Prime Cuts

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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Today Melissa Delgaudio shares her a little piece of grilling dessert awesomeness with us.  Melissa is going to be a new regular contributor ’round here.  By day Melissa is Principal of Honeybee Consulting.  You can usually find her hanging out over on Twitter.

It’s Summer and backyard chefs across the country are reveling in Weberific, char-grilled glee. True, it might seem that there are few things in life as laden with awesomeness as a great burger or steak right off the grill, but if you just open your mind…grilling can be oh, so much more.

More, you ask? Why yes! While there are limitless things that can be cooked on your trusty grill, few will leave you so satisfied and awash in post-meal ecstasy as fruit. Yeah, you heard me: FRUIT.  During the summer, the possibilities are only as limited as your imagination. Pineapple?  You bet.  Bananas?  Sure.  But those are fruits for another day.  I’m here today to talk about peaches and the sweet, magical deliciousness they’ll bring to your table.

Peaches. Sweet, delicious peaches.  Loaded with their own natural sugars and juices, they’re the ideal candidates for grilling.  And they’re nearing the peak of their season, so now is the perfect time to bring them to the table.  Whether you choose a juicy golden peach from Georgia or South Carolina–slightly acidic and a little tangy with notes of butterscotchy goodness–or a sweet, perfect white peach, ripe with undertones of raspberry-like perfection, from Central California, your results will be sublime, I promise you.

Ingredients

4 ripe peaches, halved with stones removed
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons sugar
Pinch of Kosher or sea salt
Vegetable (or some other neutral) oil
Your vanilla ice cream of choice

Preparation

Heat your grill to high (and remember to clean your grates … you don’t want your fruit to taste like the blackened tuna you made earlier). While it’s warming up, mix the butter, cinnamon, sugar and salt in a small bowl until thoroughly combined. Lightly brush the cut side of each peach with oil, to prevent sticking. Grill peaches ‘til they’re golden brown and just cooked through (about 3-5 minutes). Top each half with a couple of teaspoons of the butter mixture and serve to your salivating dinner guests with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Devilishly simple, sweetly seductive. Grilling fruit will tantalize your taste buds and open your mind to all that grilling can be.

Enjoy!

Photo by: mccun934

Today we have a guest post from Christpher S. Penn.  Christopher is one of the top minds in social media, an analytics god, a foodie, and a ninja (yes, a real live ninja) on the side.  You can follow him on Twitter where he shares tons of useful information on a daily basis.

This recipe was originally posted over on Christopher’s blog and once I read it I begged him to let me post it here for all of you.  This is an innovative recipe and the first time I’ve read about something like this.  I’m definitely going to give this a try this weekend.

An interesting thing I tried over the weekend. Take a can of crushed tomatoes, add salt and pepper as necessary, then pour it all on a baking sheet and bake it in the oven at 170 degrees for 12 hours or until dry and dark. You end up with a snack that tastes like sun-dried tomatoes and handles like a fruit rollup. Cook it longer or get a cookie cutter and cut circles out of the sheet and bake at a slightly higher temperature and you’ve got tomato chips.

Unlike potato chips, these have zero fat, only as much salt as you put in (or that came in the can), and are darned tasty. For extra fun, add in exceptionally finely chopped basil before drying.

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Today Justin Rasmussen provides a recipe he created from experimenting with some turkey patties, coffee, and a grill…some of his favorite things.  Justin is co-founder of CoffeeHouse Ideas, a creative design firm.  You can find Justin hanging out over on Twitter often.

It’s officially summer and that means if you haven’t been grilling already, you should be pulling your barbecue out and firing it up. Everyone knows that putting a rub or marinade on your meat before grilling always brings out great flavor, but what do you do if you’re bored of the same old rubs and need a way to feed your coffee addiction at the same time. We have just the fix for you!

A coffee-based rub can change the way you grill.  It’s no wonder that many fine dining restaurants use coffee-based rubs on their most prime and exclusive cuts. They know coffee helps bring out and intensify the natural flavors of your meat that other spices don’t. When you explore with different blends, origins, and roasts you’ll find those subtleties that are so reclusive in your morning brew become abundantly pronounced.