Food Porn: Haydees with the Ladies

Earlier this week, I met up with some friends in our Columbia Heights neighborhood for a mid-week pick me up...a night I called "Haydees with the Ladies."  For those of you who live in Columbia Heights/Mt.Pleasant, you've no doubt walked past Haydees. Maybe you've even gone there a few times. The place is always decked out with Christmas lights, year-round, and has great decor, including paintings of the singer Selena, the Taj Mahal, and the Pyramids, because nothing screams Salvdorean food quite like that artwork!

Unfortunately I didn't take the time to take photos of the decor, but here is their website. I think you can get the general gist of the place there. Or you can look at this steaming pile of fajitas. They were awesome. As was the cover band that sang Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Gotye.

And word to the wise, the fiesta margarita contains 50 percent more tequila. Just sayin.

Fiery Beef and Rice Noodle Salad

Every so often I try something that is similar to something I've made before, but perhaps a bit simpler. And sometimes it works out, but more often than not, I find that the more complex recipes end up more flavorful. This was the case for this recipe. It's similar to one of my favorite recipes from last year, the Vietnamese Pork Noodle Salad, which I recently made for my family over the holiday. So if I'm going to recommend making one of these recipes, make that one. But hey, maybe you can improve upon this one?

Fiery Beef and Rice Noodle Salad (serves 4)

Ingredients:

soy sauce

2 oz uncooked rice stick noodles

12 oz flank steak, trimmed

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

Cooking spray

2 cups shredded iceberg lettuce

1/3 cup thinly vertically sliced red onion

1 cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise, and thinly sliced

1/2 habanero pepper, minced

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

1 TB sugar

1 TB fish sauce

12 basil leaves, torn

Instructions:

Cut steak into 1/8-inch-thick slices.Sprinkle with salt and pepper and then place in a ziploc bag. Coat with soy sauce. Marinate for an hour or more.

Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain and rinse with cold water; drain. Coarsely chop noodles.

Heat a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Coat with cooking spray. Add beef; sauté 4 minutes.

Combine steak, noodles, lettuce, onion, cucumber, and habanero. Combine juice, sugar, and fish sauce; pour over noodle mixture, tossing gently. Sprinkle with basil.

Tortellini Tomato Spinach Soup

As part of the post-holiday detox, I wanted to make a simple soup that I could easily whip up in an hour or less and that wouldn't require too much prep work. You can't get much easier than this recipe, which calls for pre-made tortellini and a few simple ingredients.

Tortellini Tomato Spinach Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 1 TB olive oil
• 1/2 cup minced onion (about 1/2 small onion)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 4 to 6 cups broth, chicken or vegetable
• 1 (14-ounce) can whole tomatoes, crushed through your fingers or coarsely chopped
• 1 (9-ounce) package fresh tortellini
• Coarse grained salt and cracked black pepper
• 10 oz fresh or frozen spinach, defrosted and chopped
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan, very loosely packed

Instructions:

 

In a 3-quart soup pot, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Saute the onion and garlic, stirring often until onions are translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add broth and tomatoes, turn heat up to high, and bring to a boil. Add the tortellini and cook according to package instructions.

 

When tortellini is almost done, add spinach and taste, adjusting seasonings with salt and pepper. Serve immediately. Garnish each serving with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.

Beef Bourguignon

Quick disclaimer before I go on. I can be complete nitpicky when it comes to spelling, but no matter how many times I write "beef bourguignon" it always ends up differently. Because I don't know French. Hell, I don't even know if this is French, but I'm guessing since it's the infamous Julia Child dish, it probably is. Disclaimer over.

Over the holidays, I wanted to cook something nice and warm for a large number of people. I typically cook for just myself, which means a lot of leftovers. Which is fine, except for when you try something completely out of your comfort zone...and what if it turns out poorly? Then you're stuck with a bunch of leftovers that you don't want to throw away out of principle, but don't exactly want to give it away. So I took the opportunity of a captive family audience, who will not judge me too harshly, to try and make beef bourguignon. In the interest of time, I opted not to do the original Julia child version, which I believe requires a few more hours and steps. I instead did the Anne Burrell version, which was pretty simple. And it turned out really well. So if you have a few hours on your hands, and want to serve a warm meal for a crowd, this is your recipe!

Beef Bourguignon (serves 8-10)

Ingredients:

• 4 pounds beef chuck, cut into 1-inch chunks

Marinade:

• 1 large onion, quartered
• 2 carrots, peeled and halved
• 2 ribs celery, halved
• 5 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 bottle red wine
• 3 fresh bay leaves

Stew:

• Olive oil, enough to coat pan
• Kosher salt
• 1/2 cup flour 
• 8 ounces slab bacon, cut into lardons (small pieces)
• 1 large onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 2 carrots, cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 2 ribs celery, cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup tomato paste 
• 2 cups red wine (reserved marinade)
• 3 to 4 cups beef stock, plus more as needed
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 bundle fresh thyme
• 1 pound cremini mushrooms, quartered
• 1 pound red bliss potatoes, quartered
• 1/2 bunch fresh chives, finely chopped, for garnish

Directions:

 

For the marinade, combine the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves, and wine in a large bowl or container. Add the beef, cover, and let sit in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, remove the beef from the marinade. Strain the veggies and bay leaves from the wine and discard, but reserving the wine.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Coat a large, wide pan or Dutch oven with olive oil and bring to medium-high heat. Season the beef generously with salt and toss with flour. Add the flour-coated beef to the hot pan, but be sure not to crowd the pan, so you will need to work in batches.  Do not flour the beef until you're ready to brown it.

Brown the meat well on all sides and remove from the pan to a sheet tray.

Add the bacon and cook until it gets brown and crispy. Toss in the onions, carrots, celery, and season with salt. Cook the mixture for 8 to10 minutes or until the mixture starts to soften and become very aromatic. Add in the garlic and cook for 2 to 3 more minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook for 1 to 2 minutes.

Add 2 cups reserved wine and the beef. Stir to combine and cook until the wine has reduced by 1/2. Add the beef stock to just cover the surface of the beef. Toss in the bay leaves and thyme bundle. Season with salt, if needed. Bring the liquid to a boil, cover the pot and put in the preheated oven.

Cook the beef 2 hours, checking occasionally to add more stock, if needed. During the last 40 minutes of cooking time, add the mushrooms, potatoes, and more stock, if needed.

Remove the pan from the oven, and skim off any excess grease from the surface of the stew. Serve with crusty bread to sop up all the sauce and garnish with chopped fresh chives.

Food Porn: The Dor-stop

This edition of Food Porn is brought to you by Pittsburgh diner food. While I was home for the holidays, I met up with my friend and her little girl for breakfast at a place in Dormont. This diner, called the "Dor-Stop," had been featured in the Food Network Show "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives," which highlights places popular with the locals featuring regional specialties. The host, Guy Fieri, is kind of annoying, but I do like checking out the places he visits, when I get the chance.

One could say that the regional specialty highlighted at the Dor-Stop is the carbohydrate. It is a staple for Pennsylvania winters. While the hotcakes were deemed the thing to order, I opted to try out the raspberry stuffed french toast. With a side of bacon. Obviously.

This place will stuff just about anything in a carbohydrate. Because that makes everything better. And for all of you New Year's Resolutions folks...I ate this in 2012. So there.

Top 5 Posts of 2012

Today marks the end of my first year as a food blogger. I'm still debating to what extent I'll be blogging in the new year, I'll likely keep it up but perhaps with a little less regularity. But as we look to 2013, just about everyone presents a "best of" list from 2012. So in keeping with this spirit, I present to you the Top 5 most clicked on blog entries from Small Girl, Big Appetite. Some of these come as little surprise, but I was surprised that considering i post a decent amount of meat dishes, not one of them made this list!

5) Baked Costa Rican-Style Tilapia

This is a very simple dish that has a nice sweet taste, brought about by the pineapple rice. The fish itself doesn't have a lot of flavor, BUT the rice is awesome and so when you mix it all together, it's a great dish.

4) Smoked Paprika Roasted Salmon with Chive Pesto Fingerling Potatoes

I make this salmon all the time. You can easily mix the ingredients together with one fillet and not end up with a ton of leftovers. I regularly have all the ingredients in my cupboard. And it just tastes so good. I haven't made the potatoes in a while, but as we enter wintertime and I tend to gravitate to my favorite starch, I'm sure I'll revisit that side dish.

3) Food Porn: Belga Cafe

Let me give you all a brief lesson about Search Engine Optimization. Certain words naturally garner higher search results due to their popularity. I should put the word "porn" in every post because then my site visits will go through the roof. But I only choose to use it sparingly, when visiting restaurants with porn-tastic food dishes. This entry highlighted a great brunch restaurant in Capitol Hill. The truly interesting anecdote about this is that the owner/head chef of the restaurant was eliminated last week on Top Chef: Seattle. He made it about halfway through the competition. One of his dishes, the green eggs and ham, he featured on that show and it's high on my list for the next time I grab brunch there.

2) Buffalo Cheesey Bread

I need to give credit to my friend Nick Evans from www.Macheesmo.com for this recipe which I made for a Super Bowl party this year, and subsequent other sporting event watches. You take cheese, mayo, hot sauce, a good french bread, and chives to create something that tastes much like a buffalo wing, without the wing. Amazing.

1) Food Porn: Sticky Rice

Remember what I said earlier about SEO? This is a perfect example of how this works. This post included the words "porn" AND "sticky" in the title and "balls" in the body. (that's what she said?) Yep, this is a no brainer and received twice as many clicks as anything else. Sadly the owner of Sticky Rice passed away a few weeks ago, but the restaurant perseveres on. And I'll be visiting again in the New Year.

Happy New Year's Eve all!

Scalloped New Potatoes

I spent a week in Pittsburgh for the holidays. My initial intent was to cook for the family several times during the course of the week, but I only ended up cooking a full meal twice. I did assist my mother in the kitchen on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, contributing to the making of this potato dish.

It should come as no surprise to my readers from the burgh that we like our potatoes in this state. I think I had potatoes 3 ways over the course of the week. This recipe, that my mother has had cut out from a magazine from December 1999 takes a different approach to regular scallop potatoes, making them lighter, and adding a bunch of vegetables.

Scalloped New Potatoes (serves 8)

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. tiny new potatoes, sliced
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 TB margarine or butter
• 3 TB all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 3/4 cups milk (we used 1%)
• 6 cups torn spinach, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 small red sweet pepper, cut into matchstick strips
• 3/4 cup shredded white cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Coat a 2 quart oval or rectangular baking dish with cooking spray; set aside. 

In a large saucepan cook potatoes, covered, in a moderate amount of boiling salted water for 5 minutes or until just tender. Drain and transfer to an extra large mixing bowl. In the same saucepan cook onion and garlic in 2 TB of margarine over medium heat for 5 minutes or until just tender. Stir in flour, rosemary, parsley, salt and pepper. Stir in milk all at once. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly.

**Note that my mom has said that every time she makes this, she doesn't feel this is enough sauce. So we did 1 1/2 times as much of this milk sauce, but if you want to keep the calories/fat down slightly, you may want to follow the recipe.  Just know that the sauce won't cover as much as you expect.

Add spinach and red pepper to potatoes. Toss gently to combine. Pour sauce over potato mixture. Stir gently until evenly coated. Transfer potato mixture to prepared baking dish. The dish will be very full.

Sprinkle cheese evenly over top. Melt the remaining 1 TB margarine. Add bread crumbs, tossing to coat. Sprinkle over cheese. Bake for 20 minutes or until edges are bubbly and crumbs are golden. Serve.