Recipe of the Week for 1/17 - Stuffed Onions

I'm sitting here watching one of my favorite cooking-related shows, BBC America's Last Restaurant Standing, so I thought I'd try to catch up on my cooking-related blogging.

This recipe comes from one of the regular guest bloggers on The Pioneer Woman Cooks!, Kay from the Netherlands. Having gotten over my childhood hatred of peppers, I've been wanting to make stuffed peppers. However, Alec doesn't like peppers. So, when I saw this recipe, I thought it might be a good compromise.

I changed the recipe a bit from the original, mainly because it calls for ground beef, and since I don't eat beef, I used ground turkey. I've listed the recipe as I made it, the original recipe can be found here: Stuffed Onions, by Kay.

Stuffed Onions
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks, guest blogger Kay

Ingredients
2 onions
1 clove garlic
1/2 pound ground turkey (half a package)
stale bread
1 Tbsp sweet chili sauce
1/3 c. grated cheese (we used an apple smoked cheddar. Kay also suggests Gouda.)
4 c. chicken broth
1 tsp. salt
pepper
nutmeg

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Season the turkey with salt, pepper, nutmeg and sweet chili sauce. Knead well.

Cut off the tops of the onions, peel them and cut a small slice off the bottoms so they won't fall over. Use a spoon to loosen the layers of the onion and scoop them out. Make sure you leave at least 1/3 inch of onion layer.

Roughly chop the onion you removed. Mince the garlic. Crumble up the stale bread.

Brown the turkey. Remove from the heat and drain it. Add some olive oil to the pan and cook the chopped onion for about 4 minutes, then add the garlic. Put the meat back in. Add the breadcrumbs. Stir to combine. Turn off the heat and add the grated cheese.

Set the onions in a baking dish and fill to the top with the meat mixture. Pour in the chicken broth until the onions are 1/3 to 1/2 covered in liquid. Loosely cover the dish with aluminum foil.

Bake onions for about 1 hour. Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Take out the onions and spoon some of the broth over them. Put them back in the oven, uncovered for 20-30 more minutes, until the onions and topping are golden brown.

The Photo
Here's a photo of the dish. It looks a little lonely on the plate. I think we had rice with it, but I don't really remember. The Verdict
First of all, the chili sauce was a bit difficult to find, even in our fairly well stocked grocery store. We asked the lady who makes the sushi there (yes, our grocery store has a sushi bar, and yes, it's good!) and she directed us to an Asian market (who knew we had one!). A very nice lady at the Asian market recommended her favorite brand of chili sauce (Caravelle) and we bought a huge bottle, for about $3. She says it's good just to pour over chicken and as a dipping sauce. So, I'll be experimenting with other uses.

And, hopefully I'll find some good ones, because we didn't love this dish. Apparently, Alec doesn't really like onions, either (he might have mentioned that when I suggested stuffed onions as a dish). I do like onions, but this was a little much for me. I did really enjoy the filling and so I might try doing something else with that, maybe as a turkey burger.

Recipe Catch-Up - 11/9 - Florentine Meatballs

I got this recipe from another blog I read, Jamie's McBlog. Like me, she writes about a lot of different stuff, including recipes she tries. She got this recipe from Rachael Ray, who is also one of my favorites.

Florentine Meatballs

recipe from Rachael Ray, via Jamie's McBlog

Ingredients

1 box frozen spinach, defrosted in the microwave

1 1/3 lb ground turkey breast

1/2 of a medium onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 large egg

1/4 c. milk

1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese

3/4 c. bread crumbs

Olive oil

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Wring out defrosted spinach. Place turkey in a bowl and make a well in the middle of it. Add the spinach, onion, garlic, egg, milk, bread crumbs, Parmesan and salt & pepper to taste. Mix well and form into 12 large balls. Place on a non-stick cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Cook for 20 minutes in the oven until cooked through.

The Photos

I served them at meatball subs. Here's the sub with just the meatballs & a little tomato sauce:

And, here's the sub after I added some mozzarella cheese & more tomato sauce:

The Verdict
The recipe calls for 1 1/3 pounds of turkey because that's what normally comes in a package of ground turkey, so don't worry about the weird measurement. For us, this made way more than 12 meatballs - more like 20. But, they froze really well. We really enjoyed the subs, and we ate the leftovers from this batch with spaghetti and sauce and they were equally as good. It's a simple recipe and I love that it makes enough for 2 meals! I've since made them again and we have half a batch in the freezer right now, which we'll probably eat the day after we get home from Orlando - which means I won't have to go to the store right away!

Alec's Birthday & the Recipe for the week of 9/13

For Alec's birthday, I made a dish I've been wanting to try for quite some time. But, I knew it wasn't the sort of thing you'd make for just two people, so I had to wait for an occasion where we'd have guests. I invited a few friends for a small dinner party and eagerly pulled out this recipe!

It's a baked pasta dish, but with a twist - you bake it in a puff pastry shell, using a springform pan.

In the interest of time, so I can get caught up, I'm just posting the link:

Baked Angel Hair with Eggplant
from Giada DeLaurentiis, The Food Network

The Photo

Here's a photo of the dish, before I cut & served it. The glass bottom of my springform pan fit perfectly onto my pewter tray. I initially had a cake knife out out to cut it, but we ended up having to use a chef's knife. The cake server worked well, though! I wish I'd taken a picture of a slice; it looked really cool!

The Verdict

I made one change, which was to leave out the eggplant. Neither of us is really a fan. I considered artichoke hearts as a substitute, but ultimately decided the turkey sausage would be enough. (If you have an idea for a substitute, leave me a comment and maybe I'll try it next time!)

One mistake I made was that I didn't read the recipe thoroughly enough and I missed the part where you are supposed to let the pasta mixture cool before you put it in the pastry shell to bake. We ended up having to shove it in the fridge (which I know is a bad idea, as it brings down the temp in there but I didn't have time to wait).

I suggest putting a sheet pan on the rack below the springform pan. I guess some grease from the sausage dripped into the bottom of my oven. I didn't notice, until the next time I went to use the oven and smelled an awful burning smell. That resulted in two rounds with oven cleaner and a couple of nights of baking dinner in the toaster oven. Basically, it was a huge mess, which could be avoided by having something to catch the drips!

We ended up letting it sit for longer than 20 minutes and I was concerned it would be cold, but it was still hot & steamy.

Everyone at the party raved about the dish! There were 2 portions left over and I had them for lunch over the next couple of days, heating them up in the toaster oven (I don't think using the microwave would be successful.

More Photos
Here are a few more photos of the event.

The Cola Cake, all decorated.


The table, set for dinner


A close-up of the place setting. I used my New Yorker cartoon plates as the salad plates.

The bar area. I lined up 3 TV trays and draped them with a full-size table cloth.

Recipe Catch Up - Week of 8/16 - Turkey & Cheddar Macaroni

We are going on vacation soon, so I am determined to catch up on my "recipe of the week" posts before we do. That way, when I get back, I can share photos and stories from the trip! Not to mention updating the status of my running (it's not good, which is why I don't like to talk about it!)

I got this recipe from the "Grubfest" episode of Paula Deen's show. I love that episode, only in part due to the fact that her sons, Jamie and Bobby are on it. Boy, are they cute! I've had this recipe in my Food Network "recipe box" for quite some time and was reminded of it when the episode ran again. The original recipe calls for beef, but since I don't eat it, I substituted turkey.

Wayne's Beef & Cheddar Macaroni
from Paula Deen, the Food Network

The Photo
Here it is - doesn't it look yummy?

The Verdict
This was really good. Alec liked it a lot! As I said, I substituted turkey for the beef. I also cut the recipe in half, and it was still enough to fill my 9 x 11 casserole, so it was more than plenty of food for the two of us! I ate on it several days for lunch.

Recipe of the Week - BBQ Turkey Meatloaf

This week's recipe of the week comes from my new favorite Food Network show, Down Home with the Neelys. Pat and Gina Neely own a family BBQ restaurant business in Memphis, TN and they just debuted their show this year. They are so much fun to watch and their recipes always sound so good. This is the first one I've tried, though.

Instead of typing out the recipe, I'm just putting in a link to the Food Network site. It's probably easier to print out from there, anyway, if you want to make it.

BBQ Turkey Meatloaf
from Down Home with the Neelys

I did make a couple of substitutions. First, I didn't have enough paprika to mix up their BBQ seasoning. So, I used Lawry's Season Salt - it has basically the same ingredients. Second, I didn't make the BBQ sauce. I just used the sauce we love, Stubbs, made in Austin, TX. I've never been to the restaurant and I don't know if Alec has. But, they make some darn good sauce. I definitely want to go to the restaurant when we go to Austin! (Not that I know when that will be!) I also cut the recipe in half (I just eyeballed the egg). It made plenty for Alec and I to have generous servings for dinner and enough for lunch today. I served it with red-skin mashed potatoes (with the skin on).

The recipe was easy to put together and it was very tasty! Alec wants it in the regular rotation so that's a good sign!

I did remember the pictures this time! It doesn't look very pretty on the plate, though.