THIS JESS

Lemon & Dill Chicken Noodle Soup

November 30, 2018November 29, 2018CooksLeave a Comment

When life gives you…. noodles….. you make Chicken Noodle Soup! My dad gave us a batch of homemade noodles during our last visit, so we had to whip up something phenomenal! Chicken Noodle Soup can sometimes be a little bland / flat / tasteless, so I was searching for on the that really brought more flavor to the table (pun intended!).

This Lemon & Dill Chicken Noodle Soup is a slight variant on the classic favorite; just enough to give it some additoinal flavor without straying to far from the original recipe we all know and love! The burst of lemon flavoring and smattering dill bring a level of freshness that you just don’t find in soup often. There are a few things I would change the next time around:

Add some additional spicing to the chicken. Roasting the chicken with a nice rub is a great start, but I would really love to kick this up a notch and add a litle more depth to that flavoring!
The recipe called for quite a lot of garlic, lemon and dill. Yes, 100% use each of them, but I did not use the full amount for each (probably more like 75% of what the recipe called for). The garlic in particular was one that struck me as overpowerin. Next time, I would probably only use 4-5 cloves.

Other than that, fresh noodles are the best, but you really can’t go wrong with homemade soup!

You can find the full recipe here. Enjoy!

xx Jess

Roasted Spiced Sweet Potatoes with Pomegranate

November 29, 2018November 29, 2018CooksLeave a Comment

Since Thanksgiving (and those Harissa Roasted Carrots!), I’m really loving the addition of pomegranate with pretty much anything I can get my hands on. With that, a gorgeous rendition of crispy roasted rosemary sweet potatoes came across my Instagram feed, and I knew I had to marry the two.

Enter Roasted Spiced Sweet Potatoes with Pomegranate. I followed the ingredients of the linked recipe, but when it came to the dish styling and baking, I followed the below. Also, rather than cutting your sweet potatoes into cubes, slice them into thin disks:

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Pour 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil into the bottom of a 2-quart baking dish and coat the sides
Arrange the potato slices vertically in the dish (this can be done in any direction / pattern you like!). Sprinkle with additional olive oil (approx. 1-2 tablespoons)
Cover dish with foil and roast for 1 hour, covered, until potatoes are tender. Increase oven heat to 450 degrees F. Remove foil and roast another 10-15 minutes, until tops of potatoes are browned and crisp.
Once you remove the dish from the oven, top with the parsley, pistachios and parsley. Enjoy!

The dish turned out beautifully and tasted amazing. The spices on the potatoes balanced really well with a nice crunch of the nuts and the refreshing bite of the pomegranate seeds.

Test it out and see what you think! It looks more complicated than it is, and really can be a showstopper piece!

xx Jess

Molasses Cookies

November 23, 2018November 19, 2018CooksLeave a Comment

Molasses is a flavor that just makes me feel like the holidays. A little bit gingerbread-esque, it’s a perfect warm, homey-ness (and it makes me lose all self control when it comes to cookies!).

These Molasses Cookies are seriously so good (can I say crack? They taste like crack). I will say that when I was looking up recipes, the first I came upon used 1 1/2 cups of butter as the first ingredient. I love butter probably more than most, but geez that’s aggressive. The recipe I ended up going with has half the calories of the first recipe I looked at, and they still taste absolutely amazing.

Perhaps it’s just me getting used to our oven since the move, but putting two cookies sheets into the oven did not work for this one. Those on the top rack were perfect, cracked just like they were supposed to, and still very soft on the inside. Those on the bottom never cracked and frankly burned a little bit on the bottom as I left them in for some extra time to see if they were going to get there. So for these, it’s a one-sheet-per-oven situation (or at least for me!).

Let me know how these turn out for you! Do you have other favorite molasses cookie recipes you swear by? I’d love to hear them!

You can find the full recipe here.

xx Jess

Harissa Roasted Carrots

November 19, 2018November 19, 2018CooksLeave a Comment

I was home alone this weekend (not creepy to write that now, the time has passed! Although I started watching Luther this weekend so was thoroughly terrified the whole time haha – we’ll save that one for another post). With so much time to myself, the cooking plans were pretty through the roof. I also find that when I’m just cooking for myself, I prefer to cook side dishes and just nibble / graze my way through the day rather than making a big main meal.

This carrot dish popped up on my Instagram feed (from @crowdedkitchen) in the last week or so and just knew I had to have it! With a base of the Pumpkin Sage Hummus from my last post, it’s an exceedingly simple recipe and the flavors of the pumpkin hummus, the bold harissa spices, the refreshing pomegranate seeds, and the snap from the nuts is just amazing and oh-so-fresh.

In case anyone had the same question as me: what is harissa?

According to the Kitchn, “Harissa is a spice blend widely used in North African and Middle Eastern cooking (there is also a harissa paste). The recipes vary between countries and regions, but a standard version includes a blend of hot chile peppers (which are often smoked), garlic, olive oil and spices, like cumin, coriander, caraway and mint. Tomatoes and rose petals are also common ingredients.”

I bought a spice blend mix at the grocery store, but you could conceivably mix your own as well.

One of the many things I love about this recipe (oh yes, I will absolutely be making it again) is that it would really be appropriate any time of year. It would be an amazing Thanksgiving side dish, but doesn’t have to be relegated to just that.

Try it out and let me know what you think! And now that I have a Harissa spice mix, do you have any other Harissa recipes that you know and love? I would love to try them!

You can find the full Harissa Carrots recipe here.

xx Jess

Pumpkin Sage Hummus

November 19, 2018November 19, 2018CooksLeave a Comment

The pumpkin kick continues! Thank goodness pumpkins aren’t just for Halloween and are perfect for Thanksgiving (and really, all of winter!), otherwise I would never get enough!

I used to make hummus often because once you have the ingredients (or maybe you’re someone that just normally has tahini in the house!), it’s really so easy and so tasty. The only drawback (although this is a positive as well), is that it doesn’t last as long as the store bought versions since there are no preservatives. Regardless, I’ve found it’s super easy to just whip up a small batch whenever you want it, and only keep for a few days!

In keeping with our fall pumpkin kick, I found this Pumpkin Hummus recipe and decided we needed to give it a go! One thing to point out, this recipe makes a metric ton of hummus. Unless you’re feeding a huge crowd, I recommend cutting it in half.

I was absolutely not disappointed – this hummus is amazing, and seriously so easy. For my foodies who like to take photos, it photographs beautifully, and honestly, no one will believe you when you tell them how quickly you were able to make this!

Go get your hummus on! And stay tuned….. this hummus will be featured in my next post’s recipe as well.

You can find the full recipe here.

xx Jess

Curried Pumpkin & Sweet Potato Soup

November 17, 2018November 15, 2018CooksLeave a Comment

Ok, ok, so in an effort to get rid of our Halloween pumpkin, we made Short Rib & Pumpkin Chili, but then we were left still with extra pumpkin. And I can’t stand throwing food away, so threw on a quick soup to simmer while the chili was cooking!

This season, second to chili, soup is my favorite thing to make. With about a half pumpkin left, we made Curried Pumpkin & Sweet Potato Soup, throwing in a little bit of everything (I also threw in some carrots, while we were going with the orange theme!).

Super easy, super quick, soup is the best. And honestly if you have a little of anything left in the fridge, throw it on in! I especially love the curry flavor of this soup — it really warms it up, and honestly I think it gets better the next day after it has had time to rest and soak up all of the flavors.

You can find the full recipe here.

xx Jess

Short Rib & Pumpkin Chili

November 15, 2018November 15, 2018CooksLeave a Comment

RIP Halloween decorations (yes, I still had a pumpkin in my house!). Lucky for me, we never carved it, and I made sure to buy a baking pumpkin so I could make something out of it when the holiday was over 🙂

This weekend was Mission: Get Rid of the Pumpkin, so when I found this Short Rib & Pumpkin Chili, I knew I was a goner!

The chili was phenomenal, but I would say that it really ended up being incredibly meat heavy, and there are some ratio changes that I would recommend, and personally, I will make myself, the next time that I cook this recipe. In the hopes of helping you before then, here are my suggestions:

Reduce the amount of meat. The recipe calls for 5 lbs. of short ribs (bone in), but I would reduce this to 3 1/2 or 4 lbs. The end product chili was approximately 80 percent meat, if not more, which for me is just a bit higher than I want it to be.
Increase the liquid, especially water / stock. The chili did not have nearly enough liquid, and as mentioned, was pretty much a bowl of meat. It didn’t burn, and I think the recipe as written does work but for me, I would more liquid to help cut a bit of the richness of the meat and spread it out. Granted, it was incredibly tasty meat, but for me to consider this a chili, there needs to be a lot more liquid.
- To note: the beer is good as welll, but I wouldn’t increase only the beer, as that is very rich as well and the final chili ends up being quite rich. A weaker beer like a Bud Light might even be better.
Increase the amount of pumpkin and beans. Similar to the above, the final product was so short rib-heavy, I would have loved to have a little more of the other ingredients, with more black beans, and certainly more pumpkin (you could nearly double it).

I will admit that I perhaps cooked mine a little long, although followed the recipe. The pumpkin and black beans were a little bit on the overcooked / overly soft side, but all in all, the main goal was to make sure the meat was really fall apart tender, and it was (and it tasted amazing).

It was probably the most spiced (not hot spicy, but complex spicy) chili that I’ve ever made, but I really enjoyed it and I would certainly make it again, with the modifications above!

You can find the full recipe here. Let me know what you think!

xx Jess