Shrimp wraps

 

I began by making a home made salsa. It was red peppers, green onions, tomatoes and seasonings. This cooked for about 30 min. I added fresh ground pepper to it also right at the end.

 This is all of the parts minus the rice to the shrimp wraps. I am writing this blog the next morning and I am salivating just looking at the pictures. It was SO good. definitely better then my first attempt, which is saying a ton, because my family LOVED the first ones. In the red bowl is a dipping sauce I made. It is cayenne pepper, ginger (fresh ground), garlic (also fresh), soy sauce and olive oil. It seems easy enough to make, but I had to boil it from 3 cups down to 1/4 cup, stirring the whole time. This took about 45 min.

A smart person would have been doing the salsa and dip at the same time. Well I am not that person. I did them at different times, which made for a very long cooking time, lots of standing in front of the stove

Mmmm. The dip I ate with the wraps, but also poured over white rice. Both ways were really good.

This is the final product. I think I have said it, but this was so very good. It is one of my dishes that I could eat over and over. I also love the changes to the dish. Adding the dip, salsa and cayenne pepper really were great additions to this dish.

Rougeh loved it, kids loved it and I loved it. Score one for mommy!

Salmon

Today's dinner was blackened salmon with lime garlic butter, peppered Jasmine rice and blanched green beans in a garlic sauce. Sorry the green beans were gone before I could get a picture of them.

I had to make the lime garlic butter a day in advanced so the flavors can marinate together. I heated olive oil and grated lime rind into it. Blacken the lime rind, then add the salmon skin side down. Cook and flip, and add the lime garlic butter to cooked side. Finish cooking and plate. Add a little more lime garlic butter after plating.

The rice was made with only some fresh cracked pepper. It was really good, I have never made rice with only pepper. I think I will be doing this again.

Finally the green beans. I blanched them. While they were cooking I made a quick garlic butter, by liquefying garlic and adding it to butter. I then blended until emulsified. Drain the green beans and add garlic butter. Cook for just a moment more so the butter melts.

The food was really good. But, then salmon has to be made pretty bad to not taste good. Though I have had many plates of bad salmon, which is just sad. The rice was a great compliment to the sweetness of the green beans and they both worked really well with the salmon.

Tonight for dinner I think I will be making the shrimp wraps again. Both the kids and Rougeh are asking for them again. YAHHHH.

Chocolate Cake

Benjamin and Jasmine woke up today and wanted Chocolate cake. Who am I to tell them no?

We looked on line and found a chocolate cake recipe that sounded good. Harder to do then one would think. Had to get one that is egg free. With Jasmine and her severe allergy to eggs, this was essential. I have many that I have used often, but per this blog, I wanted one that I have not used before. The whole cooking experiment comes in here. So on went the search for and egg free cake recipe that also sounds good.

We were lucky because, not only did the recipe sound good, it was easy to make. Benjamin measured out everything himself. The only thing that I helped with was the liquids and mixing. Then of course the oven parts.

Decorating is done and now to eat! Mmmmm, lunch of champions.

Too many to name

So where to start on this blog?

Let's start with the green beans. They were wonderful. Blanched then topped with a heavy cream sauce and bacon. How could that have gone wrong? Heart attack waiting to happen, but worth every bite.

Next, baked and breaded fish. Good but could have been better. The recipe did not add seasoning to the breading and I think it could have had quite a bit more flavor then it did. But all in all good.

Next was rice with grilled cashews and white raisins. This is yet another recipe that I would have never thought of making on my own. When making the rice I used almond milk instead of water. This was Also really good.

The final new item in full meal of new items. Deconstructed cinnamon rolls. This is where each part if the roll is made separate but plated on one plate. It is eaten with all items together, but looks very different then a typical cinnamon rolls. It tastes a bit different also because the flavors are not cooked into each other. This gave a much stronger flavor of each of the ingredients.

So out of the four items that I made today all four were successes. Merry Christmas to all!

Spinach lasagna

Today's meal was spinach lasagna. This tastes much better then it sounds. As a kid I really did not like spinach. As an adult though I have really learned to enjoy it. Now pair that with pasta and cheese and you have a melted gooey dish.

Benjamin even put it at the top of my dishes so far and the very best of all my lasagnas. He even too seconds. Jasmine who typically likes her lasagna plain ate two helpings of it. So I guess it was a success.

Only side note, Rougeh worked late last night so he had his dinner re heated. Not so good second time around.

Fish Tacos

I give up on titling my blog on the number of the day I have cooked. Too much work to figure out which day number it is, so from now on it will be based on items cooked.

So by the given title you know I made fish tacos. Now I did not do this in any sort of typical manner. First they were made out of Mahi Mahi and not Cod. Second, we had no cabbage, so cilantro was the substitution there. Then we added, tomatoes, green onions, salsa, lime and lets not forget the garlic stuffed olives. Interesting combination to be sure, but not bad

The Mahi Mahi was grilled with Cheyenne pepper and lime to perfection. Shredded it after it was fully cooked, and ate it on the corn tortillas. It was great.

We also made Ginger bread cookies, for Santa. We attempted a ginger bread house also, but two problems with that, we did not over cook the house, which is needed so it is solid enough to hold the toppings.  Then came the issue of WAY too much stuff being put onto it. End result, house was too heavy to hold up to what the kids wanted on it, But the kids LOVED eating the house and all the toppings.

Day 15

Clams.

Clams are good steamed, bar-b-qued, baked, and just about any way they are cooked. I boiled them with water, butter, onions, pepper, and wine. They were so good. Just squeeze some lime on it and it is a meal. Four pounds of clams lasted 10 min and fed four people to contentment.

I paired it with some steamed Green Beans which is my favorite veggie to eat. Calling Green Beans my favorite is saying a lot because I avoid veggies like I would avoid sitting on a red ant hill. Both are equally painful for me. That being said I enjoy green beans. They are so tasty steamed in herbs. No butter or salt needed.

How could we have finished off such a great meal? Easy a fresh orange.

On a side note, I made pull apart bread for the first time about five days ago and have made it three more times since. The kids love it. I have added raisins, nuts and dried fruits. It really is a great treat.

Day 14

 

I decided to go with a coconut theme for the night. Coconut shrimp, coconut rice and pull apart bread with coconut.

Official name of tonight's dish, ShrimpSambal with coconut rice. Unofficial name, my new number one favorite. I think I could eat this every night. Maybe I should tell you what it is instead of just giving you the name that way you can savor it also. It is shrimp in a mixture of curry, cumin, turmeric, onions, ginger root, and coconut.

I was worried that the kids would not eat it because it is quite spicy. There are 2 Tablespoons of chili peppers in it. But the coconut was enough sweetness to offset that in the kids mouths. It was sweet yet had a surprise of a bit of heat at the end. I went back for seconds on the rice with the Sambal sauce poured on top.

Then on to dessert. I made some bread today and left some on the side that we cut into small pieces. I melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and coconut together. Mixed that into the cut up pieces of bread and cooked it all in a bundt cake pan. Flip it before eating, and mmmmmmmm.

Kids love it and finished almost the whole ring of bread.

All in all, very good meal. I will make this again.

Day 13

So I think it is the curse of 13. Today's fish was a disaster. It was Sea Bass.

I have decided also that we are not really fish people. There is very little fish that we like. Salmon, tilapia and maybe Mahi mahi. All of those fish are not really fishy tasting, they are just kind of meaty.

Sea Bass is VERY fishy, it is like a thick chunk of fish. It has a very strong flavor, and very fishy. Ughhh. I did not like it, the kids did not like it and Rougeh did not like it. The meal was well made, cooked nicely, and the seasonings were very pleasant, but the taste of the fish was too much.

I really tried to eat it. The first couple of bites were nice, but then the taste of the fish came through and I could not finish it.

I guess I should mention how I made the sea bass. It was steamed with shiitake mushrooms, ginger and cayenne pepper. This was topped off with green onions and some fresh cilantro. It looked really yummy, but did not taste it.

Add this to my failures. They seem to be stacking up. I do not like cooking today.

Day 12

Lime Garlic Shrimp Lettuce wraps.

I was done with eating fish, so today instead I opted for shrimp. I know many do not think there is much difference, sea food being sea food. I typically am not a fish person, but love shrimp, clams, oysters and scallops.

I wanted something a bit different then basic shrimp. I also wanted to go for something a bit lighter, knowing that today would be a late dinner. In comes the idea of a lettuce wrap. For this I went back to my original cookbook. Here I know there are gasps, sea food is not this books strong point. It consists of romaine lettuce, rice and 2 hour marinated shrimp.

Simple enough, but really tasty. It was a very light easy meal.

Day 11

Tilapia, not typically my favorite fish. It is non-fatty and often very dry tasting. Not in my capable hands though. Another victory. The kids helped out today. They are starting to get excited about what is being cooked for dinner. They want to help, so I am gaining many things from this experiment, time with kids, new foods and expanding my taste palette.


This tilapia was another recipe that I found online, it is Baked Tilapia with a Garlic Cilantro sauce. Jasmine made the sauce, she added all the ingredients and then thicked it. A layer of that in a shallow pan, Tilapia and then another layer on top. Bake it for 15 minutes and you have this delicatacy. The kids wanted plain pasta to go with it (they always want plain pasta, no sauces), but I added the run off from the baking as a sauce for the pasta. Good choice.

The kids both ate their whole meal. Rougeh is not feeling well today, so he skipped dinner tonight. I had made him a container to take to work tomorrow, but Benjamin wants it for school. Benjamin says that this meal was better then the Glazed Pork, which is his litmus test for my experiment. The Glazed pork being the best and Koshry by far the worst. So new Favorite.

Side note, this may be a dish I will be cooking for our Christmas party. So if you are coming you will get to taste it. I am excited.

Tomorrow, Shrimp...

Day 10

Brownies!

Yesterday we had dinner with a friend so I made brownies. I guess this does not actually fall under cooking a meal, but brownies are an important food group all the same.

My brownies did not let me down. They were great. Double chocolate, gooeyness.

Rougeh and I disagreed on how to complete the brownies, he wanted peanut butter and nuts on top. I wanted them plain, well as plain as double chocolate brownies can be. He made his, his way, I ate mine plain. Our friends ate it my way also, Rougeh told them about the peanut butter and nuts, they thought that would be good.

I cannot get past peanut butter needing to be on a sandwich, not a dessert. Who else likes peanut butter on brownies?

Day 9

Success!

So because my last three meals have been HORRIBLE. I chose stop following my book that has so far led me way off track, in the seafood department. I opted instead to hit the internet, during my land animal fast.

Tonight was Mahi Mahi. To be more precise it was Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi. I had as sides baked cheese mashed potatoes, and soy sauce infused corn. It was all so good. I had never thought to bake potatoes before I mashed them. My usual mode of softening the potatoes for mashing was by boiling them. Baking them gave them a lot more texture. It also gave it a different flavor. Another thing I had never thought of was cook corn with soy sauce instead of water and butter. It also was great.

Now to the main dish, the Mahi Mahi. I only made three peices because I did not know how it would turn out, with my last three meals I was scared. Well, three was not enough. The kids loved it, Rougeh loved it and I loved it.

Benjamin gave me a 9 today, Jasmine and Rougeh both put me at a 10. Jasmine wanted more of the potatoes, she said they tasted just like baked potatoes. I cannot wait to cook tomorrow.

Day 8

I do not know if I have just gotten out of the flow of cooking or what, but my last three meals have been bad. Well let me rephrase that, last nights was not bad per se, but it is never good when you get a tummy ache from dinner. So I count that as a failure.

I attempted Koshry. It is an Egyptian dish that consists of pasta, rice and lentils. On top of that you put a tomato based spicy sauce. This is also one of my favorite dishes. I have eaten it so many times. I thought it would be easy enough to make. I was right about that. It is easy to make, but it is hard to make it correctly.

Apperently I did it wrong. The lentils were WAY over cooked, the rice was also. The pasta was perfect. Problem began when I chose to follow the recipe that I had to the t and not use my own common sense. Once I made everything and mixed it together it was a greenish blob of food. Now mix that with tomato and it is just gross looking. It tasted ok, all the flavors were there, not quite right but there.

Now wait an hour and let the stomach start rebelling against the atrocity that was just put in it. All I had left was a VERY upset tummy. Poor Rougeh was up half the night because his stomach was rebelling.

I think I should give up because every day is getting a little worse in the food department, but I have to finish. I need to keep making new dishes. Ughhh.

Day 7

I tried to give my cookbook another chance in the sea food department. I made Pacific Cod. I baked it placed a slice of tomato, mozzarella cheese and seasoned bread crumbs. I made spaghetti to eat with the cod.

Long story short. NOT EDIBLE. The kids would  not even eat it. Benjamin who is a pasta lover would not even eat the pasta that the cod was sitting on. Pacific Cod and pasta for four = four plates of food in the trash. We could not get past much more than one or two bites.

Day 6

I have been out of town for the last few days, so cooking was out of the question. We had Italian, Pizza, Persian, fresh sea food, and breakfast diner. We did not enjoy much of what we have eaten for the last 5 days, so last night I planned on cooking again.

I made Grilled Salmon with blueberry-Cabernet coulis.

Basically it is salmon grilled with salt and pepper, then you make it swim in a blueberry, Cabernet and ginger sauce. I paired that with rice and a fresh green salad.

I do not know if anyone has ever thought to pair something sweet with salmon, it was different to put it lightly. I had my In-Laws over for dinner, the funny thing was they all loved it. They even took home the left overs. My family on the other hand were not gentle on their critique of the dish. Benjamin who has given each of my dishes 9-10, gave this a 5. Jasmine took two bites and asked to just finish her rice and not eat any more fish. Rougeh my loving husband told me that the salmon is great just without the sauce, but since the salmon was already swimming in it, not much I could do for him there. He still finished his plate though.

I went to the market yesterday and bought one package of each of the fish that they had to offer. I think today will be Maui Maui.

I just need to find a recipe for it. I am veering from my original quest. The cookbook that I have does not have any recipes that I think look good. The only hope was the one I made yesterday, and that one will not be repeated.