Guacamole Chicken Sandwich

Yet another success from the May 2008 issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray. The real name for these sandwiches is “Go Green Chicken Sammies” but I just couldn’t bring myself to use that as my post title. It’s just too Rachael-ified. But as much as I can’t stand all her goofy recipe titles, I’ve got to admit the girl knows how to write a good dinner recipe. These were delicious, healthy, and perfect for summer. I loved the herb, oil, and lime juice marinade. My only suggestion to change it up a bit is to use your own Guacamole recipe and trust your gut. In the recipe it calls for 1 small red onion for the guacamole made with two avocados. In my opinion that would make it way way way too oniony (and I’m actually a big fan of onion). I would just use 1/4 of a small onion.

Go Green Chicken Sammies

Source: Everyday with Rachael Ray May 2008

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 1/3 cup chopped cilantro
• 2 scallions, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
• Grated peel of 1 lime plus juice of 2 limes
• 2 teaspoons hot pepper sauce
• Salt and pepper
• Four skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• 4 deli slices pepper jack cheese
• 2 avocados
• 1 small red onion, finely chopped
• 1 small plum tomato, seeded and finely chopped
• 2 jalapeño chiles, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 large clove garlic, grated or finely chopped
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 4 hamburger buns or crusty rolls, split and toasted
• 1 head bibb lettuce or green leaf lettuce
• Tortilla chips, for serving

In a shallow dish, combine the EVOO, cilantro, scallions, thyme, lime peel, half of the lime juice, and the hot sauce; season with salt and pepper. Add the chicken and let marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Pre-heat a grill or grill pan to medium-high. Grill the chicken until cooked through, 12 minutes. Just before the cooking time is up, top each breast with a slice of pepper jack cheese.

In a medium bowl, mash together the avocados, red onion, tomato, jalapeños, garlic, lemon juice and remaining lime juice; season with salt.

Top each bun bottom with lettuce, a chicken breast, a mound of guacamole and a bun top. Serve with the tortilla chips.

Greek Burgers with Yogurt Sauce

These burgers were yummy. I highly recommend them. Below is the recipe for the burgers, oven fries, and yogurt sauce exactly as written by Jesse. That’s about all I have to say.

Greek Burgers
Source: Everyday Gourmet

1 pound of ground beef
2 cloves of garlic, grated
2 tablespoons of Greek Dressing
1 teaspoon of oregano
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of garlic and herb Mrs. Dash
1 tablespoon of minced basil
1/2 teaspoon of pepper
1/2 cup of Feta cheese

In a bowl add beef, grated garlic, basil, dressing ( or olive oil if you don’t have this dressing- although I would cut the amount by half) and all of the dry seasonings. Mix gently until combined. Then crumble in feta cheese and mix until just incorporated. Loosely form your mixture into a ball and score it into 4 even sized pieces, this will help to make even sized burgers. When forming your burger patties, remember to slightly indent the center of the burger, this will help with even cooking.

I like to store these in the fridge while I prepare the oven fries. I find that keeping the cheese in the patties cold until it is time to cook creates less of a mess in your pan.

To cook, preheat pan to a medium high heat ( I like a nice brown crust on my burgers) and cook on each side for about 6-7 minutes covered, depending on how thick your burger is. My burgers were thicker so I allowed for all 7 minutes per side.

Garlic Oven Fries

4 Yukon Gold potatoes ( small- medium sized)
1 teaspoon of Oregano
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon of garlic and herb Mrs. Dash
1/2 teaspoon of pepper
2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

Preheat oven to 450

So that these aren’t as huge as say a potato wedge, I like to cut the potatoes first in half, then cut the half in half again, so that you have 4 thick round slices of potato. Then I cut them into thin slices from there. Toss with olive oil and seasoning and allow to sit while your pan heats up.

Tyler Florence from the Food Network shared a great tip for oven fries. Allow your pan to preheat in your oven so that it is smoking hot, remove the pan from the oven and carefully toss on your fries. They will sizzle and form a crust right away,  get it back in the oven and toss fries with spatula or tongs every 5 minutes for 20 minutes. When you take your fries out, sprinkle them with salt.

Greek Yogurt Dipping Sauce

1/2 cup of Plain yogurt
1 teaspoon of oregano
1 tablespoon of Ken’s Greek Dressing
1 teaspoon of lemon juice.

Mix and enjoy.

Southwestern Turkey Burgers

YUM. YUM. YUM. These were the best turkey burgers I have had to date. Alex loved them so much he ate TWO last night! Once again, I can thank my friend Liz for blogging about this recipe which led to me trying it. She mentioned in her post that it has become a “classic” dish for her and her husband. Well, I think it’s quickly becoming one of our classics too!

Basically it’s just a grilled turkey burger served with avocado and salsa on top so I honestly didn’t expect that much out of it. I have a hard time liking turkey burgers and it didn’t seem like anything too crazy in the recipe. But wow, the flavors are just so good together!!

I totally misread the recipe and thought the pepper jack cheese was just for putting on top of the burgers so I bought sliced cheese. Well, turns out you put the cheese IN the burgers so I chopped up the cheese as fine as I could get it. I served these burgers with oven-baked steak fries seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika.

Southwestern Turkey Burgers

Seen on Graced by Food

Adapted from Everyday Food

1½ pounds ground dark meat turkey (93% lean)

½ cup pepper jack cheese, shredded

¼ cup plain dried breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 teaspoon coarse salt

¼ teaspoon ground pepper

hamburger buns

fresh tomato salsa (listed below)

sliced avocado

Heat grill to medium-high. In a medium bowl, place turkey, cheese, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise, salt, and pepper. Mix very gently, being careful not to overwork meat (which makes burgers dense). Gently form meat into 4 equal-sized patties. Place on grill and cook for 5 to 8 minutes, per side, or until cooked throughout. Serve on buns and top with sliced avocado and fresh tomato salsa.

Fresh Tomato Salsa

Source: Everyday Food

1½ pounds plum tomatoes, cored, halved, and seeded

½ medium red onion, minced

1 jalapeño, minced

1 small garlic clove, minced

½ cup chopped fresh cilantro

2 tablespoons lime juice

coarse salt

Chop tomatoes into ¼-inch pieces and place in medium bowl. Add onion, jalapeño, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice; season generously with salt. Let stand 15 minutes to develop flavor. Salsa can last up to 3 days in airtight container.

Philly Cheesesteaks

YUM! These will be a dinner staple in our house from now on. I don’t know why I didn’t think of making Cheesesteaks at home in the first place?!? I can thank my friend (in real life – not just a blog friend) Liz for putting the idea of cheesesteaks in my head. You see, Liz and I went to college together and were sorority sisters. She is a little bit older than me though so we didn’t get to know each other too well during college. Recently we discovered, via our friend Facebook, that we both married military men and that we both have a passion for cooking. We started talking and I told her about my food blog. She loved the idea and decided to make one herself!

She has been doing a fantastic job with her blog despite the fact that she was oh about 8 1/2 months pregnant when she decided to start it! I’m so happy to announce that Liz had her baby and she’s a beautiful little girl named Emily Grace! So this one’s for you Emily Grace! I have no doubt that you are going to grow up blessed with some wonderful food made by your Momma. You lucky girl you! Congratulations Liz and Daniel! Best wishes and THANKS for a great dinner idea!

One note: I wasn’t sure how to get “thinly sliced steak” so I asked the butcher at the grocery store. She directed me to the sirloin cut “Milanese Style” (aka very thin). Then, when it came time to cook I just sliced the thin-cut steak into strips. I think it turned out very well!

Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches

Source: Closet Cooking

1 teaspoon olive oil

2 onions, sliced

1 green pepper, sliced

1 pound thinly sliced steak

salt and pepper to taste

provolone cheese

2 hoagie rolls

Heat oil in a pan. Add the onions and green peppers and saute until tender, about 6-10 minutes. Set the onions and peppers aside. Add the steak to the pan and cook until no longer pink, about 3-4 minutes. Mix the vegetables into the steak. Place the steak, vegetables, and cheese on the hoagie roll. Place the open sandwich, with the cheese on top, under the broiler to melt the cheese.

Makes 2 servings

Croque Madame

This is officially the first thing I made in the kitchen in our NEW HOUSE!! Yay! We found a beautiful house to rent and moved in last Sunday. The kitchen was the first thing I unpacked and organized because I was DYING to break it in. As I was unpacking my cookbooks I realized that I don’t use them nearly as much as I should to find recipes. Normally I get my recipe inspirations from the internet.

So I cracked open Rachael Ray’s 2, 4, 6, 8 30-Minute Meal Cookbook that I was given as a gift. The book is actually quite nice because it gives you recipes for 2, 4, 6, or 8 people. Since it was just going to be the two of us I looked in the just for 2 people section and found this recipe for Croque Madames. We were VERY pleased with this dinner. Satisfying and easy. Alex raved about the “gravy” as he called it which was actually a Bechamel Sauce. We had some sauce left over and he declared we “couldn’t waste it” so he spread the “gravy” on toast. I served these with the salad that she suggests in the book which will be my next post.

Croque Madame

Source: Rachael Ray 2,4,6,8 Cookbook

Ingredients
* 6 tablespoons butter, divided
* 1 rounded tablespoon flour
* 1 cup milk
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper
* 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (eyeball it)
* 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
* 4 slices white bread (I used wheat)
* 2 large eggs
* 4 slices deli-cut ham, look for a dry ham rather than boiled
* 4 slices deli-sliced Swiss cheese, look for Emmentaler
* Parsley, chives or thyme (any or all on hand), chopped

Yields: 2 servings

Preparation

For the bechamel sauce: Place a small sauce pot over medium-low heat and melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute or so. Whisk in the milk and bring it to a bubble then drop the heat to low. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg and Dijon. When the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, turn off the heat.

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a medium non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. When the butter melts, crack the eggs and add them to the pan, keeping the whites separate from each other. Cook to desired doneness, sunny-side-up to over-hard.

While the eggs cook, generously butter bread with the remaining butter. Keeping buttered sides facing out, build ham and cheese sandwiches; spreading béchamel on the insides of the bread and using 2 slices of ham and cheese for each sandwich.

Heat a second skillet over medium heat. Cook the sandwiches until golden, about 3-4 minutes, then turn. Cook them for 2 minutes more then transfer to plates, top with eggs and more sauce, garnish with herb of choice and serve with a knife and fork.

Alex’s Turkey Burgers with Homemade Ketchup

I used to think I didn’t like Turkey Burgers. I had tried making them for myself one time in college and they were NASTY. Luckily, I got married to The Turkey Burger Master and he has forever changed my opinion of Turkey Burgers. Almost every week I put Turkey Burgers on the menu because of two things: A) I know it means he will cook and I can be lazy and B) They are so darn delicious. He always experiments with the flavors a little bit and this week’s burgers were by far the tastiest yet. As a bonus, he even whipped up his own version of homemade ketchup because we didn’t have any on hand. Surprisingly, the homemade ketchup is what took these burgers over the top. What a stud!!

Alex’s Turkey Burgers with Homemade Ketchup

For the burger patties:

• 1.25 pounds ground Turkey
• 1/4 c. of Shredded Cheddar Cheese
• 1/4 c. grated Parmesan Cheese
• 1/2 a small Onion, chopped
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 1 tsp. Garlic Salt
• 1/4 tsp. Lemon Pepper
• 1/4 tsp. Black Pepper
• 2 Tbsp. Worcestershire
• 1/4 tsp. Liquid Smoke
• 1/2 tsp. of Balsamic Vinegar

Mix the ingredients together with your hands and form into 4 equal size patties. Grill until done and then top with sliced cheese (we used Pepper Jack Cheese) and leave on grill until melted. Place burger patties on buns (we used Onion Buns from the Bakery section of grocery store) and top with red onion and Homemade Ketchup (see recipe below). Enjoy!

For the Homemade Ketchup:

• 1 small can Tomato Paste
• 1/4 c. Distilled White Vinegar
• 1 tsp. Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 tsp. Sugar
• 1 tsp. Salt
• A little bit of water for thinning (as much as you like)

Mix all together and use the water to get it to your desired thinness. Spread on hamburger buns and enjoy!

Craving Meatloaf + No Oven = Meatloaf Burgers!

 

So in case you missed it,  we currently live in a hotel room with no oven and a tiny kitchenette. For this reason, there are a lot of meals that I drool over but cannot make because it simply won’t work in our little toaster oven. One thing I’ve been missing since we lived here is Meatoaf. Unfortunately, I thought my craving was just gonna have to wait until we move back to Texas in April. When I saw this recipe that the Foodie Fashionista came up with for Meatloaf Burgers I thought, “Now why didn’t I think of that?!”

Alex actually ended up cooking these because I was at the gym the night we had planned to eat it.  They were delicious and we will definitely make variations on these again soon. Ours really didn’t want to stay together at all but I think that’s because Alex only used 1 pound of meat and didn’t adjust the other measurements accordingly. However, they were still totally yummy despite being crumbly. I think we are in th minority of people who actually like Turkey Meatloaf better than beef so next time we will use ground turkey. Alex also mentioned that next time he would use butter to caramelize the onions but that kind of defeats the idea of it being a pretty healthy meal.

By the way, the Foodie Fashionista’s picture of this is WAY better than the one we got so click the link above and check it out.

Meatloaf Burgers with Carmelized Onion and Smokey Ketchup

Carmelized Onions
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 cup yellow onions, sliced thin
1 1/2 cup red onions, sliced thin
pinch of sugar

Heat oil over medium heat in a small saute pan. Add onions and cover pan. Cook until onions are translucent, about 8 minutes. Add sugar and continue to cook for about 10 more minutes, until the onions are golden brown. Remove from heat and set aside.

Smokey Ketchup
3/4 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Mix ketchup and Worcestershire sauce in a small bowl.

Burgers
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 cup yellow onion, chopped
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 slice of light wheat bread, ground fine (I use a coffee grinder or mini food processor)
20 ounces 93% lean ground beef

Heat oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add onions and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook another 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat.

In a large bowl, mix ingredients from egg through bread. Stir in cooked onions and garlic. Add meat to bowl and mix well with hands. Mixture will be much wetter than a typical burger mixture. Shape meat into 6 equal patties. Grill or broil to desired level of doneness. Serve on a light hamburger bun with smokey ketchup and carmelized onions.

Yields 6 servings.

WW info:
flex – 4 points per burger
core – included
(does not include hamburger bun)

Tortas Ahogadas, Courtesy of the Grijalva’s

This recipe is one that is really special to me. Growing up my mom made it pretty frequently for us and it has always been one of my favorite things she made. She got the recipe from some really awesome family friends of ours (the Grijalva’s) who live in Los Mochis, Mexico. We actually call these friends of ours “Our Mexican Family” because they are like family to us. My mom and dad trusted them enough to send me down to Mexico by myself not once but TWICE to spend the summer learning Spanish and having way too much fun. Some of my best memories from growing up were spent in Los Mochis during the hot summers. One thing the family is known for, besides their kind and welcoming personalities, is their cooking. On my first trip to Los Mochis when I was probably about 7 my mom actually had to tell me to stop eating so many of Irma’s homeade frijoles and tortillas because she was afraid I was going to get sick. This recipe is another one that we ate while visiting and my mom was smart enough to ask them to give us the recipe.

“Tortas Ahogadas” literally means “Drowned Sandwiches” in Spanish. These are meant to be eaten with a fork and knife as you are supposed to “drown” the sandwich with the sauce and thus, render it impossible to eat with your hands. As I was researching other Tortas Ahogadas recipes online today I noticed that almost all of them were made with pork, rather than beef like this one. I’m sure it’s great with pork but I am determined to keep the Grijalva tradition going and use beef roast. Unfortunately, living in Arizona makes it a lot harder to find dried chile peppers than it was in Texas. I was only able to find one kind labeled “California Dried Peppers” so I went with it. Also, I wasn’t able to bring my slow cooker to Arizona with me because it’s too bulky so this was the first time for me to attempt making it on the stove top. Don’t make the same mistake I did and get too impatient and therefore turn the heat up so high that the water starts boiling. It made the roast a little tougher than it normally it is.

Tortas Ahogadas (Drowned Sandwiches)

3 Anaheim Chiles (dry…cleaned of seeds & membrane) As stated above, just use whatever large dried chiles you can find.
3 Pasilla Chiles (dry…cleaned)
1 Kilo (2-3 lb.) beef roast
1 onion (coarsely chopped)
4-6 cloves of garlic
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
Teaspoon of oregano
10 sun-dried tomatoes (you can use dry or packed in oil…I used in oil b/c that’s what I had on hand)

2-3 canned chipotle chilies (depending on the amount of spice that you like) to add to broth, after meat has been stewed

Cook the above ingredients in 2 liters of water until meat is tender (I usually use slow cooker on low for about 8 hours but this time I cooked on stovetop for about 2 hours…do not boil, just simmer the whole time) Take out the meat and shred with two forks (so that the pieces aren’t too big for the sandwiches) Cool for a while before proceeding with the next step so that you don’t burn yourself. Add the chipotle chilies to the broth (with meat still removed) and process either in small batches in food processor/blender or use immersion blender (lifesaver!).

Crema:
½ liter of Crema Fresca (sometimes labeled “Mexican Crema” and can be found in the dairy aisle…or sour cream works too) I just used the whole jar of Crema.
3 Tablespoons of mayonnaise
1 Teaspoon of mustard (roughly)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Other:
Avocado (slices to go on sandwiches)
Bolillo Rolls

Assembly: Lay out a roll and place meat on one side. Then ladle some of the sauce over the top of the meat and top with avocado and Crema. I also drown the tops of the sandwiches with sauce and squeeze a wedge of lime on top. These are fork & knife sandwiches…don’t even think about trying to eat with your hands!  Enjoy!