Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan, Lemon and Red Pepper Flakes

Posted on September 16, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Parmesan, Lemon, and Red Pepper Flakes

I was at the farmers market this past Sunday, doing my usual weekly shopping. One of my favorite vendor’s had these beautiful stalks of brussels sprouts. I got so excited about them that a woman, who was also shopping, pulled me aside and whispered : “How do you cook those?” This isn’t the first time this has happened to me, believe it or not, people stop me all the time, either at the farmers market, or at Whole Foods, to ask how to cook a variety of vegetables. The funny thing about people asking me cooking questions is that they almost always whisper the question? I don’t understand why they whisper the question! I want to tell them, “you know you’re not the only person on the planet who has no idea what to do with ((insert name of vegetable here)).” I shared this recipe for roasted brussels sprouts with the the lady at the farmer’s market. It’s simple, easy and so delicious. It’s one of my absolute favorite ways to cook and eat brussels sprouts.

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Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 10-15 minutes

Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound of brussels sprouts halved

2 Tablespoons of lemon juice

3 tablespoons of olive oil ( or ghee or coconut oil)

Sea salt to taste

1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan cheese

Directions: Pre-heat the oven to 425F. Add the lemon juice and red pepper flakes to a medium sized bowl and set aside. In a medium bowl add the brussels sprouts, oil and sea salt, toss well making sure that all the brussels sprouts are evenly covered with oil.

Place on a foil lined baking sheet and put in the oven.

Cook for 10-15 minute, or until the brussels sprouts take on a significant amount of color and they become crisp and tender. Sprinkle the sprouts with half the cheese and cook for another minute or two, just until cheese melts and becomes crisp, remove the sprouts from the oven, transfer them to the bowl with the lemon juice and the red pepper flakes, toss well to coat the brussels sprouts with the lemon juice, sprinkle with the remaining cheese, serve immediately and enjoy! These are crispy, tangy with a little kick! They are the perfect side dish for almost any meal!

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes!

Posted on September 3, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Mash

From time to time, I crave a meal with a deep rich wine sauce. When that happens I turn to Julia Child’s beef bourguignon recipe, or my version of it. If you have ever made beef bourguignon, then you know the sauce that accompanies the beef is everything for that particular dish! The beef, as succulent as it is, is nothing without that sauce, and that sauce was made to adorn a potato mash! The year that I had Page I decided rather than running from house to house to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family, it would be easier on her, and my husband and I, if we just stayed home and made dinner ourselves. My best friend agreed and we divided the dinner duties. Instead of a massive turkey, I roasted a chicken, she made a few sides, and I baked a cake. One of the sides she made was a potato and cauliflower mash. It was delicious, and Page loved it! It was hearty and everything you’d expect when eating mash potatoes and at the same time it had the added bonus of cauliflower. When I was making my beef bourguignon, and anticipating the yumminess of the sauce, I knew that this cauliflower mash would go perfectly with the sauce. If you’re on a low carb diet, you can omit the potatoes, and whip the cauliflower in a blender. For this recipe, I opted to not whip the mash, I wanted the hearty texture, so I used a potato masher instead. If you want a more creamy texture, just throw all the ingredients in a blender after cooking them.

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Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 10-15 minutes

Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 small head of cauliflower (about 5 cups)

2 medium potatoes (2 cups cubed)

4 tablespoons of grassfed butter

2 tablespoons of half and half (optional)

1 head of roasted garlic

sea salt and black pepper to taste

Directions: Add the cauliflower and potatoes to a pot and fill with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, and cook until potatoes and cauliflower are fork tender. Immediately drain the water from the cauliflower and potatoes, then add in, butter, half and half, roasted garlic, sea salt and pepper.

Mash with a potato masher until well incorporated, or add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth, then enjoy!

Roasted Garlic-How to Roast Garlic

Posted on September 2, 2014 by lazygirldinners

How to Roast Garlic

Can you image cooking without garlic? I can’t! I love it! Garlic lends so much flavor to a savory dish, it’s hard to imagine not having it to use. I love garlic in every state, raw, blanched, powdered, and roasted. Each has it’s own unique flavor. Roasted garlic is so delicious, and there are so many uses for it. I add roasted garlic to a plain tomato sauce to instantly take it from bland to fantastic! I add roasted garlic to one of my favorite roasted eggplant dishes. I spread roasted garlic on a good piece of crusty bread and dip it into a balsamic, red pepper, and olive oil vinaigrette, and of course, I add roasted garlic to mashed potatoes, or my cauliflower potato mash! There are a plethora of uses for roasted garlic, (like using it for my Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken recipe), once you learn how to roast garlic, you will wonder why you’ve been cooking without it!

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Prep time: 2 minutes

Cook time:30-45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 large bulb of garlic

1 teaspoon of olive oil

sea salt and black pepper to taste (optional)

1 sheet of foil–must be big enough to fully enclose the garlic

Directions: Pre heat the oven to 400F. With a knife slice the top off of the garlic. Place the garlic inside of the foil, pour the oil over the top of the garlic, making sure to cover all exposed garlic. add sea salt and black pepper if using:

Fold all sides of the foil, making sure that the garlic is fully enclosed. Place the garlic bulb in your oven:

Cook for 45 minutes, or until garlic is beautifully golden brown:

Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes, then remove by squeezing, or by removing each individual clove of garlic with a pairing knife, and enjoy!

Ground Chicken and Cabbage Curry

Posted on August 26, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Ground Chicken and Cabbage Curry

Do you ever pull out something for dinner and then have no clue what you’re going to make with it? I do…all the time! Most of the time it works out, but working out on some days can be relative. Success for me is getting a nutritious meal on the table on most days. This Chicken and Cabbage curry recipe almost didn’t come together. I pulled out the ground chicken, but all I had to go with it was the cabbage. I didn’t have any fresh onion, no fresh garlic, none of the ingredients one needs to make something taste good. My fridge was empty because I had put off grocery shopping, and now I had to pay the price. I turned to my cupboards for help. I had a bevy of ground dried spices, curry, onion powder, ground ginger and garlic. From those dried spices, this meal was born, and let me tell you what a delicious meal it was! It is one of my husbands favorite meals. I’ve made this with fresh onion and garlic, but the dried spices give this much better flavor.

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Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

1 lb of ground chicken

1 tablespoon of onion powder

1 teaspoon of garlic powder

2 tablespoons of curry powder

1 teaspoon of ground ginger powder

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, or ghee

1 small head of cabbage, chopped roughly

4 tablespoons of freshly chopped cilantro

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a pan add dried spices and heat for 20 seconds or just until spices become fragrant. Add in ground meat and brown. Once meat has cooked, add in the cabbage, and cook for about 5-7 minutes or until cabbage wilts a bit.

Remove from heat, top with cilantro and serve as is, or over a bowl of brown basmati rice and enjoy!

Grilled Pork Chops with Spicy Mustard Salsa

Posted on August 20, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Grilled Pork Chops With Spicy Brown Mustard Salsa

One of my favorite restaurants to eat at, when we are in Los Angeles, is Cafe Brazil. It’s a small restaurant, with seating for less than 50 people but the food is fantastic. If you’ve ever watched any dating show, then you’ve probably seen this restaurant several times, dating show’s love to film dates there. It holds a special place in my heart because it was one of the first restaurant’s that my husband I would frequent when we were dating. His mom lived in LA so we’d go up for a visit, and then grab lunch or dinner before heading back, sometimes with mom in tow. The food there is pretty straightforward as far as food goes, meat, beans and rice, fresh tropical juices. Simple as can be, but the food doesn’t have to be fancy to taste good. One of my favorite entree’s there is grilled pork chops with beans and rice, and a simple tomato and onion salsa, to which they add fresh parsley and a spicy brown mustard vinaigrette! So what’s a girl to do when a craving for Cafe Brazil strikes? Get in the car and drive there, or make it herself! I obviously chose the latter!

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Prep time: 5-7 minutes

Cook time: 10-15 minutes

Total time: 25-30 minutes

Ingredients:

Salsa:

1/2 cup tomatoes chopped

2 tablespoons of finely chopped onion

2 tablespoons of parsley

sea salt to taste
Vinaigrette
1 teaspoon spicy mustard
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
3teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Sea salt to taste

Pork chops
2 thick pork chops

1 teaspoon garlic powder,

1 teaspoon onion powder,

1 teaspoon paprika,

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1/8 teaspoon chili powder

sea salt to taste

Directions: Combine the ingredients for the mustard vinaigrette and set aside.

Combine the ingredients for the salsa, top with the vinaigrette and set aside.

Combine the seasoning for the pork chops, then rub generously into pork chops

Grill chops for 5-7 minutes on each side, or until cooked through–do not over cook, pork chops dry out quickly. Once chops are done, top with spicy salsa and enjoy!

Brown Chicken Stock- Modernist Cuisine inspired

Posted on August 6, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Modernist Cuisine Brown Chicken Stock

I recently purchased the six set Modernist Cuisine book set. It is a beautifully constructed work of art, but more importantly, it is the cook book to end all cook books. If you want to learn the how’s, and why’s of cooking, from a deeply scientific perspective, then you have to get this books set. I’ve certainly learned a lot about cooking from reading it. This chicken stock is one of the most flavorful stocks that I have ever made. There are not many stock recipes that call for the use of ground meat, but this one does and of course there is a very scientific reason for that, let me explain. It starts with extraction. The smaller the ingredients are, the easier it is to extract flavor from those ingredients. dicing or slicing stock ingredients more finely increases the surface area of food dramatically and doing so also reduces the cook time. So using ground meat allows you to get more chicken flavor out of the chicken and into your stock. Seems logical enough, right? This recipe also calls for the use of a pressure cooker. By now you all know that I’m a big fan of using pressure cookers, especially to make stocks. Pressure cookers, save time, and at the same time increase and condense flavors, they are great tools, and if you don’t have one you are missing out. I strayed a bit from the exact recipe in Modernist Cuisine, so if you want that recipe exactly as they wrote it click here.

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Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 2.5 hours

Ingredients: 1lb of ground dark meat chicken

3 small chicken legs

1 cup of thinly sliced carrots

1 cup of thinly sliced celery

1 large onion sliced thinly

2 large cloves of garlic thinly sliced

7 cups of cold water

4 sprigs of parsley or thyme

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon of safflower oil

Directions:

Heat oil in the base of the pressure cooker, add in chicken legs and brown on all sides. Remove to a plate and set aside. Add ground meat to the pot and brown,remove to a plate and set aside. Add onion, carrots, celery, and garlic to the pot and cook until soft. Return browned meat to the pot, add parsley, Add cold water, Place the lid on the pressure cooker, lock it and bring the cooker to full pressure without venting–you should not see steam coming out of the top, if you do, the pressure cooker is over-pressurized, lower the heat, and cook for 2 hours undisturbed. At the 2 hour mark remove from heat and depressurize your cooker based upon manufacturers instructions. Allow the stock to cool, then pour the stock through a sieve. Let cool further, then skim off the fat, before pouring into an airtight container and storing it. You can freeze this, if you are not planning to use it right away. Now, what do you do with all of the meat that’s left. The book says that if you have done your job correctly, and extracted every ounce of flavor from this meat, then to toss it. My dogs whines and dopey eyes persuaded me in a different direction;-)

Homemade Chicken Stock -Using Leftover Roast Chicken Carcass

Posted on August 5, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Homemade Chicken Stock

Store bought stock is great, it involves no work, other than opening a box, and pouring it into your pot. What’s not to love about that? As great as the store bought chicken stock is, it lacks the depth of flavor you get when you make a homemade stock. Although you gain flavor from making a stock at home, it does take time, even if you use a pressure cooker. If you are going to make this chicken stock, then do it when you have a few hours to lay around the house. Although this isn’t something you need to check very often, it does require time to simmer. This particular chicken stock is one of my favorite methods of making chicken stock, mainly because I get to make use of something that would normally get thrown out–the left over carcass of a roasted chicken. You read that correctly, this chicken stock is made using the carcass of a roast chicken. I normally add the chicken carcass, and the bones from the thigh and leg bones, I just pick the meat off of them and add them to the pot. If you’d like a more potent chicken flavor you can add a few raw legs into the pot as well, but I find that it’s not necessary, if you simmer this stock long enough it will be full of flavor. Tomorrow I will show you another way to make chicken stock, which I learned from Modernist Cuisine, stay tuned.

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Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 3-4 hours

Ingredients: 1 Roast Chicken carcass

1 cup of organic carrots diced

1 cup of organic celery diced

1 large brown onion diced

4 sprigs of organic thyme

2 large cloves of garlic sliced

7 cups of cold water

1 Tablespoon of olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

Directions: Add the oil to a stock pan or pressure cooker, add in garlic and onion, and cook until onions turn translucent about 5-7 minutes. Add in carrots and celery, and cook for another 5 minutes. Add in the carcass of the chicken and any additional bones that you have saved, add in the thyme Add in the cold water, Bring stock up to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 3-4 hours. When I cook this on the stove I check it every 45 minutes. After about 3.5 hours on the stove this stock, should be nice and flavorful, but the longer you cook it, the more concentrated it becomes and thus more flavorful. After the flavor is where you want it, turn off the fire, allow to cool to room temp, you can remove the fat that has formed on top of the stock at this point, then strain the stock through a sieve. If you are doing this in a pressure cooker, which I recommend, after adding the water to the pot, close the pot, lock the lid and bring up to pressure, lower the heat once the pot has pressurized, and cook undisturbed for 2 hours. Turn off the heat, then depressurize your pot according to the manufacturers instructions, remove lid, and allow the stock to cool to room temperature. Strain the stock through a sieve and freeze in an airtight container. This recipe makes about 4.5 cups of stock, I split it in half and freeze it. It makes it easier when I have a recipe that requires only 2 cups of stock. The remaining half cup of stock, I freeze in ice cube trays, and once frozen, I seal those in a ziplock type bag. One ice cube of stock is about tablespoon of stock, great to make sauces with.

Fudgesicles

Posted on July 22, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Coconut Fudgesicle

One of my favorite treats as a kid was a fudge pop. Back then they were sold as the low-fat, low-calorie version of ice cream. Not that any of that mattered to me , I was 7! I just really enjoyed the creamy chocolate treat! Back then fudgesicles contained 3 or 4 key ingredients, Milk, chocolate, and cream. That is a far cry from the ingredient list we see today on a fudgepop box. When formulating this recipe, I wanted to stick to what made fudgesicles great when I was little, a few ingredients and not much else. I switched out the milk for coconut milk, and added some coconut cream for richness, the result—-Heaven–creamy fudge heaven! I didn’t add any extra sugar to this, for my palate it didn’t need it. My daughter and husband both loved these without any added sugar as well. However, if you like fudgesicles on the sweeter side, add 2 tablespoons of maple syrup to the mix before freezing. Although I used coconut milk and cream as a base for these, you can use milk and cream, or just use milk. You can also use my recipe for Chocolate Tofu Pudding just freeze and enjoy!

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Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 5 minutes

Freeze time: 4-6 hours

Makes 4-6 pops

Ingredients: 2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chopped

1 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 cup of coconut milk

3/4 cup of coconut cream

Special equipment: Popsicle molds

Directions: Add the milk, cream and cocoa powder to a sauce pan over medium heat, and whisk until well combined and mixture is just below a simmer–DO NOT BOIL!!! Remove from heat. Add in chopped chocolate, and whisk until all the chocolate is melted, stir in the vanilla extract. Divide the mixture evenly among the popsicle molds Freeze for 4-6 hours or until solidly frozen. Follow your popsicle molds instructions for removing pops from molds and enjoy!

Grilled Cumin Spiced Chicken Kabobs

Posted on July 16, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Grilled Cumin Spiced Chicken Kabobs

I made these chicken kabobs over the fourth of July weekend, and everyone loved them. They were super easy to make and didn’t require a lot of time or effort to marinate. They’re a perfect quick fix dinner item, so I’m giving you the recipe. My husband is still raving about these. It just goes to show that a great meal doesn’t require a lot of time or ingredients.

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Prep time:10 minutes

Cook time:15 minutes

Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

1lb of boneless skinless organic chicken thighs–cubed

1 teaspoon of cumin

1 teaspoon of paprika

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 cup of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

Sea salt to taste

Directions: In a large bowl mix the ingredients for the chicken kabobs together,

then place the chicken on skewers.

Grill chicken on a hot grill until cooked through, about 10-15 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

Chicken Enchilada’s with Salsa Verde

Posted on July 15, 2014 by lazygirldinners

Chicken Enchiladas with Salsa Verde

Chicken enchilada’s are so easy to make. You can throw almost anything in enchiladas and not mess them up and they’re done in less than 30 minutes. A friend gave me some homemade salsa verde, and the moment I tasted it, I knew that it would make these enchiladas sing! For the chicken in these I just threw a chopped onion and 1 pound of chicken thighs in my pressure cooker with enough water to cover, and cooked the chicken for 20 minutes–easy peasy. But if you have leftover chicken you can use that.

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Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 15-20 minutes

Total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 lb of cooked chicken (shredded)

2 cups of cheddar cheese (grated)

2 cups of salsa verde

1/2 cup of black olives, sliced

10-12 corn tortilla’s

Directions: Pre-heat the oven to 375F. Lightly greese a 9×11 baking dish, then line the bottom of the baking dish with corn tortillas. Top the tortillas with the shredded chicken, top the chicken with salsa verde, top the salsa verde with cheese, and finally add a layer of black olives. Cover the olives with one more layer of corn tortillas, add a layer of salsa verde, a layer of cheese and the last of the olives. Place in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese has melted, remove from the oven, serve and enjoy!

Lazy Girl Dinners

A Lazy Girls guide to quick, healthy, and easy recipes!

Tag Archives: dinner

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan, Lemon and Red Pepper Flakes

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes!

Roasted Garlic-How to Roast Garlic

Ground Chicken and Cabbage Curry

Grilled Pork Chops with Spicy Mustard Salsa

Brown Chicken Stock- Modernist Cuisine inspired

Homemade Chicken Stock -Using Leftover Roast Chicken Carcass

Fudgesicles

Grilled Cumin Spiced Chicken Kabobs

Chicken Enchilada’s with Salsa Verde