Raspberry Coconut Overnight Oats

I used this recipe as inspiration for these overnight oats. The best idea was using all fruit jam as the sweetener! I made some changes because we only keep Greek yogurt on hand but I don't really like the tanginess of it (Greg is the one that eats it) but I didn't want to buy regular yogurt just for this so I used less yogurt and swapped the milk for coconut milk to try to mask the tanginess of the yogurt and it's delicious!

Ingredients:
1/2 c full fat plain Greek yogurt
1 1/2 c full fat coconut milk
1/3 c all fruit jam (we have used raspberry but any would be great!)
1 tsp vanilla
1 c rolled oats
2 T chia seeds
2/3 c chopped almonds

In a bowl whisk together the first 4 ingredients. When the jam is all incorporated in, stir in the oats, chia seeds, and half of the almonds. Mix well, cover the bowl, and refrigerate overnight. This makes 4 servings. Use the other half of the almonds to sprinkle on top when you serve it

Cajun Fettuccine

Ingredients:
12 oz dry Fettuccine
1 T olive oil
1 lb peeled and deveined shrimp
Cajun seasoning
Half a small white onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c chicken stock
1/4 c cream
1 c frozen corn
1/2 c grated Parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, sprinkle one side of the shrimp with the Cajun seasoning, just enough to lightly coat the one side. Drizzle the olive oil in a skillet and heat over medium high heat. Add the shrimp once the oil is hot and cook for about 2 minutes per side, or until opaque. Remove the shrimp from the skillet and add the onion. There will should be brown bits on the bottom of the skillet, that is what you want! Don't clean it out! Cook the onion for a couple of minutes until softened and then add the garlic. Stir and let cook for just about 20 seconds so the garlic doesn't burn and quickly add the chicken stock, scraping up all the brown bits in the pan. Add the cream and stir well. Add the corn and Parmesan and season to taste. When the pasta is cooked al dente, remove it from the water and put directly into the sauce. You want some of the water on the pasta to get into your sauce. The starchy pasta water helps pull the sauce together. Toss it together and add the shrimp back in

Mongolian Beef

Mongolian beef is my FAVOURITE at PF Chang's. It's rich and beefy and just delicious. But to do it on the cheap, I had to learn to make it at home. I have stir fried the beef and I have coated the beef in cornstarch and deep fried it and both are great! Just kind of depends what you want. But the sauce is where that magic happens.

For the Sauce:
1 tsp veg oil
1/2 T ginger, grated
1/2 T garlic, grated
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 lb flank steak
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3-4 green onions, cut into one inch pieces

In a saucepan, heat the teaspoon of vegetable oil over medium heat. When it is warm, add the ginger and the garlic. Let it cook for about a minute and then quickly add the soy sauce, water, and red wine vinegar so the garlic doesn't burn. Turn the heat up to medium high and add the brown sugar. When the sugar is dissolved, quickly whisk in the cornstarch. Bring to a boil and let it boil for a couple of minutes, until the sauce starts to thicken. Turn the heat off and set it aside. In a frying pan, heat the 1-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Slice the steak into thin strips. Salt and pepper the meat and add to the oil. Brown the meat and remove from the oil. Pat the meat dry on a paper towel and add to the sauce. Heat it all up and add the green onions and cook for an additional minute.

If you want to deep fry the meat, coat in 1/2 c of cornstarch and fry in 3-4 inches of oil. Let drain on a towel before adding to the sauce.

Pesto Mac & Cheese

Mac and cheese is sooo easy to make from scratch. And it's so easy to change it up! You can do a plain cheese sauce, add some cayenne and paprika for some spice, or add garlic and herbs for something more sophisticated. Add chicken and veggies or just veggies or add nothing! Once you know the ratios for a basic white sauce, the possibilities are endless. Monday nights I try to do a meatless meal for dinner. I had planned to make biscuits and fruit and veggie smoothies but we were prepping for the blizzard Tuesday and it was cold and the wind was howling and all I could think about was a bowl of warm, gooey, mac and cheese. I had some pesto in the freezer and thought it would be really delicious in the mac and cheese so I just went for it! It was REALLY delicious!

Ingredients:
2 T butter
2 T flour
2 c milk
1/3-1/2 c prepared pesto (I was just eye balling as I went along, so just make sure you're tasting as you go along, but you could add as much pesto as you want!)
2 c shredded cheddar (I like my mac and cheese really cheesy so feel free to use less if you want)
Salt and pepper to taste
10 oz small pasta (shells, elbows, etc.) cooked to package directions

In a large sauce pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and let cook for about 30 seconds. Slowly pour in the milk, whisking constantly to prevent lumps. Add your pesto and stir well to combine. Add the cheese and turn off the heat. Stir until the cheese is melted. Season to taste. Pour sauce over cooked noodles.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken

When drumsticks go on sale, it's really hard not to buy them at 69 cents a pound. I am not crazy about dark meat, but 69 cents a pound! I have my family's oven fried chicken recipe that uses drumsticks that I really like and this honey-ginger drumstick recipe that I love! But I always like to try new things. I have made fried chicken only a couple times before and it was good every time, but I always felt like it could be better. So I spent a lot of time reading a LOT of fried chicken recipes. There are so many different techniques. To brine or not to brine? Buttermilk or egg? Breadcrumbs or no breadcrumbs? After lots of research I decided to just go for it!

Ingredients:
12-16 drumsticks
Water
Kosher Salt
3 c buttermilk
2 T Sriracha
Salt and pepper to taste
3 c flour
2 1/2 T each garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika
1 T kosher salt
2 tsp cayenne
1 head of garlic cut in half through the middle, skin left on
Vegetable oil for frying

Place drumsticks in a large bowl (you can use 2 if needed). Measure 4 cups of water and stir in 1 tsp of kosher salt. Pour over chicken. Repeat until chicken is totally covered by water. Cover and refrigerate for about 4 hours. You can let it sit in this solution for as long as over night if you want to. When chicken is almost done in the solution, get everything else ready. In a bowl mix the butter milk and Sriracha together and then season with a little salt and pepper. In another bowl, mix the flour, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt and cayenne together. Drain the chicken and pat dry. Working with 3 or 4 drumsticks at a time, add to the buttermilk mixture. I let about 4 drumsticks sit in the buttermilk for about 10 minutes. While they were sitting in the buttermilk, I got a sheet pan out and lined it with parchment paper. I also got a heavy bottom pan out and filled about 3/4 full with vegetable oil. Move the drumsticks to the flour and put more drumsticks into the buttermilk. Coat the drumsticks completely in the flour mixture. Put it on the sheet pan to rest. Meanwhile, take the garlic cut in half and put it in the oil. Don't add any heat yet to the pan. Take the drumsticks in the buttermilk and move to the flour to completely coat and then rest on the sheet pan. Repeat until all drumsticks have been dredged in buttermilk and flour. Heat the oil to 325-350 degrees. Once the temperature reaches 325 degrees on a deep fry thermometer, remove the garlic and any skin that may have fallen off and discard. Add 4 drumsticks into the oil. Let cook for 6 minutes on the first side. Turn them to the other side and let cook for another 4-6 more minutes or until internal temp reaches 160-165. (Chicken will come up a few more degrees while resting so I do mine to 160 and let come up to 165) Sprinkle with salt as soon as it comes out of the oil and repeat with all drumsticks. My favourite thing to do with fried chicken is to drizzle it with honey when it's still hot so it just kind of melts over the whole thing... This chicken was so crispy, juicy, and just a little bit spicy. I will probably keep experimenting with fried chicken, but this was an excellent start!

Chocolate Ricotta Pancakes

I had some leftover ricotta from our bruschetta and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I don't have a spring form pan so I wasn't going to do cheesecake and I didn't have enough left to make lasagna. I remembered seeing lots of chefs on Food Network use ricotta in pancakes so I started doing some research to see if I had enough ricotta left to try that out. After reading a dozen or so recipes I finally settled on this chocolate ricotta pancake recipe. I did change it a little bit but not much. I took out 2 T of flour from the 1 1/2 cups and added 2 extra T of cocoa powder so they were extra chocolatey. I also did the orange syrup differently. I poured 1/2 c of pure maple syrup into a small saucepan and peeled two clementines. I put the peels from the clementines in the syrup and heated over low heat while I made the pancakes, stirring occasionally. I removed the orange peel and topped the pancakes with the syrup. These were sooo good! They were fluffy and chocolatey, but not very sweet which I love! They were super moist thanks to the ricotta. We were big fans!

Valentine's Day Dinner

A few months ago, we tried fennel for the first time. We've been trying to try new vegetables and branch out a little and this was one of the new things we tried! We had it roasted in a pasta the first time and it was delish! It was a little sweet and almost spicy in a licorice spicy way. With Valentine's Day coming up I was planning what to make. I do not like going out to dinner on Valentine's Day, it is way too busy for my tastes. So as part of my gift to Greg for the last few years I've made him a fancy dinner. I've always made salmon since it's Greg's favourite so I decided to stick with tradition and make salmon again. I wanted to make it special and fennel came to mind. With citrus being so tasty right now, I thought it would be really delicious with some oranges. Slowly the menu started to come together. The first course was some bruschetta. Toasted bread, ricotta, spring mix greens, pears and a balsamic reduction. Those were a big hit with Greg. But this orange and fennel salad (recipe below) was one of our favourites from the night. Fennel and orange dressed in some lemon and olive oil on top of perfectly cooked, fatty salmon... The crisp fennel and the bright citrus with that salmon was so excellent. This salad will be a regular for us now. For dessert I decided to try something new that I thought Greg would love. He's a big fan of fruit desserts, but especially lemon desserts. I also like lemon desserts but I am a big fan of textural difference in desserts and usually I find lemon desserts to be very one note texture wise. So I decided to try filo dough for the first time and get it nice and crisp to go with some tart lemon pudding. Layers of buttery, crisp filo with pudding in between, topped with whipped cream and a quick raspberry sauce on the side. It was a hit. I already can't wait to use the rest of the filo dough. Recipe/instructions below.

Orange and Fennel Salad
Ingredients:
1 fennel bulb, core removed and bulb chopped
2 clementines, peels removed, sliced into rounds and divided into the small triangle sections
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp olive oil
Fennel fronds roughly chopped (optional)

After chopping fennel bulb and slicing and separating clementine pieces, put into a bowl. Dress with lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil. Toss well to combine. Add chopped fennel fronds if desired. Eat plain or on top of salmon, chicken or pork.

Bruschetta:
Bruschetta is so easy and can really be anything you want so there's not much too it! Slice a baguette on a diagonal so you have more surface area on your bread. Lay out on a sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 375 for about 6-8 minutes per side or until lightly golden brown. Top with whatever you want! This one was spread with a little ricotta, some greens on top, a slice of pear and then some balsamic vinegar that I cooked down. I put about 1/3 c of balsamic in a small sauce pan and heated it over medium heat. Add a little sugar, maybe 1 tablespoon. Cook until reduced by half. Let cool. That's what I drizzled over the top of this bruschetta.

Dessert:

2 sheets of thawed filo dough
2 T melted butter
1 small pkg cook and serve lemon pudding
Whipped cream (I prefer homemade but am not about the stuff in the can!)
Sunny Anderson's 1-2-3 raspberry sauce from here

Make the lemon pudding according to package directions and make the raspberry sauce. Let both cool in the fridge. Preheat the oven to 375. Carefully fold one sheet of filo dough in half so it resembles a book (I think we called it hamburger style in elementary school?), then fold in half again but this time the other way (hot dog style from elementary?). And fold in half one last time as hamburger style. Take a 2 inch round biscuit or cookie cutter and cut two rounds from the folded filo. You should end up with 12 thin layers of cut outs. Do the same thing with the other sheet of filo. Take a cookie sheet and brush the whole thing with a layer of melted butter. Take 6 rounds of filo and place them individually on the sheet. Brush with a little melted butter and layer another round on top. Repeat by brushing each layer with some melted butter and then topping with filo until you have 4 rounds in each stack.* Bake in the oven. I checked mine at about 8 minutes and then every 2 minutes after that. I pulled mine out at 12 minutes when they are just golden brown. Carefully remove from the baking sheet and let cool. Carefully place one stack of rounds on a plate and gently spoon some lemon pudding on top. Layer with another stack of rounds and then more pudding. Finish with the last stack of rounds and top with whipped cream. Use as much or as little raspberry sauce as you want!

*Note: make sure you read the instructions on your filo dough. You will want to keep it covered when you aren't working with it as it dries out quickly.