Can You Empty the Refrigerator?

I did my best last night to use up stuff from the refrigerator and from the big meals we had this weekend. I had leftover chicken from the break-the-fast meal along with leftover crescent roll dough. Some left over mushrooms and veggies were in the fridge and freezer as well.

I sauteed about 3 carrots, cut into rounds, added one medium onion diced,and 1 tsp of chopped garlic in 1 tbs of olive oil. I then added the last of the green beans from the garden. We are supposed to get a hard 21 degree freeze tonight, so I thought I had better pick the last of them. I also added eight ounces of chopped mushrooms, and 1 cup of frozen peas. I added one cup of white rice and about 1 and 1/2 cup of the chicken chopped into chunks. To this I added one cup of gravy, (you know, the powdered mix, that you just add water to?)

If there had been cream of mushroom or chicken soup in the cupboard I would have used that instead.

I put all of this into a casserole pan and then covered it with one of the tubes of leftover cresent roll dough. I baked it for about 15 minutes and we had a nice hot chicken pie.

A Mixed Bag

We were in Reno for Yom Kippur this last weekend with our daughter Lili. It might sound funny to write about a holiday where you are fasting on a food blog, but it really is pertinent. We had dinner with our friends Walter and Cindy at a Thai restaurant, Bangkok Cuisine. We love it there. The food is wonderful. I had pumpkin curry. I think I could eat it every day. Lili had spicy basil noodles. They were wonderful too. Rob had steamed Salmon and complained that his portion was entirely too small.

We decided on Saturday when we were shopping at Costco that we would have roast chicken for dinner before Yom Kippur. You need a really good dinner before you fast. You don't get as hungry as early that way.

So, I put the chickens in to roast. 425 degrees for 1 and 1/2 hours. Wash the chicken, clean the inside really well, make sure you get out all the liver and kidneys and heart, and neck. I've never done it, but I've been told people have roasted it in the bird. I stuff my chicken with a half an onion and a half a lemon. Then I tie the bird up. I used to leave the legs open and I had the worst time trying to get it to cook. This is the best way, truss it up. Now, you can use kitchen string, but I saw my butcher do this and it makes so much sense. Take the skin at the back of the bird, right near the opening, and make a slit in it large enough to take the end of the opposite leg through it. Do the same to the other side. Rub the chicken with olive oil all over, this helps the crust brown. I have when I want a particularly juicy breast taken pats of butter and put them between the skin and the breast meat, but I didn't today. Season it with salt and pepper. Roast. Use a meat thermometer. 170 at least.

When I put the chickens in the roasting pan, I usually put them on a rack, but because it was a strange kitchen, I didn't have one that fit my pan. I cut up about 10 red potatoes and put them on the bottom of the pan after I had tossed them in 2 tbs of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Then I sat my two chickens on top of the potatoes. This way the chickens get a lift away from the bottom of the pan, and the potatoes get a good soak in all the chicken juices.

I was a little worried about the chickens, I cooked two, because it was a strange oven and I didn't have a meat thermometer, but they came out great.

We also had chicken soup. Usually I would have used homemade stock made from the chicken carcasses I have stuck in the freezer, but again we were away from home, so I used good ole Swanson's Chicken Broth from the aseptic container. I love this broth. I added carrots and some sliced onion and let it simmer for about twenty minutes. I then added kreplach. Kreplach are a Jewish ravioli. I took one chicken breast and poached it. I cut it up and put it through the food processor with one-half sauteed onion and 1 tsp of sauteed garlic. Mix it with one egg and that is the filling for your kreplach. You can make your own pasta dough, but I didn't have time so I used the square won ton wrappers you can get in the vegetable section of the grocery store. Put about one teaspoon of the filling into the corner of the square, wet the sides of the pasta, fold it in half and then crimp with a fork.

This was a great soup. Really nice and light.

We also had green beans with tomatoes and onion. I saute about two tomatoes and one half onion in 1 tbs of olive oil. I then add my cleaned green beans with 1/4 cup water and let them simmer or steam in the pan until the green beans are crisp-tender.

The final accompaniment was white rice cooked with some of the broth from the soup. We were saving the potatoes for the next day when we could break the fast.

The meal was really good, so good. We ate a lot, but I think it helped get us through the next day.

We broke the fast at 4:00 on Monday. That's really early, but we had to put Lili on the plane at 6:50, and she had to eat before she got in the air. We carved the bird, warmed up the potatoes and cooked some brussel sprouts in the leftover juice from the chickens.

I made some mushroom turnovers. So simple. I took 8 ounces of mushrooms, 1 tbs of garlic and 1/2 onion and sauteed it in olive oil. I rolled out two cans of crescent rolls and cut out circles with a tea cup. I spread one tsp of cream cheese on each circle and then dolloped on 1 tsp of filling, folded the circle in half and then put them into a 375 degree oven for about 12 minutes. They were so yummy. The cream cheese is a nice surprise when all you are really expecting is mushroom.

So we had the mushroom turnovers and pickled herring with green onions for an appetizer, and then we dug into the rest of the meal. It was so good!, as Rob would say.

After we put Lili on the plane we stopped and got a quick coffee and headed on down the road to Elko. We were both a little peckish when we got home so we cut up a baguette, some manchego cheese, a little extra aged edam, and a tomato and had a lovely snack. I guess it's really not good to eat at midnight, but sometimes you just have to.

This Week In Food

Doesn't that title sound like a Dan Rather,or Walter Kronkite moment? It does to me. We went with Doug to dinner and it was a fast day on Monday. I had a chili cheese burger, that looked like a big brown mess on my plate. Not great, I ate the meat and it was good. The chili, not so much.

Tuesday, Rob had class and we had fish when he got home. We got some marinated fish at Costco and it was really good. Salmon with rice and brocollini. Not a very interesting meal, but it was good.

Wednesday, we had left over chicken from Sunday with a baked potato and brussel sprouts. I love brussel sprouts when they are sauted in olive oil and garlic. That's the only way to eat it.

Thursday, I wasn't feeling so great, so I made a quick pasta dish when Rob came home from the office late. I cooked some capellini and then added fresh tomatoes, black olives, artichokes, and mushrooms, with romano cheese. It wasn't bad. Rob liked it.

Yesterday we drove to Reno, and by the time we got in, it was 8:30. We found this great Indian restaurant, called Indian Kabab and Curry. We had Aloo Chapote and Tandoori Chicken. Really yummy. The garlic naan bread is to die for.

Tonite, I don't know what we are doing for dinner. We are supposed to meet our friends Walter and Cindy for dinnner. Who knows? It will probably be good.

A Weekend Without Cooking

I don't very often have a weekend without cooking, but it happened this weekend. Friday I made six more loaves of challah for Rosh Hashana services. They were great, and went over well. They want the recipe. To give it, or not? So, after Friday services we got veggie pizza from the Blind Onion, which is five minutes from the townhouse in Reno. No cooking. Blind Onion has pretty darn good pizza. We had a caesar salad and were good to go. After services on Saturday, we went home and had leftover pizza and a nap. We went out to dinner with Tom and ElizaBeth to Whole Foods in the evening, and had a great time. Sunday, we did a quick shop and came back to Elko. I guess you could say I did a little cooking, heating actually. We got a roast chicken from Raley's, made stove top stuffing, and had rice with gravy. I steamed some brussel sprouts and that was dinner.

Tonight we are going to JR's with our friend Doug, so I'll cook, Tuesday and Wednesday. Rob is off to Jackpot on Thursday for court and then we are headed back to Reno to get Lili and have Yom Kippur services on Friday. This weekend, I'll be doing some cooking.

Venison Osso Bucco

In my last post I mentioned that I am in the process of cleaning out the freezer. So, I pulled out some venison shanks and some venison meat and put it in an osso bucco. I browned the shanks and the meat and then sauted two sliced onion, and one carrot,chopped finely. I added 1 and 1/2 cups of crushed tomatoes and 2 tsps of garlic along with 1 cup of white wine and 2 cups of beef broth. From their I added a bay leaf, lemon rind, rosemarry, and thyme from the garden. I adapted this recipe from "The Complete Meat Cookbook." You put the shanks back into the pan and then put them in a 325 degree oven for an hour or two, turning the meat every so often.

I'm going to serve it with some polenta and brocollini. Hopefully it will be good.

Didn't get the challah made this evening, will have to do it tomorrow morning.

WOW -- It's Been a Week -- What Have I Done?

It's been a week since I've posted and a mixed bag as to what I've cooked and what I haven't.

On Friday, the 11th, Rob and I went to our friend David's house for dinner. We try to get him over to our house, but he just seems to like to entertain at his place. David made Mexican food. We had venison and beef tacos, as well as chicken tacos. He made black beans with corn and red onions and also rice. Bruce and Lisa were at dinner and brought some killer guacamole. I brought a plum cake, that I thought was not going to work while it was in the oven. The recipe called for an 8 inch round cake pan. That's what I used, and it bubbled over to the point, I lost probably a quarter of the cake to the baking sheet I put under the cake pan. The cake turned out well. Lot's of nice lemon and plumb flavor, but not a recipe I will probably use again.

Since it was Friday I also made challah. Two loaves. We kept one and I took one over to David's.

I did not cook on the 12th either. We went to the wine walk. This is a promotion by the downtown business association to get people into their stores. You pay 18 dollars for a wine glass and then follow a map around to the different stores and you get a taste of the different wines each shop is hosting. You can quickly get drunk doing this. It doesn't help if you start at the downtown wine bar with a big glass of some lovely red wine. The businesses also have little snacks, so you can try out the food, the wine, and have a really good time with all the people you know that you see downtown. After all that wine we knew we had to eat something so our group, which had started out with four and had grown to ten moved to Sergio's a mexican restaurant in the downtown area. I had the half chicken quesadilla. It filled my plate, who know's how big the whole quesadilla is. It would have to be enough to feed like, I dont' know, a family of seven. Afterwards, we went to a Mexican bakery in town and looked over the pan dulce. Rob and I bought a couple of croissants to eat with our coffee the next morning, before tennis.

While we were at the wine walk, Rob made plans to play tennis with Nayil and Jeff, two of his good friends on Sunday. I invited them both for dinner after the tennis match and we had a great time. I wasn't sure what to fix, because I was all Mexican fooded out. No more Mexican, at least for a day, anyway. So after a quick trip to the grocery store, I fixed stuffed chicken breasts, potato gratin, and green beans.

The stuffed chicken breasts were pretty easy. I sauted one onion that I had diced in really small dice along with two cloves of garlic. I added a package of chopped frozen spinach after it had been thawed and drained. Really squeeze all the liquid out of it or you will have a runny mess. I then added about 1/2 cup of mexican cheese, it doesn't melt too much, so you have a nice textural play in the food.

Pound the chicken breasts flat. I butterfly them and then pound them between wax paper with a meat tenderizer. Once they are flattened put about two tablespoons of the spinach mixture on the breast, spread it all over the breast. Roll up the chicken breast and tie it with some kitchen string into a little bundle.

Put approximately 2 tbs of olive oil in a big pan. I made five chicken breasts, one for each of us and then one for my lunch the next day. Heat the oil and then cook the breasts until they are golden brown on all sides. They may not be cooked all the way through, but that's okay. You are going to cook them again in the sauce that you make for them.

To make the sauce take about 1 and 1/2 cups of chicken stock, (I make my own from the Friday shabbat chicken.) and deglaze the pan you cooked the chicken in. Scrape all the bits of chickeny goodness that is there. Once the stock is boiling take 1 tbs and mix it with 1 tbs of cornstarch, and mix the cornstarch mixture back into the stock. It should start to thicken almost immediately. Put the chicken breasts back in along with any juices that have settled on the plate while they rest, and cook them for another 5 - 10 minutes until the chicken is completely cooked through. Add a little bit of salt and pepper to the sauce and then serve the chicken breasts on a plate with the sauce drizzled over them.

To make the potatoes gratin, peel four medium sized russet potatoes and slice them thin. Oil the bottom of a small casserole dish and lay 1/2 of your potatoes in layers in the pan. Add 1/2 cup of your chicken stock and 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese, along with 1/2 of a sauteed onion. Slice the onion and saute it. Repeat the procedure with the rest of the potatoes, the other half of the onion and 1/2 to 3/4 cup of cheddar cheese to cover all the potatoes and the onion. Put it in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. So, do these first before you make the chicken.

Green beans, are green beans. Snap them and put them in the microwave covered with 1/2 inch of water. Cook for about seven minutes.

I loved this dinner. What great flavors. Nayil and Jeff cleaned their plates and came back for seconds on potatoes.

On Monday, I wanted fish. Rob will eat fish anyway he can get his hands on it, so I knew this would be a good meal. This summer Rob and his friend Tom went on a fishing trip in the Pacific. They caught a huge mess of cod, so I thawed two pieces of this wonderful fish in the refrigerator and we ate like kings.

I sauted one small onion and two small tomatoes diced in olive oil. Cook it down until it is one wonderful sauce, oh, add two to three cloves of garlic also. At this point, Rob took over and cooked the fish. He added a couple of bay leaves, some chicken stock, and some 21 seasoning salute from Trader Joe's. While he was cooking the fish, I cut up two small zucchini, chopped the tops off a bunch of asparagus spears, and diced a tomato. I sauted all of this in olive oil, just until the zucchini was cooked, don't cook it until it is mushy. It's better with just a little crunch. We ate this with rice. Cook your rice 1 to 2. One cup rice, two cups liquid. I used chicken stock. I never time my rice, I just cook it until there are little dimples showing in the top of the rice. It was a truly lovely meal. I love cooking with Rob. It's a lot of fun for both of us.

On Tuesday, Rob teaches class until late. So, I took the opportunity and made six loaves of round challah for Rosh Hashana this weekend. I have six more loaves to make which I will do when I get home from school today. Because I had made so much bread, I wasn't that excited about cooking dinner. We had a half a loaf of ciabatta from Trader Joe's that we needed to use up. Rob hates wasting food, and I hate hearing about it, so I used that as the crust for a pizza. I grated cheddar cheese onto the bread, about 1/4 cup for each half. I browned some hamburger that I had in the freezer. I'm trying to use up things in the freezer, because Rob will be hunting and bringing home venison to fill the freezer in about a month. I sauted a small onion, chopped up a couple of small tomatoes from the garden, halved some kalamata olives, and sliced up some artichoke hearts and put that all on top of the cheddar cheese. I sprinkled romano cheese over the top, and sprinkled some olive oil on top of that. I baked it for 20 minutes until the cheese was melted and that was dinner.

Last night we had leftovers. It was open house at school and then we went for a drink afterward, and I didn't want to cook. Leftover pizza to the rescue.

Now I think I'm up to date. I'll blog tomorrow with the venison dish I'm making for tonight. Oh, and the six loaves of challah.

I Love Cooking Magazines

I don't know how often I have been saved by cooking magazines. One of my favorites is FOOD by the Martha Stewart people. I used one of their recipes tonight. I like to create my own, but this one was really good. Thai Beef over Coconut Rice. So simple, yet excellently done. The recipe is in this month's issue. I highly recommend it. I only subscribe to three cooking magazines: Cook's Illustrated, FOOD, and Savuer. All three are worth every penny. They give me a really different perspective on cooking and eating. You can't ask for anything better. Tomorrow we are going out for dinner to a friend's house. Some nights its really good not to cook, although I do have to make a dessert. We'll see what takes my fancy tomorrow. I have to bake challah tomorrow also. It's Friday!!!

Late, Late Night Supper

It was late last night when we had dinner. Really late, 11:00 pm late. We don't normally eat so late, but after about a gazillion meetings and nonsense it was 11:00. I hate eating that late, so I tried to make something light. Pasta agliolio. I guess that's how you spell it. Take some angel hair pasta and boil it in water with some olive oil and some salt. When it's done, run it under cold water, put it back in the pan with somemore olive oil and some chopped garlic. Whatever amount your heart desires. Now, to Rob's pasta I added sun dried tomatoes. He like them, I can take or leave them, and some pecorino romano cheese. Only pecorino romano. Parmesan is okay, but pecorino romano is fantastico. To mine, just the romano. what a fine dinner. Light, easy and not too unhealthy.

Hash for Dinner

Monday, we had those great Salmon burgers for dinner, but we had three patties left over for last night, Tuesday, the 8th. After one of those phone calls with Rob discussing what to have for dinner, I decided on Salmon Hash.

Now, I love potatoes, Rob says they are my first love. Who knows, maybe he's right, but they really aren't bad for you, if you don't put a lot of stuff on them. So, I put a potato in the microwave for about 4 minutes. You don't want it completely cooked, because you want to be able to grate it. After it is par-cooked, grate it along with half a zucchini. Press the water out of this mixture with your hands or in a cheese cloth. Mix both with 1 beaten egg and salt and pepper to taste, along with 1/2 grated onion. Put about 2 tbs of olive oil on a griddle and make three to four patties with the potato/zucchini mixture. Fry the patties until they are golden and then flip to the other side.

While they are cooking take the three leftover salmon patties and cut them into dice. Slice a medium onion and 8 ounces of mushrooms thinly. I went to the garden again and pulled a tomato from the vine. Dice this. Saute the onion in 1 tbs of olive oil along with two cloves of chopped garlic. When the onions are translucent add the mushrooms and cook them down until they release their water. Add the tomato and the diced salmon patties. Cook this mixture until the salmon is warm.

Now, take one or two of those great potato/zucchini fritters you've made and put them on a plate. Top with the hash. I gave Rob a plate and his comment was "That's really much too big a portion." But in the end, he said it was so good, that he couldn't stop eating it. The plate was empty. What an easy recipe. I'll definitely make Salmon Hash again.

Last NIght, September 7

Last night, my husband Rob and I came home from Reno and needed a quick dinner. We had been to the grocery store Trader Joe's before we made the drive and we bought their really great salmon burgers. By the time we hit the house the burgers were almost thawed and had to be used. There are five burgers in a package so we cooked all five on an enameled grill pan. Just three minutes per side.

We had no hamburger buns, but we did have some great sour dough bread from the Truckee River Sourdough Company. Rob cut up the bread, we put some wonderful dijon mustard on the bread. Both sides is best. I sliced a nice bit of manchego cheese. This is probably one of the best cheeses you will ever run across and if you go to Spain you must try it.

I took an onion from the garden, sliced it thin, two green peppers that were starting to turn red and a small tomato from the garden and diced it. I sauted it in some olive oil until the onions were translucent and the peppers soft.

We put that atop the Salmon burgers and topped the whole thing with one of those great slices of Manchego. On went the sour dough bread and we were feasting like kings. The whole thing took probably 15 minutes. Don't forget there were three Salmon burgers left over for tonite.

That's Just It!

I get asked this question all the time. Those of you who have kids, you know it, they want to know. No surprises, they can gird their loins, and be prepared for whatever it is you are going to fix. Or, do you ask the question, "What would you like for supper?". And this is the answer you get, "I don't know. What sounds good to you?" To which you want to reply, "If something sounded good to me, I wouldn't be asking you what you want for dinner." But, you don't. You come up with something, anything. It's great if you can find something easy, but usually that's not the case. It's a production. A big production.

So, I'm going to spend the next month or two or three trying to make it not a big production, let's use what's in the refrigerator, plan more than 30 minutes in advance and try to take the production out of food.

Here goes!!!!!!