Comfort food, recipe initially stolen from Mike Magnuson's blog, and tweaked a wee bit:
Chef Guido's Sausage & Peppers
Ingredients:
Six hot Italian Sausages.
Two medium onions.
Three cloves garlic.
4 bell peppers— two red and two green.
Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed.
A generous glass Pinot Grigio.
Salt, cayenne pepper (Optional)
Two loaves Italian bread.
Serves three (unless one of those guys is me...)
Not for nothing, let’s get right to it.
Get the grill going nice and hot for the sausage.
Slice up your peppers, onions, and garlic. Toss the colors of the Italian flag into a hot skillet with a little bit of olive oil. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Once you got this nice and sautéed, deglaze with the Pinot Grigio.
For the sausage:
Lightly salt, drizzle a little bit of olive oil, and grill to perfection.
Finished dish:
Slice the loaf of bread down the middle. Paint the cut side with a light coat of olive oil, and toast on the grill — about 30 seconds worth. Tong the grilled sausage into the now-toasted bread, spoon over the onions and peppers, and enjoy.
Can't speak to the healthiness of it, but it's good after a long chilly ride...
Well I've already posted my real favorites in other threads, but here's tonight's menu, in honor of Comrade Fidel:
1-1/2 oz Russian vodka
Few drops vermouth
Twist of lemon
2 cups black turtle beans, picked over, soaked at least 8 hours (longer if they've been stored a long time), drained and thoroughly rinsed
Canola oil (1 tbsp minimum to prevent beans from foaming)
1 yellow onion, diced
2 large cloves garlic, minced
2-3 tsp cumin seed, bruised or coarsely ground
2 stalks celery, chopped
(optional: 1 carrot, peeled and chopped)
Fresh hot pepper to taste, minced
2 bay leaves
Unsalted vegetable broth or water
1 green bell pepper
1 bunch kale (any type)
1 orange (Valencia or Hamlin for us right-coast-ers)
10 sprigs (approx.) fresh thyme, or 1-1/2 tsp dried
(optional: 1/3 pint chopped canned tomatoes, or 1 medium fresh tomato)
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Fix yourself a martini. If you're just perusing this recipe now, double the quantities of vodka, vermouth and lemon; drink one now and one while you're cooking
Heat oil in pressure cooker. Saute onions and garlic until translucent. Add celery, hot pepper (and carrots, if using), and bay leaves and saute another 1-2 minutes. Add beans, cumin, and broth or water (important: use only UNsalted broth with uncooked beans!) to barely cover. Lock lid on pressure cooker, bring to high pressure and cook 4 minutes, then remove from heat and allow pressure to come down naturally.
While beans are cooking, seed green pepper and cut in large dice; trim and coarsely chop kale; peel, seed and chop orange. If using a fresh tomato, trim and chop it. If the orange is organic, use the zest from the entire peel as well. Please do not use zest from non-organic oranges, as they are treated with extremely toxic fungicides! That goes for that twist of lemon, too.
When the pressure drops in the cooker, taste beans for doneness; if they are not tender, replace but do not lock the lid and continue to cook until they are done. When beans are done, drain some liquid so the mixture will not be soupy (reserve the liquid in the freezer, along with the kale ribs, for your next batch of soup!). Tie thyme sprigs in a bouquet. Add kale, green pepper, optional tomato, orange, orange zest and thyme, and cook until vegies are tender, stirring occasionally, 5-10 minutes.
Season to taste with salt and pepper (and additional crushed red pepper, if desired). Serve with rice (long grain preferred).
I love lentils. Soup, casseroles, salads. Whatever.
Last night I took a really good lentil salad with a redwine vinegrette to a potluck dinner. It had just enough red tomatoes (peeled, seeded, & chopped) and scallions and parsley to really look good, and arranged in a nice white oval serving dish for contrast. It's a combination of recipes from Emeril and Alton Brown - with garlic, shallots, carrots, onion, celery and some other stuff. Someday I have to write it down the way I make it cause every time I sort of merge the two recipes together and probably do it a little differently each time as well.
Jeeze - You would have thought it was rat stew or something. I don't think anyone even tried it. Sad that adults can't venture out of their own personal comfort zones to try even a bite of something new. Oh well, more for me.
Tofu cheesecake.
We used to laughingly call it "Bean Curd Pie." Yummy, though.
"The best rides are the ones where you bite off much more than you can chew, and live through it." ~ Doug Bradbury
Last wk., I didn't get home until 7:30 pm after work ..since I went grocery shopping.
I was ravenous...and for supper slapped togther low fat cottage cheese and on the side sockeye salmon out of the tin with a glop of Dijon mustard mixed into salmon. Added some Swedish rye crackers. Yea, missing veggies but had dried figs and 1/2 fresh dragonfruit.
This is the meal most requested at my house (when i'm cooking):
chicken breaded lightly and browned in cast iron pain. salt and pepper and garlic. throw that in the oven with
fresh peeled potatoes sliced into sixths or quarters depending on the size. get some olive oil on your hands and rub all the pieces of the chicken with it. throw those in the oven too, more salt & pepper, paprika or rosemary good here.
veggies: kale, collards, turnip greens or swiss chard boiled or steamed until tender... serve plain, with lemon or vinegar on the side.
you bet it's healthy!