Main Dishes

Baked Pesto and Mozzarella Chicken

This was a quick and tasty meal that tasted a lot more caloric than it was. 🙂  I used Skinnytaste’s method of making basil pesto, leaving out the pine nuts and cutting out a lot of the oil.  It was very good; you’d hardly notice it.  I also used part-skim mozzarella, which also worked well.  This made enough for leftovers, and it reheated for a nice lunch.  We had this with asparagus tossed with a leftover pepper I had lying around.  Definitely a make-again, but worth waiting until summer when the tomatoes and basil are very fresh.

pestochicken

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Flank Steak with Cucumber and Pepper Relish

First dinner in our new house!  And add to that the fact that I am a first-time homeowner and this is all pretty exciting. 🙂  Coming from a small (understatement) kitchen in our rental, it was pretty awesome to be back in a large, relatively modern kitchen again.  After weeks of eating out with our kitchen packed, it was also excellent to have homemade food again.  This was a recipe I saw in Cooking Light and modified a bit.  The original called for pickled pepperocini, but I couldn’t find any.  Instead, I used roasted yellow peppers and olives to get some brine/tang.  We really enjoyed this – I served it with yellow wax beans tossed with some toasted almonds.

steak

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Quinoa Salad

A quick lunch that was a nice break form all the sandwiches and fast food that come with crazy schedules and moving.  It was nice to have our kitchen unpacked enough to make lunch.  I saw something similar to this on Skinnytaste, though I left out the onion and halved the olive oil.  We really enjoyed it – nice to have leftovers for lunches, too!

quinoa

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Steamed Fish with Chickpeas and Currants

Weirdly enough, I’ve never steamed fish before.  I saw this when I was perusing Chow at the beginning of MMM, and thought I’d give it a go.  It was excellent!  Great flavor, even though I altered the recipe given I was lacking in some ingredients (or accidentally used them in other recipes *cough*).  I was missing the preserved lemons for this, but a shot of lemon juice into the simmering liquid was fine…next time I would like to try the real thing, however.  This is a definite make again, and would be fine with any mild white fish; I used Mahi.  I served this with herbed brown rice and roasted asparagus.  Recipe below is unaltered.

mahi

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Spinach and Yellow Pepper White Pizza

Quick weeknight meal that uses up some veggies in the fridge.  The combination of the spinach with the yellow pepper and kalamata olives was awesome.  We used our tried and true Mark Bittman Whole Wheat Pizza Dough, though we did actually use all white whole wheat flour (I was out of all-purpose) with good results.

pizza

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Smoked Gouda Mac and Cheese

The groundhog was seriously wrong and Spring did not come early.  In fact, it’s rather late…it’s snowing right now, no lie.  We were thinking today that comfort food would go well with this disappointing weather, and given it is MMM, Mac and Cheese was the first thing that came to mind.  Definitely a splurge meal, but we enjoyed it. 🙂  I used a Cooking Light recipe and tweaked it a bit – we will definitely do this again.  Recipe below is with my adjustments/additions.

macandcheese

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Momofuku’s Ginger Scallion Noodles

On the advice of my friend Missy, we gave this a shot for MMM. I don’t know where it has been all our lives, because it’s awesome.  Despite the fact that we have the Momofuku cookbook and never saw this, I’m glad it has been pointed out now!  You can do anything with this base sauce and noodles.  We did broccoli and green peas.  Would have been great with an egg too, and many non-veggie possibilities as well.  Definitely a favorite of mine now!  I served this with Sichuan Green Beans.

gingerscallion

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Thai Curry Steamed Mussels

I know, I know, more mussels.  But we *love* them, plus they’re a ridiculously fast and delicious meal for MMM.  This is a recipe/method I’ve been meaning to try and always just end up doing my mussels with some white wine, tomatoes, you know the drill.  But we really liked this, and I think next time the only thing I would do is increase the curry paste for a little more bite.  I served this over soba noodles tossed in the sauce that resulted from steaming the mussels, with roasted bok choy as a side.

currymussels

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Mushroom Stroganoff with Goat Cheese

MMM is going pretty well so far, and this was one of the dishes we liked enough to repeat.  This is an Alton Brown recipe that I did not alter save to use vegetable stock instead of beef stock.  I did not find any change or lack of flavor due to the stock…however, next time I will increase the salt a bit and also double+ the mushrooms.  Recipe below is with my adjustments.  I served this with spicy brussel sprouts.

stroganoff

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Spicy Mussels in White Wine

The first couple of warm days made me really wish for summer, and a summery-meal seemed in order.  Mussels, vegetable panzanella, and beer were perfect.  I usually just do a classic wine and tomato broth, but this was a fun change.  A smidge too spicy to taste the mussels, but otherwise great!  We’ll definitely make it again.  Another one from Gourmet, this is as printed.  I would just cut the red pepper flakes a tiny bit next time.

spicymussels

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