I had some time to waste the other day after work and since it was a beautiful day, I decided to walk down to the Kerrytown Market and pick up something for dinner. I was thinking, some chicken to grill would be great. We’d been eating a lot of pork and beef and I was getting kind of bored and it was just the perfect kind of day to break out the new grill again. I knew we had some lovely, giant summer squash given to us by a couple of friends so all I really needed to complete the meal was an entree and some fresh sliced bread that I could dip in herbs and olive oil. Yum. The boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the case at Sparrow’s looked fantastic and I knew just what to do with it. I still had a few bottles of pomegranate juice from the last case the lovely people at Pom Wonderful sent me (and here you thought I used it all up in those pom-chocolate-mint mojitos), and I had plenty of cream thanks to our weekly Calder’s dairy delivery. (Yes, that’s right–dairy delivery. I have a milk man. I’ll dish more on that in another post later.) And for some reason, I really wanted to put the two together.
I also had this fantastic cheese I picked up at Whole Foods. You can probably find it in other places, but I found it there a few weeks ago and we are completely hooked on it. Like, ridiculously hooked on it. It’s fantastic in everything–melted on burgers, shredded and stirred into scrambled eggs, eaten by itself…delicious. It’s a jack cheese from Great Midwest that’s studded with leeks and morels. Yes. Leeks and morels. I know. You’re drooling right now as you read this. Go out and pick some up. You can thank me for it later. Read the rest of this entry »
This post is brought to you by the letters “Y,” “U,” “M,” “M,” and “Y.” And the number 3. Let’s use those in a sentence. “This meal is 3 kinds of yummy.“ Good!
This may actually be my favorite of the experiments so far. Granted, there have only been 5–so far—but this is still one of my top ones. My fabulous cousin Carmen picked this Puerto Rican chicken and rice stew to try out; I made it as dinner for Josh and myself tonight and bundled up a bunch to take her for lunch. This dish is not only tasty, it’s informative. It’s taught me at least 3 yummy things.
1. There’s such a thing as “annatto oil,” which is made by infusing oil with achiote seeds . It’s used to flavor and color foods in South American cooking. I didn’t actually use it here. I used olive oil. But good to know it’s possible. Read the rest of this entry »
It hasn’t even been a full week in our new house yet and already we’ve spent more than a little bit updating things–the cable, the washer and most notably, the oven.
I have a new oven.
Do you know what that’s like? It’s like Papa having a brand new bag, that’s what it’s like.
It’s beautiful—all shiny and black and stainless steal. The oven at our old apartment was a trustworthy thing; while I am not a fan of electric stovetops, the oven got hot quickly and stayed that way. When we moved into the house on Saturday, we knew the stove (gas) worked but that the oven didn’t. So despite my fear-of-change-driven emotional need for brownies, I had to sit and wait until a new stove was ordered and delivered. But I could still use the stove, and I did. It was a bit odd changing over to a gas range from an electric one—things heat up so fast! Lovely.
The new oven (I haven’t named it yet, but I might–any suggestions?) was delivered yesterday. Josh decided he was going to hook it up himself. This required a trip to the hardware store to get a connector-thingy. Me, I was all twinge-y with excitement, holding the flashlight while Josh fiddled around behind the stove (which was very shiny—did I mention it was shiny? I like shiny things). I had it all planned out—first I was going to make a chicken tomato sauté with chicken breasts I had acquired from the store that very afternoon for this very purpose, as well as some plump round cherry tomatoes, garlic and balsamic vinegar. Then I was going to make a super-quick side dish of tricolor couscous and steamed spinach. And then there’d be cookies. Chocolate chip, of course, with maybe some oatmeal and I could nearly taste the chewy delici—
“It’s not going to work,” said Josh.
Well of course it’s going to work, I thought, oatmeal and chocolate go great together. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, and I guess it can be healthy too. Can be.
Anyway, I was inspired by this chicken wing recipe and decided to play around with a sweet-and-spicy chicken recipe myself. The store I stopped at this morning didn’t seem to have sriracha sauce specifically, so I went with the chili paste, which I’m sure I’ll be using pretty often because it smells great.
And let’s face it–we can all use a light meal now and again. Especially in these heady days between Christmas, Christmas, more Christmas and New Year’s. So this dish, bundled up with some fresh guacamole and a delicate side of lemony green beans (blanch green beans in boiling salted water, then drop into ice water, then pan-fry in a sauce of a tablespoon of butter, a half tablespoon of olive oil, lemon zest, salt, pepper and herbs) was a welcome breath of delicious, moist, tender air. I know what you’re thinking: moist is a creepy word. Yeah, it is.
But the chicken will make you forget all that. The chicken is here to help. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh bother.
Since I was on my own tonight while Josh was out at a super exciting computer society meeting, I figured I’d make myself a very easy one pot Asian-inspired dish that Josh actually loves but never wants: peanut chicken stirfry.
Consider this less of a recipe, more of a guideline. Actually, consider everything I write a guideline. In fact, consider everything I don’t write a guideline too. Just in case.
Anyway, I love this dish because it’s fast and delicious and only really requires one pot. And you can swap all sorts of things in and out. Basically what it is is a pasta dish with vegetables and meat and a creamy peanut butter sauce. Let me tell you, it might sound odd, but if there’s one way to get your kids (and yourself) to eat vegetables, it’s to smother them in peanut butter. Trust me. Read the rest of this entry »
Meal in a pot: baked mac and cheese
I think there’s one basic truth in this world that we can all agree upon: macaroni and cheese is freaking awesome. It’s like pizza-even when it’s bad, it’s still macaroni and cheese.
There’s a de facto rule in my family that every holiday meal must contain at least one pan of baked macaroni and cheese. To not have it is a sin against God. And taste. And delicious flavor.
I do have a go-to recipe for mac-and-cheese that I like to pull out for such meals, and it never fails. But tonight, I was on my own and I wanted to make something that would a) use up some leftover chicken from last night’s sammiches and 2)have all my carbs, veggies and protein in one pot.
I ended up combining influence from my usual recipe and from this baked penne with cheddar and leeks recipe from Bon Appetit, and threw in a few other things I had on hand. Read the rest of this entry »
eat mor chikn: chicken and avocado panini
Farmer Lauren had a chicken, e-i-e-i-oooo, and with this chicken she made a sammich, e-i-e-i-ooo, with an apple slice here and an avocado there, here a spice and there a slice, eveywhere it’s nice nice, Farmer Lauren had a chicken avocado paniniiiiiiiii.
This is one of those recipeless recipes. Pretty much you can insert just about anything you think sounds tasty. Like the rest of my life, I didn’t have a plan…I just went with what I had. Read the rest of this entry »
Nobody gets left behind: leftovers
What I do with leftovers:
From the milk-roasted chicken on Sunday, I had two bone-in chicken breasts left over. What to do with them? Hm. Think. Think Think Think.
Well, I also had some Spanish chorizo I picked up at Eastern Market on Saturday as well. Chorizo is a spicy, smoked pork sausage that comes in many varieties. I also had leftover chopped green and red bell peppers bagged up in the freezer, and some fresh spinach and portabella mushrooms left from Josh making pizza for himself for dinner. And I had rice. Well that all sounds pretty good. Read the rest of this entry »
Got Milk?
It was a pretty fantastic weekend all around on my end. Headed out to Detroit’s Eastern Market again on Saturday, which you know I love, and spent the afternoon making leek onion rings and bbq beef sandwiches.
And today, Josh and I spent an hour learning how to make pasta carbonara and a pappardelle dish with the lovely Francesca Girarraffa in a cooking class at Hollanders, which was quite a bit of fun and totally worth the very reasonable price of $13 a person. For attending, we also each got a 10% off coupon for Hollanders that day, which I used to treat myself to two new baking sheets. Which I totally needed. Honestly.
Anyway, then I moved to make dinner. Originally, I had planned on doing a sort of Chinese-inspired dinner. I’d planned on roasting the pumpkin we got from this past week’s farm share and then using it to make some dim sum, along with some chicken beggar’s purses, some veggie fried rice and egg drop soup. However, by the time we were on our way home after the cooking demo, shopping, lunch at Sabor Latino and more shopping at By the Pound, I wasn’t feeling quite up to that level of culinary intrepidness. Instead I decided to make a relatively low key dish that I’d found on Saveur, a recipe of British chef Jamie Oliver’s that’s basically a chicken roasted in milk. Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Chili,
hey. how ya doin? It’s been a long time. In fact, I think the last time we saw each other was the Chili Cookoff at work in March. That was a great time, wasn’t it? Remember I had you slowcooking in a crockpot in a corner of the office all morning, filing the room and hall with your gorgeous and spicy aroma, eventually making me so hungry that I almost killed a bear? Ahh, memories.
It’s good to see you. We had a good time tonight, you and I and Cornbread. Cornbread is such a funny, reliable guy. The two of you together are like a perfect pair and the three of us, well three’s company. It was great when I diced a small medium onion and sweated it out in a couple good tablespoons of olive oil in my cast iron Dutch oven. That’s the perfect pan for evenings like this. You love how nice and hot that pan keeps you. I know. And on a rainy day like today, it’s especially excellent. And then I chopped up three cloves of garlic and a poblano and green bell pepper and added them in with some salt and pepper, finishing out our little magic trinity. Just that bit made the entire kitchen smell intoxicating. Read the rest of this entry »
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