Dinner last Night

Okay, actually this is dinner last week but it was really good.

BAVARIAN SAUERKRAUT AND SAUSAGE DINNER

Ingredients
4 cups uncooked medium egg noodles (about 8 ounces)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup sliced onion
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 cups sliced peeled Granny Smith apple (about 3/4 pound)
1 1/2 cups refrigerated sauerkraut, drained
1 (12-ounce) package chicken apple sausage (such as Gerhard's), cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
1/2 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup sherry


Preparation
Cook noodles according to package directions, omitting salt and fat; drain and set the noodles aside.
While the noodles are cooking, heat the olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add sliced onion and caraway seeds, and cook 4 minutes or until lightly browned, stirring constantly. Add apple, sauerkraut, and sausage, and cook 5 minutes. Stir in the chicken broth and sherry, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, and cook 5 minutes. Serve over the noodles.

Yield
4 servings (serving size: 1 1/4 cups noodles and 1 cup sausage-apple mixture)

Nutritional Information
CALORIES 445(29% from fat); FAT 14.5g (sat 3.4g,mono 6.9g,poly 3.3g); PROTEIN 20.1g; CHOLESTEROL 114mg; CALCIUM 31mg; SODIUM 1118mg; FIBER 9g; IRON 4.8mg; CARBOHYDRATE 59.9g



Cooking Light, DECEMBER 1999


It was so good however, that Clancy and I ate it all, it is supposed to serve at least four..or two in our house.

Dinner Last Night

I am sick of eating horrible food. For the past several months, I have been dieting wildly, trying to lose the last ten stubborn pounds of baby weight. Somehow this meant that I should only eat 800 calories a day of Lean Cuisines and soup...And then I would break my diet and pig out. I plead with Clancy not to cook, because I knew that I would eat too much because it is always so good. So I finally gave up. I have lost in the end probably 5-6 pounds. Not too many to go.

I have been cooking all week, which has not just benefited me but P. and even M. as well. And, I have been able to cook delicious things really fast, which is a requirement for me since I work all day. It is amazing what you can do in 20 minutes, and a simple home cooked meal makes everyone in my house happy.

Here is what we had last night:

PORK CHOPS WITH A GINGER CHERRY GLAZE

Use any variety of fruit preserves if you don't have cherry on hand. Serve with egg noodles tossed with chopped fresh parsley.

Ingredients
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
4 (4-ounce) center-cut boneless pork chops, trimmed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup cherry preserves
2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon bottled ground fresh ginger (such as Spice World)
1 teaspoon seasoned rice vinegar


Preparation
Heat oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle pork with salt and pepper; add to pan. Cook 4 minutes on each side; remove pork from pan.
Combine preserves and remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Add preserves mixture to pan; reduce heat, and cook 2 minutes or until slightly thickened, stirring constantly. Return pork to pan; cook 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

Yield
4 servings (serving size: 1 pork chop and 2 tablespoons sauce)

Nutritional Information
CALORIES 275(26% from fat); FAT 7.8g (sat 2.6g,mono 3.4g,poly 1g); PROTEIN 23.5g; CHOLESTEROL 67mg; CALCIUM 19mg; SODIUM 453mg; FIBER 0.1g; IRON 1mg; CARBOHYDRATE 26.8g



David Bonom , Cooking Light, MAY 2006

I cooked up some couscous instead of egg noodles (although I do passionately love egg noodles) and made a simple green salad and it was done. For the salad dressing, I added a splash of the delicious chimichurri my brother and his fiancee brought back to us from Argentina and the salad was totally transformed from something ordinary into something extraordinary.

Supernatural Brownies

The NYTimes recipe for supernatural brownies is the best brownie recipe I have ever tried. They remind me of a cakier, less dense miles of chocolate. They really are better the day after you bake them, and there are so few ingredients that the quality of your ingredients makes a significant difference.  Click here to go to the recipe.

I was recently reading somewhere, I believe in America's Test Kitchen cookbook that Jacques Pepin claimed that chocolate tastes better when it is not heated to as high of a temperature when it is cooked. And, America's Test Kitchen did some research, and he is right. This seems fairly obvious if you eat one of these brownies right out of the oven. 

I was surprised to find something that really does taste better if it cools--usually I gobble up everything when it is still so hot that I have to leave my mouth open and breathe for the first thirty seconds. The chocolate loses its flavor when it is really hot but when it cools, the brownies sink slightly and the chocolate flavor intensifies. This makes me really worried about chocolate souffles. I love chocolate souffles, but there is no way to serve them any way except for very hot. Have I, all this time, loved a sub-par chocolate dessert? I have been worried that I have just been romanticizing them--there is something so nice about eating a nice puffed up chocolate souffle full of creme anglaise. 

Clancy and I used to make them every Sunday when Margaret was a baby and we lived in Lawrence. I would make the souffles, and he would make the creme anglaise. And then we would sit at our kitchen table and hold the baby and look at how cold it was outside and eat them (two each).

Anyway, back to the brownies--I made them twice in one week. The first time I used good quality, but not excellent semi sweet chocolate along with nestle semi sweet chocolate chips and regular light brown sugar. Yesterday, I used Scharffen Berger chocolate and muscovado sugar, as recommended by the NYT, and they were better (I didn't think they could get any better, but seriously they did).

And, please do cover them, I was too lazy to return to the kitchen last night and cover them, and they got slightly stale at the edges, although they retained their moist dense centers.

P.S. You can just cut them in the pan right after you bake them, you need not follow the slightly odd saran wrap-cutting board instructions. 

How to Roast from the Acclaimed Author of How to Sell

Because it is November, I would like to offer a meditation on roasting. The Pilgrims apparently favored roasting, so when you serve roast turkey this year do not fret about somehow being inauthentic, or somehow misconstruing the tradition. Please open this link to review a letter written from the Pilgrims about the "first" Thanksgiving dinner.

I find this letter to be particularly amusing because the Pilgrim author seems so concerned to let the audience know that they are living high on the hog over here in America. Jamestown, Roanoke--HA HA--those people are obviously just poser Pilgrims who don't have our good luck. We DEFINITELY made the right decision to come here on an extremely long journey by boat to celebrate our weird Puritan religion and fight terrible weather conditions, native populations, and mutiny among ourselves. Anyway, it sounds like quite a celebration they had themselves.

Technically speaking, roasting is a cooking method that utilizes dry heat in order to cook the meat or vegetable. Roasting often causes a caramelization of the surface of the food. A roast chicken is like an omelette in so far as it is an easy thing to seriously screw up, an extremely difficult thing to do correctly and accordingly is an easy way to measure the skills of a particular chef.

In order to offer the best advice about roasting, I interviewed Clancy Martin, celebrated author of How to Sell, who also happens to be an expert roaster.

1) What is the most difficult thing about roasting?

Knowing your oven (its real temperature). Make sure you roast different things in it so you know what the actual roasting temperatures and times are. Make sure you have time to baste if basting is recommended (and with chickens you should always baste).

2) What is the best advice for roasting?

Turn your chicken. Spend lots of time preparing whatever it is you are going to roast. The most important stage of roasting is the preparation before it goes in the oven. Also, because it will continue to cook after you remove it from the over, err on the side of underroasting. If necessary you can always pop it back in for another ten minutes.

3) What are the preparations for roasting?

Varies from meat to meat. Make sure you ahve an hour you can dedicate to whatever you are roasting before it goes in the oven. Make sure you have string for tying. make sure you have butter, garlic and fresh thyme (you will use these on many things you roast). make sure you salt and pepper whatever you are roasting.

4) How do you get the skin to be just right?

Preparation before it goes in the over. For chicken, basting, turning the bird every 15-20 minutes, and watching. If a chicken isn't crisping, you can always roast and turn under the broiler at the very end.

5) Tell me about pan gravies.

Pan gravies take practice. The most important step is spooning off the fat. Caramelize at medium heat, then deglaze with a little room temperature and simmer down to half the volume.

Matt's Awesome Quesadilla Recipe

My brother, Matt made these quesadillas for my daughters' birthday party last month and they were a HUGE hit. Additionally, I plan on bringing them to the law office "Mexican Party" next week. Kids and adults alike gobble them up.

Just chop up 3/4 of a small onion and sautee in oil until soft.
Add chopped red bell pepper and maybe a jalapeno halfway through. Add a little garlic if you feel like it. Also, throw in some frozen corn too.

In another pan, sautee your chicken. I prefer to use the chicken tenderloins. I like to season the chicken with a little Adobo (definitely), some chili powder, salt and pepper, and a touch of cumin. Don't overcook the chicken. Pull it while it's still moist and shred it with some forks. After this combide your vegetables and chicken and throw some chopped cilantro in there too.

There you have it...just melt some butter and brush it on one side of a tortilla and throw it face down in a skillet. On one half of the tortilla, sprinkle a little jack cheese down, add the chicken mixture and add some more cheese on top. Fold the tortilla over and flip when golden brown. These should be fine to warm up in the oven and keep covered in foil.