaster oven. (Heck, you can just make a bunch and create your own frozen waffles for the week if you prefer)!

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Filed under American, Breakfast, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 14th, 2009 |

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Quick and Easy Roast Vegetables

After a long stretch of feasting on delicious but decidedly not-so-healthy foods like over the Thansgiving holiday, we sometimes crave for a simple, wholesome dish that can carry us in to the next week. Something that is easy to prepare (since we are still lethargic from the afore-mentioned feasting) and can get back some much needed essential nutrients into our bodies. You know, since chocolate and fried breading do not really constitute a well-balanced diet, and you can only go so far with the leftovers you have left from Turkey Day dinner!

An easy dish of Roast Veggies is all we really needed to make this weekend to help cheer us up a little bit – though getting out of bed Monday morning after a nice and easy holiday week was tough no matter what. The colorful vegetables added a little brightness to an otherwise bleak, gray, rainy day.

This dish is easy to put together – chop up whatever vegetables you have left over (we’re partial to carrots, mushrooms, onions and peppers), omit whatever veggies your significant other may not want (wifey hates zucchini, so I will have to find another use for them this week), add in some dried herbs along with salt and pepper, drizzle in some olive oil and throw it in a hot oven. In about 20-30 mins you’ll have a nice fresh side of veggies to go with whatever concoction you’re sure to try this week involving turkey breast and cranberry sauce!

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Filed under American, Quick and Easy

Posted on November 30th, 2009 |

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Cheddar Dill Cornbread

Now that I have recovered fully from two nights of gorging myself on dishes as varied as green chili fritters and sweet pumpkin pie, with only the traditional turkey being left out from the Thanksgiving celebration, I finally figured I would get back to writing about food rather than just eating it.

Even though there was no Turkey for us this year (replaced by my aunt’s wonderful Indian food, so we didn’t feel too badly) I wanted to have atleast a little hint of the traditional Turkey Day cuisine while watching football, so I made a Cheddar Dill Cornbread as one of the dishes we took to the dinner.

This has become one of wifey’s favorite dishes – and it all started with a random episode of Barefoot Contessa we watched one Saturday afternoon. The steps to put this together were so simple that once we realized that we had all the necessary ingredients needed for the bread, it took us under an hour to get the hot, crumbly, cheesy bread out of the over to warm us on a chilly Saturday evening. Perfect as a pot-luck dish, this bread works as a wonderful sponge to soak up everything from turkey gravy to the bean sauces in mexican dishes.

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Filed under American, Appetizers, Quick and Easy

Posted on November 27th, 2009 |

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