Shrimp Linguine

Back to blogging after a bit of an inadvertent cooking break at our house - we had to put our beloved family dog down a few weeks ago & I'll tell you, it hasn't been the same in our kitchen without her!  She used to sit at my feet, just waiting for something to fall for her to gobble up.  I miss her & my floor misses her, too!  I didn't realize how much she helped keep my floor clean until now!  So, it took me awhile to get back to cooking, and took me a few tries to get back to cooking stuff that tastes good, but I believe we're back on the up and up, now that it's been a few weeks & I have a few good meals under my belt.  I decided to cook a few different things since I hadn't cooked in awhile - this is one of our favorites, though we don't eat it often - bc it's so easy, yet looks impressive.

For this recipe, you'll need:

• your choice linguine noodles
• extra virgin olive oil
• 2 lemons
• butter
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 lb of raw shrimp, peeled and deveined

I'll be honest, this is not my favorite part.  I'd rather pull the giblets out of a chicken, than peel & devein shrimp with their little eyeballs looking at me.  But, in order to eat, we must peel.  So I did.

Make sure you devein the shrimp on both sides by simply slicing down the backside of the shrimp & rinsing out the vein.  It's pretty easy, just kind of labor intensive.

Smash & cut up garlic.  Smells so good!!

Boil linguine according to package directions.  Drain, but reserve about 1 cup of noodle water. Add a few tbs of butter in the noodles to prevent sticking & act as a base for your sauce.  Put aside.

Put a few tbs of olive oil in your warm skillet.  I have an electric range so it's tricky with the temperature.  Make sure it's not too hot or it will cook your shrimp too quickly and make it tough.

I added salt and pepper to my shrimp before adding it to pan.  Cook until shrimp turns pink - about 3-5 minutes.  Add the juice of 1 lemon (be careful for seeds) with the shrimp.

Once the shrimp is cooked, remove from pan.  Add more olive oil, 2 tbs butter, and garlic to the pan. Saute the garlic until cooked through.  Add the remaining juice of the other lemons (this doesn't make the sauce lemony, it just takes the fishy smell out of the shrimp).  Add remaining noodle water (I used about 1/2 cup, but you may use whatever suits you)

When your sauce looks like this, add the shrimp quickly, mix, then pour over linguine.

We ended up with two versions of this dish at our house:

Shrimp linguine, brussel sprouts with butter, red potatoes for the mister.

Shrimp linguine with mushrooms sauteed in garlic and butter, red potatoes, & french bread for me.  Carbs, anyone???

The mister doesn't like mushrooms, I don't like brussel sprouts, makes for more mushrooms for me & more brussel sprouts for him!  Perfect! 

Looks fancy, but super easy, what could be better?

Game Day Steak Fajitas

I don't know why I never tried fajitas before - they were SO easy!!  I started from a recipe off the back of the Mission tortilla bag and went from there.  I didn't get a "before" ingredient picture because I prepared everything in stages.  Again, I did a quick freeze on the meat so that I could cut it into strips - this makes it SO much easier!  I even had some that defrosted a little too much so I just stuck it back in the freezer a little longer and once it firmed up, easy once again.  Start to finish, cooking time for this meal took less than 30 minutes.  It took about 15 minutes to prep the meat and slice the veggies, prior to that, but all in all, an easy meal!  You'll need:

• about 1 pound of sirloin steak
• Italian dressing
• chili pepper
• 1 green pepper, cut into strips
• 1 sweet onion, sliced
• 2 tbs olive oil
• tortillas
• tomatoes (optional, garnish)
• avocado (optional, garnish)
• sour cream (optional, garnish)
• shredded cheese (optional, garnish)

The original recipe said to marinate steak strips in Italian dressing for 6-24 hours beforehand.  This would be great if I had made time to do this that far in advance.  However, reality strikes and I marinated my steak for about 2 hours prior to cooking.  It turned out fine, but I'm sure the longer time in the marinade, the better.  Use enough Italian dressing to thoroughly coat all meat.

Before you get started cooking, wrap tortillas in foil and put in oven to warm.  I put mine in at 350 and then lowered it to 'warm' after about 15 minutes until we were ready to eat.

Cook marinated meat in 2 tbs olive oil, over medium heat until browned

Add onions and green peppers, cook to desired tenderness.  I covered the pan here and it worked well.  In the last few minutes of cooking, I added about 1 tbs chili pepper.  You can easily adjust any of these measurements to suit your own taste.  We like chili pepper at our house, so the more, the better!

This next step is only for mushroom-loving crazies like me.  I've decided that I have a love of mushrooms that parallels my love of garlic powder.  You get the idea.  Anyway, so I removed the meat/onion mixture and left the juices in the pan...and you know what comes next - I added the mushrooms right to that!  Oh, yummmmmy!  (I know for you fajita enthusiasts, this is blasphemy, but I'm telling you, I just wanted mushrooms on this night.  And let me tell you, it worked!)

Last step - load up your fajitas!!  We will be having these again!  I was initially skeptical about the Italian dressing marinade for the fajitas, but it totally works.  Everyone in the family made their fajitas differently and the way they wanted so it was fabulous!

What's your favorite fajita?

Beef Stroganoff

This is one of the Mister's favorite dishes.  He LOVES it.  It's relatively easy to make, tastes good, and it's an excuse for me to cook with mushrooms (which I love, but no one else in the house does - I'm hoping the baby will grow up to like mushrooms so I'm not completely outnumbered, anywho...).  I found this recipe years ago from my trusty red and white Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.  Hubby has requested it ever since.  This dish also has me wishing for fall!  Fall weather, football, holidays, I do believe I am ready!!

For this you'll need:

• 1 lb boneless beef sirloin steak
• 8 oz sour cream
• 2 tbs flour
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsp instant beef bouillon granules
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 1/2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 cups hot cooked noodles

It starts out kind of gross, but that's just the way it goes.  Mix the sour cream and flour in a small bowl

Add water, bouillon granules, and pepper.  Set aside.  Get your water starting to boil on the stove to get ready for your noodles while you make the rest of the sauce.

Here's a great tip that has helped me greatly with this recipe & others:  trim fat from meat and freeze for 30-45 minutes prior to slicing it - it makes it so much easier!  Cut the meat in bite size strips.  I also chopped my onion and sliced my mushrooms before I got started, just so everything was ready before the burner was turned on.  Notice I sliced the mushrooms big - that's so Hubby could easily pick them out and give them to me!!  Win-win!

Now, melt butter in skillet over high heat and cook half of the meat until desired doneness.  I always seem to overcook my meats, but I don't like it red so that's my justification.  Better safe than salmonella, I say - ha.

Remove meat from skillet.  Add remaining meat, mushrooms, onions, and garlic (see picture above) - this smelled SO yummy!!  Cook and stir until meat reaches desired doneness again.  I added a little extra butter here.  Then I added some water because I didn't want it to burn and I didn't want to keep adding butter because that's just crazy.

I cooked it down and drained the fat, then I returned all the meat back to the skillet.

Pour in flour mixture.  Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.  It looks so yummy at this point you could just eat a taste out of the pan.  Because you're the cook and that makes it okay.

Drain your noodles and mix with sauce - so easy!

And so yummy!!  I love this dish!

Chicken A La King

I decided to make this recipe last week bc my mom used to make chicken a la king when I was growing up.  However, this recipe, which I thought was the one she used, I realized was totally different while I was putting it together.  Funny how you don't realize these things until you actually start mixing together the ingredients!  Haha!  So it was a new dish for our family!  And it turned out yummy & everyone in the family ate it so that equals success in my book.  It was pretty easy and fast, but as you will see, being fast made it a little tricky to document for the blog - it got a little crazy at the end!

For chicken a la king, you'll need:

• 1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
• 1/4 c. chopped green sweet pepper
• 1/4 c. chopped onion
• 3 tbs butter or margarine
• 2 tbs all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 2 1/2 c. half-and-half or light cream
• 3 beaten egg yolks
• 2 tbs dry sherry
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• 2 c. cooked chicken
• 2 tbs diced pimiento

Now I have to brag on my hubby for a minute - he came home last week with new knives for the kitchen and I was beside myself with excitement!!  Our knives were so old and in desperate need of replacing, so I had basically forgotten what it was like to prepare food with knives that actually cut!!  And, Tommy, it came with kitchen scissors so I'm set for my next round with dicing bacon - yay! :)

So my first test into my new knives was dicing the green pepper, onion, and mushrooms.  For this test I used the "chef's knife" - oh, you know I sure felt like Julia Child! :)

Isn't it beautiful??  And it was like cutting butter.  Brazilliance.  I added more green pepper and onion than the recipe called for.  And probably more mushrooms too.  Cause that's how I roll.

Since I added more pepper and onion, I increased the butter slightly as well.  I probably put in about 4 tbs instead of 3.

Isn't that pretty?

Saute veggies until tender, not brown.

Stir in flour, salt, and paprika to make a roux.

Add half and half all at once.  I likened this to making my own cream of mushroom soup, a kitchen staple at our house.  It was really easy and with our new knives, who knows??  Maybe I'll start doing this more often!

Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.  Then things got a little crazy and I didn't get a picture of the next step :)

Beat egg yolks in a small bowl (I used a pyrex measuring cup).  Stir about 1 cup of the thickened sauce into the beaten egg yolks - this is so the egg yolks don't cook weirdly into your dish - and I had to do it fast so I didn't end up with chicken a la king + scrambled eggs :)

Return mixture to saucepan.  Cook and stir over medium heat till bubbly.  Stir in sherry and lemon juice.  I didn't have sherry bc I couldn't find it at the store (I know, y'all are surprised I couldn't find my way around the wine aisle haha).  I think it would've been extra rich & good with the sherry, so hopefully I'll find it next time :)

Add chicken and pimientos.  I didn't measure my pimientos, just dumped in the whole jar.  And I made my chicken my usual way prior to putting it in the mix.  Heat through.

You can serve it with any sort of bread or pastry shell, so I made cream biscuits, of course!  The family really liked this meal and it was easy!  Yum!