As promised, here is a new blog post. It’s asparagus season!

My parents are fortunate enough to have asparagus that grows in the empty lot behind our house. The asparagus in this recipe, however, did not come from the wild asparagus behind my parents’ house.

Asparagus is one of those versatile vegetables that you can prepare many different ways. You can roast it, grill it, blanch it, steam it, sauté it…the list goes on.

I used to hate asparagus, but then, magically, I really started to love it. It’s kind of like how I used to really love riesling and now I find it too sweet. Oh, how our palates change over time.

In this recipe, I decided to shave the asparagus into long strips, which revealed to me that I needed a new peeler. Nonetheless, I was able to obtain strips of asparagus to serve as “linguine” to mix in with the pasta. It’s a pretty cool method to substitute for actual pasta or reduce the amount of pasta that you consume.

I wish I had more to say sometimes.

My brain is usually fried, though.

My friends and I decided to do a happy hour every two weeks so we can all get together, so that’s been fun. Maybe I’ll start blogging about those places. Maybe not. Ugh. There need to be more hours in the day.

Recipe time!

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Get a large stockpot of salted water boiling. Peel and devein shrimp. Take a heaping tablespoon of the pesto and toss it with the shrimp to marinade until you are ready to cook them. Cut the bottom inch or two off of the asparagus spears. Then take your peeler and shave the asparagus into long strips, starting from the top. Start cooking your pasta. A few minutes before your pasta is finished, heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add a tablespoon or so of olive oil and swirl around the pan, then add shrimp.

2. Cook the shrimp, about 2 minutes on each side, and flip, cooking 2 minutes on the other side, until curled up and pink. Cook shrimp in batches if you need to, you want them to have room to be spread out so they don’t just steam.

3. Once the shrimp is cooked, return all shrimp to the pan and add the shaved asparagus. I also cut up a few pieces of asparagus into bite sized pieces.

4. Once your asparagus has cooked a few minutes, add your hot pasta once it’s ready, and top with the remaining pesto. Keep a little pasta water on hand in case you need it to help make your sauce.

5. Toss to combine, add a little starchy pasta water if you need to help thin out the pesto. Top with some parmesan cheese and enjoy!

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes!

You can use them in tomato sauce, tomato soup, salad, enchiladas, dips, anything really.

I decided to make chili.

I kind of just threw it together. I had some leftover beef tenderloin carvings, and thought some petite diced tomatoes would go perfectly with the meat that would just fall apart after a few hours in the crockpot.

Sometimes, like right now, I am just at a loss for words but want to share a recipe with you all. Also, I’m going to have to make this again and update the final photo, because in my fit of hunger I forgot to take one except for on my phone via Instagram…oops!

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Cut up your beef tenderloin into 2-inch pieces. Season liberally with salt, pepper, and creole seasoning. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sear off the meat, in batches if you have to, and reserve on a plate until all the meat is seared off.

2. Return the meat to the skillet and add the garlic and sauté for one minute until the garlic is nice and aromatic, then add in the tomato paste and sauté another couple of minutes until the tomato paste has browned a little.

3. Add the meat to your crockpot, along with the tomatoes, cannellini beans, cumin seeds, chili powder, oregano, brown sugar, and mustard. Stir everything together well, cover, and set the crockpot for 4 to 6 hours.

4. After a while, you’ll get THIS. Excuse the iPhone photo, I’ll need to make this again soon so I can get a pretty photo.

I’ve made sushi three times in the past month or so, and made fried rice twice. I thought it was time to share my findings on fried rice.

There are a few secrets about fried rice that you should know.

Rule #1: Use day-old steamed white rice. Rice that has had a chance to dry out a little gives better texture and does not go mushy when you try to fry it.

Rule #2: Cook your chicken first. This provides you with INCREDIBLE flavor to give to the rest of your ingredients as you layer and cook them. Any type of chicken with the skin on is ideal, but this time I decided to use boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

Rule #3: Invest in a wok. But only if you have a gas stove. Unfortunately, I do not have a gas stove, so it is best for me to use a flat, heavy-bottomed, high-sided skillet. Woks provide the best cooking conditions for quick-cooking Asian meals such as stir fry or fried rice.

Now that I’ve let you in on my secrets, let’s get started on making this rice.

The ingredients are pretty interchangeable, the technique is really what needs to be consistent.

Ingredients

Preparation

1. First things first: cook your chicken. It’s more flavorful to use skin-on chicken, but I decided to be healthy and use skinless so I didn’t have to worry about cutting out bones. Heat your pan on high heat for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, season up your chicken with some salt, pepper and other spices. Add your vegetable or canola oil, enough to coat the bottom. Add your seasoned chicken to the pan and stir fry, stirring constantly until no more pink shows on the chicken, about 5-7 minutes.

2. Remove the chicken from the pan onto a plate and immediately add your beaten eggs and cook quickly until scrambled. (Sorry the photo is blurry, eggs scramble fast!)

3. Remove eggs from the pan and add to the plate with the chicken. Add your vegetables. I used a frozen stir-fry mix and added some frozen peas. Frozen vegetables are your friend if you want to make a quick stir fry. They’re still healthy! Also, make sure they are somewhat thawed or they will take forever to cook. I had to cover my skillet for a little while to help them steam. Once they are cooked and fried a little, remove and set in a bowl until needed.

4. Next, it’s time for the rice. By this point you’ll need a little more oil in your pan, so add a little to coat the bottom and then add your rice, using the wooden spoon or spatula to break up the chunks.

5. Add soy sauce to taste and continue to fry rice until bits begin to turn golden. Add back in the vegetables, chicken and egg and toss, mixing thoroughly and heating everything back through. Add more soy sauce if you so desire, I did.

6. Plate up and enjoy!

Sorry for the delay, folks, it’s been a busy start to the year.

Busy aside, I love quiche. And I made just about the best quiche EVER. Next time, I’ll experiment with more add-ins but for the meantime, spinach and feta are all I need.

I also used a refrigerated pie crust from the grocery store, and some of it broke off when I unrolled it, and after re-attaching it, it melted right off in the oven. Now I have a nice charred mess on the bottom of my oven. Oh well. Next time I’ll make my own pie dough, that’s easy enough.

So this quiche was out of the blue so I don’t have any photos except the end product, but quiche are incredibly easy. There’s a basic recipe and you just add whatever you like to it (within reason)

My add-ins of choice this time were spinach and feta.

So I’ve been making a lot of different comfort foods, from my Spaghetti Bolognese, to Eggplant Parmesan, to this Ina Garten inspired tomato soup, which I have made four times in the last two months.

This soup is incredible, and I think her use of saffron is what really makes the soup so distinctive. And when it comes to grilled cheese, I’m a Kraft singles girl. No gourmet grilled cheese for me. All I need is some white or wheat bread, butter, Kraft singles, and I’m good.

Most recently when I made this soup, I had accidentally bought whole peeled tomatoes instead of crushed tomatoes in the can, so I simply pureed the tomatoes with an immersion blender and used them the same way as I would the crushed tomatoes, and I came out with more of a tomato orzo risotto rather than a soup. Still tasty, though lesson learned about the differences between puréed whole peeled tomatoes and crushed tomatoes.

Either way, Ina hit a homerun with this recipe, only thing I would change is the amount of cream, and maybe purée the soup and omit the orzo for a smoother texture. It’s just a great soup to have around when cold weather hits. You can just whip up a grilled cheese to go with it and you’re golden.

Yum.

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Dice the onion and mince the garlic.

2. Add a little olive oil to a large stockpot or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté until beginning to caramelize, 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute, then add the chicken stock, crushed tomatoes and saffron. Also add a little salt and pepper to taste.

4. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the orzo to two minutes less than the package denotes.

5. Once orzo is cooked, add it to the soup and cook another 5 minutes. Add the cream and stir to combine thoroughly. Remove soup from heat, cover and set aside. If you have a favorite grilled cheese, make it now and pair it with the soup. If you would like to know how to make my grilled cheese, it’s simple. Allow a little butter to sit out and soften for about 30 minutes. Take two pieces of sandwich bread and butter one side of each piece. Add some butter to a pan over medium-high heat. Once the butter melts, put one piece of bread butter side down in the pan and top it with a Kraft single, then top with the other piece of bread butter side up. Cook in the pan until the bottom piece of bread is nice and brown, then flip the sandwich and cook until the other side of bread is nice and brown. Remove from the pan and allow to cool for a minute or so before slicing into triangles or large crouton pieces to top your soup with. If this is at all confusing, please leave a comment and I’ll be happy to clarify. Enjoy!!

It’s called Wagamama.

It”s an awesome noodle bar. And they have this awesome dish called yaki soba.

Every time I visit my family in London, Wagamama is an absolute MUST.

Wagamama recently came out with a cookbook of some of their most famous recipes, which I very much appreciated because the only three Wagamama locations in the United States are in Boston. Which is lame. Because Dallas needs more awesome noodle bars. (Hint, hint, Wagamama corporate!)

I recently moved out of my parents’ house to an apartment! The last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind with packing and working and holidays and everything. I’m so excited to be out on my own, it’s going to be a real adventure. I’ve been working so much I haven’t really been cooking, but I did manage to figure out that searing chicken breasts sets off the smoke alarm in my new place…(snore).

Good news is, I won’t be spending so much time driving around anymore so I’ll have more time to cook and blog! I have some great holiday recipes that I need to get cooking and get up on here. I also need to finish unpacking my clothes and get a bigger dresser. Oh, the joys of moving.

So back to Wagamama. It is some of the best noodles EVER. And it’s not super gourmet, it’s just a great place for everyone, and I can’t wait to share it with you, so enjoy!

Also, happy Hanukkah! Don’t forget to check my Old Fashioned Potato Latke post from last year!

Ingredients

Preparation

1. First, soak the soba noodles in boiling water for a few minutes until either warmed through or cooked if using dry noodles. Once cooked, combine with the shrimp, scallions and yaki soba sauce (recipe follows) in a medium-sized bowl and set aside.

2. Heat a wok or large high-sided skillet on high heat for a few minutes until smoking, then add the vegetable oil and turn the heat to medium. Add the chicken pieces and stir fry until golden, about 5-6 minutes.

3. Add the noodles, shrimp and scallions to the chicken and stir fry until heated through.

4. Create a little circle in the middle of the stir-fry and add the beaten egg in, and I have yet to master this technique, but beat the egg vigorously in the center until it’s fully cooked and then toss it with the rest of the yaki soba. This seems to take a while, though. Or you can easily scramble the egg beforehand and just add it in at this point and toss to heat it through.

5. Once everything is heated through, serve garnished with sliced pickled ginger and crispy fried shallots or onions and sesame seeds. Enjoy!!

Whether it’s leftover from trick-or-treaters or stuff my brother brings home, there’s always so. much. candy.

My cousin Theresa gave me the BEST idea for using leftover Halloween candy.

She came in town for the Fourth of July, and made some of the best brownies I’ve ever had. And what did they have mixed in?

CANDY.

A lightbulb went off in my head.

This is the absolute best idea ever for using up leftover Halloween candy!

You don’t even have to eat them yourself, you can give them as gifts!

Get it out of your house and out of sight before you succumb to the temptation and eat it all.

The really easy way to make these would be to buy a box of brownie mix and make the batter according to the directions and then add the candy, but that would be too easy.

I happened to make mine with peanut butter cups, and Theresa made hers with Snickers and peppermint patties, separate batches of course. But you could even make a kitchen-sink type brownie batch and use multiple types of candy. Deeeelish.

I figure I’ll give you a brownies-from-scratch recipe too, just to complicate things a bit.

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 325℉. In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, mix together the oil, sugar and vanilla. Combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, coffee/espresso powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl and set aside.

2. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

3. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in batches until combined.

4. Mix in about three-quarters of your chopped candy and pour into a greased 8×8 or 9×9 baking pan.

5. Bake for 40-45 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. About halfway, top the brownies with the rest of the chopped candy.

6. Let cool, cut and serve! Enjoy!

And here’s what I came up with.

Honestly, I had never worked with the stuff before but have seen countless recipes replacing the squash for noodles either for gluten-free or healthier options, so I figured it couldn’t be that hard.

Spaghetti squash is SO much fun to shred! It just comes apart in strings.

My dad didn’t even know that the “noodles” in the stir fry I made were squash. WIN.

That folks, is the magic of spaghetti squash. People won’t even notice.

Roasting spaghetti squash is easy, too, and you can do it in advance of using the squash in a recipe.

All you do is cut it in half (however you can, they can be VERY difficult to cut), scrape out the seeds, baste the whole thing in olive oil, then bake them cut side facing up in a 400℉ oven covered in foil for anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. It’s a good idea to keep checking it, as it can go from perfect to mushy very fast. Once it’s fork-tender all over just let it cool and then shred the strings with a fork.

Ta-da! Fake spaghetti.

Now, for this stir-fry I used a simple store bought stir-fry sauce, but feel free to mix your own! Asian sauces all use different proportions of the same ingredients, so an easy stir-fry sauce consists of oyster sauce, sugar, soy sauce, and the holy trinity, which consists of garlic, ginger and scallions, used in 90% of Asian dishes. Adding some corn starch will thicken the sauce as well.

Time for stir-fry!

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Heat a wok or large heavy-bottomed skillet on high heat until almost smoking, 3 minutes or so. Add a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil and add the diced chicken and cook, stirring frequently to ensure it gets cooked on all sides.

2. Once the chicken starts to turn golden, add in your holy trinity (garlic, ginger, scallion) and cook for 30 seconds until aromatic, then toss in the spaghetti squash and to mix with the chicken and fry the “noodles.”

3. Add in your stir-fry sauce and toss to coat your “noodles” and chicken in the sauce. I added a teeny bit too much, so start out with a little, then add more as you need it.

4. Add in your peas and any other vegetables you have around such as broccoli, sugar snap peas, carrots, corn, anything you like. Toss to heat these vegetables through. I added some garlic chili sauce to give it a little kick and depth of flavor. Yum!

Yeah, that was my lunch today.

I bought some shrimp and whole wheat naan yesterday.

Had some pesto and feta in the fridge, and voila! Lunch.

I’m really into Mediterranean food lately. There’s a restaurant in Dallas called Cafe Izmir and they make the BEST hummus EVER. And I think I figured out the secret to the texture, muahaha. Will be experimenting this weekend if I can find the time.

This is a super easy meal that anyone can whip up. It would also be great with leftover grilled chicken. I like where my brain is going with this…

As you all probably know I’m a pesto lover so any time I can use pesto I can and will. Which is funny because I used to hate the stuff. Oh, the evolution of one’s palate. There are some things I still don’t like, though. Like green peppers. Bleh.

So basically this flatbread is great for lunch, dinner, appetizers and is super light and healthy.

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Pour a little olive oil, salt and pepper in with the shrimp and toss to coat. Let them sit and soak up the goodness while you grill your naan. Get your grill pan nice and hot on high heat for a couple of minutes. Then grill your naan for a couple of minutes on both sides until you get nice, pretty grill marks.

2. Next, put your naan on a baking sheet and smear it all over with pesto. YUM. I could eat that right there. Preheat your broiler.

3. With your grill pan still hot, cook your shrimp over medium-high heat for about 2 minutes on each side, or until they’re opaque and firm but not rock hard.

4. Add the shrimp to your flatbread. Feel free to cut them into smaller pieces, it might make the flatbread a little easier to eat. Arrange the tomatoes around the shrimp and sprinkle with feta. Next, put under the broiler for literally a hot minute. Like watch it so your naan doesn’t burn. All you want is the feta to start to melt and you’re done. 60 seconds. Done. Now eat.

It actually did not get above 55 degrees this weekend!

That is an accomplishment, however being in Texas it only lasts a few days, we’ll be back up to 80 degrees by Tuesday.

Nevertheless, I took advantage of the cooler weather by whipping up (well, stirring up for a very very long time) some sweet and savory butternut squash risotto.

This stuff is BOMB.

I think it’s probably my best fall recipe yet. And you all must make it. That is not an option, it is a request.

The butternut squash caramelizes in the oven and is combined both in puréed form and cubes for added texture.

I plan on using winter squash for many more things and in many more ways, such as spaghetti squash, acorn squash, and more butternut squash, so look outtt.

I really don’t have much else to say about this dish except it is SO INCREDIBLY AMAZING!!

The notes in this are going to be extensive, because risotto can be tricky to get the texture down, so just bear with me.

Ingredients

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 400℉. Melt 2 tablespoons butter and toss with the butternut squash cubes. Spread out onto a baking sheet lined with foil and roast in the oven until fork-tender, 30-45 minutes. Toss the squash occasionally in the oven to evenly cook. Once fork-tender, remove from the oven and purée 3/4 of the squash in a food processor and set aside. Let the remaining chunks cool in a small bowl set aside as well.

2. Meanwhile, in a large stockpot, bring the stock to a boil, then reduce to a simmer to keep hot while you make the risotto. Once the stock is boiling, melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large saucepan or dutch oven over medium heat until butter foams. Add the shallot and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes.

3. Add the rice and stir to coat with the butter. Toast the rice, stirring constantly, until a little white dot forms in each piece of rice, about 3 minutes. It is VERY important that after this you are constantly stirring the risotto. This helps bring out the starches in the rice and make the risotto creamy and more al dente and less chewy and sticky.

4. Add about a cup of stock to the rice and cook, stirring constantly, until the rise is beginning to look dry and less “soupy”.

5. Remember to keeeeeep stirring. It’s very, very important! Keep adding stock by the ladleful and stirring while it absorbs, checking the texture after about 20 minutes. Depending on your stock, rice, saucepan, humidity level, etc, the rice can take anywhere from 20-45 minutes to reach the right texture. The final texture should be creamy and tender but with a little resistance to the bite.

6. Once you have reached your desired consistency, remove from the heat and stir in the puréed butternut squash and parmesan and mix stir until fully incorporated. The butternut squash might be a little tough to break up, but it should in time.

7. Stir in the cubed butternut squash and serve immediately. Garnish with some fresh, fried or minced sage leaves. Or thyme if you used that. Enjoy!! (I promise, the arm workout is well worth it).