Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

*Photos in this post are clickable to enjoy a larger view

There is something about the shortening of the days, the baring of the trees, the frost which whitens the ground on most mornings…which makes me want to hibernate in my kitchen, cooking up warm and comforting foods.

Recently I purchased In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark which is not just a cookbook, but a meditation about food and the stories that accompany the foods we remember and love the most. The book has been sitting on my counter and this week I finally delved into it. I was looking for a different way to cook the boneless, skinless chicken breast I had taken out of the freezer and I found a recipe in Clark’s book which caught my attention.

Clark reminisces about Thanksgivings past with her uncle Danny – a man who loved the dark meat of the turkey the best:

Every Thanksgiving when I was a kid, my uncle Danny used to say, “I like my turkeys built like Jane Fonda, with small tits and a big ass.” – from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, page 145 -

The point of the story was that Clark also prefers the moist and juicy dark meat over the dry breast meat, and so her cookbook has only one recipe for chicken breasts…a recipe that she envisioned made with honey and spices and sweet potatoes – something moist and flavorful. Her recipe for Spiced Chipotle Honey Chicken Breasts with Sweet Potatoes (page 147) looked delicious…but I had a little bit of a problem. I did not have Chipotle chiles in Adobo sauce or sweet potatoes, and I am allergic to Cumin. Undeterred, I decided to go forth with the recipe with some substitutions. Instead of Chipotle chiles, I diced up some red peppers, and instead of sweet potatoes, I used Russet potatoes. I left out the cumin.

The recipe calls for roasting the potatoes for 15 minutes before topping them with the chicken breasts which have been rubbed  with honey, cinnamon, cider vinegar, the peppers, and kosher salt and roasting the dish in a 400 degree oven for an additional 25-30 minutes. The smell of cooking chicken with the rich tang of cinnamon had my mouth watering. The result was  scrumptious. I do think that it would have been even better with sweet potatoes, but I did not miss the Chipotle chilies at all.

I also baked some butternut squash as a side…and decided the perfect dessert was apple pie hot from the oven.

I am eager to continue exploring Clark’s homey cookbook…I’ll keep you posted!

Do you love to cook? Don’t miss other bloggers’ Weekend Cooking posts – head over to Beth Fish Reads to catch all the links for today!

*All photos in this post may be clicked on to enjoy a larger view

I love summer for the Farmer’s Markets. There is nothing quite like browsing the stalls of the local farmers and picking up the freshest produce. My tiny little mountain town has started having a market on Tuesday afternoons…and last week I managed to get over there. It is small, but the produce is wonderful. I found some amazing tomatoes, plump summer squash, beautiful zucchini, zesty lemons and sweet purple onions:

I had two luscious trout fillets which I decided to bake with a little olive oil, dill, salt and pepper (I use a 425 degree oven and bake them until they just flake apart).

I decided that the perfect accompaniment would be a hot veggie salsa of sorts. I hate using cookbooks as anything more than a guide, so I just started dicing things up and throwing them in the fry pan:

Here is the “recipe” I made up as I went along:

• Half a large summer squash, diced
• 1 small zucchini, diced
• Half a small purple onion, diced
• Half a large tomato, cut in medium pieces
• Half a lemon, squeezed
• 1-2 Tablespoons good olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick frying pan until hot, throw in the diced veggies (except for the tomato) and stir fry until just softened. Add the tomato and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the tomato begins to soften. Add the juice from a half of a lemon, continue stirring. Season with salt and pepper to taste. I think you could even add a little cilantro to this to give this some extra “bite.”

I dolloped the salsa next to the fish and chopped up some fresh parsley to scatter over the top:

The perfect summer meal and very simple to make!

Do you love to cook? Don’t miss other bloggers’ Weekend Cooking posts – head over to Beth Fish Reads to catch all the links for today!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Weekend Cooking hosted every week at Beth Fish Reads who writes:

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

This week I am pleased to invite Fred Ramey, Co-Publisher of Unbridled Books (with Greg Michalson), to Caribousmom to share a favorite holiday recipe. He was a founding editor of BlueHen Books and, earlier, Arden Press as well as
Publisher and Executive Editor of MacMurray & Beck.

Fred Ramey’s Recipe

Here’s a recipe that evolved from one that appeared in The Tsil Café, by Thomas Fox Averill, the most delicious novel Greg and I ever published (BlueHen, 2001). I’d put it second in our list after St. Burl’s Obituary – M&B, 1996- because its menus are reachable in our kitchen. I should say that Greg was the editor for both of those scrumptious novels. In The Tsil Café, Wes, the 15-year-old protagonist creates a turkey mole for another restaurant as his first act of cooking rebellion from his father. In his father’s restaurant, only native American ingredients are allowed. But in Wes’s mole there are onions and garlic.

We’ve altered the recipe a bit around our house. But here are its basics. (You’ll need access to a Latino grocery; cooking time is about 3 hours.):

Ingredients:

½ cup roasted peanuts
¼ cup roasted sunflower seeds
6 or 8 ancho chiles
2 chipotle chiles
2 medium onions
One pound of tomatoes
All the cloves from a small head of garlic
2 teaspoons of achiote seeds (You can leave this out if you can’t find it.)
¼ cup Mexican cocoa (Abuelita’s is perfect, but any cocoa will do)
1½ teaspoons of cumin
3 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla (though we prefer the meat from one vanilla bean)

Wes calls for a tablespoon of cider vinegar. The last time we made this, we used a tablespoon of Verjus from a Michigan vineyard, just because we had it. But how often does that happen?

Whatever parts of a turkey you want to use, enough for however many folks are coming to dinner.

Directions:

Roast the peanuts and the sunflower seeds. They should be as dark as possible without burning. We use the toaster oven.

Stem and seed the chiles. Chop the onions. Halve the tomatoes. Peel the garlic. Run them all-including the peanuts and sunflower seeds-through a food processor until smooth.

Put the mixture into a large, wide pot on low heat. Add the spices and stir. When it’s bubbling, put in the turkey parts.

Cover and simmer for at least 2 hours; cooking until the meat falls from the bone and the sauce thickens. Dark meat  takes longer. Stir often. If the sauce becomes too thick, add water-or turkey broth if you have that.

Serve over rice.

As Wes’s Maria Tito says, “Love others, comfort yourself.”

Thanks, Fred!!!

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Weekend Cooking is hosted every week at Beth Fish Reads who writes:

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

With the cold weather, rainy (or snowy) days, and the light fading quickly on these winter afternoons…my slow cooker comes out of hiding and gets used frequently. I love this appliance for the way it helps meld flavors over the course of hours, the ease at which I can produce a dinner which looks like it took much more effort to make, and for the way the house fills with the smell of good food and greets me when I walk in after having worked a long day.

One of my absolute favorite slow cooking cookbooks is Beth Hensperger’s Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook. Hensperger has a real gift at creating modern food which also feels old-fashioned. And there is nothing quite like slow cooking to bring out the comfort food cooker in all of us. This past week we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday and I decided to make a pot roast with all the fixings for her birthday dinner. Hensperger has several pot roast recipes in her lovely book, but the one which caught my attention was on page 315-16 and called: Our Best Pot Roast with Roots. Hensperger writes:

This simple, old-fashioned pot roast is sublimely delicious: meltingly tender meat, with a rich-tasting sauce. Take the time to dice the vegetables finely (1/4 to 1/2 inch on a side), brown the meat well, and bring the water to a full boil before adding it to the crockery insert. Each of these steps plays a part in the dish’s final goodness.

This awesome recipe uses turnips, carrots, onions, and celery along with red wine to create the gravy (the roast cooks for 8-9 hours on low along with all these ingredients). In the last hour of cooking, I popped some small red potatoes and diced carrots into the oven to roast; and just before serving, I seared some fresh green beans as side dishes. We had a crusty loaf of bread and a good bottle of red wine … and I couldn’t have been more pleased with how it all came out!

I wish I could tell you I spent the time to bake a cake from scratch – but, alas, I opted to buy a pre-baked cake from my local grocery store…and you know what, it was great!

It has been a while since I have participated in this weekly event sponsored by Beth Fish Reads.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.

I thought I’d share with you my take on pasta salad. I don’t follow a recipe for this – it is a meal that can be whipped up with pretty much what you have in your refrigerator as long as you have some boxed pasta and Italian dressing on hand.

Quick and Easy Pasta Salad

• 1 package of your favorite pasta – preferably something like shells or twists (I like to use Rainbow Rotini because it is really colorful)
• A variety of fresh vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, pea pods, and zucchini…your choice!
• Small cherry tomatoes
• 1-2 cups of shredded cheese (I like Monteray Jack, but cheddar or Mozzarella also is a good choice)
• Shredded cooked chicken (optional)
• Bernstein’s Italian Dressing (I like Bernsteins because it has a lot of flavor and spices in it)
• Grated or shredded Parmesan cheese
• Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta to your preference according to the package instructions. When done, drain and rinse with cold water to stop cooking and cool pasta.

Slice up the vegetables of your choice – I usually cut the veggies pretty small or make thin slices, but it is up to you how you like them. Pour a small amount (about a tablespoon) of olive oil into a skillet, and saute the veggies until they are crisp tender. At the end of sauteing, add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir together in a large bowl the cooked veggies, cooled pasta, 1-2 cups of shredded cheese, the shredded cooked chicken (you can leave this out if you want a meatless pasta), and the Italian dressing to taste (I use about 1/4 cup of dressing, but it really depends on your taste). When well mixed, stir in the cherry tomatoes (if they are large, I cut them in half first). Adjust the salt and pepper to your taste.

Serve with grated or shredded Parmesan Cheese on top and a slice of your favorite crusty bread.

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I love to make this pasta on hot days when I really don’t feel like cooking. The whole meal can be whipped up in about 15 minutes and it is a total dish which allows large servings for two people with plenty of left overs for the next day.

ENJOY!!!

Welcome to Weekend Cooking – a weekly meme sponsored at Beth Fish Reads which “is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.”

I want to talk about improvisational cooking – something that I just started doing in the last year. I love to cook in large part because of the creativeness of the craft. Following recipes “to the letter” is not fun for me. I like to experiment. I hate to measure things. Besides, often I find a recipe that looks great, but I’m lacking ingredients. Since I live more than 30 minutes from the nearest decent grocery story, I don’t always have the option of popping out and picking up missing ingredients.

Wednesday night I defrosted some chicken thighs, but had no idea what I wanted to do with them. Usually I just marinate them and throw them on the grill. Good, but a bit boring. So I pulled out one of my trustworthy cookbooks: The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. On page 415 I found a recipe called Roasted Chicken legs with Glazed Shallots. Besides the shallots and chicken legs, the recipe called for the following ingredients: olive oil, sugar, 1/2 chicken stock, 1/4 cup dry white wine, chopped fresh rosemary leaves, dried thyme, black pepper and fresh parsley.

I did not have chicken legs (but I had thighs); I did not have shallots (but I had onions); I did not have chicken stock (but I had bouillon); I had no fresh herbs; I had no dry white wine. But I wanted to make this recipe.

This is what I did…

I followed the instructions to heat the olive oil in a skillet, but instead of cooking shallots…I diced up some onions and carrots and cooked them instead. I followed the recipe to add a tablespoon of sugar to the skillet and continued cooking the vegetables until they had caramelized.

I added the caramelized vegetables to a roasting pan and put the chicken thighs on top of them (just like the recipe said to do). Then I decided I wanted to use up some fresh mushrooms I had…so I sliced them up and threw them on top of the chicken.

Next I made the sauce. Instead of chicken stock, I boiled some water and added the bouillon cubes…then I substituted a couple of splashes of balsamic vinegar for the dry white wine, eliminated the rosemary and parsley and instead just used thyme, salt and pepper to taste.

From here on out I followed the original recipe – pouring the sauce over the chicken and vegetables, roasting the combination in a 375 degree oven (covered) for 30 minutes (stirring once); removing the cover and roasting 25 more minutes, turning the chicken pieces twice more.

And you know what? It came out GREAT! The balsamic vinegar gave the sauce a more hearty flavor than just white wine would have…and I never missed the fresh herbs. Furthermore, the carrots and mushrooms added a little more flavor and complimented the dish.

Improvisation is so  much fun. If you are a little nervous about doing it yourself, I recommend two wonderful resources:

The Improvisational Cook, by Sally Schneider

AND

The Flavor Bible, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg

Both of these books will help you deconstruct a recipe and create your own wonderful dish! Have fun!!

Share your Weekend Cooking post with other readers by visiting Beth Fish Reads TODAY!

Welcome to Weekend Cooking – a weekly meme sponsored at Beth Fish Reads which “is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.”

I have been in New Hampshire since January 7th – spending time with family, especially my older sister who was recently diagnosed with colon cancer and had surgery right before Christmas (she is doing REALLY well and has an excellent prognosis for full recovery). I knew I wanted to make some good food for her and a recipe in the February edition of Every Day with Rachael Ray caught my eye.

What tastes better than homemade soup when you aren’t feeling 100%? And is there anything more yummy than than a combination of chicken, lots of vegetables and pasta? Rachael Ray’s Toasted Orzo Chicken Soup (page 89 in the February 2010 print edition) fit the bill. Although there is a bit of prep time involved, this was a quick and easy soup which uses toasted orzo, finely chopped zucchini, carrots, red bell pepper, onion and garlic, fresh lemon and parsley, and of course chicken to make a delicious, rich soup. We had ours with a loaf of garlic rosemary bread, and we also topped the hot soup with freshly shredded Parmesan cheese (an edition to the original recipe) that added some saltiness. I doubled the recipe so we had leftovers…which were actually more tasty than the first day.

I just started getting Rachael Ray’s magazine which my sister gave me as a gift – and I have to say, I’m impressed so far with the number of recipes I want to try. She also has a great website, and if you are interested in soups which warm body and soul…check out this page on the website that includes numerous 30 minute soup meals.

Do you like to make homemade soups at this time of year? What are some of your favorites? Do you subscribe to a cooking magazine that you absolutely love? Please share in the comments!

Welcome to another installation of Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

I am hopelessly addicted to collecting cookbooks and food related books…and then not reading them. I don’t know why they sit unread on my shelves, but they do. I do know why I buy them…I love food, I love thinking of food, I love cooking.

My cooking skills have evolved over the years and I am happy to say I no longer religiously follow recipes. I like to take a recipe and improvise it, substitute in (or out) ingredients, and make the dish my own (which is probably one reason I am also hopelessly addicted to watching Top Chef every week…I am simply amazed at what they create, especially during the Quick Fire challenges).

I digress…back to the subject at hand.

Really what I want to share with you today are some of the fantastic food related books I’ve bought in the last year or so…and which I am determined to read before the end of 2010.

Fiction/Novels:

• Bread Alone, by Judith Ryan Hendricks – Emotionally devastated thirty one year old Wynter Morrison heals from a failed marriage by baking bread.
• The Baker’s Apprentice, by Judith Ryan Hendricks – Wynter Morrison faces more challenges in Seattle.

Memoirs:

• I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, by Giulia Melucci – A woman looking everywhere for love, and finding it on the stove.
• Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell – 365 days of cooking with Julia Child
• Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl – The coming of age of a culinary sensation
• A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure, by Marlena De Blasi – An American chef and food writer takes the reader to Tuscany…and the world’s best food.

Non Fiction:

• American Artisanal: Finding the Country’s Best Real Food from Cheese to Chocolate, by Rebecca Gray – Discover how and where food is being made the right way.

Cookbooks:

• The Improvisational Cook, by Sally Schneider – Declare your independence from recipes and a set list of ingredients
• The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters – Eat locally and sustainably, eat seasonally, cook simply…

Have any of you read these books? They look great, don’t they?

Beth at Beth Fish Reads hosts this fun cooking meme every weekend – a time to blog about anything vaguely foodie in nature.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but about two weeks before Thanksgiving I start craving stuffing, roasted poultry, squash, yams and pie. I think it is just  thinking of Thanksgiving that starts my mouth watering.

Yesterday I decided to kick off the Thanksgiving season with some pre-Thanksgiving fare. I stuffed a 5.5 pound chicken and roasted it; made a bit of acorn squash and gave the plate a bit of green with steamed broccoli.

My very first cookbook I ever owned was Betty Crocker’s Cookbook which my mother gave me. For many years this was my sole inspiration and reference to cooking…until I became more adventuresome. But I still use this cookbook – primarily for reference. And so when I roasted my chicken yesterday, I dragged my dog-eared, food splattered copy of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook off the shelf and looked up the time-frame for roasting a chicken. What I love is that any basic food information you could want can be found inside this simple cookbook (their pie crust recipe comes out perfectly). I looked up chicken, and referenced the roasting schedule (which is conveniently divided up into the SIZE poultry and whether it is stuffed or not). For my chicken, I planned on 2.5 hours of roasting time at 325 degrees.

I don’t reference a cookbook for making stuffing because I mostly improvise when it comes to that. Stuffing is one of my favorite foodie things to make at this time of year and yesterday I pretty much used what I had on hand to create it. Here it is just in case you want to give it a try (sorry about the lack of exact measurements for some ingredients…I tend to just add a little of this and a little of that as I go):

To stuff a 4-5 pound chicken…

• 4 cups of dried, cubed bread
• diced up celery (at least 1/2 cup)
• diced up sweet onion (at least 1/2 cup)
• diced up fresh mushrooms (I used about 5 large ones)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup to 1 cup of liquid (I use canned chicken broth…but you can use water or homemade chicken broth instead)
• pepper to taste
• currants or dried cranberries to taste
• pecans – crumbled into bite sized pieces to taste
• chopped up fresh parsley to taste

Melt the butter in a fry pan, add the vegetables and saute until the celery and onions are clear or just tender. Dump the butter and vegetables into a large bowl and add the bread cubes, currants (or dried cranberries), pecans, pepper, and parsley. Mix well. Add in the liquid a little at a time until you have the right level of moisture (this is completely up to you…some people like very moist stuffing, other people like their stuffing a bit drier). Taste and adjust seasonings or ingredients as needed. Then stuff that bird and pop it in the oven. The left over stuffing I add to a buttered casserole dish and bake it for about an hour at 350 degrees or until the top of the stuffing is brown and crunchy.

To make acorn squash:

Chop your squash into halves and scoop out the seeds. Place the squash upside down in a casserole dish and then add water until it comes about 1/2 way up the sides of the squash halves. Bake in a 400 degree oven until the squash are easily pierced with a fork (about 45 minutes depending on the size of your squash). Remove from the oven; drain the water and flip the squash right side up (be careful..they are very hot!). Add a dollop of butter and brown sugar into the squash halves and place under a broiler (set on high) until the sugar and butter are bubbling (they actually begin to caramelize a bit). Remove from the oven and cut into serving sized pieces. Serve hot. These also taste great leftover – just heat them up in the microwave.

Today Kip and I are enjoying leftovers. Yum!!!

What are you making this weekend? Are you already anticipating a Thanksgiving feast? Do you have a favorite cookbook for reference or basic recipes?

To read more Weekend Cooking posts, visit Beth’s blog today and check out Mr. Linky!

Have you seen this new weekly meme being hosted over at Beth Fish Reads?  Beth writes:

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.

I always feel especially creative in the kitchen at this time of the year and I tried a new recipe last night I thought I would share with all of you. This came from one of my favorite cookbooks: The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook by Julie Rosso and Sheila Lukins (I also have the equally good New Basics Cookbook by the same two authors). Anyway, I had thawed out four boneless chicken breasts yesterday and wanted to do something more imaginative than throw them the grill. On page 278 of The Silver Palate Cookbook, I found a terrific seasonal recipe called Baked Chicken With Cider and Apples. And it was simple. Simply marinate the chicken breasts in some apple cider for an hour (I used Odwalla’s Cider with Caramel), then dredge the breasts in flour with some ground ginger, cinnamon, pepper and salt. Bake in a shallow dish for 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove from the oven and pour reserved cider and sliced apples over the top of the chicken; return to the oven for 25 minutes…and you’re done. The recipe also called for Applejack (which I had to look up because I’d never heard of it…apparently it is a liquor) which I did not have…I left it out and the meal came out great, so I guess it wasn’t needed. Besides this easy dish, I also used a left over baked yam to make sweet potato pancakes with roasted pecans. Yummy.

Do you have some favorite seasonal recipes for this time of the year? I also love to make soups and stews with a loaf of homemade bread. I better stop now, my stomach is growling!