Count down to NYC!

Only 5 day until our big trip to New York! Still finalizing plans for sightseeing and more importantly...where to eat! Welcoming any suggestions!

Quick, Easy, & Delicious!

It's Tuesday night and I am totally exhausted. 6th and 7th graders a few days out from spring break do not make easy students to teach! I was tempted to pull out the chinese takeout menu, but resisted and made instead a delicious and fast dinner: pasta carbonara. It is really simple, but absolutely delicious (unless you're like my mom and don't like eggs!). Now granted, it's not the most healthy dinner...but still better than general tso's chicken or egg rolls.

For the pasta carbonara:

Boil a pot of salted water, cook 1 pound of fav pasta (we used linguini).

In a frying dish, saute 1/2 large onion (or one small) and 8 strips of bacon chopped up (I had some leftover, so we didn't have to cook it all the way through, just re-heat it).

In a large bowl, mix 4 eggs and 1/2 cup of cream. Add 1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a lot of black pepper.

Once the onion and bacon are cooked, add those to the egg/cream mixture. Stir in 1/2 cup of chopped Italian parsley. Add pasta when it's al dente, to the mixture and toss together. Add any pasta water if sauce is too thick. Serve with more parsley and cheese.

Yum!!

Berry Strata

I can't take credit for this recipe...but here is a picture of the delicious strawberry strata my amazing husband made! How lucky am I?!? (maybe I'll convince him to write his recipe)

A little Italian mid-week

It's a Tuesday night, and while I'll admit, I'd rather get takeout...we were good and cooked at home (and exercised). We took some hints from Giada and made a pasta with peas and sausage...but we made some changes to it.

Boil a pot of water for rigatoni (16 oz.). Add chopped garlic ( 3 cloves) to a large frying pan with 2 tablespoons olive oil, heating at medium heat. Once the garlic starts to cook (use your nose!), add 4 links of hot Italian sausage chopped. Cook on a medium-high heat until sausage is cooked through, and while cooking, break up the pieces. Push sausage to the edge of pan and add 1/4 cup of dry white wine (I used sauvignon blanc). Once the sausage is cooked, add thawed frozen peas (1 pound) to the pan. Using a potato masher or hand blender, puree the majority of the peas. Mix everything together and turn the heat off the burner. Add 1/4 cup chopped basil, and 1 teaspoon each of oregano, parsley, and thyme. Also add 1 cup of ricotta. Using a pasta utensil scoop out the cooked rigatoni and add it to the sausage/pea mixture and toss. Top with freshly grated parmesan cheese and season to taste. Enjoy!

Sadie's new favorite thing

In case you haven't noticed, Ryan and I have the world's cutest and sweetest pup. We love our Sadie as a daughter (yes, we're those type of crazy pet parents). We've recently created a monster however...Sadie has grown to love whipped cream, at almost an obsessive level. When making strawberry shortcakes (much easier to make them at home than go to Plant City for the Strawberry Festival), Sadie would not leave us alone until we gave her some. This picture is her eyeing our dessert. She is a funny, funny girl!

Spicy!

We decided to "spice" things up a bit for a Sunday night...by using Bobby Flay's cookbook for inspiration. We made chipotle honey chicken wings and spicy potatoes.

For the wings...in a blender, blend 2 tablespoons chipotle peppers in adobo sauce with 2/3rds cup honey, 1 tablespoon chili powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Gradually add a few tablespoons of olive oil until it's the desired consistency *you can add more or less peppers depending on how spicy you like your wings* Ideally you should make this on a hot grill, but we keep forgetting to get propane, so we did it under the broiler (about 10 minutes per side). After the wings are cooked through, toss in a bowl with the sauce and add chopped cilantro, green onions, and sesame seeds. They're yummy and messy! (while we were eating them, we kept saying we wish we had a fry daddy to make them more crunchy, but the flavor on these is really really good). I know my dad would shun non-Buffalo style wings, but I think even he would like these.

For the potatoes...boil whole, skin-on potatoes (I used russett...they were on sale!) in boiling water for about 10 minutes and then drain. Once they are cooled to the touch cut into bite size pieces, toss with olive oil and salt and pepper, and spread out in one layer on a baking sheet and place into oven. Cook until crunchy. Toss with a mixture of 1/2 cup mayo, 2 tablespoons pureed chipotle and adobo sauce, paprika, garlic salt, and cracked pepper. Serve with chopped cilantro and green onions.

This is definitely a spicy meal, but really delicious. When I first met Ryan I never imagined he would like a meal like this, but he did! It was a fun afternoon...we were both cooking different things in the kitchen and watching tv shows from the previous week on DVR. Pretty much an ideal Sunday afternoon for me. Ryan is in the process of making a fabulous french onion soup, hopefully I'll talk him into "guest blogging" about it. Have a good week! It's FCAT, joy.

Crab cakes and champagne

Okay, just by the title of this blog you know it was a good Saturday night in the Chase household! The pictures include our delicious champagne (the Total Wine saleslady said it was as good as Veuve...she was wrong, but it was still really good), the crab cakes, and our adorable Sadie trying to get in some of the action during dinner.

For the crab cakes: mix 8 oz jumbo lump crab meat with a couple rounded tablespoons of mayonnaise, grainy mustard (about 2 tablespoons), 1/4 cup bread crumbs (or panko, but we were out), salt and pepper to taste, and the zest and juice of one lemon. Stir together carefully so that the crab meat doesn't break apart too much. In a frying pan, coat the bottom with olive oil on medium heat. Once it's hot, add the crabcakes (our's made 4), and fry for about 4-6 minutes on each side (this is when we started toasting with our champagne...the reason why I'll share at a later date...so the time's were a little vague haha). We served them with a quick remoulade with mayo, mustard, lemon zest, and paprika.

All in all, it was a delicious Saturday feast! The perfect meal after a long week of dealing with FCAT prep. More to come tomorrow!

Asian Style Noodles

Yay for the weekend! This is when it's great to spend hours cooking elaborate, delicious meals that you normally wouldn't dare try to make during the hectic week, right? Well that was the plan when Ryan and I went down to The Fresh Market Saturday afternoon. But we ended up on a very simple and quick menu (but still delicious). As a side dish, we took inspiration from my mom (who in turn got the recipe from a Momofuku book), we just simplified it a tad. In one of the pictures above you can see all the incredients we used. To make the sauce we used 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar, 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon fish sauce, 1 tablespoon worchester sauce, 3 spring onions slices, a handful of chopped cilantro (one of my favs), 1 tablespoon of sesame seeds, 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger, and the zest and juice of one lemon. For the noodles, we used somen noodles (a Japaneses wheat noodle). They cook for 2 minutes in boil water and then drain and add immediately to sauce and toss. (We made the sauce about 2 hours ahead of time so the flavors had time to "marry"...another tip thanks to my mom). It was the perfect side dish; full of flavor but still light. Enjoy :)

Asian marinated flank steak

Alright, so it's Tuesday night. Last weekend seemed like eons ago and the upcoming weekend seems like an eternity away. The last thing I feel like doing (especially after a late meeting) is cooking. Luckily, I already had some flank steak marinating in the fridge. It is currently under the broiler (too lazy for the grill...weeknight cooking is all about finding ways around laziness and lack of time) for about 7 minutes on each side. When it's cooked, slice it against the grain to give the most tender slices. It is really yummy! (picture is the steak marinating with a blend of hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and worchester sauce)

For a side dish we're having the leftover fingerling potatoes heated up in the oven and finished with grated parmesan.

Say it with me now...only 17 school days until spring break yay!!!!