Project Freezer Flush

Bananas in a jam

2010-09-19T16:08:00.006-07:00

It's UFO time again - this morning I opened the door to my freezer and out tumbled three packages, only two of which I could identify because I had the clarity of mind to write the contents on the wrapper. The third package...a total mystery. Feeling the contents, I thought they were brat sausages at first, but remembered distinctly looking through the freezer several weeks ago for some and not finding any. Chorizos perhaps? Nope. When I unwrapped the solid, slightly bent, brown items from the plastic bag they were hiding in, I laughed out loud: they were bananas!!

I tend to buy bananas with the utmost sincere intention of eating them. I'll eat one the day I buy them, perhaps another one the next day, and then I forget about them. Three days later on the counter, they've turned brown and ripe and there is no way I can stomach the mushy contents. Why is it that bananas in the store are green, solid and weeks away from being edible and yet, when you bring them home, they go from green to overripe practically overnight? At that point for me they are too mushy, soft and squishy to eat without gagging.

Frugal (read: cheap) as I am, I can't face throwing the bananas away so I throw them in the freezer instead. Within no time they're frozen solid. The skin will turn a dark brown hue but the flesh will stay golden yellow. These bananas work great for last minute banana bread, oatmeal cookies or anything else that benefits from bananas.

Now.....I'm not a big banana bread fan. For one, I have yet to find a recipe that pleases me to the point where I feel I am truly eating banana bread and not some cardboard concoction with a vague hint of stale bananas. But here I am on a Sunday afternoon with only ten pounds of roasted peppers to can and now, with twelve frozen bananas on the counter, slowly thawing in a puddle of banana juice. Since I'm going to be running the canner anyway, I tried to find a recipe for these bananas and guess what? I found one for banana jam......yummie!!

Pectin and I are not great friends: undoubtedly not pectin's fault but mine, for not being more attentive. One day it will set the jam, another day it just makes it into a pourable sauce. Today's batch turned into a slightly thick, lovely sweet banana sauce. Beautiful on toast and a gorgeous addition to vanilla ice cream!

Banana Jam

10 to twelve bananas, very happily ripe but not brown on the inside

1/4 cup of bottled lemon juice
6 cups of sugar
6 oz of liquid pectin

Mash the bananas, add the lemon juice and the sugar and slowly bring up to a boil. (You may want to puree the mush with an immersion blender for a smooth consistency). Bring up to a rolling boil, where the bubbles will continue to surface even though you stir constantly, for an entire minute, then take the pan off the stove, stir in the pectin and put it back on the stove, stirring and boiling for another minute. The sauce will be rather thick and will burn easily, so keep that spoon going!

In the meantime, have your jars, lids and rings ready to go. Ladle the sauce in the jars, leave a 1/2 inch of headspace, adjust lids and rings and process in a hot boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

Once opened, refrigerate the jar. This quantity will make enough for 7 half pint jars.

Peaches and Cream Pie

2010-09-06T13:02:00.004-07:00

It's peach time. Actually, it's been peach time for quite a while and I've been working my way steadily through various pounds of Red Haven peaches that I picked at Kelley Orchards, here in Payette. First I canned them in a star anise/cinnamon syrup, then I gave a whole bunch of them away to the people at work but I still had some left to play with.

Just like with the chard, there comes a point where you're peached out. You look at your counterspace where these sweet, fuzzy, juice fruits are sitting, just waiting to get used up, begging to be canned, eaten, frozen, dried or pickled. Imploring you that their whole purpose of growing was to serve you, the perky peach processor, and fulfill the lofty goal of feeding you, your friends or for lack of better, your chickens. And all you can do is shrug your shoulders and turn a blind eye. Because, like I said, there comes a point where you're peached out.

But you also know that there comes another point, probably three months down the road, where it's cold, dark and windy out there, where you long for summer, for warmth and for fresh produce. And you guiltily remember those peaches...yup, those golden, juicy, sweet peaches. And you beat yourself up for letting those last ones on the counter go to waste. You scold yourself for not putting them up, for not eating them, using them in some way, shape or form.

So....in order to prevent that, I'm back at doing something with the rest of the peaches. And by golly, browsing through Natashya's Living In the Kitchen With Puppies (check out her recipes and fabulous photography!) I came across a mention of Peaches and Cream Pie. Whoa! I'm not usually one for peach pie but, in this case, it sounded wonderful. I sent a quick email to Natashya for some guidance and she kindly sent me the link to this website for the recipe.

I followed the recipe, substituting the tapioca for cornstarch and, since I don't have permission yet to re-post it, I'll just leave you with the link and a picture. Since pie crusts and I have this awkward love-hate relationship, I was hesitant to make my own but since the pie recipe is followed by a Favourite Pie Crust recipe, I just had to try. And I am glad I did! This is going to be my new pie crust recipe, it's fabulously easy and it was love at first sight. I had enough for one large pie and leftover dough and filling for a small one. The big one went to a dear friend whose father was visiting, the small one I ate myself. Wow! The Red Haven peaches are not overly sweet and gain some from the sugary crust and sweet whipping cream. This pie is perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Gazpacho

2010-08-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

I feel a little bit like I'm cheating, because this recipe does not contain anything I pulled out of my freezer except for the ice cubes. Nevertheless, I'm going to share it with you because it involves my beautiful garden, a handful of memories and just plain, good eating.

Gazpacho is a traditional Spanish soup, eaten cold. On a hot summery day, this is an absolute winner and it's fun to serve. You can let your guests (or yourself) dress up the soup as you wish: the usual toppings include diced cucumber, tomato, chopped boiled egg, green peppers and croutons. Keep a bottle of good olive oil on the side for that finishing drizzle.

This soup is as varied as each person makes it a little bit differently, but the base is always the same: tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, garlic, onion, day old bread, olive oil, water and salt. The first three ingredients can be found in abundance during this time of the year, so enjoy this great soup while you can!

Gazpacho
Six to eight medium size ripe tomatoes
2 medium sized cucumbers
1 green pepper
1 small red onion
4 garlic cloves
6 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
3 slices of day old bread, crust removed
4 cups of water
1 large piece of watermelon, deseeded
Salt
Pepper

Peel (optional) the tomatoes by quickly dunking them in hot water, then in an ice bath. Cut into large chunks. Peel the cucumber and chop 2/3rds in pieces, dice the rest. Add the large pieces to the tomatoes. Cut 2/3rds of the green pepper (cut and deseeded) into chunks, dice the rest, and add the chunks to the tomatoes. Now peel the onion and do the same, keeping 1/3 behind. Add three cloves of garlic. Soak the bread in the vinegar for a little while, then squeeze out the liquid and add the bread to the mix. Blend into a thick sauce. Add the olive oil, stir in two cups of water and taste. You are looking for a fresh, tomato/garlicky/cucumber flavor. Add some salt, add the rest of the vinegar and stir in a pinch of pepper. Taste again. If you like garlic, you may want to add the fourth clove. Finally blend in the watermelon, stir and chill. If you like your soup thick and chunky, don't add any more water. (I like mine soup-ier so I add the full four cups)

Serve in either a plate or in small soup cups or glasses, with a spoon. Set out small dishes with croutons, the diced cucumber, green pepper and onion so people can add them to the soup, or mix all three and serve the soup with a scoop of fresh veggies on top. It's all good. Have a squeeze bottle handy with good olive oil for that finishing touch drizzle!

Tilapia, corn and chard

2010-08-23T18:17:00.003-07:00

Yup, more chard. This is how it goes when I grow a garden: at the first sight of my vegetable of choice, let's say chard, I get all excited and I practically *stare* the greens out of the soil. When it's ready to pick, I'm gung-ho about all these recipes that I've collected over the winter. So it's chard omelet, chard quesadilla, chard sautéed with garlic, chard sautéed without garlic, chard soup......you name it. Until I am so sick and tired of chard (or green beans, or zucchini, or beets or whichever vegetable is thriving) that I am glad to know the season's over and I vow to never, ever eat chard again.

And then winter comes along and I sit, all cozied up on the couch with fifty different seed catalogs. And I see a picture of some new variety of chard (or green beans, or zucchini, or beets) and I get all excited and can't wait to order the seeds, get them started and *stare* the greens out of the soil. And then the whole circle repeats itself. Isn't it wonderful to have a garden!?

Tonight I wanted to have some veggies because it's been breadbreadbread all week long. I love bread but there comes a point.....alas, see above. A girl's gotta eat some greens too, so today I picked some chard, an ear of corn and pulled a serving of tilapia out of the freezer. Summer food is easy, quick and if grown at home so tasty..................

Tilapia
1 serving of tilapia per person
Butter
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon of flour per serving

Salt and pepper the fish, then coat in flour. Brown the butter in a skillet and quickly sear the fish on both sides. Lower the heat, cover and let sit for several minutes until the fish is done.

Corn with citrus chili butter

1 ear of corn per person

Water
1 stick of butter, room temperature
1 lime
1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon of chili powder

Clean the ears and place in a pot with water. Bring to a boil. The moment the water boils, the ears are done. Remove them from the water and set aside. Zest the lemon and the lime and mix in the butter, juice the lemon and add. Stir and taste. If you want more zing, add a bit more juice. Fold in the chili powder, taste again and adjust if needed. Serve a dollop of butter on each ear.

Chard with garlic
5 chard leaves per person
1 garlic clove
Splash of good quality olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Rinse the leaves and cut in 1 inch strips. Save the bottom end of the stems for the chickens or compost. Mince the garlic. Heat the olive oil in the skillet, add the chard and sauté for a minute or two until the greens go limp. Add the garlic and toss, making sure the garlic doesn't burn. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve everything on a plate, and sit out in the garden!

Summer goodness - chard,squash and tomatoes

2010-08-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

The better the ingredients, the less you have to work on making them taste good. Picked fresh from the garden today, I ate sautéed chard, sautéed summer squash with onions and green beans, a quick tomato salad and some salmon from the grill, topped with a caramelized slice of pineapple.

Thank God for foodie friends - yesterday, while puttering around the house painting, cleaning and writing (since I'm riddled with something akin to ADD, these activities happen in five minutes spurts) I realized I had not eaten a "proper" meal in several days. Busy baking for BBD #32, I made too many rolls and, cheap as I am, I refused to throw any of them away. So my breakfast, lunch and dinner pretty much consisted of rolls: with cheese, with hagelslag, with fried egg.....but I'm not complaining! As the eternal bread junkie that I am, I could eat bread every day, but having taught nutrition classes for several years, I also know that bread alone does not a meal make.

So I called my dear friend Luke, my fellow food friend from West Virginia, and asked for ideas. I had some salmon in the freezer that needed to be eaten and Luke came up with this brilliant idea: salmon and pineapple. Hmmm...............didn't sound too appetizing to me, but I know better than to question his suggestions so I pulled open a can of pineapple slices, put the salmon in a foil jacket with some herbs, pineapple on top and on the grill they went.

My garden, albeit reluctantly (this has been my worst growing year yet!), let me have some chard, zucchini, green beans and tomatoes so I was able to use those as a veg. No starch this time, but two slices of homebaked bread on the side. Told ya, this girl can't eat without bread!

There is really no wrong way of doing this: slice your veg, throw a little bit of olive oil or butter in a pan, add onions, caramelize on medium heat and throw in the vegetables. When the vegetables are translucent and a little bit soft to the touch, they're done unless you want them well done. During the last couple of minutes, chop up a garlic clove or two and add them to the vegetables. Nothing worse than burnt garlic so I usually save them for last.

The salmon was wrapped in foil and grilled on a medium heat barbeque grill. Leave on for about fifteen minutes, open the package to see if the fish is done (it will flake easily and be tender to the touch). If so, leave the package open so some of the juices can evaporate. If the fish is not done, close the package back up and cook for another ten minutes.

Schnitzel, cucumber salad, fries and cauliflower

2010-04-27T18:25:00.002-07:00

My last post is from April 7th. It's not that I haven't eaten since then, but sometimes I forget to take pictures. And other times the food is just not "photo" worthy. As you can see with the picture of the refrigerator soup, it looks awful. It looks more like a swamp in a plate! The soup looks awful but tasted wonderful.

The reason why I took the picture of my dinner tonight is for several reasons. One, to show how important color is when presenting a meal. The food is all white or white-ish and looks like a terrible combination. The other reason why I took the picture is because at least three of the items on the plate remind me of dear friends and new people I've met.

The schnitzel was made with some pork that was leftover from a picnic roast I purchased several months ago. When I interviewed Ursula from Germany for Idaho's Melting Pot, she prepared these fabulous schnitzels from scratch. I love schnitzels but somehow had never fathomed the idea of making them myself (yeah, I know, I'm such a dork sometimes). When I saw how easy it was to make and how wonderful they tasted, I knew this was going to be a keeper!

The cucumber salad is something I learned from Ursula as well. Salting the slices helps to remove some of the water from the cukes and improve the cucumber flavor, and a dollop of sour cream adds silkiness, flavor and a great balance. A great dish that is a winner everytime!

The fries were home-cut and home-fried in the oven. When I visited Mark in West Virginia I made these fries for dinner one night. Mark loved them and said they were the best oven fries he had ever tasted. Quite a compliment from such a good cook!

And the cauliflower.....I had forgotten how great cauliflower tastes. When I saw a recipe for cauliflower on My Kitchen In Half Cups, I was inspired to make it. As usual, I'm useless with recipes and ended up doing my own thing. Still turned out great (cauliflower with cheese is SOOOO Dutch!) but the real surprise was the few raw florets that were left over in the colander. I munched on them while I prepared the rest of the food and was delighted with the fresh, crisp taste. Gotta remember that!

But most of all, the reason why I'm posting the picture and the recipes is because all four items are so simple and easy to make. And I believe that in there lies the charm of good food: simple, easy to make and yet so tasty.

Schnitzel
4 boneless pork chops
1 egg
1 cup of panko or homemade breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon of italian herbs or your own favorite blend
1 tablespoon of butter or oil

Butterfly the pork chops, cover them with plastic film and pound them thin. Beat the egg in a plate, mix the panko and seasonings in another. Dip the meat on both sides in the egg, then dip it in the breadcrumbs so that each side of the meat is neatly covered. Pat the coating down carefully with a flat hand and repeat the process with the rest of the meat.

Heat the butter or oil in a skillet and brown the schnitzels on both sides, for about four minutes each. Since the meat is so thin, it doesn't need a lot of time to be ready.

German Cucumber Salad
1 medium size cucumber
1 teaspoon of salt
1 heaping tablespoon of sour cream
Pinch of dill and ground pepper

Peel the cucumber, then slice on a mandolin or cheese slicer into thin slices. Sprinkle the salt over the cucumber and mix well. Set aside for about 30 minutes. Pour off the excess water. Taste a slice. If it's too salty, you can rinse the cucumber and get rid of the saltiness. Stir in the sour cream, the dill and the pepper. Taste and adjust.

French fries
4 large Russett potatoes
4 tablespoons of olive oil, divided
Pinch of salt

Scrub the potatoes, dry them and cut into 6 wedges. Dry the cut pieces with a paper towel. Heat two tablespoons of oil on a rimmed baking sheet in a 450F oven. Toss the potatoes with the remaining oil and place the skin-side down in the hot oil. Bake for about 10 minutes, turn the potatoes on their side, bake for another ten minutes and turn them over on the other side. When they're golden brown, take them out, toss them in a bowl lined with paper towels and salt. Eat while hot.

Cauliflower with cheese
1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets
2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Pinch of italian seasonings
1/2 cup of grated cheddar cheese

Parboil the florets in the microwave, two minutes. Toss with the olive oil, add the garlic and seasonings and bake in an oven dish for twenty minutes. Sprinkle the cheese on top, bake for several minutes more until the cheese is melted and serve.

See? Simple as can be, and yet so good, easy and affordable.

Shrimp Florentine

2010-04-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes some of these dishes are so easy, it's not even funny. You get home, throw some stuff in the pan, cook some pasta, toss it all together and make an amazing meal. And sometimes you spend hours slaving over the stove and when you finally sit down to eat, you think "hmmm, all that work for this?".

Today was a typical amazing meal day. It had been a long one with car troubles, work issues and having to meet with people that are in the past for a reason, so by the time I walked in the door, I had no time or desire to do anything fancy. Hurray for the freezer, I say! Because I pulled out a package of shrimp that I stuffed in there somewhere, grabbed a handful of spinach, some shredded cheese from the fridge and used up the rest of that half-and-half that was bought for the butter chicken and within fifteen minutes, I had a tasty, flavorful meal. You can do the same!!

Shrimp Florentine
1 package of whole wheat spaghetti (or the pasta of your choice)
3 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon of butter
2 cups of fresh spinach
Shrimp (this very much depends on how big they are, how many you have: just get enough for everyone)
1/2 cup of half-and-half
1/2 cup of warm chicken stock
1 cup of shredded Italian cheese (I use a 6 cheese mix: parmesan, asiago, mozzarella etc)
Salt
Pepper

Add the package of spaghetti to a pot with enough boiling water. While the pasta cooks, peel and mince the garlic. Heat the butter in a Dutch oven and caramelize the garlic until golden, then quickly add the spinach. Stir for a minute or two, then add the shrimp, continue to stir until the shrimp are heated through or pink, then add the half and half and the stock, stir until well blended and add in the cheese. Keep stirring until the cheese is melted and the sauce thickens, then taste and adjust with salt and/or pepper. Drain the spaghetti and toss with the sauce.

See? Nothing to it and soooo yummie!! If you don't have shrimp, you can use chicken.

Refrigerator Soup

2010-04-02T09:02:00.001-07:00

I have days where I'm running around doing ten million things and I don't have (or want to make) time to focus on eating. Luckily, I'm not picky in that sense and take pleasure in even the smallest things, like a cracker with Brie or a slice of bread with butter and a piece of chocolate. But when it's cold outside, the body wants something more than just a bite: it's time for something warm, comforting and with substance to it! That's when it's "refrigerator soup" time. I put a pot on the stove, do some of the basics and let it slowly simmer while I do the running around. By the time I'm done, the soup's ready to eat!

I always keep a package of brats in the freezer, they're easy to fix and versatile: you can make Brat buns, use them for a stew or cook them up and eat cold with a piece of bread and some mustard. Pretty much any kind of bratwurst will do, although I do tend to favor the original brats.

The main ingredients to my refrigerator soup is: brats, onion, celery, carrot and anything you can find in the crisper of your refrigerator. The "crisper" is the bottom drawer of your refrigerator where you are supposed to keep fresh vegetables so that they stay crisp. In my case, the crisper is right on top of the freezer, so often I find my veggies frozen stuck to the bottom. Some people also call their crisper, "slimer" since veggies turn into unsightly squishy blobs if they stay in there too long. Well, here's a recipe to prevent that from happening!

Refrigerator Soup
2 brats, sliced
1/2 cup of diced onion
1/4 cup of diced celery
1/4 cup of diced carrot
3 cups of water
1 cup of canned beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups of diced, shredded, cut up vegetables
1/2 a bouillon cube
Pinch of salt and pepper

This doesn't seem much of a recipe but it's all about what you have. I always have fresh carrot, celery and onions in the house, but I also keep these in dehydrated form. Go through the fridge and see what you can come up with: half a jar of salsa that needs to go? Throw it in. Some leftover broccoli from last Sunday's dinner? Use it up. Don't use anything that needs to go for real though: if it's moldy, slimey, or if it smells funky, throw it out. This soup is not going to save it!

Fry the slices of bratwurst in a Dutch oven until they are golden brown. Pour off some of the fat but keep enough to have approximately one tablespoon (some brats are fattier than others) in the pan. Add the onion, celery and carrot and stir in the hot fat until the onions are translucent and the carrot and celery are softening a bit. Pour in the water, add the beans and whatever vegetables you were able to find.

I had some leftover kale from a boerenkool dish I made a week or so ago and two tomatoes that looked rather tired. It really doesn't take much to make a sturdy soup!

Belgian Chicken (rabbit)

2010-03-22T19:01:00.005-07:00

As a child, one of my favorite dishes was a sweet and tangy stew that my Belgian grandma Pauline used to make. It was usually served during Christmas as the main dish and sometimes during Easter. My brother and I loved it and would often ask for this Belgian chicken dish. Because that's what we were told it was: chicken made the Belgian way.

One pretty Sunday in Spring, I must have been six or seven years old, my grandma's sisters and nieces came to visit. The table was set for lunch and judging from the smell that came from the kitchen, I knew we were going to have my favorite dish: Belgian chicken! How appropriate, I thought, Belgian chicken for Belgian ladies and said so to one of my grandma's nieces. She looked puzzled and said she had never heard of Belgian chicken before. I dismissed it at the time and figured they must call it something else over there.

Once they started serving lunch I was initially disappointed: instead of the boney legs and tender breast meat, I saw chunks of what looked like beef. I briefly hesitated but decided to say nothing, because once I tasted a piece of meat I realized that it tasted very similar to the chicken dish. It was so good I even asked for seconds. The whole table held their breath. I may have been ditzy as a child, but even I knew something was wrong. "So you really like this meat, huh?" one of my aunts asked, barely containing her laughter. "Yes, I do" I said, wondering what all the fuss was about. "It tastes just like Belgian chicken.". At that point the whole table was in stitches, laughing. Why? Because the meat was foal. And I happened to be a horse-crazy little girl at the time and nobody had dared tell me that we were going to have horse meat for lunch.

For a split-second, I was hurt. They were making me eat HORSE MEAT?? But then I realized that this horse meat tasted darn good and I held up my plate demonstratively for seconds. What can I say? My tummy wins over my heart, I guess!

We had a great time that Sunday, visiting with the family and eating good food. Nevertheless, when they all left I took my grandma aside and asked her if these people were from Belgium, then how come they had never heard from Belgian chicken? Ah....the moment of truth. I guess that my initial reaction to eating horse meat made my family realize that taste ruled over cuddliness in my book. Turns out that Belgian chicken is nothing else than rabbit. And I am glad to say that neither my brother nor I have stopped eating rabbit.

Rabbit is hard to come by here in America but I found a small poultry processing plant in a town nearby that also does rabbits. And they happened to have a couple of them in the freezer, ready to go. Hiphiphurray!!!

So yesterday, I was in my kitchen cutting up this animal. It was a little unnerving because neither the head nor the tail was on this pink carcass. Enough for my mother to venture the thought that perhaps it was cat after all: it was not unheard of during the war years to buy "rabbit" in the stores and have a diminishing feline population at the same time. These pieces of meat were called "roof rabbits" among the people in the know......

Anyway, back to the bunny. So if there are no Easter eggs in your yard this year, I guess it's because I ate the Easter bunny. Just like that. With vinegar and brown sugar. And it was good! For those of you that have never had rabbit....it tastes a little bit like chicken. Belgian chicken. :-)

Belgian Chicken
1 medium sized rabbit, approx. 2 lbs
2 cups of water, divided
1 cup of white wine vinegar
2 bay leaves
10 black peppercorns
1 large size onion, peeled and sliced thin
2 tablespoons of butter
1/3 cup of brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/3 cup of water
salt
pepper
pinch of ground cloves

Cut the rabbit up. I did a slightly un-traditional cut because I did not have a cleaver and the rabbit's backbone is hard as a rock. Make sure you remove small bones or splinters before cooking the meat, they can be nasty.

Add the water, vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorns and slices of onion to a large bowl and add the pieces of meat. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, take the meat out of the marinade and pat it dry with some paper towels. Heat two tablespoons of butter in a Dutch oven and quickly brown the meat on all sides. Remove from the pan, brown the onions and add the meat back in. Pour the marinade over the meat but keep the peppercorns behind, they are a pain to remove once the sauce is made. Bring to a boil, turn low and simmer for about 30 minutes. Remove the meat from the pan, scrape all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan and add the brown sugar and the second cup of water if needed. Bind the sauce with a tablespoon of flour and 1/3 cup water, taste and adjust with salt and pepper. Add the meat back to the sauce and simmer for another hour or until the meat is tender to the point where it falls off the bone.

Add the pinch of ground cloves, taste again and adjust. You want a sweet, tangy but not overly sugary taste. Serve with boiled potatoes and red cabbage.

Macaroni

2010-03-07T13:44:00.002-07:00

Ten percent of the Dutch population thinks that macaroni and chili con carne are.......Dutch dishes. I kid you not. Eighty-seven percent of that same population eats macaroni at least once a week. When you ask children here in the USA what their favorite kind of food is, they'll usually say: Pizza! Dutch kids would tell you that macaroni was their favorite food.

A Dutch TV show called "Man Bijt Hond" ("Man bites dog") has a section called "Hond Aan Tafel", where the camara crew knocks on a random house door around dinner time and asks the surprised habitants if they can join them. Most often the answer is yes, and the short scene allows for a peek in the life of just an ordinary person. Nine out of then, the answer to "What's for dinner?" is...you guessed it.....macaroni.

And they're not the only ones that love macaroni. Yours truly enjoys a huge plate of the salty, warm, comforting pasta with a pickle on the side to provide some crunch, yummmmm!!!!!!!!!!!! It's one of the many reasons why I keep ground beef in the freezer: once the meat is thawed, this dish is quick and easy to prepare. Just what you need when you're looking for some comfort!

Dutch Macaroni
3 cups of elbow macaroni or fussili
1 lb of ground beef
1/2 a leek, white only, sliced thin
1 red pepper
1 sachet of macaroni spices*
1 small can of tomato sauce
Pickles, optional

Cook the macaroni according to instructions. Brown the ground beef in a skillet, pour off the fat and add in strips of red pepper and the sliced leek. Stir in the spices and the tomato sauce, simmer for ten minutes. Add the macaroni and mix with the sauce. Serve warm.

* I buy the macaroni spices in Dutch stores online, but the spaghetti spice mix packages that are available in your standard supermarket is practically the same.

Hutspot met klapstuk

2010-02-26T17:31:00.001-07:00

It seems that I am on a Dutch roll here. Just a couple of days ago, I made boerenkool met worst and now I've just prepared a huge pot of hutspot met klapstuk. The name of this dish does not sound very appetizing, not even in Dutch. Loosely translated it means "hotchpotch with slap piece". Well, there you go, see what I mean? Who wants to eat that?

But, as usual, appearance deceives. In this case the name is not very flattering and quite honestly, neither is the picture. But the taste will convince anyone that there is more to this dish than a silly name.

Hutspot was originally (in the mid-1600s) made with parsnips and potatoes. Every October 3rd, the city of Leiden celebrates the victory over the Spanish invaders with white bread and herring and with hutspot, this last dish presumably left behind by the fleeing Spanish army and found by a young man who shared it with the rest of the starving Leiden-ers. Or at least with those that didn't like herring, I'm sure.

Nowadays the parsnips have been replaced by large carrots and it makes for a colorful and flavorful mashed potato dish, and very affordable, to say the least.

As for the "slap piece": klapstuk is the meat that is cut from the rib. I used slices of beef chuck rib roast and it worked beautifully. The meat is marbled and during its 90 minute braising time will release all kinds of wonderful flavors and most of the fat. You'll love it!

Hutspot met klapstuk
For the meat
1 lb of sliced beef chuck rib roast
2 cups water
1/2 beef bouillon cube
1 bay leaf
8 black pepper corns, whole
1 tablespoon flour, dissolved in 1/2 cup water

Add the water to a Dutch oven or a braising pan, add the bouillon cube and stir until dissolved. Add the beef, the bay leaf and the pepper corns and braise on low heat for approximately 90 minutes or until beef is tender.

Remove the meat to a serving dish, discard the bay leaf and peppercorns and stir the dissolved flour into the pan juices. Stir scraping the bottom of the pan, loosening any meat particles that may be stuck. Bring the heat slowly up until the gravy starts to thicken. Pour the gravy over the meat and set aside, keeping it warm.

For the hutspot
6 large potatoes, peeled and quartered
8 large carrots, peeled and diced
4 large onions, peeled and sliced
2 cups of water
Pinch of salt

Place the peeled and quartered potatoes on the bottom of a Dutch oven. Pour in the water so the potatoes are just covered. Add the pinch of salt. Put the carrots on top, and finish with the onions. Cover and bring to a boil, then lower the heat and boil for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked. Pour off the cooking water but save it. Mash the potatoes, carrots and onions until you achieve a mashed potato consistency, or leave larger lumps, that's a personal preference. If you need more liquid to make it smoother, add a tablespoon of cooking liquid at a time. Taste, adjust with salt and pepper.

Now place a large scoop of hutspot on a warm plate. With the rounded side of a spoon, make an indentation on top of the hutspot, like a pothole. This is the famous "kuiltje". Put a slice of beef on top and pour a tablespoon or two of gravy into the kuiltje, and serve your beautiful, Dutch dish. All you need now is a pair of clogs and a picture of the Queen on the wall :-) Nah....not really.

Biscuits and Gravy

2010-02-21T20:41:00.004-07:00

Emile's comment the other day made me realize that biscuits and gravy could easily be misinterpreted as some outlandish concoction, especially if you translate the American biscuit for an English one and gravy for eh...gravy. It's not a biscuit and it's not gravy, at least not how you know it overseas. Trust me.

Here in America it's a regular item for breakfast, both at home and in restaurants, but I understand the confusion. Notes from a travel journal I kept on a trip to Memphis in the mid-nineties (yes, that was last century!) reads: "This morning we're eating breakfast at a large family restaurant. It's possible to order off the menu but most guests are gathered around the breakfast buffet, loading up their plates with the most bizarre combinations. The pancakes here are as thick as roof tiles and some of the items on the buffet line would do well to appear for dinner, but surely not for breakfast? Fried rice, shredded potatoes? And the most bizarre thing of all, regardless of what's on their plate, each guest is sure to ladle spoonfuls of some off-white, lumpy sauce on top."

Well, that off-white, lumpy sauce back then was gravy. I did not know it then and when I finally moved to the United States and figured it out, I avoided the stuff like the plague. It looked lumpy and pasty and I was convinced it would taste like wallpaper paste. I tried my hand at biscuits once but they emerged from the oven like hockey pucks so that was that. I shelved the whole "biscuits and gravy" thing away as one of those American things I'd never understand, like root beer and corn dogs.

Fast forward to last Spring. Talking about food one day with my friend Luke from West Virginia, he mentioned that his were the best biscuits and gravy. I was sceptical but was willing to give it a try. What can I say? The man was right. The biscuits were buttery, tender and flaky and the sausage gravy warm, spicy and comforting. To this day, I cannot make them as fluffy and buttery as he does but they'll do.

The key is, for the biscuits, to not overwork the dough: the less you handle it, the better. Easy to say, harder to do for a breadbaking fool like me, but I manage to restrain myself and just pat the whole thing together. As for the gravy.....get good quality sausage and make sure you cook the gravy long enough to get rid of the flour taste.

Biscuits and gravy
For the biscuits
1 cup of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons of cold butter
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon of sour cream
1 tablespoon melted butter

Mix the first three ingredients, cut in the cold butter and stir in the buttermilk and the sour cream. Carefully fold the dough several times until it comes together (four or five folds will do) and pat into a rectangle on a lightly floured countertop. Take a glass or a cup that has the circumference for the biscuits you want (average of 3 inches will do just fine) and cut rounds out of the dough. In the meantime, heat the oven to 400F. Melt the two tablespoons of butter in the oven dish. Take each biscuit and carefully place it face down into the butter, then flip it over so that the butter-covered side is up. Continue until the dish is full but not crowded. Bake the biscuits golden-brown in about 12-15 minutes.

For the gravy
8 oz of mild pork sausage
8 oz of spicy pork sausage
2 tablespoons of flour
1/2 cup of milk

Fry both sausage meats in a skillet until it's crumbly and cooked. Sprinkle the flour over the meat, stir several times, then slowly stir in the milk. Keep stirring, making sure you get all the crunchy bits off the bottom of the pan until the sauce thickens. Taste and adjust the flavor if needed.

Tear open a warm biscuit and ladle a generous spoonful of gravy over the two halves. Sit down, take a bite and be comforted!

Somehow you always end up with a bit of leftover biscuit dough: too small to make another biscuit but too much to just throw away. Here's what you can do: pat it together, roll it out and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Roll up jelly-roll style, slice and place sliced side down into a buttered ramekin. Sprinkle some more sugar on top and bake with the rest of the biscuits at 400F. Yummie with a scoop of ice cream or just to munch on while you wait. Now, ain't that cute?

Kale with Kielbasa

2010-02-21T17:35:00.003-07:00

The Dutch have a very solid and varied repertoire of winter dishes: solid in the sense that they all consist of the culinary trinity (meat, vegetables and potatoes) and varied because well....because there is scarcely a thing the Dutch don't add to their famous "stamppot". Literally meaning 'stomped pot", stamppot is a dish that consists of boiled potatoes mashed with either a raw or cooked vegetable. The meat is either served on top, on the side or cut into small pieces and mixed in. If the choice of protein generates any type of pan juice or jus, it will be served in a small hollow made on top of the mashed potato dish, the so-called "kuiltje jus" (kinda like a pothole in the road but different).

Those that know me well will be surprised to see that I served up mashed potatoes with kale, a dish simply called "boerenkool". There are few things in the food world that I don't care for, and one of them is boerenkool. Or was, should I say. Somehow the American kale is not half as bitter as the Dutch one is, so after preparing this dish with Michiel for Idaho's Melting Pot, I was pleasantly surprised, enough even to go home and cook it for myself two days later.

Kale is a dark-leaf vegetable that will add plenty of nutrition to your diet: it is riddled with vitamins and minerals and contributes plenty of protein. The butter and the kielbasa....not so much.

Kale with kielbasa

3 bunches of kale (or 1 lb)
6 large potatoes
3 tablespoons of butter
1/2 cup of milk, warmed
1 smoked kielbasa
Salt

Cut the leaves off the stems and slice the leaves into narrow strips. Peel the potatoes, quarter them and place them in a Dutch oven. Add water to barely cover the potatoes, then put the kale on top, add the kielbasa. Cover the pot with a lid and bring to a boil. Boil on a low flame for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are done. Remove the kielbasa, pour off any cooking liquid that may remain and mash the vegetables with a fork or a potato masher. Add the butter and the milk and stir the whole into a creamy consistency. Slice the kielbasa and place it on top of the stamppot. Serve with mustard if desired.

Chicken Pot Pie

2010-02-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

This is one of those recipes that is a super-standby. When I make biscuits and gravy for breakfast, I usually make a larger batch of biscuit dough. One part goes to biscuits and the rest gets rolled into a large circle and covers this quick and easy chicken pot pie. It's one of those dishes that uses what's in the freezer and the pantry to produce a weekday meal: it can be on the table in less than 30 minutes.

Chicken Pot Pie
For the filling
2 cups of mixed vegetables*
1 can of mushroom soup
1 cup of milk (optional)
1 cup of cooked chicken, cubed
1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
Pepper

Prepare the mushroom soup in a sauce pan according to the instructions on the can. If it asks to add water or milk, add one cup of milk only. Heat the vegetables in the soup and add the chicken. Flavor with the Worcestershire sauce and the pepper. Taste and adjust. Simmer for about five minutes or until hot, then pour into a pie pan or shallow oven dish.

For the dough
1 can of prepared buttermilk biscuits
1 tablespoon melted butter
or
1 cup of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons of cold butter
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon of sour cream
1 tablespoon melted butter

If you use the prepared biscuits, take them out of the can and separate them from each other, placing them in a circle on a lightly floured countertop. Roll the prepared biscuits together into a larger circle.

If you make the biscuits yourself, mix the first three ingredients, cut in the cold butter and stir in the buttermilk and the sour cream. Carefully knead the dough together (four or five kneads maximum) and pat into a circle on a lightly floured countertop.

Roll the dough into a circle slightly larger than your oven dish. Carefully lift the circle and place it on top of the pie filling. Cut the dough that hangs over the edges, brush the top with melted butter and bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until the biscuit dough is golden brown and the filling is bubbling. (You may want to place a baking sheet underneath the pie pan in case the filling bubbles over; it makes for easy clean-up!)

Chile Verde Pork

2010-02-14T13:07:00.009-07:00

Sometimes I'm at a loss. There are only a few choices of protein that I keep in the freezer: chicken, beef and pork, and its variants such as sausage, smokies and other obscure meat products. (Oh yeah, and a couple of pieces of salmon that I realllly need to use up one of these days, recipe anyone?). Anyway, back to the loss. Here's how it usually goes: if I pull beef out of the freezer, I'm inclined to go for a roast or some type of beef stew like Beef Balsamico or zuurvlees. If the choice falls on chicken, I come up with a myriad of ways to prepare it: roast, stewed, fried, grilled......you name it. But with pork, all I can think of is shredded pork. And that's it. And I really wasn't in the mood for shredded pork.

So when I found* a pork picnic roast in the freezer, I knew I had to come up with a different recipe. Browsing the web, I came across various ways to prepare "pork chile verde" and remembered that several months ago a dear friend from Colorado, Fred Fell, emailed me a recipe of pork chile verde. At first glance it seemed a bit spicy because of the jalapeños, and there was no bean in sight. And you know me, I love beans. I automatically assumed that "chile" meant beans. Well, not so much. Chile can also be eh...chile. As in peppers. Duh.....it took me a minute or two to process that thought. And here is me pretending to know it all!

But ofcourse, between one thing and another, I could not find the recipe and I didn't just want to get any old recipe from the web. I emailed Fred and hey presto! he responded this morning with the recipe. Just in time to get some essentials at the store and get cracking!

Now, Fred is going to wonder why I even bothered to ask him about the recipe at all: I ended up using a variety of different items that were not the original ingredients. But that's just how it goes, and I can't help it. I start following a recipe and halfway through I think: "Hmmmmmm, I wonder what happens when I use this instead?" or "Would that other thing be just as tasteful?". Yeah, so I'm useless following recipes, what can I say?

Chile Verde Pork

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 lb of pork meat, cubed

2 teaspoons of cumin

1 teaspoon of black pepper
2 teaspoons of dried oregano
1 yellow onion, peeled and sliced thin
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 lb of tomatillos, husked
1 can of roasted green chiles
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
2 cups of warm water
1/2 chicken bouillon cube (or 2 cups of chicken stock instead of the water and the bouillon)
1 cup of cilantro, stems and leaves

Heat the oil in a skillet or Dutch oven and quickly brown the pork, adding the cumin,the oregano and the pepper. Plug in the crockpot and transfer the pork after draining the fat, keeping enough fat in the pan for the next step. Sauté the onion and the garlic in the fat and add to the meat in the crockpot. Slice the tomatillos in half and place them, together with the unpeeled garlic, cut side down in the skillet. Cover and roast for about five minutes, then turn them over and roast for another five minutes or until the garlic feels soft. Put the tomatillos, skin and all, in a blender bowl and add the canned green chiles and the cilantro. Squeeze the soft garlic out of the skins and add them to the bowl. Quickly blend into a smooth, green sauce.

Now add the sauce to the crockpot. Simmer for two hours until meat is tender. Taste and see if you want to adjust the flavor with some more cumin, cilantro, salt or pepper. Remember, a recipe is just a guideline! Serve with rice and tortillas and a refreshing dollop of sour cream.

What can I say? Heaven must be green. The meat is tender, the sauce is flavorful and has a lovely tomato-ey flavor but not the acidity from a red tomato, and the cilantro is a wonderful touch. You just have to try it, I guess! If you want to add some heat, blend in a jalapeño or two.

* It's not like I open the freezer one day and go "hey ho! what's this?". Well, actually I do but what I meant to say is that I was the one who put the roast there in the first place, it's not like I have some little gnomes running around stuffing food into my freezer. Or that my freezer is so huge that I lose things in there. Although I do sometimes wonder....I've been cooking out of this thing for the last three years now and there is just no end in sight. Maybe the gnome story is not so far-fetched after all?

Erwtensoep (split pea soup)

2010-02-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

Oh, the ubiquitous split pea soup......when it's cold in Holland and people go ice skating on the lakes and the canals, the traditional picture is that a small shack "koek-en-zopie" sits next to the ice selling hot split pea soup and coffee with cookies for those tired and cold after such a wonderful day on the ice. I'll be darned, but each time I've gone skating I've never seen one of those shacks. May have something to do with the fact that I've only been skating once or twice in my life and the experience was so unpleasant that I may have blocked the memory of a soup shack. I fail miserably in the skating department, it is a very un-Dutch side of me.......

But I hopefully redeemed myself by making a very good split pea soup: it even passed the "wooden spoon" test! (i.e. the soup is so thick that a wooden spoon will stand up on its end and not fall over when stuck in the soup). Hand over those bitterballen, I'm back!

Erwtensoep
2 cups of split peas
4 cups of water
1 carrot, peeled
2 ribs of celery
1/2 an onion, peeled
1 bay leaf
black pepper
pinch of salt

About 12 little smokies or half a kielbasa

Rinse the split peas and remove anything that doesn't belong (stones, sticks, dried up discolored peas...). Put the peas and the water in a Dutch oven. Mince the vegetables and add to the peas. Bring to a boil, add the bay leaf and simmer for about 40 minutes. When the peas are soft, either puree or just stir several times, the peas will dissolve and make a creamy soup. Stir in the smokies or the kielbasa (slice before adding), heat until warm and taste. Add pepper and salt if needed.

This is an easy, quick solution. I keep a pack of smokies in the freezer. Split peas do not have to be soaked in order to cook quickly so you can have this soup on the table in less than an hour.

Traditionally, this soup is served with dark rye bread and pancetta.

Mussels à la Belgique

2010-01-30T19:11:00.003-07:00

I don't actually know that there is such a thing as Belgian-style mussels but I'm not entirely making this name up either. The way these are prepared are very similar to how they're eaten on the Belgian coast. With a dipping sauce, some bread and, here I am majorly lacking today, some golden fries.

In the Netherlands, mussels are usually on the menu when the letter "R" is present in the name of the month: from September till April, you can find mussels on the menu at restaurants, for sale at the fish mongers and on the stove in Dutch kitchens all over the country. Well, I wasn't up for making fries what with one thing and another, but I didn't mind making the sauce and baking the bread. "R" has been in the months for a long time and I was really starting to crave these puppies!

I dug out a bag of mussels from the freezer. They're so quick to prepare and totally hit the spot today: their salty, oceany smell reminded me of summer, of holidays on the beach and of happy times. Get frozen ones if you can, they've been cleaned and scrubbed already and will save you a lot of time. Don't eat the ones that have broken shells or don't open up during the cooking process: they're likely to be bad and may make you sick.

Mussels
2 pounds of mussels
1 rib of celery, diced
1/2 carrot, peeled and diced
2 shallots, peeled and quartered
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
2 cups of white wine
2 cups of water

Dipping sauce
2 tablespoons of mustard
2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
1 tablespoon of vinegar

Mix into a smooth sauce.

Put the water, the wine, shallots, carrots, garlic and celery in a Dutch oven with a lid. Bring to a boil. Lift the lid, add the mussels and boil for seven to eight minutes. The mussels will open up and will be ready to eat.

To serve, place the pan on the table with an extra plate for the shells. Serve with fries and a dipping sauce. Use your fingers to pull the mussels out of the shells or a small fork, dip into the sauce and eat up.

Leftover Lasagna

2010-01-27T18:25:00.004-07:00

Sometimes the pictures don't do food any justice, other times they make it look a lot better than it actually tastes. When I attended the culinary arts program at the Selland College (now CWI) at Boise State University, the students that were in charge of desserts for our restaurant would make the most beautiful displays: perfectly scooped ice creams with chocolate drizzle, lovely dollops of whipped cream......Showing the selection of goods to our guests always drew longing sighs and looks of admiration and dare I say, hesitation, from the diners. After all, you can't really say "They all look so good, I think I'll have a piece of each" without getting at least a raised eyebrow from one of your fellow diners. (Which makes you wonder whether it's time to seek out more like-minded folks to eat out with).

I digress. The point is that these desserts all looked marvelous to me too, until I learned that the icecream on display was just a greasy scoop of shortening and that the whipped cream was actually shaving cream. Ewwww!!!!!!!!!! No wonder they held up so well during a two hour lunch service (I'm not always the quickest one to catch on, as you can tell).

So....food may look good but may taste not so fantastic, and the other way around. And all this to say that the picture of the lasagna posted may seem like the least appetizing thing posted so far, but I'll say: I had two helpings and I don't even like lasagna. Go figure.

I stood in front of the fridge and tried to find some inspiration for dinner. The ground beef I pulled from the freezer earlier last week to make sausage rolls with ended up being put back in the fridge because I made Brat Buns instead, and I had all kinds of leftovers: half a jar of spaghetti sauce with mushrooms left over from pizza night a couple of weeks ago , about a cup and a half of shredded Parmesan cheese from that same evening and about two cups of a garlic-and-herb cheese that usually goes on crackers from eh....Christmas. I used part of it up for some Boursin buns, but still had two packages left, and they were pushing their sell-by-date.

I also had spotted nine lasagna sheets before that had been in the cupboard for quite some time. Perfect!

Leftover Lasagna
1 pound of hamburger
1 jar of spaghetti sauce
2 cups of garlic-herb cheese
2 eggs
1 cup of Parmesan cheese, shredded
9 lasagna sheets*

Brown the pound of hamburger in a skillet, drain the fat and add the spaghetti sauce. If you wish you can add more bulk by adding fresh or canned mushrooms (drained). Put the garlic-herb cheese in a bowl and slowly whisk in one egg, then the other until it forms a thick sauce.

Boil the lasagna sheets according to the instructions on the box. Spray the inside of the pan you are going to bake your lasagna in with cooking spray, then spread a thin layer of the spaghetti meat sauce on the bottom. Lay the first layer of lasagna leaves on top. Cover the lasagna with a layer of the cheese sauce, sprinkle Parmesan on top, then put another layer of meat sauce. Repeat the pasta sheets, the cheese sauce, the cheese and the meatsauce until you've reached the last layer of pasta. On top of this, place the rest of the meat sauce and sprinkle Parmesan on top. I had some cheese sauce left over and dolloped the top as well.

Cover with foil (spray the inside of the foil with cooking spray so that no valuable cheese goes lost by sticking to the aluminum!), and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 10 minutes. Let sit on the counter for ten minutes so that the lasagna can set.

Brown beans with rice

2010-01-20T21:05:00.001-07:00

I don't know if I should post this recipe on this blog, because nothing that I used came out of the freezer. I love beans and try to eat them at least once a week: they're healthy, affordable, quick and versatile and tasty to boot, but that was not what I set out to prepare.

I pulled a pound of hamburger out of the freezer on Monday to make Dutch sausage rolls but I ended up making Brat buns instead. So I thought I'd make spaghetti tonight, but by the time I walked in the door, it was too late to get that started (plus I wanted to make sure I could catch the 6:30 pm episode of "The Office") so.....I'm rummaging through the fridge to see what I can scrounge up and here is this sad little piece of salt pork, just sitting there, all by its lonesome self. And immediately brown beans and rice come to mind: it's quick, it's tasty and mighty comforting on a cold, windy night like this one.

Brown beans and rice, or as we say in Holland, bruine bonen met rijst, is a typical dish from Suriname, a former colony of the Netherlands. Here in America, I don't have easy access to the Dutch brown beans, so I use pinto beans instead.

Brown beans with Rice
1 small piece of salt pork
1 small onion, peeled and diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tomato, deseeded and chopped
2 cans of pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup of water

1/4 cup of tomato sauce
1 teaspoon of ginger
1 teaspoon of black pepper
1/2 beef bouillon cube
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup of celery leaves
1 tablespoon of sugar

1 cup of instant rice
Water

Cut the salt pork in small dice, then fry in a Dutch oven until soft. Add the onion and the garlic. Stir until soft, then add the tomato. When the tomato has softened as well, add the beans, the water, the tomato sauce, ginger, pepper, the bouillon cube and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about twenty minutes. Taste and adjust (don't add any salt before tasting, the pork tends to be salty enough), add the sugar and the celery leaves, remove the bay leaf and stir everything together. Simmer for another five minutes while you prepare the rice.

Put the rice in a microwaveable bowl, add enough water so that the rice is covered, then microwave on high for two and a half minutes. Let it sit to dry for a minute or two, then stir.

Serve the beans on top of the rice. Nice with some crunchy slices of cucumber.

Yummmmm....that totally hit the spot. Now I have to think of what to do with that thawed hamburger meat....

Fried chicken

2010-01-16T17:38:00.001-07:00

Oh boy!!! I had some leftover chicken legs and wings and a cup of buttermilk from the buttermilk buns I made the other day, and no plans for dinner. Hmm....chicken......buttermilk......ha! Buttermilk fried chicken!

There's a place in town that claims to have the best fried chicken in the valley. I have to agree, as I've not yet had chicken that good anywhere else, and I've been wanting to try my hand at preparing it myself. It is not a traditional dish in Holland so I can't remember ever frying chicken before. I love these little adventures!

From what I've read, one is supposed to marinate the chicken in a buttermilk dressing for 24 hours, then flour and let sit for another four. Well........this girl wants to eat now! For those of you that know me well enough, you're probably laughing right now because you all know that patience is NOT one of my virtues.

So I made a buttermilk dressing, de-skinned the chicken parts except for the wings and marinated the whole thing for a whopping.......20 minutes. That's about the time it took me to make the flour mix and to get the fryer started. I deep-fried these puppies, but you are welcome to fry them stove-top instead in a large skillet with an inch or so of oil. As always, please take care in the kitchen, especially with hot oil. Roll up your sleeves so they don't catch on a handle or hang in the oil, send kids/pets/husbands out of the area so that you don't have to worry about tripping or anybody getting hurt.

Fried Chicken

2 chicken legs, no skin
2 chicken wings
2 chicken thighs, no skin
1 cup of buttermilk
1 tablespoon of mustard
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic salt

2 cups of flour
1 tablespoon Old Bay spices
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Oil for frying

Mix the ingredients for the marinade in a ziploc bag and add the chicken one by one. Make sure each piece is covered with the marinade, push most of the air out of the bag and close. Set aside, turning over every now and then.

When you feel the chicken has marinated long enough (if you are planning on using the chicken within half an hour of adding the marinade, you can leave the bag on the counter. Any longer and you should refrigerate the meat with the dressing, for food safety reasons), mix the two cups of flour with the rest of the ingredients and put it on a large platter. Take a piece of chicken out of the bag, and while dripping wet, lay it on the flour. Do the same with the rest of the chicken. When all the pieces are on the flour, discard the rest of the marinade. Turn over the chicken pieces so that each piece is now covered in flour. Set aside for ten minutes, then turn them over again. The marinade will slowly moisten the flour that's on the chicken. By turning it regularly, you will be able to add additional flour which will give you a nice crispy crust while keeping the meat moist.

After about thirty minutes, turn on the fryer or heat two cups of oil in a skillet. When hot, carefully place the chicken, two by two in the pan. If you are using a fryer, check the manual to see what setting is recommended for frying chicken. Fry only matching parts at a time, that way you know they will all be done at the same time. Fry the chicken legs for approximately 7 minutes or until golden-brown. Now fry the rest (they will need less time) and let all the pieces drain on a plate with several sheets of paper towels.

You can serve the chicken with dressing or just as is.

The picture is probably the most un-inspiring one of this series. If it was only scratch-and-taste.......

Shoarma

2010-01-14T18:32:00.004-07:00

Shoarma, or shawarma, is a Middle Eastern dish traditionally made with lamb. The seasoned meat is skewered in layers and roasted vertically in one large cone shaped piece, then sliced in thin strips and served in pita bread with crunchy vegetables or over french fries. The spices are pungent and flavorful and are complimented by a garlic buttermilk dressing.

I used the breast and thigh meat from a whole chicken I cut up yesterday and three leftover tortillas from last week's roti.

Shoarma
2 chicken breasts
2 chicken thighs
1 tablespoon of shoarma spices*
1 tablespoon of olive oil

4 tortillas
1 small cucumber, sliced thin

2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 cup of buttermilk
1/2 cup of mayonnaise

Cut the chicken meat in slices or chunks, stir in the spices and let sit for about 30 minutes. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and quickly saute the meat until done.

Mix the garlic, buttermilk and mayonnaise and stir into a smooth dressing.

Fold a tortilla in half and fold again, so that you have two pockets. Put the cucumber in the bottom pocket and the chicken in the top. Drizzle with the dressing and serve.

*As for the shoarma spices, they are easy to make. If you double or triple the following recipe, it will provide you with enough spices to cover several meals. All the spices are ground.

Shoarma spices

1 teaspoon of paprika

1 teaspoon of cumin

1 teaspoon of coriander

1/4 teaspoon of cloves

1/4 teaspoon of black pepper

1/4 teaspoon of ginger

1/4 teaspoon of allspice

1/4 teaspoon of garlic salt

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon

Mix together and store in an airtight jar.

Chicken Soup

2010-01-14T18:19:00.001-07:00

Sometimes less is more. A brothy soup with just a few choice vegetables can be more satisfying than a five course meal (not including dessert ofcourse, dessert always wins!). I'm not claiming to make the perfect soup but the one I prepared yesterday was pretty darn good!

Last night I cut up a chicken that I pulled a couple of days ago. I used the breast and thigh meat for shoarma, and saved the carcass to make today's soup.

Chicken Soup

1 chicken carcass, or four chicken thighs
1 large carrot, peeled
1 celery rib
1 medium size onion, peeled
6 cups of water
1 bay leaf
10 black peppercorns

For the soup
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
1 large celery rib with leaves, diced
Chicken meat from the carcass
2 chicken bouillon cubes
Salt
Pepper

Take the skin off the chicken. Break the carrot into pieces and do the same with the celery, this is just for the stock so it doesn't have to look pretty. Put the chicken carcass in a stock pot or in your Dutch oven, add in all the ingredients and cover with water. Bring to a simmer and let simmer for a good two hours.

Remove any scum that may have gathered on top with a spoon. Ladle the broth into a clean vessel. Pull all the meat from the chicken: discard the bones and the vegetables.

Bring the stock to a slow simmer and add in the carrot, celery, the chicken meat and the two bouillon cubes. Stir and let simmer on low until the vegetables are done. Taste, adjust and enjoy.

Beef in red wine

2010-01-11T17:03:00.003-07:00

The problem with having dinner with the Ladies once a month is that one usually goes home with loads of leftovers and there is no cooking done in the next couple of days. Nevertheless, it's going to be a busy week so I'm preparing a couple of dishes that can last me for two or three evenings.

I pulled a beef cross rib roast out of the freezer: I've had pork and chicken for the last couple of days so it's time for some change......

Beef in red wine is flavorful and tender and smells like summer in a Mediterranean country. I like to do the initial preparations in a Dutch oven and then transfer the whole kaboodle to my crockpot and forget about it for the next six hours while it simmers and fills up the house with beautiful smells. This beef will serve well with mashed potatoes.

Beef in red wine

2 strips of bacon
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 beef roast (approximately 2 lbs)
1 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, thyme
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups of water
2 cups of red wine
1 beef bouillon cube
2 bay leaves
4 slices of dried tomato (or 1 tablespoon of tomato paste)

Cut the two strips of bacon in one inch pieces and fry in a Dutch oven. When browned (but not crispy), take them out with a slotted spoon and set them aside. Saute the carrot, onion and garlic in the bacon fat and add a tablespoon of olive oil. When the vegetables are sauteed, remove them as well. Add a tablespoon of olive oil to the pot and heat until it starts to smoke a bit. Season the beef with salt, pepper and thyme, and quickly brown the roast on all sides. Add in the water and the wine, add the two bay leaves and one beef bouillon cube (or a cup of beef stock), the tomatoes and simmer for four hours, or until the beef is tender.

If you prepare the dish the day before, you'll be able to scoop most of the fat off the chilled sauce before serving it the day after. If you serve it the same day as you prepare it, you may want to ladle some of the fat off during the preparation: it will rise to the top.

Leftover dinner...............

2010-01-08T21:29:00.005-07:00

Yummm.....I'm busy baking bread for tomorrow's Ladies Dinner so tonight I'm eating the leftovers from yesterday's pulled pork on tortilla chips with a dollop of sour cream and some refreshing salsa yummm! Wow, what a sentence......

Shredded Barbeque Pork with Black Beans

2010-01-08T12:20:00.007-07:00

It's cold, it's dark and there is no sign of summer in any way, shape or form. The snow is still on the ground and, in my most pessimistic moments, I'd almost dare say I am sure the sun's left us for good. Global warming? Ha! Half of the globe is snowed in and iced over, and the other half is drowning in rain. Kinda sort of. But look at this....is this cold or is this cold??

I'm exaggerating a little bit but yesterday was one of those days where a healthy salad, a quick snack or a boring sandwich could not have managed to make the blues go away. Fortunately, I have just the food for that! The beautiful smell of barbeque wafting from your crockpot will put a smile on your face and make you feel a little warmer inside, and with the help of your faithful storage items, this dish is a cinch to make. Global warming? Huh. Cold outside? It's all good. Just pull up to the table, grab a plate and enjoy this gorgeous summery dish. If you don't like pork, it can easily be made with chicken or beef.

Barbeque Pulled Pork

1 pork roast (about 1lb for four)

1 medium size onion, peeled and sliced thin
1 small can of tomato sauce
1 small can of roasted green chiles
2 cups of your favorite barbeque sauce
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of chili powder
1/2 teaspoon of oregano
1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

Salsa
Sour Cream
Tortillas

Fire up the crockpot and add the onions, tomato sauce, chiles, barbeque sauce and spices and stir. You can cut up the roast in chunks or put the whole thing in whole, whatever fits best but turn it over once or twice so it's covered in barbeque/tomato sauce.

Cook on high for 6 hours or until the meat is tender. Pull the pork out, shred it with two forks to pieces and stir it back into the sauce. Taste and adjust (you might like more cumin or chili). Stir in the can of black beans. Heat for another ten minutes or until the beans are hot.

Warm the tortillas, put one on a plate and put two heaping spoons of barbeque pork in the middle. Add a dab of sour cream and salsa, roll up and eat! For some crunch, you can top it with some shredded lettuce.

This meat is also good over a plate of tortilla chips nacho-style or served over rice.

Cauliflower soup - a quick lunch

2010-01-06T14:17:00.003-07:00

Of all the food that I cook, perhaps one out of five makes it to this blog. It's either because I didn't care for the taste or because the recipe was too complicated or required too many ingredients. And sometimes it's because whatever I cooked is all gone before I can take a picture or jot down notes.

This recipe is one that would have not made it to the blog had it not been requested by a friend. It's one that I often make when in a hurry or just not in the mood to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. It's filling, comforting and above all easy and affordable.

Cauliflower Soup

1 small onion, peeled and diced
1 teaspoon of butter
1 bag of frozen cauliflower florets
2 cups of water
1/4 of bouillon cube
salt
pepper
1/4 cup of milk
2 teaspoons of spicy Dijon mustard
1/2 cup of shredded cheese

Saute the onion in the butter until slightly browned. Add the florets, the water and the bouillon cube, bring to a boil and simmer for about five to six minutes, or until the cauliflower is soft. Remove one or two florets if you want some for garnish. Blend the cauliflower with the water into a soft puree. Add the milk and the mustard until well blended, stir in the cheese and taste. Adjust with salt and pepper if needed.

Now...this is your basic cauliflower soup and from here on it's all yours to make it your own. If you use grated sharp Cheddar cheese and have some leftover crumbled bacon, stir in a handful. The cheese combined with the slight hint of mustard and the bacon will make a great soup. You can also cut up some ham and stir it in, add some croutons and some extra cheese and you've got a great lunch. A leftover boiled potato from last night can be cut in dice and added to the final minute of boiling to add some body and volume to the soup.

Whatever you add, think texture. A creamy soup with crunchy croutons will challenge the mouth and keep things interesting.

Chicken in white wine

2010-01-04T19:24:00.002-07:00

Last week's roti left me with some extra chicken to use up. No despair! I love the following dish which is one of my favorite Spanish recipes - I still cannot master my mom's recipe but this one is a close second.

Great for using up leftover wine from the Christmas holiday celebrations. This dish is light enough to serve for lunch or dinner and a big hit with all. Many dishes are better the day after: so is this one.

Serve with rice and a green salad, and some nice, crusty bread for mopping up the sauce.

Chicken in white wine

1 tablespoon of olive oil
2 chicken legs and thighs (or 2 chicken breast, cut in chunks)
1 large onion, peeled and sliced
1 garlic clove, peeled and minced
1 small can of mushrooms (or one cup of fresh mushrooms, sliced)
1 1/2 cup of white wine
1 1/2 cup of warm water
1 chicken bouillon cube
2 bay leaves
thyme
pepper

Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven and quickly brown the chicken on all sides. Add the sliced onion and the garlic clove and saute until translucent. Add the wine, the warm water, the bouillon cube and the mushrooms and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat, add the bay leaves, a sprinkle of thyme and pepper and simmer for at least 45 minutes.

Taste the sauce and see if it needs adjusting. If not, thicken it with a little bit of flour and water and simmer for another five minutes.

Serve over rice or just by itself, with a green salad and plenty of bread! It somehow doesn't look very appetizing on the picture but by golly....it's all gone!

White beans with sausage and spinach

2010-01-03T15:48:00.001-07:00

Whoa! This morning was a slippery slide to run errands: the snow thawed yesterday but froze up again during the night. The outside steps and walkway were covered in a superthin sheet of ice. Perfect weather to run out and do what you gotta do, then come home and make a quick, comforting soup, which is just what I did.

I pulled a serving of spicy breakfast sausage out of the fridge, two handfuls of fresh spinach that was left over from earlier this week and half a carrot. The sausage came out of the freezer last week because I had planned to make biscuits and gravy this weekend but somehow never got around to it. Fortunately, it will be perfect for my quick lunch soup: I'm busy baking some raisin buns and don't want to spend too much time on preparing lunch.

Quick lunch soup

1 serving of breakfast sausage*
1/4 onion, peeled and diced
1/4 cup of carrot, peeled and diced
1 can of white beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups of fresh spinach
2 cups of warm water
1/4 of a bouillon cube

Brown the breakfast sausage in a Dutch oven and add the onion and the carrot. Saute until the onion is translucent, add the can of beans, the two cups of warm water and the 1/4 bouillon cube or stock. Stir, bring to a boil and simmer for ten minutes or until the carrot is soft and the beans are warm. Stir in the spinach, taste and adjust seasonings and simmer for five more minutes until the spinach is wilted.

And that's it. Easy as can be, and it's tasty, filling and affordable.

* You can use any kind of breakfast sausage for this: spicy, sweet...whatever you like. As for biscuits and gravy, I like a combination of sweet and spicy so I usually buy two 16 oz packages with breakfast sausage: one sweet, one spicy, and divide each one in three pieces. I place one of each in a ziploc, mark it and freeze them until I need them.

Surinamese Chicken with Green Beans (Roti)

2010-01-02T20:57:00.003-07:00

The country of Suriname is located on the northern coast of South America. A former colony of the Netherlands, it obtained its independency in 1975 but not before its culture and cuisine became a part of the all-embracing Dutch culture.

The Surinamese cuisine is a very exciting mix of European, Indonesian, Indian and South American influences. Suriname is a huge country with a variety of geographical differences, each one of which influences the regional kitchens. The Dutch brought over workers to plant and harvest the plantations: they were from Indonesia and India, equally former colonies. They prepared their own traditional dishes with local ingredients which in turn became local specialties. Roti is one of those dishes.

The roti is a flat unsweetened pancake, made from flour, oil and water. Often there is no leavener like eggs, although sometimes baking powder will be used. The roti is heated on a hot plate where the baking powder will puff it up, creating pockets of air and a tender structure. In various countries around the world rotis are served one way or the other: sometimes as a breakfast item, covered with sweetened coconut milk or as dinner with a variety of side items. That's how I'm eating my roti today, with a side of potatoes, chicken and green beans. The traditional roti is filled with yellow lentils, but I'm just making an easy one today. If you want to skip this part, a Mexican tortilla for burritos or fajitas will do just fine.

I pulled two chicken legs and thighs out of the freezer (I'm making progress!!) and thawed them to make this dish, one of my favorites.

Suriname Roti

For the roti

1 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 cup of oil
1/4 of warm water
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
extra flour

Mix the flour, the baking powder, salt and pepper in a bowl, and slowly mix in the oil and water. Knead into a flexible dough, adding flour if you need to. Let the dough rest, then cut and roll into balls the size of a small egg. Heat a griddle or cast iron pan. Roll a dough ball into a large, flat pancake and place it on the hot surface: the roti will puff up in various places. Turn it over with a spatula until the other side is done. Place them on a plate and cover with a towel.

For the chicken

1 tablespoon of oil
2 chicken legs and thighs (or two medium chicken breasts cut in large chunks)
1 small onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 chicken bouillon cube
3 cups of water
2 tablespoons of curry powder*
1 pinch of sugar
3 large potatoes, peeled and quartered

In a Dutch oven, heat a little bit of oil and brown the chicken on all sides. Add the garlic and the onion, saute with the chicken for a couple of minutes. Add the curry, the water and the bouillon cube and stir in the pinch of sugar. Bring to a boil, then simmer for thirty minutes. Add the potatoes (you may have to add a little bit of water if the water doesn't cover the potatoes) and simmer until the potatoes are done. If the sauce doesn't thicken through the potatoes, bind it with a little bit of flour.

For the beans

The beans used in this dish are traditionally long beans, or yard beans. You may be able to find them in the Asian grocery stores. In this case, I used standard green beans, they make a valid substitution.

1 lb of green beans
3 cups of water
1 bouillon cube
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper

Cut the green beans in one inch pieces. Bring to a boil with the water and the bouillon cube and boil until tender. Season with salt and pepper.

Place the chicken, the potatoes and the beans on a plate and serve the warm roti on the side. Tear a piece of the roti and fill it with a piece of potato, chicken and green bean, wrap it up and eat it up, yummmm!!! This is not a dish to eat with fork and knive, but with your fingers....

Zuurvlees - A tangy meat stew

2010-01-01T12:52:00.002-07:00

It's snowing outside like crazy, but I don't mind. Safely tucked inside, I'm busy preparing for the New Year, and in good Dutch fashion that means copious amounts of fried food. It's as if we're trying to ring in the New Year while slipping and sliding down Saturation lane, straight into a new decade!

These fried foods are not making any dents in my freezer space but I have to eat dinner as well so I've pulled a package that contains a pound of stew meat. It's the last of the beef from a Hereford steer I kept for a short while. I've set it in a marinade early this morning and, this afternoon, it will sit easy and quietly simmering on the back of the stove. Gotta love a meal that practically takes care of itself during these busy days!

I'm making Zuurvlees, a tangy beef stew from the south of the Netherlands. It's traditionally made with horse meat and appelstroop but I'm sticking to beef. It's a great dish to use cheaper cuts of beef that need some extra "lovin'" on the stove to become tender and tasty.

Zuurvlees

1 lb of beef, cubed
1 large onion, peeled and sliced
2 cups of apple cider vinegar
2 cups of water
2 bay leaves
5 black pepper corns
2 cloves
2 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of brown sugar*
1 tablespoon of flour
1/4 cup of water

Put the beef in a container, place the slices of onion on top and cover with the vinegar and the water. Add two bay leaves, the peppercorns and the two cloves, cover and marinate for at least four hours, but preferably overnight.

Separate the meat from the marinade. Pat it dry with a paper towel, melt the butter in a Dutch oven and brown the meat. Drain the onions and cook with the meat until they're opaque, then add the marinade and the spices. Stir in the brown sugar. Bring back to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until the meat is tender.

Mix the flour with the water and stir little by little into the juices in the pan, so that it thickens like gravy. Serve with mashed potatoes and sweet peas, or over a plate of French fries.

*If you happen to have appelstroop, add a tablespoon of it instead of the brown sugar. You can then use white vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar.

Comforting Lentils

2009-12-28T20:28:00.005-07:00

I indulged in one of my favorite hobbies for lunch: "researching" a mom & pop burger place. I've wanted to visit this place for a long time but somehow never did. Today, however, provided a perfect opportunity so I pulled up to the drive-through, scanned the variety of menu items and placed my rather large order.

How they've been in business since 1953 is a mystery, if you ask me. The service was rude and the fries were cold (gasp!). The hotdog was roasted to a crisp, the burger bun was satured with sauce to the point of falling to pieces and the patty was dry. And most of all.............the cheese on the burger was that ubiquitous orange square that is otherwise known as American cheese. How one dare associate this fraudulent piece of plastic with cheese or with America for that matter is anybody's guess, but I'll say it's darn cheeky!

Needless to say, after today's lunchtime pigout I was not hungry enough to prepare a large dinner. It was late, I had several things I wanted to accomplish before going to bed and the idea of a quick and comforting bowl of something was very appealing.

Enter lentils. I love lentils. They require no soaking so they're quick to cook, they're packed with all kinds of wonderful nutrients and most of all, they are such an honest, down-to-earth kind of food. I find lentils somehow very comforting. And that is just what I needed after today's disappointment!

Comforting Lentils with Chorizo

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1/2 onion, peeled and diced

1 rib of celery, diced

1 carrot, medium-sized, diced
2 cloves of garlic, whole
1 tomato, diced
3 cups of water
1 cup of lentils, rinsed
1 bay leaf
1 slice of salted pork* (about 1 inch thick)
3 oz of Mexican pork chorizo

In your favorite Dutch oven or pan, heat the olive oil and sauté the onion, celery, carrot and garlic for a good three to four minutes on medium heat. Add the tomato and stir into the vegetables until heated. Add the water, the lentils, the pork and the bay leaf. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Check water level to see if you need to add some more, you don't want it to be too dry but not too soupy either. Taste a lentil and see if they're cooked: they should be soft inside but still hold their shape. If they're ready to eat, find those two cloves of garlic and smash them, then stir them back into the pan. Remove the pork and the bay leaf. Stir in the chorizo, simmer for five more minutes so that the chorizo has time to dissolve and flavor the lentils. Taste and decide whether you need to adjust with salt: usually the pork and the chorizo provide enough salt and spicyness. Serves two.

*If you don't have salted pork, add a slice of smoked bacon. The smoky-ness will add extra flavor.

Stuffed Pork Loin

2009-12-27T16:43:00.002-07:00

The day before Christmas was one of much culinary debate (in my head) about what to eat. Turkey again? Prime rib (the official turkey replacement on this holiday) or perhaps even just a festive pizza? I knew for a fact that I did not house a full-fledged turkey in my freezer and could swear that no prime rib was hiding among the many UFOs (Unidentified Frozen Objects), so something else had to take its place. And something did: a beautiful, almost forgotten and pushed to the back frozen pork loin. A porker, you may well say, at almost two pounds. That should do the trick!

Pork on Christmas day almost seems blasphemous, but heck. See if you can get a nice pork loin with some fat on the top: it'll make the roast more moist when you prepare it. Pork nowadays ranks lower in fat than chicken and is leaner than we've been used to so adjust your cooking times accordingly. Internal temperature for pork is, according to the USDA's safety chart, safe to eat at 160F. Go much higher than that and you risk a dry brick for dinner: at 350F in the oven and somewhere between 2 and 5 pounds, you can calculate up to 25 minutes per pound.

Stuffed Pork Loin

1 pork loin, 2 lbs.
1 package of Boursin*
2 cups of fresh spinach leaves, no stems
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of butter
Thyme
Salt
Pepper
Kitchen twine**

6 red potatoes, small
1 red onion, medium size
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
2 bay leaves

Roll cut*** the pork loin, cover with plastic wrap and pound flat to about an inch of thickness. Spread the soft cheese over the inside of the pork, leaving about an inch of margin on all sides. Cover the cheese with the spinach leaves and roll up the pork, tucking in the ends. Tie the loin with kitchen twine. (Don't worry about how it looks since you'll cut the pork into slices before serving it. For now the most important thing is that the meat stays together and the cheese doesn't have a chance to seep out once it's melted.) Sprinkle salt, pepper and thyme on the cutting board and roll the stuffed pork loin in it so that it is evenly seasoned.

Brush the potatoes under streaming water, pat dry and cut in fours. Slice the red onion in six to 8 pieces.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Heat butter and olive oil in a cast iron skillet or Dutch oven and when hot, sear the pork loin on all four sides. Arrange the potato chunks around it, divide the onion on top and add the garlic in between. Place the bay leaves on top of the vegetables and place all this in the oven, middle rack.

Roast for 45 minutes or until the internal temperature reads 160F. Remove the pork from the pan and cover with aluminum foil on a cutting board for about ten minutes. Then cut the string, slice the pork and serve with the potatoes. Merry Christmas!

* Boursin is a soft creamy cheese with garlic and herbs. You may find something similar at your grocery store or if you want to make it yourself, blend four ounces of whipped butter with one package of cream cheese (softened), two minced cloves of garlic, a pinch of salt and pepper, large pinch of your three favorite herbs: thyme, oregano, marjoram, chives, parsley, dill....they can be either dried or fresh, whatever is available to you. Taste and adjust, then blend until smooth and refrigerate overnight, so that the flavors can blend. The leftovers are great on toasted bread or crackers, or whipped into eggs for a wonderful omelet.

** If you don't have kitchen twine, plain old cotton crochet thread or cotton string will work just fine. Avoid waxed twine, or sisal/hemp twine because they will leave fibers in your food. Dental floss is not recommended either! If you have nothing at all that can substitute the twine, hold the pork loin together with toothpicks but the pork loin will loose some of its juices. Compensate by placing a tablespoon of butter on top of the roast when it goes in the oven.

*** Roll cutting allows you to cut the pork loin so that you can "roll" it out into a flat sheet of meat, cover it with stuffing and then "roll" it back up into a stuffed pork loin. It takes a bit of practice, but check here to see how it can be done: http://www.ehow.com/video_2336362_prep-meat-stuffed-pork-loin.html.

White Bean Chili

2009-12-22T21:22:00.005-07:00

Beans are awfully good for you so I try to prepare them at least once or twice a week. Tonight, when I got home, it was too late to spend too much time in the kitchen. On those days my faithful food storage always comes to my rescue! In the next couple of days I'll talk some more about that, but for now I have a quick white bean chili recipe that was ready to eat in less than 30 minutes.

I ate the lemon garlic chicken's drumsticks, wings and part of the breast yesterday. This evening I cut the rest of the meat off the bones, diced it and set it aside for the chili, while the bones went into a pot with cold water with a peeled onion that was cut in half and two carrots and two ribs of celery, both cut in large chunks. A bayleaf, seven or eight black pepper corns and all this went on the backburner to simmer while we ate dinner and watched a movie. This will be my stock for tomorrow's chicken soup.

Beans and canned tomatoes tend to be fairly high in sodium so I refrained from adding any additional salt to the dish. Make sure you taste the chili before reaching for the salt shaker!

White Bean Chili

2 cups of cooked chicken, diced
1 can of chili ready tomatoes*
2 cans of white beans, rinsed
1 teaspoon of chili powder
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
2 cups of water

Optional: cilantro, shredded cheese, sour cream, can of green roasted chiles

*if your store does not sell chili-ready tomatoes, substitute for a can of diced tomatoes and 1/3 teaspoon of chili powder.

This is so easy that it's not even funny. If you blink you'll miss it. Empty one can of chili-ready tomatoes and two cans of rinsed white beans into a pan, stir, add the chili powder, cumin and oregano, stir again and taste. Hot enough? Then leave it at that. If not, you may want to add a small can of green roasted chiles or some fresh jalapeño, whatever tickles your fancy. Add one or two cups of water, depending on how thick or soupy you like your chili, stir in the chicken and warm up for about ten minutes over medium heat. Taste again and adjust. Serve hot with some cheese, sour cream and fresh cilantro if you wish, it's pretty good without it too :-)

Actually, it was so good that it was all gone before I could take a picture. Go figure.

Lemon Garlic Chicken

2009-12-21T14:30:00.007-07:00

I'm starting a new job today. During the last four months I've been getting up before the crack of dawn so I could be at work at 7am, and now my work day doesn't start until 3:30pm. Needless to say, it'll be a change of pace and an adjustment to my daily planning. Warm dinner will now be lunch, dinner will have to be something quick and easy.

Last night, I pulled a frozen whole chicken from the freezer. It'll serve for lunch today, leave leftovers for tomorrow and a nice carcass for some chicken soup this weekend.

Lemony Garlic Chicken

1 lemon

4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

1/4 cup of olive oil

1 teaspoon of salt and pepper each
1 teaspoon of basil leaves, dried
1 bayleaf
1 whole chicken, giblets removed

Zest the lemon before slicing in half and extracting the juice. Set the two lemon halves aside. Mix the juice with the garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs. Stir in the zest. Pat the chicken dry with some paper towels and place the two squeezed lemon halves inside the cavity, together with the bayleaf. Put the chicken in a large ziploc bag, pour in the marinade and close the bag. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day, preheat the oven to 375F while your remove the chicken from the refrigerator. Truss the chicken and place it in a Dutch oven or on a baking sheet. Bake for 1 hour or until the inside temperature of the chicken measures 165F or higher. If the chicken browns too much before it is ready, tent it with aluminum foil.

When ready, remove the chicken from the oven, rest for 10 minutes and cut and serve as usual.

And now for something completely different.....

2009-12-20T23:11:00.006-07:00

It would be nice to say that and I wish some things were different. But the only thing that has changed is the name, the location and the time. I am three years further since the last post, and my freezer is still full. Granted....it's a different freezer, with different food and I learned to not stock up on any food that I wouldn't eat but still......it's full.

Here we go again!

Grilled Chicken Avocado Wrap

2006-05-08T01:15:00.003-07:00

Okay, I confess the bags are still mostly unpacked, and I'm already gearing up to head over to Seattle for the weekend to attend the cheese festival. Since my last post, I have put new vegetable beds in, and I planted the equivalent of half a fresh produce stand. We'll see what will come from it!

In the meantime, the freezer project continues. Lately, with school and work, I've resorted to the easy-dinner option: grilled chicken with potatoes and a salad. There is barely anything better than the smell of grilled chicken when you walk into the kitchen, and the sight of a golden chicken with crispy, paperthin skin and juicy legs. I will pen down the exact ingredients and instructions for a Sunday meal one of these days!

For today, I played the leftover game. This is where I round up every little container and ziploc baggie in the refrigerator and fix a meal out of it. I was in luck: four tortilla wraps, two cups of grilled chicken meat and half an avocado.

Grilled Chicken Avocado Wrap

4 tortilla wraps
2 cups of grilled chicken meat
1/2 avocado
1 cup of shredded cheese
2 tablespoons of your favorite salsa
salt & pepper

Heat up your GF grill or grill pan. In the meantime, dice the grilled chicken meat and the avocado and mix in a bowl. Fold in the cheese and the salsa and add some salt and pepper to taste. Heat the tortillas briefly in the microwave so that they are easier to fold, place two spoons of chicken mix in the middle and fold each tortilla as if it were a burrito. Grill for several minutes or until the wraps are warm.

Serve with additional salsa.

Strawberry Sour Cream Pie

2006-04-30T00:51:00.004-07:00

I'm back from my trip, and I've brought home the most amazing recipes! Hurrah!! My bag is still unpacked, and there is a huge stack of mail on the counter, but who cares.....I *must* share this recipe with you. On my way to Bryce Canyon in Utah, I stopped in a town so small it's not even on the map. Looking for a bite to eat, I ended up in a tiny little cafe and had one of the most memorable meals ever, partly because of the excellent food, and partly because of the friendliness of the staff. The last part of that meal was ofcourse dessert and when I hesitated because I was already so full, the waitress said I could not possibly leave without trying the sour cream pie. Well, call me a sucker, but who says no to a piece of pie? I, for one, don't and I'm sure glad I didn't. And hopefully, after you tasted it yourself, you're glad I didn't either!!

When I asked for the recipe, I received the typical "oh a cup of this and a tablespoon of that" but no clear directions. I took notes as well as I could, and when I got home, the first thing I did was to pull out a couple of pie shells I keep in the freezer for emergencies, like this :-)
The dough is neither salt nor sweet so is perfect for either quiches, pies or empanadas, so make sure you always have one or two at hand! They thaw in a heartbeat and provide their own pan which saves on dishes to wash.

Since I didn't get proper measurements, I've been trial baking for the last couple of days, much to everybody's enjoyment. The recipe below produces a pie that comes closest to my Utah experience.

Strawberry Sour Cream Pie
1 unbaked pie shell
2 medium eggs
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of sour cream
1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For topping:
1 lb fresh strawberries
1 tablespoon of sugar

Heat the oven at 350. Pull the pie shell out of the freezer and set aside. In the meantime, unearth the mixer and beat the two eggs for about five minutes at medium speed, until they've doubled in volume. While mixing, pour in the sugar in three stages, each time waiting until the eggs have successfully absorbed the sugar and mixed it well. After you have mixed in all the sugar, continue to mix until the eggs and sugar combination doubles again in volume, add the sour cream and continue to mix until the dough has a consistent light yellow coloring and a thicker consistency, usually after another five minutes of medium mixing.

While you continue to mix, add the salt and the flour and the vanilla extract, beat until all the flour has been integrated into the mix and pour it into the pie shell. Place the shell in the preheated oven and set the timer for 30 minutes.

For the topping, wash and hull the strawberries, then chop them in little inch-size pieces and toss in a bowl with the sugar. Place in refrigerator.

Bake the pie until the middle is set, or 30 minutes, and set aside to cool. Chill for at least three hours, and place the strawberries on top right before serving. As with everyting, this pie tastes better the next day.

You can replace the strawberries with blueberries, peaches, plums or chocolate shavings.
Okay, it's time for you to get cooking and for me to get my luggage unpacked, see you in a day or two for more roadtrip recipes!

Chicken: Mexican and Texican

2006-03-26T18:45:00.004-07:00

There are days that I don't feel like cooking. I wake up uninspired in the morning, shuffle over to the freezer or fridge and just stare at the insides. I stare at what's on the shelves, at what's hiding in the crisper, I uninterestedly squeeze the celery or poke a tomato and close the doors. After five seconds, I open them again, as if expecting an inspiring new load of groceries, or for the cooking muse to hit me over the head with a stale piece of cheese. But no such luck.

The last three weeks have been like that. Usually my night stand contains stacks of cooking books, a newsletter or two with dates for cooking classes, and several gastronomy travel guides, and I look forward to going to bed and reading for a while. The recipes line up in my head after I have fallen asleep, and when I wake up in the morning, one of the first thoughts is : "Yummmm......I think I'll fix some *insert name of dish here* today", and all is well. I jog over to the freezer, make sure I have all the ingredients and go on my merry way. But lately, I have left the books unopened and even returned the Two Fat Ladies cooking video series back to the library without viewing.

But God is good, and He must have pitied me because last night the Taste of Home Cooking Show (http://www.tasteofhomeschools.com) came to town. Proud as a puppy I entered the premises of the Four Rivers Cultural Center with my ticket in hand, ready to be whipped back into cooking shape, and encouraged to be inspired. It was a fun evening, with wonderful, easy to prepare recipes, tips and suggestions, and lots and lots of material. The next morning, I knew I was back on track, because the first thing on my mind was a great pork barbecue dish that had been prepared at the show. Hurray!!!! I'm not big on pork unless it's in the shape of a slab of bacon, so I'm preparing the meal with chicken instead.

Tortillas with Pulled Chicken Barbecue

1/2 can chopped green chilies (4 oz)
1/2 can tomato sauce (8 oz)
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced thin
2 tablespoons of your favorite salsa
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 large chicken breasts
1 cup cooked black beans, rinsed and drained
Flour tortillas
Sour cream
Salsa

In a non-stick pan with lid, or a crockpot, add the chilies, tomato sauce, barbecue sauce, onion, salsa, chili powder and cumin, and stir the ingredients. Bring to a slow boil, add the whole chicken breasts and the beans, and turn low to a simmer. Set you crockpot to high. Cover and let it cook for 2 1/2 hours. Take the chicken out of the pot, and with two forks, pull the meat in shreds, return it to the pan and stir the meat into the sauce. Heat the tortillas, scoop a generous amount of chicken barbecue in one, fold, dollop some sour cream and salsa on top and enjoy this delicious meal. Serves two for lunch, or four for a snack.

Now what to do with the leftover chilies and tomato sauce? No worries !!

Mexican Chicken and Bean Soup

2 Maggi Chicken and Tomato bouillon cubes (from the Hispanic section in your supermarket)
8 cups of water
2 chicken breasts
3 ribs of celery, cut in 1 inch pieces
2 cups of baby carrots
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced thick
1/2 can of chopped green chilies
1/2 can of cooked black beans, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon of dry taco mix

Dissolve the two bouillon cubes in the 8 cups of water, add to a stock or soup pot and bring slowly to a boil. Add the two whole chicken breast, and simmer on low for a good hour. Remove the chicken from the bouillon, cut into bitesize pieces and return to the pot. Add the celery, carrots, onion, chillies and beans, stir and finally add the taco mix. Stir well, bring to a boil, turn low and simmer for another forty minutes, salt and pepper to taste if needed.

This soup is best the next day, with a spoon of salsa, sourcream and some crunchy tortilla chips. Add some cilantro on top for color.

Potage with chorizo

2006-03-09T18:30:00.003-07:00

Potage with chorizo really doesn't *sound* that appetizing, does it? Especially if you don't know what potage is, I guess. Poh-taaazh..... I love that word. Here, say it with me: pohhhhh-taaaaaazzzzzhhhhhh........ I get visions of sturdy clay pots with bubbling, savory broth containing vegetables and meat, on a solid old farmers kitchen table in the middle of the Provence, accompanied by a piece of crusty French bread, and a fancy piece of cheese. Not that I've ever been to the Provence, mind you. Or at least doubt I have. But the word potage just sort of rolls of your tongue. Poh-tah-zhe. Poh-tah-zhe with chorizo. No, definitely doesn't sound right. Chorizo is such an abrupt, strong short word. Cho-ree-zoh. Almost sounds Japanese, if you didn't know any better. Which I don't, let's face it. Oh by the way, potage is " liquid food prepared from meat, fish, or vegetable stock combined with various other ingredients and often containing solid pieces", as defined by Answers.com. Hmmm....I think I like my visual better.

Julie Engel from the Argus had a nice article about bridging cultural gaps through food in last Sunday's edition. Two of the food items she mentioned have stuck with me all week: chorizo and baked ziti. Neither one of these dishes are in my freezer so I'm caught in a dilemma. Should I give the freezer a break for a day? I weigh my chances, yes no yes no, and go with the yes. What the heck, I'll just make up for it tomorrow, how's that !!

Potage with chorizo

Chorizo is a brilliant invention: a spicy pork sausage with garlic and paprika. Yummmm !!! It's originally from Spain, but can also be found in Mexico and the Caribbean, although in a slightly different version. The Spanish chorizos are usually cured, the Mexican chorizo is often fresh. For today's dish we're using the Spanish sausages, you can find these at Red Apple.

1 tablespoon of olive oil
2 large garlic cloves, peeled
1 large onion, peeled
4 medium potatoes, peeled
3 chorizos, cut in 2 inch pieces
warm water
half a cube of Maggi Pollo con Tomate bouillon (or beef bouillon)
1 1/2 cups of turnip greens, green cabbage or kale
pinch of thyme
salt, pepper
1/2 tablespoon of paprika

Choose a pan, or pot, with a lid. Add the olive oil to the pan and put it on the stove, on medium. Thinly slice the garlic cloves, chop the onion and add both to the pan, stirring carefully, letting the onions get soft. Cut the potatoes in bitesize pieces, and add to the onions. Keep stirring occassionally so that the garlic doesn't burn. Add the chorizo, cook for five minutes, then add just enough warm water to cover the contents. Carefully stir in the bouillon cube and the greens, then top off with the pinch of thyme, and the paprika. Bring quickly to a boil, lower to simmer and cover with a lid. Let it simmer until the potatoes are done, approximately twenty minutes. About ten minutes into the cooking, uncover the pot and stir the ingredients once. This will release some of the starches in the potato and thicken the broth. Serves 4.

This is great: it's simple, good, solid, honest food. Gotta love it!!

Pork Panini with Roasted Red Peppers

2006-03-08T09:58:00.001-07:00

Panini is plural for panino, bread roll, in Italian. The word itself creates a visual image of crunchy grilled bread with dark crisscross marks on the outside, and hot tasty meat, roasted vegetables and oozing cheese on the inside.

Yesterday I pulled four thin cut pork loin boneless chops out of the freezer. The thin cut serves especially well for sandwiches, as it cooks quicker. And with four crunchy rolls from our local Tres Coronas Bakery (more about this place some other time!), we'll have a quick and tasty lunch today. Serves four.

Pork Panini

1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced very thin
1 can of mushrooms, 4 oz, drained
4 thin cut pork loins, boneless
1 tablespoon of rosemary (dried or fresh)
4 rolls
4 slices of Swiss or American cheese
roasted red peppers (the dollar stores carries these often, buy some extra next time you're in there!)
salt and pepper

Melt 1/2 of the olive oil in a large skillet or grill pan and add the sliced onion, letting it simmer on low until the onion is soft and lightly browned, about ten minutes. Drain the can of mushrooms and add to the onions, simmer on low for five more minutes, add a small pinch of salt and pepper, then push them to one side of the pan.

Lightly salt and pepper the pork chops on both sides and rub in the rosemary. Melt the rest of the oil in the pan and quickly sear the meat on both side, then turn to low. Stir the onions with the mushrooms once or twice to make sure they heat evenly.

Mix the mustard with the mayo, and cut the bread lengthwise, spreading the mayo-mustard on the bottom piece. Slice the roasted red peppers.

Assemble the sandwich as follows: place a piece of pork on the bottom part of the sandwich, on top of the mayo-mustard. Cover the pork with a slice of cheese. Scoop a good helping of onions and mushrooms on top, garnish this with roasted red pepper slices and cover it all with the top part of the sandwich. Place this between the plates of your former-boxer-turned-cooking-fiend countertop grill and grill briefly. You can also use your stovetop grilling pan or skillet, turning it over so both sides will toast evenly. Place a plate on top of the sandwich to weigh it down.

*if you like a bit of heat, put a pinch of red chili flakes on top of your onions before you grill the sandwich

Bon Profito!

Mixed Berry Cobbler

2006-03-05T19:27:00.002-07:00

When I opened the ad circular of one of our local stores, the words "Freezer Frenzy: March is National Frozen Food Month!" stared me straight in the face, as if mocking me. For the last three days, I have been down with a nasty flu. Just thinking about cooking or food was enough to send me straight back to bed, and I have not made any progress on getting our freezers emptied out. How frustrating!

Looking at the ads again this evening I groan, not so much at the sight of food (I must be getting better!), but because I am missing out on some great deals. It's been "freezer frenzy" in my house since last October and I am not even close to having enough space cleaned out so I can buy new food!

The National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association (NFRA) has been coordinating the March National Frozen Food Month promotion for 21 years. Why? Because it works, they say. The sales numbers of frozen foods increase considerably during that month, enough to organize a $10,000 sweepstakes. They also provide recipes and tips at http://www.bringustoyourtable.com/.

Here I learn that not only is March Frozen Food month, but that in the June/July timeframe we can expect a Summer Favorites Ice Cream and Novelties sales event. And when I read that October is the Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Festival month, I am encouraged to continue with my own freezer frenzy project. I may have my freezers empty just in time for the festival! How about you?

Mixed Berry Cobbler

2 cups of frozen berry mix
1 cup of sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup and 2 tablespoons milk, room temperature
1 tablespoon butter, melted

Preheat the oven and set at 350F. Mix the frozen berries with a 1/4 cup of the sugar and set to the side. Stir flour, 1/2 cup of the sugar, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Pour in the milk and stir until you have a smooth batter.

Place the butter in a 9 inch pie pan and swirl around so you cover the bottom of the pan. Pour in the batter, then put the berries on top, spreading them evenly. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden on the middle rack of the oven. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup sugar over the pie when it comes out of the oven. Serve warm with some vanilla ice cream.

Two quiches: salmon and chicken-vegetable

2006-03-01T10:52:00.001-07:00

Triple hurray for the freezer in the garage! I've shuffled some items around and I have seen its bottom! Noooo....not that bottom, but I am excited about the fact that we are making progress in this effort to use up all we have in the freezer and replace it with some fresh items. Incidentally, it is giving me an excellent idea on what to skip hoarding next time, or what to safely buy five-fold when it's on sale, like half-gallons of milk or frozen vegetable mixes.

BJ, my husband, is a milk-drinker but I am not, so we only freeze half gallons (remove about a 1/4 cup from each plastic bottle before you freeze it, the milk will expand and might break the container if you don't). I have come to really appreciate my huge quantity of frozen vegetables, and will probably continue to stock those, as they come in so handy for stews, soups and as we will see today, quiches. Nothing beats the fresh stuff ofcourse, but frozen is a close second. And I have also learned to freeze meat in smaller portions, to always have a fryer or two on hand and since I have learned to cut and debone a chicken, I no longer have to buy the expensive frozen chicken breasts or tenders ! See Basic Chicken Soup post from November 19 2005 for details on how to cut up a chicken.

Yesterday, I found two 9 inch pie crusts in that same garage freezer, so today we're having Quiche. This can be a great meal for lunch with a salad, or a dinner party if you offer various fillings. Be creative!

Salmon Quiche

1 cup small broccoli crowns (if you use fresh broccoli, steam them first before using)
1 can salmon (16 oz)
5 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon corn meal or breadcrumbs
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper

Preheat oven at 350F. Drain the salmon well and remove skin and bones as well as you can. Mix the eggs in a bowl, and add the milk slowly, beat again, and add in the tomato paste, and beat again until well blended. Remove the pie crust from the freezer, distribute the corn meal or breadcrumbs evenly over the bottom, and place pieces of the salmon on top. A quiche will usually be cut in 8 wedges, like a pie, so make sure each piece has a nice chunk of salmon. Place the broccoli in between the salmon pieces, ensuring that the surface of the pie is well covered. Pour the egg mixture over the salmon and the broccoli, filling the pie crust. Do not overpour.

Place in the middle of the oven and bake for 45'-50' or until a toothpick comes out clear.

This is great served straight from the oven, with a nice salad or cold the next day with some ketchup.

Chicken Vegetable Quiche

2 cups of mixed frozen vegetables: I chose corn, green beans and red peppers for this quiche.
5 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 large chicken breast
1/2 tablespoon italian seasoning
pinch of thyme
salt
pepper
olive oil
1 garlic clove
brie or grated cheese
1 tablespoon of breadcrumbs or corn meal

Mix the vegetables in a bowl and season with salt, pepper, and the herbs. Set aside. Cut the chicken in small, bitesize pieces and brown quickly in a pan with some olive oil and garlic. Add to the vegetables and stir. Mix the eggs with the milk, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Drain the vegetable/chicken mix of any liquids that might have accumulated at the bottom of the bowl and place in the pie crust, after you have covered the bottom of the crust with the breadcrumbs or the corn meal. This will soak up any liquid that might generate during cooking. Distribute the vegetable/chicken mix over the pie crust. Add grated cheese, or little chunks of brie, then pour over the egg mixture and fill the pie crust.

Place in a preheated oven at 350F and cook for 45-50 minutes.

Have a lovely meal!

Easy Paella

2006-02-27T14:33:00.004-07:00

We are all over the globe this month! Asian, Dutch and now Spanish. This is an easy paella, a rice dish with chicken and seafood, that will hopefully bring a little bit of sunshine on this stormy Monday afternoon.

I raided the freezer and found a couple of chicken tenders, half a pound of seafood mix* and a bag of yellow rice. Here we go!!

Easy Paella
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 chicken tenders (or a small chicken breast)
1 medium onion, peeled and minced
1 tomato, grated
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 pound of seafood mix (shrimp, squid, mussels etc)
1 bag of yellow rice mix (5 oz)
2 cups of warm water
1/4 of chicken bouillon cube
1/2 cup of green peas
strips of roasted red pepper
1 lemon

Cut the chicken in bitesize pieces, peel and chop the garlic and heat the oil in a flat base, non-stick skillet with a lid. Quickly cook the chicken, then remove from the skillet. Add the onion, the tomato and the garlic and cook while stirring until most of the liquid is gone and it almost becomes a paste. Add the seafood mix and stir regularly until the shrimp are cooked, then put the chicken back in. Mix it together, pour in the package of yellow rice, stir several times until the rice is coated with the olive oil and add the warm water and the quarter bouillon cube. Add the peas and stir everything together.

Bring everything to a boil, turn to simmer and place the lid on the pan. From this point on, do not stir the rice anymore. After about fifteen minutes, carefully lift the lid. If most of the liquid has gone, add the red roasted pepper strips on top and replace the lid. The rice should cook dry in about another five minutes, leaving you with a yummy pan full of yellow rice with chicken and seafood, i.e. easy paella.

Serve on warm plates, with a slice of lemon so you can add lemon juice to your taste.

Sometimes simple is nice....Beef broth with biscuits

2006-02-24T13:25:00.002-07:00

I went out to dinner last night, to a place that had been recommended by a coworker. The food was alright but not great, and I was a little disappointed. I love good food and it's hard enough to get something good out here where I live, so I had high hopes. But the ragout was too salty, the salad bar had dried out cucumber slices and crusty pasta salad, and the focaccia was spongy and wet.

So today's lunch was so refreshing, a simple beef broth with pieces of meat, some celery and carrots, and homemade biscuits. Easy peasy and oh so nice!

Beef broth

1 piece of beef (roast cut) approximately 3/4 to 1 pound)
1 big peeled onion
3 ribs of celery
a handful of baby carrots or sliced and peeled carrots
1 cube of beef bouillon

Place the beef in a pan, add water to cover, add the onion and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer on low for 2 hours. Set aside and cool. Make sure you refrigerate your stock within two hours.

The next day: cut and wash the celery and carrots, and brown quickly in a pan. Bring the broth to a boil, add the vegetables, the bouillon cube and turn down to simmer until the vegetables are cooked. Cut the meat in bitesize chunks and put back in the pan.

This broth is great the first day to serve with some ravioli, leaving enough liquid and reserving the meat and vegetables for a hearty lunch the day after.

Teriyaki beef with rice and spinach

2006-02-23T10:05:00.001-07:00

Why do we have so much stuff???? I am looking at the shelves in our refrigerator door, and there must be at least ten packages with sauces from fastfood chains, two jars of mustard, one of mayo, about a million (give or take a few) salad dressings, pickles and whatnots.

The packages with sauce go right in the trash, they've been there for eons so I am not even going to bother. I check expiration dates on all the salad dressings and but one or two are still good, so out they go too. Hey, I've instantly created some space ! While I'm at it, I also check what's in the crisper and what else needs to go, I have half of that roast left from yesterday. Ah...the crisper reveals fresh spinach that I bought the other day.

It's amazing what we keep in our refrigerator. After only eight minutes ( I timed it for your convenience), I have gotten rid of some items, rearranged some others, and found several ones that I didn't even know I had ( some mini wedges of brie cheese that will come in handy for the quiche I am making later this week!). I even wiped down some shelves and it all looks a lot better now! Set your timer and see how much you can get rid of, rearrange, clean and come up with in eight minutes, and drop me an email to let me know!

Time to fix dinner, I decided to cut the remainder of that beef roast in half. One half goes in a pot with water and an onion, for a nice beef soup, the other one I'm slicing for beef teriyaki. One more half empty bottle of sauce that I can get rid of :-)

Teriyaki Beef with rice and spinach

1 lb of beef, sliced in bitesize portions
2 cloves of garlic
teriyaki sauce (enough to cover and marinate meat)
a large handful of spinach per person
pinch of dried hot pepper seeds (like the ones you get with your pizza)
cup of rice
2 1/2 cups of water
salt
oil

Marinate the meat in the sauce for at least 30 minutes before preparation. Heat a teaspoon of oil in a nonstick pan and fish the pieces of meat out of the marinade, and brown the meat on both sides. Add the rest of the marinade with 1/2 cup of warm water and simmer while you prepare the rest of the food.

Put one cup of rice in a pan, add two cups of water, a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Cover with lid, turn down to simmer and set the timer for 20 minutes. I cook on electric and this is the way it works for me, you may have to experiment in the beginning.

Peel and chop the two cloves of garlic, and stir quickly in another skillet that has a teaspoon of hot oil. Add the washed spinach to the garlic and stir until the spinach is limp, sprinkle the hot peppers over the spinach, a pinch of salt and black pepper and set to the side.

Put a spoonful or two of rice on a plate, add the spinach on one side, and meat with sauce on the other. You have yourself a quick and tasty meal, and a cleaner, more organized refrigerator to boot!

*if you don't have any teriyaki sauce, don't despair, you may have a salad dressing that will do the trick: there's a citrus vinaigrette that you can add a splash of soy sauce too (and why not open up one of those endless cans of mandarine oranges that you have in your pantry and add it to the meat?), there's a ginger and soy based salad dressing that is great with beef and crushed pineapple (ha! another can gone out of the pantry!) or just use soy sauce laced with crushed pineapple liquid for a marinade. and if you don't know, why don't you send me an email or leave me a comment with what you have, and we'll think of something!*

If you have any leftover rice, save it until the next morning, add a splash of milk and some cinnamon and brown sugar, nuke it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and breakfast is ready :-)

Beef Balsamico

2006-02-21T08:37:00.002-07:00

I always get a chuckle out of reading restaurant's menu cards. The fancier the better, because I've noticed a tendency in this country that all that is foreign is good, even if we don't know what it means. Well, for Pete's sake, if you are going to put a dish on the menu, at least check how to spell it properly! If you're up for a chuckle, check out the http://www.engrish.com website for some hilarious menu cards, translation mistakes and the likes.

And while I giggle about the PocariSweat soft drink, and wish I could have some 'cozy chocolates for heroines" (I am not joking! Talk about defined target audience!), I pull a piece of beef out of the freezer. Ah ! I guess we'll be eating "meat for the heroe of this house" today :-)

I was raised in a Dutch-Indonesian household, and while some of my traits are definitely more netherlandish, such as being thrifty and (sometimes very annoying) outspoken, my cooking habits are definitely more asian. This translates to cooking for ten when there are only two people in the household, which leads to food for eight frozen in the freezer, which leads to eh...well this blog for one! Slowly but surely I am learning to cut down on my portions.

The beef roast I have pulled out of the freezer is little over 3 pounds, so I cut it in half and put the other part in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator: we'll look at that in the next couple of days. Today we are making Beef Balsamico, a nice beef stew with vegetables, and a hint of summer.

Beef Balsamico

1 1/2 pound beef, cubed
1 1/2 cup beef bouillon (1 1/2 cup hot water and one beef bouillon cube)
2 tbsp balsamico vinegar
2 cups of pepper stir fry, or other vegetables (broccoli, corn, carrots, green beans, whatever you have in the freezer or pantry that needs to go)
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 medium onion
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp olive oil
sour cream (optional)

Heat the olive oil in a skillet and brown. Add onion, garlic and potatoes and stir occasionally until onions are transparent, be careful not to burn the garlic! In the meantime, set your crockpot to high. Add the bouillon to the skillet, add the vegetables and the thyme, stir in the balsamico and bring to a boil. Pour the contents of the skillet into the crockpot and cook on high for approximately 2 hours, or until beef is tender. The length of time depends on the beef and on your crockpot, so keep an eye on it. If you prefer your veggies crunchy, do not add them in until the last thirty minutes of cooking.

Serve in a bowl, hot, with a good piece of bread and a dollop of sour cream. This is good, whether you're a heroine or not!

Ham & Cheese Breakfast Eh.....Something

2006-02-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Grocery stores often have a clearance or quick sale rack, mainly with bakery items. The Joe store has this awesome Almond Poppy Seed cake that's a great buy at their discount prices, but it's hard to find because everybody else seems to love that particular cake too. So when I am able to score one, I am thrilled. And so are my arteries, I am sure, since this cake is riddled with all kinds of sugars and fatty stuff. Another item to find on these racks is day old Italian loaves, at less than a dollar a piece, and that's what we're cooking with today.

Every now and then I will take home one of those loaves, slice and wrap it and freeze it for later use. It's the basis for a great breakfast/brunch dish, so let's get started. I just don't know what to call it, so if you have a suggestion, do mail me!

Ham and Cheese Breakfast Something

1/2 loaf of day old italian loaf, cubed

6 eggs

1 1/2 cup of cheese

1/2 cup of milk

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped

6 slices of ham, cut into 1 inch pieces (you can also use salami, bologna or turkey)

1 tablespoon butter or olive oil

3 tablespoons of mustard

pepper, optional

*if you don't care for mustard, you could also try adding fresh garlic and some black olives for a more mediterranean dish. Stir in a teaspoon of your favorite herbs, such as rosemary, thyme or italian seasoning for extra dimension. *

Grease an ovendish with half of the butter or olive oil. Add the rest to a bowl, add the onion and microwave for three minutes or until onion is soft. In another bowl, beat the eggs with the milk and mustard, add pepper if you wish. Toss the bread with the onion, and one cup of cheese and the ham pieces and lay out in the greased ovendish, pour over the milk/egg mixture, add the rest of the cheese on top and bake in an oven at 350 for approximately 30 minutes. You can check to see if the dish is ready by inserting a knife in the middle, if it comes out clean it's done.

This is great served immediately with some ketchup and a hot cup of coffee, especially on a cold day such as today!

Black Beans with Spicy Salsa and Sour Cream

2006-02-16T09:55:00.002-07:00

"Beans, beans, the magical fruit......." my ex-husband used to sing when I told him we'd be eating beans for dinner. Not necessarily the romantic serenade one expects to hear on Valentine's Day but I'll take it! Beans offer protein without much saturated fat and with plenty of healthful fiber and micronutrients, and will offset nicely all the other junk we're eating today such as chocolates and cupcakes. Besides, our pantry shelves are stacked with bags of beans, lentils and split peas, and it's time to get those babies soaking.

This whole project started with wanting, or needing, to clean out the freezer and making some more space. I had so much food in my pantries, garages, shelves, kitchen cupboards and freezer that it was starting to look like the Grocery Outlet, or the Canned Food Morgue, as some people gently put it. I am a sucker for a good deal, so I've been hoarding food for years. Image the overwhelming amount of food I had!

The first thing I did was toss anything that was past the due date. A deal is a deal, but botulism is not part of it, so in the trash went many a can. What a waste of money, and how shameful to know that so many are hungry in this world while I am throwing out food. God calls us to be good stewards of our (his) money, and this was definitely not a good way to do it. I sorted the cans that were left and realized that the cat was going to have a ball: twentyfour cans of tuna alone were sitting on a shelf, and you might remember that I am not a big fish eater!

But this mindset also translated to other areas in the house: one of the things I noticed is that I always had so much laundry. Or do I have too many clothes? Slowly but surely I have started to sort my clothes, by what stays and what goes to the women's shelter or the thrift store. And what is with all the paper clutter? So out went the daily newspaper. I don't have time, or take the time, to read it every day and now that I only get the weekend issue, I don't feel so guilty and I save a bunch of money.

Anyway, back to the beans. A couple of weeks ago, the local Joe store had a great deal on legumes, so I bought several bags of black, red, white, pinto, lentils and split peas. They're cheap, they're full of good stuff and they're easy to prepare, what more does a hard working girl want? Today we're fixing Black Beans, topped with spicy salsa, sour cream and a handful of your favorite tortilla chips, a great meal for lunch or dinner.

Black Beans with Salsa and Sour Cream
1 cup of black beans, washed and drained

3 cups of water

1 bouillon cube (chicken w/ tomato is my favorite for this)

2 tablespoons of tomato paste

1 cup of frozen vegetables (mix of corn, peppers, broccoli, green beans, carrots: think color)

spicy salsa

sour cream

tortilla chips

Soak the beans overnight in water if you remember, or add them to a crockpot with three cups of water and the bouillon cube. Follow the cooking instructions on the bag, or set the crockpot on high and cook until tender. Stir in the tomato paste, a spoonful or two of your favorite salsa, salt and pepper to taste. In the microwave, heat up your veggies until hot. (You could also stir them in with the beans in the crockpot, but then they all go black and ugly. If you don't mind go for it, it will save you a dish or two to wash!)

Ladle the beans in a bowl, add the veggies, and top with salsa and sour cream. Grab a handful of your favorite tortilla chips and enjoy!

Chicken gravy with mushrooms

2006-02-12T00:22:00.001-07:00

Ahhh this is the best part of making roast chicken with yesterday's recipe! Remember the two quarts of water, bouillon and drippings that were left after roasting the chicken? Let's make that into something tasteful and use up another can out of the pantry.

Chicken Gravy with Mushrooms

2 cups of chicken

remainder of drippings and liquid from the roasting pan

1 can of mushrooms, drained

1/2 cup of flour

Pull the remainder of the roast chicken off the bones, and remove any leftover skins. Heat the remainder of the drippings and liquid from the roasting pan, and slowly whisk in the flour. Bring the liquid to a rolling boil, boil for one minute, then lower the heat. Fold in the chicken meat, the drained mushrooms and warm up. Serve over biscuits or toast.

Our freezer is slowly but surely showing some open space. How about yours?

Roast Chicken with Rosemary and Garlic

2006-02-11T20:16:00.001-07:00

For our wedding we received wonderful gifts, one of which is a nice large roaster (kinda like a crockpot but with a metal liner and a roasting rack). Since all our cooking is done with electric, and our ovens are rather large to cook for just the two of us, I much prefer to do my baking and roasting in our roaster. Especially chicken comes out crisp, juicy and quick! I love chicken. It is versatile, price efficient and easy to prepare, and I always keep two or three whole fryers in the freezer. Whole fryers are usually 99 cents a pound, and a 4-5 pounder will be sufficient for two for dinner and leave you enough chicken for a nice roast chicken salad, or chicken sandwiches the next day. You will love this easy recipe!

Roast Chicken with Rosemary and Garlic

1 whole fryer

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

3 cloves of garlic

1 tsp dried rosemary (or fresh if you keep a herb box in your kitchen!)

1 cube of chicken broth

2 cups of hot water

Remove the giblets from the chicken (save them for dog cookies!), and rinse it, inside and out. Dry with kitchen paper. Preheat the roaster according to instructions, and add two cups of hot water to the bottom of the roaster. Drop in the cube of chicken broth.

Chop the garlic and mix with one tablespoon of olive oil and the salt and pepper. Rub the chicken with half of this mixture. Carefully loosen the skin on the chicken breast, and rub the rest of the mixture on the flesh, then pat the skin back into place. Drizzle the rest of the olive oil over the chicken, tuck in the wings, tie its legs together with some kitchen string and place the whole chicken on its back on the roaster, then put the lid in place, kick back and relax.

It will take approximately 25 minutes per pound to be ready, but after an hour you may want to check and see how the chicken is faring. The skin should be crisp and brown, and the temperature on the meat thermometer should read 180F when inserted deep into the thigh.

Remove the chicken from the roaster, and let it rest for ten minutes on a cutting board before you cut it up in pieces. Serve with a nice salad and some crunchy bread, yummmm !!!

By the way, save the leftovers and the liquid in the roaster for tomorrow's chicken ragout with mushrooms. Easy to make, and excellent on toast!

Spaghetti alla Bolognesa

2006-02-10T09:20:00.003-07:00

...or just plain ole "spagbog", as we call it.

At this rate, I am never going to get that freezer cleaned out. Don't you know it, when you start something new, life always gets in the way. Finally ready to write that book? Your house floods. Wanna lose some weight? The store has an all-time sale on your favorite chocolate bar. Etc etc etc. Devilish distractions, I call them. So too with this freezer fun. Now that I have my mind set of getting this thing taken care of, I often get home late, or eat on the road (I'm getting better at ordering smaller portions and not taking anything home!). But if you can prepare a little ahead, this dish can be ready and on the table in 30 minutes. Hurray!!!

One of the ways to be ready for situations like this is to cook your hamburger meat beforehand. Having some browned beef in the freezer, appropriately marked and wrapped, will have you serve nachos in no time, or whip up this spaghetti dish in less than thirty minutes. Do make sure that, if you decide to cook and freeze the meat, you cook it thoroughly and let it cool down sufficiently before you do so!

I cook for two (one portion for dinner and one for lunch the next day), but you can easily double the portions. This is another great recipe that will make a dent in your freezer and your pantry!

Spaghetti alla Bolognesa
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
1 tsp olive oil
1 can of mushrooms (approx. 7 ounces), drained
2 cans of diced tomatoes, italian style
1 small can of tomato sauce
1 lb ground beef

1 tsp of dried thyme

1 tsp of italian herbs (or oregano, basil and rosemary)
1 bay leaf

1 can of medium pitted black olives, drained and chopped
1/4 cup of warm milk

2 servings of whole wheat spaghetti
parmesan cheese

Add the olive oil to a non-stick pan and cook the onion and garlic until clear and smelling yummy. Don't let the garlic burn! Add the hamburger meat and stir for several minutes, then add the mushrooms. Cook for a couple of minutes, until the meat is done, then add the cans of italian diced tomatoes. Stir and add the small can of tomato sauce. Bring to a boil, and turn down the heat. Add the herbs and the bay leaf and simmer for about twenty minutes on a low heat.

In the meantime, cook the spaghetti al dente (whole wheat pasta is great, a bit chewier and with more body than the plain old white pasta, try it sometime!) according to instructions. Drain.

Taste your spagbog sauce, salt and pepper to taste, or add more herbs. I love thyme so I am very generous with this, but not everybody likes it. Stir in the chopped black olives and heat for a couple of minutes more. Retire your pan from the heat, stir in the warm milk (this will tone down the acidity of your sauce and make for a wonderful, velvety flavor).

Put a big serving of spaghetti on a deep plate, top with the meaty sauce and sprinkle parmesan on top, if desired. Dried and grated parmesan will do, but if you can afford it, buy a little piece of parmesan at the store and grate it yourself, it's fabulous!

Fish Ragout with Rice

2006-01-26T15:25:00.002-07:00

My ex brother-in-law is an avid fisherman, and often he gives me part of his catch. I have no complaints, since he catches, guts and cleans them, and there is absolutely nothing I have to do except put on the frying pan and get busy! Nevertheless, I am not a big fish-eaters, so every now and then a trout or two gets pushed to the bottom of the freezer and doesn't emerge until......well until now, I guess. This morning, I retrieved a ziploc bag (this one is a fancy one, it has purple daisies on it) with a frozen fishbody from the depths of the icebox.

For those of you that just joined me and are wondering why I'm listing the contents of my freezer......the people "in the know" say that once a year one should empty the contents of the freezer and either dispose or use up the items stored. Besides, you save money on groceries since these are already paid for! Since my two freezers were full-full-full, I decided to cook, bake or otherwise prepare the foods I found, and share the recipes with you. And while we're at it, we might as well get rid of some of those cans in the pantry as well. Anything past the due date is tossed, the rest is arranged by date and the ones closest to expiring are used up first! I hope you are encouraged to sort through those Unidentified Frozen Objects in your freezer and join the fun.

Back to the trout. I found a can of clam chowder in the pantry, so out comes the crockpot (brilliant invention!) and in goes the content of the can. Read on the can if it requires you to add water or milk, and if yes, please do.

Fish Ragout with Rice

1 can of clam chowder

1 fish (use pollock filets or other white fish, no salmon)

1 cup of mixed frozen vegetables

1 medium potato

1 cup of rice

Fire up the crockpot on high and add the contents of your clam chowder. When it's warmed up, add a cup of frozen vegetables. I found a bag with frozen celery, mushrooms and yellow corn and used it, but feel free to add any vegetables you like. Peppers usually don't fare well, but hey! to each his own.....

If the fish has bones, zap it for two or three minutes in the microwave, or until the meat easily pulls from the bones. Add the meat (preferably chunks) to the crockpot mix and stir once or twice. Peel a medium potato, dice it and add it to the mix.
Cook a cup of rice on the side. Let the ragout come to a boil in the crockpot, then simmer for 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are cooked and the fish is done. Salt and pepper to taste, and pour over a portion of rice. Enjoy your meal!!

Oh.......if you have any leftover rice, don't throw it away but save it until the next morning. Grab a bowl, put the rice in it, cover with milk, brown sugar and cinnamon, microwave for three minutes and hey presto! Breakfast is served. Yummmy! But not good for the waist, so we'll only do this every now and then, okay?

Italian Tomato Bread Soup

2006-01-24T14:16:00.003-07:00

Today I retrieved a brick from the freezer in the garage. It looks like a brick, it weighs like a brick and to be very honest, it has the consistency and coloring of an (old) brick. Nevertheless, it is not, trust me. What I pulled out of the freezer this morning is a remnant of my pre-bread machine days. It's half a loaf of "Ellie Mae" bread, as someone once referred to it. Presumably, Ellie Mae didn't know how to bake either. It looks like I consumed half of it, only the good Lord knows how, and I froze the rest, frugal as I am. I feed a lot of birds around here and much of my old bread goes into their suet feeders. Not today though, I'm keeping the brick to myself, as it's perfect for making a tasty soup with it.

Italian Tomato Bread Soup
Nothing like a good Italian tomato soup to bring a little bit of summer in your home. You'll need:

1 small onion

1 can of stewed tomatoes (preferably one with herbs, I use the ones with basil, oregano and garlic)

1 tbsp tomato paste

2 cubes of chicken tomato bouillon (or tomato vegetable bouillon if you'd like to make it vegetarian)

5 cups of boiling water

2 tsp italian herbs (or a mix of oregano, basil, thyme)

4 cloves of garlic

5 tbsp good quality olive oil

1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan (or 3 tbsp of the dry cheese)

5 slices of old bread (no sourdough)

Cut and slice the onion, soften in a pan with the olive oil on medium heat. Add the garlic, sliced or chopped. After the onion has softened and the garlic starts releasing its yummy smell, drain the can of stewed tomatoes and stir. Bring to a boil, slowly. Dissolve the 2 cubes of tomato bouillon and the tomato paste in the 5 cups of boiling water, and add to the tomato mix in the pan. Add the italian herbs (usually sold pre-mixed as Italian Seasoning, or something along those lines), add salt and pepper to taste, turn down the heat and let it simmer.

In the meantime, break the bread in small pieces. You can use whole wheat, old rolls, whatever you can find in the freezer that you saved, just not sourdough. I used my Ellie Mae bread and its bricklike consistence made for a nice thick soup. Okay, now dump the bread in the pan and stir. When the bread has softened, bring out the almighty hand mixer or food processor and process the tomato/bread mix into a nice, thick soup. Check for consistency and add more bread if needed, taste to see if you want to add more salt/pepper/herbs.

Ladle into a nice bowl, put some parmesan cheese on top and pretend you're in Tuscany.... :-)

Biscuit Apple Pie

2006-01-22T21:26:00.001-07:00

Ohhhhhhhh where does time go? Last thing I knew I was preparing the recipe for my Biscuit Apple Pie, and all of a sudden a new year has come along and it's been ages since I wrote. Well, no more dilly-dallying, here we go! Did your freezer get any emptier over the holidays? Were you able to flush out that icebox? I look forward to hearing from you!

Ziploc bags are the ultimate tool for storing food in your freezer, I marvel, while I extract one very flat, large frozen bag out of my freezer. The light brown lumpy contents do not look very appetizing, but for once I know what this bag holds: in big, black Sharpie letters it says "Rome Apples w/cinnamon and raisins". Furtherdown it has a date, "10/25/2005" and a measurement, "4 cups". Well, there you go then, four cups of apples with cinnamon and raisins, prepared by me (I recognize the handwriting), not too long ago.

One of the blessings of living in the country is the abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables that are readily available, either from your own grounds or from a farmer down the road. During apple harvesting time, we try to enjoy the apples in all its varieties: fresh, baked, boiled (with a little bit of sugar you can have instant applesauce!) and ofcourse in apple pie. The ones I don't get to use immediately I freeze, so I can enjoy a wonderful apple pie in the wintertime. Here is how I do it. Core and peel five to six apples, depending on their size. Put the slices in a pan, add one tablespoons of lemon juice and toss to coat. Then add 3 tablespoons of apple juice, cider or just water and slowly bring to a boil. Add 1/2 cup of plump raisins, 2 tablespoons of sugar and cinnamon or apple pie spice to taste. Everybody likes their cinnamon either stronger or weaker, so go with what you like best. I use 2 teaspoons. The apples will release part of their juices so that, together with the sugar, it will form a sticky syrup. You may add some more water or juice during the short cooking process to make sure the apples don't burn. Instead of raisings, you can add dried cranberries, or substitute apples for pears. No rules here!

Boil on a slow fire for about 10 minutes, then take the pot off the fire and let it cool. When cooled down enough, taste for cinnamon and sweetness and if you like it, pour the apples with the syrupy juice in the ziploc bags, and push out all the air. Zip them, then lay them flat on the counter, so you can mark them. Try to find a flat spot in your refrigerator and allow them to cool for a couple of hours before you put them in the freezer. By freezing them flat, you can stack them afterwards, which saves a lot of space.

Biscuit Apple Pie

1 bag of frozen apple slices
1 roll of biscuits (refrigerated)
3 tablespoons of melted butter

Thaw one of the frozen bags of apple slices. In the meantime, open a roll of biscuits (for a 9 inch springform I use 10) , separate each biscuit on the counter and let them breathe for a couple of minutes, then roll each one flat with a rolling pin. If you don't have a rolling pin, no worries, just use a lightly floured wine bottle or a pop bottle. Coat the springform with an anti-stick spray, and lay each rolled out biscuit in the pan, first covering the bottom, then the sides. The biscuits usually stand to be pulled and stretched a bit, so you should have plenty to cover the bottom and sides. When done, brush the inside of the dough with the melted butter. If you have biscuit dough left, you can cut it in strips and make one of those fancy lattice pies, just make sure to brush the top of the lattice with some of the leftover butter.

Pour the thawed apple slices and syrup into the form. The oven should be preheated at 400 degrees and baked approximately 30 minutes. If you make a lattice top, lay a cooking spray coated piece of aluminum foil over it, and remove that in the last 10 minutes, to avoid burning the dough.

Pull out the springform and check to see if the biscuit is done. If yes, hurrah, turn off the oven, put the pie where it can cool before you "spring" that form. If not, go in three minute increments.

This is a thick, bready dough for a great apple pie. Hope you like it!

Chicken Mushroom Casserole

2005-11-25T11:15:00.002-07:00

I'm using the two pieces of breast meat that I cut off the chicken yesterday, for today's dish. This is an easy recipe, and it will allow you to clean out some of those frozen vegetables in your freezer or start using up some of the cans in your pantry that are coming dangerously close to the expiration date.

Biscuits that are pre-proved are so easy to use, and come in handy very often. You can find rolls of 6 or 10 biscuits in the refrigerator section of your supermarket, and some brands will even go lower than six, if you are cooking for one. At any rate, keep one or two handy at all times in your refrigerator, I'm going to use it in an apple-raisin pie sometime soon.

For now, cut your chicken in bite-size pieces. For this recipe you will need:

Chicken Mushroom Casserole

2 cut chicken breasts
2 cups of mixed frozen or canned vegetables, such as corn, broccoli, green beans, carrots etc.
1 cup of sliced mushrooms
1 medium size onion
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup of grated cheese
1/2 cup of white wine (optional)
refrigerated unbaked biscuits
olive oil

Heat olive oil in a pan and add the chicken. When the meat is not pink anymore, add the onions and mushrooms and stir until the onions are soft. Add the frozen, fresh or canned vegetables (drain juices) and stir all together, then add the can of mushroom soup, 1 can of water and the wine. Let simmer for 10 minutes, and salt and pepper to taste.
Pour mixture into casserole, cover with unbaked biscuits, put cheese on top and bake in oven at 375 until mixture is bubbly, cheese is melted and/or biscuits are golden brown.

For an extra bite, you can add a small can of green chillies :-)

Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving, and leave a comment if you'd like a recipe for the leftovers!

Basic chicken soup

2005-11-19T08:46:00.001-07:00

Safety first should be your key goal when freezing or thawing food. One of the reasons I use ziploc bags to freeze most of my food is because it allows me to lay the bags flat. That way the food spreads out thinner and freezes faster. The faster it freezes the less time bacteria have to settle in. And this goes the other way too, the faster food defrosts, the sooner you can use it and less time there is for all these bugs to go haywire. For more information on freezing and thawing, visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation website (http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/gen_freeze.html).

At this point I have a whopping six pound frozen whole chicken defrosting in the refrigerator. I packed it in a plastic shopping bag and wrapped it well before freezing, and that's how I am thawing it. On the bottom shelf of the fridge, in a deep plate so that no juices can spill over into the crisper. There is quite a bit of money to be saved when buying whole chickens, instead of chicken breasts, thighs and wings separately. From one chicken I can make three to four meals easily, and make a big pot of chicken soup to boot.

If you have never cut up a whole chicken, it takes a bit of practice, but it gets easier every time and you soon will develop a sixth sense of where to cut. When the chicken has thawed, remove the giblets, neck and other items from the cavity. Save the giblets to make dog cookies, and set the neck aside. Place the chicken belly up towards you, on a cutting board. No wood! The juices will seep into the woodgrains so make sure the board is plastic or glass. Pull the left leg towards you and bend slightly to the left. With your thumb and index finger, follow the bones in the leg, starting from the ankle to the "knee" (move the leg and notice the joint). Now move up towards the body of the chicken, there is another joint where the leg attaches to the hip. Make an incision in the skin and see where the bones connect. Cut through the joint and remove the left leg. Chicken bones are notorious for easy shattering so make sure you have a sharp knife! Do the same with the right leg. Put them aside. Follow the same procedure with the wings. Since I don't care much for all the fat, I remove all of the skin, and cut away as much fat as I can. I don't bother with saving it for anything so in the garbage can it goes, but if you have some great idea on what to do with it, do let me know!

Place the tip of the knife in the separation of the two breast and score the meat. This part is more difficult, but if you just carefully follow the bone structure in the chicken, you will be able to remove two nice pieces of breastmeat from this baby! Next time I cut up a chicken I will take pictures, for now you may want to go to this website to see for yourself: http://ianrpubs.unl.edu/foods/heg146.htm

The nice thing about having a huge pot of chicken soup is that it is so versatile. The first two days we eat it like a broth with vegetables and chunks of chicken, by day three I add a can of stewed Italian tomatoes and some vermicelli (like alphabet noodles or rice) or little potatoes. Be creative!

Basic Chicken Soup

10 cups of water
1 large onion
1 tomato
3 ribs of celery
1 whole leek
2 large carrots
2 chicken broth cubes
chicken neck, wings, carcass (for more meat add the thighs and the drumsticks)

Put a big pot with cold water on the stove and add a whole peeled onion and an unpeeled tomato. This will bring a bit more flavoring to the broth. (If you want a darker broth, just cut the top and the bottom of the onion and leave the skins on, we'll remove these later). Rinse the chicken neck, the carcass and remove the skin from the wings. Add to the pot. Let the water come to a boil and lower heat to simmer for two hours. Remove the chicken, the onion and the tomato. Filter the broth through a dish towel (cotton, not terry cloth!) in a colander, transfer it to a clean pot and add one or two chicken bouillon cubes to it. Cut the onion in pieces, remove the skins if you left them on and place it back in the pot, return the tomato as well. Wash and cut celery ribs to bite size pieces, wash and ring the leeks (you may want to add some of the more tender green tops, ringed as well) and chop the two carrots or use baby carrots. This your basic chicken soup broth. When the carcass has cooled down a bit, proceed to remove the meat from the bones, making sure you catch all the little bones! Return the meat to the pot and let it simmer.

Every day, make sure you boil the soup and let it simmer for at least ten minutes. All the ingredients are fresh and it would be sad to let this soup go to waste!

Breakfast Burritos

2005-11-13T17:05:00.004-07:00

When I go out for Mexican dinner, very often I end up ordering fajitas, one of my favorite foods. But with this delicious order almost always comes a huge plate with rice and beans, and quite honestly, I hardly eat any of it. I'm too busy stuffing my face with hot steaming tortillas, filled with spicy beef strips and lots of grilled peppers and onions :-) My sense of practicality (or being downright cheap) has me taking home the beans and rice ever since I've found a great way of using them for a different dish. One of the things I love is something easy and simple to pop in the microwave for a quick pick-me-up, or when I feel like a snack. During the week I do not always have time to eat breakfast, and it's easy to have something hot to eat on my way to work. I use the refried beans and rice as a basis for Breakfast Burritos that are easy to make, easy to freeze and easy to reheat.

Unlike the guacamole and lettuce that often accompanies the fajita fare, refried beans and Mexican rice freeze well. And that is exactly what the three small ziploc bags contain that I thawed earlier (see yesterday's blog) today.

Depending on how much beans and rice you have, adjust the amount of tortillas and eggs. The tortillas I use are about 6 inches in diameter, and the amount of filling is approximately 2 full tablespoons of beans and eggs each.

Breakfast Burritos12 whole wheat tortillas

refried beans and rice

6 eggs

1 onion

1 red pepper

1 green pepper

salt and pepper

2 cups grated cheese

Thoroughly reheat the beans and rice, and mix them. If you have some hot sauce or salsa, you can add that to the mix. Beat the eggs in a bowl, add salt and pepper. In the meantime, dice the peppers, slice the onion. Put a little bit of olive oil in a skillet and sautee onions and peppers until they are soft, add the egg mix and scramble the eggs. Now heat one tortilla at a time (in my microwave 30 seconds is exactly right), and place it in front of you on a cutting board. (Heating the tortillas will make it easier to fold them.)

Place two tablespoons of the bean and rice mix in the middle of the tortilla in a rectangular fashion, place two tablespoons of the scrambled eggs on top of the beans and add a tablespoon of grated cheese. Now fold the sides of the tortilla with your index fingers over the filling, use your thumbs to flap the front of the tortilla over the top and roll the whole burrito forward on the cutting board on top of the rest of the tortilla, hiding the filling from view. In the beginning, it will take a little bit of practice to get the amount of filling right. Follow the same procedure with the rest of the tortillas, letting the burritos cool seam down on a second cutting board. When you are done, place them separately in ziploc bags, folding the remainder of the bag over and pushing out the air. Since the burritos have cooled down quite a bit, you will not have as much condensation in the bags, and they will freeze easier.

To reheat, just pop them in the microwave for a couple of minutes and breakfast is served.

Enjoy!

Scrambled Eggs with Hash Browns, Sausage, Peppers and Onion

2005-11-12T11:44:00.003-07:00

Sitting on the counter, defrosting, is my first UFO. Actually, there are three UFOs, but they all seem to contain the same type of food. In my "freezing fervor" I often forgot to mark the bags thinking "Ohh, I'll KNOW that this is beef stew/goulash/spaghetti sauce/etc etc." Let's face it, once frozen, they all look alike, one a bit lumpier than the other perhaps, and there is no way of telling which is which. By the way, I freeze most of my leftovers in ziploc bags so I can flatten them. They stack well and take up a lot less space than containers do!

At first glance it looked like these bags contained something unsuitable for human consumption and would look more in place in eh....dare I say it, a sick baby's diaper. But even in my most frugal moments, I cannot imagine having frozen something like that. I'll just have to wait till these bags thaw out! Ah...patience....it's a scarce thing to come by in this house.

In the meantime, I've located some other, more easily recognizable food items. A 3/4 full bag of frozen hash browns, a bag of pepper stir fry, 1/2 pound of breakfast sausage and 1/2 bag of grated Cheddar cheese. There's some eggs left in the fridge, so let's use those too. This will be great for an easy breakfast fix.

Scrambled Eggs with Hash Browns, Sausage, Onions, Peppers (cheese optional)

2 cups of pepper stir fry mix (you can replace this with fresh peppers and onions)

5 eggs

1 cup of grated cheese (optional)

1/2 pound of breakfast sausage

Brown the breakfast sausage in a skillet or stirfry pan, and pour off the fat. Add the pepper stir fry mix ( or fresh sliced onions and peppers), until the onions are soft, and add the hashbrowns. In the meantime, beat the eggs in a bowl (you can add a little milk for more fluff). When the potatoes are cooked thoroughly, add the eggs to the mixture in the pan and scramble until the eggs are done. Pepper and salt to taste. Sprinkle cheese over this mixture if you wish, I'm more of a cheese girl but some people love this dish with hot salsa. Also excellent on some whole wheat toast or one on of those sliced bagels from your freezer.

You can freeze the leftovers in ziploc bags, making single portions. Flatten them and refrigerate before freezing. They microwave very well and make it an easy fix for a quick breakfast or improvised lunch. Make sure you mark your bags with the date, the contents and instructions on how to re-heat the food. You may want to eat this breakfast food within six months.

Well, the bags on the counter have defrosted sufficiently and I know now what they are. More on that tomorrow!

Blueberry Crumble

2005-11-11T11:09:00.004-07:00

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/) gives the following definitions for "flush":

1. Verb; to expose or chase from a place of concealment
2. Noun: a rinsing or cleansing as if with a flush of water
3. Adjective: filled to overflowing

Well, I can't say they're not appropriate. So today I am starting the daunting task of dealing with whatever it is that my freezers hold, starting with the items that I readily recognize......
The first thing I see when I open the top freezer door on our refrigerator is half a bag of frozen blueberries. I cannot for the life of me remember what I did with the other half but since I'm having friends coming over dinner today, I guess I can make a dessert with blueberries. I also spot a bag with two blueberry bagels, leftovers from a weekend breakfast some time ago.

By the way, if your supermarket sports a Quick Sale section for day old breads or bagels, grab a bag or two on your way out, as bagels freeze beautifully. Slice them, if they don't come pre-sliced, before you freeze them so all you have to do is pop them in the toaster and hey presto! fresh bagels for all :-)

Blueberry Crumble

1 cup (or whatever you have left) of frozen blueberries
2 apples, peeled, cored and wedged
2 blueberry bagels
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 stick butter, divided

Place apples, half of the butter, the cinnamon and ginger and one tablespoon of brown sugar in a microwave bowl and zap them for 2 minutes. All microwaves are different but the goal is for the butter and sugar to melt and soften the apples. If you are not sure how long that will take, go with one minute first, poke the apples with a fork to see if they've tendered, and if not zap them a little longer. When done, pour the apples with the butter/cinnamon sauce in a baking dish, and top with the frozen blueberries. In the meantime, cut the bagels up in little pieces and put them through the blender, until you have a coarse crumbles. Preheat the oven at 350F. Mix the bagel crumbles with the remainder of the sugar and cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. (I never said this was low-cal, no-carb!) Cover the blueberries with the topping. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until bubbly.

Hurrah! I've made a dent, albeit small, in my freezer surplus. By the way, you can vary this recipe with whatever you have available. Cinnamon-raisin bagels are great for an all apple crumble, and onion bagels really add body and taste to a potato gratin dish. Be creative!

UFOs in my kitchen

2005-10-24T00:39:00.002-07:00

"It's full, honey" I said, holding a bag of thawing chicken wings in one hand, and a wrapped leftover piece of applepie in the other. Both items were supposed to go inside this freezer, but as soon as I opened the door, a small avalanche of rock-hard, unidentifiable food packages had fallen out of the ice box, and now lay at my feet. I say "fallen out" but I might as well have said "bounced out". Staring at the ground, I tried to remember what the content of those wrapped packages was. I couldn't.

Ten months ago we married and with merging two households, had also merged the contents of two refrigerators and two freezers. "What about the one in the garage?" BJ volunteered, while he brought the last bags of groceries from the car into the kitchen. I shook my head. I distinctly remembered pushing down the hinged cover of the freezer, and feeling a sense of relief when I gently tried to lift the top, and couldn't. One of these days, I promised myself, I was going to get around to reorganizing our freezers.

I was raised by a very practical, frugal grandmother and an equally practical and "waste not, want not" mother. Throwing food away, or letting it spoil in the refrigerator, was an absolute no-no, and with the luxury of having a freezer (and a microwave), I had quickly become the ultimate food-saver. Anything that was left over from dinner or cooking was quickly wrapped, packaged, double-wrapped and frozen, for future use. Bulk, or bargain sales of meats, flour, breads and any other food item that would strike my fancy was also frozen. Unfortunately, I would nearly always forget to write on the wrapper what it contained........

Well, it looks like the time for freezer reorganization has come. We have no more space available, and to tell you the truth, my curiosity is peaked by all these UFOs, these Unidentified Frozen Objects. In the next weeks, I will keep you posted on what I find, and how I used it in a recipe. Hopefully you will be encouraged to flush out your freezer too!