This recipe from Fine Cooking magazine was delicious, fairly simple t execute and hearty enough to satisfy EVERYONE (the vegetarian, the carnivores AND the omnivore) in my house.
Category: Entrees
Spiced Pumpkin, Lentil and Goat Cheese Salad
I adapted this recipe from the October (2009) issue Bon Appetit. I added about 1/2 cup of toasted pecans and one chicken breast (grilled and then sliced) for the carnivores in the household to add into their salad. This recipe needed a bit of extra balsamic vinaigrette to really finish it, so I’d plan on adding a bit of extra, if you plan to make this.
This salad is very adaptable. You could substitute blue cheese, if you prefer. This could be a fabulous first course, or, if served in larger portions, it’s a great entree salad. Toasted pumpkin seeds would be nice, too. Substitute lettuce or spinach if you’re not a fan of arugula.
Chicken al Mattone (Chicken under a brick)
When I saw this recipe on the cover of September’s (2009) Bon Appetit magazine, I knew that I would have to try it. I have an overabundance of pride about my ability to butterfly (spatchcock) a chicken, so I tend to get a little excited when I see a recipe that requires that particular technique. A recipe that also incorporates garlic, red pepper, rosemary and lemon? Well, where do I sign?
Going into the oven, under the foil-wrapped brick.
This was REALLY easy (the trickiest part is the butterflying, but it’s simple once you get the knack – there are lots of videos on YouTube – I’ll probably make my own soon) and absolutely gorgeous and delicious. I love cooking whole chickens, because everyone gets to pick their favorite: dark meat or light? drumstick or breast? The chicken stayed moist and had lots of great flavor. This will definitely be a “keeper.” If I make it again for adults only, I’ll up the level of red pepper flakes a bit.
Polenta Triangles Stuffed with Spicy Greens and Cheese
Polenta, served with some pesto-grilled chicken thighs for the carnivores…
This meatless recipe from Serious Eats was tasty and not too difficult (although it does require some advance prep and a few hours of chilling time,) but the wine flavor (I used a light Pinot Noir) in the greens layer was a little too strong for the little people that live at my house. I like this preparation of polenta, but may experiment with sandwiching different things in the polenta layers, like possibly a sun-dried tomato concoction or sauteed mushrooms or maybe spinach (or another green without the wine.)
The greens looked gorgeous as they were cooking (beautiful color!)
Onions and garlic with beet and chard stems.
Adding the greens.
The greens, pretty much fully cooked. I continued to cook them until the liquid was pretty much dry, because I wanted to be sure the alcohol cooked out and because I didn’t want the greens layer to be soupy and risk it separating when I cut the polenta.
Layering the polenta, greens and cheese. I used smoked mozzarella, because I had no idea what Caciocavallo was and didn’t want to go on a search.
Polenta, after being chilled and cut (before baking.) They are not kidding when they say that this recipe feeds a crowd. This dish would be GREAT for a buffet or potluck or for a light first course (instead of pasta) before the main/meat course.
Spicy Chicken Chili and Cornbread
When time allows, my whole family sits down on Sunday afternoons to look through cooking magazines and cookbooks and recent printouts to plan our menus for the week. We look at our schedule for the week to see what we’ve got to do on any given night. We consider if it’s a day when the kids have lots of after-school activities (so I will be driving and hence, not home to cook,) or if we need a recipe that can be made ahead. We consider who will be home that night and choose recipes based upon their preferences (for example, Girl *hates* seafood and peanut butter, but Girl will be at a sleepover tonight, so we’ll be having Salmon with Lentils, because Boy *loves* seafood and Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie, because Boy *loves* peanut butter.)
Recently, as we were having one of our planning sessions, Boy picked this recipe out and *begged* for me to make it. It was easy and quite yummy. Hubby loved it, too, because he LOVES chicken thighs and much prefers them over breasts. Girl got canned vegetarian chili, which was fine, to eat with her cornbread.
I can’t remember which cornbread recipe that I used, but I really wish that I could, because it turned out beautifully! I think that it might have been this one from Allrecipes.com. You could use any cornbread recipe that you like, but I know that this one had buttermilk in it. If anyone has a recipe that they really like, please share!
Steakhouse Birthday Dinner for a Carnivore
Boy LOVES meat…just about any kind, so when we celebrated his 12th birthday recently, only a nice hunk of red meat would do. So, we made him some beautiful ribeyes, mashed garlic Yukon Gold potatoes and The Pioneer Woman’s easy and delicious creamed spinach. I made him a lemon birthday cake with raspberry frosting for dessert. He was VERY happy.
Multigrain Pasta with Pistou Forestier
Finished dish (missing the creme fraiche…if you make it exactly according to the recipe, yours will be “creamier”)
Mushrooms, before roasting
Finished pistou
I found this fabulous recipe (recipe here) on Serious Eats. It was written by Kerry Saretsky, whose recipes are a never-fail for me. This girl knows her stuff. My favorite Salmon with Lentils recipe is hers, too.
The Girl has recently become a vegetarian, so it has required some creativity to please her at the dinner table, while keeping my two resident confirmed carnivores happy. This dish is rich and hearty enough to be a vegetarian main course (round it out with some salad and a nice dessert,) but is light and healthy enough to be a first (pasta) course, if served in small portions.
OK, now confession time…I didn’t do the prosciutto crisps and the herb chips, because it was just too fussy for your ordinary weeknight. If, however, I were serving this for a dinner party, etc., I would absolutely do them. I also completely goofed up and forgot to add the creme fraiche. At all. And it was still fabulous. Obviously, if I do it again, I will definitely add it, because…pass up creme fraiche? Intentionally? I don’t think so.
Oh, also? I used linguine pasta because I couldn’t find the brand that I wanted in spaghetti pasta.
Tilapia Tostadas
This recipe from Cooking Light magazine is a definite winner. To adapt it for The Girl, who is now a vegetarian, I added some black beans (canned, drained and rinsed) to the corn relish (she made her tostadas without fish.)
These were delicious. A little messy (to cook, not to eat), because I fried the tortillas, instead of oven-broiling them, but VERY yummy and still healthy.
We also added some Rosie’s fresh tomato salsa. Because it is awesome.
Jamaican Jerk Chicken (two versions) Gallo Pinto (Congri)
Jamaican Jerk Chicken, from Food & Wine magazine
click here for recipe
I recently bought Food & Wine’s new “Quick from Scratch Chicken” magazine/cookbook (there are lots of versions of this cookbook available from different years, some are hardback and some are magazine-style, but this is BRAND NEW and can be found at a magazine stand – it has an olive green cover with chicken and corn-on-the-cob on the front….I can’t find an online photo) and have been making all sorts of yummy things from it (Chicken with Avgolemono, Pad Thai and I’m planning to make Fusilli with Chicken Sausage and Rustic Garlic Chicken soon).
Well, last night was my brother and sister-in-law’s anniversary and since, due to 2.5 week old Baby Jack Henry, they’re still not back into full-fledged “going out” mode, I offered to make them a nice dinner over here (with the stipulation that they MUST bring the baby, of course!) It wasn’t really 100% intentional (Boy had already seen the recipe in the book and had requested that I make it, so it was already in my “make soon” folder,) but I decided to make this, because Little Brother and his wife went on a cruise to Jamaica (and other destinations) for their honeymoon, so I thought this was fitting for their anniversary.
Boy, was that ever a great idea. This stuff was lip-tinglingly DELICIOUS. It was saucy and moist and flavorful without being butt-kicking spicy. I didn’t do the leg quarters, but instead did some whole, boneless, skinless breasts and some boneless, skinless thighs. I wasn’t sure what the baking time should be, so I just used a thermometer and pulled them out when the temperature registered 175 degrees. Man, oh, man… I sliced the breasts up so that we could all taste a little bit of everything. The thighs absorbed more of the sauce and were a little spicier than the breasts. The allspice flavor was very strong, but not overpowering. If it’s not a spice that you really love, you might want to dial that down just a tiny bit. Boy, this was easy, too. Just blend it all up and then pour it over the chicken and bake. Simple and definitely do-ahead. Perfect if you’re having adventuresome dinner guests. I marinated for 24 hours for maximum flavor and I doubled the sauce, because I was cooking extra chicken pieces. If you don’t want it to be extra saucy and spicy, then I would pour off any excess marinade before baking, or simply remove the chicken pieces to another pan, and then I think the sauce would be more like a glaze, as is in the Food & Wine photo.
For the Congri/Gallo Pinto, I basically followed this recipe, but cooked the beans myself, and added a little epazote and, if you ask Little Brother (although he was polite about it), a bit too much cilantro (to me, there is no such thing as too much cilantro…)
All in all, a delicious and fairly simple dinner. Will definitely be a repeat, although I’ll need to tone down the cayenne for the little people that live with me…
For another kid-friendly Jerk Chicken variation, try this.
Panuchos Yucatecos, sort of…
We love making tostadas around here. We always seem to have some extra lettuce, tomato, onion, cilantro and maybe a bit of leftover grilled chicken or taco-seasoned meat and some refried beans and cheese. All you have to do is fry some corn tortillas until they’re crisp and then augment them with your choice of the above toppings (the kids love any opportunity to “build” their own dinner, buffet-style). If you have a little sliced avocado or sour cream, you’re golden. So, when I saw this recipe for Panuchos Yucatecos on Serious Eats, it looked so good, I knew we needed to try it. I mean, really, the beans INSIDE the tortilla? how cool is that? Then you’d have the top completely free to add all kinds of things.
The problem is, though, that when I fried the tortillas, they didn’t puff up and create a “cavity” like the ones in the panuchos recipe, so we ended up pretty much just having our standard tostadas (or chalupas, or whatever you call them in your neck of the woods…) Still tasty, but not exactly the original plan. Contributing further to the failure of this experiment, I made up the pickled onions in advance, but forgot to get them out to serve with the dinner…they were very tasty, but we got about as far away from this original recipe as possible (even though what we did make was quite good), so will definitely have to try again. I’m wondering if the tortillas that I had weren’t fresh enough and if maybe some fresher ones might puff better? I’ll keep you all posted…