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Posts filed under ‘Dinner’

Quickie Cooking – Puff Pastry Pizzette with Broccoli and Corn

I love pizza, but I have become something of a pizza snob recently – I’ve tried most of the home delivery options available and they are, to put it kindly, eatable maybe once an year. There is definitely some good pizza to be had in little restaurants and pizza places all over New York, ofcourse – but for days when we are just looking to stay home I and have a pizza nothing but my own home-made pie will do.

For days when I don’t have a ball of pizza dough waiting for me in the freezer, I’ve come up with a way to get the same thin-crust crunch and cheesy goodness that a pizza provides – Pizzettes (or tartlettes, or flat mini pizzas, or whatever you want to call them) made from good old Puff Pastry sheets! We always have some sheets lying around in the freezer – and these little pizzette are so easy to put together individually that they can be customized to whatever toppings we are in the mood for.

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Filed under American, Dinner, Quick and Easy

Posted on April 2nd, 2010 |

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Tagliatelle with Hot Italian Sausage

A hearty, cream-sauce pasta with hot Italian sausage and loaded with chunky pieces of vegetables is a nice way to warm up on a cold winter night. Tagliatelle, the long, flat pasta that is usually available only fresh in your local grocers pasta section (tough to dry out the long strands, I would think), is perfect for this dish – the smooth, silky pasta complements the rougher edges of the other ingredients.

I usually find a delicious hot Italian sausage at the grocers on sale; they freeze beautifully and are actually easier to cut up when partially thawed, so they can be cooked up ahead on the night we make the pasta. We usually throw in some halved baby bella mushrooms along with the onions and the red peppers, but any other mushroom will work well as long as you leave the pieces fairly big – you definitely want to feel the texture of the large pieces in the sauce. I use a little cayenne pepper to add a little heat; you can certainly omit if you want a subtler sauce. Garnish with some fresh parmesan cheese, add in a nice, full-bodied French red wine, and you are set for the evening!

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Filed under Dinner, Italian

Posted on March 5th, 2010 |

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Hearty Pastrami on Kaiser Rolls

There is a Subway outlet right below my apartment building, and when I first moved in here (which was the first time I’ve lived by myself, away from family), it became my source of sustenance for a few weeks till I learnt to cook for myself. I convinced myself that it was a cheap and healthy way to eat out, loading my sub with veggies and taking advantage of half-priced footlong deals (this was before the ubiquitous $5 footlong was introduced).

One of my favorites used to be the pastrami sub; I’d never eaten Pastrami before, and started really enjoying the delicious flavor of the thin slivers of meat. Honey mustard sauce was my condiment of choice, cheddar my cheese and pile on the cucumbers and onions. I miss those sub nights, so I’ve started building my own pastrami sub – its is much cheaper, I get to use my choice of bread, and use much tastier, fresher, deli pastrami instead.

I kept the building blocks the same – cheddar cheese to top the pastrami with, cucumbers and tomatoes to go with the meat, along with a few leaves of spinach nestled under the pastrami, and a nice dollop of store-bought honey mustard sauce. Fresh whole wheat kaiser rolls from the neighborhood bakery worked best; they were hearty and thick enough to handle extra slices and all the veggies without disintegrating into a wet mess that normal sandwich rolls would. A couple of minutes under the broiler (open-faced to melt the cheese), adding in the veggies and my better-than-Subway Pastrami sandwich was ready to be devoured! (Minus the Jared guilt trips!)

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Filed under American, Dinner

Posted on February 27th, 2010 |

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Veggie Thursday – Roasted Butternut Squash

One of the tastiest and easiest ways to get a quick side of veggies prepared is to roast them, as I’ve written about before. This is especially true for vegetables that have a nice, sweet flavor of their own, like the ubiquitous butternut squash, which has lately been bandied about in food magazines and TV shows as the perfect winter vegetable. Roasted butternut squash, which you can thrown in to the oven without much of a fuss as you go about your other baking, added a perfectly light side of vegetables to my Thursday dinner; I can also see it being a good complement to heavier meat dishes like tandoori chicken or a roast loin of pork. Plus, this is a veggie that is chockful of vitamins and minerals that will help you brave the chill.

The butternut squash has a subtle flavor reminiscent of pumpkin (and from what I read, it treated interchangeably with a pumpkin Down Under), which gets concentrated through a nice long roast in the oven. To intensify the sweetness and to get a nice caramelized exterior, I tossed the cut cubes with some olive oil (side-stepping the melted butter a lot of the recipes called for) and brown sugar – this resulted in a lovely golden brown char on a few pieces and infused the vegetables with a gentle, warm sweetness.

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Filed under American, Dinner, Lunch, Quick and Easy

Posted on February 18th, 2010 |

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Quick and Easy: Deli-Flat Pizzettes

Sometimes you want the taste of pizza without going through all the effort of getting a pizza crust ready, crank up the oven, load up the pies and wait for the piping hot pizzas. And sometimes, you have some left-over pizza sauce you need to use up, some veggies about to go bad, and some cooked chicken that you’ll too lazy to make chicken salad from. On those days, using deli-flats and the toaster oven to pull all these ingredients together into mini pizza-type ‘pizzettes’ is the perfect answer to getting a quick pie fix.

Deli-flats (we get the Whole Grain Pepperidge Farm version at our local mart) are 100-calorie flat breads cut in rounds – you can use them for putting together some healthy sandwiches, or use each half of the flats as a base for these pizzettes. The recipe is customizable to whatever odds and ends you have left in your fridge, and any cheese you throw on there will work – just make sure you broil them enough to melt the cheese fully to get a nice pizza taste. They make a great dinner along with some soup, or for a weekend lunch.

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Filed under American, Dinner, Lunch, Quick and Easy

Posted on February 5th, 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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Quickie Cooking: Chicken Kolhapuri

Chicken Kolhapur

Growing up in a typical South Indian Telugu household, most of the day-to-day foods we ate were mostly the bread-and-butter pappu’s (lentils) and southern curries. North Indian preparations, like their excellent Chicken curries, were reserved for special occasions when my mom wanted to try something new, or for when we went out to eat. I looked forward to those meals and always promised myself that when I grew up and became an adult myself, I would have such food every day.

As an adult, however, I quickly realized that it was wasn’t healthy for either my body or my wallet to eat restaurant-made North Indian curries very often, and the best way to meet my cravings for these curries was to prepare them at home. However, given the complexity involved in cooking some of these items, we usually resort to pre-made (the horror!) masala mixes to whip up a quick curry whenever we want to.

Now, while this may seem like blasphemy to the usual Indian canon of healthy cooking from scratch, I distinctly remember that even my mom sometimes resorted to using spice mixes just to avoid having to put together and grind each of the dozen or so spices that give each curry a distinctive flavor. Modern mix packets just take this step a bit further by also included oil and salt in the mix; advanced science allowing for vaccum-packing of such mixes without using much, if any, preservatives or additional junk. The preparation just calls for adding the mix, along with some water or milk, along with the meat or vegetables of your choice to a saucepan, heating for the recommended time and getting a piping hot curry onto the table within 15-20 mins. Quickie Cooking at its finest!

So seek out these packets as your local Indian grocer; Parampara and Sanjeev Kapoor make some of the best tasting mixes which don’t contain too much unneccessary filling. Given the simplicity involved in putting these curries together, I decided to put in a tiny bit of extra effort and upping the health-quotient of these dishes by adding in some fresh or frozen vegetables – this helps counter any extra sodium in the mix, while also adding some texture and freshness to the curry. This week we tried the Chicken Kolhapur – a Maharashtrian dish with a spicy, dark sauce.

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Filed under Dinner, Indian - North, Lunch, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 27th, 2009 |

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Gnocchi Alfredo with Red Peppers

After a couple of years of turning to the ubiquitous boxed pasta’s whenever we wanted a quick and cheap Italian meal, lately the wife and I have begun experimenting with some fresh pasta. It all started when I spotted some fresh tagliatelle on sale at the local grocers; once we tasted the true deliciousness of the fresh pasta, it became near impossible to go back to the regular old Barillas! There is something homey and old-worldey about a bowl of fresh pasta tossed in a quick home-made sauce (what, you think we do Ragu?!) and mixed in with some veggies and meats to make it a full meal.

We try to pick up whatever fresh pasta’s are available every few weeks at C-Town or Whole Foods, and yes we shop at both ends of the supermarket spectrum! Last week wifey spotted a packet of potato gnocchi and there was no going back – pasta and potatoes being two of her favorite foods. We made a quick cream sauce, tossed in some onions and fresh red bell peppers, topped it off with some bacon (only on my bowl, ofcourse) and had ourselves a nice hot bowl of pillowy little potato balls.

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Filed under Dinner, Italian, Lunch, Restaurant Meals

Posted on December 15th, 2009 |

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Teriyaki Salmon

A co-worker of mine has been pestering me for a couple of years now to try this Japanese restaurant for lunch; she raved about the mixed ‘boxes’ that offered a sampling of all their yummy seafood delicacies – a different sampler being offered every single day. Given that raw seafood is one of the only foods I don’t eat (more a matter of allergies than taste) I’ve steadfastly refused to go despite her constant reassurance that they offered ‘cooked’ items too. I finally relented today, on her last week at work for her going-away lunch, and boy did I realize what I was missing!

We ordered a couple of different samplers, filled with goodies like shrimp tempura, candied ginger, ginger fish with baby mushrooms, a fried pork pocket wrapped around asparagus and a japanese take on green beans. The star of the show was a fresh fillet of salmon bathed in sumptuous sweet and spicy asian barbecue sauce. I felt like ate for an hour but because everything was just light fresh seafood, I didnt feel weighed down – but didnt get hungry for quite a while after either. I realized why fresh fish is constantly pushed as a superstar health food - forget all those healthy omega 3 oils, this is just tasty food that really nourishes without filling you up completely.

Now, it will take me some time to learn some of the more intricate preparations we ate today (challenge accepted – Shrimp Tempura, here I come!) but over the summer I learn to make a simple and easy teriyaki salmon dish that, while not as painstakingly made as the restaurant dish, still yielded a deliciously flavored salmon that harldy took any time to put together. Starting off with pre-made teriyaki sauce (Kikkomans - the horror!) cut down some of the time, but adding a few additional touches helps punch up the flavor. The best part? You can make this in the toaster oven - so in a few mins you can have a tasty and healthy fish dish ready for your weeknight dinner! This makes a great protein dish to serve with rice and boiled vegetables.

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Filed under Dinner, Japanese, Quick and Easy

Posted on December 8th, 2009 |

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Shrimp Fajitas

Life is a series of coincidences. I’m sure a lot of you can look back upon your lives and some of the coincidences you might have brushed off in the past, but which you can now saw helped shaped your path in one way or the other. I’ve had a few of those myself, and one that relates directly to this blog happened in the most unexpected of all places – a Container Store.

A week or so after I got my own studio and decided that I loved interior decorating and want a clean, modern bachelor pad (!), I went down to the Container Store on 58th street to check for some cool organizational items. At the checkout counter, I spied an eye-catching magazine cover with fresh fruits and vegetables – the Fall 2006 Food issue of Real Simple. For someone who firmly believes in subscribing to magazines and never paying the outrageous book-store prices for a single copy, I just couldn’t resist buying this one.

And what an investment it turned out to be! For a young guy just learning to cook for himself, this one single issue contained all sorts of wonderful advice – from what to stock your freezer with, to how to avoid messy cleanup, to how to put together a menu for a dinner party, and most importantly – easy, simple-to-follow recipes that lead to delicious meals and forever got me hooked on the benefits of cooking at home.

One such recipe, which I’ve since adapted to my own tastes is one that will ease your fears of cooking seafood and serve as a fun little dish to spice up weekday nights – Shrimps Fajitas. Cumin and chili powder give the shrimp filling a deep flavor; pick up some whole wheat wraps, slap some mayo in it if you are so inclined, add in the shrimp filling and you’re in seafood fajita land.

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Filed under Dinner, Lunch, Mexican

Posted on November 23rd, 2009 |

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