Trader Joe's Hit: Lobster Ravioli and F&P's Salad

For me, Trader Joe's is hit or miss in the pre-packaged department.  Chilli in the jar?  No good.  Potstickers?  Excellent.  By far, the best, most decadent offering is the Lobster Ravioli.  We had it on Thursday with our version of the Frank & Pauly's salad (I miss that place!).  It takes 10 minutes to make.  About 7 points total meal.  Here it is.

Ingredients:

1 full package of Trader Joe's Lobster Ravioli

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 pat of butter

Pine nuts (again, with the pine nuts.  Got to use them.)

Any fresh vegetable in the kitchen

Salt and pepper
Pecorino Romano
Real Bacon Bits

For the salad:
Bagged italian lettuce mix
Sliced red onion
Crumbled gorgonzola
Real Bacon Bits
Newman's Own Light Balsamic

What you do:
Boil water.  In small sauce pan, heat oil and butter on medium low.  Add pine nuts.  Let brown, but don't burn.  Salt boiling water, toss in ravioli and any boilable fresh veggies you have (I had carrots, but broccoli or spinach or something would probably be better).  Boil five minutes.  Drain.  Toss ravioli and veggies with the oil and butter sauce.  Seaon with salt and pepper.  Garnish with grated pecorino, bacon bits, and a sprinkle of parsley flakes.

For the salad, toss the lettuce, dressing and onions together (leaving onions out of Mark's serving, of course), and then top with the gorgonzola and bacon bits.  This is the closest we've been able to replicate the F&P chopped salad.

Nice with a glass of chardonnay.  Thank you, Trader Joe's!

Wine Dinner

The gales sailed through, the sky cleared, and a rainbow over Rocky River led us straight to Tartine for a wine dinner.  Five Spanish wines served with elegant tapas. 

We learned two things:  (1) Mark does not care for squid salad, but he does like the combination of Manchego cheese and quince; and (2) not a good idea to schedule early morning meeting the day after a wine dinner.

Live & Learn: Leftover Chicken Piccata, Not So Good

We started a new lunch routine about 6 months ago, which killed two birds with one stone:  Manage calorie intake, but still spend Sunday afternoons cooking.  So, instead of making a big rich meal on Sundays, we (I) started making a week's worth of lunches.  For the most part, it's worked out great.  We've done various big salads, turkey chili, beef stew, any number of variations of pasta.  All delicious, all week long.

But this week, we tried to get cute. 

"How about some sort of lemony chicken with just regular green beans?"  Mark suggested.  Done.  Eight servings of a beautiful lemon chicken piccata with toasted pine nuts, steamed green beans, and roasted fingerling potatoes.  All for about 6 points a serving.   

On Sunday, they were beautiful.  Lunch on Monday, not too bad.  By Tuesday's lunch, I had to call Mark and apologize.  Two-day old chicken piccata sucks.  But, the green beans and fingerlings were still good.  Better luck next week.


Chicken Piccata with Toasted Pine Nuts, Green Beans and Fingerlings

*Live and Learn:  Only make as much of this as you will eat that day.  Also, two things I don't believe in:  Cold water baths for veggies, and pounding chicken.  I've done neither in this recipe. 

Ingredients:
2 boneless chicken breasts, butterflied OR Perdue's pre-scallopined (if that's a word)
Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil

Pine nuts, a handful

Capers, drained

2 lemons, juice and zest

Cooking sherry or white wine (about 1 cup)

Green beans, fresh, ends trimmed

Fingerling potatoes, about 3-5 per person, sliced in half.

Preheat oven to 400 (or 425 for normal ovens).  Toss halved fingerlings in a bit of olive oil and roast in the oven for 20 minutes.   Meanwhile...  Boil water for the green beans. 

It's taken me ten years to figure out how to adequately saute a chicken breast.  Here's what I've learned.  Preheat the oil pan in between medium and medium high.  Just enough oil to cover.  This is critical.  Rinse the breasts under water and pat dry with a paper towel.  Sprinkle with lots of salt and pepper.  Saute the breasts 5 minute each side.  Don't be tempted to flip or check before 5.  That's it.

Remove the chicken to a plate.  Add the pine nuts and toast for about 2 minutes.  Watch them so they don't burn.  Add the capers, as much as you like.  Deglaze with the sherry, about 1 cup.  Add the lemon juice and zest.  Mix together to combine and let boil for a minute.  Reduce heat to simmer and add the chicken.  Simmer covered for 20 minutes. 

Next, boil the the green beans for 5 minutes, drain, splash some cold water over them.  Set aside.

Taste the sauce.  Add salt and pepper.  If it's too lemony or too winey, add some chicken stock or water.  If you like a thicker sauce, ladel a bit of the sauce into a bowl, stir in a tablespoon or so of corn starch, and then add that mixture back into the sauce.

An Old Family Recipe

For our wedding shower ten years ago, Aunt Joyce sent us a beautiful handmade gift.  She wrote a lovely note explaining the gift, a nostalgic collection of old family recipes culled over the years.  Awwww, I thought, how wonderful.  I opened the book, a collection of pages bound in an album, to savor the first family recipe.  Chicken and rice?  Aunt Carol's homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?  What would it be?

It was a copy of the restaurant section of the Yellow Pages.

So, we followed Aunt Joyce's old family recipe this weekend, and we went out.

Friday, basic pork roast, mashed potatoes and baby carrots at the West Side IA.  Lovely with Jim Beam or Guinness. 

Saturday night, Mark and I wanted to go to a restaurant we had not been to before.  Heard good things about Parallax in Tremont.  It was fine.  Did not rise to the level of our favorites, Players or Three Birds.  The highlight of the evening, however was getting cocktails at the Velvet Tango Room. Love that place.  Worth every bit of the $15 per drink price tag.

Dinner for Two in Fifteen

Had a great weeknight dinner last Tuesday that took about 15 minutes to make. 

Pork Tenderloin Medallions with Veggies and Couscous.

Ingredients:

Boxed herbed couscous

Stir-fry veggies

½ Premarinated pork tenderloin*

Soy Sauce

Corn starch

Honey

Dijon Mustard

Beef stock (or juice, water, chicken stock, wine, etc.)

Directions:

Cut the tenderloin into six medallions, toss in a bowl with soy a few minutes while you make everything else.

Herbed Couscous.  Follow package instructions.  Completely easy.  You basically boil water in a small pan, dump in the couscous, take it off heat, and let it sit covered for 5 minutes.  Fluff with a fork; done. 

Prechopped stir-fry veggies from Heinens.  Saute in a non-stick skillet with cooking spray on medium heat for about 7 minutes.  Remove from pan and keep warm.

Using the same skillet, spray more cooking spray, increase heat to medium-high-ish, and add pork, saving the bowl with the soy remnants.  Cook for 2-3 minutes on each side.  If it seems to brown to quickly, turn the heat down toward medium.  Remove pork to a plate temporarily.  Lifting the pan from the burner, add stock, about a cup or so.  It will bubble up and boil if all goes well.  Return pan to burner, reduce to medium heat, and let the sauce boil and reduce a little, using a rubber scraper to scrape everything up.  Meanwhile, in the bowl with the soy sauce remnants, stir in a little Dijon, honey, and corn starch in equal parts.  I used about a tablespoon of each.  Add this mixture to the sauce, reduce heat to simmer, and add pork back to the pan.  Cover and keep heated on medium heat.

Make drinks.  Enjoy your drinks and set the table, like real adults, while everything stays warm on the stove.  Talk about your day.  Pet the cats.

Plate everything up together like a chef would.  I used our salad plates to make it look more decadent.  I filled half the plate with veggies, ¼ of the plate with couscous, then topped with three medallions each leaning on the couscous.  Drizzle sauce.  I garnished with some chopped parsley and green onions that I had from something else.  Final touch, sprinkle a few sesame seeds over the whole thing.

Loved it.  Took about 15 minutes from start to finish.  Two pans and a bowl to clean.  The pork tenderloin was extremely tender.  I estimate this meal to be about 7 points, max.

*I bought one with a Montreal steak seasoning type marinade, but anything would work.  I cut the tenderloin in half first and froze half. 

Apple Brown Bethie

Well, we had plenty to cry about last weekend in Wisconsin.  Those Badgers broke our Buckeye hearts at Camp Randall.  But, our times at the Jackson farm lightened our moods.  Especially the Apple Brown Bethie.  Neither Beth nor I had made any sort of apple crisp/crumble affair before, and we wanted to.  We spent a laid back Friday night lounging around Beth and Greg’s huge new kitchen island, making dinner, listening to 90’s music, and getting pop culture updates from Dan.  Beth perused a few crumble recipes, then we developed our own.  It was so good that the sweet memory of the Apple Brown Bethie almost—almost—erases the pain of the Buckeye loss. 

Recipe:  Apple Brown Bethie

(Tweaked primarily from the Neeley’s recipe for Apple Crisp on http://www.foodnetwork.com/)

Filling:

4-5 apples, peeled, cored, chopped small (we used two Jackson apples and three honey crisp apples)

1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Cooking spray

Topping:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into pieces

1/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix all filling the ingredients together in a glass baking dish coated with cooking spray. 

For topping, mix the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt in a separate bowl.  Blend the butter and walnuts into the mixture until it forms crumbles.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before serving this great dessert.

(10 servings; 5 points per serving)