M's Sides Archives - Page 2 of 2

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 23, 2012

On Sunday evening, my husband likes to cook a meal for us when he can. He usually likes to cook up some type of red meat with a few vegetable side dishes. These sides are very good with most any red meat dish, including beef, lamb, veal or even pork. We chose lamb chops (which we will give you a good recipe for at the end of this post).

Onion Roasted Potatoes

Take 6 yellow or yukon gold potatoes, and an onion. Cut the potatoes into eighths, and chop the onion. Place these ingredients into a large zip lock bag with a quarter of a cup of olive oil. Cover with salt and pepper. From here, these can be roasted in the oven or even put on the grill (we did the latter to save time). Put them on medium heat on the grill for 40 minutes, stirring regularly. Double this time if in oven.

Roasted Green Beans

For red meat dishes, we prefer asparagus, but as a northern hemisphere vegetable, they are out of season. Green beans, however, grown anywhere and are readily available. For these, you need olive oil and butter. Put 30-40 green beans in a 1/8th of a cup of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of butter. Grill for 25 minutes, or put in the oven for 30. Take 10 minutes off these times of you like them crunchy.

Garlic Roasted Shiitake Mushrooms

Get about 30 Shiitake mushrooms and a six to eight cloves of garlic. Chop the garlic cloves in half, and cut the stems off the shitake mushrooms. Cover in about an eighth of a cup of olive oil, and roast for 25-30 minutes on the grill or in the oven. These are particularly good with a red meat main course.

These are three dishes which are great with red meat. You can do any type of meat with these, but we chose lamb chops, which are quite tasty. The recipe we used was to brush the chops in an olive oil mix filled with thyme and rosemary. Quite delicious after being grilled for 10 minutes a side. Grab a full-bodied cabernet and enjoy!

-m

Posted by Meaghan Barry on January 6, 2011

Since we are in midst of winter with no end in sight, I decided to make a tropical fruit salad today. This recipe is super easy, but will help beat out some of the winter doldrums!

Tropical Fruit Salad

Ingredients:
-3 kiwis
-1 mango
-2 oranges
-1 tablespoon honey

Peel and slice up the fruit.

Put the fruit in a bowl and stir in the honey.

Sit back and enjoy your tropical fruit salad. Close your eyes and picture yourself on a warm island somewhere! (And tune out all meteorologists who keep talking about two upcoming snow storms.)

-m

Posted by Meaghan Barry on February 23, 2010

For the Super Bowl, I also made Guacamole (as did our Mom…I guess it’s a family trend). Sister K has a very good recipe that she has made for me before (for recipe, click here.) I was searching around for a new variation and I found this one by Alton Brown on the Food Network website.

Ingredients
-3 Haas avocados, halved, seeded and peeled
-1 lime, juiced (I was out of limes and half a lemon worked just fine in this recipe)
-1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
-1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 medium onion, diced (I prefer red onion for this recipe)
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro (omit if serving for a crowd…a lot of people do not like cilantro)
1 clove garlic, minced

Directions

In a large bowl place the scooped avocado pulp and lime juice, toss to coat. Drain, and reserve the lime juice, after all of the avocados have been coated. Using a potato masher add the salt, cumin, and cayenne and mash. Then, fold in the onions, tomatoes, cilantro, and garlic. Add 1 tablespoon of the reserved lime juice. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour and then serve.

A good trick I learned somewhere is to stick the avocado pits into the guacamole while it is sitting out. Remove them before serving. In addition to the lime/lemon juice, this prevents the guacamole from browning.

-Sister M

Posted by Meaghan Barry on February 21, 2010

I finally got around to making a special Valentine’s Day dinner, albeit about a week late (last Sunday, neither one of us felt like going grocery shopping and we just ended up getting Indian take-out). For starters, I made hummus, toasted pita chips, and warm olives with za’atar. For the actual dinner, I used Ana Sortun’s cookbook Spice (chef of Oleana…my hands down favorite restaurant in Boston and her husband runs the best farmer’s market stand, Siena Farms, in Copley Square during the summer months). I made the Seared Salmon with Egyptian Garlic and Coriander Sauce, Rice Cake, and Sister K’s Roasted Asparagus. The salmon was very good…it browned very nicely in this recipe. I made way too much of the tomato sauce as I forgot to halve the recipe. I did get to practice my new cooking skill of peeling tomatoes that I learned in my French cooking class. Basically, you cut off the top, cut an x from top to bottom of the tomato and place in boiling water for 1 minute. Put in an ice bath afterwards and the peel practically falls off. The rice cake were delicious…scoops of rice that get a great crusty top when you cook them and then bake them. Here is the recipe slightly abridged for time for quantity (check out the cookbook for the full recipe):

Rice Cakes:

Ingredients
-1 cup basmati rice
-2 eggs
-1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 tblsp canola oil
-1 tsp butter

Bring 4 cups of water to a boil over high heat. Add rice and reduce the heat to medium. Simmer for 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain the rice and allow to cool for 20 minutes. Preheat over to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs with the yogurt until smooth. Stir in rice and season with salt.

Heat a medium ovenproof saute pan over high heat and add oil and butter. Once the butter is brown, scoop the rice in 1/2 cup measuring container and drop into pan (should make 4-6 scoops). Cook over medium heat until the bottoms brown (around 6-10 minutes). Place this pan in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. The bottoms should have a nice crust and the tops should still be soft. Serve with the crust side up.

I thought this made a great side dish and was not very difficult to make. I am definitely going to make this one again.

-Sister M