Whirled Peas

OK, not really. But I liked the name. This recipe was a pasta dish from Real Simple October (?) but after making it I think it's better off as a side dish than over pasta. It's got very light flavor and actually makes peas taste good!

2 tbs. butter
2 green onions, chopped
salt and pepper
1 tsp. meyer lemon zest (the original calls for regular lemon but I found it to be quite bitter)
1 bag (11 oz. or so) frozen peas

Melt butter in a pan over medium heat. Add in green onions and cook until soft, about 3 min. Season with salt and pepper (maybe 1/4 tsp. each). Add in 1/2 cup of water, peas and lemon zest. Cook covered for 5 min or until the peas are heated through. It actually took awhile for the peas so keep an eye on them to avoid over cooking.

Chicken Stir Fry

This recipe is from the October (I don't know, I can never tell what dates magazines are from, it could be January 09 at this point) Real Simple magazine. I love bok choy, but never had a recipe to use it on so I was excited to try this. It's really easy and has so few ingredients that I can actually just write out the recipe for you instead of trying to find the link. I did make a change to it, I used Soy Vay Hoisin sauce instead of BBQ sauce because that's all I had. It came out great, I am definitely adding this into our chicken dish rotation.

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts chopped into bite size pieces
4 green onions, chopped
3-4 bok choy things, quartered lengthwise
1/4 c. low sodium soy sauce
1/4 c. Jarred BBQ or Soy Vay Hoisin sauce
Salt and pepper
White rice

OK, cook the chicken in some olive oil over medium-high for 6-10 min. Season with salt and pepper. The recipe says 5 but my chicken must be really thick because that never works. Anyway, just cook it until it isn't pink and then set it on a plate.
Put the bok choy into the pan you just removed the chicken from, add 1/4 cup of water to the pan. Cover and cook for 3-4 min. until the veggies are soft.
Mix the green onions, soy sauce and BBQ or Soy Vay together. Pour that into the pan with the bok choy, bring to a boil. Add chicken. Cook and stir 2-4 min. until the chicken is heated up again.

Serve over white rice- or with any side you prefer.

Red Pepper Sauce

My husband had a "team building" thing for work where they learned to cook. One of the recipes was for Potato Gnocchi with Red Pepper Coulis. In my unending mission to translate "fancy" food words for the normal folk (like myself) I replaced the Coulis with Sauce since that's basically what it is.
The gnocchi recipe was great, but unless you have a few hours and a need for 1,000,000 gnocchi blobs stuck to your countertop I find the store bought kind to be just as tasty as homemade- and your kitchen won't be coated in flower and potato slime.

*note- you don't have to chop things very well, you're going to puree them before this is over

2 Red Bell Peppers (chopped, about 2 cups)
2 small white onions, the boiling kind, chopped
4 Cups of chicken broth (or vegetable broth if you prefer)
1 tsp. salt
Pinch of pepper
Olive Oil

Put some olive oil in a pot or pan, cook peppers and onion over medium heat for about 3 min. Add in the chicken broth, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced by about half.
Carefully puree what you have left by using a stick blender (my favorite) or a blender. Be careful, that sauce is hot! When you are done, spoon it over the cooked gnocchi. That's it!

Stir Fry Sauce

Here is a quick and easy recipe for a stir fry sauce. I used what I had on hand for a beef stir fry with bell peppers and onions. You can use any vegetables or meat you want with this great sauce.

1/2 Cup Low Sodium Soy Sauce
3 Tbs. Rice Wine Vinegar
1 Tablespoon Sesame Seeds
1 Tsp. Powdered Ginger (you can use fresh ginger if you want, maybe 1/2 tsp)

Mix this all together and set aside. Cook your stir fry and add the sauce at the end. Cook for 1 min. and serve over rice.

The Long Awaited Garlic Aioli Recipe

Yeah, probably not but I said I'd post it and I am now. It's ridiculously easy, but tastes so good you'll want to have it with everything- especially freshly steamed asparagus. Mmmmmmm

3-4 Garlic Cloves finely diced
1/4 C. Mayonnaise

Add the garlic to the mayo, cover and let it sit in the fridge for 10 min. or more. Keeps for a few days, the flavor is better the longer you wait! Goes great with tuna steaks, asparagus, artichokes or anything else you can think of except maybe ice cream.

Summer Pasta

This is one of my favorite warm-weather recipes. It's perfect on a hot day because the only cooking required is boiling water for pasta.
4-5 ripe red tomatoes (big ones, like the vine ripened kind)
1/2 Sweet onion- it's important to get a sweet onion since it will not be cooked
1 small tub of mozzarella bocconcini *There are two kinds, perlini and regular. You can use either one but I find it easier to use perlini since you don't have to slice them.

2 tbs. olive oil

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper
Fresh Basil
Pasta

First do all the chopping. Dice the tomatoes and onion and put them in a medium bowl. Rinse and dice your bocconcini (if you are using perlini, just rinse them and add them to the tomatoes and onion). Add the olive oil, salt, pepper and stir thorougly but carefully. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter and fester while you cook the pasta. Once your pasta is done, serve up the pasta, top with the tomato mixture and then sprinkle fresh cut basil on top. That's it! It keeps for up to 3 days in the fridge and gets better each day.

One Dish Fish

I don't remember what this was called in the latest issue of Real Simple (May 08 I think) but it was really good and dish rhymes with fish so that's what I'm sticking with.

The only things I bought for this were the sugar snap peas and ginger, 2 things which I don't normally have on hand. I also didn't use long grain white rice, I only had short grain so I just used 2 cups of rice and the same amount of water.
A note about grated ginger. Fresh ginger does not grate well. I peeled it with a vegetable peeler and then got out my cheese grater and spent about 2 minutes making ginger slime which was useless. I then tried using my zester but that was a lost cause as well. I finally cut off thin slices and then diced them into little tiny squares. That worked just fine, it still tasted great.
I had it for leftovers at lunch this week and it didn't make the microwave or kitchen at the office smell like fish so go ahead and bring it to work with you, I already used my coworkers as guinea pigs on this one.
Here's the recipe http://food.realsimple.com/realsimple/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1736081