foodtvandme.com is the unofficial food network fansite with news, reviews, and my attempts at those great recipes you see on tv.

Thanksgiving is a little more than a week away, I should, therefore have a handle on the planning, right?  Unfortunatly, I am going to be out of town for a few days busy being a bridesmaid for one of my friend’s weddings.  I need help.  I love to cook the Thanksgiving meal, so I, therefore, volunteered for the task to cook this huge meal for my family months ago and I’m happy to do it.  However… 

I’m getting a little nervous.  I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to plan for the meal itself.  I looked at Food Network’s Thanksgiving site and found a couple of recipes that I’m going to try.  If you’re a bit panicked, too feel free to check out the site.  You might find somethings helpful, or you might not.  

But before I leave, I would like to ask for all of you to help me, too.  What timesaving tricks do you use for Thanksgiving?  I could use all the help that you can give me.  I like to keep things simple.  My family eats simple food and we all have varying levels of pickyness.  My brother only eats turkey and bread.  My mom doesn’t like vegtables.  And, as I’ve said before, I don’t like fish.  My dad will eat almost anything, so no problems with him, but I’m not going to make oyster stuffing just for him.  Sorry dad. 

So if you, also, have run into the problem of picky eaters, and have simple crowd pleasing recipes that you think my picky family might like, those would be most helpful as well. 

When I get back from the wedding, this blog better be full of ideas.  Please.  I need help.  And thanks in advance.

Madeline over at Everthing Rachael Ray tagged me for a meme.  The first thing I had to do was look up what “tagged” meant, and the second was to look up what a “meme” was.  If you are like me, and are new to the whole meme thing, click on this helpful link which was provided in Madeline’s post. 

The question posed was this:  Which menu would you serve to blogging friends for a welcome dinner upon their first visit to your home?

Excellent question.  A little ambitious, but excellent nonetheless.  I first have to point out, that if I have people over, I probably won’t make a dinner with five parts to it, like Madeline.  In fact, my dinners usually consist of about three things, a bread/rice dish, a meat (usually chicken), and a vegetable.

But, in keeping with the 5 part theme, I will answer with some recipes that I have posted in weekly recipe attempts and fill in the gaps with other Food Network chef recipes.  When I cook for people, I want to impress them.  In order to impress someone with my cooking, it has to be easy and attempted before hand to ensure minimum screw ups.  Here goes nothing.

Appetizer: Black Pepper-Basil Farmer’s Cheese Bruschetta with Tomato from Bobby Flay’s Boy Meets Grill.  It’s really tasty.  Looks impressive.  And it’s pretty simple to make.

Salad: I’m sorry.  I have to break the recipe pattern with this one.  My salads usually come out of whatever ingredients I have left on hand once I make the rest of the meal.  It would be a salad with romaine lettuce and leftover vegtables.  That’s just how I do salads.

Entree:  Chicken Francese from Tyler Florence’s Food 911.  I made this one last week, and I loved it.  It also think it would go well with the bruschetta, and, again, it looks impressive.

Side Dish:  Oven Roasted Green Beans from Emeril.  I love these things and cook them all the time.  I like to use them in place of rice or potatoes when I’m trying to watch my girlish figure.

Dessert:  Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti from Giada’s Everyday Italian.  I haven’t actually made this one yet, but I think the best way to end any type of gathering is with a cup of coffee and a delicious treat.  What goes better with coffee than biscotti?

Here’s who I’m tagging:

• Adam at Giada Fan
• Geneve at Geneve’s Kitchen
• Dan at The Hungover Gourmet
• Mike at TV Food Fan

As an amateur cook, I’m always on the look out for easy meals to fix for company, especially easy meals that look complicated.  I’ve found the perfect easy, company food care of Food Network’s most attractive chef, in my opinion, Tyler Florence. 

Weekly recipe attempt: Chicken Francese

Tyler coins this meal as part of the perfect first date menu.  I kind of agree. This meal, especially this recipe, is fairly easy to manufacture, and looks pretty on the plate.  I, however, don’t really think that a meal cooked at home is particularly proper for a first date.  After watching the disaster of Dave Lieberman’s blind date from Dave Does (click here for my post and the link to the Aphrodesiacs episode) the thought of cooking for a complete stranger at your home can be a little creepy especially if you try too hard.  Cooking is more of a third date thing in my opinion, so I recommend this for a third date as opposed to date number one.  But I digress.

I made the chicken without too many screw ups.  The one thing I should mention about the chicken is that you should definitely try to pound it as thin as you can get it.  I didn’t pound mine thin enough, partly because I don’t own a malet, and partly because the chicken breast I had was from a mutant chicken that had a breast the size of a turkey’s.  This led to the chicken taking a bit longer to cook, which if you have company, is a bad thing.  Once the chicken was finally done, I placed it on a bed of green beans for color.  All of it went so well together.  I think I used a touch too much lemon juice in the sauce so be careful.  Half a lemon goes a long way, especially when the sauce cooks down and concentrates. 

All in all, I give this recipe a 9 out of 10.  I admit I may be adding half a point because I like to look at Tyler while he cooks this, but the recipe is really good, especially for that special someone. 

The spooking season is upon us.  It’s time to ply those kids with sugar and make some crazy cupcakes.  Can’t bake?  No problem!  The Food Network is gearing up for this scary time of year by releasing a number of specials that will help turn your quaint country cottage into a haunted mansion.

Emeril kick’s off this Halloween season with a Bam!  He’s airing special episodes all week for “Sweets and Treats” week.  Those episodes include Shrunken Heads and Graveyard Pudding.

Sandra Lee has a special Semi-Homemade Halloween like only Sandra could do.  In this special, she shows us how to candy our own apples and make a spooky pizza.  I caught a glimpse of this episode last weekend and she dresses up in different costumes for every segment.  Doesn’t everybody wear ten different costumes in one evening?  I will defend her multiple outfit changes by saying that it could concieveably give someone an idea or two about what to dress up as, but in true Sandra Lee fashion, her outfits are very over-the-top just like her tablescapes.  If you want to spend a couple of hundred dollars on your costume, by all means, take a page from the book of Sandra Lee’s costume catalog.  Her special airs October 28th at 5pm ET/PT, or October 29th at 7pm ET/PT. 

Lastly, if you ever wondered where your favorite trick or treat candies came from, then check out Spooky Treats Unwrapped.  Marc Summers takes you through the world of candy making and explores the manufacturing of scary treats like wax fangs and ghost shaped Peeps.  He also throws in some classics like Mike and Ikes and the ever so scary Pez.  AHHHH! PEZ!!! Flee for your lives!  Just kidding.  Sadly he doesn’t explore the tiny chocolate bars that were always my favorite treat to be plopped into my pillowcase for Halloween.  I guess Unwrapped has explored the world of chocolate so many times that the show felt another chocolate segment would be over kill, but I say, you can never have too much chocolate.  This special airs October 28 at 4pm ET/PT, and October 29th at 2pm ET/PT.

For the Food Network Halloween page click here.  This page has a lot of helpful Halloween party tips for any of you last minute party planners.  It has costume ideas, decoration plans and, of course, delicious spooky recipes.

This week’s recipe attempt wasn’t actually attempted by me.  My friend, Valerie, decided to take on a recipe from last weekend’s Nigella Feasts episode.  Her recipe was a more adventurous attempt than my usual attempt (she’s a bit more skilled than I am at cooking and I hate to admit it, but I have to give her credit.)  This is also a fish dish, which is nice for everyone who likes fish, unfortunatley, I’m not one of them.  So here is a treat for all of you out there.  The following is Valerie’s attempt at a salmon dish from Nigella.  The commentary on the dish is also hers.  Enjoy!

Weekly recipe attempt: Sake Salmon and Rice
Valerie writes:
I am completely new to Nigella Lawson, but I’m already hooked.  On Sunday, she made salmon look so delicious I was ready to try it.  Salmon isn’t even a favorite of mine.  Truthfully, I rarely eat fish.  I think her accent and semantics makes her recipes extra inviting.  Due to a power outage,  I was able to invite two coworkers over for lunch.  The main course was Sake Salmon and Rice.  I only changed one thing in the recipe.  I tried, but couldn’t find English Mustard and didn’t want to use wasabi paste, so I used ordinary spicy brown mustard.  The cardamom gave the rice a nice aromatic flavor.  I think I’ll always put cardamom in my rice now.  If you have a rice cooker, this is the simplest recipe ever.  It’s great to entertain with because you aren’t slaving over a hot stove.  I think the English mustard or wasabi would have really kicked the flavor up a notch, but I was quite satisfied the way I made it.

I give it an 8 on taste and a 9 on the easy factor.  I have a salmon recipe!

I picked this week’s recipe for a variety of reasons.  I was going to pick one of Nigella’s recipies as a kick off to her new show, but they were both kind of heavy: chili with cornbread and a trifle with whipped cream and other bad-for-you yumminess.  For the next few weeks, due to an upcoming wedding where I have to squeeze myself into a tight fitting bride’s maid’s dress, I am going to try to eat a bit healthier.  Therefore, I will try to pick slimmer recipes or modify recipes to cut some calories.  That having been said, this week’s recipe came from the queen of quickness herself, Rachael Ray.

Weekly Recipe Attempt: Chicken in Tarragon Cream Sauce, White and Wild Rice with Walnuts

First off, I love chicken.  It is by far the thing that I cook the most and what attracted me the most to this recipe.  So I took that building block and followed the recipe pretty much to a tee.  After the pot roast disaster (click here to read about the pot roast that ate Orange County), I had to return to my tried and true roots of poultry. 

While the chicken cooked, instead of rice (to make things a bit lighter) I oven roasted some green beans.  I would like to thank Emeril for this idea.  I don’t really like his show, but this was one great idea.  It made the beans all crispy and yummy.  If you have a hard time choking down vegtables, or getting the little ones to eat their green beans, try the oven roasted trick and tell them the beans are actually green french fries.  Just stick the beans in a 400 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes with some olive oil, salt and pepper.

It then came to the cream part.  I used some fat free half and half (yes there is such as thing.)  I found mine at Trader Joe’s.  If you don’t have a Trader Joes, or if you can’t find it at your supermarket, try fat free sour cream.  I used what I had on hand.  If you don’t have a bride’s maid’s dress to fit into, by all means use the full fat stuff. 

It was good.  I’m not a huge fan of tomato-type sauces with my chicken, but the balsamic vinegar definitley helped take away some of the tomato flavor.  Go lighter on the vingear than you would think.  When this stuff concentrates, the aroma can hit you in the face like a sucker punch.  Just wanted to warn you.

All in all I give this recipe an 8 1/2.  It doesn’t get a 9, but I think with fat free sour cream instead of half and half, it would.  If anyone out there tries this with the rice, let me know how that turns out. 

This week’s recipe was an ambitious attempt on my part.  I decided to try to make a pot roast.  Me and slow cooking don’t go together, but I saw Dave do this so easily, and inexpensivley, that I thought I could give it a whirl.  I had carrots and onions, so all I had to do was pick up some potatoes and a piece of beef, and I was set.  Fortunately for me, pot roast meat was on sale.  I forget what kind of roast it was, but it did say “Pot Roast” on the label, so I thought I couldn’t go wrong.

Weekly recipe attempt: Red Wine Pot Roast with Honey and Thyme

Things were going smoothly with this recipe, in the beginning, anyway.  I did a fine job at browning the meat.  I managed to set it aside while the vegtables sauteed without dropping it on the ground.  I didn’t burn the vegtables.  I put the lid on it and managed to get it into the oven without incident.  Everything was cooking.  Everything was bubbling.  I was patiently waiting for a couple of hours.  Things were going well and I was very engouraged, until, to my peril, I had a lightbulb moment.  The meat that I had bought was significantly smaller, I mean about half the size of Dave’s meat, which meant, it needed less time.  Oh no.  I had this lightbulb moment fairly late in the game.

When I took the pot out of the oven, things looked ok.  I tried a carrot.  It was cooked.  A bit sweeter than I thought it would be (more on that later) but my panic began to subside.  I then cut into the meat.  It wasn’t pot roasty at all.  It was flakey and not in a good way.  I was saddened.  This is the problem with slow cooking.  You look forward to something for two hours or more, and if it doesn’t work out, you just wasted two hours and have no food.  I, however, thought that perhaps, covering it with gravy would make things better.  Covering any food with gravy or sauce usually does a pretty good job at covering the flaws. 

I poured the gravy over the mound of food, and things, once again, seemed ok.  But (remember the carrot) when I tasted the gravy, it was sweet.  Really sweet.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I was expecting or what I was looking forward too.  Maybe it was supposed to be that way, and I just didn’t care for it.  I tried to add salt, lots and lots of salt, but it didn’t work.  Maybe I shouldn’t have substituted red onions for white.  Maybe the sweetness was too much, but I doubt it.  But in any case, it wasn’t the deliciousness I was expecting. 

I think it will be a while before I attempt another slow cooked meal.  I give this pot roast a 5 out of 10.

This week’s attempt was a simple one: salad.  I always love making salads in a pinch for a meal, but I usually use dressing from a bottle.  Today, I thought I would take a que from the quick-cooking queen herself, Rachael Ray, and make one of her lovely little salad dressings for a tasty, healthy weeknight meal.

Weekly Recipe Attempt:  Iceberg Lettuce Chopped Salad with “French” Dressing

This is simply a salad.  I suggest adding whatever you want for the bed of the salad.  I added canned, sliced beets because I love them and they happened to be in my pantry.  Corn would have been delicious on this salad, but that I did not have.  Rachael had cucumber, carrots and radishes.  I didn’t have any of these things on hand, so they didn’t make the cut.  The radishes would have been a pretty addition to match the dressing.

As for the dressing, it actually did taste like French dressing.  It may not have been that brilliant red color like most of the bottled stuff, but it looked real.  And I knew what was in it, which is always a plus. I think a dash or two of hot sauce woiuld have spiced up the dressing, but I thought of that after I sat down to eat.  I was too hungry to go back to the kitchen at that point to add another ingredient.

All in all, I give this recipe a 6.  I know the score is pretty low, but this recipe lacks the “wow” factor.  I do like it’s versatiltity, but let’s face it, it’s a salad.   Most salad ingredients are pretty interchangeable.  I don’t know that I’ll make this particular salad again for a while.  It was a little to boring for me.

In the last post, I alluded to a special menu that a friend of mine and I were preparing for Labor Day Brunch, and I must give us a round of applause.  We attempted a couple of items from Bobby Flay’s Boy Meets Grill brunch episode in the Labor Day marathon.  We made cheesy eggs and blueberry honey butter for biscuits.  The original accompanyment for the butter was corn muffins, but the biscuits were only 44 cents at the grocery store, so who can pass that up.  Although the corn muffins would have perhaps been better for the butter. 

The eggs were great and pretty easy to make.  I always forget how much you can do with eggs.  I get worried that when I add cheese to eggs, the cheese will burn and get stuck to the pan.  The cheese never does this, but I still worry.  This time we used goat cheese, which is creamier than say a cheddar, so it added more of a creamyness as opposed to a cheesey, gooeyness.  It was delicious.  You also might be tepmted to take out the jalapeno if you don’t like heat, but please don’t.  It definitley adds a much needed kick and you need to give it a try.  Just don’t put too much in it. 

The butter was good, too.  It was more of a method for the butter.  I now see how they make things like garlic butter, honey butter, chive butter, etc.  It’s simple.  Take whatever you want to turn into butter and stick it in the food processor.  Then add the butter and blend away.  It’s so easy, I couldn’t screw it up if I tried, although I don’t usually need to try to screw things up, it just sort of happens. 

All in all, the brunch was delicious.  A Bloody Mary makes a perfect addition to the brunch.  If you don’t want any alcohol for breakfast, Virgin Mary’s are great, too.  In fact, I think I prefer them at 10 in the morning, but to each their own I guess.

Who else had a bruch they’d like to tell my about?  I’m always looking for good brunch ideas.  There’s nothing better on a lazy weekend then a huge spread of delicious and pretty food.

Ok.  There are a couple of things I have to say here before getting into the actual recipe.  I’m not exactly a big fan of Paula Deen.  I don’t know if it’s her voice, her use of copious amounts of fat in her dishes, or the insipid catch phrase she uses at the end of each show, “best dishes from my house to yours,” but I can’t watch too much of her.  This brings me to the number of reasons for my selection of one of her recipes for my weekly attempt.

Firstly, I was tired.  It was hot here in Southern California (almost 100) and I had just gotten back from a 6 mile walk.  I wasn’t in the mood to cook anything.  It’s also rent paying week. That wonderful week where my latest paycheck goes toward putting a roof over my head.  I wanted to use the stuff that I already had as opposed to going grocery shopping where I would inevitably purchase more than I came in for, yet again.  That brings me to the last reason.  All the great grilling or brunch recipes or just plain things I wanted to cook are being saved for the weekend.  My friend Valerie is coming up and we are working on a special Labor Day menu for the blog.  

With all that being said, I am willing to suffer through Paula’s show to get this recipe which I bring to you today:  Marinated Tomatoes.

This recipe was perfect for what I wanted last night.  I had just gone for a walk in the blistering heat and wanted something light and cool to eat.  The ingredients were easy to assemble, no cooking required, mere whisking is all this one takes.  There was quite a bit of oil in the recipe.  I wouldn’t recommend eating the tomatoes by themselves.  I put them on top of some mixed greens along with some left over peas and white beans.  I used them like a dressing with big heaps of tomato.  It was quite tasty.

I give this recipe an 8 out of 10.  It gets a high score because of it’s versatility.  You could even use the tomatoes a sort of a Southern style bruschetta if you put the mixture on top of toasted bread.  Hmmm….  Maybe I’ll try that tonight with the left overs.