Honey-Marinated Pork with Gremolata

I got this recipe from one of my Bon Appetit magazines. Honey is one of our favorite sauces/condiments. We LOVE to eat it on our chicken nuggets and french fries at McDonald's (if you haven't tried it, you should)! It's the only sauce that Isaiah will eat on anything, he puts it on eggs, waffles, sausage, tatter tots, fries, chicken, and more. Of course this dish was right up our alley :)

I used up all of my rosemary with the last recipe (oops, didn't buy enough). I used dry rosemary instead, so your gremolata will look a little different than mine did.

2 pork tenderloins
1/2 honey
4 garlic cloves
1 Tbsp orange juice
1 tsp (or more) fine sea salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 Tbsp finely grated orange peel
1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
2 tsp chopped fresh sage

• Whisk honey, garlic, orange juice, 1 tsp sea salt, and 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper in a small bowl. Place tenderloins in a gallon ziplock bag, pour mixture in with tenderloin, and coat. Chill at least two hours, or over night.
• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Heat oil in large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork to skillet, reserve marinade.
• Brown all sides of pork, turning often. Transfer to oven and cook until internal temperature reaches 150 degrees (20-30 minutes).
• Transfer tenderloins to plate and pour reserved marinade in to skillet. Add wine and boil gently until reduced to 1/2 cup (about 3-4 minutes). Season with sea salt and pepper.
• Mix orange peel, thyme, rosemary, and sage in small bowl for gremolata. Cut pork crosswise into 1/2" thick slices, pour sauce over pork, and sprinkle with gremolata.

Rosemary Rubbed Salmon with Roasted Potatoes, Parsnips and Mushrooms

I got this recipe from my Bon Appetit magazine. Overall it was a pretty good meal :) We decided we would change two things though.

First, the fish was waaaay too salty. I've noticed that most recipes I make that call for coarse kosher salt seem to be this way, so to remedy this, I reduced the salt in the recipe by 3/4 (the original recipe calls for 4 tsp). Second, neither of us liked the parsnips. They were like carrots with the consistency of potatoes. Next time we're definitely going to leave them out of the roasted mixture. For this recipe, I'm going to leave them in though, because I know everyone has different tastes, and you guys might like them!

As usual, we used both white fish (cod in this case) and salmon with this recipe because we all like something different :)

1-1/2 cups loosely packed fresh rosemary leaves
1 tsp coarse kosher salt
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
6 Tbsp olive oil, divided
1 lb red skinned potatoes, cut into 3/4" pieces
1 lb parsnips, cut into 3/4" pieces
3.5-3.75 lbs whole side of fish with skin
1 lb crimini mushrooms, quartered or halved
1/3 cup pinot noir or other dry red wine

• Blend rosemary, salt, and pepper in processor until finely chopped. With machine running, gradually add 4 Tbsp olive oil and process to a coarse paste.
• Position 1 oven rack in top third of oven, the other rack in bottom third of oven. Preheat to 450 degrees.
• Toss potatoes and parsnips in 2 Tbsp oil and 3 Tbsp rosemary mixture in large bowl. Transfer mixture to rimmed baking sheet, arranging in an even layer. Roast on lower rack for 20 minutes.
• Line large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Place fish skin side down on sheet. Spread with remaining rosemary mixture.
• After first 20 minutes, toss mushrooms with vegetable mixture, return to lower rack. Place salmon on upper rack and bake until just opaque in center and vegetables are tender (about 20 minutes).
• Empty vegetables from baking sheet and place sheet over two burners on high heat. Add wine and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits. Drizzle juices over salmon.

I used a glass 9 x 13 pan for the vegetables so when I got to the last step, I wasn't able to make the wine sauce. Because of this, your fish will look different than in my picture!

Churros

Churros are one of my absolute FAVORITE desserts! When I found a recipe for them in my Cuisine at Home magazine I was beyond ecstatic! All the necessary items were immediately put on my shopping list and we went shopping :)

Unfortunately the only part that seemed to work out right was the shopping, haha. The recipe says to use a 1/2 inch wide star shaped piping tip, but the churros just seemed to come out waaay too small and the center wasn't doughy enough. About six churros in, the piping bag actually broke! I popped the piping tip in to the corner of a zip-lock bag, but it was only one churro later before the tip tore it's way out of that. The dough was just too thick to pipe out of a bag.

I decided to squeeze it out of the corner of the bag, but as I did, the corner just continued to tear bigger and bigger until the entire glob of dough popped out! At that point I simply started tearing dough off and rolling it with my hands. This was a very laughable situation because after frying, the churros looked more like turds than churros :O Fortunately after being covered with the sugar mixture they looked a little better ;)

Next time I'm going to try a "+" plate with my cookie press. If that doesn't work, I found a few churreras (basically a cookie press with a star shape at the end) for less than $20.

Vegetable Oil
1/2 cup + 2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 water
1/4 tsp salt
Minced zest of 1 orange
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs

• Heat about 2" of oil in a large pot until it registers 350 degrees on a candy thermometer.
• Combine 1/2 cup sugar, cinnamon, and cardmom in cereal bowl, set aside.
• Heat butter, water, 2 tsp sugar, salt, and zest in saute pan over medium until bowling. Stir in flour. Cook one minute more to dry out.
• Transfer dough to mixing bowl, mix for 30 seconds with hand mixer. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.
• Transfer dough to a piping bag fitted with medium star shaped tip.
• Pipe 3" long strips of dough in to hot oil. Slice dough from piping tip with knife dipped in frying oil.
• Fry churros until golden brown on both sides, remove from fryer, and drain on paper-towel-lined plate. Immediately coat in sugar mixture.

Here are the... funny... looking ones ;)

Rosemary-Orange Pork Tenderloins

As you can tell, we really like pork tenderloin! A friend of mine, Caroline May, made this dish for us at a dinner party. I absolutely LOVED it, so I got the recipe from her :)

1 cup orange juice
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp rosemary
3 cloves garlic, minced
Pork tenderloin

• Trim the fat off of the pork.
• Combine the orange juice, soy sauce, olive oil, rosemary, and garlic in a baking dish or zip lock bag. Add pork and marinate at least hour, up to over night.
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Drain pork and reserve marinade.
• Place pork on a baking sheet and season generously with pepper. Roast until done (about 20 minutes per pound).
• Bring marinade to a boil in small sauce pan. Mix a little cornstarch with water and add to marinade to thicken (if desired).
• Slice pork and serve with sauce.

I was in a little crunch for time and had to get other things done while dinner was cooking, so I had to make the dish a little differently. Instead of reserving the marinade, I put the tenderloin in a 9 x 13 pan, added the cornstarch to the marinade, poured the marinade mixture over the tenderloin, and cooked it all together.

Jimmy Dean Sausage Balls

For Christmas a few years back we started doing appetizers and finger foods because everyone was sick of spending the entire evening in the kitchen cooking and cleaning. This recipe was one my grandma used, I'm not sure where exactly she got it, but it's great!

On the sausage, it doesn't really matter what kind you use. For this particular batch, I used 1 lb of hot, and 1 lb of sage because I didn't think everyone would enjoy spicy sausage balls :)

2 lbs Jimmy Dean's sausage, uncooked
1-1/2 cups all purpose baking/biscuit mix
16 oz sharp cheddar cheese (4 cups shredded)
1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup celery, finely chopped
1/2 tsp garlic powder

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all ingredients together.
• Form in to 1" balls and place on cookie sheets (ungreased).
• Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Spinach Artichoke Dip

I made this dip for a get together we had and EVERYONE loved it :) It came from my favorite magazine... you guessed it... Food Network! It was their "Copy That!" recipe, from Houston's (never heard of the restaurant).

This recipe calls for frozen artichoke hearts, I looked at both Yoke's and Winco and couldn't find them, so I asked the produce manager at Yoke's. He said they didn't have frozen, but pointed out the canned (which was kind of between their fresh produce and their cheese/wine/olive area). I also had a hard time finding the white cheddar cheese, turns out it was wrapped in a black wrapper (hiding the white of the cheese!) with the rest of the cheddar cheese.

2 - 10 oz bags spinach, stems removed
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 Tbsp minced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups whole milk
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1-1/4 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup sour cream, plus more for serving
1/2 cup shredded white sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup frozen artichoke hearts, thawed, squeezed dry, and roughly chopped
Tortilla chips and salsa, for serving

• Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Stir in the spinach and cook until bright green (about 30 seconds). Drain and rinse under cold water, squeeze out excess moisture, then finely chop.
• Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, 1/2 tsp salt, and cook until onion is soft (about 2 minutes).
• Add flour and cook (stirring) until lightly toasted (about one minute). Whisk in the milk and cook, stirring constantly, until thick (about one minute).
• Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, Parmesan, and sour cream.
• Return the pot to medium heat, add the spinach, cheddar, and artichokes. Stir until the cheese melts and the dip is heated through.
• Serve warm with tortilla chips, salsa, and sour cream.