I’m back!

©Mylunchanddinner2013

I’m back… not from outer space, but from what was the longest, hardest and happiest year! I had a beautiful baby on December 2012, plus I was finishing my PhD, I think some of my darling friends and followers might remember.

So, I am finally a Doctor in Engineering. A great achievement, specially because I was a stay-at-home mom/student working on my dissertation. It was really hard to raise a little baby with terrible cholic while making a bunch of mathematical calculations, new statistical proceses on my fields, but somehow I managed to survive! Yey!

So, I haven’t been taking photos of my food recently, but I promise I will again soon! I will love to share my insight on restaurants I have visited, and yummy recipes!

I have to tell you though… I have changed my eating habbits during the weekdays, and I eat healthy, but still delicious. Don’t worry! I still eat lots of really good stuff on the weekends, and I will tell you all about it!

Hope you enjoy reading my posts again!

Love,

Mylunchanddinner…

Blue cheese stuffed burger

© mylunchandinner

My husband loves my cooking. I usually make lunch everyday. So, on weekends, we love going out and taste different things.  However, there is always a Sunday in which we are feeling lazy to leave the house, so we just watch TV and movies. On those days, Hubby knows I may cook somehow unhealthy food… so after watching a food tv show with stuffed burgers, we decided to make our own!

Our experiment turned out to be pretty tasty, so I highly recommend this if you like cooking, burgers and pampering yourself with delicious strong taste and a bit of fat!

This is a deluxe burger which is more than a special treat!

What you need:

400 grams (1 lb) ground beef (I usually use lean)

1 egg

1 slice of bread damped in milk

1 chopped garlic

a piece of chopped onion

1 teaspoon of ketchup

1 teaspoon of mustard

1/2 teaspoon celery seeds

1 teaspoon meat sauce

salt and pepper

100 grams (2.5 oz) of blue cheese crumbled

2 burger buns

mayo, mustard, and ketchup

2 lettuce leaves

4 slices of tomato

How to do it

1. Place meat, egg, damp bread, mustard, ketchup, meat sauce, cellery seeds and add salt and pepper in your desired quantity.  Mix everything with your hands until you have an homogenous mixture.
2. Make four balls with the meat and form them into patties that come out and round the buns about 1/2 inch
3. Add half of the blue cheese on the middle of two patties. Cover with remaining meat patties and seal the borders.
4. On a hot pan, add some oil and fry the patties on both sides for about 5 minutes on each side or until desired cooking point.
5. While cooking the meat, on your plate prepare the buns with your desired amount of mayo and mustard. Place one lettuce leaf on the bottom half of the bun and the tomato slice on top.
6. Place the cooked patty over the tomato, add ketchup and top with the other half of the bun.
7. Enjoy!

Don´t forget to wash and disinfect your lettuce and tomato!

© mylunchandinner 2012

Broccoli Orecchiette

© mylunchandinner

After receiving my Jamie Oliver cook book, I looked at the recipes. I wanted to cook something, but couldn’t really decide on what. My husband kept pointing at the pages he thought he would like, but then again choosing among combinations where each plate’s photo looks so good is extremely difficult. Thus, we decided to cook one recipe for dinner each weekend. In this way, we wouldn’t have to choose what we wanted for dinner, plus there will be no discussion about me wanting to eat meat instead of the chicken he wanted.

And so, it begins. Cooking one Jamie 30-minute meal every week, in the order the recipes are presented on the book. This week: Broccoli Orecchiette, zucchini and bocconcini salad, prosciutto and melon salad.

The day started with a the discussion that led to deciding on the challenge. After deciding on the order, we looked carefully at the book. We were going to make a list for the groceries, but were starving. We had gotten up really late and our breakfast had been too light in pursuit of lunch. The trip to the unhealthy meal I described yesterday was our next step. We took the book with us. I studied the recipe carefully, then figured which ingredients I was not going to find, and what would I do to minimize the problem.

After lunch, we went to the shopping mall near our house, and then to the Automercado, the local grocery store we liked. I rapidly wrote on a sheet of paper what we needed, and divided all the ingredients by two, given that we were going to eat dinner just the two of us. We also decided to pass on the prosciutto and melon salad because otherwise it would be too much food. I bought everything on the list that I could find. So this is what I couldn’t find and what I used instead:

purple broccoli sprouts –> used more regular broccoli

red chili –> used chili flakes

fresh thyme –> used dried thyme

fresh mint –> used basil

baby zucchini of different colors –> regular zucchini

Plus… I used fusilli instead of the orecchiette, not because I didn’t find the right kind of pasta, but because my husband love fusilli.

Ok, so after the unhealthy and yet delicious meal on Saturday, we were so full to have dinner, so we postponed the adventure for Sunday. We had a light breakfast and a light lunch, totally prepared to have a good dinner…

We started by taking all the necessary equipment described at the beginning of the recipe. I then proceeded to read everything. Hubby decided he wanted to participate so we were together making every dish. It was a bit messy, but quite fun! We were bumping to each other, which made us laught, and both of us were paying attention to details so nothing would be left out. When we were done, I felt really happy with the results. The pasta looked very similar to the photo in the book, and the zucchini salad had a lovely smell.

We then moved to the best part of the night… eating! The pasta was creamy, but with just the right amount of sauce. I find this to be very good given that I love Italian food, made by Italians.  The difference between actual Italian food and one that is not is that the fake pasta is usually swimming on sauce whereas the real one is not. Thus, I found this creamy enough for taste, but also the exact amount so you don’t get sick of the flavor. Delicious!

© mylunchandinner

The salad was really good. I had never made a dressing with lemons zest. The taste is really enhanced by it! Try it, even if you are not cooking a Jamie recipe. It is absolutely recommended! The zest was not the only thing that made the dressing good though. I think the right combination of ingredients was something special, even with my exchange of basil for mint. The only thing I didn’t like was the bocconcini mozzarella. There was something about the taste, that was just not good for me. My husband didn’t like it either. I guess it my be a problem with the brand, unfortunately that is the only one sold at the store. I will try a regular kind of mozzarella whenever needed.

I do owe you the prosciutto salad, but I guess that made with the right ingredients, it should be as good as the one I did make.

In conclusion, everything was extremely delicious, and I am looking forward to next week’s Pregnant Jools! I promise next time I will make all three dishes…

© mylunchanddinner 2012