Buffalo Burgs From the Burg

Chinets. Yep, that's right. Easy peasy cleanup. I love those nights.

Buffalo burgers. I've had them in restaurants and thought, hey these are pretty good. I actually noticed my local grocer carrying ground buffalo and bought some.

I made a simple patty, just salt, pepper and the buffalo. Hand pattied, grilled over medium-heat to your liking and serve.

I served these topped with fat cheddar slices. During the last few minutes of cooking, lay your cheese on, make a foil tent and let melt.

Beautiful fat tomatoes, pickles, mustard, ketchup - just the perfect fixins on this burger and it's great.

I served them on some GREAT hamburger buns my friend posted on her blog.

Whisk Wednesday: Cornish Hens With Cabbage

Want to dive into a french hunter-like winter meal? Savory, comforting, warm and nourishing? This is a hearty french country style dinner. 2 cornish hens were used in place of guinea hen. The hens are roasted and set aside. The cabbage, carrot, and onions are pre-cooked and ready for the lardons, hens and sausage, then simmered together to meld the fresh flavors without blending the dish into one flavor. Wonderful herbs like the giant Le Cordon Bleu Bouquet Garni, garlic, thyme and of course butter flavor the dish to a welcoming winter, blow-off-the-chill platter. It's great. We managed to make over 4 meals with this dinner.

Want to see how my other Whisk Wednesday Partners faired? Follow our leader's blog roll located at Whisk: A Food Blog.

Recipe Holder

This is it! This is how I read recipes in the kitchen. Our Whisk Wednesday group was chatting about how we read while we cook. Is it a stand? Is it a book holder? Do we attempt to balance in the fruit bowl?

I've tried everything, but one thing I can't seem to get right is being clean when I cook. Splatters arrive everywhere. What you say? You've been hit too? And you live on another continent? Yeah, sorry about that. It happens around here.

Because of the splatters, spills, and my often wet hands that want to TOUCH the book, page, etc., I've had to migrate to copies of recipes from the books or magazines. Over the years I've learned to put my recipes into my recipe software for many, many reasons. One of those reasons is to be able to print the recipe out, splatter it like 50 kindergartners in paint class, and toss.

P.S. Try to ignore the untiled backsplash there in the picture. I'm working on tile choices.

Seafood Stuffed Shells

This is Seafood Stuffed Shells with a Creamy Garlic Sauce. It was very rich and elegant and I even managed to squeeze in a few ingredients from the freezer.

8 oz jumbo shells, mostly cooked

Seafood:
Lobster, cooked, about 8 ounces
Shrimp, peeled, deveined, chopped into fat chunks, tails removed about 6 ounces
Scallops, small bay, about 6 ounces

Poaching Liquid:
Lobster Stock or veggie stock, or water
White wine

Simmer lobster stock with a bit of white wine and add the scallops and shrimp. Cook for about 1-2 minutes, just till partially done. Drain.

Filling:
Ricotta cheese
Parmesano-Reggiano cheese
Pecorino Romano cheese
1 egg
Salt and Pepper (go light on the salt, Parmesan and Pecorino have salt)
Fresh basil if you have it
Sprinkle of garlic powder

Mix the filling ingredients into a bowl and add the poached and drained seafood.

Garlic Sauce:
2T butter
2T flour
1/2 cup lobster stock
1 cup heavy cream
3 cloves garlic, pressed

If desired, 1 cup of roasted tomatoes to pink it up and cut some of the heaviness of the cream.

Melt butter in a saucier or saucepan. Whisk in flour to make the roux. Slowly add the stock while whisking, bring to a simmer, add the pressed garlic and simmer about 1 minute. Stir in the cream.

Preheat the oven to 350. Spray or lightly oil a large glass baking dish. I used a 6x10. Stuff your shells with the seafood mixture and lay in one layer in the baking dish. If you have extra filling you can sprinkle it over the top, it won't hurt anything. Pour your garlic sauce over the top and add the roasted tomatoes if using, then sprinkle with Parmesano-Reggiano cheese.

Bake at 350 till bubbly, about 45 minutes. Remove from oven, let sit for about 5 minutes and serve. Add parsley as a garnish.

Great way to use your lobster stock, use your lobster meat you saved, use your roasted tomatoes, grab a few shrimp from the freezer and if you're lucky, maybe even the scallops too.

Whisk Wednesday: Monkfish

Monkfish in White-Wine Cream Sauce with Vegetables

Monkfish was described to me as tasting like scallops. A firmer texture and should be cooked like scallops or shrimp. I've never had it before...until now.

It was suprisingly good. I liked the dish, but I probably would not add it to my repeat menu. We did save the leftovers which I cover with puff pastry and baked like a pot pie. It was even better!

The monkfish is cut into 2" pieces and cooked with pearl onions, green beans, fresh peas, carrots, turnips and mushrooms. The sauce is thickened with eggs and cream. It's very delicious.

You can always join our "Whisk Wednesday" team by signing up on Shari's Whisk Blog

You can also view how the rest of my partners did with this dish by visiting the BlogRoll.

Eggs Rossini - I Love You

I loved it!! One of the best brunches I've made at home. Now, I expected Eggs Rossini to be eggs poached in red wine, but in this recipe, it's not the case.

While we made this, we sipped on some Proseco and nibbled on some strawberries. What a fun morning!

Eggs Rossini

Beef
8 ounce filet mignon
Salt & Pepper
Grilled to your taste and let rest about 5 minutes.

Eggs
2 whole eggs
Water
1/4 cup vinegar
Salt
Poach eggs in simmering water for about 3 minutes.

Hollandaise Sauce, less than 1/2 cup, fresh or store-bought
Fresh Parsley, chopped
Truffle Oil
Hash Browns, fresh or frozen, browned with butter, salt & pepper
Hoisin sauce

Grill your steaks, let rest and slice in half resulting in two disks of beef. Add a small amount of hoisin to each filet and set the hash browns on top. Easily set each egg onto the top of the hash browns and drizzle the hollandaise sauce over top. Garnish with parsley and drizzle with truffle oil.

Sit back, eat slowly, and savor every bite.

Salmon En Papillotte

The Preparations:
The Result:

En papillote. A GREAT way to make your dinner. If you haven't tried it, please do! You are taking meat and veggies (in this case salmon) and wrapping it up nice and tight inside of foil or parchment paper and baking.

Reasons:

1) Easy preparation

2) Easy to cook

3) Couldn't be simplier to clean up

4) The taste as all the flavors are melded and concentrated inside that little package.

The Le Cordon Bleu recipe for this week was changed to a couple of variations. I accidentally took the two variations offered and came up with a third.

Serves 2

1 pound salmon, seasoned with salt and pepper

1 fennel bulb, sliced thinly

Some fennel fronds for garnish

14 grape tomatoes

2 cloves garlic, pressed

1/2 red bell pepper, sliced thinly

1 cup white wine

Take large foil squares and lay them on the counter. I used heavy duty and pulled out quite a large section. One for each packet. Enough to wrap each meal up.

Lay veggies in the bottom, salmon on top, drizzle wine into the package and seal up the packages so the ends are tucked in with the top rolled down. Leave some space inside above the food for steam. Set the packages on a cookie sheet for easy handling.

Bake 375 for 30 minutes. Open your packages and serve.

A good reference for the En Papillote technique is here Dorie Greenspan

Tip: I was worried I hadn't cut my veggies thin enough, so I did pre-saute them, but only shortly.

Tex-Mex Red Chicken Chili

One word. Crockpot.


I find that when I use the crockpot, I'm totally eliminated from the cooking, simmering, adding and layering of ingredients and seasoning as I'm cooking. I love doing the cooking part and the crockpot just takes that all away.

However, there are some days when I have to clean, do laundry, cook OTHER meals, veg out and surf the web. And I supposed those days could possibly, maybe, be good for crockpot recipes.

Oh but wait! I didn't use a recipe. Ooops. I did the routine of "I need to weed out from the freezer". I weeded out, oh yes, but can you even tell??? I wonder.

Meat:
1 pound package of chicken thighs (some were boneless, skinless, others had bones and skin)
Mexican seasoning (chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, salt and pepper)

Remove defrosted thighs from package and set on a platter. Give them a good rub of the mexican seasoning. Let rest at room temperature.

Veggies:
Onions, chopped
Garlic, chopped
Jalapenos, roasted poblanos, anaheim peppers, or a mix of, chopped
Corn, straight from the freezer

Beans:
Light Red Kidney, rinsed and drained
Black, rinsed and drained
Field Peas, rinsed and drained

Base:
Canned Tomatoes, I used whole peeled (hand crushed) and diced
Chicken Stock

Seasoning:
More of the above rub.

Add all ingredients to your crockpot and leave on low for 8 hours, 4 on high. I used low and kept stirring. For the thighs, about an hour before I wanted to serve, I removed the chicken from the bones, cut/shred into bite size pieces and return to the chili.

Toppings (Optional):
Green Onions, sliced
Cheddar cheese, shredded
Sour Cream
Fresh Cilantro, chopped

Meditteranean Sea Bass / Bronzi

Blinders? Do you have your blinders on??? EEEK. It's not the photographer. The photographer captured the "chefs" freaky meal all on her very own. (Pssst...I am the photographer and the chef). Guess I shouldn't quit my day job.

But wait....good news!

This was great!!
GREAT??? It looks...uh...scary.
Well okay, so I need help and practice with whole fish. I must explain.

This week's Whisk Wednesday meal was for Meditteranean Sea Bass, baked, served with sauteed mushrooms and a cream sauce. DELECTABLE! Ugly, but tasty.

My favorite gourmet store recommended Bronzi. A bass from Greece, very similar to Meditteranean Sea Bass. Did you know that you cannot exchange Chilean Sea Bass for Meditteranean Sea Bass? Me neither. The things you learn.

Another, wonderful, meal adventure described as only beautiful to the palate but not to the eyes!

Meal 1, Meal 2, Meal 3 To Come

On top of Old Smokey

All covered with cheese

I lost my poor meatball

When somebody sneezed

LOL...okay...sorry, got carried away here while trying to invent titles for this post. Still don't like this one, but it is what it is.

Meatballs, so often forgotten but can be used in many recipes. I made a nice batch of meatballs and then ended up with three meals from them.

First night was homemade pasta with homemade sauce, and of course the homemade meatballs. Second meal was a giant meatball sub. Then I froze the last of the meatballs which I think I will use in an italian soup.

Italian Meatballs

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil +2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 lb ground veal

1/4 pound ground pork

1/4 lb ground beef

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano cheese, grated

1/4 cup bread crumbs

extra bread crumbs for rolling meatballs

salt

ground pepper

1 pinch crushed red pepper

1 tsp dried oregano

2 tsp dried thyme

In a large saute pan, heat 2 teaspoons olive oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and saute till partially softened, about 5 minutes. Cool for a couple of minutes.

Place the meats in a large mixing bowl. Remove onions from heat and add to ground meats. Add egg, egg yolk, cheese and bread crumbs to the bowl and mix with a wooden spoon. Season with salt and pepper. Add the red pepper flakes, oregano and thyme and mix well.

Roll the meat mixture into golfball size meatballs. Roll in the extra bread crumbs.

In a large skillet, heat 1/4 cup olive oil over medium heat. Add the meatballs and brown on all sides, 5-6 minutes.

Remove the meatballs from the pan and put on a paper towels to dry a bit.

Now they are ready for your recipes. Toss into tomato sauce and serve over homemade pasta.

Meatball Subs

1 baguette

8 meatballs, cooked and room temperature

Tomato sauce or pizza sauce

Mozzerella cheese

Optional Additional Toppings:

Shredded lettuce

Sliced half moon tomatoes

Drizzle of italian dressing

Red Wine Vinegar/Olive Oil

Sliced pepperoncini

Slice the baguette lenthwise. Do not cut all the way through. This helps to make a "trough" like holder for your sub. You will need it cut this way and still use about 2,000 napkins.

Ladle some sauce onto the bread, top with meatballs and cheese. Bake at 350 till the cheese is melted, about 10 minutes.

Let cool and add any of the additional toppings suggested.