Thursday, July 10, 2008

Creative Cooking

During the last week or two, I've whipped up a couple of new variations on some of my favorite dishes. I was so pleased with the way they turned out on the plate that I decided to take a couple of snapshots...


The picture above is a variation of Chicken Parmesan. Since the kids are vegetarians, I used one of those vegetarian chicken patties. As an avid carnivore, I was skeptical, but I have to admit that it's not bad. The fake chicken patty is laid on a bed of home made mashed potatoes, and surrounded by Campari tomatoes, cut into quarters. The entire dish was then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. The kids really liked it, and I was very happy with the presentation.


This second picture is a variation on another staple around the house... spaghetti. This dish contains meat. I don't really have a name for it, but here's how I made it...

I made meatballs -- the first time I've tried cooking meatballs. The meatballs were made by combining 1 pound of ground beef, 1 egg, basil and oregano to taste. I mixed it all up, rolled the meatballs and started browning them on a low heat. After the meatballs were slightly browned on the outside, I marinated them in spaghetti sauce and wine, with the pan covered.

Around the outside, you will notice that I made sun-dried tomatoes. These were made as follows...
-Line a cookie sheet with olive oil.
-Halve several tomatoes (I used Roma tomatoes)
-Make a baste of olive oil, white wine, basil, oregano and thyme. Cover the tomatoes with the baste.
-Top the tomatoes with Parmesan or Feta cheese. (I used Feta)
-Cook at 200 to 250 degrees for six to eight hours.

The overall presentation of this dish:

Line a plate with fresh baby spinach. Top the spinach with the pasta. Place meatballs on top of the pasta, and line the plate with the sun-dried tomatoes.

I also topped the dish with a single sun-dried yellow pepper slice. Peppers take less time to sun-dry than tomatoes, so make sure to start them later or finish them sooner.

These dishes may sound time-consuming and difficult, but they REALLY aren't. And in addition to being relatively simple, it's cool to see my family enjoying the artistic presentation.

2 comments:

Sunny said...

That first one looks really good....making me hungry!!!
Paulius was supposed to have made me dinner for when I got home from work- but I think he forgot and went to bed.......
Guess it's a bowl of nasty cereal for me this morning for supper!!!

Sunny said...

Hey!!!
Just wondering if all is okay with you and the family.....you haven't posted in ages.

Miss reading your stuff, but I know how crazy things can get when the kids are out of school for the summer- plus all the weather related incidents up your way!!!

Hope to see ya on again soon, Ozman!!!