Red Snapper w/ Sweet Mustard & Spinach

It's only two days before the big Thanksgiving Feast, here in the states.  My family is all over the place this year, with my dad visiting my brother in Florida, leaving the girls and my mom to fend for ourselves.  My sister is taking care of the main attraction (the turkey!) and I'll be doing all the sides.  I even plan to bust out a from-scratch pecan pie.  So hopefully all runs smoothly for us!  But not too smoothly, of course.  We don't want to end up having to put on Thanksgiving every year.  Hehe.

How do you all plan on celebrating the big Thanksgiving day?!

So I ended up taking home a 6 lb. red snapper yesterday from Whole Foods.  It just looked SO good.  Then I realized, what the heck am I going to do with a 6 lb. red snapper?!  After breaking it down, I ended up with 8 4 oz. fillets.  That's more than enough to feed us for a bit!  So I decided to give 4 of them to a couple close friends.  And with 2 of them I made this fantastic pre-birthday dinner for Andy (whose birthday is indeed today!).  He gobbled it all up without a problem!

Ingredients:

2 4 oz. red snapper fillets
flour, for dusting
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil

Sweet Mustard Sauce:

2 tablespoons dijon mustard (I used the whole grain variety)
3 tablespoons boiling water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1-2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon soy sauce
juice from 1/2 lemon
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
salt and pepper, to taste

1/2 lb. spinach, stems removed
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
 salt and pepper, to taste

Caramelized Apples:

1 Granny Smith Apple, core removed and cut into 8 wedges
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Make your mustard sauce first.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the dijon mustard and boiling water, adding the water in small increments in order to create a smooth emulsion.

Slowly drizzle in vegetable oil, whisking constantly, until all is incorporated.  Stir in honey, soy sauce, lemon juice, and parsley.  Season with salt and pepper, to taste.  Set aside, until needed.

In a medium saute pan, melt the butter with the brown sugar.  When the sugar is dissolved, add your apple wedges.  Cook until the apples start to soften and are warm.  Hold warm until needed.

Heat a large oven-proof saute pan under medium high heat.  Add butter and oil to pan.  Season both sides of snapper fillets with salt and pepper.  Dust with flour, shaking off any excess.  Add snapper to the pan and cook until browned.  Carefully flip fish over and transfer pan to oven to finish cooking, about 3 minutes was perfect on these.

During those 3 minutes you can quickly saute your spinach.  Add butter to a medium pan under medium high heat.  When butter is melted, add spinach.  Season with salt and pepper.  Cook spinach until wilted.  I find it's easiest to keep the spinach moving, to create steam.  This helps the spinach wilt faster, but you don't necessary have to do that if you don't want to.

To plate, arrange half of the spinach on each plate.  Top with snapper fillet.  Arrange the caramelized apples around snapper.  Finally, drizzle the sweet mustard sauce over top of the snapper.  Enjoy!

This is definitely a keeper dish!  Andy loves snapper more than any other fish, and I'm glad we've got a couple extra fillets in the freezer for when his craving strikes next!  I'm off to finish baking Andy's birthday cake - hope you all have a great day!

Secret Recipe Club: Spicy & Sweet Squash Bowl

It's Secret Recipe Club reveal day!  It's basically the Secret Santa of the food blog world.  It's always fun to discover a new blog and peruse their recipe collection!

I immediately fell in love with my blog assignment this month - The Cookin' Chemist.  Tessa is a pharmacist by day, foodie by night!  I can relate to her in a way because my original career path was to become a pharmacist... but we all know how that panned out.  But anyway, I've always loved the science behind food more than anything, so I have a feeling Tessa and I have quite a bit in common!  And plus, our husbands are our main test subjects for our dishes =)

There's plenty to love about Tessa's dishes.  You'll find anything from Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies to a Whole Grain Artesian Free-Form Loaf.  But because we've been trying to eat healthier around these parts, I saw this Spicy & Sweet Squash Bowl and knew that I'd found my choice!  I only adapted a couple of things - instead of quinoa, I used couscous.  And I had brought home some granola from school, so I used that as my crunch factor instead of some pecans.

Ingredients:
Adapted from The Cookin' Chemist

1 cup couscous
1 & 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon curry powder
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 medium to large butternut squash, peeled and cubed
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
salt, to taste
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
1 cup fresh spinach, roughly torn
1/4 cup crunchy granola

Preheat the oven to 400 F.  Coat the squash with olive oil, white sugar, cinnamon, 1 teaspoon curry powder, and salt to taste. Roast until fork tender, about 25-35 minutes depending on how large you cut the squash cubes.

Place the couscous in a medium saucepan with the broth, 2 teaspoons curry, cayenne pepper, and brown sugar. Mix well. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook for about 15 minutes until the liquid is completely absorbed. Let sit for a few minutes. Remove the lid and fluff with a fork. Mix with spinach, cilantro, and butternut squash pieces.

Divide the couscous mixture between plates/bowls. Top with the crunchy granola and dig on in!

This was so tasty!  Everything I expected and then some!  Spicy.  Sweet.  Perfect =)

Thanks for letting me stalk your blog Tessa!

This post is also featured on Danielle's blog Mostly Food & Crafts!

Spicy Fried Chicken Tenders w/ Chipotle Honey BBQ Sauce

It's Friday people!  The weekend has finally arrived.... and I have to work.  Well, today and tomorrow, anyway.  And then Sunday is a free day!  We're planning on going to Holiday World with a couple friends so it should be a fun day!  I'm most looking forward to the water park, of course!

Anyway, I think fried food gets a bad rap.  In moderation, I don't find any problem with it.  It's when it become a DAILY thing that people start running in to trouble.  And in honor of the Kentucky State Fair starting up yesterday (aren't state fairs ALL about fried food?!), I decided to whip up some fried goodness of my own.

The best thing about this?  You can buy a bulk pack of chicken tenders, eat the ones you want, and any leftovers can be sealed up and placed in the freezer.  Just pop 'em in the oven when you want to have them again (just like those expensive bags of chicken tenders you buy in the frozen section!)

Feel free to play with the seasoned flour as you see fit - make it more or less spicy, leave out a few spices - whatever you feel like doing!

Ingredients:

about 20 chicken tenders/tenderloins
1 cup flour
3 tablespoons chili powder
3 tablespoons hot paprika
2 tablespoons garlic salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 tablespoon cayenne
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon kosher salt
4 eggs
4 tablespoons milk
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 cup barbecue sauce (homemade or store-bought is fine)
1 tablespoon chipotle peppers, with adobo sauce, mashed
2 tablespoons honey
 vegetable oil, for frying

You can choose to flatten the chicken tenders for a more even cook, or you can keep them as is.  I didn't want to go through all the fuss - they were all pretty much the same size anyway (and they look more natural minus the flattening).

Heat a large heavy bottomed pan or dutch oven under high heat.  Add enough vegetable oil to come up about 2 inches (or at least enough to have your tenderloins submerged - another reason to flatten the tenderloins if you need to).  If you have a deep fryer - more power to ya! - just turn the sucker on and get that oil heating up (to at least 325F).

Set up a standard breading station - one pan/bowl for the flour mixture, one for the eggwash, and one for the breadcrumbs. 

In one pan, combine the flour, chili powder, paprika, garlic salt, black pepper, cayenne, thyme, oregano, and kosher salt.  This is obviously your flour mixture bowl. 

In another pan, make your egg wash with the eggs and milk.  Whisk until combined.

And lastly, place your breadcrumbs in the last pan.

In batches (depending on how big your pans are), dip your tenderloins first in the flour mixture, then in the egg wash, and then coat with breadcrumbs.  Place finished breaded tenderloins on a parchment-lined sheet pan.  Continue until all tenderloins are breaded.

When your oil is ready,working in batches (I did 5 at a time), deep fry the tenderloins until golden brown and cooked throughout, about 3-4 minutes.  Drain on a paper towel-lined plate and season with additional salt and pepper, as needed.

While your tenderloins are cooking, you can mix up your barbecue sauce.  In a small saucepan, combine the prepared or store-bought barbecue sauce, chipotle pepper, and honey.  Place under medium heat and simmer for about 5 minutes to develop the flavor.  You can either choose to puree the whole mixture (so the random bits of chipotle pepper are dispersed throughout, or if you don't want too much heat, you can choose to strain the mixture to remove the chipotle pepper).

Serve with dipping sauce and go at it!

This makes plenty for a small get-together, or enough to save for lunches/quick dinners throughout the busy week!  I'm all about planning ahead!

What's your favorite sauce to serve with chicken tenders?

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Beer-Marinated Pork Tenderloin

How's everybody doing?  I can't believe it's already Friday!  This week just flew by! 

I've been grilling more than ever, and pork seems to be the protein we've been working with the most lately.  I haven't marinated anything in forever, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to do so.  My fridge was pretty bare, but I managed to scrounge some essentials: beer, soy sauce, and ginger.  I also picked some jalapenos from my garden and threw those in there for a nice little kick.  Add some sugar for sweetness, and we're well on our way to flavor town!

Ingredients:

1 lb. pork tenderloin
1/2 cup soy sauce
12 oz. bottle of beer (I used a Falls City Pale Ale - one of our new favorite beers!)
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon molasses
1 & 1/2 T fresh ginger, grated
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced

Clean the tenderloin of any silverskin or excess fat. 

In a medium bowl, combine the soy sauce, beer, sugar, molasses, ginger, and jalapeno.  Stir until sugar is dissolved.

Place the tenderloin in a shallow pan (taller than the tenderloin) and cover with marinade.  Cover and place in refrigerator to marinate for at least 2 hours.

Preheat a grill to medium high heat.  Grill the tenderloin to desired doneness, about 2-3 minutes per side (assuming you turn it on all 4 sides and not just 2).

Let rest for 5 minutes before slicing.  Serve with fresh vegetables or side of your choice!  We were both too tired to go to the store, so we settled on a can of green bean we had in the pantry - so NOT the same as fresh vegetables!

This was definitely a tasty little meal!  Definitely something you could leave to marinate in the morning and just quickly grill off once you get home from work/school! 

Hope you all have a great week =)