Category Archives: Recipes

RECIPE – Chicken Soup

Posted on February 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

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Ingredients

  • 2 chicken breast halves or 1 cut-up whole chicken
  • 2-3 carrots or 1/2 bag baby carrots
  • 1 onion
  • 2 – 3 teaspoons tomato sauce (for color)
  • 1/2 lb. favorite pastina
  • salt & pepper

Directions

Wash chicken and put in a large stock pot. Cover chicken with cool water until completely submerged. Add tomato sauce (and 1/4 tsp dill if desired). Peel carrots and cut into 1-inch size pieces. Add to pot (along with optional celery).

Peel and quarter onion. Add to pot and slowly boil all ingredients until chicken is cooked, about 30 – 45 minutes. Remove chicken from pot and remove skin from chicken. Remove meat from bones in small pieces; set aside.

Remove carrots when cooked to desired softness. Add salt & pepper to soup and cook a little more (15 – 30 minutes). Strain soup into a large container (removing onion pieces) and add chicken and carrots back in. Refrigerate soup.

When ready to use, skim off accumulated fat and reheat soup on medium flame. Add cooked pastina (small pasta) just before serving. Salt and pepper to desired taste.

Read my observations.

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RECIPE – Chicken & Artichokes

Posted on January 26, 2008 | Leave a comment

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Ingredients

  • 1 lb. chicken tenders (or strip-cut breasts)
  • 1 lemon, sliced
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup bread crumbs
  • 1 TBSP olive oil
  • 1 TBSP butter
  • 1 package frozen artichoke hearts
  • 2 cups sliced mushrooms
  • 1/2 cup dry Vermouth or Marsala
  • 1 chicken bouillon cube
  • 1/4 cup water

Directions

Cut up chicken into 2 inch strips. Dip pieces in egg and cover with breadcrumbs. Brown in olive oil/butter mixture. Remove to warm dish.

Scrape bottom of pan and add chicken bouillon (dissolved in water). Add Vermouth or Marsala. Cook 2 minutes and put return chicken to pan. Cover with sliced mushrooms, artichoke hearts and lemon slices.

Cook 10 – 15 minutes uncovered and mix before serving with rice or couscous.

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RECIPE – Meatballs & Peas

Posted on December 30, 2007 | Leave a comment

Ingredients

  • Meat mix
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/4 cup dry Vermouth
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 package frozen peas
  • salt & pepper

Directions

Shape meat mixture (same as Stuffed Peppers) into small balls, and brown on all sides in olive oil in a coverable skillet. Remove meatballs from pan and saute onion until soft. Return meatballs to pan.

Add Vermouth and cook 2 – 3 minutes. Add package of frozen peas, and salt & pepper to taste. Cover and cook until meat & peas are done, about 15 minutes.

Serve over rice.

Read my observations.

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A Cajun Christmas: Shrimp, Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

Posted on December 28, 2007 | 2 Comments

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I hope you all had a happy holiday break, whatever (and however) you celebrated. There’s a lot to catch up on, so let’s get to it.

The first dish up is a huge, hardy gumbo, made once again from a recipe appearing in Bon Appetit. I don’t remember exactly how I arrived at this Cajun stew for a Christmas potluck party, but, then again, there were a lot of drinks that night.

Gumbo is a dish of huge proportions in every aspect: volume, prep time, expense and taste. Be prepared to spend upwards of $40 or more to put together all the ingredients (including some not-so-easy-to-get items like clam juice and frozen okra). You’ll be in the kitchen at least an hour (including a huge amount of chopping time) and will be doing a load of stirring.

For a party of upwards of 20, I halved the recipe and still took almost half home at the end of the night. I made six cups of cooked rice to accompany it; I would suggest more like 10 cups for the halved recipe.

It may be a lot of effort, but you’ll eat like a king for days. The stew has amazing resiliency and really does taste better in the days subsequent to its marathon preparation.

As for substitutions, I did use some pre-cooked chicken sausage from Trader Joe’s instead of the andouille (in order to appease my favorite vegetarians). Just remember that since they are pre-cooked, you should only add this kind of sausage at the very end to warm it up. The same rule applies if you’re using already-cooked shrimp, as I did.

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The Great Cookie Klatch

Posted on December 18, 2007 | 1 Comment

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No, I’ve never heard of a klatch before either.

But when I looked it up last week after receiving an invitation to the above office event, I immediately dug the idea. After all, who doesn’t love an informal gathering, as for conversation?

For my cookie contribution, I used a recipe from a Mrs. Field’s cookbook that I’ve had forever (I think I stole it from my mom). Although I’ve tried a couple of the book’s other concoctions – with varying degrees of success – I’d never attempted the classic Blue-Ribbon Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Unlike the delectable, store-baked Mrs. Fields, these didn’t turn out so great. They had a good, chewy consistency (I finally got the butter part right!), but the taste was a bit off. I think there was too much brown sugar.

Other klatch batches included:

  • Holiday shaped sugar cookies
  • Other chocolate chip cookies
  • Peanut butter-chocolate fudge
  • Linzer tort cookies
  • Butter cookies topped with cream cheese icing and red sugar
  • Pizzels
  • Key lime cheesecake squares

Needless to say, the afternoon sugar rush had me working at not-quite-full mental capacity. And I’ll tell you what: the employee handbook doesn’t quite cover this dilemma.

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RECIPE – Chicken & Couscous

Posted on December 16, 2007 | Leave a comment

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. chicken tenders, cut into small pieces
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 can chickpeas (ceci beans)
  • 3/4 cup couscous
  • 1 bouillon cube

Directions

Saute chicken in oil until browned slightly. Remove from pan with slotted spoon.

In leftover oil and juices, saute onion until soft but not browned. Return chicken to the pan; then add chickpeas with liquid and bouillon cube. When chickpeas are sufficiently cooked, add couscous following the directions on the box.

Additional liquid and/or bouillon may be needed, depending on preference.

Read my observations.

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RECIPE – Balsamic Vinaigrette

Posted on December 13, 2007 | Leave a comment

Why buy grocery store salad dressing when you can easily make some of your own? Except for the oil and vinegar, which should stay in a 2-1 ratio, the below ingredient amounts are just guidelines. Change the mix at your own discretion.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 1 clove garlic, sliced
  • 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice

Directions

Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Serve over salad (duh).

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Guest RECIPE – Broccoli di Rabe Stuffed Bread

Posted on December 12, 2007 | Leave a comment

As you may have already surmised, I’m not the only cook in my family. Here’s a recipe sent to me by a cousin who really knows her way around an Italian kitchen. I haven’t tried making this yet, but anything with bread and melted cheese always gets my attention!

Ingredients

  • 1 loaf (donut-shaped) Italian pizza bread – available from most Italian delis
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 8 – 10 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 bunch broccoli di rabe
  • 2 cups fresh mozzarella, sliced

Directions

Take the round pizza bread and cut it through the middle horizontally to create two round pieces. Sprinkle chopped garlic and olive oil on each half and bake in the oven at 375 degrees until hot and just starting to crisp.

In the meantime, saute broccoli di rabe in lots of garlic and some olive oil. When cooked, transfer mixture to the bottom half of bread and spread over the surface. Cover the rabi with slices of fresh mozarella and then place top half of bread on top.

Place loaf back in oven and heat until cheese melts. Cut like pie and serve.

* Make sure to squeeze some of the oil out of the rabi or it will be too messy to eat. Also, you can substitute just about anything in for the rabi: spinach, slices of fresh tomato, or just mushrooms cooked in garlic and oil.

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RECIPE – Chicken Cacciatore

Posted on December 6, 2007 | 2 Comments

Ingredients

  • 6 chicken thighs
  • 3 chicken breast quarters
  • 2 TBSP olive oil
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs
  • 1 – 2 green peppers, sliced
  • 1 – 2 onions, sliced
  • 1 – 2 cloves garlic, sliced
  • 1 can (28 oz.) crushed tomatoes
  • 1 – 2 cups sliced mushrooms
  • 1 – 2 TBSP Italian seasoning
  • salt & pepper

Directions

Clean and dry all chicken pieces. Reserve skin on two thighs; remove from rest of chicken. Dip chicken pieces in egg and coat lightly with breadcrumbs. Pan fry on both sides in olive oil over medium-high heat.

When browned, move chicken to stock pot (or other large pan with tall sides). Add sliced peppers, onions and garlic. While on medium-low heat, add crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning.

Cover and let simmer for 2 – 3 hours, stirring occasionally.

In last half hour, add sliced mushrooms. Serve with fresh Italian bread.

Read my observations.

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A very dry run

Posted on November 18, 2007 | Leave a comment

For this year’s Thanksgiving festivities, I was given the plum assignment of making an appetizer. Having not made an proper appetizer in, well… forever, I started rifling through a few cookbooks, some magazines, and my own brain for something unique. I narrowed the choices to:

  • a seasonal salad
  • stuffed mushrooms
  • a cheese and bread combo

I quickly decided against the salad because of the obvious lack of finger-friendliness. I then jettisoned the mushroom idea, when I realized that quite a few people don’t like the friendly fungi. This left the third option and yet another recipe (Blue Cheese and Caramelized-Onion Squares) from Bon Appetit.

I was already digging the idea of using blue cheese or gorgonzola, and so, took the fact that this recipe came from a section called the Thanksgiving Workbook: What to Bring as a sign.

I decided to do a test run last weekend. It didn’t exactly go well.

First of all, I couldn’t get the dough right. The mixture was so wet, I had to virtually double the amount of flour to make it look anything like a cohesive ball. The caramelized onions turned out great, but took a good twenty minutes longer than expected. And then there was the finished product.

These things tasted like the Sahara Desert. It didn’t matter how well the cheese and onions went together; the crust was so dry as to completely suck the saliva from inside my mouth. I may as well have been eating salted, toasted flour itself. I guess this shouldn’t be considered an unexpected turn of events, considering how much flour I did end up using, but the experience pretty much sank my idea for Thanksgiving.

Therefore, I’m changing things up a bit for the actual event. First, I’ll be using pizza dough. Second, I’m going to try and add pears to the mix, as they really go well with the other two flavors. And finally, I’m going to make a second pie, with cheddar, apple and bacon.

I’m not sure exactly how they’ll turn out with the fruit, but at least my relatives won’t be gagging. And, in the end, isn’t that what Thanksgiving’s all about?

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