Tag Archives: bleu cheese

November 26, 2012 · 11:29 am

Homemade Crepes

I thought crepes would be incredibly complicated, but they are in fact just milk, flour and eggs! I’m sure there are plenty of other ingredients (i.e. sugar) that some people add to this recipe, but I was taught that one should start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start). So I kept it simple:

crepes, recipes, walnut, pear, bleu cheese, arugula, lunch

1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 2 eggs, pinch of salt.

Mix-eems up!

Now came the hard part. I wasted one entire batch of batter attempting to swirl the batter evenly in our cast-iron skillet. The trouble is the batter starts cooking as soon as it hits the pan, so make sure you have a strategy. I didn’t need much butter, just a light greasing of the pan and about 1/3 cup of batter did me just fine. 🙂

Swirl evenly into pan on med heat.

It’s definitely a learning curve.

After several tries, I finally found my swirling sweet spot. Hours later, I read that an easy way to make it even is to tilt the pan and pour the batter in on an incline — if anyone has tried this, please let me know if it works!

As soon as the batter starts to bubble, flip-eems around and cook the other side. Afterward you can set them aside until you have as many as you need.

crepes, recipes, pesto, mozzarella, tomato, caprese, chicken caprese, lunch

Chicken Caprese Crepe for my man.

Heat it up on a warm pan and serve!

When it’s time to build the crepes, turn the pan on very very low and lay your crepe down, throw on your toppings and fold hot-dog, then hamburger (the nineties kids know what I mean).

The time had come to attempt the crepe of all crepes. The one I had placed up so high on a pedestal, I was bound to be disappointed, right? WRONG! I had seen this done so many times, I knew all of the components. I knew the order the ingredients needed to go in and what sorts of dressings topped them. It went crepe, bleu cheese, pears, honey, walnuts, balsamic, then arugula.

I topped this with black pepper and honey.

Served with arugula and a balsamic glaze.

And it was delicious! I’ll have to work on my crepe technique, but the integrity of the crepe was there. I considered this a huge victory and I intend to enjoy this for lunch every day this week because me and this crepe? We’re married. What’s your crepe soul-mate?

The 4th of July Means Burgers and Beer

Falling on a Wednesday, this 4th of July seemed to catch everyone a bit off guard. Do we celebrate the week before? The week after? The whole week? What’s the American thing to do? Duh… Work. So since everyone in my home had to work on the 3rd and the 5th, we decided to stay close to home this year, but that didn’t stop us from celebrating the day the American way: with lots of food!

We began by indulging ourselves in our absolute, hands-down, bar-none favorite lunchtime meal: fruit and cheese. Now it may not seem American, but when I put it to you like this:

cheese board, fruit and cheese plate, brie cheese, bleu cheese, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, pecans, olives, cornichons, gherkin

Brie and bleu cheeses, assorted berries, olives, pickles and pecans. Nums.

I think you’ll be forced to agree. The colors are even overwhelmingly red, white and blue. The brie, the bleu, the berries, the pickles… so many flavors to wash down with an ice cold American brew. Snobbishly unwilling to drink any form of mass-produced light lager, we went with two ales from the Captain Lawrence Brewing Company, based right here in Queens. I enjoyed a pale ale, as per my modus operandi, while my mate enjoyed a belgium-style brew as per his. Yes, it’s a little douchy. Yes, we’ve embraced it. Yes, it complimented the cheese and fruit perfectly. And we knew it would pair well with the little challenge we’d arranged for ourselves at dinnertime: Re-create the Ring of Fire Burger at Queens Comfort, with this we decided to make buttermilk battered baked onion rings (try saying that 3 times fast).

buttermilk battered onion rings, baked onion rings, 4th of july recipes

1 egg, 1/2 cup buttermilk, 1/4 cup flour, cayenne, salt and pepper

Dip in the batter, dredge in the breadcrumbs, then onto a plate.

Baking the onion rings rather than frying them had very little to do with calories, as should be made obvious by the fact that they are battered in buttermilk (Thank you, Martha Stewart). It was mainly because we don’t possess a deep fryer and we have only one skillet suitable for pan frying many things as once. So I battered and dredged the vidalia onion rings and put them on an oiled cooking sheet before popping them into a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes (flipping them halfway through).

fried jalapeños, ring of fire burger, queens comfort, 4th of july recipes

Jalapeños 2.0: Battered and Fried

fried jalapeño burger, ring of fire burger, queens comfort, bleu cheese, avocado, buttermilk battered onion rings, baked onion rings

Our take on the Ring of Fire burger.

If you’ll remember, the Ring of Fire Burger at Queens Comfort has fried jalapeños and sriracha and was incredibly well-recieved by my person. It was his idea to recreate the burger, adding avocado obviously (since it would appear we don’t really know how to eat meals that don’t include this fruit). I added bleu cheese to mine for funsies and it was ta-styyy. A bit wider and flatter than the one at Queens Comfort, but all-in-all, I’d say we made our forefathers proud. Happy Birthday, America!

Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps

If you’ll remember a week or so ago, I bought a rotisserie chicken to make some particularly delicious crunchy tacos. As I mentioned then, I only used half of the chicken for that meal. This is what a did with the other half:

I was in the mood to make a lettuce wrap, something I always thought sounded nice but had never actually made. A few months back my housemate purchased a bottle of buffalo sauce that we used for one meal and haven’t touched since. We were short on time this particular evening, so I decided buffalo chicken would be a fun foray into the challenging world of lettuce wraps. Since I wasn’t making the sauce myself, I decided the homemade part of this meal would be the bleu cheese dressing.

First grate or finely chop garlic, onion, celery and carrot

Mix in greek yogurt, lemon juice and bleu cheese crumbles

I added the carrots and the celery to the dip to mirror the flavors typically served with buffalo wings. I used yogurt here for the dressing because I saw this as a healthier version of the traditional wings and bleu cheese. Once the sauce was finished, I shredded the chicken and warmed it through on the stove with the buffalo sauce.

I heated the rotisserie chicken with the buffalo sauce

I know many people use iceberg lettuce for lettuce wraps, but I hate iceberg lettuce so I used romaine and it worked just fine. As a final flourish, I shredded some carrots and celery for either a side salad or wrap topping, it’s up to you! These made for a pretty meal that was healthy, tasty and took less than 20 minutes to prepare. POP POP.

Served with a salad of shredded carrots and celery

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Tagged as bleu cheese, buffalo chicken, buffalo chicken lettuce wrap, carrots, celery, cooking, easy dinner, food, healthy bleu cheese, lettuce wrap, recipe

February 20, 2012 · 4:29 pm

Bleu Cheese Buffalo Chicken x 2

Last night I was on my own for dinner so I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to cook a two-fer. I think you know where I’m going here… It’s a meal that you can cook for dinner and then eat again the next day for lunch!

Mix the crumbled cheese with the bread crumbs.

Add a little extra sauce and some olive oil or butter.

What I really wanted was chicken wings, but what I had was a chicken breast. I also had buffalo sauce and salad so I decided to pick up some bleu cheese crumbles and do a spin off of this garlic cheddar chicken recipe I saw. The recipe calls for you to dip the breast in oil, and then roll in breadcrumbs and cheddar before baking. Instead, I decided to marinate the chicken in the buffalo sauce and then roll it in bleu cheese and breadcrumbs to bake.

Then bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

I also crumbled up some bleu cheese in my salad and in the dipping sauce for a decadently cheesy dinner! It was tender and spicy and I had the perfect amount left over for a sandwich today. What more could you want?

Served with salad and bleu cheese dipping sauce!

Tag Archives: bleu cheese

Homemade Crepes

The 4th of July Means Burgers and Beer

Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Bleu Cheese Buffalo Chicken x 2

Let’s Twat!

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