Month: April 2012

Fritatta’s are easy! I know they sound fancy but they aren’t. Let me walk you thru it.

Crack some eggs in a bowl (I normally use 2-3 per person)

Chop some herbs (this time I used some basil and thyme I had in the fridge)

Chop some deli turkey (I had some extra I wanted to use up but you can use anything really. Have some leftover chicken or bacon? use it)

So crack your eggs in a bowl and scramble them up. Add in your herbs and turkey. Add some cheese. Most of the time I will add in some parmesan but this time I am going to add the cheese mid-way. Please hold.

Take a non-stick pan and add some butter or margarine, etc. just enough to coat.

Add in your egg mixture but don’t stir. Did you hear me…DON’T STIR.

It’s gonna look something like this.

You will see the egg mixture start to set on the bottom and the sides and that’s a good thing.

So at this point…I added some goat cheese (I know I know again w/ the goat cheese) and turned on the broiler.

So the reason why we turned the broiler on is now that the bottom is cooking, we need to cook the top. There are some fancy fritatta pans out there that are like two pans locked together. I think these are lame and unnecessary. Just my opinion. Here is a photo.

I put my fritatta in the oven on broil and just keep any eye on it until it turns golden brown on the top. I chop it into four pieces and serve it up. Really an easy breakfast and a great way to use up what you have in your fridge.

Greetings!

This week I made a yummy dish with very little effort. I love those. They are my favorite. 🙂

I bought a flank steak at Trader Joe’s earlier in the week and normally I would have made Emeril’s chimichurri marinade for it.  I LOVE THIS MARINADE. It is so delicious and is posted on my fridge.

http://www.emerils.com/recipe/7608/Skirt-Steak-with-Chimichurri-Sauce

However, this week I thought I would look for something a little different. I wanted to use up some thyme I had in the fridge. So I scanned the internet and  settled on this one from http://www.cleanandelicious.com. Love the name and the recipes on there. Two things I did differently…I didn’t add the salt and pepper before grilling and I didn’t blot the marinade off. Oh and I added some fresh rosemary. Ok three things. Whatever.

http://cleananddelicious.com/2011/09/26/a-keeper-marinade-for-grilled-flank-steak/

I continue to be a bad food blogger photographer but I did take this picture of it on the grill alongside the squash, zucchini and red onion i grilled in the basket with just some olive oil and garlic salt.

I was so glad this was my menu for myself and the boyfriend since while I was grilling, my neighbor was working out with her trainer. I yelled over…”so glad we are having lean meat and grilled veggies”! They giggled and then said they were jealous.

So make your marinade, let your meat bathe in it for 24 hours and fire up the grill this week. So quick. So easy. DO IT!

This was my first time hosting a holiday event. It was a team effort and here was our menu.

Deviled Eggs*

Spinach and Goat Cheese Strata*

Roasted Tomatoes*

Asparagus w/ Puff Pastry and prosciutto

Crawfish Monica*

Honeybaked Ham

Scalloped Potatoes

Banana Pudding

Bloody Mary and Belini Bar

I made the dishes with the asterisks and hosted the event. What I learned was that when hosting a brunch for 12…you need to have enough dishes, utensils, serving dishes and glasses for your guests so via Target, Walmart and Ollies Bargain Warehouse…all of these were acquired. Don’t get me wrong, I have service for about 6-8 but not 12. I gave myself Saturday to hit the farmers market, hit Walmart, and come home and prepare. I also pre-made the strata and let it sit overnight.

Here is a photo of the night before…

and yes I realize I have a ton of crap on my fridge. But I like it. I have pictures of friends and family. I also have funny magnets like one that says, “i thought i was acting like a slut and then i realized i was acting like a man” and one that says, “sex is like pizza. even when it’s bad it’s good”.

The first thing I made was deviled eggs. In hindsight, I should have made them the night before to give them time to set…but since it’s the first time I’ve made them I am going to cut myself some slack. They tasted and looked great. I got the recipe from People magazine and can’t find it online.

Here is the recipe for the strata I made. I looked at a TON of fritatta and strata recipes and this was the one I settled on. In my opinion the thyme made the dish. It was lemony and delicious.

http://www.recipething.com/recipes/show/19267-herbed-spinach-and-goat-cheese-strata

and here’s your photo…

The other thing I prepped that night was the Crawfish Monica. If you’ve been to the New Orleans Jazz Fest, chances are good you have had Crawfish Monica. After a few beers…it’s awesome. The best way to describe it, is macaroni and cheese with cooked crawfish tail meat. DELICOUS! I found out a few years ago you could order a kit from the good folks at Kajun Kettle Foods who sell it at the Fest, so I finally did for this Easter Feast. It was so worth it. There are some leftovers in my freezer right now and that makes me HAPPY!

Here is a link to their website:

http://www.kajunkettle.com/

and of course a photo…

I made it w/ and without the crawfish.

The last dish I made was roasted tomatoes with gorgonzola by Giada. She is hands down my favorite TV chef, but this dish didn’t turn out to be as yummy as I thought it would be. Perhaps my cheese didn’t melt enough, because of the oven dance I was doing to keep everything evenly cooked and warm. I’ll try it again next time w/ parmesean.

Recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/roasted-tomatoes-with-garlic-gorgonzola-and-herbs-recipe/index.html

and you can see them in the above Strata photo…they didn’t warrant their own photo.

Here are some photos of the rest of the brunch…

 

 Finally, it was naptime for all, as demonstrated by Jameson Davis, who probably was the recipient of too many ham scraps.

 OK off to eat a leftover banana pudding. Hope everyone had a great Easter or Passover!

Hi everyone! I decided to change the name of my blog…well because there is already a tastebykate.com. So…welcome to whatkatetastes…not my first choice but I’m going with it for now. If you have a better suggestion, please email me at whatkatetastes@yahoo.com or leave a commment here!

So it’s National Grilled Cheese day and thankfully I made one of my favorites on my Easter break. So easy. So delicious. So NOT traditional.

Here is what you’ll need:

Bread

Butter

Goat Cheese

Deli Turkey (I like mine mesquite smoked)

Get yourself a pan and put it on medium heat. Butter your bread (I melt mine in the microwave). Spread your goat cheese on the inside of your bread. Add the smoked turkey. Grill on both sides and enjoy!

For Ms. Nancy as she was looking for this over the weekend and my lazy butt hadn’t blogged yet. DOH!

So it has become a tradition between my boyfriend and I that we make homemade pizza together. I think it’s pretty awesome because while I love to cook it’s nice to have a break every now and then.

First…the ingredients. I personally get most of my pizza ingredients at Trader Joe’s. If you have one in your area you know why I love it. And if you don’t…I’m sorry because it rocks.

What you’ll need:

• Pre-made raw pizza dough. Most stores have it now in the deli section and most have both whole wheat and regular dough. We vote for whole wheat.
• Sauce. Sure there is pizza sauce out there and sometimes it’s a bit thicker than marinara sauce but really any tomato sauce will do.
• Cheese. I like the part-skim mozarella cheese myself.
• Toppings. Most stores sell pepperoni. This week we tried pancetta but we’ve also thrown some sausage on there too. Whatever you like…veggies, meat, whatever.
• Cornmeal. Use the cornmeal to make the surface you roll your dough out on less sticky. Also throw some on your pizza stone.

Speaking of pizza stones…go get one. Mine is from Williams Sonoma but most stores like Target and Walmart have them. Heat your oven to 500 for about 20 minutes to get it good and hot. Then turn it down to 475. Cook your pizza for about 10 minutes.

Also, get a pizza peel aka giant pizza spatula. Gotta have one to get your pizza on and off that hot stone.

We make our pizza right on the pizza peel. Here’s a shot of the rolling out of the dough…

 

next add your sauce…

 

then your toppings…

 

earlier this year we had a run of Republican front runner pizzas. that was fun, especially because we are Democrats!

put it on your pizza stone…

 

after about 10 minutes…PIZZA TIME!

 

oh and while you are buying stuff…go ahead and get a pizza cutter too!

Enjoy!

I have a crush on Beef Stroganoff. Always have. Maybe it’s the Cream of Mushroom soup element to it…maybe it’s the pasta. I love it. I even love the quick Hamburger Helper version (which there is a whole grain version now…just fyi).

I had bought this piece of meat when I bought another cut of meat for something else so I decided to make Beef Stroganoff. I’ve made it before from scratch but was looking for something new. So…I went to the master…Martha Stewart.

Nothing tricky here just followed her recipe. Easy Breezy. I hope you try it. It was so yummy. I used baby portabella mushrooms instead of white mushrooms and rather than open up a giant thing of beef broth I had and wasting most of it…I disolved a cube instead. Oh and she doesn’t say to put it over pasta…but isn’t that the rule? 🙂  

http://www.marthastewart.com/341384/beef-stroganoff

So if you have seen the NASCAR Google video about self driving race cars today…you know who the BS guys are…and if you don’t please view it here before proceeding:

http://www.nascar.com/video/none/none/120331/cup-mar-google/

So the BS guys are some great guys in the parking lot outside the TV Compound at Auto Club Speedway. They are always near sign 11C. They are awesome. After we shot their bit, they insisted we eat some tacos…said if we didn’t we would offend them. So we did and they were AWESOME. So I asked them what they marindaded the Tri-Tip in. Soy sauce and garlic. Tri-Tip is a West Coast thing so you may have a hard time finding it at your store.  Here is the wikipedia description.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-tip

At Trader Joe’s this week they had some Tri Tip steaks …so I thought why not. I  took them and put them in a plastic bag, about 3 or 4 cloves of smashed garlic. Perfection.

Here is a photo of their setup and my new friends Fernando and Mike and my finished Tri-Tip tonight. They were delicious tacos. Enjoy!

 

When I started this blog I said to myself…you must keep going. Well, I failed.

I’ve been busy with work, see NASCAR and Google’s April Fool’s joke, and have traveled much more than anticipated in 2012. There is good news and bad news about when I travel. The good…I am a culinary traveler making an effort to try new places I’ve read about or visit old ones I love. The bad…is that I get tired and cranky and fail to blog.

So here is the first of many blog posts to come this week, catching up and culminating in my first time hosting Easter brunch for my friends and family!

First up…Super Taco Tuesday.

My boyfriend Franklin and I love politics. We also love Taco Tuesdays. So March 6th, aka Super Tuesday, we had Super Taco Tuesday. I cooked some pork shoulder in the crock pot all day while at work and it was delicious. Can I remember what recipe I used? No and that frustrates me trememdously. But if you use the Google machine, there are a ton of good carnitas recipes out there using the slow cooker. Add in my salsa and guacamole recipe and tadah! Super Taco Tuesday.

Tonight…it’s Sunday and we are having tacos again…but this time it is Tri-Tip tacos with the tri-tip marindade from the fans at Auto Club Speedway in the Google video. Stay tuned for that later!