Prime Cuts

A few nights ago we were doing a little grilling and decided that we wanted to make something different than regular fries to go along with our cheeseburgers.  We decided to make baked zucchini fries.  While I’ve had fried zucchini fries before, I really like the clean taste of baking them.

Zucchini fries are an excellent side dish as a substitution to French fries and are sure to go over great the next time you have guests over.  You can serve these as a side dish or by themselves as an appetizer.

One of the things that I love the most about this dish is that it is so simple to make.  It takes no time to put together and, besides the zucchini, you probably already have most of the ingredients at home.  But, when you serve this dish, it will seem like it took a lot longer than frozen French fries.

Ingredients

2 zucchinis
1 egg
1/4 c buttermilk
1/2 c shredded Parmesan cheese
1/2 c seasoned breadcrumbs
1 c marinara sauce
Salt & Pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Cut zucchini in half crosswise and then into 8 wedges.  Depending on the size of your zucchinis, you could cut into 1/4 slices as well.
3. Combine the Parmesan cheese, seasoned breadcrumbs, salt and pepper into a mixing bowl.  In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and buttermilk together.
4. Dip the zucchini slices first into the egg and buttermilk mixture.  Then roll the zucchini slices in the Parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs.
5. Coat a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray.  Lay out the zucchini slices in rows.  Bake at 425 degrees for approximately 10-15 minutes before rotating zucchini slices.  Bake for another 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.  While the zucchini slices are baking, heat up marinara sauce in a small sauce pan.
6. Upon removing from over, lightly season zucchini slices with salt & pepper.
7. Serve zucchini slices with marinara sauce on the side for dipping.  If you would like to garnish your dish, you could top the zucchini slices with fresh shredded Parmesan cheese, diced tomatoes and freshly chopped parsley.

Enjoy!

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Photo by: h-bomb

With out a doubt autumn is my favorite time of year. The shifting of the seasons brings with it my favorite things — beautiful scenery (especially if you’re lucky enough to be in New England), sweaters, and of course, the food. Autumn means comfort food and I LOVE it.

Since I live so far away from my family, I’ve been spending the last few years trying to recreate some of the recipes that remind me of home. Stuffed butternut squash, pumpkin pie, grilled cheese and tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, and my absolute favorite — delicata squash. The KING of all comfort food. Ohhhh holy awesome, reminds me so much of everything great this time of year. And I almost nearly fainted from excitement when I saw it at my local grocer this week.

My mom introduced me to the glorious vegetable several years ago when I was revamping my eating habits to be much healthier. What’s great about delicata squash is as healthy as it is, it’s completely satisfying and filling.

So here’s what you’ll need (keep in mind I almost never measure so I’m fudging on some of these estimates) to have the best dish of the season (and it’s totally simple):

Delicata Squash Recipe

This should be about 4 servings.

Ingredients

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• One delicata squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1/2″ inch slices
• One butternut and/or acorn squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1/2″ inch slices
• One yellow onion, chopped
• One red bell pepper, chopped
• One green bell pepper, chopped
• One garlic clove, chopped
• 12 oz of precooked and frozen shrimp (or whatever you’d like for (4 servings), thaw
• 1 1/2 cup of quinoa, cooked to package instructions
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Peel all the delicata squash with a vegetable peeler, then cut it lengthwise in half, and scrape out the seeds. Cut each piece in half again lengthwise, then crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices. The other squash should be peeled, seeded, cut into 1x 1/2 inch pieces. Place squash onto a sheet pan (giving a little of space between the squash pieces), gently coat with EVOO and sprinkle salt and pepper over the squash. Place in the oven to bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until a beautiful golden brown.

While the squash is cooking, heat up a medium pan on medium/medium high heat with a light coat of EVOO. Add in onion and cook until it starts to soften and become clear. Add in garlic and your peppers. Saute until warm. Add in shrimp and cooked quinoa. Saute together until warm all the way through. Put into serving bowls and top with a healthy serving of baked squash.

So incredibly delicious, you’ll be asking for seconds — and don’t worry, this is a comfort dish that you can absolutely feel good about.

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Today Sue Murphy pops in to share an awesome cabbage rolls recipe with us.  By day, Sue is a partner Jester Creative, a new media production company. She also blogs at Suzemuse. By night, she experiments with both cooking and eating food (especially eating) and enjoys the occasional culinary success in the kitchen.

Suze’s World Famous Cabbage Rolls

Prep time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Makes about 15 rolls
(recipe can easily be doubled, and they will freeze well)

Ingredients

1 medium head of green cabbage
1 lb medium ground beef
1/2 cup long grain white rice (uncooked)
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp onion powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 cans of condensed tomato soup
1 can tomato sauce

Preparation

Preheat oven to 375F.

Cut around the core of the cabbage with a sharp knife to loosen leaves. Place whole cabbage in a pot of boiling water.

While cabbage is cooking (in about 10 minutes you can peel off the first leaves), mix ground beef, rice, water, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt and pepper in a large bowl.

Peel off the first couple of leaves of cabbage using tongs, and drain excess water. Place a cabbage leaf on a clean surface. Trim off about 1/2 an inch of the hard stem at the bottom of the leaf. Place about 2 tablespoons of the ground beef in the bottom part of the leaf. Do not overstuff. Fold the sides of the leaf in and roll the leaf around the beef, making a nice tight roll. Place the roll in a medium-deep baking pan. Repeat until all the beef is used up, layering the dish with about 15 rolls.

Pour the tomato soup and tomato sauce over the rolls to coat thoroughly. Tightly cover the pan with foil and place in oven. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Let rest out of oven for 10 minutes and serve with boiled buttered potatoes or pierogies.

Ta daaaa!  Enjoy!

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Photo by: Danakochan

Today my friend Jessica Randazza comes by to hang out and share a recipe that her grandparents brought over with them from Sicily.  Jessica currently serves as an account executive and social media manager for a food public relations agency in Seattle. Because she grew up as the daughter of an executive chef and in an Italian family, she uses food as a way to bring friends and family together. When she’s not hanging out in the kitchen, she can be found tweeting or sharing her thoughts on the communications on her blog.

For years it has been a tradition to return home to Birmingham, Ala. each Labor Day weekend and while the trek home is primarily to see my friends and family, the time that I spend with them is always centered around food.
The list of out-of-this-world cuisine that my hometown could easily consist of 100 items, but unless I’m feeling overly ambitious, I never have a chance to savor them all.

That said, there are two things that I ALWAYS make time for — southern food and my family’s favorite, “basta with the gusta”.

Southern food can mean a lot of things, and it actually doesn’t matter what it is. I’m satisfied with cornbread, sweet tea, mashed potatoes, fried pickles, mac and cheese…really anything. And since I didn’t go home this year, I threw a birthday (which also happens to fall around Labor Day) celebration for myself centered around all southern cuisine. But the basta was still missing.

Now I’ll be honest, I have no idea what “gusta” means or if I’m even pronouncing it properly. But its based on a Sicilian peasant dish my grandparents brought over from Italy, and it’s a Randazza classic.

My friend, Carson, has heard me rant and rave about the dish for years.  Being the incredible friend she is, she knew I’d want it for my birthday and called up my mom and asked for the recipe — surprisingly something I never thought to do. As it turns out, it’s REALLY easy.

Jessica’s “Basta with the Gusta” Recipe

Ingredients

Chopped medium yellow onion
2-3 zucchini cut into 1/4” circles
3 1/2 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
Parmesan cheese to taste
8 oz spaghetti or a noodle pasta cooked al dente
Olive oil

Preparation

In a large-ish frying pan, cook your onion with a splash of olive oil over medium heat until it starts to caramelize. Throw in 2/3 of the chopped zucchini with the onions. Cook until warm. Pour in the chicken stock, heat until warm.

In a separate pan, pour in olive oil to cook the remaining 1/3 chopped zucchini. When it begins to brown, sprinkle breadcrumbs and coat both sides (there should be enough oil in the pan to help the breadcrumbs stick). Pull off the heat and plate.

Pour chicken stock mixture over pasta and stir thoroughly and plate. Add breaded zucchini and Parmesan on top and mangiare!

A simple dish with an surprisingly exquisite flavor profile…and now I know I don’t have to wait to have a taste of home.

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This is a recipe that is about as easy as I will ever post but the bottom line is that it is extremely good.  I recently made roasted cauliflower as the vegetable of the day at Caminito, and made some for our end-of-night staff meals as well.   Naturally when I brought out a plate of cauliflower half of my staff said “no thank you” but me being the chef that I am, I made sure that everyone tried it anyways.  Everyone loved it!  It doesn’t taste like normal steamed or raw cauliflower when roasted at high temperature, it takes on a different texture and sweetness from the carmalization as well as some desirable char form the high temp roasting.

Try this next time you are looking for an easy vegetable side dish, you won’t regret it.

Ingredients

Serving size: 4 people

Large head cauliflower
Vegetable oil
Sea salt (preferably coarse)

Preparation

1. Start by removing the cauliflower flowerettes from the main stem.  I like to start by removing the inner stem with a paring knife, and then cut the main body of the cauliflower in half then, further break it down into pieces of about a 2″ thickness.  Cutting the pieces with a sharp knife rather than tearing or breaking it will create a better surface area to promote carmalization.
2. In a mixing bowl liberally coat the cauliflower pieces with vegetable oil and a decent pinch of salt.
3. Place the cauliflower with a cut side contacting the metal of the pan you will be roasting it in.  This contact with the metal will create the carmalization that you are looking for.  Make sure you use a thick metal baking sheet pan or cast iron skillet.
4. Place the pan in the 375 degree oven for 15 minutes.  After about half that time check the cauliflower and turn to allow a fresh cut side to contact the metal and carmalize.
5. After 15 minutes remove from the oven and check for doneness, it should be crisp but tender, and have the aroma of pop corn.

Enjoy watching your kids and other vegetable haters gobble this treat like it was candy!

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Photo by: su-lin

Today Joe shares an awesome roasted beet and green apple salad as a healthy addition to our other recipes.

Something that Justin and our readers have been asking me to do for a while now is to post a healthy/lighter fare recipe.   Specifically a recipe that is non-beef or even vegetarian.  While meat is my forte, I do have a few vegetable dishes in my repertoire.  Although I eat a steak or two just about every day, once in a while I have a salad too.

One of my favorite veggies has to be beets.  I hated this vegetable as a child, because until I began working in professional kitchens, I had never had a beet that was fresh or for that matter wasn’t boiled to death.  Beets are especially delicious when roasted, and once they are, the possibilities are virtually limitless.  They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, well a beet a day keeps 10 doctors away.  They are packed full of vitamins and nutrients, which is why they have earned a place among the super vegetables…those few veggies that contain significantly more nutrition than most others and simply put are super good for you.

The following recipe is for a simple salad that is my spin on a salad course that was prepared for me by Caminito predecessor chef, and my personal mentor, Maryann Salcedo.  I have done several variations of this salad in my day, and although this recipe is quite simple, the contrasting flavors and textures are truly complex.

Roasted beet and green apple salad a la Maryann

Ingredients

4 medium beets (racquetball sized) stems, and roots trimmed
2 granny smith apples
4 large mint leaves Chiffonade
Zest and juice of 1 orange and 1 lemon
1 tbsp light olive oil
1 tsp sugar
Salt
Pepper
(Vegetable oil and coarse salt for roasting beets)

Preparation

1.    Wash beets thoroughly, (do not peel) then rub with vegetable oil.  Place in a single layer in a baking dish and sprinkle with coarse salt.  Cover dish with aluminum foil and bake at 350 for approx. 2 hours, or until a small paring knife slides in without resistance, be careful not to overcook.  Cool beets to room temp and then chill.  This step can be done a day or two in advance.

2.    Combine zest, juice, olive oil, sugar, salt, and pepper in a large bowl, whisk vigorously to combine.

3.    Prep beets by peeling outer skin with a sharp paring knife.  Cut beets into matchstick size, next cut unpeeled apples into the same matchstick size, quickly transfer beets and apples into large bowl with citrus dressing, toss lightly to coat.  The citrus juice will prevent the apples from turning brown.

4.    Transfer salad to serving plates, you will not need to apply any of the excess dressing left in the mixing bowl, whatever clings to the beets and apples will be sufficient for flavoring.

5.    Garnish with chiffonade mint, and possibly a small scoop of plain yogurt if you like.  In the summertime I like to add a few fresh blueberries at the last minute for color and added sweetness.

This is a very refreshing salad that is good for just about any time of year.  All the ingredients are readily available, and inexpensive.  While this combination may seem less than exotic, the proper roasting of the beets, and knife work that goes into producing a uniform matchstick cut, will make this salad stand out.  The matchstick cut creates more surface area on the beets and apples for the dressing to cling to, but you can of course cut yours however you like.

Eat one of these salads a day and your doctor will soon be but a memory.

Enjoy!

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Photo by: Kitty Sonnenschein

On today’s episode of Prime Cuts TV we show you how to make rustic-style fire-roasted sweet onions.  Instead of using the grill surface, we actually show you how to make the sweet onions by placing them inside of the fire to roast.  These are a great addition to a cheeseburger, steak sandwhich, pork chops, and many many other dishes.

Note: There is a lot of background noise due to working near our hood fans and we had several tables in the steakhouse at the time of filming.  We’re also working on improving the lighting in the kitchen for episode shoots.  But, hey, we’re a working kitchen, not some TV set

[viddler id=f01eddaa&w=437&h=370]

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Are you looking for a quick and healthy meal that you can whip up after a long day at work?  Do you love grilled vegetables, feta cheese and pasta?  Well today we bring you our very first guest recipe here at Prime Cuts.  This recipe is from Yael Beeri.

Ingredients

2 red peppers
2 zucchini
1 medium onion
4 garlic cloves
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoons mustard
1 teaspoon honey
Salt and pepper
1 pack (500gr) pasta
200 grams feta cheese

Optional: Black olives

Preparation

• Slice the peppers and zucchini into thin strips then cut in 2 (or 3 depending on size) and place in a bowl. Add sliced onion and pressed garlic. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the mustard and the honey, salt and pepper and mix well. Leave the veggies to marinate in the sauce for about 90 minutes, mixing them every now and again.
• Once marinated, spread the veggies in an oven tray and grill for about 20 minutes in a pre-heated oven (350 ºF).
• In the meantime, boil water to cook the pasta and cook the 500gr of pasta (in my opinion this goes especially well with penne, but use whatever pasta you want).
• Take the feta cheese and grate it into a bowl.
• When the veggies are roasted and the pasta is rinsed, place the pasta in a round (or flat) bowl, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil on it and some salt. Then pour the grilled veggies on top and mix. Above all that, place the grated feta cheese.

This pasta can be served as a hot dish as well as a cold pasta salad.

Do you have a special recipe that you want to showcase to other fans of Prime Cuts?  If so, send us a message on our Contact page.  We look forward to reading some new and original recipes.

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Photo by: Yael Beeri