Asian Beef and Mango Salad

Week 3, day 3...

Asian taco salad? Surprising, but good. Spicy beef, light dressing, crunchy peanuts, cool cucumbers, tangy cilantro and sweet mangos. It also meets my 3 main criteria for salads: knife unnecessary, lots of vegetables other than lettuce and fruit/nuts!

Shrimp with White Beans and Quinoa

Week 3, day 2, a.k.a., shrimp with white beans and toast.

The more I think about this recipe, the more I love that it is a total secret weapon. It literally took less time than a DiGiorno pizza to make this (and that is even with me peeling and slicing the garlic). The subtle flavor of butter, garlic and white wine (traditional shrimp pairings), together with the creamy white beans and peppery arugula, results in a sophisticated meal. Yay!

Update: we fell off the health wagon a bit in December, and I made this as originally designed, with toasted white bread. Husband (completely ignorant that we'd had this before) swore the bread made the dish. So there you go.

Chicken Paprikash

Week 3, Day 1 -- My husband starts the week by doing the Billy Crystal quote of "too much pepper in my paprikash" and requests a viewing of this movie while we eat the chicken paprikash.

First: I think this recipe needs to be a little more descriptive. "Bell pepper" should have a color-- it looks like the photo editor used green, but I used red because I wanted the sauce to be a uniform color. 2 1/2 lbs. thighs and drumsticks should be more specific, as in, 4 chicken legs (each leg being one thigh and one drumstick). And "large pot" should really be clear that you need something with reasonably high sides, but also a wide surface area-- something like this All-Clad saute pan, 6 qt. size, would be perfect.

Second: I don't think tomatoes and a bell pepper are sufficient as a dinner vegetable portion. We deleted the egg noodles and added cauliflower, as you'll see in the picture.

Enough whining; the Hungarian version of chicken cacciatore is good weeknight food. It's also one of those perfect, "add ___ and pause" kind of meals where you can manage to do all of your mise en place and cleaning while it's simmering away. The sour cream and dill really make the recipe, adding a fresh and creamy texture to an otherwise hearty braised dish.

Steak with Roasted Carrots and Onions

Week 1, Day 4, will need a do-over... catch it next time.

Week 1, Day 5, however, was the perfect fit for a Friday night. Steak and wine is the best reward for a week of chicken and diet Coke. No idea what Newport steaks are; we bought a large NY strip steak and split it. Since we needed to open a new bottle of wine for the sauce, I opted for red; the sauce was a dark burgandy instead of a nice mustard color, but it was delicious. I've never cooked with tarragon before; Central Market doesn't carry it in the local herb section, so I bought the package and was scared when I opened it and smelled the black licorice-y flavor. Fortunately, the dijon and the wine tone down the anise and negate the Twizzler effect. So easy that this may be my go-to sauce for steak. And I love when recipes remind me that all you need to bring out the best flavor in vegetables is olive oil, salt, pepper and a roasting pan (see, e.g., asparagus). Somehow the onions imbued their scent not only in my entire kitchen, but in the carrots as well.

Turkey Burgers with Creamy Romaine Slaw

Week 1, Day 3 (skipping the pasta dish due to excess carbs, boo).

I have never been a huge fan of turkey burgers. I think this is because I've seen too many episodes of the Biggest Loser where Jillian and Bob chastise the contestants for eating ground turkey that is not strictly breast meat; therefore, when I am trying to have a "healthy" burger, I'll substitute chicken breast or a black bean burger. But it turns out black bean burgers have a huge amount of sodium, and even 93/7 turkey is low in calories, and we're all going to die anyway. Also: my first turkey burger was incredibly bland and difficult to forget.

But these turkey burgers are not bland! It's kind of the Giada de Laurentiis throw a bunch of stuff in the turkey meatballs approach (see here). I liked the tangy mustard, and the oniony scallions, and I loved that I had already bought thyme for the previous day's recipe. The romaine and carrot slaw was a fun topping; my husband admitted that he hated coleslaw, but that this version was both creamier and more flavorful. Success! I used baby romaine, which took a little longer to slice, but I used a food pro for grating the carrots and that went quickly.

Roasted Tilapia, Potatoes and Lemons

Skipping back to week 1 of the Real Simple one-month meal plan.

The roasted tilapia, potatoes and lemons was a nice balance of summer and winter-- crisp, fresh lemons and tilapia and familiar, homey potatoes and thyme. Kalamata olives to add a Mediterranean flair. Perfect for October. At the risk of sounding cliche, this looked incredibly sophisticated but was real simple.

Next time, I'll make it ever-so-slightly more complicated but keeping half of the thyme on stems and breaking off the leaves and chopping the other half. The thyme looked appealing on stem, but was difficult to eat, especially when the roasted lemons also fell apart and we were picking out lemon zest as well. The lemon issue may have been user error; next time I'll use a larger pan and try to get them crispy on top (this time, I used a small casserole and ended up putting the tilapia on top of the lemons and potatoes).

Chorizo and Potato Tacos with Black Bean and Radish Side

Skipping Red Currant-Glazed Chicken with Spinach for now... will blog on the next go around...

Okay, these chorizo and potato tacos are awesome. My husband actually saw this recipe in the magazine and asked every night if we were finally having it. It's one of those silly things -- I love tacos with potatoes but never made them at home because I thought the true dice would be too time-consuming. However, when you use bursting-with-flavor chorizo, you can spend an extra minute chopping because you save time on seasoning. Similarly, I usually serve plain canned black beans, which I like but don't love. Here, though, the beans are not reheated. The radish/lime/cumin/cilantro combo really helped step them up (although I refuse to call it a "salsa" since there aren't any peppers). We used low-carb wheat tortillas and ate the beans on the side since the chorizo mixture more than filled them up. This recipe followed the warm meat, cold side pattern the other recipes used; I'll have to see if that carries through the other weeks.

Overall, YUM, but... by far the least healthy of the week. It's difficult to get an exact count on chorizo, since we used the Central Market links, but it was not bueno. The pork fat covered potatoes, though-- muy bueno.

Lamb Meatballs with Couscous and Feta

Real Simple week 2, day 2...

These lamb meatballs came together so fast it made me totally rethink meatballs! It helped to divide up the lamb mixture in four equal chunks, and then each chunk into 5 pieces. I never think of serving just raw tomato/cucumber as vegetable sides, but they were so fresh and delicious here mixed in with the lamb, dressing and couscous. (As an aside, for the "English cucumber" I believe the magazine is referencing a seedless cucumber-- mine actually happened to be from Canada). I can't imagine these would be as good with hamburger, but it was tempting to get extra lean ground beef since I know the ground lamb is fairly fatty... oh well. One final invaluable hint here: 4 oz. is A LOT of feta. Without a kitchen scale, I would never have guessed it was so much. It felt nice to get the extra :)

Overall, our second favorite of week 2.

Real Simple Four-Week Dinner Plan / Curry Shrimp and Snow Peas

October's Real Simple features a four-week dinner plan of easy weeknight recipes. Last week we did week 2-- we got out of order because the first meal of week 1 (Roasted Tilapia, Potatoes and Lemon) was too close to the Baked Cod and Chorizo to have 2 weeks in a row. So far, the recipes are simple and quick as promised, and the variety is incredible. We tend to fall in a fish/chicken Mexican/stir-fry rut, and even though I plan each week in advance I've never tried to vary the cuisine this much, which I'm definitely going to start doing. However, we have had some problems with the emphasis on white flour based dishes (toast, pizza, pasta) and therefore it looks like I'll be eliminating or adapting 1-2 recipes a week.

To start, the curry shrimp and snow peas. Bean sprouts and red curry paste are ingredients I have never bought before-- yay branching out! Central Market has a bulk bin of bean sprouts in the produce section, near the bulk lettuce, so I was able to buy just the right amount. I ended up using quinoa instead of rice, as we were out of brown rice, and this dish definitely needed something to soak up the sauce. Overall, I loved the cold, crunchy vegetables and the warm, Thai-style shrimp; not sure that I loved them together, in the same bowl. Next time, I think we'll try this as an entree and a side.