Shrimp Succotash

It’s been a long week, 5 days of working after the 4 day week last week, feels like eternity.  With Friday left to go, making an easy recipe like this was a welcome addition to the night!

Fresh, light, bursting with flavor and color- this recipe is the perfect summer meal to fill you up without leaving you with that heavy feeling.  The freshness really shines through with basil and parsley, both easy to pick from your garden!  Plus tomatoes, corn and zucchini are all in season for summertime.  So hooray for Friday and the weekend, and this recipe!  Enjoy,

Ingredients:
Serves 4
Adapted from Ellie Krieger, So Easy
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
15 ounces no salt added corn kernels,drained and rinsed
10 ounces lima beans, thawed
1 medium zucchini (about 1/2 pound) quartered lengthwise and sliced
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 pound shrimp
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1 cup parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic, corn, lima beans, zucchini, and tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, about 7 minutes.

Spray a large nonstick skillet with cooking spray, and preheat it over medium-high heat.  In the meantime, prepare the shrimp. Pat them dry and season them with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Add the shrimp and cook until the inside is opaque, 3 to 4 minutes, turning once.

Stir the vinegar and basil into the succotash, season with additional salt and pepper, to taste, and serve topped with grilled scallops. Garnish with Parsley Drizzle.

Parsley Drizzle:

1 cup lightly packed flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons water, as needed to slacken

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree.

Yield: 1/2 cup

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Chicken with Mango BBQ Sauce and Asparagus

Nothing is better, or easier, than a quick chicken recipe on a Tuesday night.  We picked this out on the weekend and planned ahead Monday night to start it, which is key for this recipe to be “quick” when you are hungry.  Make the sauce/ marinade tonight, seal it up with your chicken, and toss in the fridge to cook tomorrow.  We paired this with some fresh roasted asparagus (which cooked in the oven while we used the lower broiler for the chicken) and some fresh bread to round off the meal.  The sauce has a nice smokey aroma, but the flavor is a great balance of sweet, savory and tangy all at once, plus our idea to marinate it over night lended itself to very tender moist chicken.  It wasn’t spicy which is deceiving with all the peppers in there.  Cooking it in the broiler on foil meant easy clean up and super fast cooking time.  This recipe serves 8, but we froze half the sauce and placed it in the freezer for next time, using 2 large chicken breasts split or butterflied in half again to make (4) 4 ounce chicken breasts.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced (about 1 cup)

1 red pepper, diced (about 1 cup)

3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/3 cup red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons lime juice

1/4 cup low-sodium tomato sauce

1 mango, diced (about 1 1/2 cups)

2 to 3 jalapenos, minced

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded to 1/2″thickness

Directions

Heat the oil in a medium-sized skillet over medium-high. Add the onions and cook until translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the red peppers, garlic, salt and pepper, and allspice and cook for 2 minutes more. Stir in the vinegar, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice and tomato sauce and cook for 1 minute more. Transfer the mixture into a bender and add the mango and jalapeno. Blend until smooth.

Put 1 cup of the barbecue sauce into a sealable plastic bag with the chicken and marinate over night or for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the broiler. Put the chicken on a broiler pan and discard the marinade. Broil the chicken on high for about 12 minutes, turning once. Let the meat rest for 10 minutes before slicing. Spoon about 1/2 cup of barbecue sauce over the meat slices and serve.

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Blueberry and Almond French Toast Bake

This breakfast was delicious, and So Easy from her cookbook Ellie Krieger says it perfectly, “The hardest thing about this dish is waiting for it to come out of the oven because as it is baking it fills your kitchen with the most enticing, heartwarming, vanilla-cinnamon aroma. Its looks and taste hold up their end of the bargain too. Inside it is egg-y, perfectly sweetened, and studded with bursting warm blueberries. Outside it is crisp and crowned with sugared toasted almonds.”  Put this together the day before and cover in the fridge over night.  Waking up and putting it in the oven is really a treat- no need to make batter and more dishes in the morning, just enjoy your coffee and wait for the timer to go off! We halved the recipe to serve just 4 and below is our version, enjoy:

Ingredients

• Cooking spray
• 4 ounces French baguette, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 4 large eggs
• 4 large egg whites
• 1 cups fat free milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
• 2 cups fresh blueberries
• 1/8 cup sliced almonds
• 1 tablespoons dark brown sugar

Spray a 8 by 8-inch baking pan with cooking spray. Arrange the bread in a single layer in the baking pan. Whisk together the eggs, egg whites, milk, vanilla, cinnamon and maple syrup. Pour the egg mixture over the bread in the pan, spreading it around so the liquid saturates the bread. Scatter the blueberries evenly on top and sprinkle with the almonds and brown sugar. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Uncover the baking pan and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Serve warm, cold or at room temperature.

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Roasted Pork Chops, Carrots and Beets

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds carrots, mixed colors if available, peeled
• 1 1/2 pounds beets, different sizes and colors if available
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 bulb garlic, broken apart, 1/2 the cloves smashed, 1/2 left whole
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 orange, juiced
• A few sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked
• A few sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves picked
• 5 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 4 thick organic pork loin chops
• 8 fresh sage leaves
• 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Put the carrots into a large pot and the beets into another, and add enough water to cover them. Season with salt and bring to a boil. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes until just tender, then drain and place in separate bowls. Peel the beets, and cut any larger carrots and beets in half or into quarters. Smaller ones can stay whole.  Add the flavorings while the vegetables are still hot. Toss the carrots with half the smashed garlic and a drizzle of olive oil, then lightly season. Add the orange juice and the thyme leaves and toss again. Mix the beets with the rest of the garlic, the rosemary, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. You can now put the vegetables together on a large roasting pan with the carrots in 1 half of the pan and the beets in the other ( view photo above). Place in the middle of the preheated oven and roast for around 1/2 hour or until golden.

While the carrots and beets are cooking, lay the chops on a board, firmly press a sage leaf onto the eye meat on both sides of each chop. Season with salt and pepper.

When the vegetables start to color, heat a large ovenproof frying pan on the burner, add a good glug of olive oil and put in the chops. As soon as you’ve got nice color on 1 side, turn the chops over and place the pan in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the chops are crisp on the outside and just cooked through and juicy in the middle. Remove the chops to a warmed plate. Pour most of the fat out of the pan and add a squeeze of lemon juice to it. Stir and scrape the lovely sticky bits off the bottom and drizzle all over the chops. Remove the carrots and beets from the oven – they should be nice and sticky by now.

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Pizza Night

Our first posting starts off with our favorite food- Pizzas! These aren’t just any pizzas either- they are delicious home made pizzas using Chris Forberg’s awesome dough recipe. Making the dough is very simple and is the best way to go for the best pizza. We like to make super thin crust that has a nice crispness to it. So to begin, we make a simple starter dough with warm water, yeast and flour (bread flour makes a crispier crust), then we add more flour and some melted butter water mixture to the bowl and beat it with the dough hook really really well. Kitchen Aid mixers are the greatest thing ever! We let it rise with a wet towel over it and punched it down every half hour or so for 6 hours. All of our fresh ingredients came from our Pilsen farmers market as well as Pete’s fresh market. We had baby bella mushrooms, fresh from our garden basil, tomato, Kalamata olives, green and red onions, Italian sausage, green peppers, banana peppers, cilantro and a mix of parmesan and mozzarella cheeses ( the more the merrier here). Each pizza was hand made by yours truly and we documented them all for you to take a peek, don’t be too jealous though… they were yummy! Ok, go ahead and be jealous. Enjoy!

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