Stir fry

Leftover Meatloaf

Meatloaf gets a bad rap, and I'm not really sure why. The wife makes a really good meatloaf from a pound of ground beef, some onion, garlic, milk, ketchup, and salt & pepper. It's tasty, and the recipe is included below. When we first cooked the meal, we steamed some broccoli and cooked some long-grain brown rice along with it. A pretty simple meal, but healthy and delicious!

Mom's Meatloaf


1 lb lean ground beef
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
3 cloves garlic, diced
Ketchup

-Preheat oven to 350 F
-In a mixing bowl, combine the ingredients, mixing well. Form into a loaf in a greased baking pan. Top with a zig-zag of ketchup.
-Bake for 1 hour at 350 F. (This tends to be a fairly juicy recipe, so we pour out excess liquid about halfway through. It makes the edges a bit crispy, and probably cuts down on the fat content too.)

Chicken Tortilla Soup & Guacamole Bruschetta

I recently began renting space at a co-working location called the Coop. Today, one of the gals from the design firm that owns the space, along with her fiance, cooked lunch for everyone in the office. This was the result. The soup was good, and would have been perfect with some salted tortilla chips. However, the blue corn tortillas were low-sodium, and so the soup wasn't quite salty enough.

The guacamole bruschetta, on the other hand, was perfect. The Italian bread was sliced thin and toasted til it was crunchy. The guacamole was just chunky enough to be bruschetta-like, without feeling like you got a mouth full of avocado and nothing else. Thanks to Tessa and Dorian for their great cooking!

First Grill-Out, Continued: Dessert at Hot Chocolate

Sorry, the quality of these photos is not up to par. The lighting was quite low at the restaurant. As soon as I get a chance, I will tweak things in Photoshop and hopefully you'll be able to see the dishes!

After eating such a great steak, we both agreed that such a fine meal was almost too good to not be followed by dessert. It was early enough that we decided to go out to one of Chicago's hottest dessert restaurants, Hot Chocolate.

We started off our dining experience with some wine and a cheese plate. Specifically, I had the Artizuri Garnacha (another Spanish red!), and the wife had Fritz's Riesling, a semi-dry Austrian riesling. Both paired well with the cheese plate, which had Manchego Grand Reserve, Dunbarton Bleu, and Grand Cru Gruyere, along with some candied nuts, plain crostini, shortbread cookies, and a baby green salad.

After our cheese course (because, after all, we were making this the continuation of our dinner!), we ordered our desserts. I had the Poppycock dessert, which is quite possibly the most delectable thing I have ever tasted. It is a pecan pie square with caramel corn ice cream on one side, and the other side is a piece of shortbread with caramel corn ice cream, topped with a drizzle of honey, tangerine, and vanilla bean cream. Oh, and there is some poppycock (think Cracker Jacks, but better) on top of both sides that just completes the dish. It was unbelievable.

The wife had a creme brulee that was nearly perfect: creamy, sweet, caramelized, and had a hint of citrus to it. I much preferred my dish, but hers could not be ignored either.

First Grill-Out of the Year

My parents-in-law, with some health issues and general concern for eating wholesome foods, are fond of purchasing grass-fed antibiotic-free beef from their local Amish butcher in Kentucky. It so happens that said butcher only sells entire sides of beef or whole butchered cows. And thankfully, my parents-in-law recognize they cannot eat a whole cow in a year, and are generous enough to send us home to Chicago with a cooler full of various roasts, steaks, and ground beef.

In celebration of the first truly sunny day we've had in a while, I decided to grill some of that beef. Specifically, four T-Bone Steaks that I've been itching to eat since we trucked them up to Chicago from Kentucky over Christmas. A simple garlic salt & pepper rub was all they needed for flavor before they went on the grill. A few minutes on each side, and we had perfect medium steaks.

Meanwhile, the wife was inside sauteing red, orange, and green bell pepper, sweet onion, and sugar snap peas along with some herbs. We opened a bottle of 2001 Sierra Cantabria Rioja, a spicy Spanish red wine that had mellowed a couple years in our wine rack. It was about the best first cook-out of the year that I can recall having.

The moral of this story is simple: When you get married, find a spouse with in-laws who buy too much grass-fed beef and will give it to you for free so you can enjoy it.

Or, put another way: when you get good ingredients, don't mess them up by trying to be overly fancy.

Eggs Benedict and French Toast from Jam

In honor of Casimir Pulaski Day, or rather, in honor of the wife having the day off work due to Casimir Pulaski Day, we decided to have a late breakfast at a local place we've been waiting to try. Jam is that restaurant, and what a place! Their focus is on brunch, and I ordered the Eggs Benedict. Now, I'm a big fan of the Benedict in general, but this was something special. The eggs were perfectly poached and looked like domes of glistening white savoriness; crisped pork belly replaced the traditional Canadian bacon; and instead of slathering the whole thing with fatty hollandaise, the beet flavored hollandaise was used as a decorative garnish with enough to provide flavor while letting the other components stand out on their own merits.

The wife had the Malted Custard French Toast. This photo really doesn't do it justice. It was magnificent--light, creamy, fluffy, and savory all at once. The menu says it has 'macerated rhubarb, lime leaf cream, and pink peppercorn' as flavoring, but really it was the rhubarb that stood out.

Jam gets a great recommendation from us. Cash-only, but there is an ATM on the premises.

Pizza Dinner

Tonight, we went to Fiore's, the corner store, and picked up some of their pizza dough. See, they make a good pizza there (I've had it a number of times myself), but there's just something about creating your own.

After struggling a bit to roll out the dough into a somewhat circular shape, the wife and I took some time making a sauce from some tomato paste, tomato sauce, and fresh basil and rosemary. Then we chopped onion, mushroom, pepper, spinach, and garlic, spreading them liberally over the sauce. Finally, a layer of pepperoni followed by a pile of mozzarella cheese.

The whole thing was nearly dome-shaped, which you can't really tell from the photo because of the angle. It was practically a deep-dish pizza, although the crust doesn't come up the sides at all. In all honesty, we overdid the toppings, and some of the veggies in the middle were undercooked as a result. But it was still fun to make and even more fun to eat!

Lunch at Whole Foods

The in-laws are in town this weekend, making my food photography spotty at best.
But one good thing from their visit is a trip to Whole Foods on Saturday, where the samples are more plentiful than swallows in Capistrano. So, this is where I ate lunch for free, by circling the sample area a few times in a row. A great exercise for all the freegans in my audience.

Five Guys Burgers

I didn't really eat breakfast or lunch today. This is not good for keeping the metabolism up, and substituting a cup of coffee for a meal is not a replacement, I know. But, my lack of calories through the day meant that I felt a bit justified eating a big fat dinner.

So we went to Five Guys Burgers on Clybourn Ave. and had some awesome burgers. If you haven't been to a Five Guys before, check it out. Their menu is simple (burgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese, and fries), but they focus on freshly sourced and prepared food, and it shows. No freezers in this place, and everything (fries included) is cooked to order. You wait a couple minutes extra, but the food is well worth the wait.

If you consider this to be a 'sit down' restaurant, it isn't the best food you're gonna get. But if you think of it as a Fast Food place, you have got to be impressed with the quality, freshness, and juiciness of the burgers. (Check out Yelp's reviews for some opinions on the matter.)

The damage: I had a bacon burger (comes with 2 beef patties), a pop, and the wife & I split a large fries. Now, I'm off to shovel a parking space (and put some lawn furniture in it to reserve it, of course) to work off all the calories I just ingested. See you at breakfast!

Peppercorn Tuna

After skipping lunch today because of work demands and not-much-in-the-pantry syndrome, I was ready for a really quality dinner. The wife and I picked up some 10 oz ahi tuna steaks from CostCo while grocery shopping, and I cooked one of my favorite fish recipes--cracked peppercorn tuna (recipe below).

To go along with the tuna, I steamed some broccoli (a bit overdone, I'm afraid) and cooked some rice.

~~~~~

Cracked Peppercorn Tuna

2 8-10 oz Ahi Tuna Steaks
3 Tablespoons whole black peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 Tablespoons safflower oil

1. Season the tuna steaks with the salt and cayenne pepper. (Season to taste--the teaspoon measure is just a guideline.)

2. In a medium skillet, heat the safflower oil over medium-high heat (olive oil can be substituted, but it has a much lower smoke point, so you'll have to pay attention to the heat). Once the oil is hot, put the peppercorns in and stir occasionally til they pop, about 4 minutes.

3. Put the tuna steaks on top of the peppercorns in the skillet. Cook until the steaks are medium-well (about 5 minutes each side). An easy way to tell when the steaks are done is when the tuna turns flaky all the way through.

4. I prefer to eat the tuna with the peppercorns on the fish, but some of my friends have said it's too peppery, so I guess you can scrape them off if you find it too spicy.

Poached Egg

It's snowy this morning in the Ukrainian Village--the perfect kind of day for a hot breakfast.

A quick way to get hot protein into your body is to crack an egg into a ramekin and stick it in the microwave for a bit. (You'll have to play with the time to figure out how long to cook it for your desired consistency and based on your microwave. For me, 1:05 makes a good poached egg, with a solid white and a slightly runny yolk.) You'll end up with a great poached egg in about a minute.

Today, I got my favorite quick breakfast--a soft poached egg.

Leftovers for Dinner...Again

Forgot to take photos before I ate--I was hungry!

But it was the (leftover) fajita chicken again.

On the side, we had a romaine lettuce salad with tomato, olive oil, goat cheese, and fresh basil. Quite good. With the leftover pasta, I might make a pasta salad for lunch tomorrow...

Leftover Chicken Fajitas

I cannot think of a good way to make leftovers look good, presentation-wise. Any ideas?