I won’t bore you with further pictures of my dinner prep, but I will tell you that the lobster salad turned out very well, and I served Greek-style kebabs tonight, and Thor asked for seconds.
The lobster salad came from my imagination:
1/2 lb of cooked lobster tail, cut into small chunks
Put in a lidded bowl and shake ingredients until well blended
Serve as is, or rolled up in a tortilla (as I ate it, mmm!), or on a soft roll
Tonight’s recipe came from my Mediterranean cooking cookbook.
Tonight’s kebabs are actually beef in the cookbook, but I used ground lamb, and it went like so:
1 lb ground lamb
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp coriander powder
1/4 tsp brown sugar
1 small onion finely chopped
1 Tsp cilantro finely chopped
Salt ‘n Pepa to taste (p-push it real good!)
Once you’ve mixed up all the ingredients, you mold the meat into sausage looking links around 4 skewers. If you are using wooden skewers, be sure to soak them in water for half an hour first. I use metal ones because of that one unfortunate incident with me–you don’t want to know. Just know that there were splinters involved.
You are supposed to grill these over coals, but I put them in the broiler for 10 minutes on one side, and 3 on the other, which was a nice medium on the smaller kebabs, and a nice medium rare on the fatter one I made for B.
I served it over couscous with slices of fresh avocado, and we had honeyed Greek yogurt for dessert. Not a bad spread!
The B Family went to Half Price Books last night, and I scored three new cookbooks, along with my Father-in-Law’s next holiday present. God bless him. He has suffered through nine years of crazy gifts from me. But he loved his talking George Bush doll, and his Chia Obama. Okay, loved is maybe too strong a word, but he did enjoy seeding Chia Obama’s ears, eyebrows and nostrils, so at least we know he was entertained.
Anyway, cookbooks. This is about cooking, not my inappropriate gift giving–I can’t even remember how that started. I get normal gifts for everyone else. Only Pop gets the nutjob treatment. Cookbooks.
The new ones are the Step-by-Step, the Mediterranean, and the Smoothie books. No, those aren’t all my cookbooks. I haven’t found all of them in the unpacking, yet. And yes, that is an upside down wall sconce being used as a book end.
I’ve done a fair amount of cooking today, for having only gotten started after four o’clock. I made my crackers this morning, then went to the grocery store and came home with the fixings for five recipes out of my new books. I also came home with steamed crab legs, cooked lobster tail, and shrimp cocktail because my mother has addicted my child to crustaceans and he has been begging me for crab for two weeks.
While I was resteaming the crab legs, I got started on Goat Cheese Tarts from the Step-by-Step cookbook. This is my kind of book! It is full of pictures, showing you how to, what to, and how it should look. I’m pretty visual. That helps me.
The recipe called for a sheet of puff pastry, 10 oz of goat cheese (I got two different kinds from the same brand), onion, corn, or tomato relish, one egg beaten, oil for drizzling, flour for dusting, and pepper. I also added chopped olives and a dash of sea salt for flavor.This relish. You guys! This relish is delicious! I had no idea what kind of relish to get, only that B hates corn, so that was out. I chose this one because Wayne rhymes with Lane, and it was Award Winning. I chose wisely. Buy this.In short: You dust some flour on a space, roll out your dough, then use something round (I used a glass) to cut out 12 circles of pastry. You transfer that pastry to a buttered up cookie tray (I used a stick of Land o’Lakes butter and just rubbed it all over the tray until it was slick.) Then, use a smaller circle to make an inner ring dent (don’t cut! just impress) on the circles of pastry, brush egg all over that, then prick the dough with a fork a few times to punch some holes. I don’t know why. It was an instruction and I followed it. Then, you put a spoonful of relish in the center of each round, and I added a spoonful of chopped olives, then a dash of salt. Then, you put a round dollop of goat cheese on top, drizzle that with oil, and top with sprinkles of pepper.
That goes into an oven, preheated to 400, until the pastry is fluffy and the cheese is bubbly. It took about 12 minutes for mine. Serve hot or cold.
They don’t look like much, and I was actually afraid to eat one. I served them to B first, since I had finished cracking and cleaning his crab legs first. He said they were very good, so I tried one. Um…I have 4 left. I am saving them for tomorrow. Maybe.
But the relish is the thing. That relish is delicious! It is exactly the right balance between sweet and savory. Nom nom nom. Probably a ridiculous amount of calories per bite, but I don’t care. That’s good eatin’!
I had a lot of lobster left over, so I have made lobster salad. We’ll see how that is tomorrow, and if I like it, I’ll tell you what I threw together for that.
My friend, the illustrious Dr. Stephanie S., posted a recipe for basic homemade crackers on Facebook. I had exactly one cup of whole wheat flour sitting in my pantry, so I decided to give it a try. Mmmm!
First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and get a cookie sheet ready. If it is non-stick, no worries. Otherwise, give it a coat of cooking spray.
1 cup of flour 1/4 cup of water 3 tbs olive oil 3 tsp toasted sesame seeds 1 tsp garlic salt, ground with parsley 1/2 tsp chili powderKnead the ingredients until dough forms, and is slightly sticky.Roll out your dough (on a non-stick surface, or a surface prepped with cooking spray) to about 1/4 inch thickness, then cut into the shape of your choice.Pop the cut crackers in the oven for 8-10 minutes, until crispy.Remove from oven and enjoy!
Pretty tasty little wafers. These would be good with hummus. The basics are always the same: Flour, water, oil. Mix up the flavor ingredients as you like to change up the taste. Next time, I’m using rosemary!
Here is an easy, fake lasagna recipe that Thor & B both liked well enough to go seconds on. It’s been quite a while since either of them asked for seconds out of my kitchen. Am now self-congratulatory and happy to share the recipe I cribbed from Creamland, then changed up to suit my own tastes.
1 box rigatoni pasta
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1lb ground lamb
1 80z container of ricotta cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1tbs basil
2tbs italian seasoning
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 egg
Boil the rigatoni while oven pre-heats to 350.
Brown lamb into small chunks with 1/2 the italian seasoning and 1/2 the salt (you may want more salt to taste.)
While rigatoni and lamb are cooking, combine 1/2 of the spaghetti sauce and everything else in a mixing bowl and stir like crazy, until everything is well blended and smooth. Add the lamb and mix. Set aside until pasta is finished.
Drain your pasta and add it to the mix. Stir until pasta is well covered.
Spray non-stick to the bottom of a casserole and pour in a little sauce to cover the bottom. Pour in the pasta/lamb/cheese mix and cover with more sauce. Sprinkle more parm or some shredded cheese on top. Bake for 15 minutes.
Eat. Tasty!
*I very nearly could not use this title because, grammatically, real is incorrect. It should be “really good” but that doesn’t scan as nicely as “Fake Lasagna–Real Good”, so… Footnote.
The Outside Lane 