Tag Archives: garlic

Little Dom’s…Again! {Brunch}

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I’m a tofu-eating, yoga-practicing, toms-wearing, brunch-going twenty something living in Hollywoodland. I’ve become my own worst nightmare. My name is Shannon, and I am so LA.

Maybe it’s true. Maybe the sunshine does make us less cynical than our eastern counterparts (I still love you more, NY!). But how cynical can you really be on a sunshiney Sunday morning enjoying eggs benedict with your slightly woozy friends from the previous night’s debaucherous adventures? (life lesson learned: Jameson is stronger than beer.)

Enter the wonderful meal mashup that is brunch. I was particularly hyped when I found out that Little Dom’s in lovely Los Feliz served brunch, so duh, I dragged some (slightly hungover) friends to recuperate over some coffee and breakfast potatoes.

Little Dom’s
www.littledoms.com
2128 Hillhurst Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 661-0055

The Rating: 

The Quick and Dirty:

The wait wasn’t too bad during prime brunch time (maybe 20 minutes or so?). The coffee? Strong enough to kick that headache. The eggs benedict need to become a regular menu item, because they were perfection. For an Italian restaurant, the pizza is just ok (props for the homemade sausage though). No brunch is complete without pancakes, and it’s really hard to f those up, especially when they have blueberries and ricotta cheese in them. Yum.

The Eats:

{roasted garlic potatoes}

{bacon eggs benedict on focaccia}

{italian sausage pizza}

{ricotta blueberry pancakes}

Stuffed Peppers {Home Cooking}

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{yum}

Take this recipe with a grain of salt. Or several teaspoonfuls (I just had to retype that from “teaspoonfulls” and “teaspoonsfull” until the squiggly red line went away). Salt is the simplest but arguably one of the most versatile and utilitarian seasonings to have in your kitchen. It helps bring out every flavor in your recipes and also, it’s AWESOME. I’m partial to the coarse Kosher variety. When I found this recipe, I knew they had it right.

My past stuffed pepper recipes were more interpretations and variations on the traditional pepper, and this surprisingly was my first attempt at the standard pepper.

—————————-

Recipe via Chow.com

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Uncooked rice, any kind, about 1/2 cup
4 bell peppers, any color or size, washed, 1/2 inch cut from the top, cores and ribs discarded
Butter
1 medium onion, chopped into sizes you like to eat
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 pound of ground meat
Worcestershire sauce
Some form of tomato: chopped fresh, canned (small can oughta do it), tomato sauce, even ketchup
Salt
Pepper
1 egg
Grated cheese

1. Cook the rice as usual.

2. While that’s cooking, start water boiling in a pot big enough to hold your four peppers. Stir in enough salt to make it as salty as seawater, at least a tablespoon per four quarts.

3. When the water boils, dump in your peppers. Let them sit until they’re just starting to get soft, about three minutes. Remove them from the water with tongs and let the peppers drain in a colander while you prepare the filling.

4. Put a big knob of butter (two tablespoons? a little more?) into a pan and heat over medium high. When the butter foams, tip in the onions and cook until soft, a couple of minutes. Shake some salt over them.

5. Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant.

6. Stir in the meat and cook until it’s no longer pink. Salt the living hell out of it, and chuck Worcestershire on it until it tastes good to you. (Don’t be weirded out about eating lightly cooked meat, ya big baby.)

{mmm meat!}

7. Put the meat in a bowl and let it sit for a few minutes. Stir in the rice. Stir in whatever tomato form you’re using until the mixture looks nice and moist and juicy. Taste for salt—you want this thing good and salty, so go nuts. Put some pepper on there too. Taste it again. Hey, that’s not bad. Maybe you’ll eat lunch right here over the sink.

8. Crack the egg on top of the meat and rice and stir it up good.

{ready for the oven}

9. Sprinkle salt all over the peppers, inside, outside; stand them up in a 9-inch square baking dish.

10. Using a soup spoon, squish the stuffing into the peppers, making sure to pack it in tightly. I despise cheese but there are people who seem to like it, so if you are one of them, throw your grated cheese over the top now. Yuck. You just ruined it, but OK.

{peppers! note the tons of salt}

11. Bake at 350°F for a half-hour or until the peppers have gone pleasingly wrinkly all over and your cheese is bubbly.

Stuffed peppers freeze and travel well, so make a double or triple batch and keep them in the freezer in a resealable plastic bag. Need lunch? Pull one out and microwave until hot, about 8 minutes if your microwave is of the same wattage as mine, whatever that is.

Repurposing Mustard

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Mustard isn’t just a condiment for sandwiches anymore.  Use it to make a sauce for poultry or, as I’ve recently discovered, make a delightful salad dressing.

I’m in love with the mixed greens I pick up at the farmer’s market every sunday, but the basic olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing was getting a little old.

Enter a mustard vinaigrette recipe, courtesy of foodnetwork.com.  The ingredients are simple, and you probably already have most, if not all, on hand.

  • 1 garlic clove, sliced in 1/2
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • Small splash soy sauce
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil

The directions are seemingly easy, unless you have trouble simultaneously patting your head and rubbing your belly…

Rub the inside of a large wooden bowl with the garlic clove and then either discard it or save it for another use. Put the mustard in the bowl and whisk in the balsamic vinegar and soy sauce (a French secret!) vigorously for about 10 seconds to get a creamy consistency. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Drizzle in the olive oil as slowly as possible with 1 hand while whisking as quickly as possible with the other hand to emulsify. Lay the salad greens on top of the dressing and toss just before serving.

With my whisk in one hand and the little prep bowl of olive oil in the other, I found myself viciously whisking in the olive oil like a madwoman.  When I slowed for a break, I could see the oil and vinegar beginning to separate, at which point I proceeded to whisk even more energetically.  All while trying to slowly pour in the olive oil.  So worth the strenuous hand-eye coordination test.  The result is a perfectly balanced not too watery but not too creamy vinaigrette.

Since I only had a little more than a cup of mixed greens left in my fridge (what am I going to do until I can get more on Sunday?!), I poured about a third of the dressing into another bowl and tossed in the greens.  Topped with sunflower seeds, I had myself a light, tangy and very addicting salad:

Dijon mustard in itself has quite a kick to it.  But mixed with the balsamic vinegar, olive oil and soy sauce, it’s somehow extremely tamed and works with, not against, its fellow ingredients.  Best of all, I was done in 5 minutes:)

Made This Just for the “Halibut”

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Get it?  ”Halibut”?

Anyways, another great fish purchase thanks to my new friend at the seafood counter at Whole Foods was a lovely piece of halibut.  When asking for suggestions, the fish guy said that anything you can do to salmon, you can pretty much do to halibut.  Added bonus for those who aren’t salmon or “fishy” fish fans: halibut is supposed to taste less “fishy” than salmon.

At the end of the workday, I realized I had this filet of halibut to cook, but didn’t quite know what to do to it.  After a quick google search before I shut down my computer, I found a recipe for a lemon butter parsley sauce.  I took a few (ok, a LOT) of liberties with the recipe, and came up with my own (and unmeasured) recipe, that includes:

  • Some butter
  • A clove of minced garlic
  • Some finely chopped parsley
  • Fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • Some dried basil
  • A lemon slice  (just one is ok.  Ignore the 3 extras in the picture below:))

Heat all of the above ingredients (minus the lemon slice) in a saucepan over medium heat until butter is melted:

Pour the sauce over the halibut, skin side down.  Broil for 10ish minutes, or until fish flakes easily from the thickest part.  While I’m a fan of anything I can broil (usually means it cooks in 15 minutes or less), I found out that my oven, well, not so much.  I live in an apartment building with “charm” (which essentially is a euphemism  for “old” and “dilapidated”), and the kitchen appliances aren’t much newer.  So when I set the oven to broil, my entire apartment filled with smoke (there wasn’t even anything in the oven yet?!)  I also found out the hard way that my smoke alarm does indeed work.  While I had the oven preheating, I was jumping up and down trying to fan my smoke alarm in a pathetic attempt to turn it off before the sprinklers went off (and the fire department came to visit).  Thankfully, I didn’t burn my charming apartment building down, and I didn’t have to bother the handsome men of the LAFD.

As ridiculous as that scene was, the overheating oven and smoke-filled apartment were totally worth it.  The sauce is perfectly light (in spite of it being butter-based).  I love the zing of lemon and the crisp hints of parsley.  And the lemon slice and sprig of parsley work wonders in covering up the part of the fish that I tested mutilated for doneness.

Goes great with a lemon-dressed salad (not pictured).  I just took some mixed greens, a bit of olive oil and a smidgen of balsamic vinegar, poured on some extra lemon juice and topped with a bit of salt and pepper.  The olive oil, vinegar and lemon worked surprisingly well together.  All in all, a wonderfully lemony summer dinner.