Fiddle Heads Attempt #4

I just found this picture on my camera. Geoff and I made this for dinner a couple weeks ago after having gone out for drinks with his sister and brother-in-law. His brother-in-law ordered a pasta with lots of garlic, some tomatoes and oil. It smelled so good, I thought about it for days. It seemed easy enough so we gave it a shot and added a couple of extras.

Ingredients:
Pasta
Shrimp, peeled and de-veined
Fiddle Heads, ends trimmed and washed
Tomatoes (diced, or cherry tomatoes cut in half)
4 cloves garlic, chopped as much as possible
Olive oil
Butter
4 tsp lemon juice

1. Boil fiddle heads for 5 minutes
2. When fiddle heads are done, begin boiling pasta (should take about 10 minutes for the pasta to be ready)
3. While the pasta is cooking, cook shrimp in a little bit of butter, 2 tsp lemon juice and garlic
4. Fry fiddle heads in a little butter and 2 tsp lemon juice
5. Once pasta is done, drain and put back in the pot, add fiddle heads, shrimp diced tomatoes and garlic. Toss with enough oil to just cover the noodles.
   

Tomato, Portobello & Fresh Mozzarella Melts

This was what Geoff and I made for dinner last night. Although there was no meat, it did taste very meaty. There's something about grilled mushrooms, and especially portobellos that tastes a lot like meat.

I can't say enough good things about this meal. Super fast and super healthy (although it didn't taste like it was healthy).

From Good Housekeeping: Grilling for Every Day

Ingredients:
2 c. loosely packed arugula or watercress
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
4 lg portobello mushrooms, stems removed and cut in half
2 med. tomatoes cut into 3/4 in. thick slices
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
4 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced
1 loaf focaccia or ciabatta bread about 1-in. thick (we couldn't find other, so we got a loaf of light rye bread)

1. Heat BBQ to medium-high heat and clean the grill. In a small bowl, toss arugula and vinegar until evenly coated. Cut bread into two 8" by 2" pieces. Cut each piece horizontally in half to make a total of four 8" by 2" pieces (or cut the rye into 1 or 1/2 in. slices).
2. Brush mushrooms and tomatoes with oil; sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Place mushrooms, stem-sides up, and tomatoes on grill and cook 6 to 8 minutes, or until tender and charred, turning once. Transfer tomatoes to plate. Arrange mozzarella on mushrooms; cover and cook 1 to 2 minutes longer.
3. place bread, cut-sides up, on work surface; top with arugula mixture, grilled tomatoes, and cheese-topped mushrooms. Cut each sandwich into quarters and serve.

For some of the pieces of bread, we left plain, some with a little butter and some with a little cream cheese. Each was really tasty, but you really don't need to put butter or cream cheese on the bread since everything else has enough flavour.

Salmon with Dijon-Dill Sauce

We were rummaging through the freezer and found some salmon steaks that we thought we'd finished. As it was already late and we were ridiculously hungry, we came up with this deliciously light meal that didn't take more than 10 minutes to put together.

We had some extra tomatoes that needed to be eaten so we made a small salad to go with the salmon. Our final touch was to fry up some mushrooms and drizzle the bed of veggies in our balsamic dressing. The bite of the salad dressing and the Dijon-dill sauce complemented each other perfectly so we could attack everything at once when we finally sat down to eat!

Ingredients:
2 Salmon Steaks
2 Handfulls of fresh baby spinach
1 Tomato - sliced
1 small hand full of mushrooms
1 Knob of butter
1 tbsp of Dill Weed
1/3 cup of Sour Cream
3 tbsp of Dijon Mustard
2 tsp of lemon juice
1 clove of garlic - minced
salt
pepper

For the sauce:
Mix the dill, mustard, salt, pepper, lemon juice and garlic into the sour cream.

For the salmon:
Brush melted butter onto salmon and fry until cooked through. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, fry mushrooms in butter until softened. Spread the spinach on the plate and top with the tomatoes and mushrooms and drizzle with balsamic dressing. Place the salmon on top and cover liberally with the sauce and enjoy!

Deluxe Grilled Cheese

I want to start by saying that I had the best orange ever today. It peeled easily, it was ripe AND there were no seeds in it at all. It was perfect.

My nanny makes grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch almost every time I'm home. She uses white Wonderbread, Kraft cheese slices and some crispy bacon and as she's frying it up she squishes it flat so its barely 1cm thick. The best part about the grilled cheese sandwich was that she always served with with a huge dill pickle. I love grilled cheese sandwiches, and I didn't think any sandwich could compare to my nanny's until the last time I went to Montreal with Geoff to visit his parents.

His mom had cooked a ham for dinner the night before so there was plenty of ham left over. She used pumpernickel bread instead of white bread. This was the first time it ever even occurred to me that you could use any bread other than white sandwich bread. She filled the sandwiches with real cheese and thick slices of ham, and it was delicious. I've been craving another one since.

Ingredients:
2 slices black forest ham
Gouda, sliced
Pumpernickel bread sliced
Butter
Tomatoes, sliced

1. Butter the outer side of the bread
2. stack the cheese, ham and tomato (I used grape tomatoes because we had them left over from dinner a few nights ago) and put the other slice of buttered bread on top
3. fry over medium low heat until all the cheese is melted (5-7 minutes)

Spicy Pasta with Shrimp and Grape Tomatoes

Geoff and I made up this pasta as we went last night. We wanted to try and take pictures before it was too dark so we kind of rushed this meal. It was pretty tasty and really easy.

Ingredients:
(serves 2)

200g pasta of your choice (we chose springs)
3/4 of a carton of grape tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise
5 cloves chopped garlic
1 jalapeno pepper
1 other hot pepper that was green and small
12 shrimp (6 each!)
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
3 tbs olive oil
2tbs butter
grated Parmesan cheese to your liking
salt and pepper to taste

1. Defrost and peel shrimp
2. Boil pasta until al dente
3. While pasta cooks, melt butter in pan, add garlic for 20 seconds with red pepper flakes.
4. Add peppers to pan, then add shrimp
5. Cook shrimp until they curl up and turn pink (1-2 minutes per side)
6. Toss pasta with olive oil then dump in everything from the frying pan
7. Add Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste

You could toss in some spinach to this recipe for extra fiber, but we used pasta that already had lots of fiber and protein added to it (Catelli has made white pasta healthy, finally!)