Tilapia Fra Diavolo

Fra Diavolo (Italian for “Brother Devil”) is a spicy sauce, typically tomato-based and using chili peppers for spice. The term is also used for sauces that include no tomato, or that use cayenne or other forms of pepper. Mosts believe that the dish was named for Michele Pezza. [courtesy Wikipedia]

This dish features a parmesan crusted tilapia filet covered in a tomato sauce loaded with fresh vegetables and just the right amount of flare.

Make It Your Own
This is a dish that begs to be personalized. If you prefer cayenne pepper over crushed red pepper, go for it! If you like quick dishes, a can of Rotel can be substituted for the fresh vegetables. I prefer it this way, but to each his own. Add mushrooms, capers or black olives to enhance the flavor even more. Another easy variation would be to add small shrimp or crawfish to the sauce. Any firm white fish, such as orange roughie, cod or even Mahi Mahi could be substituted depending on what your budget and palet preference is. Whatever floats your boat, this sauce is basic enough that you almost can’t go wrong with making it your own!

Serving Suggestions
This dish is great served with any fresh vegetable side. Asparagus sauted in olive oil, salt and peppered to tast, makes an excellent accompaniment. We enjoyed it with brussel sprouts and a baked potatoes. It would be excellent with any pasta, the sauce This is a classic dish that is a blank canvas that goes with anything.

Beautiful Presentation
Someone who wants to look like a gourmet chef could take this dish and easily plate it in such a way that it makes for a beautiful presentation. With the red of the tomatoes, the green of the peppers and golden brown exterior of the fish this dish is appealing to the eye.

Chocolicious Two-Layer Cake

This is a chocolate lovers dream! We made this cake for Thanksgiving last year and it was the only thing that could tame the chocolate lovers palette! It uses chocolate in proceed and unprocessed forms and combines rich, moist chocolate cake in two layers with decadent chocolate icing that will send the chocoholic soaring to new heights!

Needs TLC
This is not a quick mix cake. It requires a watchful eye to make sure that you don’t over heat the chocolate and that you mix ingredients at the right time. This goes for the cake and the frosting. The yield is a wonderfully textured classic two-layer cake.

Ribbons Of Delight
The mattering method of this recipe is called “ribboning.” It involves whipping eggs with sugar until they double in volume, then adding the butter, dry ingredients and milk. It refers to the ribbon-like strands that form when whipping the eggs and sugar. This often the first step in making sponge cake as well.

Chocolate Lover’s Dream!
This makes for a cake that will satisfy even the most rabid chocoholic. It features melted chocolate mixed with cocoa in the cake and melted chocolate in the frosting. Wow! You can easily vary this recipe with the type of chocolate you use, at least in terms of dark vs. light chocolate. If this is too much chocolate for you (and it was right on the borderline for us) then just make your favorite butter cream or cream cheese icing to compliment the delicious moist chocolate cake.

Monkey Bread!

Monkey bread is a delightful treat that loved by all. Basically many instances of the center of the cinnamon roll, it’s irresistable! The origins of the name is a matter of debate. Some say it because we eat it with our hands and it’s so good that we stuff our cheeks and resemble a monkey, others say it resmebles the monkey-puzzle tree. It’s a little known fact that Nancy Reagan served monkey bread at White House shindigs.

An Endurance Race
This is not a quick fix recipe, but the results are well worth the TLC! You have to make the dough, let it rise, work the dough, let it rise, build the bread, let it rise and then bake it. It’s a big effort but as you can see, it makes a very presentable, very edible dessert that everyone will love!

Poppy Seed Chicken

This is one of my favorite dishes that my wife makes! It’s simple and easy for the running family crowd. In fact it’s a great recipe to cook up ahead of time and put in the oven any time. It’s creamy, buttery flavor goes very well with the chicken and crunchy Ritz crackers.

Serving Suggestions
This is a classic casserole so there are tons of sides that compliment it pretty well. The question is: To mix or not to mix? If you’re the type that hates for food to touch each other, this is going to be a difficult dish for you without a lunch tray from your local elementary school. Personally, I love to mix it up, especially with corn. It’s great with any fresh vegetables for a good wholesome meal.

Lemon Bundt Cake

My wife has perfected this recipe for a lemon bundt cake. It’s a great cake with or without the lemon flavoring, so if you don’t care for lemon or just need a change of pace, leave it out. Try this classic cake out and let us know how you like it!

Better With Age
This cake is light and delicious once it cools and is fresh, but as time goes on the cake’s consistency consolidates over time. This sounds like it wouldn’t be such a great thing, but believe me, it is a good thing. The cake, as it consolidates, get more moist. You’ll love as much on the third day as the first, but it’s a different cake on each day.

Salsa Fresca

We recently acquired a food processor. The first thing we made was salsa fresca. This is such a simple, easy recipe and the food processor makes it even easier. Don’t fret if you don’t have a food processor, it’s still very easy to do the old fashioned way as well.

Fresh Ingredients
The key to the best results in this recipe is to have the freshest ingredients! We’ve found a great farmer’s market here in Houston that has several vendors with locally grown, fresh and ripe ingredients. It’s call the Bayou City Farmers’ Market. You can find local farmers’ markets anywhere in the US at LocalHarvest.org. If you’re into organic and foods containing no hormones there’s lots of resources there for you as well.

Chicken Parmesan

I had a quiet evening with my wife for July 4th. We made Chicken Parmesan and enjoyed one another’s company. I thought I’d share the recipe and results. It’s a relatively easy recipe that yields a great dish.

You’re probably noticing an Italian theme in my initials posts. Don’t worry we like much more than Italian and those posts will be coming. In fact, just yesterday we made some homemade salsa that we’ll be canning soon. I’ll post on that and much more in the coming days.

Parmesan Cheese
Obviously, the fresher the better for Parmesan cheese. We didn’t have time to go to the store and get a nice block of parmesan cheese this time. So we used the Kraft grated Parmesan. This would be appalling to a true gourmet, but I’m a pseudo-gourmet so it sufficed given our time crunch. I’ve made this with authentic Parmesan and it is, in fact, better. That having been said you could still taste the Parmesan in this batch and was still nice and crunchy.

Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse!

 

I took my wife for a date last night to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. They’ve got a great summer deal going. You can get two meals, including you choice of salad, entree, sides and dessert to share, for $89 (plus drinks, tax and gratuity). This is a big number for two meals but Ruth’s Chris is very nice restaurant with outstanding steaks!

You can access more details about the promotion here.

In order to appreciate Ruth’s Chris you must understand their cooking methodology. From the Ruth’s Chris website:

Carefully selected and aged for tenderness. Cut thick to ensure juiciness. Seared to perfection at 1800 degrees. Topped with fresh butter that sizzles seductively on your plate, announcing the arrival of a fantastic steak you’ll be talking about for days.

I’ll testify!  This was my second Ruth’s Chris experience and it was a great one!  My previous visit was to the San Antonio location.  The service and atmosphere at the Houston location is not up to par with San Antonio but that all faded to the background once the steaks arrived!

We both order the petite filet.  Mine was cooked rare and my wife’s was cooking medium well.  They were perfectly cooked and the plate was sizzling with the grlic butter that had put on the top of the steak.  It was so tender, like velvet!  I would completely recommend giving it a try if you have a chance!

-The Fortunate Foodie

Perfect Pan Pizza – For Starters

For my inaugural post I’ll share some secrets that we recently learned that led to a GREAT homemade pan pizza. This pizza was the best I’ve ever eaten, much less made, with it’s crunchy, bready crust and it’s bubbly, crispy cheese. It was a labor of love but well worth the efforts!

Here are the results:

From the top (who needs Pizza Hut?!)

From the side…2″ thick.

Signature Pan Crust
We discovered, not because we’re great detectives but because we know the right TV show to watch, that a huge help to a great pan crust milk. Milk?! That’s right, adding milk and a little olive oil to the dough mixture instead of just water gives the crust that nice bready texture. It also gives it a little extra fat that makes the flavor out of this world. If you’re concerned about the fat, then you shouldn’t be eating anything that has peperoni or pizza in it’s name! Also adding what seems like a lot (3 tbsp) of olive oil into the cake pan in which we baked the pizzas helped give the bottom side of the crust a crunchiness that adds a certain something to the package.

Welcome to the Fortunate Foodie

From time to time my wife and I will try new recipes.  Food is something we enjoy so we share our experiments’ observation with our friends and loved ones.  People are often intrigued by what we try out and ask for the recipes, etc.  We felt like this would be a great forum to share our food triumphs and travails with the world.  I hope you get something useful from it.  We’re going to try to make this a well updated blog, so keep checking back to see our latest experiment.

My wife, of late, has become, an efficiency guru for shopping as well.  Not like many shop-a-holic wives but in a frugal way.  This makes me happy!  She’s gotten a lot interest because she’s even making money back on purchase on a regular basis.  Check out her “Game The System” blog for more details on how you too can save at least 80% off of groceries and other items.

-The Fortunate Foodie