Lemon Bacon Shrimp Pasta with Chard

What to make for dinner? We've all found ourselves asking ourselves this question while only having the kitchen only be filled with leftover ingredients of meals past. That's exactly what happened with this dish. It was born out of hunger and the impatience of waiting for a pie to finish baking. Why, yes the pie is indeed going to be the next post. 

Everyone has that one food they can not stand, for me it's brussels sprouts, I know it's a bit cliché, but I don't even like them enough to find a recipe that makes them taste good enough to choke them down. A certain photographer's least favorite food, as weird as it sounds, is bacon, since we basically only had bacon, shrimp, and chard in the fridge, I tried concocting a dish that would hopefully appeal to the both of us.  Not to spoil the end result, but a dual appealing dish was not the result. 

I've thought about it and I'm not going to post the actual recipe on here, because it was sort of a throw a bunch of stuff in a pan and see how it turns out kind of dish. I will tell you what's actually in it, because I'm that nice. Even with just the listed ingredients you should be able to recreate it or creative something simliar of your own.

Lemon Bacon Shrimp Pasta with Chard

• Shrimp (16/20 size)
• Jowl bacon cut into tiny strips
• Lemon juice and zest
• Onion chopped
• Garlic minced
• White wine
• Angel hair pasta
• Chard chopped
• Basil out of jar (I know I'm ashamed of me too, but it was the only basil we had in the kitchen)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Goat cheese

Serves 4 small portions

Sometimes not using a recipe can be liberating, being able to free yourself from the shackles of Betty Crocker. Take this post as a challenge for the inner culinary explorer within you. See if you can take the inspiration and make it your own with what you have and hopefully make a dish that everyone will enjoy!

Photos by a non-bacon loving Katy Weaver

Open Face Steak Sandwich

Here's a cooking tip for everyone reading, if you want to make a sandwich fancier, make it an open face sandwich. It shows off all the content in the sandwich in an appetizing way. Want to make that PB&J sandwich more interesting? Just make it an open face sandwich. Boom! All your dinner guest will be impressed with your culinary skills. Here's another cooking tip, don't serve PB&J sandwiches at a dinner party, unless it's some weird dinner party for 8 year-olds.

Everyone loves steak, even vegetarians, they just won't admit it. Steak is amazing and an important part of a balanced diet, but sometimes just eating a hunk of meat doesn't cut it. Not even with a steak knife. And most of the time when I order a steak sandwich from a restaurant, it's either super greasy or very dry, occasionally I'll find a place that's somewhere between the two, but those places are pretty rare. That's why I wanted to make my own steak sandwich and use the most marbled pieces of meat I could find. 

Caramelized Bourbon Onions

• 1 large yellow onion chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 shot of bourbon

Serves about 4

1. Get a skillet, melt the butter, and add the garlic. After about 30 seconds add the onions, and sugar. Cook over medium high heat until the onions are caramelized.
2. Add the shot of bourbon to deglaze the pan and cook until the liquid is gone.

Open Face Steak Sandwich

• 1 lbs Denver steaks
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• a dash of salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup shredded white cheddar
• 1 loaf of ciabatta bread thickly sliced 

Serves about 4.

1. Preheat your oven to 500 and place a cast iron skillet in the oven (I used my cast iron griddle and it worked just as well). 
2. While the oven is heating up. Place the steaks in a bowl and toss them with the olive oil, salt and pepper.
3. Once the oven reaches temperature take the skillet out of the oven and place it on the stove top over medium high heat. 
4. Place the steaks on the skillet for 30 seconds. Flip and cook the other side for 30 seconds as well. Flip the steaks again and place the skillet back into the oven for 2 minutes. Flip the steaks one last time and let cook for another minute. Take the steaks out of the oven and let them sit on a plate for about 3 minutes before cutting them into strips.
5. Take a slice of ciabatta and spoon enough of the bourbon onions on it to barely cover the bread.  Sprinkle the cheese over the onions, that way it gets all melty. Then slice the steaks into strips and place on top.  Enjoy!

This steak sandwich pairs nicely with the chard from this recipe, and if you're looking for an appetizer, yam hash browns make a wonderful opening to this dish.

Once again all these stunning pictures are by Katy Weaver.

Blood Orange Rainbow Chard

This is probably my most colorfully titled blog post yet! Chard and citrus complement each other very well and blood oranges are probably my favorite fruit within the citrus genus. For those who have never had chard, it's nothing to be scared of, chard is just a leafy green that's high in vitamin A, C, and K.

Blood Orange Rainbow Chard

• About 12 large leafs of chopped rainbow chard
• 1 blood orange juiced and zested into strips
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of minced garlic

1. Heat the oil in a large sauce pan over medium heat. Throw in the garlic. Put the chopped chard in the pan, I like to include the steams, but you don't have to add, if you find them too crunchy.
2. Peel parts of the orange skin into strips and add the zest to the pan. Cut the orange in half and add the juice as well. 
3. Cook over medium heat while stirring occasionally until the chard is wilted, about 8 minutes or so.
4. Plate and serve as a side! And make sure to remove the orange peels! Enjoy!

Above is a little preview of the Open Steak Sandwich post, which I'll be posting later this week!

These are all colorful Katy Weaver photos!

Yam Hash Browns

When given the chance to choose between regular ol' potatoes and yams, I'm going to yam it up. Yams are probably my favorite tuber, that is if I had to pick just one. As anyone who follows this blog knows that I love breakfast food, but to be honest I've never been a huge hash brown fan, whenever I eat them I always feel like something was missing. I discovered that the sweetness of the yams works well with the onions and to complete the full flavor of the dish I topped it with hot sauce and goat cheese. 

Yam Hash Browns

• 2 large red yams peeled and grated
• 1/4 cup of diced onions
• olive oil
• crumbled goat cheese
• Hot sauce (I use Sriracha)
• Sliced green onions
• Salt & pepper to taste

1. Peel the skin off the yams. 
2. Grate the yams into a large mixing bowl. Once the yams have been reduced to pieces, squeeze out as much of the juice you can. I'd recommend doing this over the sink. Also, you're hands might be stained orange after you do this, (regular hand soap removes the yam caused jaundice).
3. Mix in the diced onions with the bowl of yam shreds, add salt and pepper to taste. 
4. Find a large skillet somewhere in your kitchen, I don't know where you keep yours. Add enough olive oil to make a layer about 2 cm deep, and heat over medium high heat. 
5. I usually make two hash browns at a time. I make two hash brown shaped, well hash browns in the pan. Let the first side cook for about 5 minutes then flip and let the other side cook for another 5 minutes. DO NOT put the cooked hash browns on paper towels, they'll stick to the fibers in the paper and it'll just turn into a mess. I recommend using a wire cooling rack. 
6. To finish the dish, plate the hash browns and top with crumbled goat cheese, green onions, and hot sauce. Enjoy!

This is just the appetizer, more posts coming later this week!

All photos taken by Katy Weaver (I would highly recommend checking out her awesome newly redesigned website!)

Artichokes in Avocado Hollandaise Sauce

People always say that food carries an emotional and personal connection to to it. I tend to avoid talking about those kind of things on this blog, because I try to mainly focus on the food. Now this recipe doesn't have any personal or emotional for me, I mean it's just artichokes and sauce, but I feel like I've created a connection with this dish. Let's be honest you're not reading this post for the personal story behind it, you probably just found this recipe on Google or someone repined it on Pinterest and you just want to look at the pictures, or you'll just scroll down to the recipe without reading this text block.

Since this recipe is pretty short I'm going to continue with my narrative. Sometimes people fall out of your life and they don't come back, the universe can be cruel like that, and there's nothing you could have done to change the outcome. Other times those people come back into your life and it's all the time spent apart from each other that make you realize how important they were to you and how important they still are to you. This simple little dish of artichokes and hollandaise sauce will always remind me of that feeling of someone great reentering your life, even if it's in some small way.

Artichokes in Avocado Hollandaise Sauce

• 4 artichokes
• 6 cups water
• 1.5 tablespoons of minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Pinch of salt
• Avocado Hollandaise Sauce from this post.
• Hot sauce of your choice

1. Heat the water in a large pan on high until it boils, then add the garlic, olive oil, and the salt.
2. Cut the stems off the artichokes to a reasonable size. Also cut the tops off the artichokes. Feel free to cut the tips of the pedals off, but it's not required.
3. Place the artichokes in the boiling water, cover the pot and let them cook for about 35 or until the stems are soft.
4. Serve with the hollandaise sauce. I added a drop of hot sauce to my dish to give it some color and some extra kick.

This makes for a perfect side dish or as an appetizer. I suggest getting creative with the platting. Enjoy!

All these artsy artichoke photos by: Katy Weaver Photography