Stay for Dinner

STAY FOR DINNER: Family and friends gathered around the table, enjoying each other's company over good food, blessing the meal and each other...some of life's best moments. On this site I'll share with you some of the best and the easiest of my extensive recipe collection, as well as new (to me) recipes and my latest experiments. I'll recommend substitute ingredients and alternate ways to prepare most of the dishes so you won't stress over following the recipes to the letter. Now draw everyone into the kitchen to share a glass of wine or iced tea with you while you cook. Engage your spouse & kids or last-minute guests by delegating the slicing & dicing, pot-stirring or table-setting. Get creative and use what's on hand to reduce time-sapping trips to the store. Relax and enjoy the process of spreading a feast before your loved ones.

Celebratory Meal - My Guys are Home from 6 Days of Harley Riding!

Everyone Loved this Appetizer

What's not to love? Jalapenos, which I blanched after seeding to take some of the fire out, filled with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. My mom, who doesn't enjoy much heat, loved them, and so did my leather-mouthed husband. The recipe was on allrecipes.com, and it inspired an original recipe...that just didn't work.

BUMMER: I tried bacon-wrapping feta-stuffed olives, but the results were disappointing. Too salty, too, strong tasting - you really couldn't even taste the bacon, so why bother?

So I went back to the recipe on the other website. Tonight I baked these delectable two-bite wonders at 350 for roughly 45 minutes, but they could be grilled for less time and would taste even better, I'd think. Experiment with the filling - add herbs or spices, dry ranch dressing mix, etc... But I'd advise not using the soft cream cheese; I think it would me more likely to ooze out during cooking. Also, you can use just a half slice of bacon to wrap each pepper half, but the full piece of bacon did make it easier to cover the cheese well and hold it in. Secure the bacon with a toothpick. Or two.


Easy and Delicious Salad

Cucumbers, black olives, cherry tomatoes, chick peas, feta and your favorite
balsamic, Greek or Italian dressing. This could be lunch all by itself.




The Main Event

Brisket - dry rubbed and slow roasted in a 250 degree oven for hours, with a chunky, tomatoey, barbequey sauce. Amazing. This is about the fourth time we've made this brisket recipe, and it is an
all-time favorite at our house. It comes from the kitchens at The Food Network and I do follow the recipe because the rub and the sauce complement each other beautifully.


There was fresh corn, too, which my mom stripped from the cobs and fried up in a pan that still had a little bacon grease in it. All in all, it was a great meal for two tired, hungry and road-weary motorcyclists to come home to.
Labels: , , , , , ,

4 comments:

  1. Robert9/25/2011 2:05 PM

    Hi Kemala:

    Try a feta sutffed date wrapped with bacon. Im enjoying your posts.

    Robert Robert's Place

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kemala9/25/2011 3:35 PM

    Sounds great, Robert. Feta would work well with dates - after all, it's the most middle-eastern of cheeses that's readily available here.

    We used to wrap chunks of banana with bacon, and grill them with a sage basting sauce. Surprisingly good. I'll have to find that recipe.

    Btw, we enjoyed our after-church lunch at Roberts today, as always. KJ really likes your new Cajun Chicken Caesar Wrap.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kemala10/18/2011 12:47 PM

    From the blog author: be watching for the brisket recipe - it's wonderful and I want to share it with you soon.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kemala3/31/2012 3:35 PM

    After making these again, here's what I've learned. They're amazing when cooked long enough to get the bacon crisp. It makes a difference. So does the flavour of the grill. The night before a party we cooked our meal on the grill after assembling these tasty wonders, and used the last of the ashen coals to pre-cook them for about 10 minutes. Once they were cool, I bagged them up in a gallon freezer bag (we'd made 4 dozen) and refrigerated them until the next evening. Then I put them on cookie sheets and finished them off in the oven, making sure I left them in long enough to crisp the bacon. They we marvelous. Confession: I left a few in the bag in the fridge so we could have some the next day after our guests went home!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)