Lemon Caper Chicken, Spinach, Rice

This one isn't a splashy meal, but it epitomizes what's important to me in a dinner: 1 meat, 1 starch, and one veg.  My husband prefers to sauce everything on his plate, so he'd include the sauce as a prerequisite.  But if I add sauce to the pre-req's, I may as well add bacon because it's always on hand and almost always makes it into a meal in one form or flavor.  It's funny that I didn't realize how tied I was to this "nutritional trinity" until I had to flake out on a side dish or two due to lack of time or ingredients.  It's so disappointing to have a lonely starch with no veg.

Lemon Caper Chicken
This meal does not require any prep earlier in the day (i.e.,no naptime chores) and allows us to eat dinner at a reasonable hour after the kids are in bed.

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp EVO

1/4 C flour

Salt and pepper chicken. Pour flour onto a plate.  Press chicken into flour on both sides, shaking off excess.  Heat butter and oil in a large skillet (12") on medium high heat.  Saute chicken for 4 minutes on each side and remove to plate to stay warm.

Pan Sauce

1/2 small onion

1/4 C white wine

3/4 C chicken broth

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp capers

Saute onion in same skillet as chicken until softened.  Deglaze with white wine. Add broth, lemon nad capers.  Reduce for 10 minutes. Add chicken back to pan to cook through, another 10 minutes.


Sauteed Spinach with Bacon
Giant box of baby spinach (think it's 1-2 lbs)
2 slices bacon
2 cloves garlic
lemon squeeze


Rinse spinach.  Fry 2 slices bacon in a large dutch oven with lid.  Remove bacon when crisp and drain on paper towels.  Add garlic and cook 1 minutes.  Add damp spinach to pot with bacon drippings and toss to coat. Cover and let steam for 5 minutes until wilted.  Remove lid and allow water to evaporate.  Salt and pepper and squeeze lemon juice. Serve immediately.

Rice in a box
Why on earth would I chop and prepare ingredients to jazz up rice when it is one of the easiest and tastiest modern conveniences?  I love Far East Pilafs and rice  mixes.  They are never mushy and if you start them at the beginning of your prep time, you have a hot easy side in 30 minutes.  I learned that the rice/starch is always the time intensive factor in any meal so it always gets first priority on the stove.

Which reminds me, this whole meal was very stove intensive.   I long for the day when I can have all 4-5 burners raging without wonting for space.  The fact is, my pots and pans often encroach onto other burners and I have some flames that are more reliable than others.  So, I made the rice and then re-used that burner for the spinach when it was done.

Bouillabaisse (aka Fish Stew)

Fancy name and apparently it can be much more fancy and time consuming than what I  made. Call it fish stew, call it bouillabaisse, or cioppino, but call it delicious. I scanned several recipes until I found ideas of what I already wanted to do.  I mostly just looked for the secret ingredients that showed up in most of the recipes:  fennel, saffron, and fish stock.   I will say I agree with Cooks Illustrated that you must combine some sort of firm fish (halibut/grouper), flaky fish (snapper), and shellfish (mussels, scallops, shrimp) to get the right textures in play.  I also learned that the fish counter keeps frozen fish stock so that I will never have to buy or deal with fish bones and shells (hooray!).

The leftovers were absolutely devoured by my toddler. He even sopped up all the juices with the garlic bread and ate fennel without knowing it.  (Big parenting win!)

Bouillabaisse

4 small Snapper fillets (thanks to Uncle Stanley's fishing success!)
4 scallops
5 shrimp (keep stocked frozen)
3 leeks or 1 small onion
1 small fennel bulb, slice thin
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 pinch saffron
4-6 C fish stock (can substitute a fortified version of clam juice if not available)
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

In a large Dutch Oven, heat 1 tbsp olive oil.  Add leeks and fennel and cook over medium heat until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 more minute.  Add stock, saffron, and tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Simmer 20 minutes until veggies are soft.

Heat broiler and make garlic bread while you simmer.

Add snapper, cook 2 minutes. Add shrimp and scallops and cook 2 more minutes.  Turn off heat. Serve.

Pizza plus Baby bread

Made the dough during nap so that it could rise for 2 hours.  My son was so excited that he couldn't wait for the pizza to cook and kept eating all the ingredients (not unusual).  We started rolling dough at 4pm and all the pizzas were done by around 6pm since we made 4 personal-sized pizzas.

Pizza Dough

The dough was from Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe.  I used all-purpose flour instead of bread flour and let it rise in a cold oven to get it out of the way.  I think it's a solid dough recipe, but I'm not bound to it.  I'd like to find a less fussy version that I could get a bit thinner or even roll out.  I will say that this Master Recipe is much more forgiving and sturdy than the quick version that rises in a warm oven.

It's important to have a pizza peel because it's relatively impossible to move the dough to the baking stone without it. I also use cornmeal all over the peel to keep it from sticking.

Toppings:

pancetta

pineapple

bulk Mild Italian Sausage

thinly sliced red pepper

chopped Sun-dried Tomatoes

Mozzarella

Baby Breadsticks

Another great thing about making this homemade dough is that I was able to make perfect little breadsticks for my 7 month old.  She uses them as a spoon (since she has to do everything herself) and dips the crust into her baby food.  I dipped the dough in EVO and threw them on the baking stone next to the pizza.  They cook for about the same length of time and get pretty hard like a teething biscuit.

Dessert Pizza

For the last pizza, we all opted for a dessert pizza rather than leftovers of the other kind.  I reasoned that if you brush all of the crusts with EVO for savory pizza, then butter would work for a dessert one.  Nope.  I'll leave it dry next time.  The butter didn't brown so I left the crust in the oven for extra time causing it to get too crunchy.  I'll have to figure out if the butter caused it or if it's because that dough ball rested for about an hour while we made all the rest and the recipe says rest for 5-30 minutes.  Only a Cooks Illustrated scientist could probably solve that mystery.

Dessert Pizza

1 C confectioner's sugar

1-2 tbst milk/half n half

1/2 tsp vanilla

cinnamon sugar

chocolate chips

Sprinkle chocolate chips over dough right out of the oven so they can melt.  I'll use some nutella next time.  Mix confectioner's sugar and milk to make icing.  Drizzle on top of chocolate. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.  yum.

Kid's Gnocchi

We were stuck inside on a rainy weekend and I couldn't make it to the grocery store on Friday.  So I checked the pantry and we had some russet potatoes. Checked the freezer and we had some pancetta.  Plus it was Friday night and we need an excuse to drink nice wine....So begins the gnocchi experiment!

So I googled a recipe from the pasta master--Mario Batali.  His food and restaurants can be really complicated, but I'm pretty sure he got famous from making his grandma's old recipes. Surely she didn't sit and fret over mixing techniques and measurements.  Here's the starting point recipe for our gnocchi adventure.  I also cross referenced the recipe with one in the 'Silver Spoon' which is supposed to be the encyclopedia for Italian cooking.  I mainly took Batali's proportions because getting 1 3/4 C of potato seems ludicrous.

I should mention that the only time I ever tried gnocchi in the past it was a total disaster.  I made it from straight semolina which was like cornmeal.  Cornmeal texture and gnocchi should not even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Gnocchi
2 small russet potatoes (I used 3 but will cut back next time. See notes below)
2 C all purpose flour
1 egg
pinch salt

Boil a large pot of water.

I boiled the potatoes whole for 30-40 minutes and then let them sit on the counter for about an hour to "cool."  Refill your pot with salted water for the gnocchi.

Rice  or food mill the potatoes onto a giant work surface or cutting board where you're going to roll out your pasta.  Make a well in the middle.  Sprinkle all of the flour over the potatoes.  Crack the egg in the middle and prepare to get your workout.

Mix the egg into the potato/flour mixture with a fork in a circular motion, incorporating more and more of the potato and flour as you mix.  Once you get almost all of it mixed in, knead the rest in by hand and continue to knead for another 4-5 minutes.  [This is where it was beneficial that I had ever seen the Molto Mario episode so I had a clue how to mix it all in]

Divide dough up into baseball-sized balls.  Then the fun!  Rolling it all into long snakes and then cutting them into 1" pieces.  I would actually make the snakes about 1/2" and then cut them into 1" gnocchi. I had my toddler help:

All of the fork-flicking and ridges you're supposed to to for gnocchi didn't really work. That may have been because they had too much potato in the recipe. I noticed that the over-worked pieces of dough that my son had played with actually turned out more al dente than the fluffy-soft first batch.

These only take about a minute to cook and you'll know when they're done because they float.  So, have your sauce ready to go.  Simpler is better because gnocchi are pretty rich and only need a light tomato, EVO, basil-type sauce. My pancetta-tomato-spinach sauce was way too much for these little guys.

I put all the cut gnocchi on parchment on a cookie sheet so they would transfer to the pot easier.

Aunt Anne's Chicken

This recipe combines a love of two Aunties--my sister-in-law in Seattle and my husband's Great Aunt Lee. Aunt Lee's chicken contributes the evaporated milk and Aunt Anne the melba toast. The original Aunt Lee Chicken is made with Post Toasties (which I can't even find in the store anymore) and I have only had Aunt Anne Chicken once. So you see where the need to modify comes from. This is so simple and so good that I don't know why I don't make it more often.

Aunt Anne's Chicken

1 package any flavor Melba toasts (I used Sea Salt)

1 lb chicken thighs

1 can evaporated milk

s+p

Pour evap milk over chicken thighs and refrigerate for several hours. Good to start it during naptime. Then when everyone is awake, I get my toddler to help push the button on the Cuisinart to make the Melba Toasts into bread crumbs. Leave some small chunks of toast.

Preheat oven to 350. Drain off excess milk and toss chicken thighs with some salt and pepper. Dredge the thighs in the breadcrumbs and place on rimmed baking sheet. It's fine if they are touching because they shrink significantly during cooking. Cook for 30-40 minutes.

The Celery Root

Celery root is on about the same level with turnips when it comes to mystery and intrigue. It's a weird looking and intimidating ingredient but so savory and delicious that it makes you re-think basic old root vegetables and boring potatoes.

Celery Root Mashed Potatoes

modified from Cooks Illustrated

NOTES:If you dice ahead of time, you must submerge both celery root and potatoes seperately in cold water to avoid oxidization. Dry the celery root with paper towels prior to cooking so you can get a good caramelization. Do not use yukon gold potatoes (my favorite for plain mashers) because they make it gummy.

1 1/2 C celery root, diced 1/2 in thick

2 russet potatoes, in 1/4 in half moons

4 tbsp butter

1/3 C chicken broth

3/4 C half/half or milk, warmed

1. From Cooks Illustrated:

   1. Melt butter in large saucepan over medium heat. When foaming subsides, add root vegetables and cook, stirring occasionally, until butter is browned and vegetables are dark brown and caramelized, 10 to 12 minutes. (If after 4 minutes vegetables have not started to brown, increase heat to medium-high.)

   

   1. 2. Add potatoes, broth, and 3/4 teaspoon salt and stir to combine. Cook, covered, over low heat (broth should simmer gently; do not boil), stirring occasionally, until potatoes fall apart easily when poked with fork and all liquid has been absorbed, 25 to 30 minutes. (If liquid does not gently simmer after a few minutes, increase heat to medium-low.) Remove pan from heat; remove lid and allow steam to escape for 2 minutes.

   2. 3. Gently mash potatoes and root vegetables in saucepan with potato masher (do not mash vigorously). Gently fold in warm half-and-half. Season with salt and pepper to taste; serve immediately.

2. These are great with Friday Steak Night because they are so savory and hearty. Love them!

Beef Stew Spectacular

After chunking a batch of beef stock that turned out watery, I looked up a recipe to realize you need 6 lbs of beef +bones to make 2 quarts of stock. Broth will do thank you.

Beef Stew
250 degrees is the perfect temp for spoon-tender stew beef. The flour thickens the broth to a "Campbell's Chunky Soup" consistency which I happen to love.

1.5 lbs stew beef

1 onion

4 carrots

2 celery

2 small turnips

1 russet potato

1 pkg frozen peas

1 tbsp tomato paste

1/4 cup flour

3 cups beef broth (Pacific)

4 sprigs thyme

1 tbsp parsley, finely chopped

1/2 c robust red wine

Chop everything for mix en place during naptime.

Turn on Sesame Street. Pat meat dry, salt and pepper and brown in a dab of oil in a heavy dutch oven on medium high heat. Brown, meaning don't touch it for at least 5-6 min per side. Get it good and caramelized. Remove to plate with tongs. Add diced carrots, celery, and onion. Sweat for 5 min. Stir in tomato paste. Add flour and cook for 5 min to get out raw flour taste. Deglaze with wine. Scrape hard on the brown bits. Add meat back and add enough broth to barely cover meat. Add turnips Throw it in the 250 degree oven for 1 hour. Add potato and return for 1 more hour. Check everything for tenderness. Make kids dinner in microwave.

Pour wine and remove from oven while husband puts kid #2 to bed and add peas and parsley. Salt and pepper. Return to oven for 10 min. Switch off oven if kid fails to get to bed in a timely fashion. Add some french bread to warm in oven.

The low temp keeps the veg from getting mushy while the rest of the house goes to chaos. Case in point: We had to remove a door knob after I locked my son's toys in "time out" earlier in the afternoon because the cats were crying for their dinner which was also locked inside. Uf. But then the stew was lovely.