Month: September 2016

So, this is a round-up of some meal highlights from the past week.  One was amazing lasagna that my husband made; I’ll ask him for a guest post so we can come back to that another time.

The next is a glorious chicken/merguez/veggie stew in the slowccooker.  It involved a batch of good frozen chicken stock, chicken thighs with bone and skin, great lamb merguez, 2 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 1 1 sweet potato, 4 carrots, and half of a giant onion.  Cut the veg into chunks and get it into your crock pot with the meat and stock.  Add in a bit more garlic paste than you think you need, a few good squirts of tomato paste, ground cumin, ground cinnamon, and a touch of chili powder.  If you want to throw in a can of chickpeas and/or mix up the veg, by all means, go for.  Then turn it on low overnight, and awaken to a delectable smell which has you excited about dinner all day.  Or turn it on in the morning, that works, too.  For couscous I use a ratio of 2 3/4 water to 1 1/2 of grain.  Boil the water (or stock, when I’m making a couscous salad), turn off heat, dump in the grain, cover.  After 5-10 minutes, uncover and fluff.  Serve with that gravy, veggies, and meat, and slurp heartily.

Another day was a simple steak taco.  Get a large-ish decent but not indulgently pricy steak from a good butcher, if possible.  Marinate it in scant amounts of garlic oil, Mexican oregano, and ground cumin, cinnamon, ancho, and chipotle, along with some sort of acid– I did a touch of apple cider vinegar, but lime would also be great.  Let it sit for an hour or two.  Sear it in a very lightly oiled cast iron pan on medium-high, 3-4 minutes per side depending on thickness.  Pull it out and let it rest; drop frozen corn kernels into the pan to char them up.  Prep the “Mexican pimento cheese” I’ve posted about before (http://nomasutra.com/index.php/2016/09/11/of-weeknight-dinners-asian-marinades-and-such/), and a batch of guacamole which I’ve also previously posted (http://nomasutra.com/index.php/2016/05/14/meximelt-someones-heart/).  Let the corn cool a bit and add it to the cheese mix.  Warm through corn tortillas in the cast iron pan on very low.  Slice the steak against the grain.  Slather the corn/cheese mix on the tortillas, add strips of steak, and top with some guac.  It’s not tidy, but man is it yummy.

What to do with leftover guac if you manage to hang onto some?  The next morning, make crispy bacon, and slather it with the guac on toast for gorgeous bacon sandwiches.

Speaking of bacon, in case I missed an easy recipe from last week, I also recommend salade liegoise.  Boil potatoes, and over the hot water, steam some good frozen green beans (the long whole ones, not the cut up bits which tend to not retain any snap when heated).  Cut bacon into small bits or use lardons, and cook till crispy.  Set bacon aside, then reserve most of the grease.  In a bit of it, saute chopped onion until soft.  Add a bit more of the grease, some apple cider vinegar, a dollop of dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and a glug of half-and-half or heavy cream.  Whisk through and cook for just a couple of minutes.  Dress the rest of the ingredients with it.  Happy nomming!

So though last week was a short one with the Monday Labor Day holiday, it was also the first week that my husband started at his new job, and I knew cooking at home might be challenging.  So, last weekend, I planned ahead and got a couple of marinades going.

The first was a similar to how you’d season fried chicken, but for a bake.  I got the idea from a friend who got it from another cooking blog, and so I ran with it.  In mine, I used buttermilk, pickle juice, salt, pepper, brown sugar, powdered mustard, and smoked paprika.  I loved the flavor, but realized after baking it in the oven at 375F that I really should have used our stovetop smoker since I’d used skinless, boneless chicken, which can dry out a touch.

For sides, I roasted asparagus drizzled with garlic oil and tossed with salt and pepper at 425F for about 15 minutes.  OMG, sooooo good!  The frilly bits get a little crunchy, and it’s super yum.  I also pan roasted fresh corn on the cob– just let it hang out in a cast iron pan over medium heat, roll from time to time, and watch for it to get little brown toasty bits.  Mine took quite a while, 35 minutes or so while the other stuff was roasting.  Your mileage may vary based on the heaviness of the pan and the heat you use.  I put together a riff on Mexican street corn dressing that ended up being sort of a faux-Mex version of pimento cheese.  Mayo, sour cream, salt, ancho chile powder, dried cilantro (fresh would be good if you have it), and a big handful of the “Mexican cheese blend” shred.  It needed a touch of tartness, and in the absence of any citrus in the house I just went with a splash of white wine vinegar.  Lime juice would have been good, but man, this stuff was ADDICTIVE.  We slathered it on our corn, dipped our asparagus spears, and even swiped some of the chicken through it.   Total winner, winner chicken dinner.

For the other marinade, I did my old stand-by for carrots, which is this one:  http://www.closetcooking.com/2015/03/maple-dijon-roasted-carrots.html and doubled it.  Poured half of it into a big ziploc, and added more garlic paste, ginger paste, sweet chili sauce, fish sauce, mirin, and a good dollop of gochujang, and then got the chicken in there.  Used the smoker for the chicken, and tossed the carrots with their marinade and roasted.  Solid.  Gochujang adds an amazing savory, sumptuous umami, and I highly recommend that you experiment with it.

Speaking of Asian marinades with gochujang, we earlier also had a real success with Korean short ribs.  We asked the butcher to cross-slice the bone-in short ribs they had on hand, and it worked very well.  I pretty closely followed  http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014547-korean-style-short-ribs.  I just used a firm-ish Bosc pear.  I’d recommend cutting the sugar in half and upping the gochujang quite a bit, but that’s to our taste, so you do you.  Also, our broiler was weird and mostly useless so after repeatedly trying it and getting no browning, we ended up moving to tried-and-true cast iron.  Maybe just go with that.

To accompany, I made crab fried rice.  I cooked the rice in boxed stock the day before (1 cup rice : 2 cups stock).  I then cracked a couple of eggs and stirred around like for a scramble, and then, here’s the weird cheffy thing I learned from a cooking show, tossed the cold rice all through the raw egg to coat all the grains.  When you then cook quickly over high heat, it adds yummy egg taste and texture throughout.  I usually season my fried rice with soy, rice vinegar, fish sauce, and a touch of something sweet, like a Teriyaki marinade.   I used a package of some sort of “Asian stir fry veg mix” from the grocery and a tub of fresh crab claw meat (on sale!).  Topped with green onions, it was excellent. and we later had the leftover rice with a runny egg on top and some Filipino longanisa sausages.

We also did sandwiches and leftover chili one night for supper this week.  Deli roast beef and comte cheese on split hot dog buns with horseradish, dijon, and mayo– mad yum.

Oh, and one other recipe/combo recommendation for this post, one for breakfast.  One of my favorites, which I ate almost daily from the coffee bar at my office in Vienna, Austria– a brown bread sandwich with egg salad and a slice of ham or salami.  Make egg salad as you’s like (I go simple, mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, and in this batch some green onion).  Put a little bit on either side of the bread and the sandwich meat in the middle.  Super tasty and a nice change from breakfast standards.  Can be made the night before and packed easily for a bite at your desk if, like me, you can’t manage to wedge in a morning meal and also getting ready in time for work.