Experimental Snack Food

So, as Miss A will recall, I purchased a bag of Totino's Pepperoni Trio pizza rolls on Sunday afternoon, for a v. light and fatty lunch before we ate a fab dinner (to be discussed later). THREE flavors of pepperoni! THREE! They were hot, nuclear hot, and very spicy after you ate more than 3 of them. One of the three flavors was clearly "nuke-ular." Am not sure what other pepperoni flavors were present.

Ingestion of the Trio rolls forced ingestion of these:

Pigskin Pigout

So, R and I indulged a LOT on Saturday afternoon/evening between the Notre Dame and OSU games...our menu included chicken empanadas, pigs in blankets, and fried ravioli. All were delish, but particularly the chicken empanadas. I used the Paula Deen recipe, with some changes. I increased the cream cheese, decreased the chicken, added a chipotle in adobo (b/c I heart them) instead of a regular pepper, added a roasted red pepper and some carmelized onions instead of just a regular sweet pepper. I still have half of the filling left, I may make enchiladas, or more empanadas. They were really really REEEEALLY good. For the fried ravioli, I used a Giada recipe, of course, and I don't think I made any changes!

Baked elbows

Hello all. Last night, I prepared some delish baked elbow mac. R called it fancy Hamburger Helper. Gourmet, even.

First, brown 1 lb of ground chuck and one chopped onion. Toss in some red pepper, salt, and black pepper. Meanwhile, prepare 1 lb of elbow macaroni or other short pasta, cooking a few minutes shy of al dente. In a large mixing bowl, mix 1 1/2 to 2 c marinara sauce*, 1 c ricotta, 1 c shredded Italian cheeses (usually a blend of mozzarella, asiago, parm, etc.), salt, pepper, and other seasonings, such as dried basil and oregano. Add the browned meat/onion mix and mix well, add in the pasta, mix well. Pour into a greased 9x13 casserole, top with more shredded cheese and some grated parm for good measure. Baked at 400 for 25 minutes, then crank on the broiler for 3-5 minutes to get the top nice and brown. Slam.




*Here's my chance to act like a Food Network chef - I store homemade marinara in the freezer, but if you don't have homemade, use your favorite store brand!

Beef!

I again borrowed from the Wellfed site, and make a chipotle maple beef brisket. My only changes to the recipe were to use a chuck shoulder roast (that's what I had on hand) and to use apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar. I also cooked it in that most important tool of the Midwestern wife, the Crockpot. It was very very good. Very flavorful and tender. Will be purchasing an actual brisket to do it properly this weekend for the husband's fam. I can see how grilling it before you slow roast it will make it taste even better. Am v. pumped.

More pork

Sorry for my lack of posts as of late - the new pup is taking it out of me.


Last night, I prepared another round of boneless pork chops with a rice side and some frozen corn. I won't insult anyone's intelligence by explaining how to prepare frozen corn. For the pork chops, I marinated them in a mixture of about 1 tbsp hoisin sauce, 2 tbsp soy sauce, a crushed garlic clove, a splash of olive oil, some red pepper flakes, black pepper, and something else I'm probably forgetting. After an hour or so, I then heated up a tsp of oil in a skillet and cooked the pork chops.

For the rice, I heated one tbsp butter and one tsp olive oil in a saucepan. I then added one minced shallot, salt, and pepper. Once the shallot was softened, I added 1 1/2 c long grain white rice and stirred until it was coated with the buttery mixture. I then added 2 1/2 c chicken broth and a splash of water, along with some more salt and cooked according to the package directions. It was quite yummy. I suggest tossing in an extra pat or two of butter.

Smothered pork

What sounds fattier than a smothered pork chop? Not a whole lot, I wager. We prepared this meat/carb overload of a meal last night. Pork chop? check. Kielbasa? check. Potatoes? check. Rice? check. And above all, gravy? check and double check.

Hysterical website

Check out Pimp that Snack. V. funny. Many thanks to J for the suggestion.

I particularly like the suggestions for home-pimping, especially the pimped out Iced Bun. I think this becomes funnier because it is apparently English, but the idea to just take a loaf of bread and ice it to make a giant bun made me laugh. The t-shirts and other merchandise are also quite funny.

Uses for fresh summer tomatoes

Saturday, we made a lovely steak and had some pasta with a fresh tomato, basil, garlic, onion, etc. sauce.

To make said sauce, first make cross-shaped slices in the bottoms of four roma tomatoes. Place in boiling water for about 1-2 minutes, until skins start to split, then transfer to a bowl of ice water. Peel. Repeat (less cooking) with a variety of cherry tomatoes. Meanwhile, slice 2 onions and start to heat over medium heat with a bit of olive oil. When these have sweated, add 3-4 cloves of minced garlic and some red pepper flake. Then chop the peeled roma tomatoes and add them to the pan.


Break the tomatoes up as you go (be careful not to overheat the sauce, the seeds from the tomatoes could burn and turn the sauce bitter. Alternatively, you could seed the tomatoes, but that's a PIA when you just don't feel like it). Add the peeled cherry tomatoes after 15 minutes or so. I've been known to drop a splash of red wine in at this point, maybe a handful of parm, too. Chop several handfuls of basil and add that to the mix right at the end. Prepare any type of pasta according to the package directions, but let the pasta cook its remaining minute or two in the sauce.

Toss, serve with the lovely steak and you are all set. Some nice wine doesn't hurt either.

Summer Foods, Part I - Chicken Salad

Hm...I haven't been posting here much of late. Guess that has something to do with crazy travel schedules, busy times at work, and getting my own blog back up and kicking. But there is still cooking to be done!

As the summer comes to a close, it's time to do a quick review of top shelf summer dishes before getting into some tastiness for the fall tailgate season. Today - my recipe, only slightly stolen, for Tarragon Chicken Salad.

Start with 3lb of chicken leg quarters (for a wallet-friendly balance of white and dark meat), and cook them any way you want. However, while I normally do not advocate the boiling of any meat, in this case a hot water bath is just what the doctor ordered. All the boiling will leave the meat falling off the bones, and as a bonus, you'll have high quality homemade chicken stock as a leftover! The boiling should take somewhere in the ballpark of 90 minutes to get the chicken nice and melty.

Once the chicken is done (and cooled), shred until you just can't shred anymore! Some people prefer to chop the chicken, and to those people I say - go back to Russia. Chicken salad is the poultry version of pork barbeque - the only proper way to do it is to shred the meat. You can be a sissy and do this with a fork, but I prefer to do it by hand - it makes it a lot easier to grab morsels off the bones and to remove skin.

Now, for the remainder of the salad ingredients. As with just about every other thing I cook, I seek a balance of flavors and a balance of textures. To that end, I add about 1 1/2 cups of diced celery, 2 cups of diced Granny Smith apples, and 1 cup of sliced radishes (or red onion if you can't find them) to the chicken. The combination gives sweet, tart, spice, and most importantly, crunch to balance the soft chicken.

While the dry goods will contribute some flavor, you definitely want most of the flavor to come from the dressing. I combine: 2 cups of light mayonnaise, 1/2 cup of that chicken stock you just created, 4 tbsp of dried tarragon, 1 tbsp of dried dill, and 1 tbsp of dried oregano. If you want a bit of kick, feel free to add 1 tsp of cayenne as well - but as much as I like spice, I don't include that. Mix well, then stir it into the dry goods.

Voila! Homemade chicken salad - and a lot of it - that will be good for lunches all week and a picnic for your friends on Saturday. What's that? Chicken salad won't last six days in the fridge? Of course it will. If the chicken is cooked, it's good for a week in the fridge. The mayo would in and of itself be good for months in the fridge. The only real risk are the vegetables, but they will only go bad if exposed to water and oxygen - the oil-based mayonnaise sauce surrounding them will prevent that, so long as you keep a good lid on the tupperware. So don't worry about it.

Tomatoes!

A bowl of delish cherry tomatoes!

Breakfast for Dinner

I have been craving pancakes forever it seems, so we went with a breakfast for dinner theme last night featuring said pancakes plus eggs scrambled with veggies and meats and cheese. Delish.

For the pancakes, I prepared the oh-so-complex Bisquick pancake batter and fried those suckers up with butter and a tiny bit of cinnamon. Mmm.

For the eggs, I cooked a few sausage patties and a few strips of bacon, then chopped and set aside . I sauteed half an onion, finely chopped, with half an orange pepper, chopped, in the bacon fat. I added some salt, pepper, thyme, and a bit of cayenne and paprika. I then added a handful each of chopped cherry and yellow cherry tomatoes (from the patio garden). Then I added back the meat. Meanwhile, I mixed a heaping tablespoon of sour cream, salt, pepper, and 6 eggs. I poured the egg mixture over the meat/veg skillet and cooked until the eggs were soft set, sprinkled with some cheddah just before removing the eggs from the heat, then I slammed. Boy, did I slam. We both slammed.

Fruits of the Patio Jungle!

Behold the quasi-cornucopia!

Casserole Craze part 4

Many thanks to the newly engaged Miss ALO in Indy for this fab, economically sound recipe for tuna noodle casserole. I've made modifications over the years, but the core recipe is still there.

For said TNC, prepare one package of wide egg noodles according to the package directions. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, heat over medium one can of cream of mushroom soup, one can of cream of celery soup, a hefty splash of milk, and some salt and pepper. Once the mixture is hot, add in 1 to 2 cups of shredded cheese and stir until melted. Mmm. Also while the noodles/soup are cooking, finely chop one medium onion and several stalks of celery.* Mix the onion and celery with about 3/4 c Miracle Whip and one large can of tuna. Drain the noodles and add them to the mix, then top with the soup mixture. The original recipe said to put the noodle/tuna/vegetable mixture in a casserole dish, then top with the soup mixture, but I just mix the whole lot up. Put the mixture into a 9x13 casserole dish. Top with something crunchy - I used either smashed Ritz crackers or smashed cornflakes tossed with a bit of butter, but ALO has used Cheezits, I think. Bake at 375 degrees for about a half hour or so (or at any other reasonable temperature, the joy of casseroles) until the top is crunchy and the filling is bubbly.




* I generally saute these in a pan with a bit of olive oil before adding them to the casserole to take away the bite of the onion, but this is optional.

Southern breakfast

Mmm. Biscuits and gravy. I know I've carried on in the past about how nasty sausage gravy is, but when you make it yourself using homemade spicy breakfast sausage, it becomes a quality breakfast. And no, I didn't make biscuits from scratch, sorry R. I don't have that kind of energy or drive first thing in the morning.

For the sausage gravy, brown 1 lb of breakfast sausage (preferably spicy sausage). Remove sausage to paper towels, leaving 2 tbsp of fat in the pan. Add about a 1/4 of flour, mix well, and cook for about 2 minutes. Add 1 1/2 to 2 c water, salt, pepper, and any other seasonings you desire (like onion powder, garlic powder, etc.). Give this a few minutes to come up to temperature and thicken, then add back in sausage. Serve over piping hot biscuits.

Classy Saturday night

Pizza and prosecco. A delightful match indeed.

Food Network reviews - Rachael Ray

I decided to go ahead and get this one out of the way before the end of the world and before I forget the newest acronym from the RR world. Rachael Ray is the reigning queen of overexposure in the TV cook universe. Her FN shows are 30 Minute Meals, Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels, $40 a day, and Inside Dish. She has a monthly mag, Everyday with Rachael Ray. And her own daily, one-hour talk show will premiere in September. Say what you want about her on-air personality and menu planning, but the lady has to be a hard worker and must be able to operate on about 2 hours of sleep.

Many MANY people complain about Rachael. Her recipes are lame, her show is too frenetic, she's a bad tipper, she's too fluffy and silly, etc. Some people thinks she's downright evil. I'm not willing to go that far. I think she fills a niche. People are comfortable with her menus: no fois gras, no caviar, no talk of this vintage or that, no talk of "good" ingredients (again, wait for the Ina Garten review). She's not all evil. She's not all good.

Things I like about Rachael's shows:
1) I enjoy the travel shows, particularly if they are cities of which I'm particularly fond - Boston, Irish cities, etc. It is just fun to see places you love on TV.
2) I've gotten a few tips from her that I've made good use of - using chicken broth to cook rice/potatoes instead of water is the first one that comes to mind. That never occurred to me before I began watching her shows, and it adds a lot of flavor to bland starches.
3) She is unpretentious and lighthearted on all her shows. In the early 30MM shows, she was a lot calmer and less insane acting. If you see older episodes, you can see why people like her. The newer episodes show a much more spastic, sleep-deprived Rachael.

Things I do not like:
1) The incessant acronyms. EVOO (followed, each time, by saying extra virgin olive oil and not just letting the phrase stand without explanation). The new one, MYOTO, make your own take out. I swear, I almost threw a shoe at the TV. And, why are you always sauteeing in extra virgin olive oil? Why waste the flavor for mere sauteing?
2) With regard to 30MM, the 30 minute time frame is generally NOT accurate for most home cooks. Most cannot chop that quickly, most cannot put their hands on their smoked paprika quite so easily, most choose not to carry 30 pounds of ingredients at a time. Also, the explosive mess created by such whirlwind food preparation would easily require 45 minutes of cleanup. I get the gimmick - 30 MM sounds good for a show title and theme. But it just isn't accurate.
3) The girl needs to slow down - I guess her agent assumes that she needs to get her hand into every type of media before her star goes out, but it has taken a toll on her personality and appearance. Does the woman ever get a break?

Recipes I enjoy:
I don't use her recipes often, but in addition to the chicken broth trick above, her show did introduce me to the wonders of ground chicken, which I enjoy. In particular, I like the chicken cordon bleu burgers.

Food Network reviews - Giada De Laurentiis

I've not been doing much cooking, what with being on vaca and just general laziness, so I've decided that anticipation of what will hopefully be great new Food Network shows, I'm going to start doing mini-reviews. For now, I'll just review current favorites. As new shows premiere (including the wretched Deen boys in Road Tasted), I will mix those in!

So, in today's entry, we'll focus on Giada De Laurentiis. Now, most friends know how much I heart Giada. Yes, she's too skinny. Yes, she doesn't look like she eats her own food. Yes, she does the Italian accent over the top when she pronounced "spaghetti," etc. But her food IS good. Her recipes are accurate. And above all, the food is simple. And, of course, her show on FN is Everyday Italian, also the name of her first cookbook.

Things I like about the show:
1) Luscious production values - everything looks so beautiful, even when I know I would dislike the food (weird seafood or something)

2) She makes use of her friends, but they seem like real friends, unlike the weird relationships Ina Garten makes use of (more on that in a future update)

3) Unlike certain quick "cooks," Giada makes the preparation actually seem simple and straightforward, rather than racing around like a lunatic.

Things I don't like about the show:
1) It repeats the menu over and over. At the beginning, she tells you what she's making. Then there's a 20 second intro to each dish explaining how she makes it. Then she makes it. I end up fast forwarding through the first two runs. Thank goodness for my DVR.

2) I don't generally enjoy when she has guests cooking with her. I find it hard to believe that anyone in her family needs THAT much handholding in the kitchen. I appreciate that she is very close to her aunt, from whom she learned a lot in the kitchen, and I find it amusing when they disagree on Giada's embrace of butter vs. olive oil in some dishes, but I'd rather just watch the pro go at it.

Favorite recipes:
1) Mushroom risotto w/ peas
2) Rigatoni with steak sauce
3) Spaghetti with garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes
4) Nutella sandwich
5) Venetian panino

July 24 update - sometimes, GDL is just a little TOO expressive...

BBQ marinade

I needed something quick and dirty to make for dinner last night. I thawed some B/S chicken breasts and made a quick marinade - the juices of one orange, one lemon, and one lime mixed with about 1/4 c of prepared BBQ sauce, one roughly chopped garlic clove, 1/2 tsp of chili powder, s/p, 1 tsp grill seasoning, and about 1 tbsp honey. I let the chicken sit for 30-45 minutes, then cooked in a fry pan - but would have preferred to grill, had it not been for the jungle on my patio. I then served with some lovely Lipton/Knorr chicken rice and green beans.

Am on vaca tomorrow through Tuesday, hopefully I'll have some stories then!

PORK! and tomatoes

Crockpotted a Boston butt roast yesterday to make BBQ pulled pork. Took some random tomatoes we had floating around the house, hollowed them out, and stuffed them with seasoned bread crumbs, s/p, minced garlic, chopped basil from the garden(chiffonaded actually), a splash of olive oil, and some parm cheese. Baked at 375 for about 25 minutes. And served also with leftover stuffing from the previous night's meal. It was a night of stuffings.

Stuffed chicken

So, on Sunday, I decided to tweak a recipe R had prepared back in May, using chicken breasts in favor of pork chops. We made regular ol' chicken style Stovetop stuffing, stuffed it into some boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and dredged the chicken lightly in flour. I heated a bit of butter and oil in a pan, and browned the chicken breasts, not cooking them through. I then added 2 minced shallots and one minced clove of garlic to the pan and heated them for a few minutes. I then threw in a good cup of white wine, let that cook for another 2 minutes, added the chicken back, and threw it in a 375 deg. oven for 15 minutes or so. Delish.