The other week I was looking through my recipes and I found a recipe for roasted broccoli. Sounded good, but I had cauliflower in the fridge. The recipe was simple and tasty so I substituted the cauliflower for the broccoli and added a bit of paprika to add color and a little smokiness. This created an amazing side dish that I will be making a lot more of.
The cauliflower got a really nice color and the tips of the florets caramelized nicely to give a great flavor.
I am a huge fan of garlic bread and I am always looking for a new way to make it. I took this idea from the bread at the local grocery store. They make a tear apart cheese bread that is pretty good. The concept however, is awesome. No need to cut the bread and you can serve it family style. Plus, since the bread is braided, there is garlic butter throughout the whole loaf of bread.
The braids allow for the center of the bread to be light and fluffy. So darn tasty!
Last week I picked up some different rums to make the hurricane cocktail for Mardi Gras. Since I had some extra lying around I decided to make another cocktail. This one combines my two favorite juices, orange juice and cranberry juice.
I served it straight up in a Martini glass but also enjoyed it on the rocks.
The other day I was strolling through the Crate and Barrel Outlet when I saw French Onion Soup Crocks for $1.99. I had to pick up a couple. Since then I have been on the hunt for a tasty French Onion Soup recipe. Most called for cooking the onion over the stove-top until they were caramelized and tasty. But after finding this version from Cookography via Cook’s Illustrated I had to make it. This version roasts the onions in the oven to help build a nice complex flavor. It is extremely tasty.
Topped with homemade croutons and Provolone Cheese this was the best French Onion Soup I have ever had.
It is really cold here in DC. I thought moving to the south would be cool, but this is way too cool for me. I know what you are thinking, but DC is technically the south as it is south of the Mason Dixon line. Since it has been so cold and snowy here in DC, I have been spending a ton of time by the fireplace trying to keep warm. The only thing that I can think of that goes great with fire is a cup of fresh hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows/s’mores. However, I forgot to pick up Marshmallows at the store. Luckily I had the ingredients lying around to make my own. This is the story of how a box of gelatin saved me during the great snowmageddon.
The Marshmallows can be cut big for fire roasting or small for hot chocolate.
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I have been experimenting with pizza crusts. So I have a ton of pizza dough lying around. You can only have so many pepperoni pizzas before you need to find something different. So I decided to try my hand at breakfast pizza. If you have been near a TV at all over the past couple of days you know that it has snowed here in DC. It has snowed a lot, roughly 27 inches. I have a front wheel drive car and there is no chance of me getting out of my house for another day at least. So I had to substitute a few ingredients in my breakfast pizza. Normally I would use salsa as the base, but since I had none and there was no way of me getting to the market. However, I did have a can of diced tomatoes. So I substituted that. It was still good, but salsa is the best.
The pizza browned nicely and allowed the eggs to finish setting. The best way to start the morning.
Usually I post about things to do in DC, but this weekend is going to be crazy. 18-24 inches of snow are supposed to fall in the Nations Capital. To you guys in the Midwest this doesn’t seem like much, but think about it this way. Last year we got 6 inches of snow. Further, there are only a handful of snowplows. So even a couple of inches of snow cause havoc. That is why there was no bread, milk, meat, eggos and frozen pizza in the grocery store. It is coming up to the big game weekend and I had to wait 30 minutes at the butcher counter just to get ground beef. Don’t even get me started about the people fighting over the last snow shovel. It is a mob scene out here.
Looks like Tucker is gonna have another fun weekend!!
So instead of posting what to do in DC, I decided to link to some great recipes that will keep you toasty and warm.
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The weather here in DC has been all over the place. We have had snow one day and a sunny 65 degree day the next. Who knows what it is going to look like tomorrow. When it is nice, I like to take advantage of it, you never know when it is gonna snow. It just so happened that earlier this week we had a 65 degree day. So I immediately began planning a barbecue. It has been so long since I fired up the Weber that I did not know what to cook. So I researched a good barbecue recipe. I finally came upon a barbecue sauce recipe from Giada that used balsamic vinegar as the base. I was intrigued. So I made.
Was I ever happy that I made this sauce, it is amazing!!
