Market-inspired cooking

This is a great dish for the weekend, and especially if you are paying a visit to the Rochester Public Market tomorrow morning. I created this for Valentine's Day, hence the heart shaped raviolis. While you won't be able to score those delicious four-cheese ravs tomorrow, the heart of this dish (pun intended) is the homemade ravioli's you can get for $8-9 per dozen at the Public Market inside the fish building. There are tons of variety flavors to chose from.

Once you pick out your pasta, then stop by one of the oh-so-great smelling fish stands and pick up some of the biggest shrimp they have...a dozen should suffice if you're feeding two people. When you get them home, you'll have to peel and de-vein them. When I cook the shrimp, I coat them in blackening season which I get from The Spice Guy at the market.

For the sauce I buy a jar of store-bought sun-dried tomato alfredo sauce. I doctor it up by adding some shallots, garlic, a can of fire-roasted tomatoes (they aren't hot...fire roasted just means they have been roasted over a fire), some heavy cream, and shredded asiago or any kind of Italian cheese. You can add some pepper as well.

Hope this inspires you at the market tomorrow.

Where's the beef?

Tonight I made one of my favorites, Taco Salad. My favorite part of it is making it with Bocca Soy Crumbles, which are vegetarian, fat free, and almost guaranteed to fool any meat-eater when made this way. I cook the crumbles with corn, cut fresh off the cob, and a can of black beans drained. I add a packet of taco seasoning, which for this recipe I used Chipotle flavored seasoning plus a pinch of Dinosaur BBQ Cajun Seasoning.

You can buy the same crispy tortilla shells you would get in a restaurant in the ethnic section at Wegmans. I fill the bowls with a mixture of Wegmans' brand mixed greens with herbs and chopped romaine, and then I top the salads with fresh chopped tomatoes, chives, shredded pepperjack cheese, and fresh sliced avocado. For dressing, I used spicy Hidden Valley ranch dressing. It's quick, easy, healthy, as I said, you can fool any meat-eater out of wondering "Where's the Beef?"