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!)

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...

Cooking with Leftovers: Baby Spinach

I love baby spinach... there are so many things you can add this to... a sandwich, salad, quesadilla filling, lasagna filling etc. However, the bag only comes in one size, giant. Therefore, I'm constantly stuck with half a bag of leftover baby spinach that inevitably goes bad before I can use it. This issue came up again last week when I made chicken, mushroom and spinach quesadillas for my weeknight dinners. I had to use up a good amount of spinach before it went bad so I tried this Giada recipe, penne with spinach sauce.

I did make a couple of changes to the recipe... I can't really get on board with whole wheat pasta so I used Ronzoni Smart Pasta instead. I also substituted feta for goat cheese, reduced the amount by half and used no-fat cream cheese.

The pasta turned out really good! Its good warm or cold. I'm having it this week with some garlic-herb chicken!

Cooking with Something New: Broccolini

"Broccolini is a green vegetable similar to broccoli but with small florets and long, thin stalks." per Wikipedia, reliable source, I know! ;)

I'm trying to eat more (and new) vegetables. I'm not a huge fan of broccoli but I was trying to incorporate it into things I was cooking but with little luck. I kept thinking the taste was a bit overwhelming and wanted it more tender. And, I also don't see the point in just smothering it in cheese in order to consume a vegetable. I watch a lot of cooking shows and they seem to use a lot of broccolini. We picked some up last time we were at Central Market and I cooked it using this recipe from Epicurious.

The recipe could have used a bit more seasoning but overall it turned out pretty tasty. I was pretty surprised that I didn't totally hate it (I'm pretty picky... probably not surprising to anyone). The stalks come out really tender and there's a lot less of the pieces that get stuck in your teeth. Most important, the flavor is a lot milder than regular broccoli which is good for me!