Sauteed Shrimp, Brown Rice & Roasted Broccoli

Hey, so sorry I haven't been blogging since last summer but I've been swamped with school work. I've also had a lot of things going on in my life, like my new school and going to Hawaii. Anyways tonight I made shrimp sauteed with garlic, brown rice, and one of my favorites roasted broccoli. I must admit that I was feeling a little bit rusty because I hadn't cooked dinner for a while. I know, me the food lover and the "chef" not cooking dinner for I don't know how many months, (and trust me you don't want to know) this is just outrageous. Well cooking dinner on a Saturday isn't the easiest thing when you want to sleep in and do nothing all day. So anyways back to my dinner. First I made the rice which was going well until the water started to boil out of the pot, then it wasn't so fun. Also I don't recommend texting while cooking (which is what I was doing) because it makes sure you don't really read any of the instructions. So I was like "Oh look the rice is boiling over, but its ok because I just got a text and I'll have plenty of time to turn down the heat." Then 20 minutes later "Oh look I got another text." I'm the queen of procrastination, so it's natural for me to put the slightly more important things after the slightly less important texts. The rice turned out pretty well though. Now on to the shrimp.

As I was saying in the beginning I'm feeling a bit rusty in the cooking territory and shrimp might not have been the best thing to re introduce me to cooking dinner for my family.  Because you have to move fast and not be timid as my mother dearest says. I was extremely worried that most of the shrimp were under cooked and only a little bit was cooked but luckily no one got food poisoning and none of my shrimp was actually under cooked or over cooked. Although as some of you know I can't saute  garlic without giving it a little color or in other words burning it. So bye I've got to get back to texting.

One tip from me, Ambika: If you are not a lover of brown rice I recommend trying brown basmati rice. It is a long grain rice and is lighter & fluffier than the short grain variety, with a nice nutty taste. Proportions are the same as white rice, and you don't need to rinse it. After bringing waterand rice to a boil, cook on lowest heat possible, covered, for about 50 min - an hour.

Peach Crisp

Lila:

So on Saturday I made peach crisp which like I said on my previous post is one of my all time favorite desserts and Sunday me and my family had to leave my cousin's house but don't  worry, no peach crisp will be left uneaten because we have tons of it. This specific peach crisp is amazing and I usually detest fruit desserts but this actually tasted good ( it tastes even better with vanilla ice cream.) The two greatest thing about this crisp I think are that it tastes amazing cold and it's pretty easy to make. So yeah bye my mom will post a link to the recipe and I strongly recommend it to non fruit dessert lovers because it will convert you to a partial fruit dessert lover.   

Ambika:

This recipe actually came from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten. I did however find what looks like a similar recipe by her online at foodnetwork.com.

So bake and enjoy!

Ellen has the best baking dish for this!!!

Our Cousin's Farm

Lila:
So on Thursday I went on a three or four hour car ride to go to my cousin Ellen's house in Pennsylvania. Since I usually hate long car rides I wasn't exactly so happy about being stuck in a car for about three hours while I was sitting next to my oh so annoying little brother, but it was worth those pretty abysmal three hours, because Ellen has almost every kind of cooking thing that you could possibly think of and also she's just a lot of fun to cook with, oh and did I mention she has a pool with a diving board? Anyway so on Thursday we made Meyer lemon chicken with risotto, yesterday we made grilled steak ( Ellen did that), the grilled steak was amazing by the way, and I made the roasted potatoes, plus farro, I helped make the corn on the cob too. But unfortunately I can't eat corn on the cob because I have braces so my mother dearest has to cut the corn off of the cob for me ( sigh...) so I'm having a pretty good time here so far and my mother ( or Ellen) will tell you where to get these recipes and tonight we're making peach crisp - one of my all time favorite desserts.     

Ambika:
I LOVE my cousin's farm. I've been going there since I was a child and have many great memories of family meals cooked and shared there. For those of you who would like to know what farro is here is the Wikipedia definition. Basically it seems to be another type whole grain wheat, rather like spelt. We cooked it in chicken stock like rice - 2 cups liquid to one cup grain. We sauteed onions first, then added the farro and chicken stock, and cooked it until liquid was absorbed (there seems to be some debate on exactly how long we actually cooked it for - 20 - 30 mins). We then added lots of butter and parmesan cheese. I love farro and was introduced to it by Ellen years ago at an Italian restaurant. Frankies Sputino makes great farro btw if you want to try it and are in Brooklyn or NYC. I will make this at home for sure.

The chicken with Meyer lemon from the night before came from this recipe from the NY Times and was delicious! We substituted thyme for the rosemary because my husband hates rosemary and didn't use leeks because we didn't have any. I don't have any pics of that dinner, sorry. Here is a pic of the wonderful stove at the farm.

Some of the family at the dinner table.

      
Our cousin Katy showed us this great trick for buttering corn. First put a big pat of butter on a slice of bread and then butter your corn on the buttered bread!

Dinner was oh so yummy!!!

Our cousin Herb made a great salad and Lila made balsamic vinaigrette.

Lila will write about the peach cobbler in the next post.
Here are a couple more pics. 

Ellen at the grill:

Lila tasting the farro:

Lemon Chicken

Lila:
On Friday I made lemon chicken which is chicken that is basically poached in this sauce that consists of lemon, butter, white wine, and mushrooms. Okay I was so excited that I basically got to poach a chicken because I've always wanted to poach a chicken. The next thing I want to do is brine chicken. I know that brining a chicken sounds kind of weird  but it's supposed to actually be quite tasty, well at least that's what I heard on one of my class science trips and that was the only cool thing we did in science class all year (the trip was to a restaurant and was a pickle tasting.) Anyway I normally hate mushrooms but this made them actually taste somewhat good and that's saying a lot because I usually try not to touch mushrooms. Bye I have to do my piles of math homework.

Ambika:
I would just like to clarify that this was poached boneless chicken breast. Lila found this recipe on epicurious (we LOVE epicurious as you know by now I'm sure). It was really delicious and pretty easy to make, so this will go into the regular dinner rotation for sure. Even Pavan loved it! The sauce was so yummy I wish we had made rice with this - we will make sure to next time!

 We did make another favorite veggie dish to go with the chicken: mashed cauliflower. Ok actually it's pureed cauliflower. Great substitute for mashed potatoes. Just steam the cauliflower florets and then puree them in a food processor with LOTS of butter and salt and pepper. 

Panini with Grandma

Lila:
0n Friday or at least I think it was Friday but anyway I was staying over at my grandma's apartment for the day/previous night. My grandma has a panini press at her apartment so I came up with the idea to make paninis. So we made this amazing broccoli rabe and provolone panini, it was one of the most amazing paninis I've ever had not considering that I have only had two paninis in my life. The recipe consisted of one pretty hard to find thing: a sliced Italian round loaf that had to be 1/4 of an inch thick and it had to be 8-9 inches long. Well it was hard to find with the selection of supermarkets in her area so we improvised and bought two rolls of ciabatta bread instead and they turned out heavenly. The recipe also called for anchovies and my grandma was a bit reluctant because who really likes anchovies but when I said that anchovies were a flavor enhancer she was sold. Bye I've got to go eat dinner because I'm starved.

Ambika:
Lila used this panini recipe from epicurious. I'm glad I wasn't around for this dish as it would have been torture (no bread for me - sigh). Lila forgot to take pictures of the paninis but she did take a pic of the pasta they made together with tomato, basil and fresh mozzarella. Looks yummy!

Potato Pancakes

Lila:

So today I made potato pancakes which were pretty good. They weren’t the best potato pancakes I’ve ever had. The best potato pancakes I’ve ever had were in third grade when one kid’s mom made them, those were superb. However the kid’s mom was a former food network chef so I can’t exactly make food network caliber potato pancakes - well at least not yet anyways. I don’t know why but they didn’t exactly have the right flavor, maybe it was because I used grape seed oil instead of canola oil. Anyway so in the recipe it said that you have to grate a large onion and let me tell you grating an onion is not a fun time. I mean anything that is onion chopping is a bad thing but onion grating is in a whole different category, it’s 1,000 times worse than bad because bad, well, just does not justify the awful stinging in your eyes. 

So bye I’m off to watch TV.       

Ambika: 

Lila really did do everything for this recipe, since I have never made them myself. I thought they were delicious - just needed salt. Here is the recipe we used. The mom Lila was referring to (former food network chef) wrote a cookbook  I remember: Kitchen Playdates: Easy Ideas for Entertaining That Includes the Kids ** 70 Delicious Recipes by Lauren Deen. Perhaps this book includes the superb potato pancake recipe.

 

Spaghetti with Skylar

So last Tuesday I had a sleepover with my friend Skylar who I made dinner with and who's mom told me and my mom that there was a sale at this awesome store called LF. So anyway we made a marginal tomato sauce although the $10.00 Parmesan that I bought was quite good.

Here are my tips on how to not make a mediocre/watery tomato sauce. Personally I prefer to use whole tomatoes because they're just so fun to squeeze. That sentence didn't sound right did it? Anyway I also like to brown the garlic even though my mom always tells me not to, it actually gives the tomato this nice unexplainable flavor. I also prefer making tomato sauce with a friend because it just makes it more fun and besides isn't cooking/baking with a friend almost always more fun than when you're cooking/baking on your own? On to more tomato sauce making tips. I also prefer to use San Marzano tomatoes instead of your generic tomatoes because who want regular tomatoes in a semi regular tomato sauce? My final tip is not to stir the tomato sauce every 5 seconds because then it won't cook and will result in watery and marginal tomato sauce. So bye I'm off to watch TV. Oh and my mom will also post the recipe.                    

 Lila usually makes a great marinara sauce, and we all think the reason this one wasn't quite as good was indeed too much stirring. Who knew? Here is Lila's basic recipe: 6 - 7 cloves of garlic sliced and then browned in extra virgin olive oil. She adds a can of whole tomatoes that she already has squished into a bowl with her hands. Then she cooks it on medium low heat stirring occasionally for about 30 mins. She adds a handful of torn up basil toward the end and also salt and pepper to taste. We did  once make an amazing marinara from The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual. It takes all day but still...