Category Archives: Main Dishes

February 16, 2022 · 7:03 am

Red Beans & Rice with Smoked Sausage

This is an easy-to-make, family friendly recipe. (Unless you are the one of my five children who won’t touch anything that looks like a hot dog or sausage. She just picks around those and eats the rice and beans.) I usually have all of these ingredients on hand, so when I end up at the end of the day and don’t know what to cook, it is easy to pull some smoked sausage out of the freezer and put this together.

You can start with uncooked rice, or use leftover cooked rice to prepare it even faster.

The amounts of spice in the recipe will make a mildly spicy dish. Adjust the amount of Cajun seasoning and tabasco sauce to your family’s spice tolerance.

RECIPE:

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Tagged as brown rice, Cajun, entree, main dish, recipe, red beans, skillet meals, smoked sausage

January 15, 2022 · 3:00 pm

Mapo Tofu

“Comfort food” means something different to everyone. Our youngest child (soon to leave the nest and graduate into adulthood) has always been our pickiest eater. I gave up long ago on trying to see the logic in what she likes and dislikes. But one thing is consistent: she hates bland food. She wants nothing to do with hot dogs, hamburgers (or any variation like meatballs/meatloaf), pizza, roast chicken/turkey, and ANYTHING in gravy or a tomato-based sauce. But she LOVES most ethnic foods that come packed with flavor and spiciness. She especially loves Mexican and Asian cuisine (Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese), with a few un-explainable exceptions.

So to her, comfort foods DO NOT include soups, stews, pot pie, roast beef or chicken, or pretty much any American food. Mapo tofu, however, is one of her very favorite meals. It is packed full of mouth-tingling flavor! And tofu (which is the blandest thing ever, but provides a nice texture in the spicy sauce).

Mapo Tofu (also spelled mabodofu) is a Szechuan dish that we first came to love while living in Japan. It is made with ground pork, tofu, chili paste, onions, garlic, and other Asian seasonings. The best place we have ever eaten it is in a Szechuan restaurant in Beijing; it was so spicy it was hard to swallow, but soooo good. When we moved back to the US, I needed to find a way to make it from scratch.

In addition to other ingredients, I use a few tablespoons of this spicy bean sauce to flavor my mapo tofu. This requires a special trip to an Asian market for me, but that is one of my favorite outings, and the family loves it when I also come home with Aloe drinks, ramune, and senbei snacks.

Part of the flavor of this dish comes from ground Szechuan peppercorns, which are unique because they are not especially spicy (that quality comes from other ground peppers). But they cause a slightly numbing sensation to your tongue when you eat them.

So as our weekend forecast is for cold and snow, this is what our Little J hopes to see on the menu!

RECIPE:

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Tagged as Chinese, entree, Japanese, mabodofu, main dish, mapo tofu, spicy, Szechuan peppercorns, tofu

October 8, 2021 · 2:13 pm

Kabob Koobideh

The weather here is still unusually warm, which has extended our outdoor grilling season. These Middle Eastern spiced kabobs (affectionately called “meat logs” by my children) are a flavorful departure from burgers, hot dogs, and grilled chicken. I like to serve them with tzatziki, hummus, and warm pita bread.

If you don’t want to go to the trouble to make kebabs (or it is winter and you don’t want to dig your grill out of a snowbank), this meat mixture is also great shaped as meatballs and baked, or browned in a skillet.

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Tagged as entree, grilling, ground beef, kabobs, keto, kofta, main dish, meatballs, Middle Eastern, pita bread, recipe, tzatziki

August 9, 2021 · 11:52 am

Sheet Pan Garlic Lemon Shrimp and Asparagus

Sheet Pan dinners are a quick way to cook a full meal on one easy-to-clean pan. This shrimp and asparagus meal can be on the table in under 30 minutes.

Line your baking pan with foil for an even easier clean-up.

RECIPE:

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Tagged as 30 minute dinner, asparagus, garlic, main dish, quick and easy, recipe, seafood, sheet pan, sheet pan dinner, shrimp

July 22, 2021 · 8:36 am

Japanese Sukiyaki

Happy 19th birthday Aaron! About a week ago, Aaron left for Germany to serve a 2-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so we celebrated his birthday a little early. Aaron’s dinner request was Japanese Sukiyaki and Coconut Cream Pie Bars (pictured below).

Sukiyaki is a Japanese hot pot, served in the pot over a portable gas burner at the dinner table. Diners use chop sticks to take items out of the pot onto a bed of rice. Dipping hot items from the broth in raw eggs is traditional, but we didn’t want to risk salmonella with Aaron taking an international flight the next day.

Sukiyaki broth is a slightly sweetened soy broth. Thinly sliced beef and various vegetables, noodles, and tofu simmer in the broth until cooked through.

Here’s a photo from another time when we used slightly different vegetables:

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Tagged as beef, entree, hot pot, Japanese, main dish, recipe, tofu

May 4, 2021 · 4:26 pm

Instant Pot Thai Pork Wraps

This shredded pork wrap filling can be made in an Instant Pot or slow cooker. The pork is seasoned with a soy peanut marinade and makes a flavorful meal everyone will love. Top with chopped peanuts and julienned cucumbers for a great crunch.

Serve in tortillas for wraps. For a low-carb meal, use Bibb or Butter lettuce leaves for lettuce wraps, or serve on a bed of chopped lettuce.