Brown rice cakes with sauteed vegetables

When I first saw this recipe, I thought, "Well, maybe..."  And then I promptly set it aside for a couple of years and forgot about it!  Recently I found it in my "to try" file, and thought, "Well, maybe..."

I'm glad I finally got around to actually trying it.  It's really really good!  Brown Rice Cakes with Sauteed Fennel, Broccoli Rabe, and Ricotta

Orecchiette with broccoli rabe

Martha Stewart has about a million recipes for pasta with broccoli rabe.  Well, maybe not a million, but an awful lot.  Here's one we really liked; even though it doesn't have the usual sausage in it, it's still got a real umami kick thanks to a couple of anchovy fillets.  Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Tomatoes

My major change was to use dried orecchiette.  I don't really know what universe Martha lives in, but in my universe, I'm lucky to find orecchiette in any form, forget fresh.  I boiled the pasta and added the broccoli rabe for the last 3 minutes.

Dandelion greens

Cultivated dandelion greens can be substituted for just about any reasonably robust green that you enjoy, and can be cooked in all the same ways.  It's a bit less delicate than baby spinach, and considerably more delicate than collards, so use that for your guide in how you choose to handle them.  All I did was chop them up, and saute them in a bit of bacon grease with onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes.

Roasted bok choy

The best bok choy to use for roasting is the little tiny baby size.  But we can almost never find it, so I've adapted the roasting directions for a piece that's a bit bigger!

Roasted Bok Choy

Baby or small heads of bok choy
Olive oil
Garlic salt (optional)

3 parts lemon juice
2 parts miso paste
1 part rice vinegar

Preheat oven to 425.  Wash the bok choy and slice it lengthwise if it isn't baby-sized.  Pat dry and arrange on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle lightly with garlic salt.  Add a couple T of water to the bottom of the pan and cover with foil.  Bake for about 5 minutes, remove the foil, and bake for 5 to 10 minutes more until leaves are crisp.

Whisk together the lemon juice, miso, and vinegar, and spoon sauce over bok choy once plated.  

Roasted green beans with pine nuts

For Thanksgiving this year, I fixed a variation of our favorite Roasted Green Beans with Herbs, using a thinly sliced onion and smoked paprika instead of the garlic and herbs.  I toasted some pine nuts and set them aside to add to the beans during the last 10 minutes or so of roasting.  Very tasty!

Stuffed portabella mushrooms that I actually like

Don't hate me.  I have just never been a fan of those huge meaty mushrooms, and certainly not as a substitute for actual meat.  Still, I have wanted to like them, so I continue to experiment.  I like them much better when they've been chopped up into something, but that sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Finally, I found this stuffed recipe that I really like, thanks to Hannaford's Fresh magazine.  A lot of the stuffing is actually taken up with additional mushrooms.  That's not cannibalism, is it?

French-style chicken in a pot

I've been a fan of slow-cooked, braised, or crock pot chicken for forever.  So when I saw Cook's Illustrated showing off how to stack everything for the whole meal into the Dutch oven properly for braising, I was sold.  Get this...the stuffing goes into parchment tubes that you roll and twist, and it gets cooked right along with everything else!

Make your favorite stuffing first and twist it up.  Set it aside.  Brown the chicken (I brined mine for 1 hour beforehand), and set it aside too.  Place your root vegetables and aromatics in the bottom of the pot.  Add enough broth to stop 1/2 inch short of the top of the vegetables.  Place the stuffing rolls and the chicken legs (if using...I didn't) in the next layer, and rest the chicken breasts on top.  Cover with foil and the lid and pop it into a 300 oven for 60 to 75 minutes.

CI has you using skin-on chicken and then discarding it just before serving.  I decided to pass on the skin, and that's one of the reasons I chose to brine my birds.  

The trick to crispy home fries

Crispy Home Fries that aren't raw in the middle and burned on the outsides.  Forget the skillet (except for pre-cooking the bacon); instead, par-boil the chopped potatoes for just a minute with a dash of baking soda!  Yup, baking soda.  It does wonderful things to the outsides of the cubes, making them starchy and mushy so they crisp up better in the oven.

Using a super-hot oven, roast the potatoes on a pre-heated rimmed sheet in bacon grease.  Don't add the onions until half way through the roasting, and stir in the crumbled bacon at the end.  Voila!  They are magnificent.  You can get Cook's Illustrated's recipe here, or you can just do what everyone else does and wing it.  But definitely use these suggestions...these are the best home fries I ever made!

Simple butternut squash soup

This really should be called Quick and Simple...as long as you have a steamer (a rice steamer is best), you can intensify the flavors of your soup and turn it out in practically no time!

Simple Butternut Squash Soup

2 (20 oz) bags of frozen butternut squash
Butter
2 shallots, minced
6 c water and vegetable stock
1 t salt 1/2 c half and half
1 t brown sugar

 Steam the butternut squash until soft. Heat butter in a Dutch oven over medium heat, and saute shallots until softened. Add squash, in batches, and brown slightly. Add the water collected in the steamer tray plus enough water and vegetable stock to equal 6 c. Add the rest of the squash, and salt; boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes. Use an immersion blender off heat. Stir in the half and half, and the brown sugar.

Butternut squash with tangerine

I've been on a real squash kick lately, and I wonder if it's my body's way of telling me that I need some beta-carotene.  Once more, Fresh magazine came through for me, although as usual I did change it a bit.  

Butternut Squash with Tangerine
4 c cubed butternut squash
2 tangerines
1/2 t cinnamon
1 T olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Steam the squash until soft and hot.  While it cooks, grate the zest from the tangerines into the serving bowl.  Squeeze in about 1/3 c of the juice.  Add the cooked squash and the rest of the ingredients, and use an immersion blender to puree. 

Butternut squash with rosemary

I love all the hard-shelled squashes in the wintertime, but I might love butternut squash most of all.  Hannaford's Fresh magazine recently featured this great combo, which I changed up a bit.  You'll see that I subbed in tahini for cashew butter, and upped the spices a bit.  Do it their way or mine...just do it!  


Butternut Squash with Rosemary

4 c cubed butternut squash
1 T tahini
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 t fresh rosemary, chopped
1/4 t nutmeg

Steam the squash until soft and hot.  Place in serving bowl along with other ingredients and use an immersion blender to puree.

Spinach with prosciutto and Parmesan cheese

I don't have a real recipe to share for this, but then, you really don't need one...it is that simple!

Spinach with Prosciutto and Parmesan Cheese

Olive oil
Prosciutto, cut in short strips
Onion, chopped
Clove of garlic, chopped
Spinach
Parmesan cheese

In a skillet or dutch oven, heat the oil and crisp up the prosciutto strips; remove and set aside.  Saute the onions and garlic until soft.  Lower the heat and add the spinach to wilt, stirring the onions and garlic together with it.  Just before serving, stir in the prosciutto and top with Parmesan cheese.   

Chicken fajitas

We love fajitas, especially chicken, but I've been looking for a way to get a bit more interesting flavor into them.  The obvious step is to marinate the chicken before sauteing, but I was also looking for ways to punch up the flavor of the vegetables.  So recently it was suggested to me that broiled poblano peppers would be a great substitute for my mild green peppers, and I jumped at the chance to try it out.

Score!

Roasted boniatos

Have you tried boniatos yet?  They are commonly called Cuban sweet potatoes, or sometimes white sweet potatoes.  I've tried them a couple of different ways now, and I've got a few tips for you.  I was told to roast them in their jackets just like you would a regular sweet potato, and that worked quite well, except that they seemed to take just a bit longer to fully soften.

And then I decided to experiment.  Although I generally recommend experimenting, this one did not turn out very well.  I peeled them first, intending to boil and mash them.  The boiling and mashing went ok, but the peeling was very very disconcerting: boniatos oxidize RAPIDLY, leaving the exterior flesh grayish.  Not at all appealing, no pun intended.  I don't think it affected the taste, but they were not pretty!

Mashed potato add-ins

We love our potatoes both mashed and whipped, but when you're going to add a bunch of savory bits to them, lightly mashing them by hand seems the best way to go. 

Mashed Potatoes

4 large Russet potatoes, peeled
1/2 stick (4 T) butter
Salt and pepper
1 c half-and-half, warm

Add-ins:
4 - 5 T horseradish
3 - 4 scallions, sliced thin green and white parts

2 T brown mustard
3 - 4 oz smoked cheese like gouda

Boil the potatoes whole and then simmer until tender, about 20 minutes.  Drain and return the potatoes to the warm pan to dry out slightly.  Cut the butter into pieces and mash it into the potatoes to melt, along with the salt and pepper.  Chose one of the add-in groups to mix with the warm half-and-half. and mash it all into the potatoes.  Keep warm until time to serve.

Creamed greens

Lots of people go nuts for creamed greens.  I guess I'm just not one of them.  I made this dish, using kale and chard, and it was good, but...

But I felt like I had somehow wasted two bunches of perfectly good greens.

Still, if you like creamed greens, here's how I did it.

Creamed Greens

Bunches of greens: kale, collards, chard, spinach, or whatever
Onions, shallots, garlic

Butter
Flour
Milk
Heavy cream
Nutmeg
Nuts (optional)

Steam the greens until wilted.  Set aside.

Melt the butter in a large pot with a cover.  Saute the onions, shallots, and garlic until tender.  Add more butter if needed and make a white sauce with flour and milk.  Add cream and a sprinkle of nutmeg.  Stir in the greens and heat through just before serving.  Add nuts to individual servings. 

Pasta with bacon, onions, and mushrooms

 

Oh, how delicious!  I can imagine this dish with prosciutto instead of bacon too.  I found the recipe in Martha Stewart Living magazine, back in April...but for some reason it took me awhile to get around to trying it.  I'm glad I finally did.  Some of her pasta recipes leave me cold, but this one is a keeper for us.  An unexpected (to me, at least) twist has you adding mint leaves.  Do!  Don't substitute parsley unless you really hate mint.  The flavor is more subtle than you'd think.  The only change I made was to sub rotini for fusilli.  

Cucumber salad

I tend to think about this salad more in the summertime, but there's absolutely no reason not to serve it at other times.  Use an English cucumber, and slice it paper-thin with a processor if you've got one.  I did this one by hand, and my slices are a bit thicker.  I used shallots instead of the more traditional red onions, and doused it all with oil and vinegar.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds just before serving. 

A tasty mixture

Carrots, shallots, and fresh thyme from the garden, harvested just before the first snow!  Roast them all together in a bit of olive oil. 

Stuffed baked potatoes

Stuffed potatoes, twice-baked potatoes, whatever you call these...they can get pretty elaborate.  I've seen them stuffed with shrimp, caviar, all kinds of things, and even though some of them sound pretty good, I can't help thinking that the humble baked potato was meant to be a comfort food.  Comfort food doesn't include caviar at our house, sorry!

Stuffed Baked Potatoes with Broccoli and Cheddar

A large potato for every two people
Butter
A handful of broccoli florets for each potato
Salt
Lemon juice
Dry mustard
Sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
Sour cream
Half and half (optional)

Bake the potatoes at 400 until softened, about an hour.  Let cool for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, steam or microwave the broccoli until softened.  Saute in butter in a skillet until lightly browned.  Spoon into a large bowl and add salt and a sprinkling of lemon juice.  


Cut each potato in half lengthwise and scoop the innards into the bowl with the broccoli.  Leave a little more than a 1/4 inch shell.  Place the shells on a foiled baking sheet and place back in the oven to dry out and crisp slightly.

Mash the potato and broccoli mixture by hand.   Add more butter if desired, along with a sprinkling of mustard, the cheese, sour cream, and half and half.  Spoon into shells.  Turn on the broiler and place the filled shells under it for 5 to 10 minutes to heat and brown.