{bruschetta & roasted asparagus}

Ever since I watched Julie & Julia I've been wanting to make bruschetta. Last night I finally got around to it. I even made my own french baguettes, with the help of my fabulous bread machine which mixed, kneaded and rose the dough.

My cute little baguettes

 

I sliced up a baguette, brushed each slice with olive oil and toasted them briefly under the broiler. Then I put some of the tomato mix [recipe here] along with some mozzarella cheese on each slice and put them back under the broiler until the cheese melted.

 I lightly roasted some asparagus with olive oil and garlic to go with the bruschetta, and dinner was served.

I'll definitely be making this again.

Menu Monday

Thai food has been my main squeeze for the past week. I can't get enough of it. I made this Thai vegetable-tofu stir fry with red curry sauce on Monday, and it was really good.

First, the chopping of the veggies.

Then, the saute-ing of the tofu cubes with some sliced onion & chopped garlic & ginger.

(In my fabulous new wok that was a birthday present from the hubby).

When the tofu cubes were golden brown, I threw in a can of coconut milk and some Thai red curry powder... probably 2-3 tablespoons.

After that was all mixed together, in went the vegetables that take a bit longer to cook (carrots, green beans, orange bell pepper, broccoli, the white part of the baby bok choy). A bit later, I put in the mushrooms.

When everything was cooked, I put in the chopped basil leaves and the green leafy part of the bok choy until they were gently wilted.

All ready to eat.

Served it up with some brown rice. I love brown rice, but I think Thai curries actually taste better with white jasmine rice. I just didn't have any white rice in the house.

Thomas liked it. Except for the orange bell peppers, of course. But I was happy to eat those for him.

Random postscript: These chocolate covered gummy bears made my week. At first I was like, ewww, chocolate covered gummy bears, gross. But then I tried one, and they are kind of awesome.

Menu Monday...

... is back after a long hiatus. Because I made an awesome dinner, and it happened to be on a Monday.

It's rainy and cold [relatively cold, I mean... this is Dallas we're talking about] at the moment, so I thought soup sounded wonderful. I rummaged through the fridge and pulled out a bunch of vegetables, and picked up two small pagnotta loaves while I was grocery shopping.

The vegetables... onion, cauliflower, zucchini (courgettes for you fellow non-Americans), a tomato, and an orange bell pepper (shhh, don't tell Thomas). I threw them all in the pot with some vegetable broth and chopped garlic, oregano,  basil, and fresh ground black pepper, and let it cook until all the veggies were soft.

Then I pureed the soup in my blender, so Thomas would have no idea that he was eating orange bell pepper. Muahahahaha.

While the soup was simmering, I put the two pagnotta loaves in the oven to warm them up and give them a nice crusty outside.

When the loaves were nice and hot, I took them out and cut the top off of one and hollowed it out [saving the pulled-out bread to eat another time]. The original plan was to hollow out both of them so we would each have a bread bowl filled with soup for dinner, but I realized there was no way I could eat a whole one by myself.

I filled the loaf up with the pureed vegetable soup, added a little spring of cilantro, and we shared it for dinner. And we were both stuffed. And Thomas gave it two thumbs up, having no clue that he was eating orange bell pepper.

And we will share the other pagnotta loaf with soup for dinner tomorrow night :)

Menu Monday

I spotted butternut squash while I was grocery shopping on Monday and added it to my [ever-growing and changing] list for the week. When I got home I changed my dinner plan to revolve around the butternut squash, because if there is a butternut squash in my house it must. be. eaten. immediately. I chopped it up and steamed the pieces to get the skin off, brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme, and roasted them in the oven. We ate it with salmon steaks and quinoa (which were somewhat of an afterthought, when I realized butternut squash wasn't exactly a meal in and of itself).

This is a butternut squash. If you haven't had it before, you're missing out.

Dinner. Yum.

I had dessert all planned out. We were going to have panna cotta... I had all the ingredients ready to go. So when dinner was done, I got ready to whip it up for dessert. And then I remembered. It has to set in the fridge for at least 4 hours. Brilliant, Sarah... always thinking ahead *sarcasm*.

So we ended up having our dessert the next day. But it was worth the wait.

Panna cotta (Italian for "cooked cream"). It's basically a kind of custard... a very delicious kind of custard. I topped it with raspberry sauce (which is super easy to make by the way... throw some raspberries sprinkled with sugar in a bowl in the microwave for a minute and hey presto raspberry sauce).

Close-up of the deliciousness

...and I just realized I haven't posted since the last Menu Monday... fail. I'm going to have to start distinguishing between the titles.

Menu Monday

Uhhhh... So. We had Chinese takeout on Monday. Yeah. I was lazy, so instead of cooking we called in an order and had it delivered to our door, then sat and ate it as we watched a movie. It was kind of awesome. I've never had food delivered to my door ready to eat. Not even pizza.

We grew up in Africa. These things are novel to us.

Kind of a lame excuse for a Menu Monday post, I know. And one of these days I'll actually do this post on a Monday .

Menu Monday x 2

Nothing terribly interesting has happened recently (apart from Dallas being 100+ degrees for the past two weeks, holy moly, someone please turn the sun off)... so I'm just going to write about my two favorite meals of the week :)
On Monday I made something that I decided to call Mexican lasagna. It's kind of like chicken enchiladas, but the name "chicken enchiladas" instills great fear in me, as a result of an unfortunate school-wide food poisoning event by a dish of that same name at the cafeteria at boarding school in Kenya back in 9th grade. So, Mexican lasagna it is. For the benefit of my brothers over in South Africa, who expressed a desire to make this when I described it to them, I'll write out the whole recipe. Bear with me, recipes are not my strong point. It'll be more of an estimation.

The finished product

Instructions (I bolded all the ingredients you'll need):

Preheat oven to 400 F

In a pot, saute one chopped onion in oil, add some minced garlic. Add about one pound of bite-sized pieces of boneless skinless chicken breast... while that's cooking put in some taco seasoning to taste, 1/2 tsp of cumin and 1/8 tsp ground coriander seed. Put in one drained can of sweetcorn, or about the same amount of frozen sweetcorn. Then, put in 2 cups of salsa. You can also add some chopped up jalapeno peppers if you like it spicy. Simmer until it's nice and hot.

While that's simmering, layer the bottom of a non-stick 9x13 baking pan with tortillas (I used about six 6-inch diameter ones). Then put 1/2 of the chicken mixture in, spread some sour cream on top of it, and sprinkle some cheese of top of that. Then repeat the layers one more time (tortillas, chicken, sour cream, cheese). Cover the pan in aluminium foil and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for another 5 or 10 minutes.

We ate it with avocados, of course :)

Now for the other favorite meal of the week. Steak.

Mmmmm... the only dressing I used was some salt and fresh ground pepper rubbed on each side. Simple but deliciously effective.

Seriously, those were some of the best steaks I've ever had.... but they were a huge pain in the rear end to cook. We don't have a grill/BBQ, and I read somewhere that if you sear both sides of the steak on high heat on the stovetop in a frying pan with some butter it gets a nice grilled/roasted flavor. Then you finish oven it in the oven so it stays tender... sounds easy. And maybe it will be easier next time (which will be in several months after I've forgotten what a pain they were to cook). 

The first problem is that you can't let the butter burn, which it does fairly easily. Especially on the high heat that it needs to be to sear the steak. The second problem is I only have one frying pan large to fit the size of those huge steaks, so I had to sear them one at a time, rinsing the pan to get rid of the burnt butter and then melting new butter between each steak.

And watch out for that butter. It splashes. And burns. Especially when it gets between your fingers. Ouchie.

I eventually got them all seared and in the oven one at a time, and then had to take them all out one at a time as they were all done at different times... then you have to cover them tightly with foil and let them sit for 10 minutes to allow the juices to settle (otherwise the steaks apparently go dry and chewy). 

Phewsh. Well, I can say it was worth it when we finally sat down to eat... because those steaks were D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S. Juicy and tender on the inside, with grilled crispiness on the outside. We ate them with baked potatoes, green beans, and of course, avocados. The avocado kick has now become a full fledged obsession. We love them.

Yum.

And I think that's about enough food for one post, yes?

Menu Monday

My idea for "Menu Monday" is to post what we eat each Monday to make myself branch out and try new stuff, because I love cooking and I don't want to get stuck in a rut with it!
So... I branched out last night and cooked fish. I normally don't like to because it stinks up the whole house for a couple days with a not-so-delightful fishy smell. So I chose salmon, because it doesn't really smell fishy... and I baked it, which also reduces the smell factor.
It turned out really well... I learned how to cook the salmon from the fabulous Grandma Driver when I was staying with her in May :) I squeezed some lemon juice over the filets, sprinkled some salt and fresh ground pepper on them, and then spread mayonnaise over the top before baking them.
We ate them with oven-baked fries, over which I sprinkled rosemary and thyme, along with side salads and some Pinot Gris. Best meal I've had in the past couple of weeks. Or maybe it just really hit the spot. Whatever the case... it was very yummy.

Brief weekend recap (in case anyone cares to know):

We watched "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" on Friday, which we thought was hilarious and entertaining. But that could just be because we are actually 12-year-olds stuck in 21-year-olds bodies. The next day we bought the "Hunger Games" books by Suzanne Collins and spent the rest of the weekend fighting over them ("It's my turn to read!"... "No, it's my turn!"). Yet more proof that we are still 12. Seriously, though... those books are amazing! Go find them and read them. I can't wait for the last one to come out next month! On Sunday night we had grand plans of going to Whiterock Lake for a picnic but it was so so so HOT that we just carried everything down to the pool and ate as fast as we could before getting in the pool. I don't think I've ever been in a place that gets this hot. 

Right... onto more important (and dreaded) things, ie. the infamous online classes...