Bring Your Lunch to Work – NYTimes.com.
There’s a great article in the New York Times Dining section today about bringing your lunch to work. So many people opt for buying lunch, spending a lot of extra money that you can save simply by making a couple of things early in the week or on Sunday while watching TV that can give you great tasting lunches for the rest of the week. Check out this article and see some of the ideas it has for you.
I have had some cornmeal around the house and I was looking for something a little different to do with it besides just make some cornbread or polenta as a side dish. I had done some looking around and came across this recipe at The New York Times’ website for a polenta pizza and it sounded like a pretty good thing to try to was certainly going to be something different. It’s a very easy recipe to make and like any other type of pizza, you can use your imagination and top it with whatever you think might taste great. While this particular recipe calls for pancetta, I actually had some Italian sausage on hand as a leftover and just sliced that up and used it instead.
Polenta Pizza with Pancetta and Spinach
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
1/2 cup milk
Salt
1 cup coarse cornmeal
Freshly ground black pepper
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 cup (about 4 ounces) chopped pancetta
1 pound spinach, washed, trimmed and dried
1 to 1 1/2 cup Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees. Brush a layer of olive oil on a pizza pan or cookie sheet. In a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat, combine the milk with 2 1/2 cups of water and a large pinch of salt. Bring it just about to a boil, reduce the heat to medium and add the cornmeal in a steady stream, whisking all the while to prevent lumps from forming. Turn the heat to low and simmer, whisking frequently, until it is thick, about 10 to 15 minutes. If the mixture becomes to thick, whisk in a bit more water. Ideally, you want the consistency to be approaching thick oatmeal.
Stir 1 tablespoon of olive oil into the cooked cornmeal (polenta). Spoon the polenta onto a prepared pan, working quickly so the polenta does not stiffen. Spread the polenta evenly to a thickness of about 1/2-inch all over. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover the baking sheet with plastic wrap, and put it into the refrigerator until it is firm, about an hour or more, or refrigerate overnight.
Put the polenta in the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until it begins to brown and crisp on the edges. Meanwhile, put 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and pancetta and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft and the pancetta is nicely browned, about 10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to take the onion and pancetta out of the pan; set aside. Add the spinach to the skillet and saute until it releases its water and the pan becomes dry; sprinkle the spinach with salt and lots of pepper.
Take the polenta out of the oven, sprinkle with Gorgonzola, then spread the onion-pancetta mixture and the spinach evenly on top of the cheese; drizzle the pizza with another tablespoon of olive oil. Put the pizza back in the oven for 2 minutes, or until the cheese begins to melt and the pancetta and vegetables are warmed through. Cut the pizza into slices and serve hot or at room temperature.
You can try many variations of this. I did not use the Gorgonzola as I did not have any on hand and simply used mozzarella instead. The recipe recommends using slices of mozzarella with some slices of tomato and some basil to make a margherita pizza. I think you could really put anything on top of it that you like and you can make the whole pizza vegetarian and just use vegetables for toppings. The longer the polenta sits in the refrigerator, the firmer it will get and give you a better base. I would certainly try this one again as it can make a great party alternative for many.
That’s all I have for today. Check back this week as I have several recipes I have tried recently to post, including a new chicken recipe, some braised short ribs, blueberry lemon cakes, blueberry hand pies, some watermelon agua fresca and more. There are lots of good recipes to come so keep checking to see what’s next. Until next time, enjoy the rest of your day and enjoy your meal!
Whole Chicken Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts – NYTimes.com.
I came across this article on the New York Times website about using and cutting up a whole chicken. I do this myself quite often and it not only provides us with several great meals, but then you have excellent parts to make your own chicken stock, which I highly encourage and is a thousand times better than anything you can buy in the stores. The article also provides a video on how to cut up the chicken if you have never done it before. Trust me, it’s not that hard to do and is certainly worth the effort. Check it out!
The Dinner Kit Is Served – NYTimes.com.
This is an interesting article in the New York Times today regarding these home delivery services that allow you to get an entire meal delivered. All of the ingredients and the recipes are included with the meal and everything is packed fresh and delivered to you. You just need to prepare the meal yourself. I do find this as an interesting alternative for some people who would like to make their own dinner but may not have the time to put in to get all the ingredients or find the recipes on their own. I was wondering if anyone out there may have given this a try before and what they thought of it? Feel free to leave your comments on what you think of the process and if you have tried it, how has it worked out for you.
My personal opinion on it is kind of split. While I do think it gives some people a chance to eat a home cooked meal instead of getting take out or dining out all the time, I think there are a few flaws in the services. From what I can tell, there does not seem to be much of an option if you are cooking for a child. This seems to me to be a service designed for a single person or a couple where both partners work but still want the home cooked meal. The meal choices seem somewhat limited and lacking. While it’s true that I am lucky enough to have the time to prepare meals on my own for my family, not everyone has this luxury so I can see the appeal. I also think it is a bit pricey for what you get. If you had the time, you could get the ingredients on your own and probably for a better price. Personally, that would be the way I would go, but I do enjoy the entire cooking process and some people may just want it streamlined for them so it can be easier.
I think it presents an interesting option for people who want a meal at home but feel pressed for time. What do you think? Check it out.
Ever since I saw this recipe in the New York Times last week I have wanted to try it, and I finally got to the store and got the red beans and some Andouille sausage to make it. It’s a pretty simple recipe and I think you could probably even adapt it to be made in the slow cooker if you wanted to do it that way so it would be ready for you when you got home from work.
Spicy Red Beans with Chicken Thighs and Andouille
1 pound red beans, soaked overnight or quick-soaked, then drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 bone-in chicken thighs
1 pound andouille sausage (or linguica, or other sausage you like), sliced 1/2-inch thick
1 onion, sliced
1/2 bell pepper (your choice of color), seeded and roughly chopped
2 stalks celery, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons file powder (optional)
2 to 3 teaspoons red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
Drain and rinse the soaked beans. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy pot over medium-high heat until the oil is hot but not smoking. Add the chicken thighs and brown well, 4 to 6 minutes. Remove the thighs, add the sausage to the pot and brown well, another 4 to 6 minutes. Remove the sausage from the pot. Add the onion, bell pepper and celery and saute, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 to 7 minutes.
Add the garlic and saute, stirring frequently, for 1 minute. Add the thighs and sausage back into the pot along with the beans, the file powder (if using), the red pepper flakes, salt and pepper and enough water to cover everything. Stir well and bring the mixture to a simmer.
Transfer the pot to the oven and bake until the beans are tender, 2 1/2 to 3 hours, checking every 30 minutes or so after the first hour and adding water as needed if all the liquid has been absorbed.
That’s all there is to it. It has a nice, spicy, fragrant smell and the chicken and sausage go great with the beans. You could easily add some rice to this dish to round it all out. Throw in a side vegetable or a salad, and you are all good to go.
It’s just a quick little recipe for today. I have a few other recipes lined to try later in the week, including a new recipe for a banana cream pie, some banana cupcakes, and of course a few entrees along the way. I have lots of fish in the freezer right now, so I’ll be doing some fish recipes in the very near future if you want to check back for that. I also have a couple of special recipes for my own upcoming birthday meal next week if you want to see what we’ll be making for that. Until next time, enjoy the rest of your day and enjoy your meal!
101 Picnic Dishes to Make in 20 Minutes – NYTimes.com.
Another great blog entry I came across today from the New York Times. It is the season of picnics, and even if you decide at the last minute to go, you can still whip up most of these ingredients in no time at all. Give it a try!
I’ve been busy the last couple of days so I haven’t had time to post anything, but tonight I’ll write about a couple of good things I saw today and our dinner tonight, which was Stir Fry Chicken and Vegetables. The first article was one posted by the Food Network and was all about what should be in your pantry for every day use. I have written about this before myself, and if you want to read my post on it, you can check it out right here. The Food Network pantry has a few things in it that I don’t usually have in mine, but they are all good staples to have around. If you have all these things, you can pretty much make dinner on a moment’s notice for yourself, your family and any unexpected guests. If you want to see what they suggest, you can check out there article right here.
The second article I read today was in the New York Times today. It’s written by Julie Moskin and it is all about being a cookbook ghostwriter. She writes about how the days of the famous chefs sitting down to impart their cooking wisdom on everyone are over, and that most cookbooks may have the name of a famous chef on the jacket, but they are actually written by someone else who gets a lot less money and no recognition for their work. It’s a very interesting article to read. What she says makes sense in that today’s chefs with television shows and multiple restaurants couldn’t possibly crank out books as fast as people like Martha Stewart and Rachel Ray do in today’s marketplace. It’s nice to see the little guys get a little recognition for their work. If you’re interested in checking out the article, you can find it right here.
Lastly, tonight I made a simple stir fry chicken and vegetables with white rice, which I have made before and posted about on here. I’ll post the recipe again, and you can also check it out here if you want. The nice thing about stir fries is that you don’t really need any recipe at all to make one. You can add any kind of protein (or none at all), whatever vegetables you may have on hand or left over, make a little sauce, and you have a great meal pretty quickly. We eat a lot of stir fry dinners for these reasons.
Stir-Fried Chicken and Vegetables
2 cups broccoli or cauliflower florets and stems, cut into bite size pieces
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 pepper (any color), seeded and sliced into strips
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 medium onion, sliced
1/2 cup chopped scallions
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced into 1/2-inch wide strips
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce 1/2 cup chicken stock, white wine or water (your choice, I am using stock)
Put a large, deep skillet over high heat. Add half the oil, swirl it around and immediately add half the garlic and ginger. Cook for 15 seconds, stirring, then add the onion and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the broccoli, cauliflower, carrot and pepper and cook over high heat until the vegetables are tender but not at all mushy, about 5 minutes. Add the scallions and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.
Turn the heat down to medium and remove the vegetables. Add the remaining oil to the pan, then the remaining garlic and ginger. Stir, then add the chicken. Raise the heat to high, stir the chicken once, then let it sit for 1 minute before stirring again. Cook stirring occasionally, until the chicken has lost its pink color, 3 to 5 minutes.
Return the vegetables to the pan and toss once or twice. Add the sugar, then the soy sauce; toss again. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then add the liquid. Raise the heat to high and cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan, until the liquid is reduced slightly and you’ve scraped up all the bits of chicken, about 30 seconds. Serve over rice.
So that’s all I have for today. Tomorrow is our meat-free meal of the week and I’ll be making Cream of Broccoli Soup for dinner. It promises to be very tasty. I’ll have to pick up some crunchy bread in the morning to go with it. Enjoy your evening and enjoy your meal!
It’s in the sixties in January here in Harriman, which is unheard of for this time of year, but I’ll take it! Today there were two great articles that are food-related in the New York Times. The first, written by Leslie Kaufman, closely relates to what I am trying to do at home and here on the blog. She has her sons cook one meal a week, which includes the planning of the meal, detailing ingredients and doing the cooking. Her sons are 14 and 10 and do the actual cooking with a parent within earshot, but this is something I have been working on doing with Sean for a while. It’s a great way to get kids involved in the meals, gives them some responsibility, let’s them know what you have to go through every day to cook for them, and makes them more interested in doing things in the kitchen. I think it’s a great article, so take a look at it if you get the chance.
The second article is written by Mark Bittman, the author of ‘How to Cook Everything.” It’s a good article on how the Department of Agriculture is making schools change up their lunch menus to make things better for our kids. It gives you a good look as to what the changes are going to be, and while there may still be work to do on this, it’s a step in the right direction.
Now on to our meal for the day. Today is Michelle’s choice, but it also one of Sean’s favorites. We all love breakfast for dinner nights, actually. It gives us a chance to eat the breakfast food we love but don’t always have time to make during weekday mornings when things can be a bit hectic. We are making this meal our meat-free meal for the week as well, which disappoints Sean since that means no bacon or sausage tonight, but we’ll still have a great meal with Pancakes, Hash Browns and maybe an egg or two. Since a vegetable doesn’t really go too well this meal, we are going to opt for a fruit salad instead.
Pancakes are pretty easy to make, whether it is from scratch or from a box. We often use Bisquick ourselves when you need something done in a pinch. It tastes good and it’s quick, but today I am going to post a recipe for some homemade pancakes. The recipe I am using calls for buttermilk, but if you don’t have any on hand, whisk 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice with two cups of milk and set it aside for a few minutes to thicken, and voila, you have buttermilk. This type of buttermilk is fine for cooked applications, but I wouldn’t use it for raw recipes like the ranch dressing we made yesterday.
Pancakes
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 cups buttermilk
1 to 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 200 degrees. Set a wire cooling rack over a baking sheet and set aside.
Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, melted butter, and then the buttermilk. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour the buttermilk mixture into the well, and whisk very gently until the buttermilk mixture is just incorporated (a few lumps should remain). Be careful not to overmix the batter.
Heat a large skillet over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes. Brush the bottom of the pan with 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil. Using 1/4 cup of batter per pancake, add the batter to the skillet (only 2 or 3 pancakes will fit at a time) and cook until large bubbles begin to appear, about 2 minutes. Flip the pancakes and cook until golden brown on the second side, about 1 1/2 minutes longer. Spread the pancakes out over the wire rack on the baking sheet (they shouldn’t overlap) and hold in the warm oven. Repeat with the remaining batter, brushing the skillet with oil as needed between batches.
If you have any leftover pancakes (which we usually do) let them cool to room temperature, then wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze. They will keep for up to a week while still maintaining most of their original flavor and texture. Defrost in the refrigerator for 24 hours, then heat in a 350 degree oven until warm, about 5 minutes. I usually leave a couple on the fridge for the next day and my buddy Liam and I have them for breakfast.
Of course, there are a lot of things you can add to pancakes or top them with. I love adding bananas or blueberries; once you add the batter to the skillet, just sprinkle a few slices of banana or a few blueberries over each pancake, or just top the pancakes with the fruit after they are cooked.
We decided to make some hash browns tonight to go with our pancakes. Hash browns go great with bacon or sausage, and we’ll do that another time I am sure, but they are fun to have any time. They don’t take long to make, and I use the food processor to grate the potatoes, sparing my knuckles the use of the box grater.
Hash Browns
1 pound russet potatoes (2 medium) peeled
2 tablespoons grated onion
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley (optional)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon butter
Grate the potatoes using either the large holes of a box grater (watch your fingers!) or the shredder attachment of a food processor (you should have about 1 1/2 cups when your done grating). Wrap the grated potatoes in a kitchen towel and squeeze thoroughly of excess moisture, then toss with the onion, parsley (if using) salt and pepper.
Melt 1/2 tablespoon of the butter in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat until it begins to brown, swirling to coat the pan. Scatter the potatoes evenly in the skillet and press firmly into a cake. Reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook until dark golden brown and crisp on the first side, about 8 minutes. When the first side has browned, slide the potatoes onto a large plate. Carefully cover the plate with another large plate, and flip so that the potatoes are on the plate, browned-side up. Melt the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of butter, then slide the potatoes back into the skillet, browned-side up, and continue to cook over medium heat until the second side is golden and crisp, about 5 minutes longer. Slide the hash brown cake onto a plate or cutting board and cut into wedges.
There’s nothing like hash browns with some eggs. I prefer a fried egg or an egg over easy, but for tonight we’ll just whip up some scrambled eggs and save the fried egg for another time, maybe for a nice egg sandwich with some sausage or bacon.
Scrambled Eggs
8 large eggs
1/4 cup half and half (you can use milk instead, but the eggs are creamier with half and half)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon butter
Whisk together the eggs, half and half, salt, and pepper. Melt the butter in a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat, swirling to coat the pan. Add the eggs and cook while gently pushing, lifting and folding them from one side of the pan to the other, using a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, until they are nicely clumped, shiny and wet, about 2 minutes. Remove the cooked eggs from the pan quickly and serve.
We’ll get more into eggs another time when we’re using some meat with breakfast, but you can always add cheese, chives, onions, thyme or countless other herbs to add some flavor.
We’re finishing off with a simple fruit salad of what we have on hand – bananas, blueberries, blackberries, grapes and mandarin oranges, sprinkled with a little sugar and lemon juice. Of course, you can always use whatever fruits you like, are in season and taste the best to you.
Boy, for such a simple meal, I did a lot of writing today! There are lots of different variations you can do when doing breakfast for dinner. I’d love to hear what other people do when they make this for a meal. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them and I’ll try to comment as quickly as I can. Tomorrow is a leftovers night for dinner, but I have decided to write about some good ideas for Super Bowl snacking, since the game is Sunday and you want to be prepared. Let me know if you have any snacks or recipes you’d like to see to use for the big game. Have a great day!
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