Chile-Lime Acorn Squash

Chile-Lime Acorn Squash 
Adapted from Gourmet

When it comes to entrees, maybe 1 out of every 3 we make come out really well.  But vegetables, one of America's most unpopular food categories, knock my socks off nearly every time.  Despite popular opinion, vegetables taste freaking awesome.  I mean, no, not those steamed-in-bag frozen ones, or almost anything steamed, really, but well cooked vegetables steal the show on our plates more often than not.  I'm pretty convinced that roasting + oil + salt is God's gift to produce.  Just that much will produce a pretty delectable result every time.  But then there's recipes like this one that will really blow your mind.  Acorn squash is usually prepared with butter and brown sugar (delicious), but this out-of-the-box preparation is outrageously good.  I had it as a snack the other day, but it would make a great side to a Mexican or Asian meat dish.


Ingredients

• 1 acorn squash
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 3/4 tsp coarse salt, divided
• 4 Tbsp olive oil, divided
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 1/2 Tbsp lime juice
• 1 tsp Sambal Oelek, or another red chile sauce (Sambal Oelek is amazing, and pretty easy to find in the Asian section of your grocery store)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Halve squash lengthwise, then cut off and discard the stem end.  Scoop seeds and stringy flesh out.  Slice along the ribs to create wedges.
3. Toss wedges with pepper, 1/2 tsp salt, and 2 tablespoons oil.
4. Arrange squash on their sides on a baking sheet.  Roast for 20-25 minutes, or until tender and golden brown.
5. While squash roasts, make vinaigrette.  Mince garlic.  Place 1/4 teaspoon salt on the cutting board with the garlic and use the flat side of your knife to mash into a paste.
6. In a small bowl, whisk together the garlic-salt mash, remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil, and chile sauce.
7. Transfer roasted squash to plates and drizzle with vinaigrette.
8. Side note, extensive Googling has led me to believe you should not eat the skin of winter squash, including acorn.  I just peeled it off as I ate.

Serves 4 as a side (I ate 2/3 of it as a snack).

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Crabby English Muffins

Crabby English Muffins
From Tera's Grandma Arlene

For the first 15 or 20 years of my life, virtually every Easter and Thanksgiving was spent at my Grandma's house.  According to family lore, if you wanted to chat with young me, your best chance was to find me at the appetizer table, which was really the pool table in my Grandma's basement.  Thank goodness we used something as big as a pool table, because our family knows how to rock appetizers.  These are a family classic, and although my Grandma isn't responsible for cooking the whole meal these days, we can always count on her famous crab English muffins.

This year, with our big NYE party just around the corner, I finally thought to ask for the recipe.  I called up my Grandma requesting that she email it to me, and to my surprise she said she has it memorized and can just tell me over the phone.  Well, now that I know what's in this mystical delight, I can see what she meant.  It's pretty much equal parts butter, Velveeta, and fake crab meat.  It might not sound gourmet, but boy oh boy do they fly off the platter, and what more can you ask for in an appetizer!


Ingredients

• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 lb Velveeta
• 8 oz imitation crab meat, also known as surimi (it's in the refrigerated case, probably near sausages - it's a compilation of white fish, flavored and dyed to look like crab, and while that description sounds gross, just go with it)
• 6 English muffins

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Place butter and Velveeta in a microwave safe bowl and microwave, stirring every 30 seconds, until melted.
3. Pull crab meat apart into smaller shreds, using forks or your hands (hands is way faster).
4. Mix crab meat into butter and Velveeta.
5. Split English muffins into 12 halves.
6. Divide crab mixture across muffin halves.  If you want to make them in advance, you can put them in the fridge at this point and bake when you need them.
7. Bake for 20 minutes, or until brown on top.
8. Cut each muffin into 4 pieces.

Makes 48 pieces which will be quickly devoured, even after you admit that the only ingredients are butter, Velveeta, and fake crab.

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Lobster Risotto

Lobster Risotto
From Cooking Light 

I know it's a little late for this story, but I'm finally ready to tell you about New Year's Eve at the HMK.  It had the makings of a truly classy event.  Five couples, wedding china, beef tenderloin, lobster risotto.  Sounds mature, right!?  Well, it's hard to say exactly where the night took a collegiate turn, but by about 1am we had transformed into a bunch of wannabe 21 year olds playing beer pong and quarters and ditching champagne in exchange for Coors Light cans.

Luckily the pre-frat party portion was just as big of a success.  I've been reading a lot of Barefoot Contessa books lately and she really drills it home that you shouldn't overcommit and try to make too many things.  It's more important that you and your guests have fun, and that doesn't hinge on one extra appetizer or a super complicated dessert.  This, of course, was the hardest thing John and I have ever had to do.  We have SO many recipes we've been dying to try, and we must have flirted with at least five things that we ultimately, and wisely, decided to skip this time.  In the end we contributed a crab toast appetizer (coming soon to a blog near you), beef tenderloin, and lobster risotto.  Our guests brought two more appetizers, a salad, a veggie, and a few desserts.  Sure enough, it was the perfect amount of food, and by no means enough to stop everyone from staying and drinking until 4am!


Ingredients

• 4 cups lower sodium chicken broth
• 15 oz (2-3 tails) lobster tails (make sure it's good, non fishy lobster - I know it's expensive, but bad lobster will ruin the dish)
• 3 Tbsp butter, divided
• 1 cup Arborio rice, uncooked
• 3/4 cup frozen green peas, thawed

Preparation

1. Bring broth and 1 1/2 cups water to a boil in a medium stock pot.
2. Add lobster and cook, covered.  If your tails are about 5 ounces each, cook for about 4 minutes.  If they are bigger tails cook a little longer.
3. Remove pot from heat.  Pull tails from broth, reserving the broth.
4. When tails are cool enough to handle, remove meat (reserve shells), chop, and set aside.
5. Place shells in a gallon bag and smash with a mallet.  They don't need to be pulverized, just broken up.
6. Return broken shells to broth and simmer, covered, on medium-low for 20 minutes.
7. Strain broth through a sieve, catching the broth in a bowl.  Discard shells.
8. Place broth in a sauce pan and keep warm over low heat.  Remove 2 tablespoons of broth and set aside.
9. Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a medium heavy saucepan or Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add rice to pan and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
10. Add 1 cup of broth and cook, stirring constantly, until liquid is nearly absorbed.
11. Add the remaining broth mixture, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and waiting for each portion to become nearly absorbed before adding the next.  It should take around 20 minutes.
12. Remove risotto from heat, stir in lobster, reserved 2 tablespoons broth, 2 tablespoons butter, and peas.
13. Serve immediately.

Serves 4.

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New Years Eve

New Year's Eve in the Honeymoon Kitchen!

We kept it casual this year and hosted 8 friends at our place for dinner.  Couldn't have asked for a better time!  Details and recipes coming soon.

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Bacon Wrapped Dates

Bacon Wrapped Dates
From the Honeymoon Kitchen

How good are bacon wrapped dates?  I'll be the first to admit they've become slightly overdone, but I'm still not sick of them.  We order them at tapas restaurants, gobble them down at other people's parties, and serve them at quite a few of our own.  And the other night, we made them for dinner.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They were our dinner.  As in the entree.  As I mentioned the other day, we received a plethora of olive oils as Christmas gifts, and decided to replace our dinner one night with an elaborate olive oil tasting.  But since even we couldn't justify bread and oil as dinner, we added an appetizer to make ourselves feel better...yes, we have our own brand of logic in the HMK.  Which is precisely what I love about it!


Ingredients

• 12 Medjool dates (I know they're expensive, but they really should be Medjool - they're super meaty and sweet and perfect for this dish)
• 12 whole, unsalted almonds
• 6 slices bacon
• 1 jar red pepper jelly (probably available near all the other jelly flavors)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Use a paring knife to slice a slit in each date.
3. Reach into the date, being careful not to tear it open more than necessary, and pull out the pit.
4. Replace each pit with an almond, and squeeze the date shut.
5. Cut bacon slices in half to form 12 shorter slices.
6. Wrap each date with a half slice of bacon and place on a baking sheet, seam down.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until bacon appears crispy.
8. While dates are cooking, warm the jelly in a small sauce pan over low heat until thin enough to pour onto a platter.
9. To serve, pour jelly onto a platter and place dates on top of jelly.

Makes 12 pieces.

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Lemony Multi-Grain Salad

Lemony Multi-Grain Salad
From The Kitchn 

Twas a week after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature felt skinny, not even young Ralph.  (Ralph's our puppy, andddd I'm tired of rhyming).

Yes, it's time for the post-holiday bloat.  Show me one more cookie, pie, or piece of meat and I may explode on the spot.  We've returned from our stay in the 'burbs, the house is full of our new loot including 700 new dog toys (all of which have squeakers, thanks relatives, haha), and of course a few kitchen goodies.  As the resident family foodies we always receive our fair share of cookbooks and kitchen trinkets, but this year had a unique theme - olive oil!  We received awesome specialty oils from 3 different people, netting 7 oils and 2 balsamic vinegars overall.  So we did what seemed obvious - grabbed a loaf of good crusty bread on our way back to the city and set up a little olive oil tasting station in lieu of dinner.  The array had a few flavor-infused oils, including a delightful Meyer lemon oil.  While it doesn't make the best dipping oil, we immediately agreed it was destined for a pasta salad.  So today I whipped up this great salad for a light holiday-detox lunch.  If you don't have a lemon oil, the original recipe actually called for a combo of fresh lemon juice and regular olive oil, so I'm sure that would be really good too.


Ingredients

• 1/2 cup slivered almonds
• 4 oz Israeli couscous (it's the bigger pearl-shaped balls, not the itsy bitsy stuff - orzo would be a good sub)
• 1/2 lb asparagus, woody ends discarded and cut into 1 inch pieces
• 4 oz faro (if you can't find faro, any chewy grain will do - maybe pearl barley or wheat berries)
• 1/4 cup Meyer lemon oil OR 1/4 cup olive oil and the juice of 1 Meyer lemon OR 1/4 cup olive oil and the juice of 1/2 regular lemon
• salt, to taste
• pepper, to taste
• 2 oz soft goat cheese

Preparation

1. Heat a medium skillet over medium heat.  Toast almonds, about 3-5 minutes.  Stir frequently and be very careful not to burn.  Set aside.
2. In the same skillet over medium heat, add couscous and toast until light brown, about 5-7 minutes.  Stir frequently and be careful not to burn.  Set aside.
3. In the same skillet over medium heat, heat 1 tablespoon regular olive oil.  Add asparagus and saute until crisp but tender, about 4-5 minutes.
4. Fill two pots with water and bring to a boil.
5. Add couscous to one pot and faro to the other.  Boil couscous about 5 minutes, or until tender but not mushy.  Boil faro about 9 minutes, or until tender but chewy.
6. In a large bowl toss almonds, grains, oil (and lemon juice, if using), asparagus, and salt and pepper to taste.
7. To serve warm, divide salad between 4 bowls and crumble goat cheese over each portion.
8. To serve cold or room temperature, chill salad for at least one hour, crumble goat cheese into salad and stir together.  (If you stir it into the warm salad it will melt and be somewhat unattractive, as well as more muddled in flavor).

Serves 4.

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Shrimp & Andouille Etouffee

Shrimp & Andouille Etouffee
From Cooking Light 

Happy New Year!  As with every year, it feels like 2011 went too fast and I won't remember to start saying 2012 until well into February.  But here we are, with the crazy holiday season behind us and months of beautifully unfilled calendars ahead.  Of course that can only mean one thing - New Year's Resolutions!  Truly one of the silliest concepts, seeing as how they're nearly always abandoned (I don't think I made it 3 days in 2010 when I resolved to stop nagging John to propose...).  Yet every year I seem to come up with something, and this year is no different.

First and foremost, I'd like to advertise the blog a little more.  Nothing major, just a little Facebook hype or perhaps a Twitter account.  I was hesitant to publicize it at first in case I didn't stick with it or it was a major flop, but being home for the holidays made me realize how many people are actually reading it!  And apparently enjoying it!  Our main PR team at the moment is our moms, and as it turns out their friends are big fans (thanks guys!).  In fact, we talked about the blog so much over the past week that I started to recognize a recurring theme which leads me to my second resolution: give more credit to the handsome half of the HMK.  Every time the blog came up, people complimented me and then John piped up to mention his involvement.  And it's true, he really does a lot both in the kitchen and behind the scenes.  So I thought I'd take this moment to produce a short list of his many contributions:

1. Cheese grating and nut shelling.
2. Most meat trimming.
3. Risotto stirring and other mundane and sweaty stove-top tasks.
4. Running out to the store mid-recipe to get the ingredient we (I) inevitably forgot.
5. Website editing and fixing.  (Please direct any comments/complaints to my one-man IT department).
6. Grilling.  I don't even know for sure how to work it.
7. Bacon frying and other dangerous tasks with grease-fire potential.  And in the event of a grease-fire, I'm pretty sure he'd do the fire extinguishing too.
8. Earning money to pay for grocery bills, which undoubtedly rival those of a family of 4.
9. Stove cleaning (I claimed not to be strong enough to scrub the grease off and he pretended to believe me).
10. All etouffee making.  Which brings us to today's recipe.

If we were playing the newlywed game and I had to pick a cuisine John most enjoys cooking and eating, I'd feel pretty good about saying Cajun.  He's made his fair share of gumbo and jambalaya, but this etouffee is by far his specialty.  It is truly one of the only dishes that I have nothing to do with.  It seems like he always makes it on nights when I have something keeping me busy until dinner time.  When we made it a few weeks ago I thought I'd finally have my chance to see the Cajun genius at work, but as luck would have it an out-of-town friend called to chat just as we were getting started and John got the kitchen to himself once again.  And so, it is with love and thanks (and only minor apprehension) that I turn the keyboard over to him for the first time so that the man who knows the recipe best can recite it for you.


Ingredients

• 4 cups less-sodium chicken broth
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/3 cup butter, divided
• 1/2 cup flour
• Cooking spray
• 1 1/2 cups white onion, chopped
• 2/3 cups celery, diced
• 1/2 cup red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 cup green bell pepper, chopped (between the onion, celery and peppers the mix is really up to you based on your preference - I seem to end up with about 4+ cups of chopped veggies)
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp Cajun seasoning
• 1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp ground red pepper
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 cup green onions, chopped
• 1/2 lb peeled and deveined shrimp
• 2/3 lb Andouille sausage cut into half-discs
• Louisiana Hot Sauce, to taste
• 4 cups long-grain rice, cooked and kept warm

Preparation

1. Combine first 4 ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a simmer.  Cover and remove from heat.  I always underestimate how long it takes to bring 4 cups of chicken broth to a simmer, start this right away use this step as a good time to chop the veggies.
2. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup and level with a knife.  Add flour to pan, stirring constantly with a whisk.  Cook until the roux is somewhere between a milk chocolate and dark chocolate color (or lighter if that is your preference) and remove from heat.
3. Add 1 cup of broth mixture to pan, stirring constantly with whisk until smooth.  Add remaining 3 cups of broth mixture, stirring with a whisk until smooth, set aside.
4. Melt remaining 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon (I usually round up to 2 tbsps if i overdid it on the veggie chopping) in a large Dutch oven (and by large I mean large, I made this originally in our 4-qt Dutch oven and it nearly fills to the top.  With our new and improved 9-qt Dutch oven its the perfect amount of space [thank you wedding]) coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat.
5. Add veggies (onions, celery and bell peppers) to pan, cook 10 minutes or until veggies are tender and onion is golden brown, stirring occasionally.
6. Stir in 3/4 cup of water, scraping pan to loosen delicious browned bits from the pan.
7. Add tomato paste, Cajun seasoning, garlic, salt, black pepper and ground red pepper to onion mixture; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly.
8. Add reserved broth-flour mixture and Worcestershire sauce to pan, stirring well to combine.  Add Louisiana Hot Sauce to taste.  Bring to a simmer and cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
9. Add green onions, shrimp and sausage; cook 3 minutes or until the shrimp are done.
10. Time to play find the bay leaf and remove from the pan.
11. Serve over rice.

Serves 6 generous portions.

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