7 Quick Takes. What I cooked.

My daughter is home for a couple of weeks. Which means that there is another person living in my house who will eat things besides mildly-flavored chicken, broccoli (yes) and cheese. So here are some things I cooked this week. Warning: Everything tasted a lot better than the consistently yellow-ish photographs indicate.

— 1 —

Leftovers from Spaghetti All’amatriciana, recipe from Michael Chiarello.  Lovely, rich flavors built in about 15 minutes.  Pancetta, onion, Italian parsley from my garden, balsamic vinegar…beautiful and dense. Takes no time. Do it.

— 2 —

“Blueberry Boy Bait.”   Worst photo of the day, no contest.  Looks nothing like the photo in the recipe.  Blueberries all sank to the bottom.  But still – tastes wonderful.

— 3 —

Rosemary Foccacia  Made it many times before.  This is a fantastic recipe.  This rendition was a little thick, but tastes just fine.

— 4 —

Your text here.

Ice cream.  This is nothing fancy.  Cookies and cream – that is, a vanilla base with crunched-up Oreos.  Jeni’s base, since I am uninterested in accumulating egg whites right now. One of the several items I no longer buy in stores: ice cream, salsa, hummous….

— 5 —

A luscious glob of roasted cherries.  From Jeni’s cookbook, but it’s really just common sense – cherries, sugar & cornstarch.  I doubled it.

— 6 —

.

Not green.

When we were in New Mexico, I tasted and enjoyed a few versions of the New Mexican State Dish of Green Chile Stew.  I decided I would make it at home.  This week seemed like a good week. And today – which started out under serious storm clouds – seemed like a good day.  So I raced to the grocery store before the rains hit, collecting what I needed, and returned home, only to find that I’d mis-purchased.  Simply put, I didn’t have enough chiles because although I had grabbed a bunch of fresh poblanos (which I roasted), the canned chiles I’d carelessly grabbed from the shelf were pickled  – lovely, yes, with their little slices of carrot, true  – but not right for the recipe.  Drat.  And then it was pouring, and I didn’t want to go out again, so I just made do.

So this is probably the most inauthentic “green chile stew” ever..BUT IT WAS STILL DELICIOUS.   I mean – my daughter and I are in love with this dish.  She stuffed it in tortillas, I ate it straight from the pot. It’s crazy.

(Recipe? Basically this.) 

— 7 —

Not nuggets

Now, this is nothing new, but I thought I would share.

My boys are pretty keen on fried chicken parts.  I, however, am not keen on bags of fried chicken parts.  So what I do instead is actually pretty simple, doable by busy people, probably more healthy than Mysterious Ground Chicken Parts, and – I can only speak for my own – tastier.  They LOVE this.  They get insanely excited when they hear the mallet in action and detect this being prepared

Pretty basic – just pounded out and breaded chicken cutlets.  Chicken Milanese, a schnitzel…what have you.

All I do is get chicken breasts, slice them thinly, pound them, and bread them up with both flour and panko crumbs.  I do a big batch all at once, cooking a few for that night and then freezing the rest.  The picture above are those in the process of being frozen – you just do as you would with berries and so on – freeze them separately on a cookie sheet for a couple of hours, then pack them up, so they’re all ready for a night when you don’t have a lot of time to cook.  Saute them up any way that fits your life- I go simple, in a combo of butter and vegetable oil.  If you have adventurous palates (which I do not), you can, of course, spice up the breading in any mad way you like.

Do it all ahead, and you will have time to do this, and not worry about what time you get home:

Canyon Mouth Preserve, 8/8/2012

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