Feed me: Udon noodles

I've been in a cycle of just cooking whatever is familiar lately and we needed something different. I dug around in the cupboard and found a pack of udon noodles so I made this! 

This is Hot & Spicy Peanut Butter Noodles by Donal Skehan. I added some sous vide chicken thighs and I added some fresh peanuts as garnish. I could have made the sauce a bit thinner but otherwise it was so good that I'll definitely be making it again!

These noodles came together easily and used a lot of ingredients I already had on hand. I had to pick up some chili oil but I know I'll use that again!  

I found the recipe after a few searches and I fell in love with Donal Skehan's site. There are tons of recipes I want to try like this Mac & Cheese 3 Ways. Yum! 

Dinner: Cajun style

We started a little supper club with our friends, we trade of houses and try and meet about every six weeks. The deal is that the host chooses the cuisine and makes the entree and cocktails. The guests get to bring an appetizer and dessert. We stuff ourselves with too much food and wine, laugh and go home. 

This time around Thomas and I chose Cajun on a whim as our style. On a random cruise through the grocery store we came across frogs legs... score! Neither of us had ever had frog but we gave it a try and made this recipe for Buttermilk Fried Frog Legs with Mustard Cream over Green Onion Corncakes. Quite a name but they were really good! We also made Smothered Collard Greens and having never made collard greens these are definitely going in my side dish repertoire! 

I am really happy we tried cooking bullfrog. It was easy to find, simple to cook and really tasty! 

Farmers' market finds: Ripe figs & heirloom tomatoes

Recently I've been trying to buy our produce at the Oceanside Farmers' Market. I have a flexible work schedule and I thought I should really take advantage of this little local gem. The market is open year round and is only about a mile from my home. I've gone every week for a month now and we've tried some food we wouldn't normally buy. I figured it was time to start keeping track of what we made so here I am! 

This week I got some really great mission figs and sweet heirloom cherry tomatoes. I wasn't planning on using them together but we found this recipe for Beef Tri-tip with Roasted Figs and hello, it was amazing. I didn't have any fancy little onions so I used regular sweet onions and roughly followed this recipe to gauge roasting time before adding the figs and tomatoes. 

Adding a olive oil and balsamic vinegar to the figs and tomatoes before roasting yielded a sweet sauce that we used over the beef rather than making a gravy. It was perfect and what I've learned is that I need to roast figs a lot more often!