Foodie Wednesday: Frittata with Potato and Prosciutto

(The Potatoes, Onions & Garlic cooking...is there anything that smells better than onion and garlic?)

(The egg, whipping cream, basil & prosciutto mixed together)

(Everything cooking together in the pan)

(The Finished Product!)

(Side View of my Piece)

So for my latest Giada creation I chose the Frittata with Potato and Prosciutto. After I made Giada's other frittata I spoke to my mom and she told me this one is even better. She was SO right! This fritata had a whole lot more flavor, not that the other one wasn't good, because it was, but this one was AMAZING! And amazingly easy to make:) The leftovers re-heat well too!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 onion, chopped

1 (15-ounce) potato, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (I didn't peel my potato).

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

6 large eggs

1/4 cup whipping cream

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto, coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons fresh basil

Directions

In a 9/12-inch-diameter nonstick ovenproof skillet, heat the oil over medium flame. Add the onion and saute until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the potato, garlic, salt and pepper, and saute over medium-low heat unil the potato is tender and golden, about 15 minutes.

Preheat the broiler. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, cream, Parmesan cheese, prosciutto, and basil to blend. Stir the egg mixture into the potato mixture in the skillet. Cover and cook over medium-low heat until the egg mixture is almost set but the top is still runny, about 2 minutes. Place the skillet under teh broiler and broil until the top is set and golden brown, about 4 minutes. Using a rubber spatula, loosen the frittata from the skillet and slide it onto a plate. Cut the frittata into wedges and serve.

Post in Comments:

What are you favorite frittata ingredients?

Foodie Wednesday: Musroom Risotto with Peas

(The Risotto in the pan cooking!)

Even though I may not have had a Foodie Wednesday post in awhile (last week due to internet technical difficulties at my house and prior to that just being busy with work) does not mean that I have not been cooking up a storm!

In my quest to cook all of the recipes in Giada DeLaurentis' "Everday Italian" cookbook I present to you Mushroom Risotto with Peas.

Ingredients

8 cups canned low-salt chicken broth
1/2-ounce dried procini mushrooms
1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups finely chopped onions
10 ounces white mushrooms, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice or short-grain white rice
2/3 cup dry white wine
3/4 cup frozen peas, thawed
2/3 cup grated parmesean
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, optional

Directions

Bring the broth to a simmer in a heavy medium saucepan. Add the porcini mushrooms. Set aside until the mushrooms are tender, about 5 minutes. Keep the broth warm over very low heat.

Melt the butter in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add olive oil. Add the onions and saute until tender, about 8 minutes. Add the white mushrooms and garlic. Using slotted spoon, transfer the porcini mushrooms to a cutting board. Finely chop the mushrooms and add to the saucepan.

Saute until the mushrooms are tender and the juices evaporate, about 5 minutes. Stire in the rice and let it toast for a few minutes. Add the wine; cook until the liquid is absorbed, stirring often, about 2 minutes.

Add 1 cup of hot broth; simmer over medium-low heat until the liquid is absorbed, stirring often, about 3 minutes. Continue to cook until the rice is just tender and the mixture is creamy, adding more broth by the cupfuls and stirring often, about 28 minutes (the rice will absorb 6 to 8 cups of broth.

Stir in the peas. Mix in the Parmesan. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

(The finished product!)

I will say that this did take a long time to cook - I was stirring for what seemed like forever - but it was well worth it. I was nervous having never previously made a risotto and it doesn't start to really look like risotto till towards the end, so I was unimpressed with my big brown glob of mush in the pan while I was cooking!

However, the final product was outrageously delicious!!! Jon and I could not stop saying how good it was. It made about 6 servings and had 4 as leftovers. It was a fight as to who got them! I will definitely make this recipe again and I look forward to trying additional risotto recipes. Now that I've done it once it doesn't seem so scary anymore.

As a side note, when purchasing the 1/2 ounce of Porcini mushrooms you really only need 1 maybe 2 mushrooms. They are $49.99 a pound (at Whole Foods) so be careful how many you throw into the bag!!!

Post in Comments:

Have you ever made a risotto?

What are your favorite risotto flavors?

Foodie Wednesday: Nacho Spuds

I tear out all recipes in magazines that look good and have the potential for me to make them! This was one I tore out of Everyday with Rachel Ray! Above is a picture of the nacho spuds on the baking sheet.

Here is a picture of my serving of nacho spuds with a dollop of sour cream on top! I have to say these were delicious, very tasty, easy to make and great to reheat for lunch or dinner the next day. I would definitely recommend these to anyone looking for a fun dinner. I would also imagine that these would be pretty kid friendly. Maybe they'll become your family's new favorite meal....

Nacho Spuds

Ingredients
2 large baking potatoes (1 1/2 pounds total), sliced into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
2 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1/2 pound lean ground beef sirloin
One 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
2 tablespoons taco seasoning
One 8-ounce package shredded sharp cheddar cheese (2 cups)
1 cup grape tomatoes, quartered lengthwise
Sour cream and shredded lettuce, for serving

1. Position a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 450°. On a rimmed baking sheet, toss the potatoes with 2 tablespoons olive oil; season with salt and pepper. Arrange in a single layer and bake until golden, about 20 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining 1/2 tablespoon olive oil and the ground beef and cook, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon, until browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Mix in the beans, taco seasoning and 2 tablespoons water. Lower the heat and simmer, stirring, until heated through, about 10 minutes.

3. Transfer the potatoes to an ovenproof platter. Sprinkle half of the cheddar on top, spoon on the meat mixture, then top with the tomatoes and remaining cheddar. Place in the oven and turn off the heat. Let stand until the cheese is melted, 2 to 3 minutes. Serve with the sour cream and lettuce.

Enjoy!

Recipe Wednesdays: Orecchiette with Mini Chicken Meatballs

Last week I made another Giada creation: Orecchiette with Mini Chicken Meatballs. Once again, it was delish!

If you would like the recipe you can click HERE. It was fairly simple, more prep time than cooking time. It was more flavorful then I thought it was going to be. The chicken meatballs were divine and I was nervous seeing as I had never used ground chicken as a base before in place of ground turkey or beef.

This meal heated up great as leftovers, I ended having it for lunch most days last week. I just added a little bit of chicken broth each morning and some salt, pepper and cheese and it was delicious once heated in the microwave for about 2 minutes.

This is definitely a recipe I would recommend!

Recipe Wednesdays: Comfort Food

This Sunday I was making my meals for the week and I made one of my favorite dishes that is totaly comfort food for me - Skillet!!! Skillet was something that we ate all the time growing up. I don't know if my mom just made it up or if she got the recipe from someone but I have very fond memories of skillet night (my brother and sister might feel differently!)

Here is the recipe:

1 lb. ground turkey

1 onion

1 box of frozen peas

1 box of beef rice a roni

Chop up the onions and cook them with the ground turkey. Drain the fat from the ground turkey. Add the margarine/butter and the rice to the pan and brown the rice. Add the water, seasoning packet, ground turkey, peas & onions to the rice and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

On a cold day I find a piping hot dish straight out of the pan extra yummy! The great thing about this meal is that it heats up in the microwave well so it's great to have for lunch for the week.

The drink in the background is my new concoction - 1/2 seltzer water and 1/2 grape juice - yum!

Post in Comments:

What is your favorite comfort food?

52 Weeks of Cooking: Easy Bacon, Onion and Cheese Stuffed Burgers

Ah...the infamous lunch I mentioned in my previous post. I wanted to make stuffed burgers for my family gathering because I had never made them before and I thought it would be a fun thing to make.

I wanted to pick a relatively simple recipe (for a stuffed burger that is) and I found this particular recipe on http://www.allrecipes.com/. If you would like to review the actual recipe click here!

I got everything ready so that when they arrived all I had to do was the assembly. The burgers didn't stay totally stuffed, some of the stuffing came out the side while Jon was cooking them.

I served them with just a light salad because I had a feeling that they might be a little heavy. And I was right. Everyone "said" they really liked them, and I liked the flavoring and the taste, but I just thought it was too much food. I only ate half my burger and was glad I didn't try to finish it off.

I would definitely try a stuffed burger again, and I would even try this stuffed burger again. Next time I would either make the burgers smaller and put less filling in, so that the burger isn't too large or I wouldn't serve it on a roll, but rather over a bed of lettuce, with onion, tomato and pickles.

52 Weeks of Cooking; Awesome Baked Sea Scallops

Again, I bet you thought I had abandoned you! No, even though I was perhaps too busy to write, I did stick to my 52 weeks of cooking:) Saturday, October 20th Jon and I woke up early enough to go to the Farmer's Market at Union Square, one of our favorite New York things to do. It's just such a great way to start your day (and this coming from a girl who hates crowds, ah, how I've grown).

My parents, brother and my brother's girlfriend were coming over for lunch the following day and I wanted to make something with very fresh ingredients. While we were there we picked up some scallops for our Saturday night dinner and I made this dish - Awesome Baked Sea Scallops.

You can find this recipe on www.allrecipes.com or by clicking here! The cool thing about allrecipes.com is that when you find a recipe you can adjust the ingredients for as many people as you want by just putting in how many people you are cooking for.

This recipe was good - a little heavy, more filling than I generally like my fish to be - but in all fairness to the recipe I forgot to adjust it for just 2 people in all aspects but the scallops! Oops - that's what happens when you rush around. It looks really beautiful and is really quite flavorful. I definitely plan on giving this recipe another go around and will make sure that I adjust the recipe appropriately next time!

52 Weeks of Cooking: Pork and Vegetable Stir Fry

Goodness I feel that this is turning into a cooking blog - eek! I'm going to have to get out this weekend and do some interesting things so I can get back to blogging about NYC experiences! Our weekend was a ton of fun - it was a lot of hanging out with friends, cooking, drinking, watching sports - you know, THAT kind of weekend! We had a great time and got to spend lots of time with friends and family.

Sunday night we decided to relax and cook in. I do have to say that this 52 weeks of cooking project definitely has upped my cooking, and it's really reminded me of how much I love to cook. I'm not very crafty so cooking is one way for me to express myself in a way creatively - it allows me to take different ingredients and turn them into a meal. I didn't realize how much I've missed that until I took up this project. So yay for it working :)

Pork and Vegetable Stir Fry (this is a South Beach Diet Cookbook recipe)

Cook Time: 30 Minutes

Ingredients
1/2 cup sugar-free apricot reserves
3 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons canola oil, divided
1 1/2 pounds pork cutlets, cut into 1/4-inch strips
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound broccoli, cut into florets
1 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 bunch scallions, cut into 2-inch lengths
4 ounces snow peas, strings removed

Whisk preserves and soy sauce together in a bowl until smooth.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large nonstick skillet or wok over high heat. Add pork and cook, stirring frequently, until lightly browned and no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate.
Add remaining oil and garlic to the same skillet; cook over medium-hight heat for 30 seconds. Add broccoli, pepper, scallions, and snow peass and cook until vegetables are crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in portk and preserves mixture; cook 1 minute more. Serve hot.

This recipe was more prep time then anything else, since I had a lot of veggies to chop up. It was a really easy recipe and it was uber-flavorful! Most importantly it heats up well the next day for lunch or dinner leftovers.

Happy Cooking!

52 Weeks of Cooking: Margarita Pizza

I have to thank my friend Shion for this fabulous recipe. We had a girls dinner night on Thursday and she cooked this fabulous pizza, gave me the recipe and I made it this weekend. It is so simple, fresh and delicious!

Ingredients
1 clove of garlic
2 tomatoes
Fresh mozzerella
basil
Olive oil
Pillsbury Dough Pizza Dough

Preheat the oven at 400 degrees.
Pop open the can of Pizza dough (isn't that the best part!) and roll it out on a baking sheet that is already covered with cooking spray. Bake it for 8 minutes. Meanwhile sautee the clove of garlic (which has been sliced up) with olive oil in a pan.

Take the pizza out of the oven and brush the garlic and olive oil mixture onto the pizza dough. Line sliced tomatoes on the pizza and then place the sliced mozzerella on top of the tomatoes. Final touch place the basil on top of the pizza. Bake it for another 16 minutes. And your done.

Enjoy!

52 Weeks of Cooking: Chicken Stuffed with Spinach and Goat Cheese

I'm already a little behind in my 52 weeks of cooking blog entries - eek! Last week we had an event for work (my first with my new job) and it really consumed all my energy and time! Thankfully it was a successful event. However, grocery shopping did not get done which is why a new recipe wasn't tried - sorry folks! So this week I'm going to cook 2 things so as to "catch up."

Last night I cooked - Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Spinach and Goat Cheese. I've never cooked with goat cheese before, but I've loved it when I've eaten it, so I was excited to use it in this recipe. Unfortunately for me my stuffed chicken turned out to be more of a "roll" which was fine. I just hadn't bought the right thickness of chicken.

Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Spinach and Goat Cheese (this is a South Beach Diet recipe - hey, I said I would be trying all different kinds of things).

Time: 30 minutes

4 teaspons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 (1/2 pound) bunch spinach, tough stems removed

4 (6-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts

4 ounces low-fat goat cheese

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Special equipment: Wooden toothpicks

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Heat 2 teaspoons of the oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in spinach and cook, stirring constantly, until spinach is wilted and liquid evaporates, about 2 minutes. Season well with salt and pepper and transfer to a late. Wipe skillet dry with paper towels.

Beginning at the thickest end of 1 chicken breast, carefully insert a sharp knife into the center and cut a pocket as evenly as possible, leaving a 1-inch border on three sides. Repeat with remaining breasts. Open each pocket, sprinkle with salt and pepper, then fill evenly with goat cheese and spinach. Seal each with two toothpicks and season outside with salt and pepper.

Heat remaining oil in the same skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook, turning once, until well browned on both sides, about 3 minutes perside. Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake until juices run clear, about 8 minutes. Serve hot.

*(For my variation, I just flattened the chicken breats, spread the spinach and goat cheese on top. I then rolled the chicken and secured with the toothpicks. Follow the rest of the instructions, minus baking it in the oven. It was just as delicious!)

I really loved this meal - I thought it was incredibly flavorful and the goat cheese was so yummy! I'm definitely going to look for more recipes that call for it. Bon Appetite!

52 Weeks of Cooking: Chipotle Chicken Taco Salad

I am an avid reader of the website popsugar.com! Within popsugar there are a bunch of different sections and one of the sections is yumsugar and is all about food and recipes. The writer on yumsugar has been doing this 52 weeks of baking and every week she posts about what she baked, how easy it was to make, was it good, etc. I really enjoying reading those posts and was thinking of copying the idea of doing 52 weeks of baking. Then I realized that Jon probably wouldn't eat anything I baked because he doesn't like sweets (I know - gasp!) and I don't really need to be eating baked goods all week every week so that idea went out the window.

Cooking however I want to do more off. When we lived in Boston I cooked all the time. Moving to NYC, I've found it really is true - people eat ALL the time! Given that most nights I'm getting dinner ready for 1 I'm not uber motivated to cook up elaborate meals. However, I miss cooking tremendously! I've been meaning to start cooking more and I thought that blogging about cooking might help me stick to that goal. Thus, I'm going to do 52 weeks of Cooking and blog about the recipes that I cook.

Wednesday night I had my brother and his girlfriend over for dinner and so I decided this would be the inaugural meal of 52 weeks of Cooking. The point of 52 weeks of Cooking is not only that I cook up a new recipe but that I cook up something that isn't necessarily safe and easy I have to try things that are out of the box for me (mind you they may not seem out of the box for you!) So here it goes....

Chipotle Chicken Taco Salad (this recipe is from the Cooking Light Annual 2007 recipes cook book)

Total time: 35 minutes

Dressing:

2/3 cup light sour cream

1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

4 teaspoons fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon minced chipotle chile, canned in adobo sauce (I didn't use this because I am adverse to HEAT in my food!)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Salad:

4 cups shredded romaine lettuce

2 cups chopped roasted skinless, boneless chicken breast (about 2 breast halves)

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 cup diced peeled avocado

1/3 cup thinly vertically sliced red onion

1 (15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained

1 (8 3/4 - ounce) can no-salt added wholekernel corn, rinsed and drained

1. To prepare dressing, combine first 7 ingredients, stirring well

2. To prepare salad, combine lettuce and remaining 6 ingredients in a large bowl. Drizzle dressing over salad, toss gently to coat. Serve immediately. Yield: 4 servings (serving size 2 1/2 cups)

We had tostitos gold tortilla chips on the side to scoop up the bits and pieces of the salad. And we had tinto de veranos (or as my brother calls them, "the poor man's sangria"): 1/2 glass cheap red wine, 1/2 glass orange soda, stir!

I have to say the salad was very good - I even liked the beans and tomatoes! Jon, my brother and his girlfriend all enjoyed the meal! I'd say the first week of 52 weeks of Cooking went well!