I know how much you all love seeing what sorts of food I've been eating lately (*winky face + emoji 馃槈) and it's been a while since I posted on the subject, So I figured that it's time for another Leaky meal update. These are just a few meals that I've prepared recently that I remembered to take photos of. But since I'm doing multiple meals in this post I'm just going to give you the high level directions on what I did to prepare them. I didn't follow a specific recipe anyway and the steps are pretty straight forward if you did want to try them out yourself. Okay, let's get into it.
Easy Cabbage Rolls
The first dish that I will discuss were some easy cabbage rolls. I say "easy" because I don't actually know how to roll them properly, so I cheated by buying a smaller cabbage and just doing a lazy fold sort of roll with them. The taste was basically the same and the presentation was alright so win win really.
So first I cooked some ground beef and then added in some chopped onions and garlic for flavor. At the same time I cooked some rice in a seperate pot. When both were done I added everything together along with some tomato sauce to add moisture to the dish and some dried herbs for additional flavor.
While all of that was happening I separated a bunch of cabbage leaves from the plant, cut off a big portion of the large stem at the base and steamed them to make them soft and pliable.
Once all of that was complete I spooned some of the beef and rice mixture into the cabbage leaves and then did my lazy fold that I mentioned earlier.
Next I put them into an oven ready casserole dish.
After that I covered the rolls with a layer of tomato sauce and grated some parmesan cheese over top.
I baked that in the oven for 30 minutes or so just to heat everything up and allow it all to come together.
Thats it! Done and ready to serve. I thought they turned out quite good myself.
Stuffed Bell Peppers
Next on the list are stuffed bell peppers. This was my first time attempting them and I was just going to "wing it." I cooked up some ground chicken this time, with some carrots, onions and garlic and then added in some rice afterwards. I cooked the rice in chicken broth and used cardamom spice for flavor (or was it coriander? I always get the two mixed up). It was coriander actually. Just confirmed...
I stuffed the peppers with the mixture and threw them into the oven to bake. The peppers didn't really hold a whole lot of the stuffing so I just threw the rest into a casserole dish to bake as well.
They looked really nice but I thought that they were a little dry in the end. I'm not sure what I would do differently in this case, other than maybe just look up a recipe online. Any suggestions?
Loaded Pierogies
This last dish was the most recent and the best of the lot. We went to a family potluck last weekend and I was having a really hard time trying to decide what to bring. In the end I landed on pierogies, which really turned out delicious overall.
The pierogies themselves were just store bought. I didn't make them myself but just threw them into a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes until cooked.
Prior to that I had cut up and cooked some bacon to add in afterwards. I bought thick cut, naturally smoked and cured bacon and it was delicious 馃構.
Here is a close up of the frying bacon, just because it looks so good.
Next I fried chopped onion in the bacon fat for some extra flavor.
This isn't a low fat dish by any stretch of the imagination.
I put the pierogies into a serving tray next and brushed some olive oil on them to avoid the next layer from sticking. Ideally I would have only done one layer but I don't have a pan large enough for the amount of pierogies I needed to bring.
Next I added large dollops of sour cream (similar to creme Fraiche) as well the cooked bacon and onions and some additional green onions for both flavor and color.
The secret weapon to this dish was the crispy fried onions that I added last. They are store bought but are delicious with a nice crunch. Try and tell me that this doesn't look amazing... It tasted as good as it looked too so it was a major hit at the party.