The past few weeks have been nothing short of hectic, with flights all around the country and random events popping up here and there - and the foreseeable future isn't much calmer! So most of my last few meals have been repeats and haven't warranted whole blog posts of their own, but before I dive into last night's dinner here is a quick update on things I've made lately:
1) Prosciutto Pizza - using raw dough from Mariano's not TJ's, I say this with a heavy heart... but.. the dough from Mariano's was MUCH better. Easier to work with, better to taste and texture, just better. Anywho, I topped the pizza with Cento brand canned tomato sauce (never used it before but I always buy their brand of clam juice and clams when making linguini with clam sauce), shredded mozzarella and parm, and of course lots of prosciutto. It was fab along side a heaping helping of kale and spinach on Sunday night.
2) Beef Bolognese - super simple, super Dahlish. Sauteed crushed garlic with finely diced shallot, in olive oil then added a pound of ground chuck and seasoned with salt and pepper. Once the meat was browned I added a can of crushed San Marzano tomatoes and a bunch of fresh chopped herbs and let it simmer away. Simple as that.
3) Spinach Salad lunch - I am a creature of habit and especially with things like breakfast and lunch which I pack almost every day. It's hard to stay creative and healthful so sometimes I get stuck in a rut bringing the same thing. every. day. This past week lunch has been a salad of spinach, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and turkey along with oil and balsamic vinegar. For breakfast you can find me scarfing down my daily dose of cottage cheese and berries.
4) Roasted Chicken Breasts & Wild Rice - This was a week or so ago, I used my go to method for the chicken breasts (which includes popping them in the oven on broil for ~10 minutes on each side). I served the chicken atop Trade Joe's Wild Rice which includes hearty barley - I also mixed in some spinach and paired the whole thing with an easy caprese salad.
OK now onto last night's dinner. My roomie had requested earlier in the week that I make some sort of shrimp in white wine sauce.. to which I groaned and gripped that I didn't want to eat pasta which is of course what comes to mind for white winey shrimp. I thought and thought and finally decided that I would still in fact include a carb in this meal but it would have to be colorful and it had to be something that needed to be used (I have a LOT of veggies on hand that need using before I head out of town again this weekend). So purple potatoes it was.
For the shrimp I simply sauteed one finely diced shallot with some garlic and fresh cracked black pepper until translucent. Then I added my peeled and deveined shrimp, which I had let marinate in half a lemon's worth of juice for about 10 minutes. I cooked them to a nice pink on each side before adding a bit more salt and pepper, dried ground basil, a few glugs (that's a real unit of measure right??) of white wine, and a small pad of butter.
The shrimp only take a few minutes so I did this right as my potatoes and asparagus were finishing up in the oven. I had roasted the potatoes after cutting them into bite sized bits and drizzling with olive oil, salt and pepper. The asparagus was steaming away in the oven in a nice little tin foil pouch.
I served the shrimp and sauce over the potatoes which soaked up the wine flavor nicely - I felt satisfied but a little better about downing purple potatoes than white flour pasta - call me crazy!
