Happy Fourth of July, everyone! In Laura tradition, I am at home, blogging. Five years running! Woot! Anyways, I’ve decided to start posting some cooking blogs because I like to think of myself as a bit of a “good cook” in the respectable sense. Tonight, I made myself a delicious feast and had a chilled bottle of Franz Reinhart 2008 Reisling in the fridge. May I say for $7 a bottle, its pretty good!
Alright, so on the menu tonight was Red Pepper Crusted Flounder and Spicy Southwest Chipotle Corn Pasta :) Sounds tasty, no? So, the recipe I’m posting essentially only works if you’re cooking for one, as I always do. So, adapt however you want accordingly.
Red Pepper Crusted Flounder
The restaurant I work at serves a lot of seafood dishes. But most of them are so blandly prepared because well, old people like bland food. We have a variety of cooks from different countries like Mexico, Greece and the Middle East. I always see them preparing food for themselves with lots of fun spices that are colorful and (when they let me try some) insanely delicious. So, I tried my hand at making a spiced up version of a boring old dish.
(This is a broiled dish, and can also be pan fried, but broiling is probably healthier in the long run)
Ingredients:
1-2 large flounder fillets washed and prepared
2 tbs. italian style breadcrumbs
1 tsp. dried roasted red pepper flakes
1/2 tspt chili powder
chipotle chili pepper powder
2 tbs butter
salt/pepper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 425. Once oven is preheated, take your baking pan and spray lightly with cooking spray and leave it in the oven for 10 minutes. This will evenly heat the fish while it cooks. Take the breadcrumbs, peppers and powders and mix in a bowl, spread them out evenly and coat the flounder fillet with a nice layer of the mixture. Melt the butter and set aside. Once the pan is preheated, place the fish on the pan and pour the butter even over the fillets. Cook 5-7 minutes. Once the 5-7 minutes has passed check to see with a fork if the fillet flakes. If so, then it’s done. Otherwise put it back in for another minute or two.
Spicy Southwest Chipotle Corn Pasta
Josh took me to this awesome little place called Moon Time in Coeur d’Alene, ID. Their food was insanely delicious. I ordered this ancho pepper black bean burger and it came with this amazing chipotle corn pasta salad. We both decided we had to figure out how to make it and so I came up with a super simple, easy to make version. Normally, I make all of my cheese sauces myself, but if you don’t want to go through the trouble of making a cheese sauce, just use this recipe I made for the sake of laziness. I also changed the pasta for a healthier option.
Ingredients:
2 or 3 handfuls of Ronzoni Garden Delight Pasta
1 tbs butter (I know, I loooove cooking with butter…shush)
1/4 of a small yellow onion finely diced
1 tsp minced garlic (I use it from a jar)
1/2 can sweet corn
chipotle chile pepper powder
Ragu cheddar cheese sauce (For lazy losers. If you want my actual cheese sauce recipe just ask. There’s like 95089230982 pounds of butter in it)
Directions:
Cook pasta, drain. Sautee the onion and garlic in a saucepan with the butter. Add corn and chipotle pepper powder. I like to use a lot because I like spicy food. I think I used about 2 tsp. But, use to your discretion. Once everything is mixed evenly, add a little bit of cheese sauce to the mix, but not too much! Just enough to evenly coat what’s in the pan. Add pasta and mix. Remove from heat.
