Josh: Oh! Oh, what is this? Readers, did you plan this suprise party for Kandice and I? The balloons, the streamers! You remembered! We're so touched that you remembered our Blogaversary!
Kandice: It seems like only yesterday that we were posting our "Fish and Chips" post. Has it really been a whole year?
Josh: It has. Here's to another year of cutting, chopping, slicing, sautéing, frying, and failing.
Kandice: But in the meantime, Let's kick this party off with a few new recipes!
Bruschetta:
Josh: So for our appitizer, we decided to try one of my favorites, Bruchetta. Ah, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. Here's what you'll need:
6 or 7 ripe plum tomatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
6-8 fresh basil leaves, chopped.
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 baguette French bread or similar Italian bread
1/4 cup olive oil
The recipe says to use plum tomatoes because they have less juice and seeds, and they would be easier to use with this certain dish. We unfortunately couldnt find plum tomatoes, so we just used the same ammount of roma tomatoes, and it turned out just fine.
The first step would be to get some water boiling in a pot. Just enough for all of the tomatoes to be submerged. When the water starts to boil, take it off of the heat, and carefully drop the tomatoes in. Let them sit for one minute, then take them out. The water will have losened the skins a little, so that you can halve them and peel them.
Once they're all peeled, you have to take the middles out, so that you don't have much juice or seeds left, just the meat of it.
Next we preheated the oven to 450 degrees, making sure that there was a top rack placed in the oven. Next we minced the garlic, and chopped the tomatoes finely. We put them in a bowl with 1/4 cup of olive oil, then added the chopped basil leaves. From here, you can add salt and pepper to taste.
We then took our baguette and sliced it about 1/2 inch thick on a diagonal, so that we had pieces that looked like this:
From there, I brushed olive oil on one side of the bread, then I put the bread back on the pan, oil side down. Then, you just pop the pan in the oven and toast the bread for 5 to 6 minutes, or until the bread starts to get golden, crispy and delicious.
When they come out of the oven, flip them so that they are oil side up, and plate them. We plated them right before we ate them. We didnt want to let them sit, or they would get soggy. We had a little bruchetta station with the tray of bread, and the bowl of tomato, so that we could assemble them right there.
They were delicious. So very delicious...
Spicy Shrimp Pasta:
Ingredients:
4 cups Bowtie pasta
1 lb Pre-cooked shrimp
1 jar Tomato & Basil pasta sauce
1 tbs Olive oil
½ Red onion, diced
1 Red pepper, diced
1 Green pepper, diced
¼ cup Fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp Crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
2 tsp Oregano
1 tsp Ground black pepper
1 tsp Garlic powder
2 cups Spinach, roughly chopped
Kandice: So this recipe is one that Josh and I created a few weeks prior to making it for JK.
Josh: Yup. This was something that we just kind of threw together on the fly.
Kandice: To make the dish we first started cooking the BOWTIE pasta in a pot of boiling water.
…*Pause*… I remember one time when I cooked the sauce and forgot to cook the pasta! I felt so stupid.
Anyways, after starting the pasta we sautéed the red onion with the olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Then we added the green and red peppers.
Josh: After letting them sweat a little, we added in all of the herbs and spices. This included the: red pepper flakes, oregano, black pepper, garlic powder and parsley.
Kandice: We let this mixture cook for 2 to 3 minutes to allow for the flavors to fuse together. Here and there we sprinkled in a little water so that they peppers and onions didn’t stick to the pan. After a few minutes I added in the pasta sauce and turned down the heat to simmer.
Josh: While it was heating up, we added in the shrimp and the spinach. We let the sauce simmer for approximately 5 to 7 minutes. It smelt really good while it was cooking!
Kandice: By then the pasta noodles were finished cooking, so we strained them and put them back into the pot. Finally we combined the pasta sauce to the noodles.
Rosemary-Infused Watermelon Lemon-Limeade:
Ingredients:
1 cup Water
½ cup White sugar
1 sprig Rosemary, leaves stripped & chopped
¾ cup Lemon juice
¼ cup Lime juice
6 cups Seeded watermelon, cubed
Josh: So before we began any of the other dishes we started making our drinks. To start making the watermelon… lemon… lime… ade… we had to boil the water and sugar together in a small saucepan.
Kandice: Once the water started to boil, we turned down the heat on the burner and added in the rosemary to the water to let it steep... for 1 HOUR!
***Note: Steeping is to soak a solid (like tea or in our case rosemary) in a liquid at a temperature under the boiling point. This method is used for softening or extracting an essence from a food.***
*** 1 Hour Later ***
Josh: Once the rosemary was done steeping, I combined the lemon and lime juices and placed ½ cup of the mixture into a blender with half of the watermelon. I then strained the rosemary syrup through a mesh strainer into the blender.
Kandice: We pureed the mixture until smooth. Then we added the remaining watermelon and juice and blended the rest.
The drink itself was pretty tasty once we poured in to a glass of ice. It's definitely an unusual drink that you would have to try before knocking it down.
Kandice: It was a great year for JK. We've had a ton of fun making food, taking pictures, and brainstorming. We want to thank our readers for sticking with us for a whole year! Without you guys, we wouldnt be doing this. We hope you'll stay with us for another year, and maybe another one after that, even!
Josh: And as always, you can e-mail us anytime at jkdailyspecial@gmail.com, find us on our facebook fan page, and now you can post comments on our youtube video! Thanks for a great year! Here's how our meal looked all put together and pretty...
Oh, wait, something doesn't seem right...
Ah... That's better. :)
--------------------------
Recipies found on:www.simplyrecipies.com
and
