Beef with Broccoli

 

One of our go-to quick weeknight recipes is always beef and broccoli, and usually we would just use a store bought sauce for the dish. However, in our 'Cook This Not That: Skinny Comfort Foods' cookbook we noticed that they had a recipe which includes making your own sauce for beef and broccoli, so naturally we wanted to give it a try to see if it would be better than what we could buy in the store.

Here are the ingredients that the cookbook suggests that you use:

3 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
3 tbsp oyster sauce (this was our first time using oyster sauce in our own cooking!)
2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine, sherry, or dry white wine (we used sherry)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp toasted sesame oil (we love this oil!)
1 tsp cornstarch
1 lb flank steak, thinly sliced
1/2 tbsp canola or peanut oil (we used canola oil)
1 lb broccoli, broken into bite size pieces
1 red or yellow bell pepper, cored and sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1/4 cup low-sodium beef stock

And here is how the cookbook suggests that you bring it all together:

1. Combine the soy sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing (sherry), brown sugar, sesame oil and cornstarch in a large mixing bowl. Whisk to combine the liquid with the cornstarch. Mix in the beef and let marinate for 30 minutes.
2. Heat the oil in a wok over medium heat. Add the broccoli, bell pepper, garlic and ginger and stir-fry, using a spatula to keep the vegetables moving, for about 5 minutes, until the vegetables have softened. Add the beef and its marinade and continue cooking, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes, until the beef is browned and nearly cooked through. Add the stock and cook for another 2 minutes, until the sauce thickens and clings to the beef and vegetables. Serve over steamed brown rice, if you like.

This recipe was OK but it the sauce (the key element of this recipe) did not meet our expectations (which were to exceed the sauces we could buy in the grocery store). So we will probably continue to buy our beef and broccoli sauces from the grocery store - unless we want to expand off of this recipe and see what other creations we can come up from.

If you try this recipe please let us know your thoughts!

Bon appetite & enjoy!

Garlic-Rosemary Roast Beef & Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

 

I love having a hearty roast beef dinner on a Sunday night! But because Steve and I are so busy (and we like to try so many new recipes) it is actually rare for us to make a roast beef dinner on a Sunday night. However, when we do make it we like to make it with garlic - so it was very fitting that we found garlic infused recipes in our 'Cook This Not That' cookbooks!

Here are the ingredients you will need for the Garlic-Rosemary Roast Beef:

3lb rump roast
8 garlic cloves, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp chopped, fresh, rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste

And here is how you need to bring the roast all together:

1.  Remove the roast from the fridge at least 30 minutes before cooking.
2. Preheat oven to 250 deg F. Use a small paring knife to make small incisions into the roast and gently insert garlic clove halves all over. Rub the roast with the olive oil and season all over with rosemary, salt and pepper. Place on a rack on a baking sheet and place on the middle rack of the oven.
3. Roast for 90 minutes. Turn up heat to 475 deg F and roast for another 15 minutes, until a deep brown crust had developed and a thermometer in the thickest part of the meat reads 140 deg F.

Here are the ingredients that you will need for the Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes:

1 1/2 lbs Yukon gold potatoes
1 cup low fat milk
1 tbsp butter
6 cloves roasted garlic
Salt and pepper to taste

And here is how you will bring the mashed potatoes all together:

1.  Place potatoes in a large pot of salted water and bring too boil. Cook until a knife inserted into the flesh meets no resistance, about 25 minutes. Drain.
2. While the potatoes boil combine milk, butter and garlic in small saucepan and heat until butter is melted. Keep warm.
3. Mash potatoes into a rough purée. Slowly add hot milk mixture to the potatoes using a wooden spoon to beat continuously. Season with salt and pepper.

Overall the combination of these two recipes were great (especially if you like garlic!). I am sure that we will be using these recipes and elements of these recipes for many years to come!

The Garlic-Rosemary Roast Beef is from the 'Cook This Not That: Skinny Comfort Foods' cookbook.
The Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes are from the 'Cook This Not That: Easy & Awesome 350-Calorie Meals' cookbook.

Bon appetite & enjoy!

Classic Risotto with Authentic Italian Flavours - Chef Michael Smith

Until recently, neither Steve nor I had never made our own risotto. It was not until we went to the Halifax Club for their Piemonte Wine Dinner that I had a risotto so good I wanted to learn to make it at home - so that I could eat it whenever I wanted.

I am also a big fan of Chef Michael Smith's recipes and his cooking shows - so when I was looking for a great risotto recipe for me to try - his recipes were the first place that I looked. I wanted to start with a simple risotto recipe, so I was delighted to see a classic Italian risotto recipe on his Food Network webpage.

Here are the ingredients that Chef Michael Smith suggests you use for his Classic Risotto with Authentic Italian Flavours:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups Arborio rice
1 cup Italian white wine
8 cups real chicken broth, simmering hot
1 cup good quality Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, shredded
1 tablespoon (or so) of butter
a few sprigs of fresh thyme or any fresh herb, minced

 And here is how Chef Michael Smith suggests you bring it all together: 

1. Lightly simmer the chicken broth in one pot as you make the risotto in another pot.
2. Splash the oil into a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, then toss in the onions and garlic and sauté quickly until golden and fragrant, a few minutes. Add the rice and continue to cook and stir over medium high heat, coating the grains evenly with the oil, until the rice grains give off a toasty aroma and transform from pure white to almost entirely opaque.
3. Splash in the white wine and stir frequently as the rice quickly absorbs the liquid. Reduce your heat to low. Start adding the hot chicken stock in several additions, stirring frequently after each one and allowing the rice to absorb the broth. Continue to cook and stir the risotto until the rice is just tender or al dente (soft with an ever so slight bite to the center) and creamy. The Arborio rice will gradually release its starch and thicken the extra liquid into creaminess. Creamy is important if you’re going for authenticity! This will take about 20 minutes from when you start adding the liquid.
4. To finish stir in the Parmesan, butter and minced fresh thyme. Spoon into dishes piping hot and share.

This recipe was easy to follow (he has a great ability of fully explaining each step in the process) and the final product was delicious! This recipe is going straight to the top of dishes that I want to make again!

Definitely give this one a try!

Bon appetite & enjoy!

Kung Pao Chicken

We all know that sometimes chicken can be a little bit.... boring! So we like to find all kinds of ways to spice it up - sometimes literally! As you will remember, we love the 'Cook This Not That' cookbooks and for Christmas Steve received two new books from this series. Many of the recent recipes we have posted to our blog were from the 'Cook This Not That: Easy & Awesome 350 Calorie Meals'; however, this recipe for 'Kung Pao Chicken' is from the 'Cook This Not That: Skinny Comfort Foods' cookbook.

This recipe definitely delivered on its ability to add some flavour and spice to the chicken, but I would not agree that this dish is a comfort food - a little too spicy for my liking!

Here are the ingredients that you will need for this recipe:

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, diced (we used chicken breasts because they were on sale)
1/4 cup rice wine or sherry (we used sherry)
1/4 cup low sodium chicken stock
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp sriracha or other Asian chili sauce (we used sriracha)
1 tbsp peanut or canola oil (we used canola oil)
4 dried red chilies or 1 tsp red pepper flakes (we used the red pepper flakes)
4 scallions, chopped, white and green parts separated
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp mined, fresh ginger
1 large zucchini, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup roasted peanuts

And here is how we brought it all together:

1. Combine the chicken, rice wine, stock, soy sauce, balsamic, sugar, cornstarch, and sriracha in a large bowl. Cover and marinate for 30 minutes, or up to 2 hours in the fridge.
2. Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add the chilies, scallion white parts, garlic, and ginger and stir-fry for 30 seconds, until fragrant but not browned. Add the zucchini and bell pepper and continue cooking, using a metal spatula to keep the ingredients in near-constant motion, for about 3 minutes, until the vegetables are lightly browned.
3. Remove the chicken from the marinate and add to the wok, stir-frying for about 3 minutes, until lightly browned on the outside. Add the marinade and peanuts and cook for 3 minutes longer, until the liquid comes to a boil and begins to thicken and cling to the chicken an vegetables. Stir in the scallion greens and serve over a small scoop of steamed brown rice, if you like.

As I mentioned above, this recipe was a little too spicy for me, so if we do decide to make it again we will make sure to cut back on the red pepper flakes!

Give this recipe a try and let me know what you think about it!

Bon appetite & enjoy!

Margarita Chicken

Over the past few months we have been trying out recipes that have black beans in them - Steve really likes black beans and they are a nice way to add in another texture to a lot of dishes. In our new 'Cook This Not That: Easy & Awesome 350 Calorie Meals' cookbook there was a recipe for Margarita Chicken (which included black beans) so naturally we wanted to give it a try.

Here are the ingredients that you'll need for this recipe:

1/2 can black beans (14-16 oz) drained
1/4 tsp cumin
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tbsp canola oil
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup prepared salsa
1 cup pepper jack cheese
Chopped cilantro

Here is how we brought it all together:

1. Preheat oven to 450 deg F. Combine black beans and cumin on a saucepan and heat all the way through. Squeeze in the lime juice and season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and warm before serving.
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season the chicken all over with salt and pepper and sear in a hot pan for 3-4 minutes on the first side, until a nice crust develops, then flip. Cook for another 3-4 minutes,then spoon the salsa over the meat, top with cheese and place in oven. Bake until the chicken is cooked through and the cheese is fully melted, no more than 5 minutes. Divide the beans among all of the plates and top with chicken and garnish with cilantro.

This dish was OK but was not something that I would be jumping at to try again. Given that most of the flavour is coming from the salsa you really need to make sure that you are using a salsa that has a full flavour to it.

If you try this recipe please let me know how it worked out for you and if there were any substitutions that you made.

Bon appetite & enjoy!

Greek Salad

 

I am a big fan of Greek food, and since the Greek Festival here in Halifax last Spring (2012) Steve too is a big fan (we even tried the stuffed grape leaves at the festival - something neither one of us had thought that we would ever do!). So when we saw that there was a recipe for Greek Salad in our new 'Cook This Not That: Easy & Awesome 350-Calorie Meals' cookbook we felt we needed to give it a try.

Unfortunately for us this dish was not delicious. It is rare that we will make a dish that we simply just do not like (and I thought that it was quite strange that I could not like a Greek Salad - it is not a difficult recipe), but I think that it was that the ingredients listed simply did not come in the appropriate ratios.

Here are all the ingredients that are suggested for this recipe:

2 cups chopped cooked chicken
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded ad chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
4 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1/2 can garbanzo beans (we used chick peas)
3/4 cup crumbled feta
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Here is how the recipe suggests that you bring it all together:

1.  Combine chicken, cucumber, pepper, tomatoes, onion, chick peas, and feta in a bowl.
2. In a separate bowl combine vinegar and oregano with salt and pepper, slowly drizzle in olive oil and whisk to combine.
3. Toss the dressing with the salad, let sit for 30 minutes and serve.

My thoughts on why this recipe did not taste the way it should was in large part because of the onion. Using a full red onion was just too overpowering and masked the flavours of all of the other ingredients. We are keen to try more Greek Salad recipes but are very quick to share that we will not be trying this recipe again... ever.

Red Pepper Alfredo

Anyone who knows Steve knows that he loves Alfredo sauce, so when we came across a recipe for Red Pepper Alfredo we knew that it was only a matter of time before we tried it. I should also mention that we love eating dishes that have roasted red peppers in them - so naturally this dish already had two thumbs up to us!

This recipe is from the 'Cook This Not That: Easy & Awesome 350-Calorie Meals' cookbook. As many of you may now know - many of our recipes are from this series of cookbooks. They allow us to try lots of new dishes, while keeping the recipes relatively simple and are low calories (not that we really care about the calories, but it is a good feature).

This recipe delivered on our expectations! It was delicious and of course easy to make. The only suggestion that Steve had was to add in chicken or some type of meat to make the recipe a little bit more filling.

Here are all the ingredients that you'll need for this recipe:

10 oz dried fettuccine
1 1/2 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk
1/2 cup half and half
3/4 cup chopped roasted red peppers
2 garlic cloves halved
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste

Here is how we brought it all together

1. Bring large pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 30 second less than the package instructions.
2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute, until the two are fully incorporated. Slowly add the milk and half and half, whisking to prevent lumps from forming. Add the red pepper and garlic. Turn the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour the mixture into a blender and purée until smooth and uniform in colour. Return to the pan and stir in the Parmesan. Season with salt and pepper and simmer until pasta is ready.
3. Drain the pasta and add directly to the saucepan. Toss to coat evenly.

Steve and I both encourage you to try this recipe the next time you are looking for a new pasta dish to try! It is worth the time it takes to roast your own red pepper!

Bon appetite & enjoy!