Easy Macaroni Salad

So my faithfulness to glomming Tastespotting in my reader led me to this post here, BLT Macaroni Salad. It looked really good and I had all the ingredients on hand. But of course I had to change it up a bit.

Cooked elbow macaroni, chopped tomato, cooked bacon pieces and fresh from our garden green onions.

Since there is only the 5 of us I used a half pound of pasta, two smallish tomatoes, half a pound of bacon and about 6 green onions.

Here's where I made a big change to the original recipe: mayo (1/2 cup), red wine vinegar (a good tbsp.) salt and pepper.

I have a thing for red wine vinegar and it just has more flavor to me than plain white.

Mix your dressing up in a large bowl and add the other stuff, you can save some onions to make it look pretty or try to hide them in the sauce to get the kids to eat them without the "what's the green things" whine that I listen to.

Stir it all together and you're done.

This makes a great macaroni salad for people who don't like a lot of weird and or unidentifiable ingredients in theirs. We've had it with panko coated baken chicken and ribs and it was great with both.

Recipe:
For 5 with a bit leftover
1/2 lb cooked elbow macaroni
1/2 lb cooked and crumbled bacon
2 smallish or 1 medium tomato
1/2 bunch green onions
1/2 cup real mayo
1 to 1 1/2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together and serve or chill until ready to serve.

Part 3: Tzatziki Sauce and Squash Side Dish

Here is the conclusion to our Greek/Med Dinner from a couple weeks ago.

Tzatziki is part of an appetizer in Greek or Turkish dishes, it's served as a dip with pita bread.

Here in the US you'll see it listed as Cucumber Sauce a lot of times.

What you need: yogurt (we'll get into specifics in a minute), olive oil, red wine vinegar, a cucumber, fresh mint, garlic and salt and pepper.

The yogurt, if you are lucky enough to live in a area that has a store that carries plain Greek yogurt, buy that, you'll get to skip a step. If you're like me and have never seen plain Greek yogurt in the store, just get whichever brand you like or is cheapest. Important point here, vanilla yogurt is not plain, it's vanilla so read the label carefully, vanilla would just be ick. You'll need 16 oz, usually 2 containers.

Now to get the yogurt ready, we've gotta get all that extra water out, I could be mistaken but I believe this is about half the process of making yogurt into cheese, but anyway, I use coffee filters and a mesh strainer and a bowl to drain the yogurt. (It works better with the basket filters we used to use but the #4 shaped filters are fine for 1 container of yogurt.) This needs to be done preferably the night before you want to mix the sauce, just fill the filters with the yogurt, put those into the strainer and set the strainer over a bowl, you can cover with a paper towel or plastic wrap then stick in the fridge.

This is what ends up in the bowl the next day, and the yogurt has a much firmer texture.

You need about a tablespoon of minced garlic, this is 3 little cloves, minced as fine as I could get without mincing my fingertips. I have no real knife skills but I get by.

I'd call this a good sized cucumber, about 8 inches, peeled and seeded. Then chop into small pieces, not minced but not big chunks either.

Now we have to get rid of as much water in the cucumber as we can. Cukes are mostly water, but really like to keep it so after chopping lay the pieces out onto a kitchen towel and roll them up, now you might need some help but grab each end and twist with everything you've got, preferably over the sink. You don't want to dry the cucumber or give your hands towel burn but you want to get a lot of the water out, more room to put flavor in now.

This part can be a little tricky due to how big your cucumber is but add 1 tablespoons oilve oil, 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar, a healthy pinch of kosher salt and a few turns of fresh pepper, throw in the minced garlic and give a good stir. The cucumber should be nicely coated with everything but not have a puddle in the bottom. If it's not enough liquid to coat everything add another 1/2 tablespoon olive oil and another teaspoon of vinegar.

Finely mince the mint, about 3 leaves and add to the mix, I use my really good Henkels kitchen shears for the mint.

Dump in the drained yogurt and give it a good stir. You can serve it right now but the flavors will intensify after about an hour so I usually cover it with plastic and then cook dinner. Check the seasoning and add and needed salt or pepper.

Serve with pita for dipping or just about any type of meat, beef, lamb, chicken and pork I know all taste good with it, fish I haven't tried.

Ingredients:
16 oz plain yogurt
1 medium cucumber
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tea red wine vinegar
3 fresh mint leaves
kosher salt and fresh pepper to taste

Drain yogurt over night, peel and seed cucumber the chop into small pieces, squeeze to drain excess water. Add cucumber, olive oil, red wine vinegar salt, pepper, mint and garlic. Stir to combine and add yogurt. Let rest for an hour or so and serve.

And onto the easy peesy Squash side dish. Seriously easy.

We've got a yellow crookneck squash and a zucchini here, Mom used a mandolin to slice these, I'm too scared of slicing me to really use it. A teaspoon or so of minced garlic.

Remember the onions that had been marinated with the pork for the Souvlaki? Grab some of those too.

Throw all of it into a skillet with a tablespoon or so of olive oil and let it just hang out on medium heat. Go ahead and stir it occasionally.

About 10 minutes later, here's what you've got. My mom loves this stuff, I have no clue because I won't eat squash. She did say it went good with the meal and gave the kids a veggie to eat but me and my Dad passed on it.

So that's the conclusion of the Greek Med dinner. If anyone tries it please let me know how it turns out.

Lovely Creamy Risotto

I have never ordered risotto in a restaurant. I don't know if I've ever been to one that serves it. But having seen it so many times on tv cooking shows and online recipes and Chef Ramsey's obsession with only serving perfect risotto on Hell's Kitchen I figured I'd try it.

I did not plan to fall in love with the creamy flavor packed rice.

Here's how I make it, I have no idea really if this is how it's supposed to taste but I love it, and eat way too much of it.The basic ingredients: Aborio rice (sometimes called risotto rice like mine up there), butter, garlic, and onion.

You don't have to use anything but the rice, it's special. Aborio rice is a super starchy short grain, it's the starch on the rice that gives risotto it's creaminess, you never want to rinse this type of rice. The butter/margarine can be substituted with olive oil or really any kind of fat. The garlic and onion can be subbed or left out entirely, but I think they make great flavor.


For a single good sized serving I use 1/3 of a cup of rice.

About the liquid, I use chicken broth because I usually pair my risotto with roasted chicken, and I don't drink wine so I don't cook with it, but you can use some white wine and whatever broth tickles your fancy, or just go basic and use water. The amount really is up to the rice and how done you want it. If I had to guess I'd say I average about 1 and 1/2 cups of liquid per 1/3 cup rice.


I melt the butter on medium-low heat and cook the onions about 5 minutes, then scoop in the garlic and stir just until I can smell it, then dump in the rice and toss around to coat it in the butter.

Then I start adding liquid, about a 1/3 to a 1/2 cup at a time and make sure you always stir really well after you add the liquid. You want a simmer going pretty steady once you start adding liquid, lots of small bubbles, but not boiling and popping over, raise and lower your heat accordingly.

I use a good nonstick pan to make my risotto so I don't follow the rule of always stirring, but if your pan is on the sticky side I'd say you need to keep right by it because if it sticks it will burn.

After a couple of liquid additions it will get a creaminess going, but it's not done, if you taste the rice now, it will still be crunchy, bleh.

This may look like the same picture but notice the carmelized chicken stock around the pan? That's how I know it's getting close when I start seeing that. Also it tends to stay in mostly a mountain when you scoop it up. Always just check the rice, it's so much easier than guessing.

I never need to add salt to mine because the chicken stock while low sodium is still full of it, but I do add some fresh pepper.

If you want to add anything now is the time, asparagus is a popular choice and just about any kind of cheese or any fresh herb. I like mine plain mostly.

One of my favorite dinners. Just throw in some roasted chicken and have a salad and you're ready to go. In all it took me about 20 minutes for the risotto, the chicken that's another story.

Baked Beans

So here are the baked beans we have at BBQs and picnics and just whenever the mood strikes.

Stuff: Canned Pork n Beans, whatever brand you like or is on sale, those 2 big cans are enough to feed say 8 normal adults or 3 of my uncles, BBQ sauce this is actually kinda optional, if I have it I use it but I don't go to the store for it, ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, pancake(maple) syrup, another I don't run to the store for thing, onion powder, garlic powder, and chili powder, and the will run to the store for thing...bacon.


First, open the cans of beans and dump them into a strainer or colander, you want to rinse all that "tomato sauce" they come in off. Then dump the beans into a bowl and then start adding the other stuff (no bacon yet). This recipe really does not have measurements, you have to taste the sauce and make sure it's right, just a nice balance of all the flavors.

I usually put about 3 squirts of ketchup then maybe 2 of mustard and one of bbq sauce. Syrup gets a good squirt and then 2-3 big tablespoons of brown sugar. The onion and garlic get good healthy shakes and the chili powder depends on if I want to fight with my kids about it being too spicy.

Stir it all together and taste, see what you need more of or what you need to balance out, the mustard tends to get strong fast but a little more ketchup and sugar fix that. Oh yeah, heat the oven to 350.



Pour it into an oven safe dish, I think this one holds something like 1.5 quarts and smooth out the top with your spoon. Now for the good stuff.

Bacon. Ok so you can either use completely uncooked bacon, which I do if I'm feeding more than just a few, or you can use some cooked but not crispy bacon. This stuff was leftover from a recipe where I needed it half cooked in a skillet and half in the oven. Just lay it over the top there then pop it into the oven for 30-45 minutes.

You know it's done when the top just starts to look at little dry and the sugar around the edges of the pan gets crunchy(carmelized).

Ok so I was more worried about fixing plates and watching the ending of the superbowl then getting a pic of the finished beans. But this is what they look like when done, top is dry and crunchy, underneath is moist but not dripping like that "tomato sauce" was. You can have these with ribs, hamburgers, hot dogs, anything really. They have that nice bbq type flavor to them.