Good but not quite good enough

This was my second weekend hauling stuff up to my friends’ place, so that Adam and I can get dinner going while they deal with their baby and we’ll be able to play a board game (this week was Formula D; I did not do so well this time – frustrating, this is usually one of my better games). Lessons learned this week:

1. They do not own a roasting pan with a lid
2. pyrex covered with aluminum foil works just as well
3. When folks have babies, things like pepper, garlic, and other pantry staples may run out without anyone noticing
4. the legs of the chicken to be roasted goes up. However much sense it may make that the flat side of the chicken should go down
   1. If the pan is full of sauce, it’s okay if the breast side went down instead of up
5. One day, one day!, I will succeed in making an entire meal that my new vegetarian, gluten-free friend can eat!
   1. first I need to remember all of her restrictions (forgot the vegetarianism this time, arrrrrgh)
   2. challenges are good – they make me grow as a cook

On to what I actually did make: Roasted Chicken in a milk sauce. In the end, the vote was ‘yeah, this was pretty good, but you’ve got other things that take less work and come out even better’. I am wondering if it would have been better with sauce poured on individual pieces – we pulled the whole chicken out of the pan, carved and served. I’m thinking one of those sauce/gravy boats that only see use at Thanksgiving (I’m pretty sure Adam and I don’t have one of those, much less our friends up in Columbia) of the sauce on the table may have been a good thing. ::shrugs:: Oh well, I guess roasted chicken is still safely in Adam’s repertoire 🙂

Roasted Chicken in Milk

Original found JamieOliver.com
Makes 1 whole chicken – maybe 8 – 14 servings?
Recipes left to try (& copy…): 16; Dinners: 2 recipes left

• 6 lb whole chicken
• kosher salt and pepper
• olive oil
• 2 sticks cinnamon
• handful of sage
• 2.5 tbsp orange zest (b/c I didn’t want to zest a couple of lemons, and our orange zest was/is old, so we upped how much we used)
• 6 cloves garlic, left in their skins
• 2 1/3 cups milk

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Season the chicken all over with salt and pepper – sprinkle a generous amount onto the skin and then rub in with your hands. Heat the olive oil in a pan or pot on the stove, then fry the chicken until the skin turns golden. Remove the chicken and discard the oil. If using a pan, transfer the chicken to an oven safe pot (with lid) or pyrex dish. If using a pot, return the chicken to the pot.
2. Add the cinnamon, sage, zest, garlic, and milk to the baking dish with the chicken. Roast in the oven for 1 1/2 hours or until the internal temperature reaches 165°F. If you remember, baste the chicken with the sauce. If not, don’t worry, it’ll come out fine.
3. Serve

Why does everyone think a 4hr slow cooker recipe is helpful?

Seriously, if I’m around to turn on the slow cooker 4 hours before dinner, I’m around enough to cook. Okay, now our slow cooker can switch over to warm after a set number of hours, but things still cook (at least a bit) on warm. It might be that my first slow cooker didn’t have a timer option and I came home to quite a few batches of overcooked chicken something. But 4 hour cooking times in a slow cooker still sounds like a really awkward time to work with/around.

Eh, I might just be cranky about how many vegetables I chopped up for this one – more specifically, how long I was standing up to do so. Also how much in leftovers there are. Trust me, there was no way this recipe, as written, was going to fit in my 6 quart slow cooker.

I think I’m starting to understand what Adam means by his (usually anguished) cries of “It got away from me!” We are totally going to be eating this for the rest of the week.

At this point, in a change from how things usually go around here, I’m thinking I will not keep this recipe. Basically too much work for the end result (for me) – those of you with working olfactory senses might get more out of it.

Vegetable & Chickpea Stew

Original from TheKitchn.com
Makes … lots. 8-12 servings?
Recipes left to try (& copy…): 17; Dinners: 3 recipes left

• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 – 1 large onion, diced
• 10 purple potatoes, diced
• 1 tbsp salt, divided
• 1 tbsp curry powder of choice
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/8 tsp chili powder
• 2 cups broth
• 32 oz chickpeas
• 4-5 small peppers, diced
• 1 medium head of cauliflower, cut into bite-sized florets
• 28 oz (5-6) tomatoes, diced
• 10 oz baby spinach
• 1 can coconut milk

1. Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven or large pot on medium heat. Add the onion and 1 tsp of salt; sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the potatoes and 1 tsp of salt; sauté for several minutes.
2. Add the curry, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, and chili powder; cook, stirring a bit, until fragrant – about 30 seconds. Pour in some of the broth and scrape the bottom of the pan to pull up any brown bits. Add the rest of the broth, chickpeas, peppers, cauliflower, tomatoes; stir to combine. Cover and simmer for 45 – 60 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.
3. Add the spinach and coconut milk; stir until spinach wilts. Pull off the heat and adjust any seasonings if necessary. Serve.

Probably should have been the first pizza I tried ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This here is the mother recipe of pizza – the simplest pizza to base the ratios you remember off of, the base recipe you improvise off of. Dough, sauce, meat, veggie and cheese. The baseline of pizza. The ‘oh f***, I don’t have a plan for dinner’ emergency dinner of pizza – as long as you’ve got a batch of dough in the freezer.

I mean, unless you’re like Adam and I, who for some reason don’t keep a jar of pasta sauce in the house. Probably because we’d use it in a non-emergency-food spot. Which rather defeats the purpose of emergency sauce, in my opinion.

The original calls for sausage, we used chorizo, and I am pretty darn sure it would work with chicken sausage, chicken strips/chunks (browned on the stove first please), meat substitute or whatever you want/have lying around.

So our pizza doesn’t look too … square in the pictures below – I had some issues pulling the pizza off the pan. The cheese and whatnot slide around – still tasted good 🙂 We kinda devoured the whole thing for dinner – thought there’d be half a pizza for leftovers. Nope.

Baseline Pizza

Original from TheKitchn.com
Makes 1 pizza
Recipes left to try (& copy…): 18; Pizza: 1 recipe left

• 1 batch of pizza dough (I used the 2nd half of the thin crust we made back in July – it’d been hanging out in the freezer for a while)
• 1 jar tomato sauce – use as much or as little as you like (the Wegmans’ store brand tomato & basil sauce worked quite well for us)
• ~3oz sausage link, or other meat product of your desire
• 1 pepper, color of your choice, thinly sliced
• 1/2 onion, yellow or red
• ~ 4oz Monterey Jack cheese (~1 cup)

1. If you have a baking stone, place it in the oven on a rack in the bottom third of the oven. If you do not have one, place a baking sheet on a rack in the bottom third of the oven, to heat along with the oven. Preheat the oven to 550°F or as high as it will go; heat for at least 30 minutes before baking.
2. Lay the pizza dough in the middle of how you are keeping it from sticking in the oven, such as a large square of parchment – we used a Silpat but as mentioned, had issues getting it back off. Press and push, staring in the middle working outwards, the dough into a flat-ish round, about 10-inches wide. If the dough starts to shrink back, let it sit for about 5 minutes, then continue. Once shaped, let it sit to rise until ready to top, about 15-20 minutes.
3. If your meat topping is not cooked through, do so now before adding it to the pizza.
4. Spread the tomato sauce nearly to the edge, then distribute the meat, pepper, and onion evenly over the pizza. Sprinkle the cheese evenly on.
5. Transfer the pizza on the parchment or silpat into the hot oven. If using the parchment, after 5 minutes, use a spatula to lift and slide the parchment out. Bake until the crust is golden and crispy/charred in spots, a total of 8-10 minutes.

The pretty view

The whole view

I’m failing to think of a clever title

Does it seem like I’m keeping most of the recipes I try to y’all? Does to me… Might be because most of the new ones I find are through TheKitchn.com – who knows where they get them, but presumably someone has tried it out before the post goes up (and the bad ones don’t get posted). I think they’ve got enough writers that all the published recipes get tested before hand – unlike cookbooks and magazines who are under a deadline… So at least one layer of filtering before I ever try the recipe.

I’m hoping it’s also that I’m developing a sense of what usually works together and don’t add the ones that won’t to the queue of things to try – it’s nice when your own actions/abilities are a factor in the outcome 🙂

So what’s the recipe I’m keeping this time?

Sweet potato, caramelized onions, sausage, and eggs hash. While that definitely sound like a breakfast type of food to me, Adam and I happily used the leftovers for lunches that week. Because when there’s only two people in the house and you make an 8 serving recipe, there’s gonna be leftovers. This is basically a meal-in-a-bowl (definitely not a one-pot recipe) that really does work for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner. Probably gonna be most impressive at brunch though – the partial cook ahead of the sweet potatoes, onions, and sausage can let you make a very pretty presentation with the eggs (and a cast-iron skillet if you got one).

For those of you who don’t eat pork, I see no reason this wouldn’t work with chicken, turkey, or other non-pork sausage. Vegetarians, I haven’t cooked with non-meat sausage enough to have a feel if it would work or not. Give it a try and let me know, would you? I’d like to know and think you might get to it before I can get back to this recipe. Thanks! 🙂

Sweet potato, onion, sausage, and egg hash

Original from TheKitchn
Makes 8 servings
Recipes left to try (& copy…): 19; Breakfasts: 1 recipe left

• 2 lb onions (2 should do)
• 1 tbsp butter
• table salt
• 1 lb your favorite sausage (chorizo is rather good too), sliced
• 3 lb sweet potatoes (about 3)
• 8 large garlic cloves
• 1/4 cup fresh rosemary leaves or 2 tbsp dried rosemary
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper

To serve:

• large eggs
• Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with foil, parchment paper, or a Silpat.
2. Peel the onions, slice in half lengthwise, cut into thin moons, then cut the moons in half. In a skillet over medium-high heat, melt the butter until it foams. When it starts foaming, add the onions and sprinkle with salt. Do not worry about cramming, everything will cook down. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until onions are a very dark brown. If the onions appear to start burning, lower the heat. They will probably cook for 30-45 minutes before turning the very dark brown.
3. Meanwhile, in a separate skillet, cook the sausage over medium-high heat, chopping it into smaller pieces with a spatula. Cook until browned and beginning to crisp, about 10 minutes. Drain off excess fat.
4. While the onions and sausage cook, chop the unpeeled sweet potatoes into about 1/2 inch to a side cubes. Finely mince the garlic and fresh rosemary, if using. In a large bowl, toss together the potatoes, garlic and rosemary (fresh or dried) with the olive oil, kosher salt, and black pepper.
5. When the onions and sausage finish cooking, toss them in the sweet potato mix as well. Spread the mix out evenly on the prepared baking sheet. Roast in the 450°F oven until the potatoes are soft and browned, about 30-45 minutes.
6. You can at this point, refrigerate the hash for up to 5 days and finish off (detailed below) the day of serving – Adam and I continued straight through and it worked fine. But! I think this would be an awesome way to prep during the weekend for guests during the week.
7. Heat the oven to 425°F. Spread a relatively thin layer of the cooked hash in a baking dish, cast iron skillet, or individual ramkins. Make small wells in the potatoes and crack eggs into those wells. Sprinkle everything with salt and pepper, to taste. Bake for 15-20 minutes until potatoes are hot and eggs are cooked through. If you like your eggs runnier, cook for less time – the sweet potatoes and everything are already cooked and safe to eat. Serve with Parmesan cheese on top, if you like.

An excellent purple

This was delicious. A very simple ingredient list produced this wonderfully sweet (but not too), almost creamy, lovely iced dessert.

I mean how can you say no to that lovely shade of pinky-purple?

Speaking of, I didn’t seem to achieve quite the same shade as Ms. Second Helpings did – I’m thinking I needed a higher berry to water ratio. Or to actually make this in berry season 🙂

Blackberry Sorbet

Original from Our Lady Of Second Helpings
Makes about 6 servings
Recipes left to try (& copy…): 20; Desserts: 1 recipe left

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3 cups fresh blackberries, rinsed and dried – if you prefer not to dry them, decrease the water a bit
• 3 tbsp lemon juice (fresh is better, bottled will do)

1. Mix together the water and sugar in a small saucepan; heat on medium-high to a boil. Stir frequently to prevent the sugar from burning; continue cooking until the sugar dissolves. If you’re using white sugar, the liquid turn clear – if raw or brown sugar, the liquid will be brownish. This should take only a couple minutes.
2. Add the blackberries to the syrup and bring back to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until berries soften – about 2-5 minutes. Remove from heat and strain the berries through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl (for the syrup). Then mash the berries into the mesh with a spatula or the back of a spoon, until all the juice has been pressed out. Toss out the pulp and stir the lemon juice into the sugar-berry mixture.
3. Refrigerate this mixture for at least 3 hours before preparing in an ice cream maker, according to manufacturer’s instructions. Sorbet should end up fluffy and will last in the freezer for up to a week – it will thicken/harden over that time.