This wasn’t very good, but I’m not calling it a failure. That’s because the flavor combinations were great, but the final product was a bit dry and could have been much improved. I wanted to make a mac and cheese with fall flavors, and my mind went right to brussel sprouts and squash. I wanted to brown these veggies first so the mac wouldn’t be a big mushy mess. My favorite way to eat brussel sprouts is the way heidi cooks them. I could eat a bunch of them like that as an after work snack or even as a popcorn alternative watching a movie (Realllly??? Yes!). I decided to start with this recipe, but crank the heat up so that they would brown but barely cook. That way in the oven they wouldn’t overcook and still have some of that yummy brussel crunch. P.S. I’m marking this as vegetarian because you could easily make it with olive oil instead of bacon and bacon fat.

I want to talk more about the raw fish thing today. If you didn’t see part 1, its here. Anyways, you would think in Bermuda that fresh fish would be plentiful, but in reality you only have 2 options. The grocery stores where most stuff is flown in and/or frozen and thawed, or from a dude on the side of the road with a cooler. The problem with the side of the road guys, is that they aren’t there every day. It seems to me that every time I feel like eating fish I don’t see them in their normal places. When I have other dinner plans, I pass 4 or 5 guys on the way home from work. The other problem with these fish guys is that I have personally heard from a source close to one of these guys that they occasionally fly in fish and pass them off as their own! So it isn’t fully trustable. Today we are using raw tuna and raw salmon. The tuna is flash frozen to a certain degree that kills bacteria. It isn’t as nice as fresh fish, but I can trust it. The salmon is fresh and local from the gourmet store here (a rare occurrence) that posts what is flown in and what is local. The fish dudes there are friendly with me and very honest about the day things are caught so I trust that as well. The purpose of this previous paragraph is really just to say trust where you get your fish! I have friends that often make sushi and have never had a problem, but don’t take the decision lightly, have a trusted source.

I sort of wanted to make sushi for awhile, but hesitated for 2 main reasons. For one, I thought it would be kinda hard and not really turn out as good as it is in restaurants. The second reason was that I was worried about raw fish at home. I have cooked with “sushi grade tuna” before and I seared it, so I knew that stuff was pretty good but for some reason I still had reservations. Finally the opportunity came along and I couldn’t be happier with how things turned out. It wasn’t all that hard to do, and the taste was amazing. Far better then most places on the island. One way to judge how much we liked it was that normally at a restaurant we drench the rolls in soy sauce and wasabi. I found myself barely dipping these rolls into the sauce because the taste alone was just so great. Today I am going to show you the set-up, and the first roll. Tomorrow will be the 4 other awesome rolls we made!

Today’s post kills 2 birds with one pretzel. The soft pretzel is here to herald in the first day of October (Oktoberfest), and to welcome the beginning of the division series in baseball. I think pretzels represent both of those things pretty well. To elaborate more on the pretzel, I have asked Mandi for a paragraph:

I’ve always been rather proud of my Philadelphia food heritage. You’ve read my slice. You’ve seen my cheesesteak post. if there is one thing Philly knows, it's food. In my opinion the two foods they do the absolute best are the cheesesteak and the soft pretzel. I could live on soft pretzels. Happily. The pretzel cart in the airport is the first place i run when i land home. There’s absolutely nothing that makes me happier then a hot, fresh soft pretzel straight from one of their many pretzel factories first thing on a crisp Philadelphia morning. Recently I was home for a week visiting the family. I’d Estimate I had about three pretzels per day during that week. It was wonderful. Upon my return to this lovely island my body began to go through a soft pretzel withdrawal. I realized it was time to do something that Dan and I have been talking about ever since we saw Alton brown's on good eats. It was finally time to make soft pretzels.

Go Phillies!

-Mandoline

Over the past 2 weeks I have had a lot of strange and exotic foods on here, so I have decided to step back a bit with some awesome yet more basic dishes for the next week. I am starting today with a nice veggie soup. This soup began in my head as a healthier cream of broccoli, but sort of turned into a huge pot of veggie party. The reason was that I wanted a lot of mirepoix to kick up the flavor, and I also wanted a potato and some cauliflower to make it extra creamy. I wanted these veggies for the extra creamy factor because I wanted it to be healthy so I was using (not much) milk instead of (a bunch of) cream. I didn’t want to use much cheese either.

I haven’t quite put my finger on the word curry and its meaning. Wikipedia is no help really. For one, it’s a spice, but the spice is really a blend of other spices. Second, there are curry leaves which are a mystery to me, because wouldn’t you think curry powder would be made from this curry tree? Third, it is a name for hundreds of dishes from all over Asia that are completely different from each other! When I first started having curries, I only liked Thai curry, so as I made a few, I started to think that the meaning of curry had to do with mixing a blended paste with coconut milk, and simmering. After making a few Indian curries as well, my current definition of curry is: Curry: Any dish where you puree a bunch of sh*7 including lots of spices BEFORE cooking. Can anyone help me on that definition? I think it's pretty accurate, but I am guessing it will become even vaguer as I continue making curry from different areas.

Anyway, today I have a quick, healthful, and delicious weeknight meal for you to check out. I saw the recipe for the cauliflower on the food and wine website a few days ago, thought it would be good with fish, and made it that night.

I am marking this vegetarian, even though we used pancetta. The pancetta isn’t necessary, but it added a nice flavor. You could just use olive oil instead, and maybe a dash of red wine or balsamic vinegar. This idea came to Mandi in our usual 3pm what do you want for dinner email discussion. She said she wanted to make vegetable lasagna, but use the veggies as the pasta and even as the sauce. We brainstormed for a bit and this is what we came up with. I love giving you guy’s original recipes, so PLEASE let me know if you like this and if you ever cook it!

As the tomatoes turn red on the plant with each passing day, I wonder what ways I can purely taste the tomato flavor. Aside from just popping a tomato in my mouth, how can I get the utmost taste of the fruits of my labor? Salsa is a pretty obvious choice, but at the moment I could probably make enough salsa for only 3 chips or half a taco. I came up with this idea randomly and made them after work today.

Broke account so I broke a sweat
I've bought some things that I sort of regret about now – Modest Mouse

I’m not really that broke, but a few things happened that caused me to have to be creative for a few days last week with my food. Last Tuesday, Mandi and I ate really well all day without spending a dollar! Luckily, because I cook all the time there were ingredients lying around my house, but even if there weren’t, these would still be really cheap meals to make.

SIDE RANT - we have been watching the next food network star and enjoying the show somewhat. I take it for what it is and realize that no one on this show could ever touch anyone on top chef. But it is a different show and they are looking for something different then Tom and Padma. Last night I was completely disappointed with the winner and I can’t imagine that anyone liked Aaron. He sucked the last 2 weeks and I didn’t even think he could possibly win. I was trying to decide if it would be Lisa or Adam the whole episode, they both had way better pilots and are way better in general. I wanted Lisa to win from day one and I am going to be making it my personal goal to contact her and interview her or post one of her recipes. I don’t care if it is a year from now and no one even remembers her! YEA LISA GARZA! Mandi and I have sworn off food network before, once when they stopped playing Molto Mario, the first time we saw ultimate recipe showdown or down home with the Neely’s, and who could forget the holiday dessert iron chef debacle. This time we really mean it food network! Its over! Well maybe after Jamie and Anne this weekend, THEN it is over.

I was planning on posting a post I've been waiting a while to do today, but it requires a clean house. Every night this week I had planned to take the pictures, but my house was never clean enough, so today I present to you, a post I like to call “what I ate for dinner last night.”

I was craving cauliflower all last week and was excited to see that Jamie would be focusing on it on his upcoming episode. We decided to make the cannelloni dish with a few changes. For one, we just watched the molecular episode of diary of a foodie and wanted to try making the tomato powder. Another was the strange fact that Jamie used canned tomato puree instead of making a sauce for this dish. We had some leftover sauce we had made and decided to mix that with puree so we would have enough. I also thought it odd that Jamie did not pre cook the pasta before stuffing it, I was doubtful it would cook properly in the casserole but wanted to try it anyways.

I make breakfast every day that I don’t go to work. This means Saturday and Sunday most weeks, and random days sprinkled in here and there. When on a diet, the usual bacon and eggs doesn’t really cut it for both weekend days. Neither does the leftover taco ingredient omelet, the breakfast pile, the McDonalds steak egg and cheese clone, or the sausage sandwich with pancakes as bread smothered in high fructose corn syrup also known as fake maple syrup (Figure 1, After click-through) I decided this week to go light for breakfast and make some blueberry buckwheat pancakes. There is a recipe with yeast right on the bag of buckwheat, but I decided to go with an Ellie Krieger recipe I saw her make a few weeks back. Another quick pancake anecdote – I used to hate pancakes all my life until about a year ago when I first made them without using a box, then I realized its pancake mix that I hate, and not actual pancakes.

For some reason soup was the topic of the day. Our normal email group was emailing about soup for like an hour. Didn’t anyone realize it is the middle of the summer? It’s hot and humid. I don’t want soup! But Mandi did. So we compromised on one chilled soup and one hot soup. We had a cayenne ripening in the garden so I thought we could spice up a gazpacho. This made me laugh… hot cold soup. That’s when I thought, how can I make the hot soup cold? Mint is a “cool” flavor and I had heard of people using mint with lamb and peas in ravioli/wontons. That’s how I came to the finalized dinner of the night. Duo of soups: Hot cold (spicy gazpacho), and cold hot (mint lamb wontons in chicken broth). Food sounds classy if you say “duo”.

Today’s post is an extremely exciting, scientific experiment. At Christmas this year we were lucky enough to receive my grandmother's gnocchi recipe. I have the fondest of memories growing up eating these little pillows of heaven. So you can imagine my surprise when we saw that her recipe calls for potato buds instead of normal potatoes! This really got us wondering and Mandi and I decided that it would be a good idea to put them in a head to head competition to see which tasted better, potato buds or the spud itself.  We had made Heidi's recipe before, so we planned to use that as a base recipe.  It started to get crazy when on the morning of the experiment we saw Tyler Florence make gnocchi. We wanted to try his recipe too! That got Mandi's brain going and she decided she wanted to make some colored versions of each recipe to see how that affected the flavor and texture. When it came down to it we couldn’t agree on a sauce. I prefer tomato sauce on my gnocchi, but she likes cream... well the whole thing really just continued to snowball and in the end we ended up making four types of gnocchi with two flavors and three sauces...

For all the different gnocchi's, we kept the flour / egg / potato ratio as similar as possible so that we could really judge the potato method. The comparison involved baked potatoes, steamed potatoes, boiled potatoes, and potato buds. Then we colored some of each kind with some spinach and roasted red peppers.  The three sauces were tomato, gorgonzola cream, and thyme butter. This made for a total of 36 possible combinations.  Our impressions on which were best and worst are at the bottom of the post.

Were back!  And what a great vacation it was!   Wanna hear about it?  Here goes.  Ribs 4 times, potato salad, peaches wrapped in bacon, pasta salad, scallops, taco dip, chicken wings, cheesesteaks, qdoba burrito, cheese fries, cheese fries, mcdonalds 4 times, steak egg and cheese bagel from there, sausage egg and cheese from dunks, finagled another bagel, 2x taco bell, (once drunk at 1:30 am with my family?) clam chowder, clam chowder, chili, fried fish sandwich, beef burros, boneless wings from petes (still good), soft pretzel, pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza, spicy basil pad Thai, spring rolls, kobe flat iron, tuna tartare, sweetbreads, bone marrow, and about 400 or so beers.  I’m sure I missed stuff; we had about 4 meals a day.  And NOW it is time for a diet!  Starting off my diet today I have an iceberg wedge salad with a blue cheese dressing.  Blue cheese dressing!?!  You can’t have that if you are trying to be healthy!!!!!   Relax folks, we only used 4 oz. of blue cheese (<200 calories each) and made the dressing with low fat yogurt and buttermilk.  It was delicious!

I wasn’t sure what to call this really…  Quinoa salad?  Mexicany rice bowlish thing?  I settled on Black bean avocado bowl.  It came about when Mandi and I were brainstorming about quick easy healthy weeknight meals we could completely make AND eat in a half hour and run after.  This would actually be great as an alternative to pasta salad at a BBQ and would also travel really well, but we just had it as a quick and healthy weeknight dinner.

We ate so bad this weekend… how bad did you eat?  We ate SOOO bad this weekend that we kept oil on the stove at all times in case we had the urge to fry!  And fry we did.  This particular fry session was around 12:30 on fry-day night (he he). 

I have really wanted to sear tuna lately.  Why? I have no idea.  For some reason it has been one of those dishes that gets stuck in your head and you can’t stop thinking about it until you finally make it yourself!  But what would we do with this seared tuna?  I didn’t really want to put it in a salad.  The brainstorming began at 2:30ish between Mandi and I over email.  Mandi wanted avocado because Thursday is usually taco night and if she couldn’t have tacos, some avocado would at least ease the pain.  I thought mangos would be a nice compliment to the lightness of the tuna.  After looking for awhile online, I was reminded of a raw tuna nacho appetizer I had at Mesa Grill in New York.  I saw a recipe that included an avocado and a chipotle crema and decided to make these, wing a mango salsa, and put it all on a corn tortilla.  The results were delicious!

Nothing crazy here today, just a really basic yet delicious strawberry salad.  I’m sure you’ve all pretty much had this salad in one form or another, and this is the way we make it.  Mandi really wanted to post this one because it is her favorite salad.  The strawberries were really fresh and delicious and the pictures came out great so here it is.

This is probably our favorite after beach BBQ.  We make it after a long day of beach when you need something hearty and flavorful, yet light and summery at the same time.  My parents were down visiting and we had just gotten back from a long day at the beach. Click below for more

Since there was a public outcry after my last healthy post (apparently 2 slices of bacon makes you a fatty) I decided to post another one today.  Sometimes when I am trying to be healthy, I ruin it because I crave pasta all the time.  I generally do not like whole wheat and whole grain pastas.  For some reason however, when I put a pesto on a whole grain pasta, I really enjoy it.

This recipe is a combination of Giada’s Swordfish and Spaghetti with Citrus Pesto, Heidi’s Pesto techniques, and some tweaks of our own (putting the citrus in the fish instead of the pasta, using whole grain pasta, fish selections).  I find it important to cite my sources so that I don’t pull a Cindy McCain.  I’m so Topical!

Click below for the recipe and pictures.

The most common question asked of me by friends is this – “what’s a quick, easy, healthy, and delicious dinner I can have after work tonight?” What do you guys think I am, Rachael ray?  Well guess what!? You’re all in luck! I am on a diet since bathing suit season starts in a week or 2 here in Bermuda. (Even though actual Bermudians refuse to go to the beach until May 25^th.) So I will have some healthy weeknight dinners up here in the next few weeks.  Now don’t worry, they won’t all be healthy.  I have a few posts I made pre-dieting that I am waiting to post.  Also, my diets are short because they are intense.

I’m rambling, so without further a due, my FAVORITE fast easy delicious and super-ancient-whole-grain-run-a-mile-punch-a-baby-healthy meal!  Fish-in-a-bag!

Some of my friends right now are saying “Fish?  Really?  I mean… I don’t really like fish.” To you I say shut up and make this and you will LOVE it.  Unless you mess it up somehow which you probably will.  Jeez my friends are dumb... just kidding friends!

Click below for more!!

These last two days of "happy chicken week" are just to show a couple different, interesting uses for the stored up chicken stock.  Our idea this past weekend was to cook something that looked like a totally different food than it actually was.

A few weeks ago at the Grillin and Chillin event we had a dish by Chef Shaker Estephane where the Mango was cut into what looked like stringy little noodles. This gave Mandi the idea that she wanted to make an entire dish where everything was shaped like noodles. I had also been thinking about it when reading Morimoto’s cookbook that I got for Christmas. He loves what he calls “visual food puns”.  So we first thought of a food we have often, spaghetti and meatballs. It got us thinking... what if the meat was the noodles, and the pasta was the meatballs? What we ended up with was pretty awesome. Click below for more.

We had revenge on pad thai this past weekend.  I didn’t take as many pictures this time because we had so many good ones last time.  Also because once you get going with this dish in the wok,  you need to be focused and keep the ingredients coming.  If you are serious about trying pad thai, check out chez pim and read her page on it.  It may seem long, but you need to read through it to get the idea of how to make this dish really great.