Butterscotch Chip Cookies
The upside of having a well-stocked larder is the ability to make just about anything you want - when you want. The downside is having all this stuff in the house that is taking up space.
In the weeks prior to Christmas Cookie Baking, I started buying ingredients. I didn't have a plan, I didn't have my recipes together, but if I saw something that looked like it could possibly be used, I picked it up.
That's how we ended up with a bag of butterscotch chips in the pantry.
I don't know if I've ever actually used butterscotch chip before, but that didn't stop me from picking up a bag. I mean - you just never know, right?!? They were there, price was right. Into the cart they went.
The Christmas Cookies were planned, baked, wrapped, and delivered - and that bag of butterscotch chips just sat there. Mocking me.
Until today.
I was planning on making cookies, today, and was going through my vast cookie recipe collection, when it dawned on me that butterscotch chips could be substituted for chocolate chips, and if I made a cake-like cookie, Nonna would eat them!
A recipe was born! I used half shortening and half butter because shortening gives tenderness and butter gives flavor. You can use all of one or the other... I also used baking powder and baking soda - baking powder helps give it the cake-like rise.
Butterscotch Chip Cookies
Ingredients:
- 1/4 lb of shortening
- 1/4 lb butter
- 1/2 lb brown sugar
- 4 eggs
- 3 1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla
- pinch salt
- 11 oz bag butterscotch chips
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Cream shortening and butter; gradually add sugar. When light, add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and salt.
Gradually add flour. When fully mixed, stir in butterscotch chips. Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes.
Scoop 1 1/2 tbsp balls of dough on cookie sheets.
Bake until lightly browned - about 12 minutes.
They're good. Really good. And really easy to make.
Orange Bars
So... what to do if you have a bag of your favorite Cara Cara oranges hanging about? Well... if you're a basic, normal person, you peel and eat. If you're me - you make Orange Bars.
These are quick and easy and really good. Granted, they're not quite as over-the-top as David Lebovitz's Lemon Bars, but they're not half bad! I actually forgot about David's recipe, otherwise I would have made them with the oranges instead of lemon.
Oh, well... so many recipes, so little memory.
Orange Bars
crust
- 1 cup flour
- 3 tbsp powdered sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/3 cup butter
- pinch salt
filling
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp finely grated orange peel
- 2/3 cup orange juice
- 2 tbsp flour
- pinch salt
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8"x8" pan with foil. Grease foil and set aside.
In a food processor - easiest - combine ingredients until it becomes a coarse crumb. Press into bottom of pan and bake about 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.
In a medium bowl, whisk all filling ingredients together until smooth. Pour over hot crust and bake about 25 minutes, or until filling is set.
Cool completely. Remove from pan and cut into squares, dusting with powdered sugar, if desired.
Really quick and easy - and really good!
Orecchiette with Fennel and Tuna
We were watching Jacques Pépin - one of my most favorite chefs - the other night when he came up with an Orecchiette with Fennel and Tuna that just sounded outrageous. It was just so simple I knew I had to make it.
I have been a fan of his since his first TV show 20-whatever years ago. What I really appreciate about him is his candor in how his cooking has evolved. He talks about how, when he was younger, he would be looking for more ingredients, more garnishes - ways to really take something over the top, his adapting from classic French to production cooking at Howard Johnson's, and today, it's about simplicity. Less ingredients, less fuss... letting a few quality ingredients speak for themselves.
That is something I can totally relate to. I did mom-and-pop restaurants, a Navy aircraft carrier, 1000 room hotels, and a 99 bed hospital. Once upon a time, I loved to cook classic French with all the sauces and 527 steps to create a simple dish. Now, it's more rustic Italian or rustic French. Simple foods that speak volumes simply because of their simplicity. Even my desserts have toned down. I'm much more interested in canning things from the garden - making liqueurs and hot sauce. Not taking any of it seriously.
Tonight's dinner is a classic example of that concept.
Armed with a bag of organic Orecchiette from Puglia, I set out to do it justice. And while I was at it, I baked a loaf of my favorite bread from Puglia! I had the biga in the 'fridge...
Orecchiette with Fennel and Tuna
adapted from Jacques Pépin
- 1/2 lb Orecchiette
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1/2 cup pine nuts
- 1 medium fennel bulb, thinly sliced
- 1 bell pepper, cut into thin strips
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 6oz can of tuna (packed in oil, preferred)
- 1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
- Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Start cooking orecchiette.
In a large skillet, saute onion in olive oil until translucent. Add pine nuts and cook until they begin to lightly brown and are fragrant.
Add sliced fennel and stir or flip pan until fennel is on bottom and pine nuts on top. Add a bit of pasta water. Cover, and cook about 3 minutes.
Uncover and add bell peppers. Cook a few minutes and add the garlic. Continue cooking and add the tuna and raisins.
Cover, again, and cook until vegetables are tender - just a few more minutes.
Drain pasta and stir into fennel. Stir in parsley and cheese.
Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper, as desired.
This really is stellar. I have to admit I was unsure of the canned tuna, but it totally made the dish. We both ate our fill - and then some. And... there's plenty left over for a couple of lunches.
So thanks, Jacques! I may just have to dust off a couple of your cookbooks and see what else I can come up with! The countdown to retirement is on - and the key word is simplicity!
Stuffed Cabbage
Victor and I share a pretty even like of different foods. It makes for cooking dinner pretty easy - we just know we'll like whatever the other is cooking. The only two places where we part ways is with cooked cabbage and curry. Victor is just not a fan.
Of course, it took 10 or more years to find this out. I found out fairly early on about the cabbage but it did take years to find out about the curry. Finally, one day, he had to confess that he really did hate both.
No big deal - there are a bazillion foods to cook. Dropping a couple off the rotation really doesn't stifle the creativity. But every now and again, I'll see a recipe and think that it would be fun to make, only to realize it would be fun to make but not really well received.
Oh well.
So... several years back, Victor decided to make me Stuffed Cabbage. I was thrilled. It's a childhood meal as well as something I've made absolutely forever. He found a recipe from Ina Garten - and he loved it! Score one for the Barefoot Contessa!
Since then, he's made it a few more times. I let him decide when the time is right and Monday, he added cabbage onto the shopping list. It was time.
Naturally, the grocery store was out of green cabbage - the weather has played havoc with deliveries and with crops - but there was red cabbage. I wasn't going to pass up an offer for stuffed cabbage, so red cabbage, it was!
The fun thing about red cabbage is when you blanch it, it colors the cooking water a glorious shade of purple - which then dyes everything it touches - like hands. It's wonderful - especially if it's someone else's hands...
And it's wonderful rolled around a beef and rice filling and baked in an agrodolce tomato sauce.
My stomach is smiling.
This is Ina's recipe. Victor plays with it a bit and tweaks it for the two of us. The sweet/vinegary sauce with raisins really makes the dish. I could go after a bowl of that with a loaf of bread and die happy.
Stuffed Cabbage
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons good olive oil
- 1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions (2 onions)
- 2 (28-ounce) cans crushed tomatoes and their juice
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 large head Savoy or green cabbage, including outer leaves
For the filling:
- 2 1/2 pounds ground chuck
- 3 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onions
- 1/2 cup plain dried breadcrumbs
- 1/2 cup uncooked white rice
- 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme leaves
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Directions
For the sauce, heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, add the onions, and cook over medium-low heat for 8 minutes, until the onions are translucent. Add the tomatoes, vinegar, brown sugar, raisins, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Set aside.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil.
Remove the entire core of the cabbage with a paring knife. Immerse the head of cabbage in the boiling water for a few minutes, peeling off each leaf with tongs as soon as it s flexible. Set the leaves aside. Depending on the size of each leaf, you will need at least 14 leaves.
For the filling, in a large bowl, combine the ground chuck, eggs, onion, breadcrumbs, rice, thyme, salt, and pepper. Add 1 cup of the sauce to the meat mixture and mix lightly with a fork.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
To assemble, place 1 cup of the sauce in the bottom of a large Dutch oven. Remove the hard triangular rib from the base of each cabbage leaf with a small paring knife. Place 1/3 to 1/2 cup of filling in an oval shape near the rib edge of each leaf and roll up toward the outer edge, tucking the sides in as you roll. Place half the cabbage rolls, seam sides down, over the sauce. Add more sauce and more cabbage rolls alternately until you ve placed all the cabbage rolls in the pot. Pour the remaining sauce over the cabbage rolls. Cover the dish tightly with the lid and bake for 1 hour or until the meat is cooked and the rice is tender. Serve hot.
It's the perfect wintry dinner...
Santas and Spicy Jambalaya
We started taking down Christmas, today. It was 2°F outside - absolutely no reason to step outside and do anything.
I have to admit that I just don't get the concept of always having to be out and about. I just can't think of anything worse than always being in the car, running into this store and that, standing in line for coffee, for mediocre service, hurrying here and there...
I think I'm getting old.
Because I think that once upon a time that was me. Now?!? I leave the house to go to work and go grocery shopping. I brew my own coffee and if I can't buy something online, I don't buy it. Life has gotten a lot less complex. And I love it.
Our big decision, today, was whether to take down the tree or leave it up for one more night and take it down tomorrow. We packed away everything else. The tree stayed.
We have a pretty good system. The linens all get collected to be washed, and then we start loading the table with Santas. Lots and lots of Santas.
The bins come back up from the basement and I start wrapping and packing while Victor disassembles the smaller trees, wreaths, and garlands, and brings things into the kitchen. It's a great system.
We stop for sustenance - today was coffee and Kolaches - and then carry on until we're done.
And then there's dinner.
Tonight, it was a jambalaya of sorts. Of sorts, because I didn't use any shrimp.
I did use chunks of chicken and andouille sausage - and thyme and hot pepper sauce - so it had a great kick. It just wasn't New Orleans authentic.
Jambalaya
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 bell pepper, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 8 oz andouille sausage, sliced
- 2 cups chicken, cubed
- 1 can diced tomatoes with juice
- 1 cup rice
- 3 cups broth
- 1 tsp thyme
- Tabasco sauce (I used our homemade hot sauce)
- Salt & pepper
Saute onion and pepper. Add garlic and saute. Add chicken and cook. Add andouille and brown.
Add rice, tomatoes, broth, thyme, a few healthy shots of Tabasco, and a pinch of S&P. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and let simmer about 15 minutes.
Stir everything well. Cover, again, and cook another 10 to 15 minutes or until rice is cooked.
Add a few more healthy shots of Tabasco and enjoy.
It's pretty no-brainer easy and it doesn't take a lot of watching. And on a freezing day, it warms the old body right up. I was going to make cornbread to go along with it, but completely forgot. We ended up watching a PBS/Broadway special of Holiday Inn after taking the last of the bins downstairs and it completely slipped my mind until we were sitting down to eat.
Oh well... we really didn't need it!
Spaghetti and an Epiphany
I learned something new, today. I have always thought that Twelfth Night was January 6th - the Epiphany. It appears that it can also be January 5th!
My way of reckoning starts the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas on December 26th. The Church of England starts the First Day of Christmas on Christmas Day! Who knew?!?
Tradition also states that Christmas Decorations are supposed to be down by Twelfth Night or risk bad luck. Well... we blew that one regardless of which day it is - the decorations are still ablaze. We will probably start taking them down tomorrow. Once upon a time, we took them down on New Year's Day. Now... we put it off as long as possible. I'd leave it all up until Easter if I thought I could get away with it.
With it being colder than an ice cube outside, we may as well start moving and get it done. There's only 20 or so bins that need to come back up from the basement, get filled, and hauled back down...
Piece of cake.
Speaking of cake, we had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.
Once upon a time, that would not have been remarkable - we had it all the time. But when Nonna decided she no longer liked spaghetti, we stopped for a long time. The past few months have seen us cooking two meals more often. Her list of dislikes keeps growing. It's actually easier to cook two meals than try and cook something we will all eat.
I made the meatballs back in December and froze them. The sauce was Victor's. Garlic bread on the side. The perfect meal after a long day.
Dessert is going to be brownies with a chocolate ganache.
Time to put the feet up!
Pork Tenderloin and Tapenade
While I was out in the sub-freezing world, today, Victor was home - our warm, well-insulated home - thinking of things to create with a pork tenderloin. All of that lovely warmth really inspired him - he came up with a tenderloin stuffed with homemade tapenade. Yeah... Victor made tapenade - because that's the sort of stuff we do. What's even crazier is that he was able to think about making it and then actually make it without leaving the house to buy anything.
The perks of having a well-stocked larder!
He used:
- kalamata olives
- green olives
- anchovies
- capers
- roasted garlic
- olive oil
- grated parmesan cheese
Really simple. Really basic. Really delicious! No measurements or recipe... As the commercial says... Just Do It!
Another great perk in life is having a husband who loves to cook - and is good at it! I am thrilled any time he says he's cooking - I know I'm in for a treat.
He split the tenderloin and spread the tapenade on, rolled it up, tied it, and into a 350°F oven. He also made a rice-a-roni-ish rice with peas to go along with it.
It was picture-perfect yumminess.
Tomorrow is going to be pasta and meatballs because we're still working on cleaning out the freezer, and Sunday... Sunday is the start of the end of Christmas. The taking down and packing away of a bazillion Santas, Trees, Ornaments, and Assorted Decorations. I think a slow-simmering soup may be in order...
Stay tuned.
Chicken Pot Pie
When the weather gets rough, the formerly-tough get cooking.
We didn't get anything like the folks along the Atlantic, but it's been enough for me. I have ventured out in blizzards in my youth. Hell - the Tahoe years would find us driving down into Kings Beach in blinding snowstorms to hit the liquor department at Safeway. Or Kings Beach Liquors. We always tried to be prepared for catastrophes, but sometimes we consumed everything we had before the catastrophe was over. I've been through typhoons, tornadoes, earthquakes - and blinding snowstorms. As with many things, today, I can say I've been there and done that - no need to do it, again.
Nah... if it's snowing outside with winds gusting like hell, I'm more than happy to be indoors - and even happier to be in the kitchen where it's always warm. I am no longer compelled to go out and embrace Mother Nature at her fiercest. At some point, the wisdom of old age has to kick in. Besides, I want to be around long enough to start collecting my Social Security before those bastards in Washington figure out more ways to take it away. [countdown date=2018/06/30-16:00:00] Only [timer] until that first check![/countdown] But who's counting?!?
One thing I did this morning was organize the freezer. It's been a while since any attention was paid to it - and it showed. It's not all that big - which is good - because if I had more freezer space I would use more freezer space. And then I'd have even more stuff to try and organize. I knew I had a pie crust in there, and in my cleaning, I found another. That settled the dinner question - a double-crust Chicken Pot Pie! And there was a small Maple Walnut Cheesecake in there. Dessert is ready, too!
Looking back over past entries, it seems I always make a Chicken Pot Pie when it's snowing outside. It's pretty much the ultimate comfort food - and they're so easy to throw together.
I don't really use a recipe for a pot pie of any sorts, but our friend Ann sent hers down a while back, so here it is. I made a bit of a variation on this. I had turkey stock in the freezer, so I used it. And fresh carrots, celery, and peas in place of the frozen mixed.
Here is Ann’s recipe. It’s pretty classic.
Nursie’s Pot Pie
Nursie said she originally got this from a pie crust box.
- 1/3 c butter
- 1/3 c flour
- 1 very small chopped onion (or to taste)
- 1/2 c chopped green pepper, leave this out if you want to
- 1 1/2 c broth, chicken for chicken pie, beef for beef pie, and I use veggie broth for pork pie
- 1/3 cup milk
- 2 c frozen mixed veggies
Cook the onion and green pepper in the butter for a bit, whisk in the flour and add the liquids, cook until thickened. I season with salt, pepper, herbes de Provence, but you can use what ever sounds good. A little celery seed isn’t a bad addition, and with beef I use garlic and mushrooms instead of the green pepper. Add 2-3 cups chopped leftover roast whatever and the vegetables. Mix well and dump into the pie crust.
Bake in a two crust pie at 425 for 30-40 minutes and enjoy.
No shit, this is delicious. You can use whatever veggies you have around including leftovers. It is a great end of the week and I don’t want to cook sorta dish. But it is good enough for company! Anyone want to come to dinner?
Tomorrow is just going to be freezing cold and windy. No snow in the forecast. It's back to work and back to reality. And I should be able to drive right over the snow in the driveway.
Life is good!
Pizza and Bomb Cyclones
Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
I was a weather-related call-out to work, this morning. Yesterday, I was saying we weren't going to get anything from the storm. The way they were hyping it just made me think it would blow on by.
It appears that I was not correct. We currently have 2 weather advisories and a special weather statement for our zip code.
The wind is blowing like a banshee and snow is flying all over creation. It's absolutely beautiful in a weird sort of way. And as long as the power stays on, it will continue to be beautiful. And cold. Really cold. Wind chills are going to be in the -20°F neighborhood for the remainder of the week. That's pretty cold.
Time to hunker down and hit the kitchen!
Dinner, tonight, is going to be a double-crust chicken pot pie. Lunch was pizza.
Pizza is extremely easy to make. The dough is merely flour, water, salt, and yeast. One rise, form, top, and bake! Easy.
I have a 2-day dough that is excellent and great if you're planning pizza. I also have a quickie dough for days like today. I ended up splitting the dough into two pieces - one for today and another into the freezer.
Pizza Dough
- 1 pkt yeast
- 3/4 cup lukewarm water
- 2 cups flour
- 1 scant tsp salt
Proof yeast in the water. Add flour and salt and mix about 8 minutes with a mixer or knead by hand.
Place in an oiled bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled.
Form into a pizza round and top with your favorite toppings.
Start with your round of pizza dough.
Spin it into a round and place on the pizza peel. You need flour or corn meal on the peel to get the pizza to slide off the peel. I switch back and forth. Today I used corn meal.
Top with your favorite sauce. I made a quick one with tomato paste, red wine, water, garlic, oregano, and S&P.
And then the cheese. Less really is more.
I topped this with a 3-pepper salami and freshly-grated parmesan.
And then into the oven on the brand-new - preheated - baking stones.
It helps to have a dog standing by...
Bake at 450°F until done.
We do not own a pizza pan, so onto the cutting board.
And mangia!
It's ridiculously no-fail.
And speaking of no-fail...
We have had a round 14" pizza stone for more years than I can count. I honestly don't know how long we have had it but I do know it replaced the quarry tiles I had used for years before that. I loved the tiles but hated constantly putting them in-and-out of the oven, trying to find a place to conveniently store them when I wasn't baking... The problem with the pizza stone is that it's round - and I don't always bake round things. The other day clinched it when I wanted to bake 2 baguettes and a small round loaf. I had to curve the baguettes to get them all to fit - and then they all grew together in the oven.
Off to Chef Google for a solution.
My original plan was to find a single stone that fit the entire oven rack. I looked at a few - and looked at the shipping charges - and then started reading up a little more. The general consensus for a home oven seemed to be smaller blocks rather than a single large block because of the way they heat. Not to mention easier to handle.
I went with the Dough-Joe from Falls Culinary, a small company in Sioux Falls, SD. I think for the most part that we will be able to just keep them in the bottom oven and I'll do my bread-baking there instead of the upper oven.
We really only use both ovens a couple of times a year, so they really can just stay put most of the time.
The pizza came out fantastic. I foresee some fun baking!
Steaks on the Barbie
The banishment has been lifted! I'm allowed back in the kitchen!
To celebrate, I made a really simple meal - steaks, mashed potatoes, and peas. And I hardly made any mess. Well... just two pots and two skillets. And spoons and tongs and a potato masher and that sort of stuff. For me, it was hardly any mess, at all - and I didn't dirty the stove!
I started the steaks on the grill and finished them off in the oven - and then topped them with sauteed onions and mushrooms finished in brandy. The mashed potatoes had lots of cheese in them. The fresh peas just had a bit of butter. One needs to watch one's calories, after all...
A simple meal in preparation for the Blizzard of '18 due to start in a few hours. The weather folks are now calling for 3"-5" at our house. I'm still saying maybe a dusting. They're hyping it so much I just don't see it coming inland here. And if I'm wrong - I just hope we don't lose power. Victor and I can - and have - gone days without electricity. His mom is another story. The thought is too awful to contemplate.
So here's to a bust of a storm and electricity!
Italian Wedding Soup and Banishment from the Kitchen
Victor cleaned the kitchen, today, while I was at work. I'm officially banished for 24 hours. He wants to relish in the unusual cleanliness of the place - the clean stove top without a bazillion burnt-on splatters... Counter tops where you can actually see the granite... Drawer fronts that aren't caked in flour...
It's not that I'm a complete slob, it's just that I use the kitchen. A lot. I wipe up and I wipe down, but... stuff spills over on the stove or in the ovens. Flour dust flies no matter how careful I am. The spoon doesn't always make the spoon rest...
My punishment is I get a clean kitchen and dinner cooked for me. I'd throw a pity-party but I'm too busy doing a happy-dance. Banishment does not suck around here!
My gruel tonight is Italian Wedding Soup. It's freezing outside - literally and figuratively - and a bowl of hot homemade soup and warm, crusty, homemade bread is just the kind of punishment I need.
So here's the soup I was forced to eat, tonight.
It's truly a difficult life I lead.
Italian Wedding Soup
Meatballs
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1/2 cup onion, minced
- 1 tsp garlic, minced
- 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
- 1 large egg
- Salt & Pepper, to taste
Soup
- 3 qts chicken broth
- 1 lb escarole, chopped
- 2 large eggs
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Make meat balls: Mix all ingredients together and form into very small meat balls- about the size of a prize shooting marble. Place on a sheet pan off to the side.
Make the soup: Bring the broth to a boil in a large pot. Add the meatballs and escarole and simmer until the meatballs are cooked through and the escarole is tender – about 10 minutes.
To add the egg: Whisk the eggs to blend. Stir the soup in a circular motion. Slowly drizzle the egg mixture into the moving broth, stirring gently with a large fork to form thin stands of egg.
Ladle into bowls and add additional grated cheese and a drizzle of good-quality olive oil.
Oh... and that crusty homemade bread?!? Victor made parmesan toast. This is the last piece.
I ate it.
Sicilian-Style Chicken Agrodolce
Since the demise of the US version of La Cucina Italiana, my go-to recipe magazine has become Fine Cooking. It's an easy-to-read magazine and they actually treat their readers like they have a bit of intelligence. Not a bad start.
They also come up with some interesting ideas for food. Tonight's dinner is compliments of two past issues.
I had a whole chicken in the 'fridge and just wanted to cook up half of it and freeze the other half for another day. I thought braising the chicken would be an easy dinner and set out to look for a recipe.
I have - or, rather, had - a few hundred recipes bookmarked under a "food" folder in my browser. It's my new way of finding and keeping recipes I'll probably never make. I was actually going through them and organizing them a bit - and deleting all of the dead links from who knows how long ago - when I came upon a Fine Cooking recipe I had bookmarked for a Sicilian Pollo Agrodolce - Sweet and Sour Chicken. I decided it was kismet and I printed it off.
A little further down the list was a recipe for Potatoes Boulangère - a potato gratin without the cheese and cream. I think that on any other day I would have made one or the other, but today, I decided to make both. It's a holiday, after all, right?!? Right!
I spent some time going through and deleting things I know I'll never make and creating folders for the other stuff I probably will never make but aren't ready to delete and then it was off to the kitchen...
Chicken Agrodolce
- 1/2 chicken, cut into 5 pieces
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Flour for dredging
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 small onion, cut into small dice
- 1 small rib celery, cut into small dice
- 1 small carrot, cut into small dice
- 2 Tbs. sugar
- 2 Tbs. good-quality white-wine vinegar (I used an aronia berry wine vinegar from Jalma Farms in Cape May)
- 1/2 cup chopped roasted red peppers
- 1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
- 18 grape tomatoes
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/4 cup golden raisins
- 1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
- 2 Tbs. capers
Pat the chicken pieces dry, season them with salt and pepper, and dredge them lightly in the flour.
Heat a-large sauté pan fitted with a lid over medium-high heat and add the 1/4 cup olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the chicken pieces (in batches, if necessary), browning them very well on both sides. When browned, remove the chicken from the pan and set aside.
Turn the heat to medium and add the onion, celery, and carrot. Sauté until they’re soft and fragrant, about 6 or 7 minutes. Add the sugar and vinegar to the pan and let it bubble for about 1 minute. Add the peppers and tomatoes.
Return the chicken pieces to the pan and turn them over in the vegetables once or twice to coat them. Increase the heat to medium and add the wine, letting it boil until almost evaporated. Add the chicken stock and bay leaf, cover the pan, and simmer on low heat until the chicken is just about tender, 30 to 35 minutes, turning the pieces once or twice during cooking.
Add the raisins, pine nuts, and capers and simmer to blend the flavors, about 5 minutes. longer. The sauce should be reduced and thickened but still pourable. If it looks too dry, add a splash of chicken stock or water. Taste for seasoning. It should have a nice balance between sweet and sour but not be too aggressive. Add more salt, pepper, a splash of vinegar, or a pinch of sugar to balance the flavors.
Arrange the chicken on a large serving platter and pour the sauce over.
I like braised, saucy dishes and this one has a lot of future possibilities. I can see this with boneless thighs and served over creamy polenta...
Stay tuned.
And then we had the potatoes...
I do have to admit that these wouldn't be my first choice for serving with a dish like this - but I wanted to make them, so I did.
Potatoes Boulangère
- 1 Tbs. olive oil
- 3-1/2 oz. diced pancetta
- 2 cups onions, thinly sliced
- 1 tsp thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- Scant 1 tsp. kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
- 2 lb. Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch-thick half moons
- 1 cup chicken broth
Heat the oven to 375°F. Heat the olive oil in a medium (9-inch) Dutch oven over medium heat.
When the oil is hot, add the pancetta. Sauté until it just begins to crisp and turn brown, about 4 min.
Add the onions, thyme, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally and more frequently toward the end, until the onions are deep golden, about 14 min.
Meanwhile in a small saucepan, bring the chicken broth to a boil and then remove from the heat.
Add the potatoes to the onions and cook, stirring for a minute or two. Pour the hot broth over the potatoes and onions and bring the pot to a boil, stirring with a wooden spoon to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Cover the pot, put it in the oven, and bake for about 15 min.
Uncover the pot, gently and evenly push the potatoes down with a spatula, and continue to bake uncovered until the potatoes are completely tender and have started to brown, about another 25 min.
The potatoes seriously rocked. They may become my new go-to!
So meals are completed for the first day of 2018. Well... other than dessert, that is.
It was a great day to be inside and in the kitchen. And that's where you will probably find me most of the year!