Roasted Garlic Rosemary Brussels Sprouts and Oven-Baked Ribs

This Saturday was totally efficient for me.  Other than getting lots of chores done, I managed to make a very awesome dinner with one of my most favorite foods ever, Ribs! Plus, I experimented with trying out how to make Brussels Sprouts.  I’ve never made it before and only ate it once before the week before when my best friend made it for the potluck.

Ribs and Brussels Sprouts with Rice 🙂

I have my own ribs marinade.  I don’t really know the portion as I do it by the feeling that I get.

However, this time I did change it up a bit.  The ingredients I used included: Low Sodium Soy Sauce, Hoisin Sauce, Honey, Ground Pepper, Herbes de Provence and a bit of sugar if you find it not sweet enough or just use a little bit more honey.  After you spread it on the ribs, you can add a bit of water in it so that it won’t be too dry in the baking process.  Set the oven to 400F and covered it with aluminum foil and then cooked it for about an hour and 15 minutes.

Ribs!

When there was about 30 minutes left to bake the ribs, I switched on my rice cooker to steam some rice and started prepping the brussels sprouts.  For the brussels sprouts, I got the recipe from Tone it Up when I signed up for the Bikini Series.  Its a pretty simple recipe, although the only part that bothered me was that they didn’t tell us how long to bake it for…so I slightly improvised on that.

They named this recipe: Beauty & The Brussel.  I think its for the nutritious factor of it, I don’t know. Its called Roasted Garlic Rosemary Brussels Sprouts.

Ingredients:

2 cups of Brussels Sprouts

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp pine nuts

2 garlic cloves, diced

1 1/2 tbsp fresh rosemary (or dried)

Pinch of seasalt

How to make this: 

1) Set oven at 400F. Prepare the baking tray by covering it with tinfoil. Spray a little cooking spray on your tin foil.

2) Cut off the ends of the brussels sprouts and then cut it in halves lengthwise.

3) Mix together olive oil, pine nuts, and diced garlic in a bowl.  Toss the brussels sprouts in the bowl.

4) Lay the brussels sprouts in one layer on the tin foil including flakes.  Sprinkle rosemary and salt

Roasted Garlice Rosemary (or Thyme) Brussels Sprouts!

I ended up baking it for about 30 minutes.  However, the key is to keep flipping them every 8-10 minutes.  I’ve read some recipes that say 5-7 minutes.  It worked out pretty good for me.  I did make one modification to the recipe aside from using more for each ingredient to be in proportion with the amount of brussels sprouts I had.  I ended up substituting rosemary with dried thyme.  I did some research and it says that its a good replacement and thyme itself is a milder spice, I believe.

My first time eating brussels sprouts like this and it was pretty good.  I’ll search up some more recipes for it especially since its supposed to be really nutritious as its filled with vitamins and helps boost immune system and metabolism. That sounds pretty good to me!

I have to say, I was impressed with myself with this meal.  Plus, I didn’t flip out at any part of it.  I may have gotten frustrated just a little, but I was alright.  In between of the first 30 minutes of the ribs baked time, I actually whipped up something else, but I’ll save that for another post 😉

I’m a beginner at making brussels sprouts! Anyone have suggestions of other good ways to make it?

Beijing Beauty: Pork Tenderloins in Asian Glaze

Sunday was a big night.  I got back into some cooking. One of the recipes were supposed to be from A Bite of China Project but my bitter melons decided to deteriorate before I could cook them..so I ended up flipping through my Looneyspoons cookbook and found this one to complement our other dish (which will be posted up tomorrow probably).

For this one, I needed to modify it as it was originally meant for the grill so my boyfriend did the grilling in a pan on the stove.  I’m no good with anything that has oil splattering out of the pan, which actually turned out that the sauce made it bubble more to cook it. At least I got myself a little help while I was frantically running around the kitchen trying to prep the other meal 😉

Before we get into that one (which will be posted later, as I mentioned above), here is how these Beijing Beauty Pork Chops turned out!

For this one, the recipe is from Looneyspoons Collection by Janet and Greta Podelski with the same recipe name Beijing Beauty

Makes 6 servings

3 pork tenderloins (12 oz/340g each)

Glaze

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 tbsp each Dijon mustard and liquid honey

1 tbsp each sesame oil and reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 tbsp grated gingerroot

2 tsp minced garlic

2 tsp grated lemon zest

Directions:

1) To make glaze, combine all glaze ingredients in a small bowl and mix well.  Set aside.

2) Heat up oil in the pan.  Fry the pork in a pan and add in the sauce to simmer.

I would have to judge when you think its ready. I didn’t really check the time exactly but I’m guessing it would take about 15 minutes to cook through on medium heat (?).  Also, you should serve this in slices, but we just sliced it on our plates 🙂

This pork recipe tasted really great! It had hints of sour from the lemon juice but at the same time, it wasn’t too salty or sweet either.  I liked it and would definitely make it again!