Quick Post: Appreciation

There's really not much better than when the person you care for states his enjoyment of a dish you've thrown together.  He really likes when I roast a chicken (I got another one at the Farmers Market this morning, so roast chicken is coming this week), and that's nothing fancy.  He likes when I do the salmon on papillotte, and that's just putting some stuff in tin foil and throwing it in my oven.


So two nights ago when I made another version of my Melting Pot Soup, and he told me that he really liked it, his praise put a smile on my face.  This time, in addition to the chicken feta spinach sausage, I used some whole wheat elbow macaroni instead of orzo, baby bok choy, celery, onions, carrots, dried oregano, dried basil, and some red pepper flakes. 

He loves it.  And it's really easy to make.  There's still a lot left, but it's going quick.

Variation on a Brown Rice Theme

I realize I've sung the praises of the easiest Baked Brown Rice recipe in an earlier post, but I feel the need to return to the scene of the crime.  This brown rice recipe continues to be a staple.  It's low-intensity, is super tasty, goes with anything, and really can be dressed up with just about anything.

Tonight, as with my earlier post, I have added chopped button mushrooms.  I continue to be lazy here and buy the pre-cut ones.  I really should get more bang for my buck by buying the whole ones, but the concept of standing over my sink brushing the dirt off of them strikes me a having the potential to reduce my motivation to zero.  What can I say...I know my limits.

And, as before, I am going to add half (if not more) of a regular, normal, everyday, yellow onion.  I have added red onion for a little bit of color once.  With the time in the oven, the taste difference is minimal, and the color sort of loses it's luster. However, instead of red, we're going for the other Christmas color - green.  I'm going to dice up some zucchini and add it into the mix.  I love zucchini raw or cooked, so the way I figure, it will be hard to mess that up from my perspective.

I might have gotten a little carried away with the veggies this time (this is probably the most I've ever put in there), but we'll see how the brown rice reacts.  I've got a half diced medium yellow onion, about 1.5 cups of roughly chopped button mushrooms, and 1.5 roughly chopped medium zucchini. I'm certainly not worried about it tasting good.  I'm worried about the brown rice not getting to soak up as much of the buttery, salty, boiling water as it should while it's in the oven.  But then again, both the onions and zucchini should give off some moisture as well, so maybe it will balance it out?

Normally, I double the recipe when I put it in a 13x9 baking dish, but there have been times that when I add veggies to that recipe, it gets awfully close to the top of the dish.  This time I did just one recipe (not doubling) since I put so much else in the dish.  Before I wrapped it up in foil, it certainly looked promising, even if I've got at least twice as many veggies as I do rice.

Now...to wait for 1hr.    tick tock.

Good news.  It looks delicious.  I will have a bit of it tonight, but then I'll dish it up to be servings

Swimming upstream with the trout

Yeah yeah.  I know it's not trout that swim upstream, but keep reading.

I went to the grocery store to look at what fish looked good, assuming I would likely purchase some salmon fillets, when I asked the fishmonger, "what's the difference between these two fish?"  "One is trout." "Oh.  It looks a lot like salmon."  (not my finest moment)  But it does!  (And, in my defense, the label was partially cut off.)  Since the fishmonger said that you could prepare it the same way as you do salmon, I figured, let's try it.  I was a little worried as the boyfriend's taste buds tend to be, well, particular, but hey.  I was cooking, so I get to choose.

So, just like I have prepared salmon many times before, I decided to do it en papillotte (in a pocket).  The boyfriend was going to come over after working out, and I figured he was going to be a little hungry, so I figured that I should make a snack for him.  I decided to make kale chips again.  This time, the bunch of kale took up three baking sheets. They were, once again, a hit.

As for the salmon, I didn't want to do the exact same thing as I have done before (lemon, salt, pepper...and...basically, that's it)so this time I put a slice of onion on top and some bell peppers sliced into thin strips beneath.  I did, of course, stick with the salt and pepper, but didn't add acid. 

Once again, fish in a packet turned out...well...swimmingly.  It was flaky and the bell peppers still had some crunchiness left in them.  I probably cooked it at 350 for something like 15 minutes (honestly, I can't remember, as I'm finishing this post many months after the fact). 

Some other thoughts about cooking fish in a packet, if you do include either vegetables that exude a lot of liquid or you put some butter, lemon juice, and/or white wine, you end up with a nice "jus" in the bottom of the packet.  The best thing to do with that is to get a hunk of crusty bread (but not too crusty so as it hurts the roof of your mouth) and sop up that liquid.  Tast-i-licious.

the agony of defeat

Shockingly, my experiments in the kitchen don't always turn out as good as I would like.  Tonight was one such experiment. 

First off, at first glance, I thought I had couscous in my pantry.  I wanted to make couscous with dried fruit and almonds.  It's so tasty and almost seems dessert-ish.  Next, I thought, why don't I mix ground turkey with some feta and some spices and make some meatballs. 

None of it worked out.

First I tried to make meatballs.  I had chosen the 97% fat free kind of ground turkey, and let me say, if ever there were a confirmation that fat adds flavor...'cause this stuff was taste-free.  I mixed in some diced onion, feta cheese, dried basil, dried oregano, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  I thought for sure that would help things.  I balled them up into about golf ball sized meatballs and put them on a pam-sprayed baking sheet.  Into the oven they went at 350 for 20 minutes. 

As it turned out, I had quinoa and not couscous.  I still chopped up the dried apricots and mixed them with the slivered almonds and the sultanas (golden raisins) while the quinoa was cooking...just so I could get my head around things.  I also realized...well, if I'm cooking quinoa, I should use broth.  And then I opened the pantry.  Sweet.  Just one cup of stock.  So the quinoa, after being rinsed thoroughly and toasted in the pan with a tiny bit of oil was cooked in one cup of chicken stock and one cup of water.  Not what I would normally do, but this was just the way the night was going.

The meatballs came out and despite being completely cooked, they looked anemic.  B-O-R-I-N-G.  Despite all the things that I put in the mix, they tasted as anemic as they looked.  Again I say...sweet. 

Then I thought, well, I'll just forgo the dried fruit and almonds (they were really for the imaginary couscous), and I'll add black beans into my quinoa.  I'll throw a little "house dressing" on it too.  I get the house dressing out of the fridge.  It's pretty much empty.  So I put what is left in the bowl and then went to make more dressing.  No balsamic.  It's at the boyfriend's house.  Strike85 against this meal. 

The boyfriend decided to add marcona (as he calls somewhat jokingly "maricopa county") almonds to his quinoa, black beans, and cut up meatballs.  He said he liked it a few times and that the almonds really made it. 

I had quinoa, black beans, a tiny bit of house dressing, and cut up meatballs.  A passable meal, but man, it was not what I had planned in my head.  I'll have to go and get some couscous to do my dried fruit/slivered almond meal. 

(As an aside, two nights ago I made leek/broccoli soup and put too much liquid in it.  The tilapia I made was fine, and actually tasted pretty good when piled into a bowl of the soup, but nothing earth-shattering.  Let's assume this was not the beginning of a streak of mediocre meals.)

Quick post - Salmon. It's what's for dinner...and lunch

Tonight I did the same thing I did last week - pocket cooking of salmon and zucchini.  Super tasty, super easy, and super healthy.  Honestly, how can you go wrong? 

Amazingly, I managed to keep myself from eating the entire 8 ounce fillet that I had purchased.  Since it had been on the plate with the zucchini I was eating that had herbs de provence on it and the lemon that was on the fish.  I flaked it with some raw zucchini, so the juices from the fish, the lemon, and the herbs de provence were combined with the raw (yet very tender) zucchini. 

I also baked some brown rice tonight - the fool-proof method (see the following post).  So, tomorrow's lunchbox is full.  From the top to the bottom - flaked salmon with zucchini, brown rice with mushrooms and onions, unsweetened applesauce, all-bran crackers with laughing cow cheese, and yellow and orange bell peppers.  I started to pack dried cranberries and crushed pecans for my morning oatmeal, but then I remembered that I am going to a morning event with Leadership Austin, where they will serve breakfast. 

This should give me enough energy to get through the pilates class I'm going to after work....

melting pot soup

I am very blessed to have a wonderful brother-in-law. While he has innumerable pride-inducing characteristics (great husband and great father just to name two), one of my favorites is his interest in food. He works to create the epicurious.com website and has a non-work-related love of cooking interesting meals. At one point, he was making his own cheese in their ground floor tiny kitchen. Amazing.

At some point he and I were talking about some sort of Italian wedding soup. I don't know where that name came from, but I must have recently seen a can of Campbell's Italian-Style Wedding Soup ("Meatballs and Spinach in Chicken Broth" as it is described on the label). I think he had also told me of a version he made, and it piqued my interest.

I figured, instead of meatballs I could use the feta and spinach chicken sausage my local grocery store sells. I seared it off and chopped it into large-ish bite-sized bits. The mirepoix would, of course, stay the same (carrots, celery, and onions). And while the sausage was searing in another pan, the mirepoix would get things going in my large pasta pot. Once those had sweated out, I added in some chicken stock. I don't remember how much, but definitely too much. I ended up having an entire pasta pot full of this soup. But wait, I've gotten ahead of myself.

Right after I added the chicken stock, I started cutting up my bok choy and giving it a quick rinse. That's what I was substituting for the spinach...a decidedly non-Italian ingredient, as far as I know. I threw in the sausage since, while seared, it needed to be cooked through. I added some more water (as if there needed to be more volume). Then after a few minutes of boiling, I added the orzo. Did I mention that's what I replaced the little nondescript pasta balls in the Campbell's soup with tri-color orzo. It is a favorite of mine.

Not much longer after that I added in the bok choy. Some hot red pepper flakes and some freshly ground black pepper joined in on the fun. Not much salt was needed since broth usually takes care of itself. As you can see from the next picture, I made A LOT of the stuff.

The way I figure, this melting pot soup sums up the various cultures to which I was exposed as a child growing up in New York. Every family had Chinese food from time to time (my Jewish friends always having big family dinners at the Chinese restaurant on Christmas, a tradition of which I was mildly jealous). And though we ate Chinese food fairly regularly, I am aware that it pales in comparison to the real deal. But what can I say...my mother could eat her weight in Schezhuan green beans (though, being a bean pole herself, I suppose that is not much of a feat). And, of course, Italian food was ubiquitous in the city. Even though we were a borough away from Little Italy proper, we were only a few blocks up the hill from a neighborhood whose light poles were painted the green, white, and red of the Italian flag. And then Campbell's soup - I have such distinct memories of their "alphabet soup" from childhood. This might sound gross to many, but we added milk to our beef broth-based alphabet soup. It cooled the soup down to suit our childhood palettes, but more importantly, it's what our mom and dad did, so it was the right way to eat your soup. The next step, of course, was to crumble Premium Saltines (original, thank you very much) into the soup by the handful. That is still one of my go-to soups when I need something comforting.

In any event, it's a soup informed by my culinary past in the Melting Pot of all Melting Pots. And it's darn tasty.

Grand Plans - A quick post

Today I went by the grocery store just to get some pickles (I had to make tuna salad), and it was one of those situations where you end up buying a heck of a lot more than you plan. (Oddly, it was not because I was hungry.) BUT, I had specific recipes in mind. I've been wanting to oven roast some leeks (just thought it's worth a try), so I bought a bunch of leeks ($2.99). I thought about making my Melting Pot Soup, so I bought bok choy ($1.38) and chicken, spinach, and feta sausage ($3.17). In thinking back to my fantastic trip to Fredericksburg, I also decided to get some thin-cut pork chops to try out a wiener schnitzel recipe ($1.99). I purchased some avocados at Costco last week, and I've been dying to make some guacamole, so I bought an onion ($0.23), some garlic ($1.00), and some jalapenos ($0.19). In addition to some other items, I got a pretty full 4 bags for just around $35.

One thing I'm trying to focus on is not letting my food spoil before I get to use it. That's a hard thing for me because I always have such grand plans, but I'm hoping this time will be different because I do have grand plans.