Glutenfreedelicacy

Spicy Kiwi Cucumber Margaritas

Craving mexican but feeling lazy — we made our own salsa to go along with chicken soft tacos, and washed it all down with a dang good margarita. A perfect blend of muddled kiwi and cucumber with a dash of jalapeno spice — ummm umm delicious!

Tasty Bourbon Ginger Snap Cocktails

Looking for a standout cocktail to serve at your New Year's Eve party or your next cocktail soiree? Then look no further than the Bourbon Ginger Snap, courtesy of Real Simple magazine. 

This cocktail is quick and easy to make and downright fabulous — each sip bursting with the perfect blend of zesty, earthy, spicy fresh-flavored oh-la-la decadence.

It will leave your non-bourbon drinking friends craving seconds (or more!) and your beer, wine and other boring cocktails jealous. 

These drinks pack a punch so try not to drink 'em too fast, although if you serve yours in tiny vintage cocktail glasses like we did, that will be hard!

Pig and Figoliscious

We love cooking with pork, not only because it’s perfect for grilling, it’s lean, juicy and works well with a variety of marinades and seasonings. So after searching online for an interesting recipe, it was this Fig and Chile-Glazed Pork Tenderloin from Cooking Light that tantalized our tastebuds.

We’re seeing figs used in a lot of unique dishes and cocktails these days, and since we love the taste, we were really looking forward to this meal. 

This recipe calls for fig preserves, and we used this quick and easy recipe by Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network website as a base, with a few of our own tweaks. For ours we cut the sugar down to ¼ cup, and added about a ¼ cup of water to reduce thickness, and 4-5 tablespoons of bourbon. For an extra kick, we used the flavor injector filled with approx. 2 tablespoons of bourbon to marinade the pork minutes before grilling. We served collard greens as a side from Trader Joe’s, and washed it all down with our own Fig Sidecar. 

Wow — we felt like we were eating a gourmet celebration dinner with this super-tasting meal. The pork was cooked to perfection, very tender and juicy with it’s charred outer crispiness that we love so much. The fig sauce was absolutely divine — an amazing luscious and savory blend of tangy, zesty, smoky, sweet, and woody flavors that intensified after each blissful bite. By all the oohhhing, uummming, and aahhhing being said, our neighbors probably thought that someone was getting porked! Actually it was our tastebuds getting porked, and we loved every bite of it!! 

 

For our Fig Sidecar, we added two heaping tablespoons of the leftover fig sauce to an ice-filled martini shaker. Then added two shots of bourbon, and two shots of our very own date and raisin infused bourbon that we had on hand. Toss in a tablespoon of bitters, a squeeze of one juicy lemon, and a splash of orange juice. Shake like crazy, pour into a cocktail glass, garnish with a few peach slices, and get ready for a fabulously tasty (and potent) treat! Feel free to reduce the bourbon if you like less kick.

Bonkers for Burgers!

 

When I was a kid, I was a super picky eater. I wouldn’t eat anything green or anything that crunched unless it came from a cereal box or a potatoe chip bag. No veggies were allowed to enter my mouth unless they were cooked carrots, peas, corn or potatoes. Tomatoes? Forget it. Mushrooms were ugly, onions were nasty and all other veggies were just plain yuck. Mom would sneak chopped veggies into meals in hopes that I wouldn’t notice, but most times I would spot them on my plate and disgustingly push them to the side. My favorite thing to eat was a cheeseburger and fries, and I looked forward to eating them every chance I got.

Before I started school I was dad’s sidekick on Monday’s — his day off from cutting hair at the barbershop. I looked forward to spending time with dad, tinkering around the house, and riding around town in his big mobile taking care of errands and such. I especially loved going to Jackie’s Restaurant, where we’d sit at the counter and enjoy a big juicy burger and fries for lunch. This was our time together and I will always cherish these memories.

As much as I loved eating cheeseburgers at restaurants, none of them compared to dads. He’d fire up the grill and smother them in his beer infused special sauce. They were so good we’d usually fight over the last one.

So in honor of Father’s Day, I thought it would be fun to relive those memories by making beer flavored burgers for dinner. Dad liked to pour a whole bottle of sauce (either a barbeque or steak sauce like A1 or Heinz 57) into a pot with a chopped onion, hot sauce, a few tablespoons of molasses and about a half cup of beer. He’d heat the sauce while the burgers were grilling, and when they were done, he’d put them in the sauce to simmer on the stove. 

For our burgers, we decided to make a home-made barbecue sauce from Cooking Light magazine. We added 3 tablespoons of St. Peter's Sorgham Gluten Free Beer, and an extra teaspoon of molasses to thicken it up. Instead of adding onions to the sauce, we made Pickled Red Onions also from Cooking Light magazine. We prefer our burgers cooked medium, so we served the sauce on the side. My burger was served on a gluten free english muffin, alongside grilled watermelon and peaches with Bobby Flay's Honey-Yogurt Dressing drizzled on top. To drink we made a Watermelon Cucumber Cooler from the latest Everyday Food magazine.

 

The burger's were luscious and the sauce added a spicy, sweet and tangy burst of flavor that we loved. The pickled onions threw our tastebuds in a tizzy with their perfect blend of sweet, tart, and spice! The grilled watermelon and peaches had a bold, charred flavor that was nicely balanced with the caramelized fruit sweetness and the velvety sweet and tart dressing. We couldn't have picked a better drink to go with this meal, it was fresh, tasty and fabulously refreshing. 

This meal was so good, we ate it for dinner two nights in a row! I just wish dad could have been here to enjoy it with us!

Steak Fajita Fantastico!

Most Saturdays after our workout at the gym, we’ll enjoy our lunch while watching whatever is on the Food Network. This weekend we watched Giada at Home as she made Chicken and Steak Fajitas. Giada's recipe calls for the zest of two limes, agave nectar, orange juice and a few spices for marinating the meat. Our mouths were watering in no time, and being such mexican foodaholics, we couldn't wait to make this for dinner. We left out the chicken and used a few reserve top sirloins we had from Omaha Steaks. We reduced the oil down to 2 tablespoons, used 4 tablespoons agave nectar along with 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and marinated the meat for five hours.

Notice those lovely grill marks on the steak? That's from our new cast iron panini pan! We bought it a few weeks back and we've used it for cooking almost every meal. We just love the crispy, charred flavor the cast iron provides!! While the steak was cooking in the pan we grilled sliced red peppers and onions in a cast iron skillet. 

These fajitas were amazing. The steak was wonderfully moist and juicy, and the marinade was thickened perfectly with a great citrucy sweet flavor. We loved the lime zestiness, orange and agave nectar sweetness. The steaks were big, so all we needed was some corn chips and an easy home-made salsa to complete this meal. If you're craving steak fajitas, then this is definitely a 'meating' you don't want to miss!!

And of course what's a mexican meal without a margarita? No fun to us, so we made two different types — both of which were inspired by the ones we sipped at Mayahuel — a cool tequila cocktail lounge and restaurant in New York. One was made with elderflower, egg whites and bitters, and the other was made with mezcal, muddled jalapeno and fresh oregano. The perfect compliment to this tasty meal!

Cinco-delicious!

We love celebrations, and with Cinco de Mayo a few days away, we chose to commemorate the upcoming occasion with tacos for lunch all weekend long. Since we love mexican food and could eat it an entire week without getting sick of it, we decided to keep the taco kick alive by making them for dinner.

We picked Salsa Verde Carnitas, a slow-cook recipe that we found at SimplyRecipes.com that looked great and sounded fabulous. We made the homemade salsa verde, and used only one jalapeno with 1/8 teaspoon of chipotle chile powder. To drink we made a margarita with ginger lime syrup, muddled cucumber, and a splash of seltzer.

The carnitas took 3 ½ hours to cook and was worth every minute! The meat was tender and juicy with lots of brown, crispy edges from the roasting that we loved!

Each bite was like a Mexican rodeo bursting with texture and flavor — crunchy, spicy, crispy, tender, creamy, zesty and smoky. The margarita was refreshing, citrusy-sweet and so good it had our tastebuds doing the mexican hat dance! We could get used to eating this tasty meal every week!

Spicy San Fran Fiesta!

For tonight’s dinner we decided to undress our Omaha Steak filets from their typical midwest tuxedos and gussy them up with the fiery flavors of Mexico instead.

On the menu: Mexican Gazpacho from Cooking Light magazine, Chile-Spiced Steak Tacos from Food and Wine magazine, and Marcia’s Mango Blackberry Jalapeno Margarita.

Both dishes were amazingly quick and easy to make. The gazpacho was refreshing and flavorful with an explosion of spicyness that lingered in our mouths and left our tastebuds scorching! Half the amount of jalapeno would be just fine for those who don’t like too much heat.

The steak tacos were absolutely luscious, the meat tender and juicy and packed with a kitchen sink full of flavors. We both agreed we hadn’t had a steak taco that tasted nearly this good before, but then again, we were eating filet!!

The margarita was sweet and spicy with a nice tequila kick — the perfect amigo for this meal, and muy deliciouso!

If this margarita sounds good to you and you'd like this recipe, please let me know by adding a comment, and I will post the recipe. Just trying to keep the postings short, but I am more than happy to pass it along to those who are interested! Cheers!

Filet Attack of the Heart

Even on Valentine's Day, the great recession demands for a gourmet homey frugality. We could have gone to many of the fine restaurants San Francisco has to offer, but instead we chose to create a romantic meal at home instead. On the menu — succulent filet mignon with rich balsamic glaze, slathered brussel sprouts with vinegar glazed onions, and moistly mashed potatoes, sprinkled with parsley, bacon bits, and thyme, all fit for a salacious king and queen!

 

Of course, no meal would be complete without pre-dinner cocktails and a nice, full-bodied bottle of wine. For our cocktail, we made this lovely Elderflower Sidecar, which was refreshing and fabulous!

 
 

Cucumber Vodka Martini

We love going out for a good cocktail, but sometimes it's just as fun making one at home. When our favorite neighborhood restaurant Street introduced us to their cucumber vodka martini, it was love at first sip, and we couldn't wait to infuse some cucumber vodka so we could enjoy our own tasty version.

First we went out and bought a bottle of Smirnoff (any other mid quality vodka will do), a large cucumber and a tall container with an airtight lid. We peeled and sliced the whole cucumber in approx. 1/4" pieces, poured the vodka into the container and added the cucumber slices, then put the lid on and hid it away in our closet for one month. We shook the jar once a day to get the cucumbers to mingle with the vodka. After one month, we poured the vodka through a metal sieve into a large glass. Then we topped the original Smirnoff bottle with a funnel and poured the booze back in, and let it sit in the back of our pantry for another month. Finally, after two long months we made our first cocktail, and boy were they tasty! 

This is how I made our Cucumber Martinis:

- Cut 4 slices of cucumbers and muddle into an ice filled martini shaker

- Add 4 shots cucumber infused vodka

- Add 1 tablespoon agave nectar

- Shake like hell then strain into chilled martini glasses

- Drop a strip of cucumber into each drink, and garnish the rim with a round cucumber slice

If you like your drinks sweeter with less kick, feel free to add more agave and top with seltzer. Enjoy!