Tag: Date Night Dinner

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Eat

Grilled Swordfish with Roasted Summer Vegetables and Herbed Quinoa

When your garden hands you a bounty of tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs—grill a swordfish.

There’s something deeply satisfying about a summer dinner that pulls straight from your garden or farmers market haul. This recipe does just that: thick, meaty swordfish steaks meet a medley of roasted tomatoes, zucchini, and okra, all tossed with herbs and piled over a simple lemony quinoa. It’s bright, savory, and easy enough for a weeknight but elegant enough for company.

This version features purple bumble bee and sungold tomatoes from my garden—both packed with sweet acidity and incredible color—but any cherry tomatoes will work beautifully. The candle fire okra (also from my garden) adds a striking visual touch and a light, crisp texture that even okra skeptics can get behind.

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Halibut with Charred Corn & Tomato Salsa over Brown Rice Pilaf

Summer tomatoes don’t need much help to shine, but when you’ve got fresh halibut and a few ears of sweet corn lying around, it’s hard not to get inspired. This recipe is one of those perfect August dinners: light but satisfying, simple enough for a weeknight, and impressive enough to serve when someone brings wine over. The corn gets a little charred in a skillet (or on the grill if you’re already out there), and the heirloom tomatoes bring that juicy acidity that balances everything out. The brown rice pilaf? It’s upgraded with lime zest, scallions, and toasted pepitas for a subtle nutty crunch that plays well with the salsa and fish.

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Alabama Niçoise Salad

This isn’t your Parisian grandmother’s Niçoise—but she might just ask for seconds. Born from a love of French tradition and an overachieving Alabama garden, this version swaps tuna for perfectly sous vide chicken, trades haricots verts for crisp asparagus, and lets local produce do the heavy lifting. It’s composed, confident, and just a little rebellious—the kind of salad that wears seersucker to a wine tasting and somehow pulls it off. Beneath the wit, though, is a serious respect for balance, texture, and bright, briny flavor. Vive le South!

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Spicy Mango Salsa

Jalapeño pepper adds a kick to this bright mango salsa, which I like to serve with baked or broiled fish. This recipe is an accompaniment, but can easily stand alone as an appetizer with chips.

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Red Beans and Rice

As I’ve said in the past, Red Beans & Rice is always fun for me to cook because I change the recipe everytime I make it. This one was probabaly the best batch I’ve made in years, so I’ll honor it with a side of Louis Armstrong singing and playing Basin Street Blues, because Red Beans & Rice just don’t seem right without Louis Armstrong.

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Creole Boiled Rice Recipe

The kind of rice I enjoy with Gumbos, Red Beans, Étouffée, etc., a lot of NoLA Cuisine dishes, is Creole Boiled Rice. I like it because the grains stay separate from one another, essentially, they let the main dish be the dish. Not that the rice is second fiddle, in fact, if your rice is terrible, it will ruin the whole dish. When I have a pot of Red Beans on the stove, my Rice is as important as my Beans, which means, Very important! I take Red Beans & Rice very seriously. Well, not too seriously, nothing should be too serious, but let’s just say I hold them in high esteem (more on Red Beans later). Anyway, this is a great, simple, Accompaniment Rice. Not great because it’s simple, just great!

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Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo

My go-to website for cajun recipes, nolacuisine.com, has gone defunct. I’ll leave the link active here in case it ends up being a temporary issue, but in the meantime, here’s a copy of the chicken and andouille sausage recipe.

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Date Night Eat

Basic Grilled Lamb Chops Date Night Dinner

Grilled Lamb Chops with Roasted Root Vegetables and Cesear Salad

Grilled lamb chops are the perfect date night dinner, especially when it’s been a busy day and you don’t have a ton of prep time.  Where I live, Trader Joe’s is always a sure bet to have New Zealand Lamb racks in stock.  I can occasionally find them at Sprouts, but that’s about it.  I like to make a simple herb marinade with thyme, rosemary & Italian parsley and then grill them.  The presentation is elegant and they’re delicious when paired with a spicy red wine like a Malbec or Cabernet Sauvignon.  So good!

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Date Night Eat

Basic Galette Recipes

Blueberry Galette
This one turned out better than my first one!

A few weeks ago I discovered galettes.  For those of you who don’t know, a galette is like an open faced pie.  They’re generally made, as best as I can tell, with fruit fillings which is what I’ve been doing.  But you can also make them with more savory fare, which I plan to do soon.  The awesome thing about galettes is that they’re made to look rustic, so you almost can’t mess them up.

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Date Night Eat

Blackened Cauliflower Steaks with Caramelized Onions

Blackened Cauliflower Steaks with Caramelized Onions

Tonight we were in the mood for something on the lighter side.  I considered my other roasted cauliflower recipe, but wanted a bit of a different flavor profile, and I like the idea of a more steak-like presentation.  I had a great blackened rub in the spice cabinet, so decided to go with a basic pan-seared cauliflower steak with some caramelized onions.  I used butter in the skillet to sear the cauliflower since I figured that the whole thing was already pretty economical on the calories, so a butter flavor bomb with the blackened seasoning would be totally fine.  It was really good!

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