Month: July 2015

by sluttyfoodblog

Eggs Benedict Fries

Eggs Benedict Fries.

Yes.  They are A Thing.

They should be A Thing on your menu for this week too.  Because seriously.  Why not?!  Life is short.  Eat the French fries, topped with creamy, tangy Hollandaise sauce, topped with a glorious poached egg, topped with smoked paprika and chopped chives.  Eat them.

Eggs Benedict Fries are what happen when it’s National French Fry Day, and you’re home with a sick kid, and you’re starving, and feeling creative.  Sorry not sorry folks.

Let’s talk about these fries for a second.  Crispy, oven-baked fries (so they are healthy!).  Hollandaise (need I say more?).  A poached egg (another healthy element!), but not just any poached egg – an egg with a gorgeous runny orange yolk, because nobody likes an anemically-yellow-snot-colored runny yolk.  I mean maybe that’s fine for you but trust me when I say you do NOT know what you are missing.  When you poke the yolk of a pasture-raised egg and let that orangey dream slip lusciously into all the cracks and crevices below it, you could convince yourself that no sauce is needed – that a runny orange yolk is all the sauce you need in this world – nature’s bounty – right there in a little orb of deliciousness.

(Where can you get pasture raised eggs?  For one thing, try your local farmer’s market, or try Whole Foods and pick up a carton of Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs.  Don’t even talk to me about the price until you eat one and taste it for yourself.  If you’re a runny yolk person like me, you will never go back to any other egg – not even organic, not even cage-free.  Pasture-raised will be the only way you’ll want to go for the rest of your life.  That orange yolk will make you want to build yourself a chicken coop for some chickens and give them a bunch of space to roam around so you can have your very own orange yolk on demand any dang time you want.)

Anyway.  Just make these.  Obvi this is not the kind of thing you want to eat for dinner a few times a week, though I wouldn’t judge you.  But hey, you home alone this weekend?  Want something slutty to much on while watching Netflix?  These are perfect for you.  Eat like no one is watching.  Even better when there is actually no one watching.  Cuz if they’re watching they’ll want a bite.  And you won’t want to share.  Trust me.

Eggs Benedict Fries

Eggs Benedict Fries

Ingredients
1/4 bag Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Golden Crinkles, or your favorite frozen fry, baked or otherwise cooked according to package directions
1 packet Knorr Hollandaise Sauce, prepared according to package directions
1 egg, poached*
Chopped chives and smoked paprika for garnish

Directions
1. Once everything is cooked, prepare in this order: Make a mountain of French fries on a plate. Ladle on some Hollandaise sauce. Top with your poached egg. Ladle on some more Hollandaise sauce, duh. Then top as desired with chopped chives and smoked paprika.

Notes
* If you need instructions on how to poach an egg, I wrote some pretty good directions here.

by sluttyfoodblog

Blue Duck’s Cheesesteak Nachos

Hello friends.
As you know, I live in the Land of the Cheesesteak.  I love cheesesteaks.  You can hardly drive a mile in any direction in Philadelphia without passing a place where you can get a cheesesteak.  Cheesesteaks are the bomb.

These nachos were inspired by my favorite neighborhood restaurant, The Blue Duck.  Back in March during March Madness, they posted a picture of one of their lunch specials on Instagram – it was a picture of these amazing looking nachos so of course you know I had to go.  I commented and asked if they would be on special for dinner and they responded to me to “come on down” so come on down I did.  When I got there I found out that the nachos were no longer on the specials menu, but they knew I was coming so they held on to some for me (insert flattered emoji here).  And the nachos were just as good as they looked in the picture!  Complete with chopped steak (like cheesesteak meat), a cheddar cheese sauce, pickled red onions, pickled jalapenos, scallions, and sour cream… I mean how much more can a nacho connoisseur ask for.  They were just friggin awesome.

So I was inspired to make them myself.  This has been on my mind for a while and I finally had the opportunity to make these this weekend.  And they turned out way better than I expected!

Cheesesteak NachosMy only hurdle in recreating these was the beef.  I had never made homemade cheesesteaks before – not beef ones anyway – but I knew all the good shops used thinly sliced ribeye in their cheesesteaks.  So I went to the butcher at Whole Foods and told them what I was making and asked if they could slice some ribeye for me real thin.  They actually recommended a different cut of beef (rump roast) and they sliced it thin by hand with a knife.  I wasn’t sure how it would work out but I trust the butchers at Whole Foods so I went with it.

Then I had to figure out how to cook it.  I knew it would have to be over high heat to get a good sear and get some coloring so the beef didn’t look like that unappetizing grey-brown that beef can look when cooked.  This method worked out really well for me.

I already had a great pickled red onion recipe and pickled jalapeno recipe, so those components were complete too!

And I basically just amped up the spice in my cheese sauce and I was set.

So then I put it all together and was still unsure of the beef – I thought it might end up being chewy – but it was perfect.  It was soft and tender, it wasn’t chewy, and it tasted just right with all the other components.  I had a choice – sit and eat, or do a victory dance.  I chose to sit and eat!

Cheesesteak Nachos

Blue Duck’s Cheesesteak Nachos

Ingredients
Tortilla chips
1/2 pound thinly sliced rump roast or chipped beef
2 tablespoons safflower oil or other light vegetable oil
Salt & pepper to taste
1 recipe pickled jalapenos, or store-bought
1 recipe pickled red onions
1 recipe homemade cheese sauce made with sharp or medium cheddar cheese
Chopped scallions and sour cream, if desired

Directions
1. Prepare pickled jalapenos and pickled red onions one day in advance according to recipe directions.

2. Prepare homemade cheese sauce according to recipe directions. Keep warm over low heat.

3. Trim sliced beef of large veins of fat. Discard the fat. Lay the strips of beef in a single layer on a cutting board, and slice crosswise into more bite-size pieces. Season with salt and pepper. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add oil. When the skillet is hot, add the strips of beef. Do not move the beef; allow it to sear for about 2 minutes. Then stir it around so it browns on all sides. When the beef is finished browning, you may have a lot of fat in the skillet. If so, carefully pour almost all of the fat off. Then return the pan to the burner and continue to cook the beef. This second round of searing will get the beef nice and brown and caramelized. Continue to move the beef around the pan so it doesn’t burn or stick into one spot. When the beef looks nicely browned, turn the heat to low.

4. To build the nachos, layer tortilla chips on a large platter. Ladle on some of the cheese sauce, then add some of the beef. Then ladle on more cheese sauce, and add pickled red onions, pickled jalapenos, sour cream, and chopped scallions as desired. Serve warm and enjoy!

by sluttyfoodblog

Ethan’s Rotini

Hey guys!  So today I have a super duper really super healthy pasta dish for you!

(Did you detect my sarcasm through your screen?)

Really all I was being sarcastic about was the “healthy” part.  This IS the slutty food blog, after all.  Not the healthy food blog.  There are enough of those.

This is one of our favorite pasta dishes of all time.  And it’s not our recipe at all.

When we lived in Spokane, we became friends with this awesome guy named Ethan.  He came over to eat a lot, which was great for me because I was learning how to cook and hadn’t quite yet learned to love leftovers, so having someone extra to feed at the table meant less food waste.  He was always so polite and grateful and thankful and complimentary about whatever we fed him.  So one day he invited us over to his house for dinner.  He was going to make us his famous rotini recipe.  Yum!

So I sat in the kitchen and watched him cook and I was so impressed with how simple this recipe was and how much flavor it had.

I feel obliged to share it with you all because it’s a super quick weeknight meal you can throw together for your family.  This recipe makes a lot so it feeds a lot – four at least – or two really big helpings, which, I swear, uh, we have never eaten that much at one time in our house.  Ever ever ever.

(Did you detect my sarcasm there?)

So go make this.  What is better than easy, cheap, AND tasty?!

Ethan Rotini

Ingredients
1 stick butter (8 tablespoons)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1 14.5oz can diced, peeled tomatoes
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons fresh minced parsley
3 green onions, chopped
Salt and ground white pepper to taste*
1 tablespoon dried basil
12 ounces rotini

Directions
1. Heat onions and parsley in oil in a deep saucepan over medium heat until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the can of diced tomatoes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and mix with a hand blender until the tomatoes are pureed. (Alternatively, if you don’t have a hand blender, pour the mixture into a regular blender and pulse until tomatoes are pureed. Return to saucepan.) Add salt and white pepper to taste. Add basil. Simmer 10 minutes on low heat.

2. Cook rotini according to package directions in a small stock pot and drain. Return to stock pot. Mix in butter until melted, then add Parmesan cheese. Add tomato sauce and stir. Serve and enjoy!!

NOTES:
* The ground white pepper truly makes the difference in this dish. You can use ground black pepper, but the white pepper gives it so much more flavor!

by sluttyfoodblog

Poutine

What’s poutine?

This:

Poutine

Aw yeah that’s it.

Poutine is this amazing plate of Canadian goodness (you can find the official definition here).  We are talking about crispy fries, and a beefy brown gravy, and sweet, creamy cheese curds, and a bit of minced parsley on top cuz every plate should have some green on it.  The cheese melts in a way that you’ve never seen cheese melt before.  And the oniony gravy combined with the cheese is just so salty and sweet and slutty.

I adapted one of my favorite sauces I make for steak to make the gravy for this.  And cheese curds – they are what make this dish.  I get mine from Valley Shepherd Creamery in Reading Terminal Market right here in Philly.  You could probably find them at any good cheese shop.  If you’re in the upper midwest, I bet you can find them anywhere.  I have even found them online (and this is not a bad option to resort to if you can’t find them – trust me, they are worth it!).  But I was lucky enough to find them just a few blocks away from where I work, making them (almost too) easily accessible.

I first had poutine at this bar called National Mechanics in Old City.  It was on their specials menu for that night.  We have been trying poutine wherever we could find it on a menu ever since.  My husband is especially enamored – I am also now too, now that I can make a pretty bangin’ plate at home.

The recipe I have below is for a pretty suped-up version of poutine.  You could make a really simple version of the gravy by just buying a brown gravy mix at the grocery store.  However, I would recommend making it with beef stock instead of water.  Beef broth would work too, but beef stock gives it a much deeper, richer, more beefy flavor.

Poutine

Ingredients
1 bag Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Golden Crinkle French fries
3/4 pound cheese curds
2 shallots, finely minced
2 tablespoons butter
1 puck Demi-Glace Gold
1 cup beef stock*
Minced parsley

Directions
1. Make the gravy: Begin by melting butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add minced shallots and stir; cook until translucent, about a minute or two. Add the Demi-Glace Gold, and whisk until it melts into the butter-shallot mixture. Once melted, pour in the beef stock. Whisk until well combined. Bring the mixture to a boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Then turn the dial to low, and leave on low for about 8 minutes, or until the French fries are done.

2. Bake the fries: I love Ore-Ida Extra Crispy fries because you get the texture of a deep-fried French fry, but it’s been baked instead. Prepare a large cookie sheet by covering it with aluminum foil and spraying with cooking spray. Pour fries into an even layer. Bake fries until 2 minutes shy of done as according to package directions. Flip once halfway through. Remove fries from the oven when they are done to a broiler-safe platter.

3. Make POUTINE!: Set the broiler to high heat. Top the fries with the cheese curds, spacing them out throughout the fries and the platter. Put the platter into the broiler, and broil the fries and cheese for about 2-3 minutes, or until the cheese curds have become an ooey gooey melty delicious mess. Remove from broiler, and pour gravy on top. Top with minced parsley.

4. EAT!

NOTES:
* I recommend using beef stock, though beef broth will work. Beef stock will impart a much deeper and more beefy flavor.