It's been a little while since I've posted anything. I don't think I've been cooking much actually. There have been a couple times where I just didn't take pictures because I wasn't in the mood to go find the camera. And I wasn't making anything spectacular. The last few weeks have been full of grilled cheese and snacking on whatever's in the cabinet.

Then I finally got around to stealing some more basil from my grandma's garden. There were three recipes I've been waiting to use fresh basil on and I can only remember two of them now. It's driving me crazy now trying to remember what the 3rd was. There was just a little basil in it. Hmmm.....

Oh, I also got some tomatoes from the garden. I'm not too crazy about tomatoes, but I'm trying to get better. So it's pretty important to work on liking a food more when it's from the garden and not park-n-shop.

So on to the food!

Here are the juicy tomatoes I spoke of:


And the basil.


2 halibut steaks
whole basil leaves (amount depends on the size)
4 tomato slices
4 1oz slices of mozzarella cheese
salt & pepper
vinegar & oil
(I just poured some in a bowl till I liked the way it looked. You just need roughly a couple tablespoons of each)
chopped basil for garnish

I used frozen halibut. It's the first time I cooked fish frozen. They turned out great though. I rinsed them over cold water to get rid of the ice chunks & patted them down with a paper towel.

Pre-heat the broiler to about 450

Line a baking sheet with foil & lay out the fish. Broil about 5 inches away from the heat source for about 4-6 minutes.

Take them out, sprinkle with salt & pepper and flip.
They'll go back under the broiler for around 5-7 minutes if you use frozen fish, but just about 1-2 min. if it was fresh. It should be opaque all through.

When they come out again, the toppings go on. I layered it cheese, basil, tomato.


They'll go back in for about 2 minutes, till the cheese is good & melty.

Put them on plates and drizzle the vinegar & oil mix over top & then sprinkle the chopped basil on & around it.

Yummy.

Donnie really liked it. There was something about it to me that didn't hit me quite right. It might have just been the tomatoes or the vinegar. I'll experiment with different vinegars & see if that does it. Or maybe I just won't eat all the tomatoes. :)

The fish was awesome though. I've never cooked halibut. There were a couple large bones, but it was so flakey & light. Not a concistency I'm used to with fish steaks. Juicy too I think. I don't know that I can think of the right word. But it was good.

More Livejournal inspiration here. The first version of this was with left-over lasagna stuff.

I remembered seeing this before while I was killing time. I took my left over ground beef (which was seasoned with some garlic powder and cilantro) and reheated it in a pan with the unused lasagna noodles that I tore into smaller pieces. I also made some pesto loosely based on this resipe. and just mixed it all together. It was pretty great.

Then I went back to find the original recipe that inspired me and saw there was cheese. So I wanted to try it that way.

I put some cilantro into the meat (still using ground beef, not pork. I don't really like pork that much.) again and a little thyme. Less garlic powder this time because I knew there was already a lot in the pesto.


I also happened to have some penne sitting around, so I used up the rest of that. Although, I did like the lasagna noodles better.


Once they were done I drained and threw them in with the meat.


Once everything got a little mixed together, I dumped some mozzarella on top & let it get all melty, stirring it up some more.


All done!


Oh, and a little parmesan on top. :)