Brandon loves carrots and he’s quite good at cooking them.  He took the secret ingredient reigns on this meal and steamed some carrots and drizzled them with honey and parsley.   (He prefers dill, but I don’t like it.) We splurged and got the fancy multi-colored carrots from the Market.

We paired the carrots with turkey burgers and baked sweet potato fries, adding lots and lots of minced garlic (like the garlic fries at the Mariner’s games).  Delicious!!

Carrots, a la Brandon

Carrots, carrots, carrots

This week we’re trying a favorite snack of Brandon’s: carrots.  We bought some fun, multi-colored organic ones at the market, but most of our recipes call for your standard orange carrot.

From Wikipedia: Carrots can be eaten in a variety of ways. Only 3% of the β-carotene in raw carrots is released during digestion: this can be improved to 39% by pulping, cooking and adding cooking oil. Alternatively they may be chopped and boiled, fried or steamed, and cooked in soups and stews, as well as baby and pet foods. A well known dish is carrots julienne. The greens are edible as a leaf vegetable, but are rarely eaten by humans. 

What's up, Doc?

This meal was fantastic and took less than 15 minutes to prepare, from start to finish.  (Really only 5 minutes of “hands on” time.)

We sauteed the baby bok choy per the NY Times, and added more garlic (I love garlic) and some Enokitake (I think) mushrooms.

We made some Green Chopstick pork dumplings, placed them on top of the quinoa and drizzled Trader Joe’s soyaki (soy/teriyaki) sauce over the whole meal.  So good and so easy!

Deliciousness!!

Sesame scallops

What an adventure this meal was!  I have never made scallops before and they turned out pretty well!  I followed Emeril’s sauteed bok choy and shiitake mushrooms with seared sesame-crusted scallops and ginger butter to a tee — but with less butter.

The scallops turned out really good– and we’ll definitely make them again.

(Although with less lemon next time, it detracted from the recipe, in my opinion.)

Emeril's scallop delicousness

Baby Bok Choy

Our ingredient for the week is baby bok choy, and as a result, we have some great Asian-inspired meals planned.

It’s surprisingly hard to find information about bok choy on the internet (beyond lots and lots of recipes), but I did find this from Melissa’s Produce: It is a versatile vegetable which is delicious in soups and stir-fry, braised whole or sautéed.  Once cooked, the leaves and stalks become more mild and add a hint of sweetness. 

Spring Pasta With Prosciutto, Peas and Zucchini

We’ve made dishes like this before, but never with zucchini.  We used orecchiette noodles and followed the first half of this Epicurious recipe more-or-less, but omitted the butter, rosemary, flour, egg, milk, and parsley.  We did have some canned chicken on-hand that we included too.  (It sounds gross, but I really like the canned chicken, especially on big cobb salads!)

I love prosciutto and Brandon loves sage, so this Cooking Light recipe is a winner at our house.  We subscribe to Cooking Light and when this recipe graced the cover over a year ago, we had to make it. So, we did.  And it’s been a favorite ever since.

We’ve made this dish with and without the “lemony” sauce and it’s superb both ways.  We typically have it with angel hair pasta or quinoa and broccolini.  (It’s the new broccoli!) I’m fairly certain that we pair it with those sides because that was on the Cooking Light cover.

Lemony Chicken Saltimbocca (sans the "lemony")

Pizza! Pizza!

I love pizza.  It’s one of my most favorite meals — it could even be considered one of my food groups.  (Pizza & brussel sprouts)

For our first prosciutto meal, I made pizza.  First, I took a plain, fresh dough from Trader Joe’s and let it rise, per the instructions.  I tossed it a few times and spread it out over cornmeal. I made the pizza sauce by mixing some oil, minced garlic, herbs and tomato paste and added mozzarella, Parmesan, prosciutto (of course!),  black olives and some caramelized red onions.

This is one of my go-to quick and affordable meals and I highly recommend making it for yourself.  My most favorite pizza uses the TJ’s crust, garlic and olive oil “sauce,” caramelized onions, prosciutto, mozzarella, and brussel sprouts.

When you try this out, it’s very important to let the dough rise before you use it and also that you don’t over cook it.  (If you do, it becomes hard as a rock!)

The finished product

I love, love, love prosciutto so this special ingredient was very welcome.

YUM! Prosciutto!

From Wikipedia…Prosciutto is a dry-cured ham that is usually thinly sliced and served uncooked; this style is called prosciutto crudo in Italian and is distinguished from cooked ham, prosciutto cotto.

I bought “prosciutto piccolo” which, according to eHow, translates from Italian means “little prosciutto” or “little ham.” The only difference between prosciutto and prosciutto piccolo is prosciutto is cured with bone while prosciutto piccolo is not. Even though the procedures are the same for curing ham in Italy, each region has its own specific standards. Prosciutto piccolo is a traditional Italian meat that is delicious when wrapped around fresh fruits and vegetables or served in a sandwich.

Fascinating. And delicious.

Cooking with prosciutto? Here are some great recipes!

• Pear, prosciutto and asiago pasta
• Spring Pasta with Prosciutto, Peas and Zucchini
•  Lemony Chicken Saltimbocca
• Pizza!

This is the second time we’ve made fried plantain chips and they were pretty good!

Fry, baby, fry!

Brandon removed the plantain peel with a knife, which is a task in itself.  Once they were cut, we threw them in some boiling canola oil and waited until they floated to the top.  We split the plantain chips into a few batches and put coarse sea salt on them as soon as they were done frying.

Paired with some ground turkey tacos, these plantain chips were good.  Unfortunately they didn’t keep well for my lunch the next day.  While the plantain chips were fun, they were also a lot of work.  Next time we’ll probably just be lazy and have tortilla chips.

The full meal deal