hearth-Craft

Hubby and I had just returned from our little weekend getaway in celebration of our 5th wedding anniversary.  It was rainy and chilly and there was that rumbling thunder in the distance that promises more rain.  I decided to get creative in the kitchen and make a little something that would chase away some of the autumn chill in the air.

This dish was sorta kinda inspired by a dish we had over the weekend - in that it’s chicken pieces with a sauce involving fresh onions and tomatoes. There it ends, because I decided to leave out the cream and the tomato paste I could taste in the dish.  I decided to add a splash of wine, because I tend to cook with alcohol a lot and like the flavor. I also decided to add some heat to the dish, specifically so that it becomes good for chasing away the chill of a rainy day.

Ok - so how did I do this? I started with bone in chicken pieces. I suppose you could use chicken breast if you have it on hand or if you don’t prefer bone in, but I like the roundness of flavor cooking with bone in pieces gives.  I prepped my chicken the way I usually do, by seasoning it raw with sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. Then I set it aside.

I halved the onion and thinly sliced it (the original source dish had finely chopped the onion - go with your preference). I took a couple of fresh tomatoes and diced them in big chunks till I had about as much tomatoes as I had onions.  I also took a couple of big cloves of fresh garlic and finely diced them. Stuff was going to happen quickly in the pan, so I did all this up front as prep.

I took one of those deep, big pans - you know the ones that have a couple of inches tall lip? And I drizzled some extra virgin olive oil.  I let that heat up nice and hot, then I added the onions. I used a wooden spoon to toss them around so the olive oil coated them nicely and seasoned them with a touch of sea salt and fresh ground black pepper too - cause anyone who watches Food Channel nowadays knows to add flavor in layers.

I sprinkle crushed red peppers at this point to add the heat. Sauteeing them in the oil like that releases the oil from the dried peppers and generates this nifty color. Cooking any pepper like this mellows out the bite of spicy burn too. A little goes a ways, but I season to taste so um, no measurements here. Sorry. ^_^;

This is where I place the chicken in the pan, skin side down and brown the pieces for a few minutes.  I flip them and then brown them on the other side for a few minutes more. They don’t have to cook all the way through because I’m going to do some additional cooking later, they just need to get a beautiful golden brown to all sides (the original dish didn’t do that and I think it adds more flavor this way, plus some people don’t like the texture of the not browned chicken skin).

At this point, I add the diced garlic and toss everything around. You can add the garlic earlier - but all this sauteeing adds to the risk that the garlic will burn, so I add it later and the flavor is just as good and less chance of burning garlic.  Then I toss in the diced tomatoes and any juice that came off them while cutting them. Toss for a minute. Optionally, add anchovy paste or a splash of asian fish sauce at this point…adds a nice roundness of flavor that ’s not fishy at all in the end product. Promise!

Then I take a nice white wine (always use one you like the flavor of and not a cheap wine, cause the flavor will only get concentrated in the dish and why use the flavor of cheap wine you wouldn’t drink?).  I liberally splash the pan with the white wine, cause I like cooking with alcohol for the flavor it adds. Careful not to start a fire at this point…or at least have a small kitchen extinguisher on hand and be ready to start over again with clean ingredients.

A few minutes of simmering allows some of the alcohol to cook off - not all, be warned. Contrary to common belief, not all alcohol always cooks off so if you’re worried simmer it a little longer. Then I add a good couple of cups of chicken broth and let the whole thing simmer for a while until the chicken is falling away from the bones.

Depending on how much liquid I’m left with, I might add chicken broth along the way so I can serve it over rice or we’ll just eat it just like that. ^_^

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It was a dull day.  I opened the freezer downstairs in search of inspiration.  As the cool freezer air washed over me, it raised goosebumps across my skin. I had to squint just a little to see past the momentary mist and into the depths of the big freezer and there it was…the awful tragedy in frosted over horrific despair: freezer burned beef.

There’s not much you can do with beef that is so freezer burned that it has turned that light, tough color of dried strips.  There was nothing for it but for me to take it out, defrost it at room temp in cool water and do my best to salvage it rather than let it languish in the frigid eternity of freezer existence.

I made stew. Sort of.

You start with the basics: onions, carrots, potatoes, garlic.  Chop them however you like (I like to mince my garlic fine and chop the rest a little larger than bite sized). Saute them in a hot pan with olive oil, seasoning them with sea salt and pepper.  Add the meat, now cut into pieces the same size as the veggies so they’ll cook uniformly, seasoning that too.  Saute for a few minutes more. Then add water and simmer until the meat gets tender. Depending on how much you’re cooking that could be 10 minutes, could be an hour.

And then I add the magic.

Curry is basically stew…but with curry powder or curry paste. Today - I decided to make Japanese style curry and so to the stew I added my seasonings.  There’s Japanese curry burbling away on the stove right now and it smells so good. And honestly, once the meat is tender and because curry is so distinctive and strong (but Japanese curry is mild and not all that spicy, just warm and comforting) - my guys will never know the meat was freezer burned at all.

Whew.

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Sophie is coming for dinner tonight.  She’s leaving on Tuesday to tour around Europe with her boyfriend from Austria.  She hasn’t seen him all summer.

Since she asked me to cook for her I decided to make some of her indulgences - rich, luscious and full of vibrant color and flavor.

The menu?

• Apricot Glazed Chicken with dried plums and fresh sage
• Potatoes au gratin with lots of heavy cream and white cheddar cheese
• Young asparagus spears sauteed with sea salt
• Fresh avocado tossed with sea salt and extra virgin olive oil, splash of red wine vinegar
• Tomatoes (fresh from my garden) with buffalo mozzarella and fresh picked basil dressed with evoo

Hopefully she’ll tuck away a nice solid meal before her trip.

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I’ve been pretty quiet about our cooking escapades this winter.  Mostly because work has been so rough for me - and the commute has been so long, I’ve only been cooking on weekends.  Hubby has risen to the occassion like a champ and done a lot of cooking on his own.

Cooking is like therapy for me. I love preparing a meal and being surrounded by all those lovely scents coming from the stove and oven - especially in winter. It provides a pick me up when I don’t get to see the sun Mon - Fri. I’m a decent cook, I think. ^_^;

Now every cook starts somewhere. If you watch Ratatouille - anyone can cook. I believe that’s true. All of my dishes have started as an idea or a recipe from someplace else.  I make the recipe the original way the first time just so I know how the recipe should come out. Then the next time I cook, I make the recipe mine - adjusting quantities and seasoning or even cook time to my tastes and preferences. I add zing or take away seasonings I don’t like…it becomes my recipe. Other times I’m watching Food Network (dangerous Saturday early morning tv - gives me all sorts of ideas) and I see a show making something that sounds and looks delicious and I go out to the store and throw it together - usually without the recipe, just based on what I saw and personalized to what I feel like eating.

My steak and guiness pie with cheese is one of those. The recipe wasn’t even posted up online by the show hubby tells me. I’d watched the episode and gone out to buy a few things and made it.  It’s rich and fulfilling - and the use of guiness intead of water for the stew doesn’t make a taste like beer.  It results in a depth of flavor that seeps warmth into every inch of your being.  Puff pastry is ever so light and flaky - and easier than making my own pastry when I’m lazy.  and the cheese…ah, the cheese. This is the perfect winter dish, designed to provide leftovers for a day or two. And of course everyone might agree that when it comes to stew - the second day is even better. The stew is so satisfying that I’ll make a double batch to have the stew straight up as a meal one day and then make the pie the second day with that great flavor developed even more - just remember to heat up the stew again before filling the pie…and consider adding a splash of Guiness or beef broth to keep it from being too dry.

Tonight will be another adventure - I was up watching Everyday Italian around 7:30 this morning and she was doing this lovely set of recipes for “steakhouse” dinner. She made this lovely focaccia bread with grapes and rosemary and this incredible looking side dish of baked orzo with fontina and mozzarella cheeses including mushrooms cooked in marsala and peas all stirred into it.  The main event was an herb-crusted rib eye steak served with a nifty black olive and mustard vinagrette kind of thick sauce.

I’ll make it the way she did tonight - but my mind is already playing with the possibilities. Hubby doesn’t like mushrooms so I could always play with the recipes to eliminate the mushrooms but still keep the taste incredible.  I’m betting ham would go well in the baked orzo dish to replace the mushrooms. Hubby is also not big on black olives so I was thinking that it’s always nice to have choices (he loves choices) so making a trio of different sauces for the steak could be lots of fun. Say one mustard based sauce, another wine reduction based sauce and maybe an au poivre sauce.  The focaccia recipe is so simple and sounds so good - I might leave that as it is…or play with fresh tomatoes instead of grapes. But honestly, you see tomato on focaccia all the time, I like the novelty of the grapes, honestly. I’m excited because I’ve never cooked using orzo before and this is a great set of recipes to start learning how. Once I make the recipes my own, I’m sure I’ll post them on my Recipes page, but for now go check the Food Network for the recipes from Everyday Italian.

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Well, it definitely felt like fall this weekend.

Hubby was out doing a plethora of home improvement items that you can read about in my main blog. I did some perrennial planting.

The sun was warm this weekend, but the air was cool and starting to have that crisp smell that comes in the autumn.  The chill in the evenings summoned hot spiced apple cider into a mug in my hands.

To feed up my hard working hubby, I made a pork loin roast on Saturday with fried apples in a white wine reduction sauce and creamy whipped potatoes as well as fresh baked white bread. It was easy, really for one of my weekend meals.  I seasoned the pork loin with sea salt, black pepper and finely chopped fresh garlic and then tied the roast so it would hold its shape, seasoning the outside with more sea slat and black pepper.  A bit later, I heated a large pan with extra virgin olive oil and added freshly chopped garlic and fresh rosemary from my herb garden to infuse the olive oil with the flavor and then used the very hot pan and oil to sear the pork loin on all sides to a golden brown. I then placed the pork loin on a rack on a bed of sliced banana peppers flanked with big sprigs of fresh rosemary. The rack went over a drip pan and it was popped into the oven on medium heat for a while.  I deciuded to add a bit of water to the drip pan so that the humidity during cooking would be fairly highy, hoping the pork loin would stay moist.

The apples were equally as easy, using my handy apple peeler/slicer from Pampered Chef.  Tart sweet apples, peeled and lsiced and then quartered were tossed intoa saute pan with butter. I gave them a light sprinkle of sea salt to bring out their flavor and a tiny dusting of regular sugar. A let them sautee to golden brown and then added a liberal splash of the white wine we’d be drinking that night with dinner, tossing the apples as the sauce reduced. A quick squeeze from half a lemon to make sure the apples didn’t turn color and that sauce was done.

There’s not much to whipping potatoes or baking white bread but there is a knack to having them hit the table all at the same time. Just plan ahead so that nothing has to sit too long waiting for the other dishes.

Today, we ran around on a few errands to Costco, Best Buy, PetSmart and Lowes before changing the light fixtures in the family room from the awful tweed things leftover from the previous owners to nice indirect lighting which improved the ambience in the family room immensely.

For dinner, I’ve got a hearty beef stew simmering on the stove with traditional Indian Fry Bread rising so that I can fry it up just before dinner to serve with the stew. Never tried the fry bread before before - but it sounds good.

Beef stew my way is super simple.  I tend to cut the beef pieces for stew that you can get at a good local market into halves because the pieces are a tad big to me. I season the beef up with black pepper, sea salt or season all, and a touch of cinnamon actually. Then I brown it all in a big stew pot in hot extra virgin olive oil.  I add a couple of spoons of flour to make a rue and then hit it with some sort of alcohol - today I used beer. Give the mixture a stir to break up the rue and let the beer cook into the meat a bit and then add lots of hot water and bring it to a boil.  Then I let it go at a simmer while I clean and chop vegetables - today I used potatoes, celery, carrots and a jalepeno pepper to give it heat (after all the cooking, the heat would just be a tad warm on the tongue and very mellow…not spicy scary).  Some worchestershire sauce or a hit of A1 makes for an easy seasoning too. After the meat is somewhat tender, I add the veggies and give the whole thing a stir while I bring it up to a boil and then I let it simmer again till whenever dinner needs to be on the table.  The longer the flavors have to combine and the meat has to tenderize, the better. Hubby likes a thick stew too, so I let a lot of the liquid simmer off and thicken. Turns out a bit different every time - but it’s always yummy and definitely can stand on its own (anyone remember Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? the man asked for ketchup!)

I love cooking in the fall - with all of the hearty comfort foods that warm you from the inside out.  Tonight, we’ll make caramel apples and chat about the next steps in home improvement that will happen next weekend. Maybe I’ll make an apple pie soon…

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I had a couple of compliments come my way in a rather indirect manner this past weekend.  Saturday hubby and I were at a golf tournament that was about an hour away with an early tee time.  It meant that my daddy, hubby and I left the house at about 10am…and would tee off right about noon for a full round of golf.  This presented a problem for me, hypoglemic with insulin resistance, as it was far too long to go without eating. In general I eat about 5 or 6 little meals or snacks a day.

Too head off this issue, I woke early that morning and pulled out one of my handy Asian portable bento type lunch stackers.  This particular stacker is metal with 4 round cylinders that fit into a carrying frame.  Each cylinder is about 3 inches deep and 6 inches in diameter.  That’s plenty of room to pack a nice lunch.

I proceeded to make chicken fried rice, my Daddy’s way, and fill three of the cylinders.  Daddy’s chicken fried rice is nice a light and clean, starting with thinly sliced chicken sauteed in garlic oil.  I add veggies from my garden to that such as diced juicy tomatoes, little slices of cool cucumber, finely diced spring onion. Yep, all from my garden. A couple of eggs go in there too for added protein and the shells from the eggs go back into my garden.

I season that up with fish sauce, fresh ground black pepper and a touch of sugar.  Once some of the liquid from the veggies reduces a bit, I add day old cooked rice and toss thoroughly to make sure all of the rice is broken up and evenly coated with the cooking juices.  Because I didn’t use soy sauce or any dark sauces - my fried rice is still light colored with all of the color of the veggies brightening it up.

I filled three of the cyulinders with the fried rice, and because daddy and I love it this way - we add to the richness by topping it off with another perfectly fried egg (with the yolk still runny). Don’t eat this way too often folks!

I filled the final cylinder with fresh sliced veggies and some pan fried gyoza dumplings. And there you go, 4 stacked cylinders in a carry frame ready to have for lunch on the golf course. Yum! Daddy’s golf buddies kept complimenting him on the wonderful lunch he had - and he puffed up his chest and stated his daughter made it for him. It’s an Asian thing.

Ah the irony of Me, a good little Thai daughter. :P (You’d have had to know my childhood…)

Honestly, I’ll have to try to get measurements the next time I cook this favorite I grew up with because I never learned measurements for this dish. Can’t write up a recipe.  I eyeball all of the ingredients based on proportions and how much rice I’ve got left over.

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Ever since hubby and I went to Perilla in NYC to meet Top Chef Season 1 winner, Harold Dieterle, and present him with the gift of a kaffir lime tree - I have been haunted by the tasty kaffir lime ice cream we had for dessert at his restaurant.

Well, we made a succesful batch of quite tasty kaffir lime ice cream.  Yay! It had a stronger kaffir lime flavor than the restaurant had, but I think it was a respectable creation for hubby and myself.

Recipe on my Recipes page and also here: linky

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Hubby and I were at the farmer’s market today - they have a great selection of choice meats, cheeses and produce.  They also have a great selection of various flours, spices and baked goods.  And of course, there’s Hel’s ever-favorite stuffed pretzel logs. As I wandered through the market, picking up things I needed for the weekend’s comfort cooking - I noticed that the produce area had some incredibly lovely things on display: fragrant, deeply red, luscious strawberries.

Our housemate, Ryan, had mentioned this mornign that he had felt like strawberries and had bought some from the supermarket across the street. Those poor little plastic wrapped things paled in comparison to the ultra fresh, huge lovelies before me.There was nothing for it, I had to have them.

And I could do no less than their due by making a dessert that could honor them properly. So this afternoon, I made a decadent golden butter and cream cake.  This thing gives calories just by inhaling the lovely scent of vanilla and butter.  It is intensely rich and the batter is as heavy as brownie batter due to the use of cream instead of milk but incorporated with microbubbles of air at the same time to make it impossibly rich and yet delicate.

I’ll be slicing Ryan’s strawberries and sprinkling them with a bit of sugar and hitting them with a touch of good Portugese brandy (we have a pretty extensive collection of foreign hard liquors) - I serve them on the side so the boys can spoon as much as they want onto their slices of cake without soaking the whole cake, the cake keeps better for leftovers that way…if there are any.  I’ll be making fresh whipped cream, lightly sweetened and made using heavy cream fresh from the farmer’s market. And as a crowning glory to dessert? Those lovely strawberries served just as they are as a compliment to the dessert. Yum.

Recipe for the golden butter cream cake on my Recipes page. It’s pretty easy, actually.

Oh yeah, and I suppose dinner would be a good idea to mention in passing: parmesan and mustard encrusted pork chops, scalloped potatoes drowning in heavy cream and sharp cheddar, sauteed fresh asparagus tips.

But the strawberries…mmm.

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My boy, Joe, used to work in an Italian restaurant through high school. A couple of weekends ago he taught me how to make his vodka sauce. From there I added a couple of embellishments (in the form of prosciutto and sliced chicken - which he said worked well with the recipe, but he usually didn’t add it because meat was expensive when he was a college student. I remember his pain and give him kudos for making good food on a college budget.)

However, I have no such limitation.

Therefore, I made my spin on his vodka sauce, incorporating sauteed chicken and prosciutto to the recipe. I served it over rotini, because I like the way the pasta holds even more sauce. I like it over linguini too - but tonight I was feeling rotini. Made a big fresh salad and homemade garlic bread and sat at the table to feed the boys of my household. It went quick.

If anyone would like to try it out, the recipe is insanely easy and in my Recipes page. It’s also high on the calorie side but that’s ok so long as you’ve been good the rest of the week. My boy Joe tells me it never lasts more than a day or two at his house.  But then, he’s the one who introduced Hel and myself to chicken parm with no sauce on garlic bread. Different, but insanely yummy.

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