Another Aside

There was an eleven year period where I ate zero long pasta. I ate spaghetti every Wednesday night for the first 18 years of my life and when I got to college I shunned (SHUNNED!) long noodles in all forms: spaghetti, linguini, fettuccine, ramen, lo mein, every and anything.

It's only in the past few months, when I've been trying to cook quick weeknight meals, that I've turned back to long pasta. But I keep forgetting this crucial component. When I cook short pasta, I toss it with the sauce and all of the noodles are covered and moist, and no one's the wiser. With long pasta, it's not that simple. It needs a bit more moisture to take to the sauce. When I was growing up, my mom always rinsed the spaghetti in a colander with water. A friend tosses her long pasta with olive oil. Either way, the moisture helps the pasta intermingle with the sauce and make a more palatable quick weeknight meal.

Next time, I'll remember.

By the Label

In an ideal world, I would project an image of at least some degree of thoughtfulness and weighty intelligence. But the truth is, in some matters, I'm pretty superficial.

"How superficial?" you ask. Well, let's just say that I chose my undergraduate institution by the quality of its marketing. I shouldn't admit this, I know. And it's not entirely true, but it's not entirely not true either.

I could make excuses: Oh, I was only 18. Oh, the academic variety was impressive. Oh, but you should have SEEN the referential advertisement for Commander Salamander. Hel-looo! Regardless of the excuses, we'd end up at the same result.

This is how I pick my wine too. Taste matters. But taste comes after aesthetics. I'll never taste a bottle of wine for which I don't like the label. I can't swear this unequivocally--for example, I dislike the Barefoot wine logo, but it is cheap; I started buying it in grad school, and I do still buy it occasionally.

That said, if I'm picking a new wine, I pick based on the label. I look at font and texture and design and all of those things. I'm not even that embarrassed by it. Should I be? Maybe. Am I justified? Maybe.

Check out Grub Street's article and nice little pie chart (via The Kitchn). The author has devised some sort of faux taste/label correlation graph. This is my kind of analysis.

As a case study, the chardonnay above (from Bodega Elena de Mendoza) is actually the cheapest chardonnay available in the little market in my apartment building. I picked it up for the first time because the label has raised lettering and design, I like the colors and fonts on the label, and I'm intrigued by Argentinean wines. On the Grub Street label scale: somewhere between Diluted French, Graphic Design Subclass: Letterpress, and Graphic Design Subclass: Pottery Barn Catalogue. This translates to a taste scale that's a mix of dirt and wine; smooth wines that are not super-fruity or super-earthy; vanilla-scented candle. I'm slightly offended by the vanilla-scented candle analogy and this label really looks nothing like that Cupcake label, so I'll remove that from the mix.

At the end of the day, smooth wine that's not super-fruity or super-earthy but a mix of dirt and wine is pretty accurate for this chardonnay. And it's a pretty good wine for the price. AND, it justifies me picking wine by the label. Ring me up a few more bottles.

Something Simple

Some nights, I just want lunch for dinner. Nothing complicated, nothing time-consuming. But still something delicious. Is that too much to ask? Not with this tuna melt. Easy, warm and a hearty pesto kick.

Ingredients
1 English muffin, split
1-2 Tbsp. pesto mayo (in case it's not obvious, make your own pesto mayo by mixing pre-made pesto and mayonnaise)
Broccoli sprouts
1 can tuna, drained
Freshly ground salt and pepper
2 thick slices of a fresh, juicy, in-season tomato (they're not in season here yet, but I can dream)
1 slice Provolone cheese

Directions

• Mix the can of tuna with salt, pepper and a little pesto mayo.
• Spread the remaining pesto mayo on both halves of the English muffin.
• Top each half with broccoli sprouts, the tuna mixture, a slice of tomato (if it's in season for you), and half a slice of Provolone cheese.
• Heat together in a small skillet over low heat until the cheese melts.

Serve & enjoy!

Okay, Martha

Martha Stewart makes me feel a little too domesticated. Yes, I like to cook. Yes, I have a subscription to Real Simple. But I'm not all matchy-matchy. No one's ever described me as a great decorator or housekeeper--in fact, some might argue that the apartment I've lived in for a year and a half still looks like I just moved into it. Nothing to brag about; all just to illustrate that I don't look to Martha Stewart as a model in my life.

Nevertheless, I picked up her magazine, Everyday Food, in line at the grocery store the other day. Ummm, yum. Every single page was filled with recipes that I wanted to cook or bake. So I bought it, and I'm on a little bit of a Martha Stewart food kick now.

Take this recipe for Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage, for example. I didn't find broccoli rabe at my grocery store, but I found broccolini instead, and the sausage with the broccolini and the garlic, red chili pepper flakes and generous helping of olive oil made this dish stand out. Here we go:

Ingredients
3-4 sweet Italian sausages, casing removed and crumbled (this preparation is key for cooking the sausage evenly)
1 lb. orecchiette
1 lb. broccolini, cut into 2-inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, grated
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 c. extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

• Place sausage in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring, until browned, 5 to 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer sausage to a bowl; set sausage and skillet aside.
• Bring 4 quarts of heavily salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add broccolini. Cook 1 minute and transfer broccolini with a slotted spoon to a bowl.
• Bring the water back to a boil and add pasta. Cook until al dente, 5 to 8 minutes; drain.
• Place reserved skillet over medium-high heat and add oil, broccolini, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Cook, stirring, about 30 seconds. Return sausage to the skillet along with the orecchiette. Stir to combine, adding reserved cooking liquid if pasta seems too dry.
• Sprinkle with cheese and freshly grated pepper, and serve immediately.

Listening and Vegetables

Contrary to a few posts that may indicate I haven't been opposed to vegetables lately, let me just tell you: I have been opposed to vegetables over the past month. I just haven't wanted any. At all. Yes, there was the Cobb salad, but let's face it--there are practically no greens in that "salad." And there was a sandwich with sprouts and cucumbers, but the proportion of green vegetables to other ingredients (cheese, bread, mayonnaise) was slim. Beyond these posts, I've been eating only pizza or sandwiches or candy or eggs and bacon. And no vegetables at all.

As payback, I haven't been feeling great lately. Not sick, just meh. Nothing's been sitting in my stomach right, and I've been exhausted. The heat did me in this weekend. We were up to 95 degrees F (102 on some thermometers), and I finally had no other choice than to listen to my body crying (whimpering at this point) for vegetables.

Since I caved, there have been a lot of salads in the past few days, not really special recipe salads, just regular salads: heirloom tomato, mozzarella, tofu & arugula; spring mix, mandarin oranges, tofu, artichoke hearts, avocado, olives; tomato, cucumber, arugula & bleu cheese. They all do the trick.

This was the salad I made for lunch today: Cabbage Peanut Salad from Look! I Made That. I forgot a lot of ingredients as I was making it before work today, I changed it a little, and I'll change it a little more the next time I make it. What follows is what will be the whole recipe the next time:

Peanut Dressing
1/3 c. peanut oil
1/4 c. rice wine vinegar
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
1/3 c. peanut butter
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. minced ginger
3 grated garlic clovers
1 finely minced jalapeno

Whisk all ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Salad
1/2 head small green cabbage, thinly sliced (I need to work on my thin slicing)
1/2 head small red cabbage, thinly sliced
2 red or green bell peppers, thinly sliced
6 green onions, sliced
1/2 c. packed cilantro, roughly chopped
Handful of shitake mushrooms, re-hydrated and sliced
3/4 c. chopped extra firm tofu, pan-fried in walnut oil and ginger
1/2 c. roasted peanuts

Toss all of the vegetables and fungi together. Drizzle peanut dressing over the vegetables and toss again. Top with tofu and peanuts.

A Quick Marinade

I had two chicken breasts I needed to cook tonight.

I marinaded them in: 1/6 c. lemon juice; 1/2 Tbsp. olive oil; 1/2 Tbsp. dried basil; 2 cloves of garlic, grated. Then I cooked them in a 350 F oven for about 45 minutes.

Not too shabby.

Recipe: A Sandwich

I had this sandwich for lunch from a little sandwich spot downtown the other day and it was so delicious. It was light and healthy--a good summer sandwich, for sure. I made it last night for a quick dinner on multigrain bread, but if I had pita bread around, I would have stuffed it into a pita instead and it would have been that much more delicious for it.

Ingredients

2 halves of a pita pocket

Pesto mayo (this is easy to mix at home)

3-4 vertical slices of cucumber

Broccoli sprouts

Turkey slices (real turkey is better than deli turkey if you have some leftovers to use)

Provolone
Coleslaw

Directions

• Spread one inside half of both pita pockets with pesto mayo.
• Lay the cucumber slices on top of the pesto mayo, followed by the broccoli sprouts.
• Stuff with turkey and cheese.
• Add coleslaw to the pockets (pesto may on one side, coleslaw on the other).
• Serve!

Cobb Salad Redux

I've always loved Cobb salad--bacon, avocado, bleu cheese, what's not to love?--but there have been two Cobb salad experiences that have been formative in my own Cobb salad endeavors: California Pizza Kitchen and Leona's.

CPK turned me on to beets. Previously, my only experience with beets involved giant jars of purple water filled with pickled beets and eggs, which disgusted me (although they disgust me no longer!). But CPK chopped the beets up very neatly in its compartmentalized salad (scroll down to see the image here; CPK obviously doesn't believe in mixing its Cobb salad), so I could pull over a few to sample the taste before committing. I loved the taste and never looked back.

Leona's turned me on to Ditalini pasta. I went to Leona's in Hyde Park the first night I moved to Chicago. I was physically exhausted after spending 16 hours on a train and emotionally exhausted after the general life upheaval involved in moving halfway across the country. As a result, the turkey Cobb salad tasted like the best salad I had ever eaten in my life. It probably wasn't, but Ditalini pasta is now crucial to my Cobb salad.

Here are the ingredients my Pasta Cobb Salad Redux ends up with at this point:

• Ditalini pasta (salted in the water!)
• Corn
• Beets
• Avocado
• Hearts of palm
• Bleu cheese
• Bacon (although I can take it or leave it at this point if it's just a side dish)
• Freshly ground pepper
• Hard-boiled eggs (I forgot these last night, but if you have some laying around, they're a nice additional protein)

Between the beets and the hearts of palm and avocado, it's a pretty moist salad and doesn't need any dressing. The bleu cheese is crucial and the bacon adds more saltiness to the almost sweet vegetables involved. It makes a quick side dish (it accompanied steak last night) or add some chicken to make it a full meal. One note: it's really a one-time only dish--the leftovers don't hold up well.

An Aside: Salt & Pasta

Whenever I cook pasta, I always add a dash of salt to the pot of water when I put it on the heat. Somewhere along the way, I learned that salt makes the water boil faster, so that was my impetus.

I started reading Francis Lam's blog on Salon recently, and I've enjoyed reading his posts on food facts, recipes, and philosophy. I tried his recipe for Pasta with Garlicky Peas and Mushrooms recently, and it was pretty good. There are a couple things I'll change the next time I try it. But more importantly, it will change the way I salt my pasta water forever.

Step one in the recipe is simple: "Set three quarts of water on to boil, and salt it so it tastes nearly like sea water." Salt it until it tastes nearly like salt water. Huh. So I did, and the change in the taste of the dish was surprisingly substantial: the salt brought a lot of additional flavor to the pasta itself and that flavor, in turn, enhanced the entire dish. I've got a heavier hand now with the salt (kosher salt, preferably), and I'll never go back (until my doctor tells me otherwise).

Recipe: Avgolemono

Good people. There is soup, and then there is Soup. I was nursing a cough and general malaise and looking for a Greek soup or side dish to go with chicken breast marinated in Greek dressing and stuffed with feta cheese and spinach, when I found this dish: avgolemono, a Greek lemon and rice soup.

Avgolemono, according to Wikipedia, can be broth, sauce or stew. This recipe that I found on Serious Eats is smooth with a tart element that complements the thickness of egg introduced to the broth. Too much description? Perhaps, which is unfair for such a simple dish. Try it when you're feeling sick or healthy and fancy or plain and it's spring or winter and you're looking for a new soup or a new avgolemono recipe. Let's just get on with it.

Ingredients
8 cups chicken stock or broth
1 cup Arborio rice (you could also use long-grain rice or orzo pasta)
4 eggs, separated
Juice of 3 lemons
Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

• Bring stock to a boil and add Arborio rice. Simmer until tender, about 20 minutes. Season stock to taste with salt, if necessary.
• When the Arborio rice is nearing tenderness, whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until you get medium peaks.
• Add egg yolks and lemon juice, whisking continuously.
• When the Arborio rice is finished, transfer 2 cups of the hot stock to the egg/lemon mixture, adding very slowly in a constant stream and beating vigorously to prevent the eggs from solidifying.
• Take the soup off the heat and add the beaten mixture back into the pot, whisking to incorporate.
• Serve immediately with freshly ground black pepper.

YUM!

photo credit: brad montgomery

Everything in Its Place

So after the disaster with the avocado soup, I decided to buy 101 Things I Learned in Culinary School. I want to be prepared for the next time I'm met with a fat/acid scenario or any range of problems that an experienced cook anticipates. The book arrived this morning and the first lesson that's a good one for me is the practice of mise en place (MEEZ en plahs).

From the book:

Everything needed to prepare a recipe or to be used during a cook's shift--recipes, ingredients, utensils, pots and pans, stocks, sauces, serviceware, and so on--must be planned for, gathered, and pre-prepped before direction preparation begins. Mise en place--French for "everything in its place"--allows a cook to work in a state of constant readiness without having to stop to find or assemble basic items.

This explains a lot in my cooking world, like why short weeknight dinners that should only take 20 minutes prep and cooking time start to finish take me 45 minutes. I don't prep everything ahead of time. On The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Ree Drummond's first sequential photo is always of the ingredients assembled and waiting. I assumed it was an artistic choice, but now I realize it's probably intentional. It would make things move more quickly if I prepared everything ahead of time: ingredients assembled, vegetables chopped, pans at the ready.

For that matter, it would probably be an effective life philosophy too. To mise en place!

Recipe: Crab-Stuffed Deviled Eggs

I was planning a panoply of deviled egg varietals (can I call them varietals without being obnoxious--just funny?) for Easter dinner, but other events overtook my dinner plans and the dinner (and the eggs) never happened.

I did, however, have occasion to make deviled eggs for Mother's Day and so, instead of making a panoply of varietals, I started with just this one. I'll unveil others as I make more, but in the meantime, be happy with these. I am.

Ingredients
1 dozen hardboiled eggs
1 6-oz. can crab meat
1-2 Tbsp. mayonnaise
1-2 tsp. Dijon mustard
Old Bay seasoning

Directions

• Peel and rinse eggs, then slice length-wise in half, preserving egg yolks in separate dish.
• Mash eggs, and add crab meat, mayonnaise and mustard, mixing and mashing with a fork. Go light on the mayonnaise and mustard (especially the mustard) at first. You can always add more and crab has a delicate flavor that you don't want to overwhelm.
• Scoop mixture back into each egg half.
• Top each egg with a dash of Old Bay and serve.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Peanut Noodles & Broccoli

Ingredients

6 oz. whole wheat linguine

1 Tbsp. + two splashes sesame oil

2 heads broccoli, broken into florets

5 Tbsp. peanut butter

5 Tbsp. soy sauce

3/8 c. water

2 Tbsp. lime juice

1 Tbsp. brown sugar

3 cloves garlic, grated

1 tsp. ground ginger

1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper

dash red pepper flakes

sesame seeds

chopped unsalted peanuts

Directions

• Fill stock pot with water and add a splash of sesame oil. Cook linguine in stock pot according to package instructions.
• Add broccoli florets to linguine when two minutes are remaining in cook time.
• MEANWHILE, in a non-stick saucepan, whisk together remaining ingredients except sesame seeds and peanuts.
• Cook over medium low heat, stirring occasionally.
• Toast sesame seeds in small skillet over low heat.
• When linguine and broccoli is finished, drain and return to pot. Toss linguine and broccoli with a splash of sesame oil.
• Pour peanut sauce over linguine and broccoli and toss to coat.
• Serve in individual bowls and sprinkle sesame seeds and peanuts on top.

photo credit: f_shields

Lesson Learned: Too Much Fat, Not Enough Bite

It hasn't been mentioned here yet, but books are my bag. I grew up without a TV--the girl who (actually one of three sisters who all) walked down the sidewalk with her nose in a book on her way home from school. This led to official things like writing courses and an MA in Creative Writing (among other things) and a (brief) professional career in the publishing. Unofficially, it led to a vaguer, headier aura of BOOKS ARE MY BAG! An avid reader yes, but a book collector for the sake of filling my bookshelves; a credit card debt accumulator carefully pruning my pile of books to a reasonable number like 8 or 9 before walking to the check out counter. I swept cookbooks into my book buying fury easily--starting with big pretty picture cookbooks before I really cooked much, and, more recently, replacing them by denser tomes like The Joy of Cooking, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and How to Cook Everything.

In the latter book, Mark Bittman styles himself as a self-made cook who calls his cookbook, "a devotion to the basics, and almost nothing but the basics." It is that. The index lists line after line of recognizable classics and more exotic dishes, and the book include ingredient charts, essential techniques, basic recipes with multiple variations, and more. If I want to know how long to pan-fry scallops or need an idea for some red potatoes I have in my kitchen that need to be used, I turn to Bittman for the answers.

I came across his recipe for Fast Avocado Soup a few weeks ago (in the book, but you can read the recipe online here), and I was intrigued. I perceived it as a substitute for gazpacho, replacing the tomatoes with avocados (one of my favorite fruits--helloo!), and I've clung to this recipe since--waiting for the perfect moment to break it out.

Here's where being a book person matters. If I had come across the recipe randomly online via Tastespotting or another site, I would have looked around for a few other avocado soup recipes and cross-referenced them. It's likely they would be pretty similar in content and process, but I would have seen enough variations in the recipe to prompt me to think about how the ingredients would work together and adjust according to my own taste and expectations of the dish. But since I got the recipe from A Book (a book!), I never even paused to think. Assemble the grocery list--check; chop, purée, salt, beat, chill--check; add a generous helping of lime juice at the end--check! One of Bittman's own variations on the recipe suggested adding some chopped shrimp or crabmeat to the soup along with a little vinaigrette, but I was serving shrimp in a different dish at the same meal, so I stuck with the original recipe. I wanted a fresh, spring soup to serve with a picnic.

It was disappointing, but I can't really blame the recipe. The soup tasted exactly like I should have expected it to taste: thick, creamy, and avocado-y. The problem was that it was too thick. Its viscosity increased after I chilled it overnight. Creamy may sound like a good thing, but there was nothing to temper the fat of the avocado squared by the fat of the milk. Avocado is one of my favorite foods; I can eat it straight out of the skin with some salt, but salt is the key taste element in that snack. Though this recipe called for salt and lime juice (which should have increased the sour taste element), there wasn't enough of either in the recipe to accentuate the flavor of the avocado and expand its taste. After a few thick spoonfuls, I could only imagine drinking green milk straight from a cow's udders.

So next time I'll spend a little more time thinking about the ingredients to make sure that there's enough acid or salt to balance out the fat content. And, maybe I'll stick with gazpacho.

photo credit: j_silla

Lesson Learned: Caramelized Leeks

I've had leeks on the brain lately, so I picked up four at Harris Teeter last night, even though I don't normally cook with them. The plan was to cook steak (a once a week splurge) with leeks in some form on the side. I saw a recipe recently that put me onto leeks for springtime, but I couldn't remember the source, so a quick Google search led me to this recipe for salmon with caramelized leeks. Obviously salmon wasn't in the cards, nor were carrots (blech), but the rest of the ingredients were no problem. Normally, I prefer to use olive oil instead of butter when sauteing my vegetables, but I just drained the last drop last night. A few problems:

1. Not having had much experience with leeks, I assumed that they would make a good side dish--i.e. the proportion would render an appropriate meat to vegetable ratio. Wrong. Once I peeled off the first leaf or two, cut them in half length-wise and chopped them horizontally, the pieces I had were fairly small. After cooking them down with some butter, brown sugar and salt, and they got even smaller, leaving the leeks only as a garnish.
   
2. I have stainless steel pans, and I love them. However, they heat up more quickly and retain more heat than other pans. Knowing that, I kept the heat lower than the recipe suggests and watched the leeks as they cooked down. I thought I turned them off when I started cooking the steak, but alas! I was wrong. Consequently, about half of the leeks ended up a bit burnt. Rookie mistake.
3. The flavor was good, but at the end of the day, something a little less sweet would have been a better pairing with the steak. Occasionally, I could taste a hint of fragrant earthiness break through the caramelization, but I wished for more of that and less of the sticky sugar. Next time.

photo credit: srqpix

Recipe: Butterscotch Cinnamon Scones

If I provided photos of this adventure, they would almost all be pictures of butterscotch cinnamon scones broken up into pieces and crumbs, all over my kitchen floor. As I mentioned already though, these scones proved to be delicious the next day; I only wish that I had more left. Via The Pioneer Woman Cooks with a few changes:

Ingredients
3 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
5 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 sticks butter
3/4 c. heavy cream
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. butterscotch chips

Topping
1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. heavy cream

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• In a large bowl, mix together flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and baking powder.
• Cut butter into pieces, then cut into dry ingredients with a pastry cutter (or a fork if you are like me and not fancy enough to own a pastry cutter) until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
• Stir in butterscotch chips.
• Mix together cream, egg, and vanilla extract. Pour into flour/butter mixture, stirring gently with a fork to combine.
• Turn onto work surface (mixture will be very crumbly and falling apart). Gently press together on the sides as you flatten (or roll, with a rolling pin) the top.
• Form into a large rectangle.
• Mix together topping ingredients, stirring with a fork. Sprinkle over the top of the dough, lightly pressing.
• Cut into triangles (from the rectangle.)
• Transfer to a cookie sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
• Transfer CAREFULLY to a cooling rack and allow to cool COMPLETELY (beyond when you think they're cool).

Serve for breakfast the next day and enjoy!

Second Day's the Best Day

Yesterday was a bit of a #fail in the kitchen. It started off well enough. I made some breakfast burritos that I had been craving on Saturday but never had because brunch was at Lou's City Bar instead (a #fail story for another day). The breakfast burritos I made contained scrambled eggs, bacon, diced tomatoes, diced onions, fresh cilantro, cumin, and a dash of cayenne pepper. Yum.

I've given up chocolate for Lent (another story for another day, though not a #fail one), which has been more difficult than I thought it would be. I think about chocolate a lot, which makes me realize how much I normally eat chocolate without even thinking about it. Regardless, I've been looking for non-chocolate sweets. Grapes and dried peaches are good. Gummy bears and worms are also yummy, but not good for me and wallop too much of a sugar punch. So, I found this recipe for cinnamon scones. I had almost all the ingredients, and as an added bonus, I think cinnamon's even supposed to curb your hunger.

I couldn't find cinnamon chips at the grocery store, so I bought butterscotch chips instead. Butterscotch chips remind me of my grandma's baked goods, and I was happy to have an excuse to use them. I'll share the recipe on another day, but long story short: after I pulled the scones out of the oven, I left them to cool on the baking sheet before transferring them to the cooling rack. All well and good until I transferred them to the cooling rack and, in the process, lost more than half of the half-cooled scones on the floor. It was a disaster. They tasted okay, as I picked through the pieces remaining on the cooling rack, but they tasted 15 times better when they were actually fully cool the next day. The crumbliness and the flavor had coalesced a bit more and they were delicious for breakfast the next morning.

This roast chicken was better the second day too. As I continually note, I often underestimate the amount of cooking and effort involved in certain dishes, so by the time this chicken was ready last night, I felt a bit apathetic toward it. Moist, yes, but that wasn't enough to get me excited. Today, though, I had it in my sandwich: mmm. Mm mm mm. It wasn't an exceptional sandwich: chicken, cheese, stone ground mustard. The chicken made it exceptional though. All that time the previous day was worth it for that sandwich the next day. So, without further ado, via Blue Kitchen, Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Lemons and Capers:

Ingredients
5 to 6-pound chicken

olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 lemons

1 sprig of fresh rosemary + 2 tablespoons rosemary leaves

10 to 12 small red potatoes, scrubbed and halved

1 medium onion, peeled, halved and thickly sliced

2 tablespoons capers

Directions

• Preheat oven to 450º F.
• Remove giblets from chicken and save them to put in the baking dish with your chicken (or you can throw them out if you don't like them (for shame!).
• Rinse chicken inside and out and pat dry with paper towels.
• Season the inside with freshly ground salt and pepper.
• Halve a lemon and stuff it inside the chicken, squeezing to release some of the lemon juice.
• Stuff the rosemary sprig into the cavity too.
• Rub the outside of the chicken with olive oil and season all over with salt and pepper.
• Lightly oil the inside of a large ovenproof skillet or a low roasting pan.
• Place the chicken breast up in the pan and roast in the oven for 20 minutes.
• Meanwhile, toss the potato halves with a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
• Slice the remaining lemon into a half dozen or so thick slices, and drizzle with a little olive oil.
• Reduce the heat to 375º F and scatter the potatoes around the chicken, along with the rosemary leaves (and giblets if you're cooking them).
• Roast for another 20 minutes, then add the onion, lemon slices and capers.
• Roast until chicken is just done, another 25-45 minutes or so (depending on the weight of your chicken). A quick-read thermometer should read 165º F when inserted into the thickest part of the thigh, and juices should run clear.
• Pull the chicken out to a cutting board and let it rest for five minutes before carving.

These vegetables didn't do much for me besides season the chicken, so serve the potatoes with the chicken if you'd like and prep a savory arugula salad to serve as well. Don't forget to save some chicken for your sandwich tomorrow too!

Recipe: Black Bean Soup

I cooked for the first 28 years of my life straight from recipes, so it always feels like an accomplishment at this point in my life to be able to stray a little. (This doesn't work for everything in my cooking life yet, but it definitely works for soups.) The following is my hodge podge for black bean soup that I cobbled together after scouring the Internet for recipes and then picking and choosing what I like best. Here goes:

Ingredients
4-6 pieces of bacon
3-4 chopped pickled jalapeno peppers*
2 1/2-3 cans black beans
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 chopped medium onion
4 cloves minced garlic
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 squeezed lime
1/2 cup sour cream
fresh cilantro
1 avocado

*You could substitute a can of chilis for the jalapeno peppers--these jalapeno peppers are just what I happened to pick up. I didn't use the whole can and I left out the carrots (gross). A WORD OF WARNING: it turns out that when you saute jalapeno peppers, you create a smoke that's the equivalent of pepper spray. Pepper spray. Seriously. It's pretty strong. If you lean over the pan while you're sauteing the peppers with the bacon and happen to inhale some of the smoke (hypothetically, of course), much coughing and weeping and gnashing of teeth will ensue. The flavor is worth it, but you've been warned.

Directions

• Saute 4-6 pieces bacon in bottom of soup pot.
• Add 3 chopped pickled jalapeno peppers to the pot (see warning above!) and saute with the bacon.
• Once the bacon is crispy, remove it from the pan and drain it on a paper towel.
• MEANWHILE, while you're sauteing these ingredients, you're blending. Blend 1 can beans, 2 cups chicken broth in the blender. Add the drained bacon and blend some more.
• Back to the soup pot, add 1 chopped medium onion and 4 cloves minced garlic to the mix.
• Pour blender contents into the pot.
• Add 2 cans black beans (with the can juice).
• Stir in 1/2 tsp. ground cumin and the juice of half a lime.
• Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 25 minutes, uncovered.
• MEANWHILE, for the topping, chop some cilantro and mix it up with the sour cream.
• When the soup is finish, dish into bowls and top each bowl with a dollop of the sour cream mixture and some chopped avocado.

Serve, enjoy!

This makes a pretty thick soup. If you like your soups thinner, definitely add more chicken stock (most of the recipes I saw called for more liquid). If you like your soups even thicker, add some more beans and/or cut back on the amount of chicken broth used.

photo credit: cookbookman17