Yeah, so I took a week off from writing my blog for a number of reasons, not the least of which is how freaking busy we have been lately. It feels like we go from appointment to appointment for the kids with very few "just for fun" activities in between. I mean, we started this summer off weird - a kid in the hospital for two and a half days definitely qualifies as weird - then we have had all other kinds of stuff, which has led to me blinking and finding that we are smack dab in the middle of July! Ah, well...c'est la vie (or however that is spelled in French). "That's life", is all I am trying to say.
Our life today includes numerous play dates during the day and then a tae kwon do class for my younger daughter, happening right at dinner time. This happens on Tuesdays and on Thursdays and is not my favorite schedule, but it has forced me to break out the crock pot for multiple dinners this summer. What I am finding with the crock pot, is that the dinners are either very, very good or very, very bad. There are not many recipes which fall in between those two designations and I am hoping that my concoction today will fall squarely into the good category. I made meatballs and sauce, which are currently (hopefully) simmering away, to be ready to serve when we all get home for dinner later this evening.
For the meatballs, I used about a pound of ground sirloin and about a pound of pork loin chops (sliced thinly), which I ground (or chopped up) in my food processor. I added about four heels of whole wheat bread (ground into bread crumbs), a few leftover vegetables, pureed, from one of my very, very bad slow cooker experiments last week (damn you again, Pinterest!), plus about a half of a cup of grated Parmesan cheese. I started off by making the meatballs and browning them, but then I got lazy and dumped most of them into the sauce (a mixture of pre-made marinara and seasoned, crushed tomatoes) completely raw. I cranked it to "high" and plan to let it cook for a little over 6 hours. I sure hope it cooks through....
The very, very bad slow cooker (referenced above) was a chicken and vegetable recipe that I found on Pinterest and followed (to the letter!) and it was not cooked through when it was supposed to be. In order to serve dinner before 10 pm that night, I had to pour everything into a skillet and saute the food that was supposed to be cooked by the damn crock pot. Dishes....dishes...dishes, everywhere! I twitch a little when I think about it - if there is one thing I hate, it is using dishes unnecessarily. (I am going to have to blame that little quirk of my cooking personality on my cooking school days.)
Anyway, we will see how this one turns out...primarily because I will have no one to blame but myself if it is terrible. ("Terrible" is likely to equal "still raw and harboring potential pathogens at the dinner time hour".) Fingers crossed that all I (or my husband) have to do to get dinner on the table tonight after TKD is cook some pasta....or, I guess, in the Terrible case scenario, call for pizza.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Happy 4th of July!
Happy Independence Day, everyone! I hope you all have something fun planned and something delicious to eat, as I declare today to be independent of calories! (Uh, not for real, but see what I did there?) Anyway, we are celebrating our holiday with close family friends and a cookout, likely to be comprised of hamburgers, hot dogs and...chips and salsa. Yes. Chips and salsa - that quintessential American snack food. What's that you say? Salsa isn't technically from America? True, but it is delicious and I have been making it from scratch since I was a teenager. Our Fourth of July table (hell, any holiday or festive table, really) just isn't the same without some homemade salsa.
Now, I am not going to claim that my salsa is the best salsa anywhere, but it is tasty and, like my pancake recipe, it was originally inspired by someone else's version. I have experimented and experimented with my recipe for years (probably something like 16 or 17 years....geez, am I THAT old?) and I have my own recipe down to an *almost* science. I can make this stuff in my sleep. (That isn't an exaggeration - I could make this stuff in my sleep, but it would be dangerous for a number of reasons. Obviously.) I actually make two different versions - a red salsa that has evolved into a mix of true salsa roja and a pico de gallo (I will explain that in a minute) and a green salsa that varies from a traditional roasted salsa verde to a fresh tomatillo-avocado salsa (today's version).
The original version of the salsa roja (red or tomato based salsa) dates back to a slumber party I went to as a teenager. My friend's dad (I think) made a delicious salsa that began with roasted beefsteak tomatoes, white onions, fresh jalapenos and distilled white vinegar. This was all pureed together to make a tangy, spicy, pungent sauce that I devoured, then politely demanded the recipe. This was back in the days, waaaayyyy before culinary school, when I was best known for my infamous ability to burn everything, particularly beef that I was supposed to be browning, on the stove top. (My poor mother, seriously. The woman was working and trying to raise three teenagers on her own and I couldn't even be bothered to start dinner cooking so she could finish it when she got home. Sorry, Mom.) Anyway, I am not sure what my mom thought when I announced that I was going to "make" salsa ('cause in those days, our "salsa" came out of a yellow jar from a company that rhymes with "space" and it sure wasn't called salsa. "Get a rope!") To her credit, she let me "create" and, that folks, was just the beginning. Salsa became my signature party food and, as the years went on, I tried more and more variations on that theme. I am super persnickety about salsa (both mine and others')so much so that, if we try a new Mexican food restaurant and I don't like the *free* salsa, we just won't ever go back.
At one point, my favorite restaurant was a local chain that was kind of upscale Tex-Mex which, when most joints plunked a tiny bowl of red salsa on the table as pre-appetizer, would serve both red AND green salsa with unlimited chips. Awesome. I took note and sought to re-create salsas that looked and tasted like theirs. Their red sauce had diced, fresh tomatoes and sliced green onions mixed into the salsa, so I appropriated that idea for mine. Their green sauce was the deep olive green of roasted tomatillos, with diced white onion and more sliced green onions, so I appropriated that idea as well (though the green version I made today was quite different). My salsa became like most of my cooking - a hodge-podge of an original food inspiration and other ideas and techniques that I collected along the way.
Today's red began with a chunky puree of cored and seeded roma tomatoes, stemmed and seeded jalapenos and serranos, the juice of a couple of limes and a bunch of cilantro. I diced two cored and seeded tomatoes, sliced a bunch of green onions and added salt and pepper to taste, then mixed the puree with the "pico de gallo". Recheck for seasoning and: viola! Today's green began with fresh tomatillos, green onions, stemmed and seeded jalapenos and serranos, the juice of a couple of limes, and a bunch of cilantro, pureed until mostly smooth. I then added three avocados, seasoned with salt and pepper and pureed until it was as smooth as my blender could make it. Recheck for seasoning and: viola! Happy, happy 4th of July! Be safe, eat well and try not to set a piece of our great nation ablaze!
Now, I am not going to claim that my salsa is the best salsa anywhere, but it is tasty and, like my pancake recipe, it was originally inspired by someone else's version. I have experimented and experimented with my recipe for years (probably something like 16 or 17 years....geez, am I THAT old?) and I have my own recipe down to an *almost* science. I can make this stuff in my sleep. (That isn't an exaggeration - I could make this stuff in my sleep, but it would be dangerous for a number of reasons. Obviously.) I actually make two different versions - a red salsa that has evolved into a mix of true salsa roja and a pico de gallo (I will explain that in a minute) and a green salsa that varies from a traditional roasted salsa verde to a fresh tomatillo-avocado salsa (today's version).
The original version of the salsa roja (red or tomato based salsa) dates back to a slumber party I went to as a teenager. My friend's dad (I think) made a delicious salsa that began with roasted beefsteak tomatoes, white onions, fresh jalapenos and distilled white vinegar. This was all pureed together to make a tangy, spicy, pungent sauce that I devoured, then politely demanded the recipe. This was back in the days, waaaayyyy before culinary school, when I was best known for my infamous ability to burn everything, particularly beef that I was supposed to be browning, on the stove top. (My poor mother, seriously. The woman was working and trying to raise three teenagers on her own and I couldn't even be bothered to start dinner cooking so she could finish it when she got home. Sorry, Mom.) Anyway, I am not sure what my mom thought when I announced that I was going to "make" salsa ('cause in those days, our "salsa" came out of a yellow jar from a company that rhymes with "space" and it sure wasn't called salsa. "Get a rope!") To her credit, she let me "create" and, that folks, was just the beginning. Salsa became my signature party food and, as the years went on, I tried more and more variations on that theme. I am super persnickety about salsa (both mine and others')so much so that, if we try a new Mexican food restaurant and I don't like the *free* salsa, we just won't ever go back.
At one point, my favorite restaurant was a local chain that was kind of upscale Tex-Mex which, when most joints plunked a tiny bowl of red salsa on the table as pre-appetizer, would serve both red AND green salsa with unlimited chips. Awesome. I took note and sought to re-create salsas that looked and tasted like theirs. Their red sauce had diced, fresh tomatoes and sliced green onions mixed into the salsa, so I appropriated that idea for mine. Their green sauce was the deep olive green of roasted tomatillos, with diced white onion and more sliced green onions, so I appropriated that idea as well (though the green version I made today was quite different). My salsa became like most of my cooking - a hodge-podge of an original food inspiration and other ideas and techniques that I collected along the way.
Today's red began with a chunky puree of cored and seeded roma tomatoes, stemmed and seeded jalapenos and serranos, the juice of a couple of limes and a bunch of cilantro. I diced two cored and seeded tomatoes, sliced a bunch of green onions and added salt and pepper to taste, then mixed the puree with the "pico de gallo". Recheck for seasoning and: viola! Today's green began with fresh tomatillos, green onions, stemmed and seeded jalapenos and serranos, the juice of a couple of limes, and a bunch of cilantro, pureed until mostly smooth. I then added three avocados, seasoned with salt and pepper and pureed until it was as smooth as my blender could make it. Recheck for seasoning and: viola! Happy, happy 4th of July! Be safe, eat well and try not to set a piece of our great nation ablaze!
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Fridge Pasta
Sounds super yummy, right? I know it doesn't, but I entitled this post as such because I once saw an episode of Jacques Pepin's cooking show where he made something he called "Fridge Soup". The soup was basically a vehicle to use up leftovers and odds and ends in the fridge - an "everything but the kitchen sink" kind of recipe, if you will. Last night was my night to clean out the fridge (because today was grocery shopping day). I had a package of bacon, about a pint of *about to start rotting* tiny Roma tomatoes that we bought at a farmer's market on Saturday, an onion and a 3/4 full package of organic spinach, plus a package of whole wheat spaghetti (that was supposed to be used in the spaghetti and meatballs that got bumped to another night).
.JPG)
I rendered the entire package of bacon in my large dutch oven and, when the bacon was getting pretty crispy, I poured off all but about a tablespoon of the rendered fat and added the onion, which I thinly sliced. I let all of that kind of confit together while the pasta cooked and, once that was done, I turned off the heat and added the tomatoes (which I quartered) and the spinach. I seasoned with salt and pepper and added about a tablespoon of red wine vinegar (just to brighten up the flavors). I tossed in the pasta, mixed it all together and viola! Dinner was served....to a less than enthusiastic audience. No one (under the age of 9) liked the spinach and even I had to admit that the bacon was a little overpowering...not to mention soggy. Ew. Now I know why you should always remove bacon once it has rendered and then add it back in later. Duh. It will stay crispy that way. Oh well, this recipe did what I needed it to do - it used up all of my odds and ends in the fridge and it fed my family. Done. Not to be repeated in this exact manner, but done.
.JPG)
I rendered the entire package of bacon in my large dutch oven and, when the bacon was getting pretty crispy, I poured off all but about a tablespoon of the rendered fat and added the onion, which I thinly sliced. I let all of that kind of confit together while the pasta cooked and, once that was done, I turned off the heat and added the tomatoes (which I quartered) and the spinach. I seasoned with salt and pepper and added about a tablespoon of red wine vinegar (just to brighten up the flavors). I tossed in the pasta, mixed it all together and viola! Dinner was served....to a less than enthusiastic audience. No one (under the age of 9) liked the spinach and even I had to admit that the bacon was a little overpowering...not to mention soggy. Ew. Now I know why you should always remove bacon once it has rendered and then add it back in later. Duh. It will stay crispy that way. Oh well, this recipe did what I needed it to do - it used up all of my odds and ends in the fridge and it fed my family. Done. Not to be repeated in this exact manner, but done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
