Shrimp and Feta Capellini

It's February in Texas...so you know what that means.  Time for a nice light summer pasta!  It's from another blog called Love and Pancakes... I modified it a little and took a few more pictures to illustrate the process.  That blog is solid though you should check it out.

Grab your ingredients.

White Wine Buttered Shrimp with Capellini and Feta

Prep: 5 min. ~ Cook: 15 min. ~ Total: 20 min. ~ Serves: 4

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs. cooked, peeled jumbo shrimp

8 oz. angel hair pasta

2 cups white wine or white cooking wine

4 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. green onion

2 tsp. fresh parsley

2 tsp. fresh minced garlic

1 large tomato, diced
1 oz. feta cheese crumbled
Salt and pepper

Dice a large tomato and chop 1 bunch of green onions into small peices.

Get a thin spaghetti, angel hair or capellini pasta boiling in some water and olive oil. Melt the 4 tablespoons of butter in a pan with 2 teaspoons of minced garlic over medium high heat.  Add the 2 cups of white wine and bring to a boil, let the sauce reduce down by half.  

Season the shrimp with salt and pepper and add them to the pan.  Cook for three-five minutes.  Flip them shits.  

Add the green onion, tomato, and parsley.  I also squeezed the juice of half a lemon in there.  Cook for another 3 minutes.

Take up the pasta and mix with the shrimp and sauce.  Toss with Feta...I used about 4 oz instead of 1oz.  Cause I'm a fatty mcfatstuff.    

Enjoy!

Rib Roast and Rolls FTW

If your family runs out the same tired holiday trash every year...turkey and dressing...ham and mashed potatoes....cocaine and waffles...and you are sick of that crap...well this post is for you.

A rib roast is the perfect holiday change up and it's sure as shitzle to please.  Throw in some homemade rolls and you'll be erupting at your dinner table.  With mouth joy.  That is the overflowing joy inside your mouth.

The rib roast is super simple.  Buy one fresh at your local grocery when they go on sale, generally for about $5.99 a pound.  Should run you in between $35 and $45 for one that can feed a family of 4-5.  

( Yeah there's two of them.  We're fatties )

Set it out on the counter a few hours prior to cooking so that it reaches room temperature. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Then slap on a healthy dose of sea salt and course ground black pepper. 

( That's just the salt. Add the pepper too. I was a few beers in at this point )

Put a sheet of aluminum foil down on a baking pan and set the roast on top.  This will capture the meat drippings and you can make au jois if you like.  Put it in the oven at 450 degrees for about 25 minutes and then reduce the heat to 325 degrees. For a mix of medium rare to medium well throughout the roast, you are looking for a center temperature of around 140 degrees, which should be reached after another hour and a half of cooking after reducing the temperature.  If you like your meat more "done" then you should cook an additional 15-20 minutes. Let it sit for 10 minutes once it's out of the oven before slicing.  

 

Your first slice should be along the bones to remove them. 

Rub some horseradish on that bastard and get to eating.  If straight horseradish is too strong, cut it with some sour cream.

The sweet yeast rolls are a little more effort...but they are so good you could skip the rib roast and eat these shits by themselves. They do take a lot of prep, a lot of waiting and a lot of "working"  but they are so worth it.  I wouldn't recommend trying them for the first time while making a holiday meal...practice first.

Here is the recipe. It's Paul Prudhomme's.  And thanks to the Moms for being my hand model.  And doing all the work.

Ingredients: 

About 7 cups all-purpose flour, in all
6 Tbsp sugar, in all
1-1/4 tsp salt
2-1/2 packages dry rapid rise yeast 
2-1/4 cups hot water (105-115 deg F)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted

I took a lot of pictures because this really is a big undertaking for someone with absolutely no experience in the matters of bread making...maybe the additional visuals will give you the confidence to give it a shot.  Or maybe you'll just untwist your loaf of Wonder, bite into it, and sob softly to yourself as it sticks to the roof of your mouth.  

In a large bowl, mix 6 cups of the flour, 5 tbsp of the sugar and the salt. 

In a separate bowl, combine the yeast and the remaining 1 tbsp of the sugar with the hot water. 

Let sit 5-10 minutes,  stir until yeast granules thoroughly dissolve. 

Add the oil to the liquid mixture.

Add half of liquid mixture to flour and mix with your hands to moisten the flour as much as possible. 

Add the remainder of liquid mixture to dough and mix until the flour is thoroughly incorporated.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand until smooth and elastic to the touch, about 10 minutes.  

Gradually add 1/2 to 1 cup of additional flour (add only enough to keep dough from sticking). 

Place in a large greased bowl and then invert dough so top is greased; cover with a dry towel and let stand in a warm place (90-100 deg F) until doubled in size, about 1 hour. 

During the summer you can place it near a window...during winter you should probably preheat the oven to two hundred, turn off the oven, wait a few minutes, then put the bowl in the oven and close the door.  

Grease a large baking pan or casserole dish with veg oil.  

Punch down dough. 

Form rolls by pinching off small portions of the dough and rolling them into small balls a little larger than a golf ball.  

Don't roll the dough between your palms, rather fold the ball over itself three to four times then dip it into the pan face down to grease that side, then bottom down in rows.  

Once you've made all of the rolls, cover and let rise for another 35 minutes or so until they have doubled in size again. Then bake at 325 until lightly browned 35-45 minutes. Brush tops with melted butter 5-10 minutes before done and return to oven. 


I'm a terrible blogger and got too drunk to photograph the last couple of steps.  But you can get an idea of what it was like from the plate I subsequently demolished. Trust me...worth ever bit of the effort!

Enjoy!

Cranberry Blue Cheese Stuffed Chicken and a side of Kale

I pulled this recipe from Taste of Home and altered it slightly.  The only thing better than stuffed chicken... is stuffing your face with stuffed chicken.  So stuff on people.

Here is what you'll need:  RECIPE

I substituted blue cheese for gorgonzola and dried parsley flakes for fresh parsley.  I also cut the walnuts.

This recipe requires quite a bit of prep and you'll need several large mixing bowls to make the process go smoothly. 

Combine 1/2 cup of dried cranberries with 1 cup of cheese.  

Combine 1 tablespoons of dijon mustard with 2 large eggs.  

Whisk to your heart's content.  

Combine 1 cup of breadcrumbs with 1-1/2 tablespoons of dried parsley and a 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.  I've converted to the sea salt and black peppercorn grinders that you can find at your local grocery in the spice section.  It beats the hell out of the already ground salt and pepper.  

Pour 2/3 cup flour in a mixing bowl.  

Pound six chicken breasts with a meat tenderizer until they are about 1/4 inch in thickness.  Use one of your fresh urban chickens from your backyard.  If you don't have any of those, buy the fresh chicken breasts from the refrigerated section of your local grocery.  The boneless skinless stuff from the freezer section is just booty.  

Get all bowls and chicken on the same surface near one another.  

Spoon a tablespoon or so of the cheese and berries onto your chicken.  A little bit goes a long way and the more you stuff in there, the harder it is to fold it and finish the prep.  

Fold the chicken over.  You can secure the fold with toothpicks or you can just be careful as you go through the next steps.  If you use toothpicks be sure to pull them out before you serve!  

Coat the chicken on both sides in the flour.  

Then move over to the eggs/mustard mixture.  

Coat the chicken on both sides in this mixture as well.  

And finally over into the bread crumb mixture.  Just coat one side in this step.  

Psych!!!! Coat both sides you big idiot.  

This is a step where I venture off from the recipe.  Taste of Home would tell you to just stack those breasts onto a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.  But not this guy. 

 I say put them in a pan with hot olive oil and brown them on both sides first.  

Then you can put them on a baking sheet and into the oven.  

You'll only need to bake them for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees if you pan fry first.  If you are super skeered of Salmonella then you can stick them with a meat thermometer.  Make sure it measures 165 degrees or higher inside the actual chicken breast...not the cheese and berries.  

Because you people are such special butterflies fluttering around on my blog...I'm also going to show you how to cook some Kale to go with. It's a leafy green from the cabbage family but eats like spinach.  If you read the Why We Get Fat series also posted on my blog, you'd know it's considered a good veggie to nom on. Wash your kale in a clean sink.  

Chop a small yellow onion.  

Fry a few of pieces of bacon in a pan.  

Remove the bacon and all but a couple of tablespoons of the grease.  Add the chopped onion and 1 tablespoon of minced garlic.  

Sautee for 7-10 minutes on medium heat until the onion is tender.  

Remove the onion/garlic from the pan and deglaze that bastard with 1/2 cup of chicken broth.  

Add the Kale to the pan and cover.  Cook for about ten minutes over medium/low heat.

Add the onions back to the pan.  Chop the bacon into small pieces and add that too.  

That's some good looking Kale right there Bro.  

As a finisher, find yourself a nice third world lady to top off your Kale with "a taste" of red wine vinegar.  It's potent so don't go apeshit here.  

Add yourself a side of store bought Uncle Ben's wild rice and you've got yourself a slam dunk right in the mouth hole.  Stuff and repeat until your intestines explode. Then take another bite.  Enjoy.