(almost) bandera salad

May 12, 2009 by purplelara

Another rip off recipe, this one from Cactus Club.  I’d never had this salad at Cactus Club, but it’s Andrew’s favorite so I took a stab at it a while back using the description from their online menu.  I’ve since tried it at the restaurant, and while mine is not exactly the same, it’s just as delicious and since it runs about $15 at Cactus it’s obviously way cheaper to make it at home.  When we do make it at home I get to remind Andrew (after he has two helpings) that he just ate about $30 worth of salad, and also that he has to wear pants in a restaurant.

  • Spring mix salad
  • Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about one per person)
  • Cajun seasoning
  • Feta cheese to taste
  • Approximately one cup cooked (and cooled) corn
  • Approximately one cup chopped dates (do yourself a favor and make sure you buy the pitted ones)*
  • A couple of handfuls of crunchy-munchy bits (as Andrew calls them, aka chow mein noodles – quite often found in the produce section, near the croutons, otherwise, try the Asian or International section)**

Sprinkle the chicken breasts with Cajun seasoning and throw on the BBQ.

The salad at Cactus is served with a Honey Lime Vinaigrette.  I have yet to make a reasonable facsimile from scratch, but I’ll keep trying.  Lately I have been wimping out and buying a Key Lime Vinaigrette from IGA and adding the juice of one fresh lime, and a squirt of honey. Mix with braun, etc.

I assemble the salad by dumping everything on the plate except the chicken and crunchy-munchy bits, which I add after I’ve added the dressing (I prefer not to drown out the flavor of the Cajun seasoning and the crunchy-munchies can get soggy).

This is a real stand-bye for us.  One meal doesn’t use up all of the feta, corn, dates or noodles so we often have these ingredients at home, which means I just have to pick up some lime, chicken and salad on the way home.  There’s really very little prep to do, so it all comes together really quickly and is really yummy.

*We bought some “real”, “fresh”, “a uthentic”, blah blah dates at an Iranian store one day and they were awful – mushy and too sticky. The ones found in the grocery store are better for this salad.

**We always laugh at the “International” section. When does a food qualify to move from the “International” sectio to the regular aisles? They have Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Thai and Japanese food (among others) in the International section at IGA, yet pasta and pasta sauces are in the regular section.  Italian isn’t International, but
Mexican is? I personally believe Mexico should be up for a promotion to the regular section, as I’ve been eating it for as long as I can remember.  Asian foods may not have been on the North American radar quite as long, so I think they need to put a little more time in the International section before they can be promoted.  Also I think too
much.

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wasabi chicken burgers part 2

May 11, 2009 by purplelara

I came home with stuff to make Andrew’s favorite – Bandera salad (more on that tomorrow), but Nicole called and propositioned us (!!).  Her offer: she’d bring beer (and cheese) if I’d make my wasabi chicken burgers to go with the beer (and cheese) and the Canuck’s (last, as it turned out) game.

The only thing I have to add to my previous entry is that Nic brought asiago cheese and I do believe it is the perfect cheese for these burgers, so forget the cheddar, baby.

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a night out

May 9, 2009 by purplelara

Hurray! I didn’t have to cook. We were invited to Nicole’s to eat, drink wine and watch the game.  She made us an amazing dinner of salmon with (I think?) a sour cream sauce, bocconcini salad and steamed new potatoes.  I’m reserving this space for her recipes, if she’ll give them to me, since Andrew said it was the best meal he’d had in AGES and AGES and AGES. Ahem.

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OMG PIZZA

May 8, 2009 by purplelara

At IGA right now they have a stamp saving promotion where you can collect bakeware after collecting x number of stamps. I spent $350 there in a few weeks, so I got *free* pizza pan the other day. Really, it’s for making homemade pizza and we wimped out and used Boboli crusts, but still. Free! (ish).

We headed down to IGA to pick up the pizza fixins and while we were in the checkout line a young guy behind us was ordering pizza on his cell. He turned to his girlfriend and said “Sweet! On sale for $9.99!!!” Andrew and I looked at our bill for $49 and wondered how Domino’s stays in business. Oh right, their pizza sucks. Suck = cheap.

Anyways, Andrew was in charge of a classic pizza, and I attempted to rip off Earl’s California pizza and came pretty close.

California pizza

  • Boboli crust (or make your own if you are not lazy and more interested in spending your Friday night drinking wine and not rising and kneading and rising and kneading and throwing in the air and all that “when the moon hits your eye” stuff).
  • Pesto sauce
  • Sun-dried tomatoes (get the ones that are not packed in oil, if you can)
  • Shrimp (we bought a shrimp ring because it was on sale, and the shrimp were the perfect size. The little ones from the seafood section looked too small and prawns looked too huge).
  • Feta cheese

Assemble according to your taste preferences – we used a lot of everything. Man, it was good, but we’d go a little easier on the pesto next time – it was a tad salty, especially with the feta, so balance your pesto/feta accordingly.

Classic pizza

  • Boboli crust
  • Tomato paste (paste, not sauce – Andrew’s insistence)
  • Italian seasoning (added to the sauce paste)
  • Garlic (ditto)
  • Pepperoni
  • Green pepper
  • Canned mushrooms (he insisted on canned – he said the “off-set” the green pepper…?)
  • Mozzarella cheese

Perfect classic pizza, although again, we’d go a little easier on the sauce paste next time.

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steak with spinach salad

May 7, 2009 by purplelara

There’s not much to say about the steak, other than I rubbed some pre-made steak seasoning on it (a low-sodium version) and BBQ’d. Oh wait, there is one other thing. I really want a meat thermometer. HINT HINT ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS FOR WHOM I COOK DINNER FOR EVERY NIGHT HINT HINT.

This is the spinach salad recipe I usually follow, I no longer remember where I got it – perhaps I’ve cobbled it together from a few different ones:

  • Bag of pre-washed spinach
  • 3 or 4 hard boiled eggs
  • 4 or 5 sliced mushrooms
  • Almond slivers
  • Two or three strips of bacon, chopped and cooked – obvs.

Dressing

  • One tablespoon olive oil
  • One garlic clove, smashed
  • 1/3 cup white wine vinegar
  • 1/3 cup Dijon mustard
  • Minced shallot (an onion will do if you don’t have shallots handy).

I always whip up my dressings with my Braun handheld – this dressing can go back in the fridge or you can warm it up right before serving, which is nice in the fall or winter.  I have on occasion omitted the bacon entirely (when I forget to buy it).  When I do, I have added a small plop of bacon grease in the dressing – sounds gross but it’s not.  It’s best if you are going with the warm dressing for this, as it needs to get melty.

I guess you could call this our low-carb dinner, not that we’re trying for that (if it’s not low-carb, don’t yell at me, I don’t know, I’m just making conversation).

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leftovers

May 6, 2009 by purplelara

Happy Sixth-o de Mayo! We had burritos again (still determined to use up what’s in the fridge).

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Clean out the fridge pork chops with mushroom quinoa

May 5, 2009 by purplelara

I had a craving for that comfort food meal of pork chops on rice, baked with Campbell’s Cream of mushroom soup, but we’re trying to be healthy(ish) so I came up with this meal to try to satisfy the craving. We also had a bunch of stuff in the fridge that needed eatin’ pronto, so contrary to what I said before about not inventing recipes myself, I did create this meal without a recipe. Here’s what I can remember:

Purchased for this meal:

  • Two or three centre cut boneless pork loin chops (less fatty than the bone-in (delicious-er) ones)
  • Fresh mushrooms

Found in the fridge:

  • Nearly ready for the compost red onion
  • About to grow sprouts garlic
  • Staring to get a little wet looking spinach
  • Wrinkled and beginning to shrivel mushrooms
  • Light sour cream approaching its expiry date

Always in the cupboard:

  • Quinoa
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

Chop old wizzely mushrooms into teeny, tiny pieces (so you can no longer tell how wrinkly and unappealing they look). Sauté them in olive oil along with onion, garlic and spinach. Add a tablespoon or two of this mixture to about a cup of light sour cream. Chop fresh mushrooms into larger pieces and very briefly sauté them and add to the sauce. This way it appears that the entire mushroom flavor is coming from fresh, lovely mushrooms and not wizzled up old mushrooms no one wanted to eat. Sauce: done.

Cook quinoa as previously described. When it has finished fluffing (heh), stir in the rest of the onion, garlic and spinach mixture and steam for another minute or so.

I rubbed a tiny bit of olive oil, garlic and S&P onto the pork chops before baking them (I would normally have thrown them on the BBQ but since it PPPHUUUUUH’d out of propane a few days before that wasn’t an option).

Spoon the quinoa onto plates, place a chop on the quinoa and top with the sour cream sauce.

We loved this dinner – it’s amazing what you can do with a craving and a fridge clean-out.

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fajitas I didn’t have to cook

May 4, 2009 by purplelara

Andrew made fajitas for what he called Fourtho de Mayo. They were awesome — he steamed flour tortillas and filled them with grilled onions, red, yellow, orange and jalapeno peppers, shredded cheddar, chicken and guacamole.

He has a secret fajita making tip: when he served the fajitas he set out a little bowl of (light) sour cream and salsa mixed together for each of us, and we spooned a gloop of the mixture into our fajitas with each bite. So I guess it’s more of a secret fajita eating tip. Our fajitas didn’t get as sloppy and fally aparty as they would have if we had layered the sour cream and salsa in when building the fajitas. He is smrt.

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whole foods burgers

May 3, 2009 by purplelara

We took Dex for a walk down at Ambleside and after he peed down a strange woman’s back, we headed over to Whole (Paycheque) Foods to pick up dinner. Being a lazy Sunday we decided on pre-made burgers from the butcher section – I chose a bacon and cheese beef burger, with the bacon and cheese mixed right into the patty. Andrew picked a mesquite beef burger and a rosemary lamb burger.

Whole Paycheque is really a rip off, but the patties weren’t too bad  — about $4 each.  Sure we could have made a lot of burgers for the $12 we spent, but it was still cheaper than ordering in or going out for a burger…and they were amazing. Even with the BBQ pegging out with a big PPPHUUUUUH about three-quarters of the way through cooking them, they ranked up there in the top 5 burgers I’ve had, and I know my burgers.  Highly recommended. I want one now.

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sanafir

May 1, 2009 by purplelara

I went to Sanafir on Granville tonight with a group of girlfriends. While I’ll highly recommend the food there, I’d suggest you bring a big wallet and a small appetite. I’m pretty certain this restaurant caters to the pre-club-going, young and beautiful set and not the stuff your face and then go home and fall on the couch in your lulu’s to watch a movie set, so I understand (and was expecting) smaller portion sizes and the prices seemed reasonable on their on-line menu.

I arrived a bit late so I’m not sure if we were given a features menu or not, but sticking to their tapas style menu was more appealing anyways.  The tapas items are presented in an interesting way – listed are eight different tapas groupings:  calamari, tuna, prawn, lamb, arctic char, pork, chicken or vegetarian.  For $14 (which is completely reasonable) you receive three tapas from your group selection.  For instance, if you choose chicken, you get Moroccan Chicken Tajine, Indonesian Chicken Satays and Kashmir Tandoor Chicken.

If you don’t want all three dishes from the same grouping, another option is to pick three items from the entire tapas menu for $19 – also reasonable.

The last option is to share a chef’s platter which isn’t so much a platter, but rather a chef’s choice of tapas.  Four of us chose to do this, for $35 each, which is where I found quantity of food : cost to be a little off.  However, the chef’s choices really were amazing. From what I remember, we had hummus, soft-shell crab with a lemon garlic aioli, mushroom risotto, beef with Chinese yard beans and ahi tuna.

Definitely a great, if small, meal – which left lots of room for wine and homemade après dinner limoncillo, oh yum.

I will definitely go to Sanafir again, but in retrospect I think a better option (for me) would be to order a couple of the tapas group selections, which would be $7 less than my portion of the share platter, and seemed like more food.  Again, the food was fabulous, so mentioning the smaller sizes and the price of the chef’s choice platters is not so much a critique as an observation — and fair warning that you may have to hit the drive-thru on the way home.

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