Baked Flounder, Smoked Gouda Macaroni and Cheese

Today was day 25 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I made 2 dishes for dinner tonight: Baked Flounder with Fresh Lemon Pepper, and Smoked Gouda Macaroni and Cheese. Here's our thoughts on these two dishes:

BAKED FLOUNDER WITH FRESH LEMON PEPPER, pretty good...

The flavors of the rub on the fish were really strong... garlic, cracked pepper, lemon zest, olive oil, and salt. Not much to it, but it sure packed a punch of flavors, and pretty spicy as well. But it was good. The fish was so thin I was concerned that the cooking time of 8 minutes at 425 degrees was going to be too much, so I checked it after 6 minutes and it did need to go a little longer. I ended up cooking it for 8 minutes and it was cooked perfectly. This was a good dish, and quick and easy to make. My hubby liked it as well, it's one I may consider making again.

SMOKED GOUDA MACARONI AND CHEESE, better than I thought it would be...

I've mentioned before that I'm not really a fan of baked macaroni and cheese, but this one was actually pretty good, we both liked it. There was a LOT of spinach, and I mean a LOT... 5 cups of chopped, fresh spinach, to be exact, for 4 servings (which is really more like 6-8 servings when you're serving it as a side dish). The photo in the cookbook doesn't look like it has as much spinach in it, so when I was mixing it all together and saw how much spinach there was compared to the macaroni, I was afraid it was not going to be good and the spinach would be too overpowering. My hubby thought it was ruined when he saw it.

However, it was very good, and you really couldn't taste the spinach flavor in it much at all. We were very pleasantly surprised and both of us liked it much better than we thought we would.

There are some issues with this cookbook that I think could be more clear or precise, or described better. The spinach in this recipe is a perfect example. It says "5 cups coarsely chopped fresh spinach", which I take to mean chop the spinach first and measure out 5 cups of CHOPPED spinach. However, it probably would be been better (and look more like the picture in the cookbook) if it had been "5 cups of spinach, coarsely chopped", which would have meant measure out 5 cups of spinach, and then chop it. At any rate, it worked the way I made it, though I think it should have been the other way around.

The recipe says it will serve 4, and since I was just cooking for the 2 of us I considered cutting the recipe in half. But dear hubby loves pasta so much he said no way, he'd eat more than his allotted portion and would be happy with leftovers. We have 2/3 of the macaroni and cheese leftover so he'll have a lot to eat over the next couple of days, which he's happy about.

A good recipe that I would make again. Hubby really liked it a lot.

48 recipes down, 499 more to go (FINALLY below the 500 mark!).

Pan Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato Cream Sauce Recipe

As promised I would pick our favorite dish for each month and share that recipe. The Pan Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato Cream Sauce recipe was Brian's favorite dish. Rachel liked the Baked Chicken with Lemon, Sean liked the Oven Fried Chicken Thighs with Mustard Buttermilk Sauce, and my favorite was the Blueberry Crisp a la Mode.

If you're enjoying these recipes, you can purchase the cookbook here.

And if you want to come and taste some of our cooking personally, we'd love to have you as our guest in our Colorado Springs Bed and Breakfast Inn, Rocky Mountain Lodge & Cabins where we'll serve you a gourmet 3-course breakfast each morning.

Enjoy our favorite recipe of the month from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT for January...

PAN SEARED SCALLOPS ON LINGUINE WITH TOMATO CREAM SAUCE

• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1/4 cup minced shallots
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
• 1 Tbsp. grated peeled fresh ginger
• 2 Tbsp. whipping cream
• 1 Tbsp. butter, cut into small pieces
• 2/3 cup chopped seeded plum tomatoes
• 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 cups hot cooked linguine
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• Chopped fresh cilantro, optional

1. Combine wine, shallots, lime juice, and ginger in a medium skillet; bring to a boil. Cook until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 5 minutes. Drain mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl, reserving liquid, discard solids.
2. Return wine mixture to skillet. Add cream, and cook over medium heat for 1 minute. Add butter, stirring until butter melts. Stir in chopped tomato, 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper. Add linguine, and toss well. Cover and keep warm.
3. Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Sprinkle scallops with 1/8 teaspoon salt. Arrange scallops in pan, cook 2 minutes on each side or until done. Add scallops to pasta mixture; toss gently to combine. Garnish with chopped cilantro, if desired.

Yield: 2 servings (about 3/4 cup pasta mixture and about 5 ounces scallops)

Calories 426 (29% from fat)
Fat 13.5 g (sat 7.3g, mono 3.5g, poly 1.2g)
Protein 34.8 g
Carb 40.6 g
Fiber 2.6 g
Chol 92 mg
Iron 2.8 mg
Sodium 794 mg

Calc 75 mg

Seafood Fettuccine

Today was day 11 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT. My oldest daughter saw my post when I made Pan Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato-Cream Sauce and said she wanted me to make it for her. I said I'd make it for her the next time she came to visit. She and her family are visiting this weekend, and since there are other scallop with pasta recipes in this cookbook I thought I'd try out one of the others on the family tonight, so made the Seafood Fettuccine recipe tonight. Here's our thoughts on this recipe...

SEAFOOD FETTUCCINE, pros and cons...

This recipe called for shrimp, sea scallops, and lump crabmeat. The shrimp and scallops were great in the recipe, but the crab meat was not, it was really fishy. That could have been just the crab meat we bought, who knows, but we are not fans of our fish and seafood being "fishy", which often comes from it not being fresh. It also came out very "soupy". The recipe calls for 2 cups of half and half, but it was way too much and made the dish more soup like than sauce or cream like. I think 1 cup of half and half would have been sufficient. 

And the portion sizes were just right. The recipe said it serves 8, which at first we thought was not going to be enough for 6 of us, especially since my hubby likes to eat at least 4 portions of pasta, minimum, just for himself. But we all had our fill, and then some, and there was still some leftover. So it truly would have served 8 people with just the right size portions.

With the exception of the crab meat being fishy, the dish was good. Not sure I'd make it again. We liked the Pan Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato-Cream Sauce better than this dish.

And another comment made by my husband after he went shopping yesterday for groceries and took note of the cost of everything... this book is called "Cooking Light", not "Cooking Cheap". It's expensive for many of these recipes! The dish tonight cost about $40 to make. Since it served 8 people it works out to $5 per person, but still, it's expensive to cook like this every day. Most of the time I'm just cooking for 2 so I cut the recipes down to appropriate sizes. But still, these dishes are not cheap!

22 recipes down, 525 more to go.

Gingersnap Scones, Scallops with Linguine, Gingerbread with Lemon Glaze

Day 3 of Cooking from "THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT" and I made Gingersnap Scones with Espresso Glaze for breakfast this morning, Pan-Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato-Cream Sauce for dinner, and Warm Gingerbread with Lemon Glaze.

GINGERSNAP SCONES WITH ESPRESSO GLAZE, good but needs a tiny bit of tweaking...
I changed the recipe just a little. The recipe called for the dough to be rolled out to a 10-inch circle and cut into 10 scones. I thought they would be a bit on the thin side if I did that, so I rolled the dough into an 8-inch circle and cut it into 8 scones. I liked the size of the scones. The texture of the scones was good, not as dry as scones normally are, and we liked that about these scones. The glaze was much too thick and not of a "drizzle" consistency, so I needed to add additional water to it to thin it enough to drizzle on the scones. We liked the flavor of the icing. The scones themselves were not sweet and the icing helped with that. I didn't really care for the walnut on top, so I only put the walnut (for garnish, really) on half the scones. We served these to our guests in our Bed and Breakfast Inn, Rocky Mountain Lodge & Cabins, this morning, and they were a hit. I'd make this recipe again, the same way I made them this time, but without the walnuts.

PAN-SEARED SCALLOPS ON LINGUINE WITH TOMATO-CREAM SAUCE, Brian said a 10 on a scale of 1-10 (obviously one of our favorites)...

Since Brian can never get enough pasta, and loves scallops, I thought I'd make this recipe for him. He loved it and said I could make this recipe as much as I wanted and he'd eat it over and over again. The only variation I made on this recipe was that I used whole wheat linguine instead of regular linguine. Part of the recipe was a little unclear; it called for 1 1/2 cups hot cooked linguine, but it did not tell you how many ounces of dry pasta to cook. I cooked about 6 1/2 ounces of dry pasta, which I think was more than 1 1/2 cups, but Brian says you can never have too much pasta. The recipe said to cook the scallops for 2 minutes on each side, but the scallops did not look done on the sides so I cooked them for 3 minutes on each side, and they were done perfectly. Chef Gordon Ramsey would not have reason to throw these scallops out for being raw or overcooked (in my humble opinion). The portions seemed to be large, but that could be because I had a little more pasta than the recipe called for, but there were a lot of scallops too. So far, this has been Brian's absolute favorite recipe.

WARM GINGERBREAD WITH LEMON GLAZE, good, but needed more glaze...
I have another gingerbread with lemon sauce recipe that I make every year for Christmas, it's Brian's favorite Christmas dessert. I didn't make it this year because I wanted to make plum pudding instead (which took a month to prep and make) for a novelty. We'll be going back to gingerbread next year. Anyway, this recipe was up against my gingerbread recipe, and although this recipe was good, we still prefer my standby recipe. We liked the bites with the lemon glaze through the cake, but thought the gingerbread itself lacked a little flavor and the bites that didn't have the glaze throughout it was a little dry. The flavor of the lemon glaze was delicious, however, there was a lot of fresh squeezed lemon juice in it. We like my other recipe where you serve warm lemon sauce over the cake. And the frozen reduced-fat whipped topping does not stand a chance against home made real whipped cream.

Man, you'd think I was a food critic the way I talk about these recipes, sheesh! We ARE enjoying eating them. I don't think Brian likes the clean up afterwards though ;)

8 recipes down, 539 more to go.

Until tomorrow...