Baked Orzo with Eggplant and Mozzarella

The Smitten Kitchen never lets me down. I have been using way too many of Deb’s recipes as of late and know I should branch out already but they just never let me down! I made her Raspberry Buttermilk Cake again this weekend because it was so delicious the first time–except this time I forgot to add the egg. The egg! How do you forget this!? I realized it right when I put the cake in the oven and in an “oh shit what do I do now” moment, I took the cake out and whisked in the egg. All that delicious sugar that was on top intended for the crispy topping got mixed in with the egg and I sulked. I sulked again a few minutes later when I realized I forgot to add more sugar for the topping now that the intended sugar was mixed into the batter. Aghhh!

Luckily, cooking this dinner went a lot smoother. Other than a lottttttt of chopping, this was a super easy meal to make! The prep on this alone took me almost 45 minutes but most of the can be attributed to the fact that I’m so slow at chopping veggies. It can take me 10 minutes to chop garlic sometimes…

Peas and Prosciutto Pesto Pasta

When alliteration is the title of a blog post, you know it’s going to be a good one. I have no idea if that’s really true, but I DO know that it’s true for this one!

I’m a recent pea-convert and made peas with pesto and pasta few weeks ago. It was good and all, but I used pre-made pesto because my one attempt at pesto was so terrible that I was afraid to try again. And linguine noodles were definitely not the way to go. I was losing peas left and right.

I knew I wanted to re-attempt this one since it should be a no-brianer. Then I saw an episode of Barefoot Contessa where Ina cooking with chef from Rao’s and they made his famous peas and prosciutto side dish. I immediately got inspired to turn his side dish into a main course and  simultaneously try my hand at pesto once again.

Japanese Chicken Meatballs

Wow–I haven’t blogged in forever! I have been cooking up a storm but haven’t gotten to blog any of the amazing (not included the not-so-amazing…and there’s been just as many of these…) meals that I’ve made recently.

I know people are weary of Gwyneth Paltrow after hearing the comments she made about her children’s diet, but her new cookbook It’s All Good has some amazing looking recipe ideas that aren’t as scary as you might think. They’re all gluten-free and healthy but still retain the comfort food feel that she loves.

Shaking Beef!

Vietnamese cooking genius, Charles Phan is not messing around with this one. I’ve been dying to get my hands on his cookbook, Vietnamese Home Cooking but haven’t got it just yet, so when I found this recipe in Food and Wine, I wasted no time before trying it out.

Weeknight Cherry Tomato Margherita Pizza

This is a little Sandra Lee of me, but this is a pizza made with refrigerated pizza dough (gasp, gasp from meanie food bloggers who look down on those who don’t do everything from scratch!). You could make your own dough for this. It would be easy enough, but the reason for making this exact pizza is that it’s stupid easy but will taste amazing. Even if you’re spending a couple extra bucks on the dough, it’s still way cheaper than ordering a pizza!

Best Baked Shrimp Scampi

Even though I love cooking and more importantly, love eating, I don’t know very much about the culinary world. I watch Top Chef and someone will say “This tastes great but needs more acid!” Acid? I nod in agreement with Padma but I really have no idea what’s she’s talking about.

But with this baked shrimp scampi, I know what I’m talking about. I also know it has acid because it has lemon juice and lemon zest–suck on that, Padma. What I really mean when I say I know what I’m talking about is that I knowwwww this shrimp is the best shrimp you might ever have.

Ginger Chicken Jook

I have professed my love for Chrissy Teigen countless times before but it was awesome to watch her in action cooking, rather than just reading her blog and hilarious tweets when she appeared on “On the Table with Eric Ripert.” This girl is my kind of chick: funny, obsessed with Bravo, and loves food even more than I do.

So when I saw her on Ripert’s show making Jok Moo, I got inspired give cooking rice porridge a try. My boyfriend will eat almost anything but is in a definite Asian food mood lately thanks to a great local restaurant making authentic (and spicy!) Schezuan food, Han Dynasty but he and I had never had jook before.

Eggplant Parmigiana Grinders

I love eggplant parmigiana so much that I make my “lighter” version of it at least once a month…except each time I seem to add more and more mozzarella cheese which is kinda wrong considering its name. Oh well.

I really have the uncanny ability to take any semi-healthy recipe and turn it on its head. Super healthy, like boarding on crazy healthy, people the world-over would be horrified at how much dressing I add to salads, how I over-salt everything and how immediately after eating anything remotely good for me, will probably find some chocolate to have for a snack. But I still try to eat right…when I’m not planning a great eggplant parm dinner!

Chicken and Veggie Packets

Is this the best chicken recipe ever? No. But it’s HEALTHY. And it’s semi-inventive with the preparation method of aluminum foil or parchment paper packets. And I really love zucchini and sweet little cherry tomatoes and steaming them with the chicken makes them sooooo delicious.

This should be simple enough, but I didn’t actually read the directions until the last second and they looked like they were written in like a different language. I was folding the paper in my mind as I read them until I got to the part where it told me to make a VALENTINE. Ummmm….??? My boyfriend tried to help but he ended up using like all of the foil when we only had a limited supply and I as I stared around at the kitchen littered with parchment and aluminum foil Valentine’s day hearts I saw my dreams of chicken and veggie packet dreams crumbling down.

Buffalo Chicken Macaroni and Cheese

My photos are worse than they’ve ever been…this just proves the amount of stress I felt making this…or proves I should use the camera I own instead of my iPhone….

I’m posting this recipe in the “dinner” category, but I think it falls more into the line of like football Sundays, tailgating, party food.

First, this is just not a recipe to whip up for dinner on a Wednesday night like I did. It says it should take 20 minutes of prep time but I think I might have tripled or quadrupled that.

Second, it has like five million calories in it so you probably don’t want to serve this for dinner regularly.  This is a cautionary statement a la the new and improved Paula Deen.

So those are the cons. But luckily the pros are really great. First and foremost: it was delicious! The recipe is spot on with everything you could want or expect in a buffalo mac and cheese. I loved the idea of frying the chicken (after it had been marinating in beer!) and then coating in with hot sauce.  The cheese sauce was amazing and blue cheese and bacon were the perfect additions. I was so delirious while I was making this that I couldn’t find in the directions what I was supposed to do with the bacon. Today I see with clear eyes that I should have added it to the cheese sauce and mixed it throughout but I was in a serious cooking haze and just crumbled the bacon on top. It was great this way! I’d say that I would make it the right way next time, but I don’t see myself taking on this cooking challenge for a long, long time.