Copycat El Torito Spanish Rice
The staple rice I make when cooking my copycat El Torito steak or chicken fajitas. Also pairs well with my copycat Chili’s steak fajitas too.
Savoury Chicken with Water Chestnuts
This is one of those staple Chinese food dishes I cook. It’s filling, appetizing, and pairs well with most other Chinese dishes I throw together. The beauty of it is, I can cook this dish whilst working on two or three other dishes simultaneously.
Brown-butter toffee blondies
The addition of smashed up slabs of toffee and chopped walnuts add a crunchy but oh- so-chewy texture when you bite in to each piece.
These blondie bites are one of my wife’s favourite desserts that I make about once every six months for her. I’ve also distributed these bites amongst colleagues when I have been working on-site with a client.
When you serve these toffee blondies you can either cut them larger (100mm/4″ squares) in size as an individual serving or bite-sized about 40mm square. Either way, the obligatory glass of cold milk should be included.
I find the blondies more than sweet enough as-is, but if you have a very sweet tooth, or you just like the look of the dust treats, a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar adds a nice touch.
Bruschetta
This bruschetta recipe works well served with warm ciabatta bread.
Garlic Dijon vinaigrette dressing
Cream cheese Wellington
Warm or cold, this cream cheese baked in puff-pastry and layered with Cremini mushrooms, bacon and shallots pairs well with a small bottle of Lambrusco and some left over ciabatta that you have toasted up.
This is one of those dishes you want to take it easy on because you aren’t fooling anyone when you say you are on a diet and then proceed to eat half of this appetizer. It is about as healthy as it sounds. My wife kids herself that this dish is healthier when I make this with “reduced fat” cream cheese.
This is a perfect appetizer spread when you have friends over and is incredibly easy to prepare. I’ve laid out the instructions so that your time actually cooking is kept to a minimum if you can chop whilst keeping an eye on a pan on the stove.
There is no Nutrition Label for this recipe yet.
Margherita pizza variation #2
This is a pretty simple Margherita pizza that uses limited ingredients. It is usually what I to throw together when at a friend’s house and working with a limited pantry inventory.
For the pizza dough recipe check out either this recipe, or this recipe. And for the pizza sauce recipe, there is this one, and also this one.
Quick French onion soup
This is my quick French onion soup recipe. It comes together in about two hours of cook time, which is ideal for a late dinner, or even lunch.
This is a recipe that is perfect for “when the mood strikes you” rather than having to plan ahead with my slower French onion soup recipes.
Scrambled eggs with creme fraiche and chives
You’d think most scrambled egg recipes are pretty simple affairs. Eggs, a little salt, maybe a little pepper, you’re pretty much done.
I cannot stand wet scrambled eggs. It’s this runny, snotty consistency that reminds me of some of the nastier versions of “instant oatmeal.” Usually, the only way to make scrambled eggs and not have them wet and runny is to cook the hell out of the eggs until you go the other extreme; a rubbery, overcooked, dried out lump of yellow with an overpowering eggy flavour. There’s no happy middle ground.
This recipe elevates the humble scrambled eggs to a whole new level. The addition of chives, cut very small so that they cook almost instantly, adds a savouriness that you don’t normally equate with scrambled eggs, and the creme fraiche, or alternatively cream, adds a rich, creamy texture without being wet.
And there’s one more trick when cooking these eggs, and that is a way to control the cooking far beyond the control you get from the heat dial on your stove top.