What's Cooking in Carolina?

Mainly creative menus and recipes (usually healthy) and always from scratch with tips for party planning, theme parties, weddings and decorating tips so you can give swank parties or dinners to delight your guests from a part time caterer, owner/operator of a coming soon Entree Vous, but mainly a cook and eater who grows much of her own food and loves to laugh.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Ratatouille! The food not the movie!

We are really busy and very behind in the gardening and putting up of veggies and I am writing instead of canning so I must make this brief.

Last several days ago I stopped by the market to grab a few meats for dinner, as we have enough veggies. I bought several big boneless pork chops and they had chicken breasts, but one get one free so I did. One night we had the first few breast pounded out and stuffed with fontina and sage, rolled and grilled. The next we had breaded grilled pork chops (the recipe is on the website) and it is wonderfully juicy! Since I had the breading I went ahead and breaded up the squash and grilled it too.

Yesterday, I skinned and boned the rest of the chicken, cut it into strips and marinated in jerk sauce (also on the website). When we came from the garden at half past eight with a picking of tomatoes, eggplant, squash, basil, peppers, and cucumbers, I didn't have an inkling of what I was going to have for dinner, then it hit me! Ratatouille!

Even though we haven't had time to go see the movie, there is was right there in front of me, so in about 15 minutes (who needs 30 minutes), we had jerk chicken, ratatouille, grilled corn on the cob and cucumbers in vinegar! Summer time is great!

Labels: Grilled Breaded Pork Chops Recipe Stuffed Pepper recipe, grilled squash, jerk chicken recipe, Ratatouille

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Seafood is In (season)

We've been finding great prices on seafood of late. I'm assuming it is because it is in-season. We headed home for Mothers Day and saw both of our mothers. At the huz's mothers we made a seafood extravaganza.

We had beautiful sea scallops seared with cumin, crab cakes and a spicy garlic, thyme and cayenne shrimp sauté . We roasted vegetables including fresh local asparagus and had a big Greek style Salad. Several of the recipes have been posted before. Go to the website for more recipes.

Last night we had jerk chicken, one of my favorites along with sautéd red cabbage with peppers, onions and caraway seeds and finished with a bit a balsamic and yellow rice cooked in chicken stock.