How Ethel got her Foods Back

Dear (three) readers: I apologize for the hiatus. Winter brought a period of hibernation, but more importantly, take-out nation. A couple minor health things, a heavy schedule and What I Made for Dinner was looking like this:
Monday: Vietnamese take out
Tuesday: pizza
Wednesday: leftover vietnamese take out
Thursday: Leftover pizza
Friday: booze and snacks

No more of that. Spring is here, and it's a great time to get back in the kitchen . In honor of the season last night we killed the fatted calf (well, someone did: I just bought the chops) and had grilled shoulder lamb chops. These are pretty cheap for lamb, and while they're a little more work (more bones, a little gristle), they taste really meaty and delicious. We grilled them quickly (3-4 min. per side), and when they came off the grill topped with a mixture of olive oil, lemon , thyme, oregano, and S&P. On the side was cooked orzo with shredded zucchini. Cook your orzo, and while that's boiling, shred a zucchini and saute with olive oil, salt and pepper, and chopped garlic. Add sun-dried tomatoes if you have them. When the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the skillet. Top with oregano and feta cheese. Feel like you're straight out of Athens for under $5!

The Main Course

My plan to take Saturday's meal and stretch it out to a week of posts proved to be fortuitous. Last night's dinner consisted of cheddar and sour cream Ruffles in the ER due to the appearance of a kidney stone in my husband, so I guess I don't need to tell you much more about that. (Except that those chips are damn good.)

Continuing from Saturday's dinner, the main course was lamb shanks over polenta. Shanks are one of those things that seem to have been "Starbucks-ized": something that used to be cheap and plentiful (coffee, 50 cents a cup) that has now been deemed fancy (grande latte, $4.50). Shanks are all over restaurant menus, so they are harder to find, and sometimes kind of expensive. They are such a tasty treat, though, if you see some, buy them immediatly. Mine came in at $5.99 a pound, which is not bad for lamb (especially from Whole Foods). I cooked them slow in the oven with this recipe, then made some polenta with the directions right off the bag. The lamb falls right off the bone, you don't have to watch it, you can't overcook it, and it's amazing. Remember what my ol' granpappy used to say: "If a shank crosses your path, don't let it run away".


He never really said that.


But you knew that.

How one meal can do your work for a week!

Travel has made cooking a little rare at the ol' household lately, but I did cook a hell of a meal for friends on Saturday. I've decided to spread out the love and give you the courses over the course of the week, since this is shaping up to be a lentil skillet kind of week, and I'm sure all my thousands of readers don't need to hear about that again. So today I bring you:

THE APPETIZER

I'm pretty pleased with myself on this one. Two little apps, both fried, and perfect for cocktails. I know, I know what you're thinking: "Emily, if I'm having people over for dinner and already in my dressy apron (you do have a dressy apron, don't you?), then why would I take the time to fry?" Answer: It's delicious, it's a special treat, and it's actually not that messy.
The two things I made were blue cheese olives and prociutto wrapped turnips. Stay with me- you're going to like where this is going. The olives are large olives jammed with your favorite blue cheese. If you're a martini drinker, you may already have this motion down. Take each olive and dip, in order, in flour, beaten egg, and bread crumbs.
The turnips you cut into sticks, and parboil them. (Bring a small pot of water to boil, and cook the turnips about 10min. or until they're slightly soft. You can do this ahead of time). After they're cool, take a little piece of prociutto and wrap it around the turnip. Dip each piece into the egg from the olive recipe, then roll in sesame seeds (if you don't have them, you can use poppy seeds. If you don't have that, just use the egg wash).

Take a small saucepan and fill it with about an inch of vegetable oil. You'll know it's hot enough when you throw a tiny pinch of flour in and it sizzles, but don't let it get so hot it smokes. Fry the turnips first, a couple at a time, until they look crispy and brown, probably about 3 minutes. Drain on paper towels. The olives will go in next, and they only take 30 seconds or so to come out crispy and delicious.

This was a really fun way to start a party because you can either assemble them ahead of time and have your cocktails in the kitchen while you fry, or make your guests do some of the stuffing and wrapping for an interactive experience. It's just enough fry to feel like a treat, but not so much that you're stuffed for the main course and it's delicious with martinis or champagne.

Swimming Upstream

In the continuing quest to detox from a couple of stressful weeks, we tried to go with super foods last night: salmon and broccoli. The salmon was done on the George Foreman grill, an appliance that I haven't seen or used for quite some time, but it did a fantastic job- the salmon (1 inch thick steaks, not fillets) was cooked absolutely perfectly after about 6 min. Melted butter with chopped garlic and lime juice went on top after cooking. The broccoli was oven roasted at 425 for about 20 min, then tossed with olive oil and Parmesan. I'm a big fan of roasting just about any vegetable- the heat makes the outside crunchy and brings out the sugars on the inside.
Now if I can only remember what kind of salmon I'm supposed to buy. Farm-raised? Not farmed raised? Alaskan? Lake Ontario?

Soytastic

"What I Made for Dinner" has morphed into "What I Ordered for Dinner", as I had to work late most nights last week. But, no worry readers (reader): we're coming back. I'm on a soy kick after reading about the benefits and also trying to purge all the Chinese take out from my system, so I'm going with a dessert that I've had, oddly enough, at a French restaurant. Silken tofu sits quivering in a bowl, surrounded by a simple syrup flavored with ginger. The silken tofu is like a fancy panna cotta, but better for your estrogen levels. The syrup is equal parts sugar and water boiled until the sugar dissolves, with some fresh or powdered ginger thrown in. Take that, Frances Moore Lappe.

The $20 dinner party

Being cheap is stylish now, right? Everything seems to be "recession-busting" or "recession-proof". It almost makes you want to go out and spend your money on lobster tails and blow just prove them all wrong!
I didn't make lobster tails and blow for dinner, so don't get too excited. What I did do was have 4 people for dinner and accidentally made it for under $20 (not including booze and staple items). Here's the menu:

Appetizer: White bean dip. Canned beans are cheap. Dried beans are even cheaper, so if you have the time, soak them and cook. If you don't, spring for the .89 cent can of white beans. Puree in a food processor with a clove of garlic, enough olive oil to make it the consistency you want, salt, and some spices if you choose (thyme and cayenne work well). Buy a bag of pitas for $2.79, brush them with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and toast. Serve with the dip.

Main Course: Mussels. These briny little devil are cheap, but look fancy. Plus shellfish makes people think you spent a fortune, but a bag of mussels that can feed 4 will set you back about $5. There are a million variations on how to cook them, but basically you steam them in an aromatic broth until they open. Serve with crusty bread ($3). Here's a basic recipe to start.

Salad: Watercress and spiced nuts. This is a bit of the cheat, as I had already bought the nuts in bulk, and that allowed me to get the more expensive watercress ($4 for 2 bunches). The nuts you saute in a pan with a little butter and any sweet/spicy blend you like- I used a curry powder. Melt the butter, add the nuts and spice, throw in a small amount of sweet (maple syrup, brown sugar, white sugar), and cook until they look toasty and good. Toss with the watercress and dress with olive oil and a light colored vinegar.

Dessert: We stopped at the Italian bakery on the way home and bought cannolis. This set us back $7.

And our grand total? Around $20. Plenty of money left over for your lobster tail and blow fund.

What We made for dinner

Have you ever had a night where the weather is bad (in this case a snow storm), or you went out too hard the night before, or you just don't feel like going out, but you want to have a nice meal? No? Hmm. Well, I have that quite a bit, and am fortunate enough to have friends and family that like to cook too. This past weekend it was snowing pretty hard, and Mr. What I Made for Dinner and our friend Double D decided to join forces and come up with a nice Italian meal, in order of antipasti, pasta, meat, salad and dessert. We ended up trying a couple of new recipes that were fantastic. Here's what we did:
1. Make everyone a cocktail. A must for weekend cooking.
2. Fried Olives. Double D likes blue cheese stuffed olives in his martini, and I had seen this recipe and wanted to try it. Take your olives (the big ones), stuff with blue cheese, roll in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, in that order, and fry for 30 sec. on each side. Salty, cheesy, and fried. Mmmmm.
3. Pasta with tomatoes. Mr. What I Made for Dinner is quite good at making pasta from scratch, so I can't help you with that. I did throw a jar of tomatoes in a skillet with garlic and a couple bay leaves, and a tiny bit of cinnamon for something different and threw that on top.
3. Chicken stuffed with sausage and thyme. This was a variation on a recipe we saw for chicken stuffed with pork and sage. We didn't have the pork or the sage, but guess what we had? Cook the sausage first with an onion and some thyme, pound out the chicken breast thin, mound a little stuffing in each and secure with a couple of toothpicks. Pan fry until done, then throw a little white wine in the pan and scrap up all the jibblies. We served this with sauteed spinach.
4. Salad of watercress, pears, and candied walnuts. The walnuts are made by putting them in a skillet with a little butter, a little brown sugar, and any spice you want- I used mild curry. Dressing was just olive oil and rice vinegar.
5. Dessert: chocolate and nuts. Anything you can find in the cabinet.

This was streched out over 3 or 4 hours, so it wasn't too much food and was really relaxing. In these times of economic stress, it's good to know you can still enjoy fine dining without the state tax. Tipping yourself is optional.

What He made for dinner

The other recipient of what I made for dinner has made a New Year's resolution to cook more, so here is his entry. He has this uncanny (heh heh) way of taking any food and putting it into a skillet and coming up with something delicious, whereas I would spend 30 min. trying to think of the best possible combination of what we had before I even started. His latest skillet included chicken thighs, red lentils, chicken broth ( I think), and every frozen vegetable in the freezer, which turned out to be broccoli, peas, and shitake mushrooms. He also threw in a can of tomatoes, and I think a Turkish type of seasoning, because it had a bit of a bite to it. There may have been wine thrown in too, but maybe that open bottle on the counter was destined only for my glass- I don't know. In any case, it was delicious. Thanks, New Year's resolution!

French Canadian Magic

If you've never experienced the wondrous creation that is Poutine, you are missing out. Served in roadside shacks, bars and ski lodges in Quebec, a basic description is cheese fries with gravy, but it's so much more. It's gotten pretty trendy in the last year or so, so you'll probably see it on a bar menu at some point, but it may not be authentic. Here's the real deal, in three acts:

I. Fries. Skinny, shoestring fries. No potato wedges.

II. Cheese curd. This is difficult to find outside of Wisconsin or Upstate New York. Cheese curd is a very mild, white cheese that "squeaks" as you chew it. The beauty of the curd is that it's quite mild and it melts well without dissolving. If you can't get it, queso fresco is a decent substitute, and if you can't get that, get the mildest white cheddar or Monterrey jack you can.

III. Gravy: Canned please. In Canada, it seems to be a beef gravy with a bit of a tomato taste, but any canned gravy will work.

You can imagine how to make this: cook the fries, add the cheese, pour the gravy.

To further gild the lily, we added cut up cheese bratwurst on top, but that's not for the faint of heart. The health conscious among you should know that the justification is that football season has an ending point, and unfortunately there are not many Sundays left to sit around and eat fatty food while it gets dark at 4pm. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, I always say....

Poire au cafe

If you've never checked out Jacques Pepin's "Fast Food, My Way", you really should. Everything in this book is great, and the strange thing is, stuff that sounds kind of weird is always amazing. Case in point: coffee-poached pears. This one came about for three reasons: 1. It's January, and fruit dessert fits in with fat season. 2. I had pears that needed to be used. 3. The opening paragraph of this recipe said "if you're looking at a pot of coffee from breakfast..." and lo and behold: I was.

Here's the details: Peel 2 pears and cut into quarters. Put in a saucepan with a cup of old coffee, a little less than a 1/4c. of brown sugar, a cap of vanilla, and some booze. He called for port, but I didn't have any, so I used Creme de Noyaux, which is a bottle from the way back of the liquor cabinet that tastes like almonds. Poach for 10 min, or until the pears are soft. He called for thickening the remaining sauce, but I did'nt feel like it. I served with sliced almonds, chocolate chips, and a little yogurt, but if I'd had ice cream I would have used that. It's pretty deceptive: dark, dark brown pears look a little unappetizing, but the bitterness of the coffee and the sweet of the pears is really nice. If I'd taken the time to pretty it up it would actually look quite elegant.
Plus my acupuncturist just told me that pears are good for the lungs and the dry, hacking coughs everyone seems to be having this time of year. Health food! Who knew?