At random times when I’m cooking if something looks (or smells or taste) particularly beautiful, I like (LOVE) to get out my camera and take a picture of it. And with all the cooking I’ve been doing this year, I have a LOT of food photos on my hard drive. Here are just a few from March:
On the day after St. Patrick’s day I made our corned beef and roasted veg. It. Was. Delicious. (In part thanks to the two bottles of Guinness I cooked it in). I think my boyfriend said it gave “Blueberry Marinated Flank Steak” a run for it’s money as THE tastiest thing I’ve ever made. This wasn’t a particularly labor intensive dish as much as it was nerve wracking. It took hours and hours to cook and I was paranoid it wouldn’t turn out well.
Following St. Patrick’s day over the weekend we went to the West Side Market and bought some fresh fruit and veggies to incorporate in to dinners the following week. One of things we bought was a bag (yes, like a whole big shopping bag) full of different living lettuces. We’ve become big fans of fresh/living lettuce as the kind that comes in the bags is usually sad, tastes funny, and just isn’t as crispy as fresh lettuce. Going along with that, we’ve tried to stop buying packaged foods in general…including salad dressings. So on this particular night I tried a new recipe for a lemon thyme vinaigrette, candied my own pecans, and pickled my own onions. The pickling was surprisingly simple and the onions were (surprisingly) even tastier than the kinds you get on fancy restaurant salads.
Another gem of an item we bought from the market was fresh asparagus. UGH I LOVE GREEN VEG. I was on a serious Mediterranean kick in March so I made artichoke, roasted tomato, olive pasta to go a long with these greens. These just have a little salt and pep, crushed garlic, olive oil, and of course lemon on them.
We also bought three big baskets of peppers (mild, medium, and hot) with the intent to cut and freeze some of them and to make pepper sandwiches with the remainder. We also bought a pound of fresh garlic sausage from one of the butchers in the market and WHOA was that sausage garlicy. Sauteed pepper sandwiches are simple (just add some garlic and onion with the peppers) but they’re wicked delicious.
These sprite carrots from the market (so cute with their green tops!) were roasted with red potatoes and went alongside the pot roast I made. The roast didn’t get as much time as it needed to fully just…fall apart…when you forked it, but it was still tasty and the carrots added such a nice fresh taste to the dish.
