At the end of the year International Law Journal banquet, the Editorial Staff treated us all to a dinner at Southern Rail Restaurant in Carboro. It was, to say the least, pretty phenomenal. There was a simple salad with a roasted garlic vinaigrette. Dessert was a coffee pot-au-creme with vanilla bean and nutmeg whipped cream. But dinner…oh…dinner was amazing. It was a linguini in a spicy tomato cream sauce with artichoke hearts and tomatoes, topped with a perfectly cooked salmon that had some kind of sweet crust to it. I don’t now how they did it, but it was just perfect.

To mirror that, I revamped my usual shrimp, spinach, tomato sauce pasta to try to capture the spicy-sweet aspect of Southern Rail’s salmon pasta. I didn’t know how to sweeten the shrimp, so I just caramelized the onions and garlic. Delicious!

Recipe after the link (more…)

Amy and I met rather by chance; she sat next to me in Business Administration and we bonded over the weirdness of the class, religion, and food! So while we were “studying” for the exam, Amy (a double-Pole) taught me how to make pierogis. They’re delicious little dumplings filled with cheese or some kind of vegetable mixture – we did butternut squash and wild mushroom (porcini and cremini), but you can also do potato – then mixed with caramelized onions and topped with sour cream.

I used twice as much caramelized onion as the recipe calls for. The sour cream really makes the dish; don’t leave it out! Amy served this with a spicy Korean salad – even though it was such a mixture of ethnic foods, the smoothness and creaminess of the pierogies and sour cream went really well with the vinegary-spiciness of the Korean salad. I really recommend this pairing.

We used this recipe for the dough. We rolled it out onto the counter (with plenty of flour), and cut it out with a 3-inch round glass. This is the recipe for the Wild Mushroom filling.

Butternut Squash filling
3 cups butternut squash, diced
1 onion, diced
1 tomato, diced
Cumin, salt, pepper, to taste
Paprika or cayenne, to taste

Caramelize the onion, then add the tomato and squash. Flavor with cumin, salt, and peppers. Resist (or succumb to) the temptation to eat this with a spoon. Mash it up a little so most of the lumps are gone. Stuff inside the pierogies!

Enjoy the pictures! I’m experimenting with a Lightbox plugin. Click on the first picture (first on the left, of the dried porcini mushrooms), and then you should be able to click through the rest like a flowing gallery, complete with captions. As you can see, I had fun taking pictures while Amy was doing all the work. Let me know what you think!

This was actually the first dish I made in my cast iron pan. The shrimp got a savory sear on one side from the high heat, and everything came together perfectly. It’s reminiscent a Hamburger Helper meal, except so much better and less….boxed-pasta-y. This was for two meal-sized servings or 4 side dish servings. It was inspired by Pioneer Woman’s Penne a la Betsy (a lawyer-turned-food blogger, like me! Wonder how much Contracts Law she remembers…..or how much I’ll remember in oh….2 years at Bar Exam time.)
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This has a creamy, earthy feel and taste. The flavors meld deliciously well together in the oven. I made this for a dinner party (and didn’t get any pictures of an individual serving, sorry!), and it was pretty quick to put together – and the meal didn’t require much more. I served it with salad, bread and herb-roasted potatoes. My friend Amani pointed out that this would go well with shredded roasted turkey as well.

Recipe after the link, but first, a picture of the condensation on the pasta pot after boiling the lasagna

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This was my first time making meatballs in a non-Pakistani style, but they turned out well. I loosely got this recipe from my Good Housekeeping cookbook, but I made some changes. The meatballs stay soft and flavorful because of a pureed onion and garlic mixture.

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….. which is just a fancy term for “cook veggies. add pasta.” This is really simple, which is what makes it perfect. There’s no cream sauce or fancy-schmancy stuff. Just veggies, garlic, and pasta. The sauteed veggies give off a broth, too, so this would be great by itself with some crusty bread or scooped over couscous.

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Sounds fancy, eh? It’s not. Don’t be alarmed. On Sunday nights, I usually try to make a big pot of something that we can eat for dinner and that will last Ameir and I all week to take to work/school for lunch. This came together so quickly, I was back to lounging on the sofa in no time. (Summer break!). This thick sauce would also be good over couscous or stuffed into a hoagie roll with cheese melted on top.

Recipe here (more…)

Buttermilk Alfredo Pasta
A tangy, creamy pasta with chicken or shrimp, spinach, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes.

I made a pumpkin cake last weekend for my sister-in-law’s birthday [Turned out great - basic pumpkin spice cake recipe and then added half a can of pumpkin into a carton of Betty Crocker cream cheese frosting. Made a pretty orange frosting.]

So anyway – made pumpkin cake, had most of a quart of buttermilk left. I’m not a fan of fried chicken, and plus I think it’s a waste to use a quart of lovely, thick, rich buttermilk just to soak some chicken in. I had baked five things in the past week and a half [2 banana breads, pumpkin cake, banana-coconut muffins, and blueberry muffins] so I wasn’t going to bake anything. What to do, what to do?

My friend Sarah suggested a buttermilk sauce for pasta or chicken. Ayesha suggested mellowing it with spinach so that the potential over-tangy-ness would be a little softer. So during class… I mean during lunch, I did some searching and found another fine service by Google – Google Books! Basic Buttermilk sauce recipe taken from New Laurel Kitchen Cookbook, for which I found a preview on Google Books. Their sauce is thickened with cornstarch instead of the Alfredo’s traditional roux, which is convenient when wanting to make a quick dinner and not stand over the stove stirring flour. I added veggies and cheese to their basic recipe. Success.

Result = a tangy, creamy, cheesy sauce mellowed a little by the veggies that lusciously hugs ever single strand of pasta. It’s stronger than Alfredo and a little less creamy – a good alternative when you want something strongly flavored but not as heavy [buttermilk is surprisingly low in fat, considering its thickness.] Chicken swims happily. Pretty colors. Just all-around yummy.

Another option: Buttermilk Alfredo Mashed Potatoes and Chicken: This sauce is excellent over pasta, here, but it’s also amazing mixed into mashed potatoes with a little chicken broth. Another option – skip the pasta and spoon some directly over grilled or pan-fried chicken.

Another option: Potato and Leek (and Spinach and Mushroom) Soup . Mix this sauce into a batch of mashed potatoes and freeze the whole thing. Keep them on hand to mix with sauteed leeks and chicken broth for a quick, hearty soup.

So many options! Excited? Well done. Onwards! Recipe here: (more…)