Asian Turkey "Empanadas"

Studying Time: 2 hours
Cooking Time: 1 hour
Recipe: Adapted from Asian Turkey Lettuce Wraps | Damn Delicious 

Where have I been might you ask? J has been out of town (in California. Hate him.) and I've eaten largely cereal, oatmeal, and pancakes. Nobody wants to see that.

But, today, I'm back! J really wanted empanadas and together we created an Asian style empanada. If I were to make these again, I would use a different brand of hoisin sauce. Other than that, they were pretty good for an off the cuff creation. Reminded me a little bit of chicken roll ups that I used to eat when I was little.

Asian Turkey "Empanadas"
Serves: 2

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound ground turkey
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 small onion, diced
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 package crescent rolls

Preheat oven to 375. Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium high heat. Add ground turkey and cook until browned, making sure to crumble the beef as it cooks. Set aside. Add garlic, bell pepper and onion to the saucepan. Cook, stirring frequently, until tender. Return turkey to pan. Stir in hoisin sauce, soy sauce and ginger. Stir until well combined. Allow to cool. 

Unwrap crescent rolls, but do not separate into triangles. Seal edges and combine triangle pieces of dough into one large square. Spoon cooled turkey mixture onto dough. Fold over edges and seal. Repeat with remaining meat and dough making sure edges are sealed. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes until rolls are cooked through and golden brown.

Proscitto Tortellini with a White Wine, Garlic and Butter Sauce

Studying Time: 6 hours
Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Recipe: Trader Joe's Tortellini and a simple white wine sauce | Allrecipes.com

Very easy and delicious. This sauce was simple and tasted fancy with very little effort. It would taste great over shrimp or paired with some garlic knots or pesto pastries. Packaged pasta is so easy to dress up. Even after studying all day I still felt a little fancy.  

Flippin' the Bird {Chicken Salad Sandwich | Cooking Classy}

Studying Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Recipe: Julia Child Roasted Chicken | Chicken Salad Sandwich | Cooking Classy

I love this dill chicken salad! It tastes just like the chicken salad sandwich from my favorite place in my hometown. It's great on bread, but even better on a croissant! I spy J repping Pepperdine back there....

Cheater Korean Beef Bowl | Damn Delicious

Studying Time: 4 hours
Cooking Time: 40 minutes
Recipe: Cheater Korean Beef Bowl | Damn Delicious

SO GOOD! You know how that old woman on Patch Adams wanted to swim in a huge bowl full of noodles for her last wish in life? This is what I want to do with this dish. It was delicious! It would be even faster if I would have made the rice before hand. Very delicious and we ate enough for four people. Highly recommend.

Miller's and the Movies

Studying Time: 0
Cooking Time: 0
Driving Time: 25 minutes
Restaurant: Miller's 

Millers is not one of my favorite places, but sometimes J wants to go there. There isn't a real reason why I don't particularly like it. The food is solid and the service is always quick. I guess it's because it's another one of those restaurants on Long Island that seem like a chain even though it isn't. I got a Philly and J got cajun chicken pasta. Both were decent. I love a good Philly, but there's better to be had elsewhere. Like Vito's in Bountiful!

Little Mexico

Studying Time: Four hours
Cooking Time: 0
Driving Time: 20 minutes
Restaurant: Little Mexico 

We've searched and searched for decent Mexican food on Long Island. Little Mexico in Westbury is the closest thing we have found. And for $2, the tacos al pastor and ground beef tacos are preeeeetty delicious. 

Pulled Pork Sandwiches | Try Anything Once

Studying Time: Three hours
Cooking Time: 20 minutes
Recipe: Pulled Pork Sandwich | Try Anything Once

So many times crockpot meat turns out dry and disgusting. This is not one of those times. I really loved Dionne's recipe from Try Anything Once and look forward to making it again! The sear on the pork loin makes all the flavor difference in the world. We served it on pretzel rolls that were on sale at Trader Joe's for a dollar and it made us feel fancy. Coupled with some nutty roasted broccoli, we were a happy pair. So easy and very delicious. 

Ground Beef Stroganoff | Whole Simple Life

Studying Time: Four hours
Cooking Time: 20 minutes
Recipe: Ground Beef Stroganoff | Whole Simple Life

I spent a very long time browsing Pinterest and all my pins for a recipe for stroganoff that didn't include cream of mushroom soup. While cream of chemical soup does have it's place (in my home town's famous Funeral Potatoes and Breakfast Casserole), if I can find a recipe that doesn't use the stuff, I like to use it instead! This recipe wasn't much to look at, but it tasted very good! J boiled up some noodles and this quick dinner was ON! 

Lamb Burgers

Study Time: Three hours
Cooking Time: One hour

Beets and Bourbon

It’s been a busy week around apartment 3B. I have a presentation coming up and worked tirelessly this week on analyzing country music for gender and racial bias. I’m also planning our wedding and designing the invitations etc. which is pretty time consuming! Despite all the business, since B has the week off from his medical school rotations, we squeezed in some fun. We traveled through so pretty heavy traffic to Brooklyn so we could scout around DUMBO for some good locations for our engagement pictures and also (mainly), to eat at Smorgasburg. My recorded time for studying that day? A big fat zero. Driving time? About four hours round trip. But, the end result? So worth it. I love Smorgasburg.

I should point out that Smorgasburg is a food flea market and it is quite possibly one of my favorite things in the entire state of New York.

We try to eat something new each time we go. The schnitzel from Schnitz on a pretzel bun sang out a sweet siren song of deliciousness. I was too focused on stuffing my face with amazingness to take a picture, but Schnitz’s website, luckily, had a great picture of the Sweet Onion. This beautiful thing is a chicken schnitzel with pickled red cabbage and beets. The texture? Perfectly fried. The flavor? Out of this world.



Butter and Scotch was our next stop because they were serving maple bacon cupcakes and toffee trifle with bourbon whipped cream. I’ve had good cupcakes, but these things were out of this world. Again, I was too busy eating to take a picture. The perfect combination of salt sweet maple bacon goodness was too overwhelming. And the trifle was most excellent as well.

We finished our remarkable lunch with a most unremarkable dinner, so I won’t spend any more time talking about it.

Last night, since we were on a bourbon and beets kick, B made bourbon rib eye steaks and I made roasted Parmesan and garlic potatoes and a beet and feta salad topped with blood orange and black currant vinaigrette. Deliciousness all around! I wish we could have cooked the steaks on an outdoor grill, but we don’t have one. Yet. We used the trusty Foreman grill and they came out great.

Bourbon Street Rib Eye (adapted from Allrecipes.com)
serves two

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/3 cup bourbon whiskey
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar

• 1 tablespoon and 1-1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 (6 ounce) beef rib-eye steaks

Directions

1. Whisk together the water, bourbon whiskey, soy sauce, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice in a bowl, and pour into a plastic zipper bag. Add the rib-eye steaks, coat with the marinade, squeeze out excess air, and seal the bag. Marinate in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
2. Preheat George Foreman grill.
3. Remove the rib-eye steaks from the marinade, and shake off excess. Discard the remaining marinade. Grill the steaks for approximately eight minutes.

I’m thinking of playing around with a What’s on the Menu Monday feature so it will force me to meal plan and prep and stick to it!