Recipe of the Moment - Turkey Bolognese

On to some real food now! Not that appetizers aren't real food, but this is going to be an entree post for those of you who actually need to cook a dinner every now and then. This post is a turkey bolognese that I adapted from Pioneer Woman, who is an incredible food blogger. And, in fact, she got the recipe from a pastor friend of hers, Ryan. So this is really just a passed down recipe that's been passed down again right on for your consumption.

I chopped the recipe in half, which was more than enough for Brad and I. (We ate the whole thing, but that's just because it was so good, I don't recommend it.) And I used frozen ground turkey I had in my freezer instead of ground beef (no, not awesome, but good enough, and free, since I already had it).

The results were stunning. The bolognese has a little hint of sweetness from the carrots and lot of good, hearty flavor from the tomatoes and the meat. I added some extra garlic and some extra red wine to "beef" up the flavor of the turkey (ha ha, get it? ...), and it all worked out quite nicely. I am a big fan. I liked it way too much to not share with you all.

Why not finish off the bottle you used to cook with while you enjoy your dinner? Guaranteed perfect wine pairing for the meal.

Turkey Bolognese

Ingredients
2 glugs olive oil
3/4 cup grated carrots (use your cheese grater, just on the smaller side)
1/2 red onion, diced
1 lb ground turkey
1 T dried oregano
1 T dried basil
3 ounces tomato paste
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups red wine
1 T Worcestershire
1 28 ounce can whole tomatoes
1/2 cup milk
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Parmesan, for topping
1/2 pound cooked pasta

Directions (see Pioneer Woman's site for detailed pictures of each step)
1. In a dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat
2. Add carrots and onions, and cook till not quite soft
3. Make a well in the center of the mixture and add ground turkey, stir and cook till browned
4. Add oregano and basil, and stir to combine everything
5. Make another well, this time adding the tomato paste in the center, stirring till heated through
6. Add garlic and cook till somewhat soft
7. Make another well and add red wine and Worcestershire, stir to combine
8. Add tomatoes, breaking up with your spoon
9. Add milk, stir all together, season with salt and pepper, turn heat down to low and let flavors meld for at least 30 minutes
10. Serve over pasta and sprinkle with parmesan

Enjoy!

Weekly Recipe Wrap-Up

Happy Easter, friends! It's a joyous day, and it's joyously beautiful here in chicago, with lots of trees budding and birds singing to celebrate the risen Lord!
And in the spirit of spring renewal, we're finally getting some more food pictures up on the blog!

Brad and I are in a place right now where we're starting to pay a lot more attention to our budget. And, unfortunately, the food I like to make is not always the food our bank account likes for me to make. But we also don't want to swing towards mac and cheese every night and consequently gain 20 pounds each this year. So this installment of recipes, and many more in the future, are my first attempt at budget-friendly, healthy meals for us.

So, marching on!

The first recipe of the bunch was Linguine with Tuna Puttanesca. I had most of the ingredients for this in my pantry already, and it looked quite yummy. I used thin spaghetti instead of linguini, and I chopped up some leftover piquillo peppers to add in as well. They were a great addition to this acidic, tangy sauce.

All in all, very light, fresh-tasting, and enjoyable!

The next night, I made bean and cheese burritos, one of our cheap favorites. But I had one extra tortilla leftover, so I decided to use some of the leftover kalamatas and some veggies in the fridge to make a little cheese crisp appetizer. Delicioso!

Another recipe idea came from having a bunch of eggs in my fridge that I never use. It's feeling a lot more like springtime, so I decided to make a spinach, egg, and bacon salad. Nothing too special there, but it tasted amazing. I found a dressing for it on this blog, and now I have a new balsamic vinaigrette recipe. Perfect.

The best part about this dinner was that our friend Sarah, who comes over on Thursdays to watch Project Runway with us, had the wonderful idea of making a sangria, since it was perfect weather for it. So she brought all the ingredients for a really fruity, sparkling sangria that was a perfect addition to the night. I think we're going to make "salad and sangria Thursdays" a running theme. 

The last meal for this installment was our dinner last night with some friends. Seth, who goes to school with Brad, his wife Shauna and his nephew Max, who was in town for spring break, all came over for a game day extravaganza. We played Settlers all day long. And dinner was one of my favorites. Vodka sausage pasta. It's based off this recipe, though with the sausages fried up in the pan following the shallots and garlic, before simmering in the tomatoes.

It was yummy. And the bread and salad they brought topped it off perfectly. Plus great root beer and cream soda. The pizookie we made for dessert wasn't so bad either.

That's all for now. Hopefully we'll find some more cost-cutting-yet-still-good-for-you meals to make this next week. Though we'll have leftover pasta for just about every meal for four days.

Until next time, have a blessed Easter night!

Recipe Wrap-Up, finally

It's been a good couple weeks since the last legit recipe wrap-up. We've been all over the place lately and it's meant I haven't been around to cook anything for a while. But when I have managed to get to the stove, I've made it worth our while. Here's a random recap of the last weeks in food for the Carters.

First a winter-y breakfast for myself. Brad's not really an egg person. Or rather, he is, but only at certain times. Whereas I could be an egg person every day if they magically cooked themselves. But when I've got some time/energy in the morning, I like to make yummy egg creations. And this is my favorite as far as flavor and ease. It's eggs, scrambled with milk, garlic salt, pepper, and Herbes de Provence sprinkled in. The great thing about the herbs is that it gives you a ton of flavor, which means I never miss having cheese in them.

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Happy Valentine's Day!

Hey friends, Happy Celebration of Love Day! Just for today, some lovely little ranunculus to enjoy


For this week's recipe wrap-up, just a couple good things to share.

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Weekly Recipe Wrap-Up

Another week, some more good food!

This week was full of some yummy meals. The first was a turkey burger night. It was based off of this Southwestern Turkey Burger recipe, though I used some white cheddar on top and turkey bacon. It turned out lovely, at any rate!



The next meal was one I've been craving for a while. I've made it a few times before, and it's a delicious four-cheese baked macaroni and cheese dish. Emeril's recipe is the baked macaroni recipe I tried first, and it was so good I've never thought to try and find another. You can't see it quite as well in the picture, but it's creamy and nutmeg-y and yummy goodness. I was so excited to finally cook it and serve it. (But we needed a bit of a break between the Thanksgiving amount of food and serving this monster.)



The last recipe was a new one for me. A friend on Facebook was talking about a Greek shrimp recipe and it made me think about making shrimp. I went searching for a shrimp meal that sounded delicious and like something I've never made. This is what I came up with. Good ol' Ina Garten. Always good for some really great food that taste wonderful. (Cook's note, I used half the butter it called for, and next time I'll add another half cup or so of bread crumbs to get a little more crispiness.) It was delicious. Both brad and I really liked it. And I like that it didn't include the pasta that's usually in shrimp scampi.

Here's the shrimps before cooking.



And here they are all finished and bubbly. Mmmmmm.



The side salad with the shrimp was a really easy spinach salad with some hard boiled eggs (thanks Trader Joe's for selling those by the bag), and a lemon-balsamic vinaigrette to go with the shrimp.



So there you have it. Christmas is coming! And I'm hoping to have some very fun pictures of snow and cold up soon. You can enjoy our white christmas vicariously (or you can live here too and wish you were in sunny so cal... either way). Have a wonderful holiday season!

Weekly Recipe Wrap-Up

Another week, another recipe wrap-up!

This was a great cooking week. We got to have friends over Friday night to play Settlers with us so I finally got to cook for company! Of course, I failed to take any pictures of the food, but oh well. The pictures of the dining room from the last post are from that night, so that will have to suffice. Anyway, on to the food I did manage to capture!

The first meal was chicken piccata and some yummy garlic mashed potatoes. I love chicken piccata and I love how quickly it cooks up. The mashed potatoes were an excuse to use some leftover half and half that was going to expire soon. Hearty and delicious!



The next meal we had was for our 3rd anniversary. I was hoping for something really special, and I found this recipe and just wanted to try it out. It was a spinach spaghetti dish with artichokes and mushroom and garlic. I tweaked the recipe by adding the mushrooms and taking out the sundried tomatoes. (Though it would have had better colors with that pop of red...)





And for dessert, we had my go-to yummy dessert, which is fresh fruit over vanilla ice cream. I was inspired to add a little something different by a friend's blog (artdomestic.blogpost.com) who had a post a few days ago on Pomegranates. She's right, they are so much fun to pop out, and they are truly delicious. So I added some pomegranate arils to the classic raspberries, blueberries and blackberries, and macerated them in some sugar and freshly-squeezed lemon juice. Yummy.





And lastly, on an impulse buy at Whole Foods, I found some trout on sale, and figured that I should try my hand at whole trout. I grew up with my Dad's small-mouth bass and sauteed potato dishes, and I wanted to emulate that a little bit. But, unfortunately, I don't have the secret recipe for the breading he uses (I've never asked, he might be willing to share), and these trout were completely whole, heads and all (though I had the guy chop those off, I couldn't handle it). So I went for an oven-baked preparation, but still had those delicious Hamilton potatoes. Oh my word. This was some yummy fish. Of course, anything with all those herbs and lemon and white wine sauce would be good. But this was quite yummy.

Here's the raw trout with the herbs getting smooshed in there.


All bundled up in its pouch!


And the final dish.


That's all for now. Hope you have a good upcoming week everyone!

Weekly Recipe Wrap-Up

Phew! It's been a long week! But a great one. I was in Phoenix Wednesday through tonight for my college roommate, Elissa's, wedding. Brad joined me Friday night and we had a wonderful time with her friends and family and I'm so thankful I got to be a part of her day. God has already blessed them so much. And they're moving to Illinois in the Quad Cities area! Yay!!

So I didn't get a chance to cook much this week. But a couple good recipes came out anyway.

First up was a night where we needed something warm and filling to make a crisp, fall night more inviting. So what's better for that than french onion soup? I found a recipe online that looked really good. Here it is. And it was really good, but it took a whole lot longer than I prepared for. The caramelizing of the onions took about two hours. But it was worth it. Mmmmm mmm good. Unfortunately, I don't have oven-sfe bowls, so I wasn't able to broil a great Gruyere topping onto the bowls that you dig through, but the Gruyere topped bread had to suffice.





And my other opportunity to cook came in Phoenix. Mom was working late and it was up to Dad and I to make something to eat. So we scrounged around a little bit and came up with these frozen tempura shrimp that we needed to make something with. And I found this recipe for some cold sesame noodles. The best part? The only things we needed to buy at the store were the egg noodles and the cilantro. Nice $4 meal.

Here're the noodles (honestly the best peanut sauce I've ever made, it would be delicious on anything)



Here's the finished product:



I promise to cook some more this week, but I appreciated the help from my Dad and it was pretty fun to have another audience other than Brad to eat with me. :-)

Weekly Recipe Wrap-Up

Hi all,

This week has been rather strange for Brad and me. We've been staying up till about 3am the last four nights and sleeping in till like 11 or 12. He's drawing this awesome new drawing (it's a 7 foot by 4 foot hand that he uses this scribbling technique to do. It's really, really gorgeous so far.) I'm studying for the GRE. I'm applying for two programs in Industrial/Organizational Psychology in Chicago and so I need to take the GRE. And since I just decided I wanted to apply for these programs like two weeks ago, I really need to take the GRE like right now. At any rate, Brad and I have barely left our apartment for the last week.

Needless to say, there wasn't much cooking being done. Food was more of a soup-out-of-a-can or take-out-sushi variety. But I managed a couple meals, and two decent photographs.

This first is a simple cream pasta. I had leftover half and half and good shredded cheese, so I made this pasta. However, the sauce called for 6 raw eggs mixed with the half and half and then just poured over the hot pasta to cook it. I did not trust it not to kill us, so I left it on heat for a little bit, so there were some vestiges of scrambled eggs in the pasta. It still worked out well, though, and at least it tasted good!

And, since it's fall, it was high time I baked a pumpkin pie. I don't think I've ever baked a pumpkin pie before. So I turned to the queen of comfort food, Paula Deen, for her recipe, knowing it couldn't turn out badly. In fact, Brad said it was really awesome pumpkin pie. Add in some whipped cream and yummy! Have lovely weeks, friends!

Fall Yummy Things

You all know I've been excited about cooking at home again. Well, I went to Whole Foods and it gave me too many good ingredients to ignore so I got to make some goodness tonight. I got some free-range chicken sausages with basil and sun-dried tomato and some yellow and green heirloom tomatoes. And so I made pasta with the sausage and an heirloom tomato-based cream sauce, and of course some of our home-grown basil on top!

And I now have a new favorite thing... tea floats. Last night I was having some decaf english breakfast tea and it was too hot so I was just sitting waiting for it to cool, and then it came to me. What if I put a little ice cream on top and made a float? Oh my word. So very good. Vanilla bean english breakfast float. I must remember there's ice cream in it so I don't drink them every day. But now I know they exist so they'll be tempting me.

Now off to watch USC hopefully do better than last week...