Pasta with Whiskey, Wine & Mushrooms + Garlic Bread

Mike and I had a long week a while back so we came home on Friday and made a really indulgent meal... grilled steak with pasta and garlic bread.

The steak was just typical... t-bone or rib eye... I can't even remember at this point. Grilled to medium and seasoned with salt and pepper.

I cooked up this pasta (half of it anyway) from Pioneer Woman - pasta with whiskey, wine & mushrooms. It sounds odd but trust me, this pasta has really good flavor (plus it has cream so you can't really go wrong there). My only complaint is that our mushrooms really shrunk while they roasted in the oven so next time I would actually add more. (Sidenote, the pasta can really be served without the steak, Mike just was extra hungry and pasta alone wouldn't do.)

I also made garlic bread using a mash-up of a few recipes I saw on pinterest. Basically, I took a baguette, halved it and then split it. I took 4 tablespoons of room temperature butter and "zested" a glove of garlic into the butter using a microplane. I then buttered the bread and sprinkled it a little bit of salt and pepper. I closed up the half, wrapped it in foil and let the bread warm through in a 300 degree oven while I made the pasta.

Spicy Chop Beef Sandwiches (and homemade bbq sauce!)

I made these yummy spicy chop beef sandwiches for Mike and I along with the homemade bbq sauce. I really like this girl's blog... how could I not? Its all about Texas!

The brisket can be expensive but the actual work could not be simpler. I don't have a "real" roasting pan so I just used a 9x13 pyrex and everything turned out just fine. The meat is really tasty even before you put the bbq sauce on it. I had mine with just bbq sauce while Mike wanted his a lot fancier... jalapenos, onions, jalapeno jack cheese and sauce.

(I also was able to freeze enough for two sandwiches for a rainy day!)

Mongolian Beef & Thai Fried Rice

More uses for the wok - Mongolian Beef and Thai Fried Rice.

(yes, we do keep chopsticks at the house)

I thought the rice, while pretty salty, tasted a lot more like take-out rice than a lot of other recipes we have tried in the past (I think next time we'll either decrease the fish sauce or use low-sodium soy sauce). Mike liked the beef more while I preferred the rice. I like the meat to be a bit more tender than this turned out to be but I really enjoyed the sauce that the beef cooked in more than the beef itself.

Dallas Style Brisket Tacos

I was first introduced to brisket tacos when I moved to Dallas. They are so good and it turns out pretty simple to recreate at home. I used the Homesick Texan's recipe along with homemade black bean dip and salsa for Mike and I this week. Serve in corn tortillas with onions, poblanos, monterrey jack and a little of the pan juice.




One 3 lb brisket has a lot of meat so I froze some of the meat with extra broth for a rainy day when we're scrambling for something to eat.

Asian Grilling + a New Veggie

Mike and I love Asian flavors and this Korean-style marinated steak is delish! We served it with rice with soy and bok choy instead of tortillas.

For the bok choy (new veggie for me!), we cut it into large pieces and tossed it with olive oil, chili flakes and salt. We tossed it in a vegetable grilling bowl on the grill about 3 minutes before the steak was done. No real recipe but it turned out pretty tasty and went well with the steak and rice. (As an added bonus, bok choy is in season right now.)

(Pardon the sub-par blackberry photo!)

Grillin' Sliders

I love sliders! I know, no surprise since I'm partial to small food, but these are fun to make plus you get the opportunity to try lots of flavors instead of one type when its a full size burger.

We grilled 4 types of sliders this weekend for some friends and I think it was a hit! The sliders included beef with tex-joy seasoning, southwestern turkey, pork/chorizo (adapted from here) and buffalo/blue cheese. We also had lots of toppings including cheddar and pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole with bacon, bacon, onions sauteed in bacon fat and others. (See a trend there?)



Other slider recipes:

chili bowl burger sliders (I'm still on the fence about the shaping of meat into a bowl form but I like the idea of chili-like spices in the meat itself)
meatball sliders
lamb sliders (on potato rounds instead of buns)
white castle style sliders
turkey sliders with feta and sun-dried tomatoes

Sloppy Joes

I made Mike a batch of sloppy joes this week since I was going to be away for a couple of nights working (boo!). No Manwich can here! Wanting to leave Mike with some man-food, I found this recipe described as "cowboy food" by Pioneer Woman. Great as always!

Here are some other sloppy joe recipes from the interwebs:

chili-cheese sloppy joes
turkey sloppy joes on cheddar buttermilk biscuits
throwdown sloppy joes
sloppy joes with maui onion straws

schnipper's very sloppy joe - featured on throwdown with bobby flay

Warm White Bean and Steak Salad

I saw this recipe on Mexican Made Easy on the Food Network. (Get it here.) It was a really yummy, quick and light (even though there was steak involved). The only thing I did different was to actually warm the beans in a small saute pan on the stove before putting them in a bowl with the other salad ingredients. Just a note - the rinsing and draining of the beans is super important - it cleans a lot of the excess starch and salt off the beans. We also got to use the cast iron pan again for the steak. No steak photos but here are the beans...

Ribs, Cornbread & Cake

I saw this awesome recipe on the Alexandra's Kitchen website and have been saving it for the 4th of July weekend. It really couldn't be easier and is so YUMMY. The claim of best and easiest ribs is totally appropriate. Even though they are cooked in the oven, they still come out smokey, tender and delicious. And the cornbread... thick and light. Just a hint of sweetness.

We had Nick & Erica over for dinner and made this recipe for ribs and cornbread as well as a salad and this brown sugar pound cake with maple and peach syrup from Martha Stewart (I omitted the walnuts from the recipe).






You should definitely make this next time you are in the mood for some bbq!

Spaghetti & Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs

Last week I took these ingredients...


combined them and rolled them into meatballs stuffed with a little ball of mozzarella...


and ended up with this!


This quickly got a thumbs up from Mike. I don't know if I am a huge fan of the mozzarella in the center but they tasted good anyway! I also made the marinara sauce at home (very simple recipe of crushed tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices).

Penne with Steak and Spinach

I haven't been very good at blogging about my kitchen adventures but as you can probably tell by the name of my blog... I really like to cook and bake!

I got inspired by a Giada De Laurentiis recipe for penne with beef and arugula. I made it tonight with a couple of changes including swapping out arugula for spinach and sauteing it with garlic before tossing in the pasta. The dish came out pretty tasty for a first try. I think the recipe calls for too much dressing so I left half of it out. I served it with grilled steak and crusty french bread. Here's the end result:

Penne with sauteed spinach...

and topped with steak.