Grilled Cheese and Creamy Tomato Soup

What's more nostalgic than a good ol' fashioned grilled cheese sandwich and some creamy tomato soup. A perfect after school snack. I had seen a recipe from 30-minute meals. Click here Made some minor changes and was please with how it turned out. I used evaporated milk instead of heavy cream. A bit lower in calories and gives it a nice rich taste. For the grilled cheese, my choice of bread was sourdough. I love sourdough.



Grilled Cheese Sammie

2 slices of bread (your choice)
butter or margarine
swiss cheese slices
cheddar cheese slices

Preheat skillet on a medium fire. Butter the top sides of the bread. When the skillet is hot enough place one slice of bread butter-side down. Place a slice of swiss and chedder and top it off with the other piece of bread, butter-side up. Grill for 5-10min. Then flip and grill for another 5-10min. Cheese will be nice and melted with a crispy bread crust.

Makes 1 sandwich

Note: don't smush the sandwich when grilling.




Creamy Tomato Soup

1 can (15oz) Chicken or veggie broth
1 can (15oz) fire roasted diced tomato or crushed tomato or tomato sauce
1 8oz can evaporated milk
1 Tbsp Rosemary (optional)
salt
pepper


Combine all ingredients and bring to a simmer stirring occasionally for about 15-20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

For the creamy texture, use an immersion blender to mush up the tomato to bits. If you don't have an immersion blender, you may mush the tomato beforehand in a regular blender or food processor before adding it to the stock. If you don't have either, tomato sauce will also make a good substitute.

Serves about 2-4 people

Egg Drop Soup

I didn't want to make anything too complicated or something that took too much effort to make. I decided that soup was the way to go. It was a chilly night here in LA the other night, so it was a perfect fit. A classic dish found in many Chinese restaurants. This has always been on my favorite soups list. It's simple and easy to make. A nice substitute for the good ol' fashion chicken noodle or tomato.


Egg Drop Soup

4 c chicken or vegetable stock (fresh or canned)
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp of water or stock
1 egg beaten lightly

optional:
1 scallion (finely chopped)
1 c corn (frozen or from cob)
1 c shredded chicken


Over medium to high heat, bring stock to a boil. Then add cornstarch mixtures. Make sure to stir often. This should thicken the stock. Add salt. Keep stirring until cornstarch fully dissolves.

Slowly pour in the egg, continuously stirring. It'll make the egg into that shredded look. Add the corn or chicken.

Let is simmer for two minutes, stir occasionally to keep the cornstarch from settling. Turn off the heat, give it a taste and add more salt, if needed.

Ladle a nice helping into a bowl and sprinkle over some scallions to garnish. Voila!

Spinach & Feta Pizza with Garlic Crust

It's pizza time! Want to eat something that's easy-peasy and not too filling? Give this a try. Recipe creates 4 individual sized pizzas.


Spinach & Fetta Pizza with Garlic Crust

1 can Pillsbury pizza dough thin crust
(They also have the classic style, if you want a thicker crust.)
1 small box or bag of frozen spinach (defrosted)
2 c crumbled Feta Cheese
4 sandwich-sized slices of swiss cheese (I used Tillamook)
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
Garlic Powder


Preheat oven 400˚F

Unroll pizza crust onto a baking sheet and divide dough into 4 squares. If not using a silpat, be sure to grease sheet before placing the dough or put it on parchment paper.

Place one slice of swiss at the center of each dough. This will prevent the middle of the dough from becoming soggy.

Make sure you squeeze out the excess water from the spinach and then place over the swiss cheese leaving one inch from the edge for the crust. Then sprinkle over the crumbled feta.

For the crust, brush the olive oil on the one inch edge left untouched then liberally sprinkle garlic powder over on top. (Garlic bread anyone??)

Bake for 10-12 min (until dough is golden brown)


When you bite into it, you'll get a nice crisp thin garlic crust and a string of swiss when you reach the filling.

Buttered Veggies with Roasted Eggplants

Home-cooking doesn't get any better when my mom decides to cook a weekend lunch. Yum!




Buttered Veggies

2 Tbsp Oil
2 Tbps Butter
Salt
Pepper

1 Carrot
1 Large Potato
1 Large Sweet Potato
1 Large Chayote

Cut and peel veggies into 1 inch sticks that are a quarter of an inch thick.

Heat oil and melt butter on medium heat in sautee pan. When butter is nice and melted, add in veggies. Season with salt and pepper. Stir veggies until they look soft and of a "mashed potato" texture.


Roasted Eggplant

2 Large Eggplants (peeled)
1 Medium Sweet Onion - Sliced into rings or strips.
1/2 c Soy Sauce
Lemon juice
1 Tbsp Oil


Place eggplants in an oven safe pan and put into the broiler for a good 30 min. It will make the eggplants soft. Let cool.

Mix soy sauce and lemon in a small bowl.

Heat oil in sauce pan and sweat onions. You want them just to become almost translucent. Add in soy sauce mixture and stir.

Put the eggplant into the pan and coat with soy sauce to marinate. It will be ready to serve in 2 min.

Serve with steamed or fried rice.

Pesto Penne & Garlic Bread

I made another batch of pesto as I'm going to try my Pillsbury recipe again and I only needed half. I decided to make a simple Filipino-Italian dinner with the other half. You can do these two dishes with any kind of bread and pasta you prefer. My choice for this dish was penne rigate and wheat pan de sal (a Filipino version of the dinner roll). The latter is the Filipno aspect of the meal. It was delish, filling and just right. No need to go to Olive Garden anymore. Although, I do like their endless soup and salad deal.






Garlic Bread
3 Tbps butter or margarine (softened)
2 Tbsp Garlic Powder or 2 minced garlic cloves
2 Tbsp Dry Basil
2 Tbsp Dry Oregano
2 Tbsp Grated Parmesan (plus extra for garnish)

Combine ingredients. (Sometimes rather than combining them, I'll layer each on the bread like butter, garlic, parmesan, oregano, then basil in that order. Takes a bit more time, but I like doing it that way too.)

Take your bread of choice (dinner roll, baguette, white, wheat...), sliced, exposing the chewy innards, and spread a thin coat of the butter mixture from edge to edge. Please the slices under the broiler until bread is nice and toasted. Roughly 5 mins, if broiler is preheated.

If you're not in a hurry you can toast the bread in a preheated 350˚ oven (roughly 10min) or in a toaster oven. You'll need to keep an eye on these as bread can burn pretty easily especially if you don't have a timer. No one wants burnt toast.

When toasted, sprinkle a little parmesan on top for garnish and enjoy.

This makes about 4 servings.


Pesto
You can see my pesto recipe here.

For this mix, I chopped in some sun-dried tomatoes.


Cooking Pasta
Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. When water is bubbling like crazy, add in pasta of your choice. Season the water liberally with salt. (It'll give the pasta a little flavor). Stir a few time to keep the pasta from stick to each other.

Pasta generally takes about 8-12 minutes to cook, but when in doubt follow the directions on the package.

When the pasta is ready, drain in a strainer or carefully dump out the water from the pot. You'll want a tiny bit of that pasta water for when you mix in the pesto. It'll help combine the two together.


Note: Half the pesto mix will make about 2-3 servings. The full pesto mix will be 4-6 servings. Again it's all what you're in the mood for and how many people.

Mix in pesto with the pasta. I added in a few whole sun-dried tomatoes to give the dish a little color contrast. Add more grated parmesan, mix well and...voila! You're ready to eat.

Eggplant Parmesan - Dinner for Two

I decided to make some eggplant parmesan for dinner. I baked the eggplant rather than fry it before hand as some recipes tend to call for. The pic below has a paprika bottle in it, which is actually supposed to be oregano. I didn't realize that I had put the wrong herb out until I already started cooking.



Ingredients:

2 medium sized eggplants

1 1/2 c Panko Crumbs
1/2 Grated Parmesan
1 egg

1 8oz can tomato sauce
1 small tomato diced and deseeded
1/4 sweet onion (chopped)
1 garlic clove (minced)
1 tsp dry basil
1 tsp dry parsley
1 tsp dry oregano
Salt and pepper

fresh mozzorella

Preheat oven to 375˚


For marinara sauce:
in a sauce pan, heat some extra virgin olive oil and sautee the garlic. Add onions and cook until semi-translucent. Then add in diced tomatoes and stir to mix flavors. Add in tomato sauce. Season with basil, parsley, oregano and a nice pinch of salt and pepper. Cook to simmer.

Baked Eggplant:
Grease baking sheet or ovenware with a little olive or canola oil. (I use pam)

Cut off both ends of each eggplant, slice down the center and divide each half into two. You should have 8 pieces. You may peel the skin, if you'd like.

In two separate dishes, place one with the panko crumbs and parmesan, the other with the egg - scrambled. Dip each piece of eggplant in the egg (coating well), then into the crumb mix (again coating well) and place onto baking pan.

Bake in oven for a good 20-30min.

To serve in casserole, ladle 1/3 of the tomato sauce coating the bottom. Arrange eggplant accordingly on top and pour over the rest of the sauce. Place pieces of the mozzarella on top and bake for another 10-15 minutes or until the cheese look like melted blobs.




My wacked scoop, which doesn't do the inside justice. But it was delicious.