Yes, We Cook!

juicy pulled chicken

Joanne from Eats Well With Others commented on my pork stew the other day and mentioned doing pulled pork in a crock pot. I immediately thought I would be doing that soon. I ended up with three large chicken quarters in my fridge and figured I’d do pulled chicken instead. I prefer pulled pork, but wanted to do something different with the chicken and I have my new toy, the crock pot.

So Joanne did recipes that included more sweetness. I live in the land of pulled pork (the south) and here they make both sweet and vinegary versions. I like the vinegary versions better. I’ve never been one to like sweet barbecue sauce.

Occasionally I make my own bbq sauce for chicken and I use a vinegar based hot sauce, tamari and garlic. Simple and yummy. I did a variation on that theme for this chicken.

• 3 oz Flamin’ hot pepper sauce (little more than 1/2 the bottle)

• 1/2 cup tamari

• 1/4 cup ketchup (I would leave this out next time–I never use ketchup, it’s in the house for my husband, I used this for him thinking if would be more bbq-ey, and it was but I like the sharper flavors of it without the ketchup. This ketchup happens to be organic but it’s still got sugar in it though it’s cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup)

• 3 tbls apple cider vinegar

• 12 cloves of garlic (whole)

• 1/2 onion sliced in half circles

I didn’t feel well at all last night so I made this by literally tossing all the above ingredients in the bottom of the crock pot and then topping it with the chicken which I stirred once. It took about 3 minutes. I turned the crock pot on low and went to bed. I let it cook ten hours. There was a lot of juice and perhaps there is not supposed to be, but it’s tasty and went well over rice which is how we ate it.

This is the hot sauce I used which is by no means a requirement. Any vinegar based hot sauce will do. This is very spicey.

This dish appears to generally be made with boneless chicken breasts or occasionally boneless thighs. I’ve made it with whole legs which I cut into thighs and drumsticks. I get these whole legs for $1.59 a pound and they’re organic. Can’t beat that.

Ingredients:

3 large whole chicken legs, skinned and cut into parts

1 tbls butter

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice – save one squeezed lemon cut in half to cook with the chicken

1/2 cup of white wine

3/4 cup of chopped parsley

3 tbls capers

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup of flour (I used whole rye flour as I’m allergic to wheat. It does not have a strong flavor as one might assume, it works fine in place of whole wheat flour in everything I’ve used it in)

Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour and brown them on both sides in the butter. Once brown add the lemon juice and the lemon rinds, the white wine and the capers and parsley. Bring all to a boil and cook for 1/2 an hour.

After browning but before cooking for 1/2 an hour

After a half an hour thicken sauce with a bit of flour. I used about a tablespoonful mixed with a bit of wine, then I slowly dribbled it into the juices while it was still boiling until the sauce was thickened.

After cooking

And the final plate looked like this:

I’m thinking I should do a 101 ways to prepare ground beef as I have an outrageously inexpensive source of very lean, grass fed, organic meat and I have a ton of it in my freezer. I virtually never ate any beef before I got this source.

I was once again inspired by Wandering Coyote, though I have to say my dish is a very toned down and simpler version.

I got to cooking and didn’t have most of the ingredients I would have liked to have. This is  the recipe WC recommended.

In any case, I certainly cannot call this Mongolian Beef, which is what WC made. But it was tasty even if extremely simplified from it’s inspiration.

This was the dumbed down version–which was completely acceptable in the end:

3 cloves garlic

1 small purple cabbage (grated in food processor–it should have been sliced though, that’s why you can’t really see it)

1 bunch green onions

2 large carrots (grated in food processor)

1 lb ground beef

4 tbls tamari (tamari is essentially soy sauce, I’m allergic to wheat and tamari has no wheat in it as soy sauce does)

1 tsp red chili pepper flakes

1 tbls dried ginger (I was dismayed to find we were even out of fresh ginger)

Saute diced garlic. Brown the meat in the garlic. Toss everything else in as you like and cook as you like.  I served it over steamed brown rice. It was simple but yummy.

Wandering Coyote gave me the idea of basil and lemon for flavoring chicken yesterday.

I had some chicken breasts in the freezer which I took out yesterday and I decided to modify the recipe WC had because I needed to make another huge batch of pesto today, just like I did here.

So today once the pesto was complete I took out a couple two or 3 tablespoons before freezing the rest and added the zest of one large lemon and some lemon juice. Probably about 1 tbls of lemon. I mixed it up into a paste and smeared it all over the chicken. I added some fresh black ground pepper.

Stuck them in the oven and this is what emerged later:

I’m don’t think this picture can begin to suggest how delighted I was with the flavor of this chicken. The lemon zest in concert with the basil and garlic (and cheese and pine nuts!) was to die for. I have never used this flavor combination with chicken. And the pesto made a very good paste that stuck to the chicken so that the flavor was very rich. YUM! Thanks Wandering Coyote you just grew my chicken world!

The first part of this dish I diced lots of garlic (about a whole head of it) and sauteed it in olive oil. I then browned the chicken in the oil and garlic and topped it off with fresh rosemary and thyme from the garden. Salt and fresh ground black pepper, as well.

Once it was browned I poured in one cup of white wine and let it boil and then lowered the flame and covered the dish as it looks above.

I had dried shitake mushrooms which I brought to a boil in water. Above is what they look like before and after. I allowed the mushrooms to stay in the hot juices until they cooled and then I poured the left over juice into the cooking chicken and cut up the mushrooms in bits which also went into the pan with the cooking chicken.

When the chicken was completely cooked I took out the meat and added 1/3 of a pound of goat cheese into the juices. It looks like the above picture.

I then boiled some pasta and made the final dish. The picture unfortunately came out awful, but the food was delicious.

Paul brought home some wild salmon yesterday. I made a goopy paste to go on top of it before baking it. It contained:

Tamari
Mustard (the condiment–the one that is heavy on the seeds and spicy)
Ginger
Garlic powder
Dried Dill Weed

It turned out looking awful! Keep on moving through this post, the second life of this fish was attractive and yummy.

It didn’t actually taste all that good either. We ate only about 1/3 of it last night.

So today I made a salad with the leftover. It turned out much more delicious in it’s second life.

The salad contained:

Remainder of the baked salmon in shreds
Brown rice
Lots of fresh parsley from the garden
a heaping tbls of Capers
a quarter red onion sliced in halves
Balsamic Vinegar to taste
Tamari to taste
Olive oil to taste

Yummy and not bad to look at this time around:

Ingredients:
7 med to large carrots
3 med to large zucchini (I used traditional green zucchini because we have them in our garden right now, a yellow squash might keep the color of the soup brighter and taste essentially the same)
32 oz vegetable stock
4 cloves of garlic
2 medium onions
2 tsp cayenne
4 tbls pesto (or a bunch of fresh basil)
8 oz heavy cream
Salt to taste

This was very easy. I simply cut up the carrots, zucchini, onion and garlic and threw it all into the vegetable stock. At this point I also added the pesto. I brought it to a boil and then lowered the temp and cooked it until it was very soft.

I let it cool and then I took out all the chunks of veggies and blended them until smooth in a the blender. Poured it all back into the pot and added the 8 oz of cream and the cayenne. Do not heat the soup to boiling once the cream has been added.

It was very scrumptious!!

I did this on the fly as I do most of my cooking. I set out to simply make a cole slaw, but as I was tasting it I wasn’t liking it and ginger, tamari and sesame oil found their way into this otherwise quite traditionally American dish.

1/4 large green cabbage

1 large carrot

6 green onions

3 tbls mayonnaise

2 tbls olive oil

2 tbls mustard with seeds

2 tbls packed grated ginger

1 tbls sesame oil

3 tbls tamari

I put all the veggies through the shredder in a food processor and then mixed up the rest of the ingredients with the veggies. It’s quite nice. This is actually quite a large amount of salad. The bowl is rather large. When you shred a cabbage it turns into a much larger quantity than you might imagine.

The flavor is distinctly Asian.

This is a dish I make from time to time. The original recipe called only for chicken covered in ground salted pistachios and baked.

I’ve added herbs and spices that make it tastier in my opinion.

All one need do is first grind up about a cup of pistachios in a blender.

Once it’s as finely ground as you can get it, place it in a bowl and put pieces of boneless chicken breast in the bowl and thoroughly cover the chicken with the pistachios. If you want to stop where the original recipe stopped, stick them in the oven now and bake like any other chicken breast.

You can save the leftover pistachios in a small freezer bag in the freezer. Because they’re tainted with chicken make sure you use them in something you cook thoroughly.

I’ve added in today’s bake:

Fresh rosemary — whole leaves

Fresh sage — diced finely

Garlic — diced finely

Fresh ground pepper

Sprinkle all the above ingredient all about the top of the chicken pieces.

Then to make sure it all browns nicely and sticks together I spray the top of the end product with olive oil spray before popping it into the oven.

I bake them at 350 degrees and time all depends on the size of breast. These particular pieces were very small and took only 25 minutes.

In one of Van’s post we talked about not being big fans of white meat. I like this recipe for white meat because the thorough covering with nuts tends to hold the juices in the meat and so it turns out more tender than it might otherwise. I’m very careful not to overcook as well.

Ages ago I visited a restaurant here in Chicago that had a unique, well what I thought was unique, marinade for their steak.  I couldn’t remember ever aspect of it, so I thought I’d simply give it a go. For this I used filet strip steak that I ended up cubing for before marinating.  

Please note you will need skewers and a deep oven pan for this recipe.

Marinade

• 1 tsp curry
• 1 tsp tumeric
• Soy Sauce (enough to cover the steak in my container of choice)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 stalk of crushed lemon grass

Mix your marinade together, place the steak into an air tight container with the marinade and the meat set in the fridge for roughly 24 hours. Make sure you shake the marinade roughly ever 4 hours (if possible).  

When ready to cook, preheat your oven to 275.  Take your skewers and place roughly four pieces of steak per skewer, and place over your deep oven pan.  

Cook in the over for roughly 30 to 40 minutes at 275, basting the meat with the left over marinade ever 10 minutes.  This will bring the steak to a very nice medium rare.  Obviously, cook to your desire and check the meat often.

Lemon Asparagus

I wanted to keep with the lemon flavored theme, even if the taste was ever so faint.  Here is what you’ll need for the Asparagus:

• 1 bunch Fresh Asparagus
• pinch of garlic powder
• lemon juice
• 1 pad of butter
• freshly crushed black pepper

Cut the asparagus to the length of your choosing and place into a deep frying pan.  Add enough lemon juice to cover the bottom of the pan, include your pad of butter, and boil the juice for roughly 5 mins.  Your asparagus will turn a nice bright green when it’s ready.  

Once bright green, take off the flame and drain off remaining lemon juice.  Add the garlic powder and black pepper and you are set!

For this dish, I used Trader Joe’s Jasmine Rice for the base and placed the meat over the rice and asparagus:

And for a close up..

Come on, admit it... you want some!

This didn’t match the exact flavor of the restaurant, but it was close.  I may play with using lemon paste instead of lemon grass to add a bit more of the lemon zest aspect.  The curry and tumeric leave a nice taste after the initial blast of Soy Sauce.  Also, the medium rare preparation is perfect for this dish – especially with the cut of meat.  I could also see how this dish could easily turn into a BBQ meal.  

Bon Appetite!

Back in March, Wandering Coyote @ ReTorte made some King Size Corn Muffins.  Right away I knew I had to give these a try…because bigger is always better.(Right Donna-FFW?)  After tracking down a king size muffin tin and finishing a number of other recipes, I finally got down to making the muffins.

(Original recipe can be found here)

Blend together:
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk

Sift in:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Add:
1 1/2 cups cornmeal 
½ cup cut corn (I used Trader Joe’s Organic)

Throw the mixture into your King Size Muffin Tin and back for roughly 35 mins.  One can make normal size muffins as well but make sure you bake for roughly 20 to 25 mins.

And in the end you get…

The cut corn was an addition I made to her original recipe.  It seemed like a good addition to me, and I will toy with adding more than a half cup the next time I make these.  These are dense little treats that could go well with a meal or as a quick breakfast.

The raw ingredients:

And not terribly beautiful to look at, but I can assure you quite yummy is the final product. I need to say that normally I would use the traditional loaf pan, but we’re switching out our non-stick coated stuff for healthier options like stainless steal, glass and cast iron and haven’t gotten around to the loaf pans yet.

So the ingredients:

1 lb ground turkey

1 large onion (diced in small bits and sauteed)

1 bulb garlic (or to your liking, diced and cooked up with the onions)

1 cup pecorino/romano cheese blend (you can choose any dry grated cheese you like)

1/2 cup pesto

2 tsp red chili flakes (more or less according to taste–I like spice)

1 cup oats soaked in milk for several hours (Bread crumbs are traditionally used in meatloaf. When I became aware of my wheat sensitivity I came up with the oats as an alternative and they are quite delightful even if you can eat wheat! I recommend you give it a try.)

3 eggs

3 handfuls of dehydrated tomatoes (not pictured above—I thought of it as I cooked the onions and garlic and threw them in with some water to steam and reconstitute—my step-dad sends us loads of them every year from their very prolific garden)

Salt to taste. I also tossed in a bit of Tamari while steaming the tomatoes as part of the reconstitution process…but just a bit of it…didn’t want to be aware of the Tamari in a distinct fashion. (Tamari is basically soy sauce but it’s made without wheat)

Directions:

Saute onions, garlic and tomatoes if you want to use them.  The alternative is half can of tomato paste in the meat mixture or if you have it on hand and eat the stuff a hefty squirt of Ketchup. I don’t eat Ketchup anymore, but it works if you do.

Put aside the sauteed veggies and let cool.

Mix the meat and all the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Once the saute has cooled a bit mix that in with all the meat ingredients.

Oil pan. I use an olive oil spray. Dump the meat mixture into the pan.

Put into pre-heated 350 degree oven for approximately 50 minutes. I never know exactly how long a meatloaf is going to take. Just see that it’s browned and make sure the interior is cooked by putting a knife in the middle and see that it comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Bob @ I Cook Stuff got me motivated this past week with his home made flat bread recipe. I just couldn’t pass that up, I had to give it a go. I took his recipe for the bread and added my own touches, so here we go.

Please note, I was doing several things at once here – feel free to do in any order you desire.

This is what we started with:

Apparently the steak was a Great Buy!

Bell Peppers

With the recent discussion of organic foods, I decided to stop at Whole Foods for this meal. I was VERY impressed with the quality of the vegetables. The peppers I picked were rich in color and crisp. While not a long time eater of peppers, I can say these were the best peppers I’ve ever had.

Take your peppers, de-seed them and slice them up. (I have to include a picture, they were so impressive to me)

Whole Foods, I'm really impressed with your veggies.

Steam them in roughly an inch of water for about 5 to 7 minutes, remove from heat and drain.

Steak

I used a thin cut steak for this meal. The prep was really easy… stupidly easy. Simply cut into strips, use about two teaspoons of oil in a medium heated pan and cook until the meat is about 3/4^th done – once the meat look brown but still retains blood.

Remove from heat, drain, and put into a bowl.

Now, I say “3/4th done” because a thin cut steak – like a skirt steak – is rather hard to cook. More often than not, people tend to over cook such thin cuts. I remove the steak when it is still “bleeding” but brown as the internal heat will finish the cooking process without overcooking the meat into little strips of leather

No, I did not season the meat as the Garlic Sauce acts as the seasoning for the dish.

Garlic Sauce

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• pinch of black pepper

Mix all of the ingredients together and chill.

Garlic and Pepper Flat bread

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ cup ice water
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 tsp fresh black pepper

(Bob’s Recipe can be found here)

Mix all the ingredients together until you have a nice ball of dough. Flatten out the ball and cut into four equal parts. Take a cutting board, add flour to the board so the dough does not stick, and shape the bread to your desired size and thickness. Get a hot skillet ready, with olive oil coating applied, and fry up the flat bread. Make sure you flip the bread with a spatula constantly to prevent burning. Depending on the thickness of your, the bread has the ability to cook quickly. Indicators that your bread is ready will include browning and slight cracking.

There are a few modifications I made to Bob’s instructions.

First, I found the 1 cup of water was not enough for the dough. I added another ½ cup in order to provide enough moisture to mix all of the ingredients together.

Second, Bob suggested the cook time on the bread to be roughly 30 second. I made the bread slightly thicker than his which lead to mine to be around 2 to 3 minutes in total. Also, I did the bread over a high flame.

Assemble! Fold up and eat like a pita.

Wrap up and enjoy!

The bread is OUTSTANDING and not hard to make at all. Bob, thank you for turning me on to this one. The Garlic Sauce is a cool taste that blends well with the bell peppers and steak.. Alternate uses for the sauce could be as a vegetable dip or simply to eat with the bread.

Enjoy.   

My version. I grew up with this dish and started making it from memory in adulthood. I use a lot of tuna to make it high in protein as I need lots of protein and not so many carbs myself.

The “raw” ingredients. This is one of the very few things I make that has a lot of canned and boxed food.

Finished product in a real pasta bowl from Italy that I grew up with in my home. It’s a bit large for the quantity of pasta I made but it’s pretty!

So the ingredients:

1 large red onion diced

Garlic to taste (I go with pretty much a whole bulb—this is of course according to taste)

Large bunch of parsley chopped up

Pesto–that’s the funny looking green thing next to the bowl of tuna—it’s about a quarter cup of frozen pesto—I made it from last years crop of basil from our garden. If you’re using fresh basil, which would be better, also use a large bunch.

Anchovies in olive oil—the whole can chopped up fine. Use the olive oil when you cook your onion and garlic…it’s yummy.

Olive oil–an additional tbls or so

Capers (3 heaping tbls)

Kalamata Olive tapenade (3 heaping tbls)— I used this because I didn’t have fresh whole olives. Whole pitted olives cut into thirds are better!! I like chewing on those bits of olives and really tasting them. In this sauce the tapenade disappeared into the sauce and while it still tasted really good, it would’ve been better with a high quality black olive chunks. My favorite are oil and salt cured black olives. They have a very sharp distinct flavor and not everyone likes them. The tapenade, though, is also very easy. No pitting and cutting of olives so it’s convenient.

28 ounces crushed tomatoes

2 cans tuna fish

I used 8 oz of Quinoa Spaghetti. I’m allergic to wheat and find the texture of this pasta much better than rice pasta. It’s almost as good as the real thing, though it’s been so long I may not accurately remember anymore!

Fresh ground black pepper to taste and you might want to salt the water that you cook the pasta in, but if you don’t like salt much or you have to watch your intake, skip that because the capers, anchovies and olives all have a lot of salt.

So saute the onion and garlic until lightly browned. Add the pesto, capers and olives and saute for a couple of minutes with the garlic and onion. Then add the tomatoes, tuna and the parsley and cook until it comes to a boil and then immediately turn it off. I like this not to cook too long.

That’s it.

Bon apetit.

My general rule when I go grocery shopping is “only buy ingredients.”  What I mean by that is that I don’t buy things that are already dishes and only need to be heated.  I don’t buy spaghetti sauce, I keep tomatoes and garlic, etc. on hand.  That way if I want spaghetti sauce I can have that, and if I want chili it can also be that.  There have been a few exceptions to that rule to satisfy my wife by purchasing things I cannot make better myself.  One of those, Stove Top Stuffing, was eliminated last week when I learned the secret of sage, this week I am able to eliminate my final boxed good from my shopping cart by figuring out how to recreate Zatarans Dirty Rice.  I don’t know why I didn’t try this earlier because I’ve been mixing my own Cajun spices since I learned how to cook (the first thing I ever cooked was gumbo.)  My wife loves Zatarans with Italian sausage mixed in.  Here is how to avoid ever having to by Zatarans again.

Dirty Rice with Italian Sausage

1 lb Italian Sausage (hot or mild)

Cajun Spice

2 cups Beef Broth

1 cup Rice

1 pat Butter

1 tblspn minced Garlic

1 tblspn diced Onion  

1 tblspn dice Bell Pepper

Cajun Spice

1 tspn thyme

½ tspn oregano

1 tspn pepper

½ – 0 tspn cayenne (depending on your heat preference)

1 tspn paprika

1 tspn garlic powder

1 tspn onion powder

½ tspn celery salt

1.       Prepare Italian sausage.  What I do is fill my cast iron skillet 1/3 full of water and boil the sausages until the water all evaporated, then I sear them in the fat which has been released from them while boiling.  This little trick is how I am able to get the insides and outsides cooked to my desired doneness.  I also use this trick to “grill” onions by adding some oil and butter to the water. When the sausages are done, move them to a cutting board, let them rest and slice into bite size pieces.

2.       Saute your onion, pepper and garlic (you could add celery too)in the butter until softened.

3.       Add your Cajun seasoning and let the flavors bloom a little, once you can smell it go ahead and

4.       Add your rice, I always sauté my rice a little

5.       Add in your beef broth and cook rice as you normally do

6.       When the rice is done and all the liquid absorbed, mix in ½ the sausage with the rice

7.       Plate up and add the second ½ the sausage on top

Makes enough for 4.