Spinach-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

I was going through some boxes in the basement and came across a few cookbooks that never got unpacked. I mentioned in the Valentine's Day post that we have a lot of cookbooks. When we moved to Columbus, I decided to leave an entire box of cookbooks packed and in the basement and just display the few we use the most. Anyway, I started looking through an old Self Magazine full of recipes. It is titled "Self Dishes" and it came out in the summer of 2007. I've made many yummy recipes from this magazine and they are usually pretty easy recipes and healthy too! I'm always trying to eat healthy. Sometimes I'm successful, sometimes I'm not. Right now, I'm on a healthy-eating kick. I had the day off on Tuesday and I had just gone grocery shopping, so I decided to make Spinach-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms from my Self Dishes magazine.

This was super easy to make. It's basically just mixing all the ingredients in a bowl, spooning them on to the mushrooms caps and baking it for 25 minutes. I had this for a late lunch and it was filling and really tasty. I definitely plan on making this again because most of the ingredients are already kitchen staples.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove mushroom stems and chop the stems. Place the mushrooms smooth side down in a baking dish.

2. Next, mix thawed spinach, cottage cheese, shredded cheese, dill, and scallions. The recipe called for cheddar, but I used mozzarella. I also did not have any sour cream on hand, so I just added an additional spoonful of cottage cheese and shredded mozzarella. It still turned out great.

3. Spoon mixture on the mushrooms creating a mound. Cover with foil. (I just re-read the recipe and realized I totally forgot to cover my dish with foil! oops. But, now we know it's not mandatory. ) Bake for 25 minutes.

Here's my uncovered mushrooms cooking away. See, they look fine without the foil. No worries.
The cottage cheese binds everything together and the spinach and cheese flavors complement the meatiness of the portobellos. This dish can also be doctored up a bit! Next time, I plan on adding garlic and lemon zest. I also think adding a spoonful of breadcrumbs would add a nice texture. I love recipes that act like blank canvasses. They have a few staple ingredients and then you can be creative and add other ingredients to make it your own.

This is really a great dish. Not only is it easy, it's really satisfying and very tasty. It can be a nice vegetarian main course, served with a salad and some crusty bread. It also could be a nice side dish to accompany fish or chicken.



Two stuffed mushrooms is only 200 calories. Bonus!

Quick Steak dinner for 2 and good beer.

Cooking for two is much different than cooking for six. For the past few months, Erin and I have been living in my parents' house and on any given night there can be as few as one and as many as six people eating dinner together. Usually, my mom takes over most of the kitchen duties (which helps explain our lack of activity on FiT- that's Foodie in Training, for those not paying attention). Every now and then Erin and I will make dinner for everyone. Or my brother Greg and I will come up with some creation (our cavatelli with chunky tomato sauce and diced chicken was awesome).

But the last week, my parents and brother have been out of town, leaving Erin and I cooking for two, like we did quite often in Cincinnati. When cooking for two some things aren't as practical: huge roasts, baked pastas, casseroles, etc. We've made those things before, its just that you end up with more leftovers than dinner, and we get sick of the food before it spoils. Instead, our go-to meals usually involve a small package of some sort of meat and smaller sides.

On Tuesday, Erin and I bought a couple small steaks. They were pretty thick and lean top round cuts. Being so lean, and not the highest quality, I wanted a lot of flavor. I used salt, lots of pepper, oregano, parsley, and some "Mrs. Dash" seasoning blend (basically some dried onion, more pepper and oregano). I also added a drop of olive oil. Once my grill-pan was smoking hot with some Pam, I added the steaks, searing the pepper-heavy seasoning into the meat, creating a bit of a crust. (Caution- if you try doing this, make sure you are prepared for lots of smoke and your smoke detector going off. If, say, you are cooking at a home that has an alarm system that will call an alarm company and ultimately the fire department whenever a smoke detector goes off, you may want to disarm the system before you start cooking). I then turned the heat down a little and cooked the steaks to medium.

Erin made some spinach with lots of garlic and lemon (which is, again, my favorite vegetable side dish), a salad and a little brown rice. I also sauteed some onions and baby bella mushrooms for the steak and rice. The mushrooms and onions cut the peppery steak nicely. A nice little meal, just for two.


Beer: I tried a hI.P.A.- Magic Hat Brewing Company's extremely hoppy IPA. This is a beer made for hop-heads, and I fall into that category. There is a bit of a fruitiness, but your hardly can find it under all the hops at both the front and the back of the taste. I love IPAs, and one of the reasons is how well they stand up to hearty food, like steak. hI.P.A. is Magic Hat's spring seasonal, and let me tell you: I'm ready for spring. I've already had Great Lakes Brewing Company's spring varietal: Conway's Irish Ale. And, pitchers and catchers report today! IT IS SPRING!

My Favorite Meal In Tuscany

We spent 10 days in Northern Italy and Tuscany for our honeymoon.  It was AMAZING.  We had a great time and ate so many wonderful meals.  My favorite meal of our trip was in a small hill town in the Chianti region of Tuscany.  We stopped in Montefioralle on our first day in Tuscany, arriving on a wind-y Tuscan road to the top of a hill where we parked near a vineyard and walked in to the town.  It is a small, sleepy town (we didn't really see any locals when we were walking around) with narrow stone streets with colorful doors and shutters.  So cute!  We walked around the town and noticed an open doorway with a menu displayed.  The menu looked simple and rustic so we decided to try it out.  It didn't open for another year so we walked around a bit more, took lots of photos of the amazing views and then walked back to eat.  

The restaurant was a typical enoteca in Italy.  We saw nonna (grandma) in the kitchen cooking while the rest of the family waited and served the customers.  The minute I walked down the hallway to the restaurant, I had such a warm and homey feeling from this place.  I knew it was going to be a good experience.  And our view was amazing! The open air restaurant overlooked a vineyard and the Tuscan hills were in the backdrop.  

OK- now to the food... we started with a bottle of Chianti Classico (we were in the Chianti region) and it was a great start and one of my favorite wines (and believe me, we drank ALOT of wine).  For antipasti we shared the special of the day, fresh figs from their garden and prosciutto.  The figs were juicy and sweet and worked so well with the saltiness of the prosciutto.  

For the first course I had a panzanella salad and Ryan had picci pasta with a traditional tomato sauce.  Panzanella has many different variations, but the common factor is day old bread.  My salad has bread, tomatoes, cucumber, sliced red onion and fresh basil.  They gave me olive oil and red wine vinegar to dress my salad how I wanted.  The panzanella was so fresh and light. The tomatoes were so ripe and gorgeous and the bite of the red wine vinegar brightened up the whole dish.  Ryan's picci pasta was so rustic and simple.  Picci pasta is similar to regular spaghetti, it is just a little "fatter" and I believe it is made with semolina instead of eggs, so it is a little heavier than regular spaghetti.  We had picci pasta several times in Italy and it was always cooked to perfection.   The tomato sauce that topped the picci pasta was simple and tasted amazing.  

We both chose very hearty dishes for our main course.  I chose Italian sausage with a side of Tuscan white beans and spinach and Ryan chose short ribs and a side of the beans and spinach.  My Italian sausage was amazing.   It is hard to describe but it was juicy and a little spicy.  The presentation was so rustic and authentically Italian.  The Tuscan white beans and spinach were also a lesson in simplicity.  Both perfectly cooked, they were seasoned with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and a little lemon.  

The meal was absolutely perfect, the view, the tastes, the wine, the family serving us.  Montefioralle was my favorite Tuscan town and I think this restaurant is a main reason why it holds a special place in my heart. 

Surf and Turf for 2 for under $15

Yes, this is our third post of the day. We have been making lots of good food lately and today was the culmination. We were planning our Sunday meal on this beautiful March afternoon. I really wanted to make meatloaf. I bought eggs the other day for brunch and I wanted to use some of the eggs for the meatloaf. Ryan was inspired by the 60 degree sunny day and suggested something to cook on the grill. He stayed home and studied while I went to the grocery. While I was at the grocery store, I saw there was a special on scallops, but I thought that might be too difficult so I passed them by. When I shop for meat I always feel overwhelmed, I never know what cut is good or bad or if the price is good. So I went up to the butcher counter and saw there were boneless New York strip steaks on special. The strip steaks were huge cuts of meat and I knew that I could never eat a whole one by myself so I had the idea of just buying one and then going back to the seafood counter and buying a few of the scallops on special and doing a surf and turf. I got a few other essentials at the store and headed home to see what Ryan would think of my idea.

When Ryan saw the steak and scallops he was definitely on board and we got to cooking. Ryan was in charge of the steak (of course) and I was in charge of the scallops. I'll let Ryan talk about the steak, but first I'll talk about the scallops. They were still a little frozen so I immediately got them in a collander and turned on the faucet on icy cold and a very slow drip to slowly defrost them completely. I found a really simple recipe in the Cooking Light Italian cookbook we got from my parents for Christmas, sauteed scallops with parsley and garlic.

Once the scallops were defrosted I patted them with a paper towel to pull out some of the moisture and salted and peppered them on each side. When the steaks were almost finished, I heated a sautee pan on medium-high heat and added olive oil to the pan. When that was ready I added the scallops and let them cook on each side for 2 1/2 minutes. When they were done I removed them from the pan, lowered the heat and then added 1/2 tbsp. of butter to the same sautee pan and let it melt. Once the butter melted I added fresh garlic and dried parsley and let the garlic cook a little bit. Once the garlic was cooked, I put the scallops back in the pan and tossed them in the butter/garlic/parsley sauce. They turned out absolutely amazing and they were a great complement to Ryan's awesome steak. I'll let him take it from here...

What up my fellow foodie wannabes? So, like Erin said, she brought home a beautiful piece of meat. A classic N.Y. strip. It looked so good, and Erin's recipe for scallops were so simple, I decided to keep it simple when cooking the steak and making sure to let the great ingredients speak for themselves. I rubbed the steak down with some olive oil and seasoned each side with a bunch of salt and freshly cracked black pepper. I added the steak to the grill on medium-high heat, for about 4 minutes on each side. The high flame seared and blackened each side with all the olive oil, salt and pepper forming a wonderful crust. Another key was to let it sit for about 10 minutes before cutting it. I cut it in half and it was cooked so that the center was bright pink, but the outside was crusted with flavor: perfectly medium cooked. I could have even gone medium rare, but it was delicious, hearty and pretty tender.

Like Erin said, the scallops and steak made for a perfect combination. While the steak was red, salty, juicy and hearty; the scallops were light and were so buttery with a light garlic sauce and a hint of lemon that was fresh and delicate. We finished the meal with a simple baby spinach and onion salad, some good French bread and some corn: an absolutely perfect Sunday meal.

Saturday Night Dinner in 30 minutes

Ryan and I made a great dinner on Saturday. I'm going to go ahead and take credit for the recipe because I went grocery shopping Saturday morning and picked up a few things and came up with this meal: Sweet and Spicy Chicken sausage with baked redskin potatoes, zucchini and squash over fresh spinach. yum!

I have posted the baked redskin potato recipe before (click here)and I mistakenly said they were roasted redskin potatoes, but they are, in fact, baked. Anyway, they have to bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, so we started prepping. I washed and scraped out the eyes of each potato and quartered them and put them in a large bowl. I usually make this with peppers and onions, but I thought I'd mix things up a bit and so Ryan chopped yellow squash and zucchini and added it to the bowl with the redskin potatoes. Ryan also chopped 1 and 1/2 white onions and added them to the bowl. My only tip for preparing this dish is to make sure all of the ingredients are chopped in to equal size pieces so everything cooks evenly. I coated the ingredients generously with olive oil and added a lot of diced garlic, salt and pepper, dried basil, dried parsley, and crushed red pepper. That went on a foil-lined baking sheet and in the oven at 425 degrees for about 2o minutes. Another tip for this recipe is to make sure the potatoes, squash, zucchini and onion are spread out on the baking sheet. Check after about 10 minutes and stir the ingredients a little so each side can be baked.

After we checked on the potatoes and vegetables and stirred them, Ryan started on the chicken sausages. We have had a variation of these before, and I think they are nice to have every now and then. There are so many kinds of gourmet sausages and it's fun to try them out. Ryan cooked the sausages on a grill pan for about 15 minutes until they were browned slightly on the outside and warmed through.

While everything was cooking I came up with the idea of serving the baked potatoes and vegetables over fresh spinach. To add another kick of flavor, I drizzled balsamic vinegar over the "salad" and also added some lemon juice. The sausages were incredibly moist and I really liked the sweet and spicy flavor. The salad was a nice surprise, the balsamic paired nicely with the potatoes and zucchini and squash. It was a great Saturday night dinner that only took about 30 minutes to make! Take that Rachael Ray...

Cooking for friends

I always enjoy cooking for friends and Friday night I got another chance to try a new recipe, linguine with Shrimp and Lemon Oil. Ryan and I were going to cook for our friends but he came down with a bad cold (that I now have, thanks Ryan) so I went over to my friend Mo's to cook at her place for her, JJ, Mary and Mary's friend Eric who was visiting for the weekend.
This is actually a recipe my mom made for Ryan and I over the holidays and it's a meal she whips up for her and my dad all of the time. We also made panaconzata which I think we have mentioned in other posts, it is a wonderful Italian garlic bread that we have at Ryan's family gatherings.

To start, I put Mary to work making the panaconzata. For how tasty this bread it, it is surprisingly very simple and easy to make. Mary started by taking a loaf of Italian bread and slicing it horizontally (like a sub sandwich) and scoring the bread. After scoring the bread, she drizzled olive oil on each side and added salt and pepper and all kinds of spices including parsley, oregano and a little bit of crushed red pepper. The great thing about panaconzata is that you can add whatever you want, like sun dried tomatoes or fresh basil. Then she added shredded mozzarella cheese to each side of the bread and put the bread back together and wrapped it in foil. It's as easy as that! Then you pop it in the oven at 425 degrees and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until the cheese is melted. Here is Mary enthusiastically making garlic bread:
















While Mary was making the garlic bread, I got busy making the lemon oil which is very easy, just zest 1/2 a lemon and add 1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil to the bowl and let sit (you'll add it to the pasta at the end). I also put a large pot of water on the stove to bring to a boil for the pasta. Now, the recipe (which is copied below) calls for shallots but I used the red onion I had instead. So I began by sauteing onion in a large pan and salting the onions to bring out their moisture. Once the onions have cooked for a little bit I added some garlic and once the onion was translucent, I added the shrimp.














Once the pasta is done cooking I drained the pasta and added it to the large saute pan and mixed it with the shrimp, onions and garlic. I also added lemon juice and the lemon oil I made earlier and mixed it well. Then I added a few handfuls of fresh baby spinach and tossed it with the hot pasta until it wilted. I thought the meal turned out pretty well and my everyone seemed to like it. (JJ was able to get his vitamins and minerals for the day :) It's always fun to cook for friends and I'm glad I was able to try this great recipe for them. It is really simple and fast to make (moms are always right), a great meal to make any night of the week.