Mediterranean Flavors!

After living the island life for the last two weeks and being lucky enough to have others cook for me or eat out, it's time to get back on track and back to cooking!  I'm not one of those people that looks at recipes first and then buys those ingredients when I go to the grocery store.  I usually stock up on the basics and lots of fruits and veggies when I go to the grocery store and THEN find recipes to match the ingredients I have on hand.  While searching through Pinterest today, I came across this recipe for eggplant and a mediterranean salad that looked great!  I decided to give it a try today!

Here's the Pinterest recipe I used:

http://www.themediterraneandish.com/mediterranean-chickpea-salad-with-zaatar-fried-eggplant/

Here's how it turned out!

Shepherd's Pie!

I know many people make Shepherd's Pie in tons of different ways, but here's the method I've adopted!

Whenever I make ground beef, I always make a lot and usually freeze some of it to save for a quick and easy meal.  I make my ground beef the way my mom makes it (sort of like a sloppy joe).  We grate an onion in a pot, add the ground beef to it, season it with some salt, pepper, and cumin (and a sprinkle of allspice), add a little chicken bouillon cube to it, and then add a whole can of crushed tomatoes to the mix.  I stir that up and let it simmer for a while and add a can of tomato paste and sometimes a little brown sugar.  I let that simmer again for another 15 minutes or so and then use this ground beef mix for a few different recipes!  I use it in my Macarona bel Bechamel (see previous post), put it over some spaghetti, eat it with some pita bread, and use it in my Shepherd's Pie!

I make my Shepherd's pie by boiling some potatoes and then peeling them and mashing them.  I add a stick of butter, some milk, salt, and pepper and mash them all together to get a mashed potato mix.  I use half of the mix for the bottom of my pan, spread a little cheddar cheese over it, add a layer of frozen mixed veggies, a layer of the ground beef above, and then top it off with the remainder of the mashed potato mix.  I use a fork to mar the top and then top it with a little more cheddar cheese and pop it in the oven for about a half an hour.

We buy an AMAZING white cheddar from Costco that our family just LOVES. It's the Kerrigold Dubliner Cheddar (for Caribbean folks - it tastes just as good as the New Zealand cheddar you may get back home!!!).  My daughter LOVES this cheese and we love to eat it with some Crix as a midnight snack :)

Here's the Sheperd's Pie:

Completed pie!

This is what the pie looked like out of the oven!

I like to broil the top a little before taking it out of the oven

Here's the cheese!!!

Top layer forked

Spreading the top layer over the ground beef

Adding the frozen mixed veggies

Layer of shredded cheddar

Mashing the potatoes

Green Seasoning

I've talked briefly about my "green seasoning" in a previous post, but since I decided to make some this morning, I thought I'd share my process!  Publix had chicken breast and chicken thigh on sale this week for their buy one get one free sales and so I bought two of each and needed to season them!  One of the best pieces of advice I can give to anyone who is too busy to season (hello....2 kids under the age of 3!!!!!), is to buy good meat, clean it and season it right away, and put it in the freezer!  I, personally, have been doing this for years (even pre-children).  It makes life sooooo much easier.  You just take down the meat you want to cook that morning and when you come home, it's thawed and seasoned and all you have to do is cook it!

Green seasoning is another Caribbean staple that I've learned along the way.  It's basically a mix of green herbs, onions, and garlic blended together to make a paste that you can season all of your meat with!  When I lived in NYC, I used to just buy a large bottle of this stuff (pre-made) from my local West Indian grocery store and just pour it over my meat to season it.  Now that I have my own herb garden and try to make food as fresh as possible, I make my own.  There are tons of recipes on how to do this and what ingredients to add - but you should add more of what you like and less of what you don't like I think :)

In my green seasoning, I like to use things from my garden: chives, green onion, thyme, parsley, and cilantro.  If we happen to go to the Flea market and have some culantro (Shadon Beni), I put that in, otherwise, the cilantro is just fine.  I also add an onion, some garlic, a small piece of ginger, and a squeeze of lemon.  I like to also put in my own spices and tend to add in salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika.  I drizzle some olive oil over the top and put it all in the blender.  A few years ago, we invested in one of those Vitamix blenders, so that's what I use for almost all of my blending!

Here's a look at my green seasoning:

Fresh herbs, onions, and garlic in the blender

All blended up

Seasoning over cleaned chicken

Seasoning massaged in

My two freezer bags of meat, labeled and ready for the next time I want to cook chicken

Lots of veggies and Leftovers

Every now and then, we have a night of random leftovers in the fridge, so I try to do something with them to finish them up :)  I usually turn them into a stir fry dish of some sort and so last night, that's exactly what I did.  We always have a bag of frozen mixed vegetables from Costco in the freezer for just these occasions and I always have ingredients on hand to make a stir fry sauce with.  I posted about this sauce before, but if you didn't read that blog, I've added the link to it below.  I love the sauce that's made with this shrimp and broccoli recipe from Pinterest and it's my go-to sauce for most Asian dishes I make (regardless of what the recipe calls for).

Here's the Pinterest recipe for the sauce:
http://damndelicious.net/2015/01/16/easy-shrimp-broccoli-stir-fry/

Now tonight, we also didn't have much left for dinner and I had made a tuna salad this morning for my hubby to take for lunch with him as a wrap and so I decided to make a pasta salad to go with it.  I learned this pasta salad recipe from the lead teacher at a daycare center I was working at while I was in college back in Arizona and it has also been my go-to recipe for years!  The secret ingredients are red onions, black olives, and it MUST be Wishbone Italian salad dressing.  They used to make one called Zesty Italian, but I haven't been able to find it in a while and so now I use the one called Robusto Italian instead.  I take this pasta salad with me to dinner parties and picnics.  It's SUPER easy and can be made with ANY veggies you have in the refrigerator.

Pasta Salad - I used what I had in the fridge: carrots, cherry tomatoes, yellow zucchini, broccoli, black olives, and red peppers.  The tricolor pasta is a MUST!

Salad dressing for Pasta Salad

Here are some pics of my stir fry:

My 2 year old's portion for dinner :)

 I also decided to try a stuffed mushroom recipe that turned out AMAZINGLY!  Here's the link to the Pinterest recipe I used:
http://www.thebusybaker.ca/2016/04/spinach-and-ricotta-stuffed-mushrooms.html

Stuffed mushrooms before going into the oven

Capped mushrooms and cheese blend before stuffing the mushrooms

Mushrooms out of the oven

Mmmmmmm Salmon!

Every now and then, we run out of our bulk supplies and have to make a Costco run.  We did so earlier this week and were very pleasantly surprised to find that they were carrying wild caught salmon!  My husband refuses to buy anything that was farm raised (for health reasons and because we've seen way too many documentaries...) and so we were happy to find a wild caught salmon fillet!  I made a SUPER simple meal that turned out great!  Made some plain, white rice, steamed a bunch of veggies, and marinated the salmon in that great Soyaki sauce we get from Trader Joe's (I've mentioned this sauce in several posts!!!!).

Here's how it turned out:

My plate of food!  I also love to put a little sweet chili sauce (found in the Asian section of the grocery store) to the top of my plain rice! 

For anyone wondering about how I feed my 2 year old, here are her portions.  The larger plate is what she had for dinner and I always just pack her a lunch for the next day whenever I cook.  The smaller container has her lunch for the next day.  I just have to heat it up and give it to her.  Makes my life easier!

Salmon straight out of the oven.  I cut up some chives and rosemary from the garden and sliced some lemons to put over it before putting it in the oven.

Simple steamed veggies tossed in some butter, salt, and pepper.