Category: Main Dish

P is for…

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Portugal. Pork chops. Pomegranates. Portobellos. Parsley. How’s that for a lot of P’s? Who knew dinner could be both delicious and educational! Well, maybe just delicious. Miss A wasn’t really into helping with this one; although she and Mr. N kept passing through the kitchen stealing pomegranate seeds. (But who could blame them! Yum!)

This past weekend we made another Portuguese dinner, Stuffed Pork Chops with Pomegranate Sauce. We chose this recipe not only because it sounded delicious, but because it featured pomegranates, a fruit we had never used or eaten at home. We started by preparing the stuffing for the chops with portobellos, a shallot, parsley, garlic, olive oil, bread crumbs and Gruyère cheese. 

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Fast Approaching Three and a Half

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This title refers not only to the number of spoons given to today’s dish by myself and Mike, but also the age of our precious little Miss A. Now, for those of you that have children, you’ll know what we’re talking about when we say Miss A is officially entering “the three’s.” For those of you that don’t have children, let’s just say the person that came up with the slogan, “the terrible two’s” clearly did not have a three-year old child.

But before we get to that, let me share with you where Mike has chosen to take us for the next two weeks….Portugal! After a quick search of Portuguese recipes we were definitely excited. There is a myriad of delicious options from which to choose and today we’re kicking it off with one of the most popular foods in Portugal.

Portugal is a seafaring nation with the most prevalent fish being the cod, both dried (salt cod) and fresh. According to Wikipedia it is said that there are more than 365 recipes for cod, one for every day of the year; and it didn’t take us long to select our recipe, Portuguese Baked Cod. Continue reading →

Love, Loyalty and Barbecue

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Okay, so the words to the salute of the state flag in The Palmetto State are actually, “love, loyalty and faith,” but we’re talking about slow cooked barbecue goodness today. More specifically we’re talking about Mr. N’s state pick for the week, South Carolina Slow Cooker Pulled Pork.

We learned quite a bit about the different styles of BBQ and BBQ sauce for the southeastern coastal state, the most important thing being that BBQ refers exclusively to pork. If you want barbecued beef, it’s called “barbecued beef.” Simply asking for barbecue, however, will land you a pulled, shredded or chopped BBQ pork sandwich. And then there are the sauces which vary by region and include mustard-based sauces, ketchup-based sauces and vinegar-based sauces.

This week we chose the slow cooker method for our pork – it’s easy and convenient enough for a weekday and we love the way it makes the house smell. We also went with the ketchup-based barbecue sauce popular in the upstate and Savannah River regions, thinking that would be more up the kids’ alley.

The day before we planned to slow cook the pork, Miss A and I prepared the barbecue sauce. We used ketchup, apple cider vinegar, salt, brown sugar and crushed red pepper. 

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Rockin’ the Pumpkin

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We’ve got one more pumpkin recipe for you before we head back to sampling recipes from the Philippines. This particular dish makes use of the leftover roasted pumpkin we had from our risotto and makes for a great lunch or side salad. If you don’t have any leftover pumpkin on hand, it’s simple to roast up a fresh batch, just allow for an extra hour of cooking time.

So what is this easy, tasty and refreshing pumpkin recipe? The Pumpkin and Couscous Rocket Salad. Yep, it’s healthy and offers some much-needed freshness after all the Halloween sweets and treats. We started by preparing our couscous. We used a whole wheat couscous, chicken stock, dry white wine, fresh sage, lemon zest and lemon juice. 

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A Shining Date Night

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We interrupt this regularly scheduled Filipino recipe week for a few seasonal dishes. Now pumpkin has been all over the blog world for weeks – pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread, pumpkin bagels, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin-banana bread….I could go on and on. So we figured we’d jump on the band wagon, for the rest of this week anyway.

Last night’s Halloween festivities were a blast. The kids had so much fun collecting candy, playing with their friends and having a pizza night. Mr. N was our brave knight this year, 

and Miss A, well I’m sure you can guess what she was for Halloween. A princess of course. Continue reading →

May I Have Seconds…Make That Thirds Please

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I’m assuming from the title you can guess this is a meal that we enjoyed. We chose another Filipino recipe, Pork Estofado. Raymund at Ang Sarap has been a wonderful inspiration for our Filipino food selections. He made a version of this back in September and I was completely intrigued by cooking bananas in a pork dish.

It’s been a hectic week and we’re all fighting off colds, so no one is really running at full steam. We also wanted something that was going to be easy for a weeknight full of the kids’ activities. That’s why we opted to make a few adaptations to this dish, one of which was to make use of the slow cooker.

We started by bundling our spices and seasonings, including bay leaves, peppercorn, minced garlic and star anise in a cheesecloth.  Continue reading →