My Favorite Wine

I haven't posted in a while, not because I haven't been cooking but because I haven't had the time to write up the posts. ChemEats will come back in force in 2012.

I am just going to quickly share some photos of my newest favorite wine: Opala Vinho Verde. I don't know much about this wine, except it appears clear in the slightly green tinted bottle. This is a crisp, light and refreshing wine, perfect for a summer day. You can find this wine at Whole Foods.

RR Wine

I was exploring the corner market of our new home, and I made a fantastic wine discovery: A bottle of wine that had the label "RR".... and it was purple! How could I not get this wine to try?

The wine was actually pretty good. The flavor was light, which I often prefer in reds. You never know what you're going to get when you choose wine strictly by the label, but I am thrilled that I went with my gut this time.

We paired it with a caramelized onion & turkey kielbasa pasta concoction.

Tequila lime shrimp

I used to love to buy margaritaville's tequila lime shrimp, but it has been so expensive that it is worth trying to find a recipe I like myself. I found a recipe that I could modify to my purposes.

My Tequila Lime Shrimp Pasta Recipe

• 1/4 cup butter
  
• 8 Tblsp tequila
  
• 6 Tblsp Lime juice
  
• 3 tsp minced garlic
• Frozen, pealed shrimp
• Cayanne pepper to taste
• 1 box pasta
• 1 cup frozen peas

Instructions

• Boil some lightly salted water (for the pasta.) Drop the pasta and cook according to the manufacturer's directions.
  
• Saute the garlic in the butter for 1-2 min, then add the tequila and lime juice.
• Once the sauce is simmering, add the frozen shrimp until they are cooked through (completely pink and curled up.) If the sauce isn't thick enough, then remove the shrimp and keep reducing the sauce.
  
  
  
• Drain Pasta (don't rinse) and combine with frozen peas, stirring thoroughly.
  
  
  
• Pour sauce and shrimp over the pasta and mix.
  
  
  
• Enjoy your yummy pasta dish!
  

Talapia

Whole Foods date nights are a lot of fun. Rather than going to a restaurant, we'll go to a nice market and pick up ingredients that are a little pricier than we may choose normally. We found a coconut lime marinade, decided to pair it with some talapia.

We marinated the fish in the fridge for one hour and then lightly sprinkled it with plain bread crumbs. . We baked it at 400 degrees for 13 minutes

The fish was light creamy and yummy. We still have plenty of the marinade for more dinners. We served the fish over some plain white rice and with a small salad. What a yummy date night!

Pasta Medley - Yum!

I had a bit of a dilemma when it came time for dinner. I had a lot of different kinds of pasta, but none of them were enough to make a complete meal. I therefore decided to combine a bunch and make a pasta medley.

The sauce had some stir fried kilbasa sausage, peas and tomato sauce.

I got really excited about this meal, and decided to take advantage of some more leftovers I had laying around. I had some homemade pizza dough in my fridge, but there wasn't enough for a pizza big enough for both me and Keith. (I had considered making an individual pizza for lunch, but had never gotten around to it.) I shaped the dough into stitcks, brushed them with olive oil and then sprinkled them with garlic salt.

I baked these breadsticks at 350 until they were solid (around 10 min). This meal that was just thrown together ended up being quite amazing! I will definitely make these breadsticks again.

Homemade gnocchi

It was time for me to try making homemade gnocchi all by myself. I started with 1lb 9oz of russet potatoes and boiled them until they were soft (30 min).

After they were pealed and put through the ricer, I had 1 lb of potatos to work with for the dough.

It really does look like rice!

For the dough I used 1 lb of the riced potatoes, 2.5 oz flour, 2 tsp salt and 1 egg. This ended up being fairly salty, so the sauce didn't need any additional salt.

I still don't have a gnocchi board, so I scored them with the back of a fork.

I'm not sure the scoring made a huge difference, but it was easy enough to finish rolling out the entire batch of dough.

I wanted to make the gnocchi so badly that I hadn't given much thought to the sauce. I like to use a creamy pesto mix for gnocchi, but I couldn't bring myself to use a packaged sauce on my first batch of homemade gnocchi. I therefore whipped up a simple browned butter sauce.

I thought the packaged gnocchi I bought from Trader Joe's cooked up fast... but man these started floating almost as soon as I had them in the pot! I put them in a bowl to toss with the sauce, but the gnocchi were so soft that some of them got a bit squished. Next time, I'll either put them directly in the pan with the sauce or directly into the serving bowl.

Needless to say, Keith was very excited to come home for dinner. The whole process is so yummy, I know I will be making gnocchi a lot. Soon I'll have to try out some variations and see how well they keep frozen.

Croutons

What do you do with stale bread? Well I decided to take advantage of my French Bread ends that were hard as a rock by turning them into croutons.

I chopped up the end of a stale loaf of French bread, drizzled them with olive oil and then sprinkled on garlic salt and oregano. Apparently I should have brushed the sides with oil first before cutting, since tossing the bread in oil didn't work as well as I had expected (it wasn't very even.)

I put the bread pieces in the oven at 400 degrees (F) until they started to brown. Voila! Simple and fast croutons... what an easy salad solution.

The croutons, just out of the oven.

My salad.

Beef with broccoli

I picked up this beef and broccoli mix at the supermarket, and decided it would be a nice variation to my standard teriyaki beef stir fry.

I chopped up some stake and stir fried it with onions. I added some defrosted broccoli towards the end (so the broccoli would not get soggy.)

I was expecting the sauce to be a brown sauce like you would find at a restaurant. Instead, it is a clearer sauce. It would be really amazing with shrimp. I will definitely use it again.

Omelette

I had some heirloom tomatoes and an avocado that needed to be used up fast. Sounds like a yummy omelet to me!

I was really hungry, so I used 3 eggs in this omelet. This was so fresh and vibrant that I had to share it, no matter how simple it is!

I smothered the omelet in salsa, and then had an amazing lunch.

Chicken Parmesan

I am thrilled to finally own a meat tenderizer! I'm ready to pound some chicken for the first time to make Chicken Parmesan.

I pounded the chicken breasts inside ziplock bags (where they had defrosted). The breast on the left has been pounded about 1/4 inch thin, the breast on the right is unaltered.

I pan fried the chicken breasts for ~5 minutes on each side.

Our pans are VERY non-stick, so we only needed the tiniest amount of oil.

Our griddle pan hadn't arrived in the mail yet, so I had to use two different pans to cook dinner. Thank goodness these pans are dishwasher safe!

What Italian meal would be complete without garlic bread? I had this in the oven to crisp as the chicken was cooking on the stovetop.

After I put the mozarella cheese on top, I stuck the pans directly in the oven at 300 degrees for a min so the cheese would melt.

This meal was so fast and easy to prepare. I cannot see myself ever using pre-breaded chicken again!