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