Roasted Chicken
This picture is not doing this bird justice. This was one fabulous, succulent chicken!
Victor outdid himself tonight. The dressing was unbelievably good - a sausage and bread dressing using an artisan walnut and raisin bread, cauliflower with bacon, a moist, wonderful, flavorful chicken... great little challah rolls, and a wonderful homemade cranberry chutney that our dear friend Martha made.
It was a feast.
Roasted chicken is one of the finest foods imaginable. And I don't care what the folks at any of those national poultry places say - a free range organic chicken is light years apart from those foul factory fowl. This bird rocked.
Thursday, I'm going to take the rest of the bird and make chicken paninis. With more of Martha's cranberry chutney, of course.
My stomach is smiling.....
Sweet Potato Bean Soup
The calendar says soup - and the thermometer is finally catching up. It ain't freezing, but it's cold enough for a big bowl (or two) of soup.
Victor had mentioned bean soup the other day, and I had a couple of sweet potatoes that needed using up, so I merged concepts and came up with a sweet potato bean soup! This was an easy one. I'm always picking up a couple of cans of beans at the grocery store, and when I opened the cabinet today, I noticed I had enough to open a restaurant. The creative juices started flowing...
Sweet Potato Bean Soup
- 1 onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 2 qts chicken broth
- 1 can diced tomatoes
- 2 cans pink beans
- 2 cans pinto beans
- 1 can black beans
- 4oz pancetta
- 2 tsp herbs d'provence
- salt and pepper
- sour cream for topping
Saute the onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil. Add the broth and the sweet potatoes. Cook until very soft.
Puree potatoes and onion with an immersion blender.
Add tomatoes, beans, (I added three cans undrained and 2 cans drained) and seasoning. Bring to a boil.
Taste for salt and pepper, and add as necessary.
Ladle into bowls and top with sour cream.
Victor made excellent garlic toast to go with it.
Yum.
Panorama, Parmesan and Panini
Friday night saw us in Old City Philadelphia to meet friends for dinner. We had a fantastic dinner at Ristorante Panorama on Front Street. They bill themselves as "... contemporary, authentic Italian with influence that leans toward the Northern Italian region and features homemade pastas, authentic veal dishes, and fresh seafood specialties." They came through!
Alas, I forgot the camera, and trying to explain all of the food we ate would be nigh on impossible at this point. We had five different appetizers, five different entrees, five different desserts, and walked out with stomachs smiling. It was a great time. Here's the menu!
Still in an Italian mode, Victor made dinner while I was at work, yesterday. Chicken parmesan and ravioli. We still have those huge chicken breasts I picked up at the farmer's market, so he sliced them thin, pounded and breaded, fied, and finished off with sauce and cheese.
Two more of the cutlets went to today's lunch!
Santa brought us a Panini Press/Grill/Griddle for Christmas and I broke it in for lunch today! Breaded chicken breasts, cranberry sauce, bacon, herbed chevre, and vidalia onion relish on thick slices of raisin walnut bread brushed with garlic butter. Can we say "gastronomic heaven" boys and girls?!?
Dayum, it was good!
Tonight I'm going all out with a really fun dinner - individual beef wellington's!
The diet's start January 6th.
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to one and all! We're in North Jersey having fun with the family... Perfect weather, tons of food, lots of presents, and lots of fun and good cheer.
Sweet and Savory
We were watching mindless Christmas Food stuff on the Food Channel the other day and Paula Deen had this guy on who made these potatoes that sounded intriguing... He boiled 'em, flouerd 'em, and baked 'em. As I said - intriguing.
Chicken with a spicy cranberry and mango sauce was the main event... I floured the chicken with a combination of chipotle powder, garlic, flour, salt and pepper. Fried in a bit of olive oil...
Sauce was leftover cranberry sauce with mango chunks and chili paste (sambal olek.)
The potatoes...
I was kinda looking for a different potato recipe for a brunch in a week or so with some friends. I thought I'd try it out.
Hasselback Roasted Potatoes
- 2 pounds potatoes, medium sized (your choice of type)
- Salt
- 1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1/3 cup canola, vegetable or grapeseed oil
- 1/4 cup very finely parsley leaves
Peel the potatoes and rinse to remove any traces of dirt. Cut into the potatoes into uniform pieces. (This will help in cooking time if they are all similar.) Take a sharp knife and beginning on 1 end, cut about 2/3 through the potato. Repeat the same incision from 1 end of the potato to the other, spacing the cuts uniformly. (The idea is to create the look of a fan, which is why you don't cut all the way through the potato.)
Place the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with water. Add a pinch of salt and cook until just tender. (Do not overcook. The potatoes should remain a little hard, as they will continue to cook during roasting.)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Drain the potatoes and place them on absorbent toweling to remove excess water. Mix the flour and salt and pepper, to taste, in a bowl and carefully toss with the already blanched potatoes. Place the floured potatoes onto a baking sheet and drizzle with oil. Bake until golden brown, approximately 30 to 40 minutes.
To finish, scoop the potatoes with a slotted spoon onto absorbent paper toweling and to drain any excess oil. Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with the parsley.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Okay... the potatoes weren't that great. They were okay, but...
I suppose they have some potential, but I'm not going to fool with them for my brunch. I have plenty of potato ideas - I was just looking for something new...
The End
This is it - the last cookie pictures of 2008! This is the tray for work tomorrow... It's my 8th Christmas there... 8 Cookie trays... Yum!
Almost over for another year...
The kitchen is officially a mess.
Pots on the stove with white, dark, and milk chocolates... Cutting boards and powdered sugar everywhere. Cybil can't stay out of the kitchen. On the other hand, she's keeping the floor clean for me...
I just started putting cookie trays together. We have quite a few to do, plus the big tray for work tomorrow... THIS is the part I like best - getting them out of the house before I eat everything!
I've already consumed enough to last me through the new year... Of course, I'll be eating more and more of them as soon as we hit North Jersey on Wednesday. There's something about Christmas Eve...
Time to get these finished and then we need to start delivering.....
Merry Christmas, indeed! :)
Ravioli, Pork Chops, and Sausage
This morning before heading off to work, I pulled out a pack of 2 pork chops and a pack of 4 Italian sausages from the freezer. When I called home at lunch, Victor asked what my plans were for them. My response was "for you to make sauce." My nefarious plan worked! He made a GREAT sauce! Ravioli - also from the freezer, and cheese biscuits he made yesterday finished off the meal - and me. It was a pretty yummy dinner.
Now to finish the Christmas baking... Tomorrow is the Stollen...
Frito Chicken
I'm not a huge snack-food person, but every now and again I find myself in the chip aisle of the grocery store and a bag of Frito's makes its way into the shopping cart. I've been a Frito fan for as long as I can remember. I did switch allegiance back when the original Dorito's Tortilla Chips hit the market, but they have changed so many times, adding weird flavors that have nothing in common with a good tortilla chip (I'm obviously not their target demographic anymore...) that I haven't bought them in years.
But Fritos.....Gotta love 'em.
Problem is - even that little bag is likely to get stale before I finish it. And stale chips of any sort suck. What to do? Use them to bread chicken!
Tonight's dinner started with me slicing potatoes on the ridged section of my mandolin. (I use my mandolin all of the time and highly recommend them to everyone!) Fried in olive oil and garlic with half a red onion, they went into the oven to finish.
For the chicken, I floured it, dipped it in egg, and then dipped in crushed Frito's. Into a hot skillet it went. I browned both sides and then it went into the oven to join the potatoes.
The chicken breasts were huge. I bought them down at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago and really should have just cut one in half for the two of us. As it was - we have leftovers! But I digress...
When the chicken was about 95% done, I spread a couple of tablespoons of Sofrito Sauce on them, covered with cheese, and then placed them back into the hot oven. And fresh broccoli.
Dinner was great. Way too much food, but... so what else is new?
Time to go bake some cookies. Tonight is walnut logs.....
Soup or Stew?!?
Oh, the weather outside is frightful... A mixture of snow and sleet that is expected to turn to rain tonight and then form a sheet of ice.
Weather like this calls for soup - or stew. Since I didn't really "stew" the meat slowly for several hours, I guess this probably qualified as a thick soup. No matter. It was pretty good, whatever it was.
In typical fashion, it was a clean out the refrigerator meal. Or, in this case, freezer. I had bits and pieces, and odds and ends of veggies that needed using up, and they all went into the pot along with some stew beef, carrots, leeks, celery, fresh green beans, potatoes... and some French herbs and thickened with a beurre manié (butter and flour.)
We had some warm, crusty French bread for sopping up the gravy...
'Cmon, cold weather... I have a LOT more soup and stew ideas...
Stuffed Pork Chops
While I was downstairs wrapping goodies to mail tomorrow, Victor was upstairs creating a tres fabu dinner! He started off with pork chops stuffed with gorgonzola and golden raisins. He breaded with panko breadcrumbs and baked in the oven for about 30 minutes or so.
Meanwhile, he made an orange cranberry sauce with fresh oranges and Cointreau. And baked potatoes. He used an ice-bath for the sauce to chill quickly and set up properly. It was perfect.
The whole meal had my stomach smiling.
Now... back to wrapping...
First you buy a pork loin...
... and then you cut it into user-friendly pieces...
It's no secret that the smaller the package or the more someone has had to handle something, the more expensive it is going to be. In the world of groceries and meat, it is most definitely true. That's one of the reasons I like to buy less-processed and larger quantities whenever possible. It's also why I bought a FoodSaver.
I picked up a pretty good sized pork loin the other day, and cut it into some really nice, thick, pork chops. The kind that are perfect for stuffing. They went into the freezer and the rest was pounded into little scallops.
Tonight, I dredged the scallops of pork in seasoned flour (s&p, garlic, onion) and sauteed in a bit of olive oil and butter. I pulled them outy of the pan and added a handful of mushrooms, and browned them well. I then added a splash of whilte wine - maybe half a cup (that's all that was left in the bottle) - and reduced it down. I then added about a cup of beef broth, reduced it by half, and then added about a half-cup of cream. I thickened it with a bit of cornstarch, added the pork back to the pan, heated everything through, and ate.
It was pretty good.
Tomorrow we start baking Christmas cookies.