Healthy weekday dinner: Skillet Shrimp and Couscous!

I subscribe to Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine (which my friend Ursula got me addicted to) and I really look forward to getting it in the mail. [Click here to subscribe].  In fact, I squeal with glee when I see it- no joke! I also subscribe to her Everyday Food emails just in case they post something interesting.  Jon and I have been on a health kick lately (it is the New Year after all), so we’re trying to eat more seafood-based protein.  I saw this recipe in the email newsletter and thought it would be perfect for a quick and easy weekday dinner. Did I mention quick? 30 minutes! Enjoy!

Skillet Shrimp and Couscous

Yield: 6 servings

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 lb. medium shrimp, shelled and deveined, tails off
• Coarse salt and ground pepper, for seasoning
• 1 tsp. dry mustard
• 1 leek, sliced into 1/2-inch half-moons
• 2 carrots, shredded
• 5 cloves garlic , thinly sliced (or 1 tbsp. minced garlic)
• 1 cup couscous
• 1 cup frozen peas

Directions:

In a large skillet pan, heat 1 tbsp. olive oil over medium heat.  Rinse and dry shrimp, toss with salt and pepper.  Saute the shrimp until they are cooked through on both sides, about 3 minutes. Remove when done and set aside in a bowl and cover with foil.

Shrimpies getting tan!

Add another tablespoon of EVOO to the pan.  Add leeks, carrots, dry mustard and garlic.  Cook until tender, add peas.  Cook for another 2 minutes to defrost the peas.

Saute the veggies!

Add 2 cups of boiling water and the couscous.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Remove from heat and cover for 5 minutes.  When done, stir to fluff the couscous and add the shrimp.  Heat again to desired temperature if you like, but it should be good to go! Serve with a green salad and dinner is ready in a jiffy!

Yummy healthy dinner!

This recipe allowed us to have seconds and my co-worker and I shared the leftovers for lunch the next day! A great idea if you want  both a healthy dinner and lunch for tomorrow. You could also pack a side of this in your kid’s lunchbox!

VOTE FOR THE NOSH LIFE on “The Homies”!!

”]Every year, Apartment Therapy (a home design blog I am obsessed with) collaborates with their sister sites, re-nest (green living), ohdeedoh (children), unplgged (tech), and of course, the kitchn (cooking), to host “The Homies”.  Here’s how they describe it:

“There are awards for all sorts of blogs, but no one ever pays enough attention to the shelter blogs, so we started The Homies. It’s our way of surveying the blogosphere each year for the best new home design blogs and sharing what we find. It’s not so much a competition as a celebration of the richness and awesomeness of shelter bloggers around the world. Join us, share your favorites and check out the ones you don’t know.

There are five categories: Home Design, Home Tech, Kids @ Home, Green Home & Home Cooking.”

To vote for The Nosh Life as your favorite home cooking blog, follow this link to post a comment and enter this:

Name: The Nosh Life

URL: http://www.thenoshlife.wordpress.com

You have to register to post a comment, but it’s worth it! YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!!

Thanks for loving my site and I am looking forward to posting more fun things for you to read!!

xoxo

Lauren

Eat at Joe’s Stone Crab…or better yet, re-create Joe’s at home!

Every year, my Dad keeps with his tradition of sending me stone crabs for Christmas. This year they were COLOSSAL- not just “jumbos” from Capri Fisheries, in Naples, FL. They source many restaurants in Florida with the best stone crabs, and Joe’s happens to be one of them. I seriously have not seen them this big before. I have been eating stone crabs forever, and my parents and I have been frequent patrons at Joe’s Stone Crab in South Miami Beach since before I was born. It reminds me of being home in Florida, and brings back such fun memories of dining at Joe’s, which is a great experience altogether. I am a tad bit obsessed with this particular meal, and would probably choose it to be my last on Earth. If you’re familiar with Joe’s, you will know why. Otherwise, you will have no idea unless I make this meal, or you follow my recipe!  Enjoy!!

The trio: Stone Crabs, Iceberg Wedge and Hash Browns, a.k.a. “Lauren’s last meal on Earth”

Ingredients:

Colossals!

Jumbo Stone Crab Claws (preferably 3 per person), ordered to your door, arrives with a wooden mallet for cracking and their famous mustard sauce.
Crack the crabs with the mallet (cover them with a dishcloth so you don’t get crab junk all over you and your kitchen!)

Cracking the crabs!

For the salad:

Head of iceberg lettuce

2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp mayonnaise

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 lb. Roquefort cheese, crumbled (we got ours from Murray’s in the West Village)

For the hash browns (makes 6):

3 large white potatoes, peeled

2 small red potatoes, peeled

1 medium onion
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Butter or Olive Oil for browning

Metal cheese grater

Salad directions:

Place crumbled Roquefort cheese in a medium mixing bowl, add other ingredients and mix well with an electric hand mixer. Beat until smooth with chunks and ingredients are mixed well. I added about 2 tbsp. of water at the end to make it easier to spoon onto the wedge quarters. Cut the iceberg wedge in quarters and serve one quarter per person.

Prepping the dressing

Perfectly dressed wedges

Hash brown directions:

Grate the potatoes and onion with the largest holes in the cheese grater. Use a colander or a dry dish towel to squeeze out the
water and liquid from the potato mixture. Mix well with salt and pepper. Heat a large skillet with some butter or olive oil on medium-high. Take the mixture and make a pancake-sized ball and flatten into the pan. Make as many that will fit into the pan. Hash browns are finishes when both sides are dark brown and the middle is soft and cooked fully through.

Straining the water out of the potatoes

Perfect browning session

Browned goodness...

If you’re a frequenter at Joe’s, you know you don’t have to look at the menu to order. The only element of this perfect meal that I was missing was the Key Lime Pie, which Joe’s actually has a recipe for on their website! Totally have to make that sometime!

Pairing with Lail Vineyards 2009 Blueprint Sauvignon Blanc

We paired our Stone Crabs with Lail Vineyards 2009 Blueprint Sauvignon Blanc, which we got from one of our favorite tasting rooms, Ma(i)sonry, on our last trip to Napa in October.  Click here for the tasting notes.

Guest gifts: Sea Salt Caramels

I got inspired at The Container Store the other day…seeing all of the creative ways people can wrap gifts and make homemade presents.  I’m usually not the type to make homemade, edible gifts, but I really wanted to try making something sweet for my guests to take home from our dinner party on Wednesday night.

I found these really cute Chinese take-out containers that had Christmas trees on them, and I wondered what I could put in them…sea salt caramels of course! They are unlike any other caramel you’ve ever tasted.  It’s the salty/sweet combination that some people go crazy over, like chocolate-covered pretzels.  The waiter at Dell’ Anima (one of our fave neighborhood spots), gave us a handful last time and I needed an excuse to make them!

Let’s just say I have only made “candy” to the extent of dipping strawberries in chocolate and letting them harden in the refrigerator.  Romantic? Yes.  Difficult? Nope.  Making caramels was actually easier than I thought…and you can make these days ahead of time.

Sea Salt Caramels

[Recipe Courtesy of The Nibble]

Yield: About 40 caramels

Prep time: 25 minutes

Chill time: 2 hours

Wrapping time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream (recipe says to use cream that is not ultra-pasteurized, but that’s all I could find in the store, so I used it)

5 tbsp. unsalted butter

2 teaspoons sea salt (I used Fleur de Sel, which you can get at Williams Sonoma)

1.5 cups sugar (I used organic sugar)

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1/4 cup water

You will need a 8″ baking pan or baking sheet, parchment paper, a candy thermometer, and wax paper for wrapping.

I was a little intimidated by having to use a candy thermometer for the first time, but it worked just the way it was supposed to!

Directions:

1. Line the bottom and sides of the pan with parchment paper and lightly oil the paper.

2. Bring the cream, butter and sea salt to a boil in a small saucepan; remove from heat and set aside.

3. Boil the sugar, corn syrup and water in a heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan; then cook without stirring until the mixture reaches 248°F, the firm-ball stage (there is a spot on the candy thermometer that says “firm ball stage”).

4. Carefully stir in the cream mixture—the mixture will bubble up. Simmer, stirring frequently, about 15 minutes. The temperature should not go higher than 250°F.

5. CANDYMAKER TIP: To get the caramel consistency you want, test by dropping a spoonful of caramel into a bowl of cold water. It will form a ball, which you can test with your fingers. Stop cooking when the ball is the consistency that you want. I found that I had to cook for about 7 minutes longer to get the more firm consistency.  You should test it while you’re cooking, but be careful not to burn your fingers, because 250 degrees is really hot!

6. Pour the mixture into the baking pan and cool 2 hours.  (I used a baking sheet)

7. Sprinkle the top of the caramels with sea salt before wrapping.

8. Cut into 1-inch pieces, then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, folding ends or twisting to close like taffy. This will work well if you have a baking pan, but I cooled mine on a baking sheet, rolled them into balls and wrapped them like taffy.  Thanks for helping wrap, Christal!

I forgot to take a picture of the cute boxes and the wrapped caramels, but I assure you they looked really sweet and came out tasting so delicious!! It was a nice way to thank our guests for coming to dinner and wish them a happy holiday! I think it’s also a fun hostess gift, since Christmas cookies are what everyone else brings!

It’s not a holiday without…

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you all enjoyed your holiday and are feeling back to normal after all of the overeating!

One of my family’s traditions is having my Mom’s Deviled Eggs. They have the perfect combination of a mustardy, mayonnaisey tang! Many New York City “gastropubs” have tried their hand at making them, but I’ve never had any better than my mother’s.

And the secret is loose…

Mama Mimi’s Deviled Eggs

Yield: 24 egg halves

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 dozen large or jumbo eggs
4 heaping tbsp. Regular Hellman’s mayonnaise
3 tbsp. Gulden’s Mustard
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. Hot sauce of choice
1 tsp. Dry mustard
A dash of onion powder
Freshly ground pepper
NO SALT!!

Note: Mom specifically says NOT to use Grey Poupon, which is way too salty.  You can also add a tablespoon of freshly minced dill if you have it handy.  We didn’t have any this time and they still came out perfect.

Garnish with: sliced black or green olives, paprika, parsley, pimentos

Directions:

You have to possess one cooking skill for this one that you will use your whole life: how to boil eggs.  My mom swears by Sara Moulton’s method (originated by Julia Child):

“Start them in cold water, bring it up to a full boil, turn it off and let them sit for 17 minutes. Throw them into ice water until they are cold.”

There you go.  Now you’re ready to prepare the filling.

After the eggs have cooled in the water, peel them and place them on a paper towel to dry.  Crack by lightly tapping them on the counter or against the side of a bowl, being careful not to break the egg apart.  Find a good spot where you can peel apart the membrane and the shell will come off easily.  I have always had a hard time peeling the eggs because my mom says I don’t boil them properly.  She says that the key is to submerge the eggs in ice water. This will make them easier to peel.

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Once you have peeled the eggs, slice each in half and pop out the yolks into a bowl.  My mom has some very cool egg platters that we use for serving, so we line them up after taking out the yolk.  When you have all of the yolks out in a bowl, mash up with a fork.  Add the mayonnaise, mustard, onion powder, dry mustard, pepper, Worcestershire and hot sauce.  Use a hand mixer to whip until the ingredients are mixed well and the filling is pretty smooth.

The measurements in the recipe are pretty much what we used to get the right consistency and flavor.  If you like yours more mustardy, add more mustard.  Some people like their deviled eggs more mayonnaisey.  Then if you do, add more mayo.  It’s really the way you like it, but this is how we like ours!

Once you have come to the right taste and consistency for your filling, take a long iced tea spoon and fill the egg halves.  Top with your favorite garnish and make your eggs look nice and pretty.  They won’t be on that platter for long!!

Party in your mouth!

I can pretty much guarantee that once you make this at any dinner party or holiday gathering, you’re going to be flooded with requests for the recipe and asked to make it again next time!

What kind of recipes are a tradition in your family? What dish makes it a holiday? What do you look forward to when your loved ones cook a holiday meal?