Category: Main Dish

Gettin’ Down to the Nitty Gritty

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We’re back and today we have our last recipe from North Carolina. After all, we’ve got to get rolling with some Romanian dishes here soon too. In fact, stay tuned early next week for our first taste of Romania – it’s a twofer!

Now before we cross the Atlantic, we’re going to round out this culinary tour with a classic Southern dish inspired by our favorite restaurant from North Carolina, the Tupelo Honey Cafe. The moment I saw “Fried Green Tomatoes- served over goat cheese grits with basil” on the menu, I knew I was going to be sold. Sure enough Tupelo didn’t disappoint. The dish was fantastic! So of course we had to see if we could recreate the magic at home.  Continue reading →

Buuz Cruuz

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By Mike

I’ve been on one cruise in my life, to the Bahamas for my mom’s 50th birthday celebration, and it was indeed a booze cruise. My grandma announced at some point that “this is my second daiquiri, and I am looped!” And by “some point” I mean in the hour or so between the time we boarded and the time the ship left port.

Sadly, I’ll never take a cruise to Mongolia, as it’s landlocked in Central Asia, so our virtual cruise around the world will have to suffice. With that, we bring you Buuz, a Mongolian meat-filled dumpling typically comprised of ground mutton and very little seasoning. For our Buuz we went with ground beef and a touch of seasonings.  Continue reading →

Mongolia Rocks!

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Alright, who’s ready for some Mongolian main course meals? When we first started researching all we really knew of Mongolian food was that we’d eaten at BD’s Mongolian Grill and had heard of Mongolian Beef. Well, it turns out that the food served at the Mongolian Grill isn’t really Mongolian at all. In fact, here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

Although one such locale, BD’s Mongolian Grill, has opened even in Ulaanbaatar (ironically the first American chain to open in Mongolia), neither the ingredients nor the cooking method has anything in common with Mongolian cuisine. Rather, they are inspired by the Japanese teppanyaki.

And as for Mongolian Beef, well that has its origins in American Chinese cooking and is also not Mongolian. So we had to do some more digging. Mongolian diets rely heavily on meat – particularly from domesticated animals. As much as we try to keep true to the local traditions, we weren’t about to eat horse, yak or camel, so we opted for the next best thing – lamb, which is also a common meal. There are several ways to cook lamb, one we’ll explore later in the week, but by far the most interesting one to us was the traditional Mongolian Khorkhog (pronounced “horhog”). We knew that we had to give this a try.  Continue reading →

My Old Kentucky Home

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Okay, so I’ve never actually had a home in Kentucky, but as a kid I was obsessed with all things Kentucky. I was convinced I was going to live there – on a horse farm of course – and I had plans to loyally attend the Derby every year. In fact as a kid, I was rather obsessed with the Derby too. I’d watch the race day coverage for hours and I’d make sure to get all the local newspapers from the weekend so that I could scrapbook the event.

Flash-forward 25 years and I’ve still yet to attend the actual Derby, and I have no desire to own or live on a horse farm, but the first Saturday of May still holds a special place in my heart – even if I don’t have time to sit down and watch the entire coverage. So you can imagine my smile when Mr. N picked Kentucky for our state night this week. Good timing. Now while I was tempted to make that bourbon sirloin steak again and call it a recipe from Kentucky, I didn’t think you all would buy it.

Instead we did some digging around for Derby Day recipes. That’s when we came across a recipe in Southern Living Magazine for Kentucky Hot Browns. We opted for the less caloric version and began by making the Parmesan cheese sauce. Ingredients include butter, flour, milk, Parm, salt, pepper and paprika. Feel free to add hot sauce if you like as well – we left it out for the kids’ sake. Continue reading →

Heating Things Up

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We’re back with our final recipe from Mozambique today. This one is brought to you by Mr. N. Aside from a little roasting and the skillet work toward the end of the recipe, he pretty much whipped up this meal on his own. It’s simple, it’s quick and oh yes, it’s very, very good. As we were reading about Mozambique foods and recipes we kept coming across dishes with a piri piri sauce. Piri piri is a type of African birds eye chili pepper commonly grown in Mozambique and it’s used as the basis of a spicy sauce for flavoring meats and seafood. I’m sure you can probably guess, we opted to go the seafood route and created our version of Piri Piri Shrimp adapted from an Aida Mollenkamp recipe on The Food Network.  Continue reading →

The Sooner the Better

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It’s time once again to return to our state night adventures and while we thoroughly enjoyed our time with Hawaiian cuisine, it’s time to head back to the mainland. For these next few recipes, Mike is taking us to The Sooner State, Oklahoma. We’ve driven through Oklahoma a few times, including once during a terrible storm complete with tornado warnings. The wind was so intense that it was blowing the rain sideways and we had no choice but to stop and ride out the storm (I’ll have you know it’s taking all my will power not to include another 70’s song link here). Oh, and did I mention that we were in the process of moving across the country in a rental truck packed full of all our earthly possessions, our car hooked up to the back and our only cat riding shotgun? Talk about a hair-raising experience. Despite our brief and harrowing stay in Oklahoma, we have no memories of the food. In fact, I’m not sure we ever took the time to eat while we were there.

Fortunately we came across several websites in our search for Sooner cuisine, including the Made in Oklahoma Coalition which inspired this recipe for our Bourbon Steak Quesadillas with Peach Salsa. We started the recipe yesterday by preparing the peach salsa with peaches, a Serrano pepper, a tomato, a bit of red pepper and green onions. Continue reading →