Side note: I have decided to add a ranking system to be displayed in the title of each post so that people know how much I enjoyed a particular recipe. It will be like the star rating but with "yums" instead. So 1 yum is the worst, 5 is the best. Ok, on to the regular post.

Alright, its been a while since I have been able to post and that is a result of my new job, which has resulted in more consumption of gross take out. Cooking after working all day really takes it out of you. But I finally got some time off and I decided to go all out. Me and the boy made Au Gratin potatoes and French Onion Soup from scratch! It got a little dicey in the small kitchen with three pans going and both of us crying from chopping so many onions, but the results justified the pain. Super tasty.



I snagged the French Onion Soup recipe from a fellow blogger, and their original entry can be found here. I wrote in my changes in parenthesis.

• 6 large red or yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced.
• Olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon of sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 cups of beef stock, chicken stock, or a combination of the two (traditionally the soup is made with beef stock and I made it with just that)
  
• 1/2 cup of dry vermouth or dry white wine ( I used vermouth)
  
• 1 bay leaf (the recipe calls for this, but I left it out because I didn't want to buy it just for this)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon of dry thyme
• Salt and pepper
• 8 slices of toasted French bread (I used a crunchy Mediterranean white bread)
  
• 1 1/2 cups of grated Swiss Gruyere with a little grated Parmesan cheese (I left out the parmesan)

1.  In a large saucepan, sauté the onions in the olive oil on medium high heat until well browned, but not burned, about 30-40 minutes (or longer). Add the sugar about 10 minutes into the process to help with the carmelization. (To be honest I didn't think the sugar made a difference in such a small amount, so I would leave it out next time. The onions did fine on their own.)
   
2. Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add the stock, vermouth or wine, bay leaf, and thyme. Cover partially and simmer until the flavors are well blended, about 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Discard the bay leaf.
3. To serve you can either use individual oven-proof soup bowls or one large casserole dish. Ladle the soup into the bowls or casserole dish. (I used my regular ceramic bowls that are part of my dish set, they worked nicely) Cover with the toast and sprinkle with cheese. Put into the broiler for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F, or until the cheese bubbles and is slightly browned. Serve immediately.

For the Au Gratin Potatoes I snagged the recipe from allrecipes.com and it was very nice, but I am sure there are tons of variations where you can add stuff like ham, which I might do next time.

• 4 russet potatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch slices
• 1 onion, sliced into rings
• salt and pepper to taste
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups milk
• 1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Butter a 1 quart casserole dish. 
2. Layer 1/2 of the potatoes into bottom of the prepared casserole dish. (Somehow we ended up with a ton of potatoes and we made like six layers of onion and potato instead) Top with the onion slices, and add the remaining potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. 
   
3. In a medium-size saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Mix in the flour and salt, and stir constantly with a whisk for one minute. Stir in milk. Cook until mixture has thickened. (This looks like it will never happen, turn up the heat and keep an eye so it won't burn, as soon as it starts bubbling a lot there will be enough air in it for it to thicken so you can add then cheese.) Stir in cheese all at once, and continue stirring until melted, about 30 to 60 seconds. Pour cheese over the potatoes, and cover the dish with aluminum foil.
4. Bake 1 1/2 hours in the preheated oven.

Note: I would suggest not layering the potatoes and onions until after you have made the sauce. The bottom layer of our dish ended up burning in the pan because the sauce didn't run through all the layers, so I would prepare the sauce and put a layer of it on the bottom of the pan before you start the first layer of potatoes so that they stay moist. It would also ensure even distribution of the sauce. Cleaning a burnt layer of potato off your glass baking dish is no fun, so hopefully putting sauce first will fix the problem. 
 
An extremely successful meal, a winner for sure.

Even though this post and the one below were both posted today, I didn't make both of them at the same time. The one below was made yesterday, but I just didn't have time to post about it until now. The recipe I made tonight was really tasty and the smells from the pan made my mouth water while I was cooking. In fact, it smelled so good that my boy and I started eating before I remembered that I hadn't taken a picture yet, so pardon the bad photo.

This is another recipe that I snagged from tastespotting, the original of which can be found here. I made a lot of substitutions in this recipe to make up for missing ingredients and added some kale to the mix just because it was in the fridge. Also, I doubled the amount of garlic because I am a fanatic for it, but it might be too much so use your judgment. Next time I would probably cook the fish longer than it says because I like my fish tougher than most, but for the average person I think the cooking time is perfect.



Lemon Tilapia with Asparagus:

4 tilapia fillets (if frozen thaw before using)
1 lb white asparagus
1 bunch kale
1 1/2 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbs garlic
Cilantro to garnish
salt and pepper

1. Wash the asparagus and kale and then cut into bite size pieces (tearing the kale is easier than cutting it)
2. In a saute pan (use a really big one if you want to do this all in one pan, otherwise you could make the sauce twice and cook the veggies and fish separately) combine the butter, olive oil and lemon juice and heat until the butter melts, then add the garlic. Cook until garlic is brown.
3. Add in the asparagus.
4. While it is cooking salt and pepper the fillets to taste, then add them to the pan, making sure they come in contact with plenty of the sauce. 
5. Cook fillets for about 3 minutes on each side and then remove, leaving the asparagus. Add in the kale and cook until tender. 
6. Serve with chopped cilantro over the fish.

I really like the flavors in this dish because I love citrus, the original recipe called for lime instead of lemon, so next time I would like to try it that way. Plus, since the recipe asks you to make all this in one pan it saves a lot of time on clean up! Can't beat that.

So over a month after I have moved in I finally made a full meal in my kitchen and it was actually pretty delicious. I stole it from Just Vegging Out after I saw the post on TasteSpotting and I happened to have most of the ingredients already in my fridge. I modified the original recipe so that I didn't have to buy anything else, but you can find the original recipe here.



Couscous Eggplant Rolls:

1 cup couscous
1 cup chicken stock
1 large eggplant, sliced long ways into 1/4 inch peices
Half an onion
Handful of spinach leaves
1 cup tomato sauce
1 cup mozzarella cheese
Olive oil for cooking

1. Wash eggplant and slice it into 1/4 inch pieces, then lay it out onto a baking sheet lightly covered in olive oil. Brush olive oil on the other side of the eggplant as well. Bake uncovered in a 400 degree oven for ten minutes, then flip and cook for another 10 minutes. 
2. While its in the oven prepare the couscous using chicken stock instead of water by following the packages instructions. As it is cooking saute some onions and then add to the finished couscous.
3. Take the eggplant out of the oven and put a spoonful of couscous on one end of the the egplant strip and then add several pieces of spinach. *Note- I didn't actually make rolls because after one try where it fell apart everywhere I realized it was impossible. So I just folded the eggplant over like a sandwich.
4. Cover the pan in tinfoil and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes.
5. Uncover the pan and spoon tomato sauce over each eggplant and then cover with mozzarella. Return to the oven uncovered and cook until the cheese is brown and bubbly. 

I served it with angel hair pasta covered in butter and garlic. It was very tasty and I would definitely make it again, but I think I would add something like a fruit salad because there was a lot of salt. Also, I might just use two pieces of eggplant to make more like a sandwich next time so it wouldn't fall apart as easily when I plated it. Plus, it would make a heartier serving for the man in the house.

For my inaugural post I am going with what my boy and I made for dinner tonight. We have pretty similar tastes in food, and one of our favorites is pretty much anything covered in buffalo sauce. Its tangy, salty and spicy, three of my most loved flavor profiles.

We made two different buffalo flavored meals, buffalo chicken pizza and buffalo chicken salad. Normally we don't make two different things for dinner, but he wanted pizza and I ate pizza for lunch (another take-out purchase of shame) so I didn't feel like a repeat.

This meal made use of many conveniently pre-packaged store bought ingredients, which made it easy time-wise, but I am hoping to make more and more things from scratch in the future as my budget allows.



14oz store bought pizza dough
3/4 cup buffalo sauce
1/4 cup blue cheese dressing
onions
mozzarella cheese
sliced chicken breast
salt and pepper

1. We spread the pizza dough out on a cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick spray.
2. Meanwhile I cooked the chicken breasts on a George Forman grill lightly seasoned with salt and pepper.
   
3. Then we combined the buffalo sauce and the blue cheese dressing in a bowl and spread it over the pizza crust and topped in with chopped onions.
4. Then we covered it in cheese and the cooked sliced chicken breast.
5. Baked it in the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees. This created an extra crispy crust which we prefer, but it might be overdone for some people. 

The end result was tasty and it only took 25 minutes to make, including the cooking time, so I would make it again as a quicky meal on a busy night.


For the salad I went really simple since we didn't have a lot of fresh veggies in the fridge and to be honest I wouldn't make it again without more ingredients to spice it up, but it filled the hole so to speak. Crumbled blue cheese, cucumbers and some kind of crouton would have made it better.

Buffalo Chicken Salad:

romaine lettuce
spinach
onions
tomatoes
chicken
buffalo sauce
blue cheese dressing

1. I chopped up the romaine lettuce and mixed it with baby spinach leaves, then I salt and peppered the salad. 
2. I arranged chopped tomatoes and onions on top, along with the chicken, and then covered it with the leftover sauce from the pizza.

 For a quick throw-it-together type of meal it wasn't bad, but I can't wait to make something a little more complicated the next time.