Pizza Casserole
Recently, I have been thinking about how great it would be to do catering. I have also been cooking for friends quite a bit, which I love. Both things involve cooking for a crowd, which can be hard to do. The more I do it, the more fun it gets. It is hard to think up original recipes for large groups sometimes, so I am really excited to share this one. This week I needed a meal to feed 14 friends. I didn’t want to do chili again, so I began to brainstorm and search the web. Casserole recipes are great for large groups and pizza is great for parties, which makes this pizza casserole the ultimate party dish. The original recipe that I found, form Country Kitchen Cooking, used pasta instead of breadsticks. Since I work at Noodles & Company, I decided against using the pasta. I think the breadsticks give it much more flavor. I made my green bean casserole to go with the meal and help my ski bum friends get some nutrients into their dinner. This spin off pizza is easier to make and won’t keep you in the kitchen for the entire party!
Chicken, White Bean, & Chorizo Enchiladas w/ Green Chile
I have an addiction to Mexican food, or any food similar to it, so I am always looking for new recipes so I am not eating the same thing again and again. I have made enchiladas before, but only with chicken. I also have attempted to make green chile before, but put an entire bag of extremely spicy chile peppers in the food and ruined the dish (I had to add an entire jar of tomato sauce, and entire bag of cheese, and milk to make it even semi-bearable!).
I can now say that I have found one of the best enchilada recipes and green chile recipes. Thanks to Drick’s Rambling Cafe for the enchilada recipe, which I tweaked a bit. I will definitely be keeping this recipe for future meals. I chose to slow cook the chicken so that I could easily shred it, plus it gives it much more flavor. You can cook the green chile with pork if you would like, but I felt that it wasn’t necessary with all of the meat in the enchiladas.
Cajun Salmon w/ Spicy Eggplant Salsa & Minted Cucumber Relish
This is probably the fanciest recipe I have ever made. A friend of mine typed this recipe up and sent it to me during her vacation, I had been looking forward to cooking it with her. I was like a little kid with a new toy while I was cooking and plating the food. It is always fun to make fancy dishes that you can plate nicely. This recipe has a LOT of flavors in it, but my friend and I decided that the cucumber relish really isn’t very necessary and it would probably have been better without it. The eggplant salsa was very unique, but really good!
Cream of Asparagus Soup
This recipe is awesome, but is kind of like my lobster recipes in the sense that I cannot afford to make it all of the time, since asparagus is so expensive! I was lucky enough to go to Costco with my Mom this week though (I have the best Mom in the world!), which meant large quantities of asparagus. This soup was a hit among my friends this week, when the weather was well below zero for a few days. It is really good if you serve it with garlic bread!
Indian Meatballs w/ Curried Vegetables
I came across a recipe for Indian Meatballs while I was in New Zealand last summer, but never got around to making them. This week I decided to add to the recipe I found to make this dish. This dish is not very spicy because the coconut milk tones down the curry, but can be made spicier with Siracha if you desire. This took me a bit longer than I expected… I never realized that making meatballs was such a hassle!
Trailer Trash Pot Roast
My friends and I decided to have an early holiday dinner to celebrate Christmas this week. A little while back, I came across this recipe on the Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy blog, but hadn’t gotten a chance to make it. A pot roast is a great thing to make during the holidays, because you can begin cooking it early, then cook everything else while it finishes cooking. This recipe combines Coca Cola and Chili Sauce for a perfect combination of sweet and spicy.
Chicken Breasts w/ Roasted Red Peppers
It is that time of the year again… no not the holidays, the time when everybody you know is broke, waiting for their paycheck or other form of money to come in. A few friends and I wanted to make dinner together, but could not afford an extravagant meal this time. There are so many ways to dress up an ordinary chicken breast. This recipe (originally found on MyRecipes) is perfect for those days right before your paycheck comes in, costing less than $2 per serving!
Chicken Makhani (Indian Butter Chicken)
I found out about Chicken Makhani a couple of weeks ago and have been dying to make it. I am in love with sauces, so this dish definitely caught my eye. The combination of a flavorful sauce and a little bit of spice made it a favorite in my book. I used a clove of garlic and some ground ginger instead of ginger garlic paste. I also used skim milk instead of half-and-half, like the original recipe (found on Big Oven) called for. My version of the recipe is the healthier option for those of you trying to eat healthy! =)
Lobster & Shrimp Thermidor
The second lobster dish that I cooked this week was Lobster Thermidor. This recipe took a bit longer than the Butter Poached Lobster & Shrimp recipe. I added shrimp to this recipe as well to add some extra substance to the meal, since we didn’t have very much lobster meat. I found this recipe on MyRecipes from Cooking Light, but tweaked it a little. It is a healthier version of a Lobster Thermidor recipe. If I could afford to buy lobster more often, I would cook these two recipes all the time!
Butter Poached Lobster & Shrimp w/ Fresh Tomatoes & Basil
For my weekly cooking lesson with my mom, I killed and cooked my first lobster! We decided to make two different recipes with our lobsters. This is the first recipe we made, a very quick and simple way to cook lobster with a ton of flavor.
