Chinese Chicken Salad - 5 stars!

i am cheating, and bypassing thanksgiving. it'll be a long post, and i'm not in the mood for it now. :)

this is my meal tonight! again, i definitely need to find a more attractive way to photograph my salads. photography is not something i'm good at. any suggestions?

this salad was AMAZING. it was better than i expected. i marinated the chicken breast in some asian sesame 30 minute marinade (yes, i cheated), then grilled it. i did make the dressing from scratch (including fresh minced ginger and garlic), so i figure that makes up for my bottled marinade. i got some chinese cabbage for tony, but i just used plain old romaine in mine. not a cabbage fan.

i topped it with fresh sliced green onion, red bell pepper, shredded carrots, mandarin oranges, and of course, chow mein noodles (out of can - greasy but good!). i also tossed in some fresh cilantro and mint. i believe that's what put this salad far above any other chinese chicken salad i've ever made / eaten. YUM! oh, and i squeezed fresh lime juice over the top. what a difference those three things made! (fresh cilantro, mint and lime juice)

Chinese Chicken Salad Dressing:

¼ c vegetable oil
2 tbls apple cider vinegar
1 ½ tbls soy sauce
2 generous tsp dark sesame oil
1 generous tsp honey
½ garlic clove, minced
¼ tspn minced fresh ginger
1 generous tsp sesame seeds
2 tbls smooth peanut butter
1 tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp black pepper

Whisk together and pour over salad. Toss well to combine.

Pork Salad - 2 stars

i think i need to find a way to better photograph my salads. this looks gross - and it was actually very tasty, only a couple complaints. i also probably need to come up with some tastier-sounding names. pork salad? uh..... doesn't sound too tasty to me.

this was a day when my dinner was simply a salad. it was a combo of baby romaine & spinach, topped with sliced pork (leftover peri peri rubbed pork from previous post), avocado, red onion slivers, garbanzo beans, mandarin orange, sliced tomato, croutons and a mandarin sesame dressing, i believe. oh, and i see some pomegranate seeds in there. everything but the pork was very good. seared pork butt is great when it's hot, not so great when it's cold. it's too fatty, and when it's cold, the fat congeals. and congealed fat does not make for a good salad. use only lean cuts of meat if you're using leftover cooked protein in your salad.

two stars.

Seared Pork (4 stars) + Gnocchi (3 stars) with Spinach Salad

this was a great meal! a little heavy for me, well - the serving you see here wasn't, but i kept picking more gnocchi out of the serving dish. too much gnocchi IS a bad thing.

the salad was more gourmet than my normal ones - it contained avocado and pomegranate seeds. mmmmm. fantastic. plus some other fruits and veggies.

the pork was rubbed in an african peri peri rub and pan seared. the cut of the pork is what made it so special - it's a pork butt roast that i cut into pork chop-type slabs. it's a fatty cut of pork - there are some hunks of fat, which i don't like, but the fat is also ribboned through the meat. it's like the chicken thigh of pork - a nice, rich, moist dark cut.

the gnocchi was good - i used jarred garlic (ew, so lazy!) and fresh parsley, oh, and olive oil to season it. the taste and texture of the parsley didn't go well. it was too rough and tasted bitter. next time, i would use chopped fresh garlic, and saute the garlic and the parsley in olive oil for a minute before tossing w/ the gnocchi.

(fortunately, this used up the last of my jarred garlic, so i will not succumb to laziness again!)

over all - salad + pork = four stars, gnocchi = 3

Spaghetti Vongole - 5 stars!

heaven! i believe this is the first recipe i've cooked out of a cookbook my mom gave me last christmas - the food of italy. it's a very authentic italian cookbook, and this dish was simple, and amazing! full of fresh clams, lots of garlic, tomato, fresh parsley, lemon zest... some other things i can't remember (it was a couple weeks ago). we had bread smothered with butter and chopped garlic. i tasted garlic for a full day afterward, despite multiple teeth brushings.

five stars!

introduction to my blog o' food

there are not many things in this world that get me more excited than food. i love to eat food, of course, but more than that, i love to read about it, make plans for it, talk about it, create different meals with it, analyze those meals, obsess about it some more - generally just immerse myself thoroughly, as often as possible, in the world o' food.

i will document my creations here - my victories and utter failures, and the mediocrity in between.

YUMMY!