I am always amazed with the interesting things one can find when you’re really not looking. I recently ran across several recipes on weather.com of all places. They were promoting some simple and healthy breakfast options for the start of the school year. One of the recipes caught my eye so I decided to try it out for Dawn and myself. It’s called a breakfast pizza margherita. Here is the recipe:
- 1 English Muffin
- 1 Large Slice of Tomato
- Some Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
- 1 Egg (Fried)
- Bacon (or in our case vegetarian stripples)
- Fresh Basil
- Balsamic Vinegar
Turn your broiler on. Split your English muffin, place the tomato and cheese on one half, and sprinkle a little balsamic vinegar on the other half. Place both sides on a baking sheet and slide under the broiler. Broil until the cheese is melted and browned to your preference. Remove from the oven, add the fried egg and basil. Close the sandwich and enjoy!
Dawn and I have become big followers of America’s Got Talent. As the authors of Cats. Crooners. Cook. We wanted to congratulate Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., a formidable crooner himself, for his win on this season of America’s Got Talent.
I must apologize. We’ve had a pretty shaky stretch the last week or so trying to find time to add to our blog. Part of the reason is related to Dawn introducing me to Glee. I fought this for a long time. Dawn would always mention how great this show was, but every time she did I would make some sort of a snide comment and dismiss her claims of greatness. Well, on date night a couple of weeks ago we realized that we had watched all the movies and TV shows we owned. It was either re-watch something, or give Glee: The Complete First Season
a try. Well it took all of about 25 minutes for me to become a certified Gleek.
Well tonight I have cleared some time and am determined to touch on a couple of dishes we want to share with you. First off I want to highlight the drink station we created for our kick off dinner a few weeks ago. I don’t know about you guys, but drinks have always been an interesting area for me. The focus of our dinner was absolutely not intended to be the drinks, however we didn’t want to simply serve water and wanted to be a little more creative than buying a couple of bottles of juice from the store. Both our friend Tim Ko and myself love a simple San Pellegrino with fresh lime. There’s not a lot more refreshing than a cold sparkling water with fresh squeezed lime juice. So I decided to see what we could put together in that area. I’ve seen several recipes in magazines highlighting different fruits and vegetables to flavor water. Knowing that everyone attending the dinner had very different tastes we decided to create a drink bar with several choices to flavor the water. We sliced some lime and lemon, cubed some cucumber, and balled some melon and let each person make a drink tailored to their tastes. It was simple to set up, simple to make, and provided a refreshing element to our savory meal. You could substitute any type of fruit or vegetable you think will create a refreshing drink.
It’s nigh time that we introduce you to the small, cuddly, furry part of our blog’s title. Let me introduce you to Gaby and Lucy.
My family has had cats as long as I can remember. When I came to Ohio I had to come home to an empty apartment every day. Then I found Gaby and Lucy, a cute pair of sisters, at PetSmart. My cousin helped talk me into adopting these two kittens and I brought them home. Since then, I have gotten to experience their personalities.
Gaby likes to relax by lounging on the couch we don’t want the cats on. She likes to play with the plastic ring from milk bottles. She loves to have her belly scratched. She refuses to socialize on the bed when her sister is already there. And we recently discovered that she is addicted to wheat grass.
Lucy hates to be held. She likes to be in control and the instant you pick her up she begins to howl. However, Lucy loves to cuddle under the covers during the winter. Lucy gets very energetic when playing with her favorite toy, sometimes doing complete flips in the air.
As Aric already said, I can’t believe a week has gone by since the big dinner but to be honest, with the amount of food that was made, it seemed like a daunting task of where to start. Pair that with the 250 or so pictures taken of all the food (courtesy of our dear friend and fellow chef that evening, Tim Ko) and I think it has taken us a week just to sort through it all to bring you the highlights from that evening!
Since Aric already covered the meat (and non-meat for the vegetarian better-halves), I will dive right into the salad portion of the meal. One of my favorite cuisines is Italian, one of Aric’s is Greek. It only made sense to make a salad that evening that combined the two flavors and the first thing that came to mind was Ina Garten’s Greek Panzanella.
Panzanella stems from Italian origins and is typically made with just bread and tomatoes. The Greek influence in this salad comes from the ingredients usually used to make a Greek salad: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and feta. Put these all together and you have one of my favorite salads of all time. I feel I should also state that I adore Ina’s cookbooks, which are stacked in a colorful line on my bookshelf, so it is only natural that I am biased when it comes to her recipes. But honestly, every recipe of hers that I have tried has always been a success so is that really a bias?
One of the many things that makes this a great dish for entertaining is that you can make it ahead of time. In my opinion, this make this salad even better because it allows all that yummy goodness to marinate a bit and the bread can soak up a bit of the dressing. It also makes for great leftovers!
In the case of our crew that evening, it was also a perfect fit for the mixed palates at the table. We had herbivores (us three ladies) and carnivores (the guys) and, just to keep it interesting, a dairy-free diet to work around. I didn’t have to tweak this salad very much to make sure that everyone would be satisfied; I am not a fan of black olives so I left those out and I just made sure to find a delicious goat’s milk feta cheese to substitute for a standard feta. And to be honest, like Aric said himself, I rather enjoy the challenge that comes with find alternatives as it allows me to branch out and try products that I might not otherwise have stumbled upon.
Feel free to add or substitute the vegetables and cheese as you see fit. And make sure the bread is really toasted so it doesn’t get too soggy once it soaks up the dressing. If you can find a rustic bread, I have found that to be the best as it is very dense, but Ina’s suggestion of a French boule or any other heavy bread works well too.
Ingredients
Good olive oil
1 small French bread or boule, cut into 1-inch cubes (6 cups)
Kosher salt
1 hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, seeded, and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 red bell pepper, large diced
1 yellow bell pepper, large diced
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 red onion, sliced in half rounds
1/2 pound feta cheese, cut in 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup calamata olives, pitted
For the vinaigrette:
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup good red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup good olive oil
Directions
Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large saute pan. Add the bread cubes and sprinkle with salt; cook over low to medium heat, tossing frequently, for 5 to 10 minutes, until nicely browned. Add more olive oil as needed.
Place the cucumber, red pepper, yellow pepper, tomatoes and red onion in a large bowl.
For the vinaigrette, whisk together the garlic, oregano, mustard, vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt and the pepper in a small bowl. While still whisking, add the olive oil and make an emulsion. Pour the vinaigrette over the vegetables. Add the feta, olives and bread cubes and mix together lightly. Set aside for 30 minutes for the flavors to blend. Serve at room temperature.
It’s been a busy week. We never intended to take 7 days to get our first posts about our grand blog kick off dinner, but that’s life. Our dinner was a great success. We had some of our best friends over and asked everyone to participate. As is quite customary with our group, we cooked way too much food. Over the next week or so we’ll highlight some of the dishes we prepared, detail the recipes, and share why we chose to make these dishes.
I drew the long straw, so my post is going first. The first dish I want to share is my Greek Chops. The inspiration for this recipe goes back a long ways. As you may recall from previous posts my favorite restaurant is a Greek bistro in Stockton, CA by the name of Papapavlo’s. My parents and I have been faithful customers for years. In fact, we became such frequent customers that we became pretty good friends with several members of the staff, including the head bus boy. One particularly chatty evening he shared with us the recipe to the restaurant’s famous Greek Lamb Chops. This has become one of my favorite things to cook over the past years. I should clarify, generally I do in fact make a Lamb Chop, but this time I switched it up and made a veal chop. I fully intended to do lamb, but when I got to the meat section the veal looked so much better than the lamb did. I’m a very easy going cook, if plan ‘A’ isn’t going the way you intended, I’m generally more than willing to go to plan ‘B’ or, in this case, veal. Let’s jump straight into the recipe.
The principle player in this dish is the marinade. It’s a very simple marinade. I don’t have an exact measurement, that’s not the kind of cook I am. I tend to follow my instinct and taste buds. Whatever sounds good is what I put in. In this case, here are the ingredients I generally include:
- A cheap bottle of red wine (we used Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joes)
- Chopped Basil
- Chopped Cilantro
- Chives
- Olive Oil
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Ground Pepper
This is by no means the only ingredients that I have tried. These are just the marinade all-stars if you will. When I don’t have the pressure of guests eating my meal I generally dig through my herb cabinet to see what looks (and smells) like something that might make the meat better.
However, when the pressure’s on I go with what I know will serve me well, and that’s fresh basil, cilantro and chives. In all my cooking I used fresh herbs whenever I can, or as was this case last weekend, what I have growing in my herb garden. The flavor is just so much more robust, and I love full flavored food. My only suggestion to you is that you make enough of this marinade to reach at least half way up the meat in whatever dish you have chosen. You may not want to make enough to fully submerge the meat, but ½ submerged will allow you to fully marinate by flipping the meat periodically. I suggest letting the meat rest for at least 6 hours in the marinade. I have gone as far as 24 hours. The flavor will intensify the longer you let it rest.
I have always chosen to barbeque my chops. I grill them over medium high heat for about 6 minutes on each side. We made sure each piece of meat reached an interior temperature of 165 degrees, and removed the meat from the grill. I like my meat just a touch more than medium and these chops were perfect. Let the meat rest for a few minutes before serving, then enjoy. The marinade creates a wonderful, full and fresh flavor. There is no need for anything to dress this chop up. A fork and knife are more than enough.
That cover’s the main dish, well at least for the meat eaters. However, at our dinner party, the carnivores represented only 50% of the population, the guys. The ladies are all vegetarians. This put me into a strange new world. I have never been, nor do I ever plan on becoming, a vegetarian. Substances like tofu are foreign to me, but what kind of a food blogger would I be if I didn’t accept a new challenge and attempt to expand my abilities? Luckily, this isn’t the first barbeque I’ve been to with vegetarians. I’ve seen many a tofu kebob prepared over the last few years, so i began looking for a good tofu recipe online. I found a recipe for cilantro lime tofu, which I have to say, sounded almost appetizing. The preparation for the tofu was very similar to the veal. Prepare your marinade, pour over the tofu, let it rest. The recipe can be found here. As I stated above, my final product was something close to the recipe, but I never once pulled out a measuring spoon.
I let the tofu sit for about 6 hours in the marinade before we put it on the grill. If I do this recipe again, I will most definitely let the marinade work longer, probably a minimum of 12 hours to give the tofu more opportunity to soak up the flavors. I would also keep the tofu pieces on the thinner side. I sliced my tofu into slices about an inch think. I would suggest no more than ¾ of an inch. This will help to keep the balance of flavor between the marinade and the tofu.
One of the nice things about this marinade is it keeps the tofu from sticking to the grill. The tofu actually came out very nice. The marinade was dynamite! It was fresh and crisp, but the cayenne added a little bit of a bite. The tofu firmed up nicely on the grill, and had very nice grill markings. I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out, but honestly I don’t know good tofu from shoe soles, so my opinion is, as Joey Tribiani once said, “a moo point… it’s like a cow’s opinion. It doesn’t matter.”
Before we get into the kick-off dinner (because that is going to take multiple posts based on the number of photos we have from the festivities), a quick post about cookies.
Growing up, my mom was (and still is) famous for her desserts. Her cookies and brownies and cupcakes were always the first to go in a bake sale at school. She had to pack at least 4 or 5 extras of whatever dessert she gave me for lunch because I inevitably ended up getting swarmed by half of my classmates and even some teachers, all wanting a piece of the goodness. I guess you could say that my sweet tooth was unavoidable... not that I’m complaining!
Out of all the goodies my mom has made, nothing beats one of her cookies on a day when you just need a pick me up. Whether it was a rough day at school back then or a long day at work now, cookies never fail to help ease the day away.
With that in mind, I baked some Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies last week. But not because Aric or I had a particularly difficult week; rather we recently “adopted” a local college student for the school year. Essentially we are here to offer some moral support and a helpful hand whenever it is needed. So I thought what better way to make him feel welcome than with homemade cookies. Of course, we threw a few more odds and sods into the welcome basket but I wanted to make sure to have something straight from the oven in there.
I kept a few for ourselves, justifying it by saying it was for photos for the blog, but let’s face it, before we even finished taking the pictures, Aric was asking me to hurry up so he could eat some of the cookies. I’ll admit, I was getting hungry taking the pictures too, what with the lovely photo arrangement Aric had set up.
As we slowly enter into fall weather, I’m sure there will be more cookies to come and new ones to try my hand at... like the chocolate dipped cookie dough balls I spied at the grocery store over the weekend and found the recipe for on Love and Olive Oil's blog!!
Welcome to Cats. Crooners. Cook. We love to cook. Our cats love to cuddle. Turn on some Sinatra and come join us in the intersection of our life and our love.
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