Roasted Roots

Pretty much any combination of root vegetables, roasted simply with salt, pepper and olive oil is going to taste good. This recipe is just one of many combinations you can do, and it's more fun and flavorful than just roasting regular potatoes.

Ingredients:

3 beets
2 parsnips
3 carrots
1 large sweet potato
1 large sweet onion
1 cup fruity white wine or sherry
2 tablespoons dried savory
1 tablespoon dried orange zest (or fresh)
generous sprinkling of celery salt and pepper
1/3 cup olive oil

The first step is to chop the vegetables into roughly equal pieces, I quartered most everything except the large onion which I cut into eighths. I didn't peel anything (well, except the onions) I just scrubbed the skins very well, but you can peel them all if you like. Toss the vegetables in the rest of the ingredients and place in a large roasting pan. Cook at about 400 degrees for somewhere between 45 minutes and one hour, depending on how small you cut everything. Just cook them until you get burnt-edged onions and brown-edged sweet potatoes. 

When you get these on the plate, sprinkle them with balsamic vinegar and a few gratings of very sharp cheese. 

Easy and Yummy Pork Chops (But No Applesauce)

Ingredients:

4 bone-in pork chops (as you can see above, mine were pretty big)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 rounded tablespoon Montreal Steak Seasoning 
1 teaspoon thyme
2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar or honey or maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix all of the above ingredients in a dish or pan that just barely fits the pork chops, so they are submerged in the liquid. Let them sit in this marinade for at least an hour, turning over once halfway through the time, then pat them very dry with a paper towel.

Next, in addition to your pork chops, you will need:

Olive oil for frying
salt and pepper
one finely chopped clove of garlic
1/2 cup medium-dry cooking sherry
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon hot pepper jelly OR one tablespoon of honey and several dashes of hot sauce

It's a great idea to always have a cheap bottle of sherry and a cheap bottle of port around for cooking. You know how you always hear that you shouldn't cook with something you wouldn't drink? Well I don't agree. I hate drinking sherry, but I love sauces made with it. 

Heat the oil, enough of it to just cover the bottom of the pan, on high heat. Salt and pepper the pork chops and then cook them about five minutes on the first side and about four on the second side. Then set them on a plate, cover with foil, and let them rest while you make the sauce. 

In the same pan, over medium heat now, put in your minced garlic, then after only about 30 seconds of cooking, pour in the sherry. Let the sherry reduce by a bit, not quite half, and then put in the cream and the tablespoon of jelly. Take off of the heat immediately and taste for salt and pepper before pouring the sauce over the pork chops. Serve with roasted root vegetables (recipe here) and/or a wild rice blend. 

Fried Plantain, or, The Giant Slightly-Sweet French Fry

Plantains- they're ridiculously tasty, and because they aren't as common on the North American table as they are in South American cuisine, you can fancy-up your next meal if you serve these as a side dish instead of potatoes. I'm picturing perfect peppery grilled flank steak, home made tortillas, fresh salsa, and fried plantains.

Here's what I did, it's so easy: After peeling them, I split the plantains down the middle, lengthwise. I heated a good sized blob of butter over medium-high heat in a non-stick pan and I put the plantain slices in, flat side down first, and cooked them for three or four minutes until they were brown and toasty. Then I carefully flipped them and cooked them another three minutes or so on the other side. (As long as you don't actually burn them, I don't think the exact time matters as long as you have nice browning and they are cooked through.)

I served them with a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper and a drizzle of a very simple spicy mayo sauce. For the sauce I mixed two rounded tablespoons of Best Foods mayo with one level tablespoon of sriracha chili sauce, and one teaspoon of sugar.

Zucchini Patties, or Something To Do With Little Squashlings

I'll admit it, I have to spell-check "zucchini" every time I write it. We could spell it zukini, as in, "Eat more zukini to fit in a bikini." No?
Well, bikini assonance aside, I do not mean to imply that the following recipe is in any way slimming, it's just a yummy way to use up the zucchini that your over-zealous gardener neighbor gives you every year.

Ingredients:
5 small/medium zucchini (or the one giant one that was growing sneakily at the back of the garden) grated (approximately 4 cups)
1/2 cup semolina flour, or whole wheat flour (fine corn flour if you need these gluten free)
3 eggs
2 green onions, finely diced
2 tablespoons finely chopped Italian parsley
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon dried dill
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
3 ounces soft goat cheese (chevre), crumbled 
olive oil

a lemon, some Greek yogurt, and more Italian parsley to serve

Heat the olive oil in a NON-STICK pan over medium-high heat, using enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan well. (I had my stove on 9 then had to turn it down to 8 after the first batch.)  

After you've grated the zucchini into your mixing bowl, the best thing to do is grab handfuls of it at a time and squeeze the heck out of it over the sink to remove some of the moisture. Mix the grated zucchini in with all of the rest of the ingredients and then drop rounded spoonfuls of the batter into the pan carefully, smooshing them flat as you go, so they look like little pancakes. Fry them in batches, cooking for three minutes per side. Don't crowd the pan too much because you don't want them touching each other, it makes it hard to flip them over. This recipe should make at least 12-16 patties. If your batter starts to look a little runny between batches, you can add a tablespoon more of flour and mix really well before continuing.

They can go into a warm oven until serving, or you can just enjoy them at room temperature. Serve with fresh lemon squeezed over, good generous dollops of Greek yogurt or sour cream, and roughly chopped fresh parsley. 

Food, Not Fashion

"Just because food isn't fashionable anymore, doesn't mean we don't want to eat it!" 

Copyright by someone or other on the internet, not my picture

Thank you Nigella Lawson, for that quote from your show 'Nigella Bites', because while I adore cooking programs like 'Top Chef', I get really irritated when judges criticize contestants for making a dish or combining ingredients in a way that they think is cliche. I was especially irritated when a contestant (Stefan if you follow the show) was criticized for making chicken cordon bleu. They didn't say it tasted bad, they didn't say it was cooked improperly. They sneered that it was somehow corny or dorky to make that dish. What? It was a fried chicken challenge for chrissake, that's not exactly high-brow cooking.

If it tastes good, it's legit. And breaded chicken stuffed with ham and cheese sounds good to me.

So here's a link to a recipe from Food Network's Tyler Florence for Chicken Cordon Bleu. Let's all make it for dinner and mentally poo-poo the Top Chef judges for their insufferable simpering snobbery.

Macaroons with Buttercream Filling

First off, I'd like to say that "February Carb Month" (as I declared it) has to end early or it will be the end of my waistline. One cool thing about these cookies though, as sugary and calorie-rich as they are, they are totally gluten-free for all of my "glutarded" friends out there.

The inspiration for these macaroons was a trip to the well-appointed Ginger Elizabeth here in Sacramento. This teeny weeny boutique has delicious hot chocolate and other goodies including lovely little French Macarons. They are deliciously crispy and chewy little sandwich cookies that could become quite a habit, but at $1.75 per tiny cookie, it's an addiction I can't afford all of the time. After looking at a few recipes on the internet, I decided that, even with the high cost of almond flour I could enjoy these for much less.

For the macaroons:

1 16 oz. bag of Bob's Red Mill Almond Meal/Flour
2 tablespoons regular granulated sugar
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted if the bag has been opened
5 large egg whites (save three of the egg yolks for the filling)
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Beat the egg whites. When they are frothy-looking, add the cream of tartar, and then whip them on high until you get stiff peaks, adding the 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar slowly as you whip. If you haven't done this in a while, stiff peaks means that when you turn the beater upside down, the peak of white fluff doesn't fall over.

Next, with a big spatula, gently fold in the almond flour and powdered sugar one cup at a time, alternating them, and anytime in there put the 2 teaspoons of vanilla in as well. 

Now here's where it gets tricky. You need two cookie sheets and they must be non-stick OR you need to use parchment paper, but you must ALSO grease them well. Don't miss a spot. These cookies will stick to a pan like nobody's business. To dispense your goopy dough, you either need a pastry bag with a wide-mouth tip, OR you can be a like me and shove it all in a gallon Zip-loc freezer bag and cut one of the corners off with your scissors to make your own pastry bag. 

Dispense dough in 2 inch blobs, more or less, into even rows. I believe I fit about 20-24 cookies per large cookie sheet. Afterwards, wet your hands in cold water and use them to pat each blob until they are smooth on top and evenly round. Now the deal is, you are supposed to let the cookies sit for quite a while, an hour or even two, before baking. The reason for this is that you want a dry crust to form on the top which will give your cookies and even look and more importantly, an even crispy outer crust. If you pop them in the oven straight away, they taste just as nice, but they will have cracks on top and have uneven texture. IS that a big deal? Not really. If you don't care, then who else will? They're your cookies, you can do what you want.

Bake them, one pan at a time, on the  middle rack in a 325 degree oven for twenty minutes each. Transfer to wire racks to cool, or just lay them on wax paper or lint-free towels or a board or something if you don't have racks. Even with my greased non-stick pan I had to use  my super thin metal spatula to get them up easily, that's how sticky these babies are!

Let them cool completely before you make the little sandwiches, but they cool in half the time you might expect.

For the buttercream:

3 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup corn syrup
a pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (or other flavoring you like, lemon zest is great)
2 sticks of room temperature butter (not too warm though)

Beat the heck out of the egg yolks. I'm talking at least four or five minutes. Add a pinch of salt. Then melt the sugar and corn syrup over medium heat in a small pot, and stir around until the sugar looks like it's dissolved into the corn syrup well. This takes, oh, about three to five minutes. Now you grab the pot handle in one hand and the egg beater with the other hand, and slowly stream the syrup into the egg yolks, beating (on high) the syrup into the yolks as you go. 

God help you if you are using a stand mixer. The problem with a stand mixer is that the syrup is supposed to not hit the side of the bowl or the metal egg beaters. If it does, it gets hard like candy and won't mix into the eggs! SO, if all you have is a stand mixer, I recommend you just use that arm muscle and go with a whisk for this part.

 Once you have the syrup all incorporated in, keep beating the heck out of it for another five minutes (go back to the mixer if you did the syrup part by hand!). The egg yolks will turn very pale in color and the mixture will start to cool. Add the butter at this point, one chunk at a time and beat for another five minutes until it looks creamy and pretty. This is a good time to beat in the vanilla, or other flavoring, and food coloring if you want a color.

If you frost these cookies, you pretty much have to serve them over the next day or two. Otherwise you will want to refrigerate everything. I would refrigerate the cookies and frosting separately, if for example you are making them on Wednesday to serve on Saturday. You can also assemble them and freeze, then pull them out an hour before serving.

Don't Embarrass Your Chili Pot by Chucking in Tomatoes

Cold. Rain, Wind. 

One hundred year old house with minimal insulation.

Arizona transplant must get warm.

Solution: chili con carne with homemade tortillas.

For flour tortillas:

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (make sure your baking powder isn't ancient)
2 tablespoons lard (yes, lard)
1 tablespoon butter
3/4 cup water

Rub the lard and butter into the dry ingredients with your hands until it looks all crumbly. Add the water and  mix up until you have a ball of dough. Let this hang out for ten minutes while you heat up a very lightly oiled-rubbed smallish pan over medium heat (cast iron is good if you have it).

Tear off pieces of the dough, however big you want, and roll them out as thin as you can. Cook them by laying them one at a time in the hot pan for about thirty seconds to one minute on each side. You only want a few tiny flecks of golden brown on them, you don't want them to get crispy (or do you?).

 For the chili:

2 pounds of either ground beef or finely chopped beef
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 slice of bacon, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup of your favorite hot chili powder, I like Grandma's hot chili, but sadly it's been discontinued
4 dried Gaujillo chiles (in the Mexican spice section at the grocery store) ground fine (I use an old coffee grinder)
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon good cocoa powder
1 tablespoon honey, or agave syrup, or brown sugar
Enough water, stock or beer to cover the meat

In a medium sized pot, heat the olive oil and bacon to medium high, then add the meat along with all of the  spices and chopped veggies and brown it all well. Cover with liquid and bring up to a bubble. Simmer covered for at least an hour. If you have time, I really recommend adding a few cups more liquid and cooking for two or three hours, or throwing it in your crock pot on low all day.

Serve with a lot of grated sharp cheddar cheese or queso fresco, this helps "cool" the chili, it's pretty spicy. I recommend wrapping your tortillas in foil and warming them up before serving- or you can get all fancy-schmancy and toast them in a pan with butter.

I would serve a crisp cold lager with this, or a very cold bottle of Coca-Cola.

p.s. Tomatoes aren't terrible in chili or anything. The chili police aren't going to arrest you. If you wanted to take the leftovers and mix them with a can of diced tomatoes or tomato sauce and more beer and a pinch of cinnamon and serve it over rice, well then go right ahead and Godspeed.