Roasted Garlic and Red Pepper Quinoa

To go along with the chicken we had last night, I made quinoa! yummm…originally from this site.

Roasted Garlic, Red Pepper and Mushroom Quinoa

makes about 2 cups—serves about 6 people

1 head garlic
1/2 onion, chopped
1 cup of quinoa
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup chopped red pepper
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop the top off the garlic and peel away the loose outside paper. Drizzle olive oil on cloves, wrap in foil, and roast for 20-30 minutes, or until golden. Let cool.
(okay, I didn’t actually do this part. I was kinda busy. So I just sauteed five big cloves of garlic in with the onion)

Cook quinoa according to directions on package. (I added a couple of sprigs of rosemary and some salt).

While quinoa is cooking, heat a skillet on medium heat and add olive oil. Sautee the onions for a couple of minutes, then add garlic. When the onions are getting to be translucent, add red pepper and mushrooms and saute until soft, about 6-8 minutes. (optional: when the vegetables are done cooking, add some cooking sherry or white wine and let it simmer in there for a bit, until it’s reduced a little bit.)

When quinoa is done, fluff with a fork and add peppers and mushrooms. Squeeze the entire head of garlic cloves into the quinoa, mashing some with a fork and leaving others whole. Season with salt and pepper and mix well.

Mmmm…Garlic and Brown Sugar Chicken

I’m afraid I’m pretty rubbish at coming up with names for new dishes. Oh well.
this is what I’m trying tonight, with a few changes:
Ingredients:
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 onion, chopped
1 Tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
about…1/2 cup chicken broth?
about…1/2 cup cooking sherry or white wine?
1/4 or 1/2 teaspoon dried ginger
3 tablespoons brown sugar
chopped parsley, basil, thyme, whatever…optional
Directions:

1. In large sauté pan on medium-high heat, sauté the onion and garlic with the oil until tender.
2. Meanwhile, season the chicken with salt and pepper.
3. Once the onion and garlic are tender, add the chicken to the saute pan (be careful not to overcrowd the pan!). Brown the chicken, turning once or so, for 15 minutes. Lift the chicken out of the pan, and place in a foil-lined 13x9" Pyrex pan, and pour all of the juices over the chicken. 
4. Now you have two baking options:
1. You have a broiler. Nice. Good call. Broil the chicken for 10 minutes on the low setting of the broiler, in a casserole dish lined with aluminum foil. Flip the chicken over. Mix together the ginger and brown sugar and sprinkle over the chicken breasts. Broil for another 10 minutes (the sugar, etc. may caramelize a bit, but that just makes it tastier. Charcoal is usually not tasty.)
2. You have no broiler. None. Sadness. Well, I suppose we can work with that. Mix together the brown sugar and ginger and sprinkle over the chicken. Bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit, 218 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes. Then turn it up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit or 260 celsius and bake another 5 minutes or so. Watch out--if your oven is temperamental, it might get burned. That would be sad. Sugars may caramelize, flavors may intensify, but smoking charcoal is usually a bad thing. 
5. About 5 minutes before the chicken is done, reheat, on medium-high heat, the pan in which you browned the chicken, onions, and garlic. Add enough sherry (or combination of sherry and chicken broth) to the pan so that 1/4 inch of liquid covers the bottom of the pan. Place the pan over high heat and bring the liquid to a boil, scraping cooked bits of food from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spatula.
6. Allow the mixture to simmer briefly, just until the liquid thickens slightly, and all of the bits of food have been scraped off the pan. Season with salt and pepper, add chopped parsley, and pour over the chicken (when it’s done.)

Grilled Sea Scallops

So…guess what. While we were busily cooking the yummy dish below, my dad (the best dad in the world, mind you!) was looking up a recipe for grilled sea scallops as a treat for my coming-home Saturday dinner. Best dad, right?! Well, part of the fun was helping him make the “sauce” for the scallops…which turned out ok, but was a bit unnecessary, and the scallops didn’t really pick up any flavor from the “sauce” itself.

So this is the recipe that we came up with instead, based off of this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds sea scallops (you can buy a bag of frozen scallops and defrost them. ) We just left them whole, but you could also cut them into halves or thirds.
Melted butter (quantity? Probably about a quarter cup)
Onion powder and/or dried minced onion flakes
Garlic powder
optional: red pepper flakes
shish kebob fixings (mushrooms, red bell pepper, red onion, zucchini, grape tomatoes, etc)

Mix the seasonings with the butter and brush over the scallops. Thread the fixings and scallops onto the shish kebob skewers, and grill until done (My dad is the one who knows grilling stuff…). If desired, brush with more melted butter + onion powder + garlic powder mixture.

And…sigh with bliss. Aaaaaahhhh…soooo good.

Pasta with Scallops, Zucchini, Tomatoes, and…pretty much whatever else you have on hand. :)

My first foray into the world of cooking seafood!  
I have decided that scallops are…basically my most favoritest seafood possible. Mmmmmm….
I mean, fish is great, don’t get me wrong. I love it, really and truly. But scallops…? The texture is just so…amazing! And the taste is soft, mild, just right. Sigh. Happiness.

Anyway, so we had a couple of zucchinis being useless in the fridge, so I decided to look for a dish to use up the zucchinis and fresh tomatoes we also had lying around. So…this is what I came up with.

Serves 7-9

Ingredients

3/4 pound dry spaghetti pasta (the original recipe called for a pound. This was way too much. The  box also claimed to serve only 7-8 people. It was still way too much, folks! So…I would recommend maybe serving the pasta and the rest of it up in separate bowls at the actual table, and see what happens…)
1/4 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 zucchinis, diced
1 package button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 cup chopped fresh basil
4 roma (plum) tomatoes, chopped (you can use a can of diced tomatoes, if you need to.)
1 pound bay scallops (the little ones. mmmmm…Although you can use chicken instead, if you really must…)
1/2 cup white wine
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. In a large pot with boiling salted water cook pasta until al dente. Drain.
2. Meanwhile, in a large skillet heat oil, add garlic and cook until tender. Add the zucchini, salt, red pepper flakes, mushrooms, and dried basil (if using) and saute for 5 minutes. Add wine and let simmer for a couple of minutes. Add chopped tomatoes, bay scallops, and fresh basil (if using) and simmer for 5 minutes, or until scallops are opaque.
3. Pour sauce over cooked pasta and serve with grated Parmesan cheese and freshly grated black pepper.

Mini Oat Buns

These are…still kind of a work in progress. So. If anyone finds some delicious ways of improving this recipe, then please do let me know. These are easily made up in just a short amount of time, and one recipe makes about 7 rolls. They are rather dense/heavy, but I think that’s mostly the fault of the tasty oats.
By the way, I’ve found these are best served hot with lots of honey and butter.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups All-purpose flour
3/4 cup oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (If you’re sensitive to salt, you might take the amount of salt down a bit.)
1/3 to 1/2 cup buttermilk (I found that 1/3 cup is not quite enough, so play around with it a bit.)
2 Tablespoons honey
2 Tablespoons butter, cut up into small chunks (the original recipe called for oil. I like butter better, but the oil also worked just fine.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

Mix together in one bowl the flour, oats, baking powder, and salt. Cut in the butter, then add the buttermilk and honey, and stir until just combined. Form into biscuit/roll shapes with your hands, about a 1/4 cup of dough in each. You should have about 7 rolls. Place an inch or so apart on a baking sheet covered with a piece of parchment paper, and bake 15 minutes, until tops are very lightly brown. Brush with spreadable margarine or softened butter right away after taking them out of the oven. Enjoy!

Cheesy Corn Cakes with Spicy Avacado Salsa

Yummmm…The sweetness of creamed corn plus spicy avacado…mmmm…

Originally from this site.

Makes approximately 15 corn cakes, depending on size

2 cups corn
1x 400g (14.11 ounces) tin creamed corn
2 eggs
1½ cups grated mature cheddar
½ tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp salt
1½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ cup milk
for the spicy avocado salsa
2 avocados, chopped
1 small red onion, peeled and finely chopped (And by small, we mean small!!! As in, just doing half of a red onion is good. Better. Best. If you don’t want to taste onions in your mouth for the rest of the day.)
1 red chilli, finely chopped (remove seeds if you don’t like it hot)
juice of ½ lemon
salt & pepper to taste
fresh coriander and cilantro, to serve

1. In a large bowl, combine the corn kernels, creamed corn, eggs, cheddar, smoked paprika and salt and mix well.
2. Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix well.
3. Slowly stir in the milk until the batter is not too thick and drops off a spoon easily. (it should also not be so thin that it spreads too much when you fry the cakes)
4. Heat a large frying pan and add some oil. (A little bit. Not too much. Actually, I found that you can do without.)
5. Fry spoonfuls of the batter until bubbles appear at the top and flip. Allow to cook on the other side. Remove from the pan once cooked and place on some kitchen paper to drain.
6. In the meantime, combine all the ingredients for the salsa and mix well.
7. When all the cakes have been cooked, serve them with the salsa, extra lemon wedges and fresh coriander.

Honey-Lime Chicken Skewers

We had these last night, along with cheesy corn cakes with spicy avacado salsa and a bowl of fresh pineapple. Yummmmm….
Originally from this site.
Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• juice of one lime
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-2 teaspoon Siracha (we didn't have any, so I just put in a heaping teaspoon of chili powder)
• red pepper flakes, to taste
• 2 tablespoon cilantro
• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts

Instructions

1. In a small bowl, combine your ingredients, through the cilantro. Mix thoroughly.
2. Pour marinade over chicken breasts and turn to coat. Cover and allow to marinate for at least 1 hour.
3. Grill on medium high heat for 6 to 8 minutes per side, until juices run clear.