Ham It Up

Another holiday draws to a close, which in my family means a full stomach and exhaustion from the sheer energy it takes to chew so much food. What a way to celebrate the risen Christ.

While I can’t quite remember exactly what my mother cooked in Easters past, I’m sure it involved a ham. I don’t know why or when Easter became synonymous with smoked pork butt, but it’s hard to imagine an Easter dinner or buffet without it. Even if one isn’t exactly a fan of the ham, there it generally sits on your Easter table.

While I wouldn’t say ham is my favorite food, I must admit that a spiral cut ham with a crunchy sugary glaze tastes really good to me, as long as it isn’t more often than once or twice a year. What’s more, as it sits on the buffet table, I am virtually unable to walk by it without picking a piece off of the bone. And I walk by it a lot, I’m afraid.

This year one of our sons and daughters-in-law hosted the Easter feast. Somehow, however, I ended up with a whole lot of the ham. I’m not sure how that happened. Oh, I know. It’s because I suggested to her that life as we know it would end if she threw away the ham bone.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what I would do with it,” said the harried mother of four, “but I will send it home with you.”

So, there it sits in my refrigerator. I don’t have any problem thinking about what to do with the ham bone. There is Senate Bean Soup, of which I’ve spoken. I can also make green beans and ham, which has also been discussed in Simply Cooking Simply. There is, however, the matter of all of that ham which she left attached to the bone.

Hmmmm. I’ve been trying to think what my mother did with leftover ham. I recall eating ham with my eggs for breakfast in the morning. I also have a vague memory of creamed potatoes with ham, though I haven’t been able to find the recipe.

After putting on my thinking cap (and let’s not get started with that again), I came up with a couple of ideas.

My husband has never struggled with his masculinity when it comes to eating quiche. He has never found a pie he doesn’t like, nor has he ever met an egg concoction that he doesn’t like. Combine the two and you have a happy man. I found a lot of recipes that suggest making a piecrust from scratch, and far be it from me to discourage you from doing that. However, I give you permission to buy a good quality refrigerated piecrust in which to put your egg custard. They are so darn easy – you don’t even have to roll them out. Just lay them in your pie pan and fill it up. Here is a wonderful recipe from Taste of Home. Personally, I would substitute Swiss cheese because I love the combination of Swiss cheese and ham. Suit yourself. Make a couple of quiches and freeze one for later.

My second idea has to do with baking potatoes. I’m a fan of twice-baked potatoes, but I’ve never prepared one for dinner. But a baked potato filled with ham and cheese sounds like a substantial and relatively easy dinner.

Bake a couple of russet potatoes until they are soft. In our altitude, it takes an hour-and-a-half at 375 to completely cook. Once they are soft, cut a small section off of the top of each potato and scoop out the potato into a large bowl. Add cooked diced ham, maybe a cup or so, along with some cheese. Add a couple of dollops of sour cream, or a bit of half-and-half or milk. You can also add some cooked onion or mushrooms – really anything that sounds good and that you have in the refrigerator. Add salt and pepper. Carefully refill the potatoes (which will now be overstuffed and delicious), top with some more of the cheese, and bake in a preheated 450-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the cheese has melted. Serve with a tossed salad.

Personally, I would prefer leg of lamb for Easter, but that rarely appears on my table. Unfortunately, I’m the only one who likes lamb. Oh well.

Happy Easter to all my friends and family.

Meatless Madness

Growing up Catholic in the 50s and 60s (and don’t be a smart aleck; I mean the 1950s and 1960s) meant abstaining from meat on Fridays. And growing up in the land-locked cattle-heavy Nebraska plains meant tuna casseroles or fish sticks on Fridays.

I would assume that times and tastes and grocery stores have changed since then, even in Nebraska. I can probably buy shrimp, for example, as easily there as I can here in Denver. I can likely even find fresh fish if I look a bit. But back in the good ol’ days, we ate our fish out of a can or as breaded sticks, and eagerly awaited our Saturday morning breakfast of bacon and eggs as a reward for our penance.

Nowadays, at least for me, not eating meat on Fridays is not only easy to do, but quite enjoyable. It really doesn’t feel like much of a sacrifice. I don’t know that my husband would feel quite the same way, although he enjoys most shellfish and really likes almost all kinds of pasta dishes. And though he would always prefer Italian sausage on his pizza, he wouldn’t turn his nose up at a simple cheese pizza. Hold the vegetables for him, however.

As I paged through the newest cookbook from my very favorite chef and cookbook author Lidia Bastianich, I discovered that an extraordinary number of her recipes, especially her pasta recipes, are meatless. I assume that is because in Italy, they take advantage of the wonderful cheeses and the fresh seasonal vegetables to produce the most delicious and mostly simple sauces for pasta. Two of them caught my eye.

The first is Baked Penne and Mushrooms. To enjoy this recipe, you must like mushrooms. But the earthiness of a variety of mushrooms is kept in check by the richness of the cream and butter that is added to the mix. Topped with rich fontina cheese and baked until that cheese is brown and crusty makes a meal that even someone reluctant to try mushrooms would have to like, especially on a meatless Friday.

The second recipe that made my mouth water is Maccheroni with Fresh Lemon and Cream Sauce. Her recipe explains how to make maccheroni using a complicated contraption known as a chitarra, which resembles a guitar. The strings are used to cut the pasta into long strands. My recommendation would be to use dried linguini or spaghetti, but far be it from me to dissuade you from being creative. On her television show, she even demonstrated how you could cut the pasta by hand. Seemed like a lot of work to me.

I’m not normally drawn to pasta sauces that have cream or half and half as an ingredient, but the cream in this sauce is offset by a hearty amount of lemon and lemon zest, which would take away some of the richness that I would find a bit off putting for a pasta sauce.

The first recipe requires a stint in the oven, so you have to account for that time. The second, however, is so quick that you can throw the sauce together in the time it takes to cook your pasta (particularly if you are using a dry pasta as opposed to a fresh pasta; dry pasta takes a few minutes longer to cook).

The best news about both of these dishes is that they would be relatively inexpensive. If you don’t want to pay the price for fancier mushrooms, simply substitute the less pricey and more familiar button mushrooms. Heavy cream can be somewhat expensive, but you can substitute half-and-half if you want. It won’t be quite as rich, but that’s not always a bad thing.

Unfortunately, true fontina cheese is expensive. I would think you could substitute another kind of cheese that melts easily, such as Swiss or even Monterey Jack. If it’s up to me, however, I would fork out the cash for fontina if you can find it. After all, you aren’t paying for meat. And you could easily substitute Parmesan cheese for the pecorino cheese called for in the lemony sauce.

Meatless Fridays aren’t too tough anymore. Perhaps I should consider a meatless meal every week, even when a man in Italy wearing a pointed hat isn’t telling me to do so.

Pizza Il Forno

My husband and I have been lucky enough to travel quite a bit, and undoubtedly, our favorite place to travel is Italy. A couple of years ago, we spent three-and-a-half months traveling around Europe, and two out of those 3+ months we spent in Italy. We began to feel almost like locals.

Having spent so much time there, and loving the way Italians live and eat, we are always surprised to hear that some people haven’t enjoyed the food they have eaten while traveling in Italy. The first time someone told me that she thought the food in Italy was awful, I pressed her to explain. “We couldn’t even find spaghetti and meatballs,” she whined.

Inwardly I groaned, but patiently, I explained to her that spaghetti and meatballs really aren’t an Italian dish, but more of an Italian-American dish. When Italians immigrated to the United States, they took the ingredients that were plentiful here (such as ground beef) and, in familiar fashion, turned them into something wonderful to eat. But you are unlikely to find meatballs on a menu at any restaurant in Italy.

Out of all the wonderful things you can eat in Italy, my husband’s unqualified favorite thing is the pizza. Rome and Naples have a continuing argument on who makes the best pizza, but I like them both.

Italian pizzas are simple, with few ingredients. You won’t find pizza crust loaded with a tomato sauce, handfuls of mozzarella cheese, and piles of meat and vegetables. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love those kinds of pizzas as well. But the simplicity of a thin-crust pizza charred in the wood-fired oven and topped with maybe some slices of prosciutto and handful of arugula make for good eating. Oh, and of course, a glass of vino rosso.

It’s hard to find that kind of pizza here. There’s a restaurant a few miles down the road that comes close. But I have found that I can do a pretty good job of making a typical Roman-style pizza at home by making it on my grill.

Most of the recipes that I have found call for a homemade pizza crust. Far be it from me to discourage you from making a homemade crust if you so desire and have the time. I buy my crust at my neighborhood Whole Foods. Most pizza places will sell you their crust as well. And, if all else fails, you can use the refrigerated crusts sold in all grocery stores.

The key to a successful grilled pizza is having everything prepared in advance. It all goes very quickly, and you don’t have time to mess around or your crust will go from charred to black. Yuck.

Here’s how you do it:

Preheat your grill while you prepare your ingredients. Divide your crust into individual portions and roll it out as thin as you can.

While your grill is getting hot, warm some olive oil in a pan, and throw in a crushed garlic clove. Let the oils from the garlic flavor the olive oil, and then brush the olive oil on both sides of your individual crusts.

Put your ingredients in bowls and take them with you out to the grill, along with the crusts. I recommend very simple ingredients. Maybe you will want to brush a little tomato sauce on the crust after it has cooked on one side. Perhaps you will put on a little cheese. You can add some garlic or maybe a little prosciutto or few slices of pepperoni (but not both).

Once your grill is preheated, carefully place the crusts (on which you have brushed some garlic-infused oil) directly onto the grill rack. One web site recommends that you put your crust on a piece of aluminum foil that you have floured and slide it from the foil onto the grill. I have generally just used my hands. However you do it, this is probably the trickiest part. But you can do it!

At this point, don’t walk away from the grill. Keep your eyes open as you watch the crust begin to bubble. It really only takes a minute or so. Once the bottom of the crust has gotten a little charred, turn the crust over using tongs. Brush more oil onto the crust, and quickly put on your ingredients. Close the lid and let the pizzas cook and the cheese melt (if you used cheese) for a few more minutes – probably no more than five. Keep your eye on the pie. The result is almost as good as pizzas we ate in Italy.

Our dream is to build an actual wood-burning pizza oven in our back yard. In the meantime, we will continue to use our grill.

Low Down

This morning as my husband and I drank our morning coffee, we began talking about saving money. This talk generally happens about this time of year, not coincidentally because we just filed our tax return and had to send a check to Uncle Sam. (Really? You didn’t get enough throughout the year?)

As frequently happens when discussing our budget, I began wailing about the increasing cost of groceries. As far as I’m concerned, there’s a problem when I can’t feed two of us for less than $100 a week. But don’t get me started…..

Anyway, just as serious as a heart attack, my husband says to me, “Well, I guess we’re just going to have to start eating low on the hog.”

Now, I want to make something clear. My husband grew up on the south side of Chicago. I’m not talking about a cushy little suburb; I mean he lived in the city of Chicago, probably not too far from Leroy Brown, you know, as in

The south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town
and if you go down there you’d better just beware
of a man named Leroy Brown. – Jim Croce.

Now, granted, my husband’s southside neighborhood was probably a little more affluent than Leroy Brown’s, but I’m trying to make a point. He grew up in the city.

However, his father grew up in rural North Carolina, on a farm where they grew tobacco and corn. Every summer, his dad would load his wife and their four children into their Buick and drive from Chicago, Illinois, to Statesville, North Carolina, where they would spend two weeks on the farm. My husband always says he would take off his shoes when they arrived and put them back on when they left for home two weeks later.

There is definitely a little bit of the rural south in my husband, which he learned from his dad. It mostly comes out in colloquialisms. The first time he described a bumpy road as being “rough as a cob,” I laughed out loud.

All this is to say that I understood immediately what he meant by eating low on the hog. Literally speaking, it means eating the cheaper parts of the hog, which are generally down low. He simply meant let’s look at less expensive cuts of meat – maybe even eating occasional meatless meals.

Just for fun, I googled “eating low on the hog” and learned that pork jowl, pigs feet, and hog maw (stomach) are all cuts from low on the hog. Having never eaten any of these, I’m reluctant to offer a recipe for them. Actually, that’s not true. While traveling in France, my husband and I had the unfortunate experience of eating andoulette sausage at a truck stop outside of Lyon. Since I’ve never met a sausage I didn’t like, I was surprised to find I thought this sausage tasted foul. I later learned that’s because it comes from the pig’s colon and is considered a delicacy in parts of France. This picture tells it all.

But I am not at all hesitant to include a recipe using ham hocks, also from low on the hog. In fact, one of my favorite things to eat when I used to travel to our nation’s capital for work was Senate Bean Soup. This recipe is from allrecipes.com. Ham and Bean Soup is a hearty soup that you can serve with biscuits or crusty French bread on a chilly evening.

I also like to make green beans with ham hocks. Cut up an onion, and soften it in butter in a big sauce pan. When the onion is translucent, add a tablespoon or so of flour, and cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly, until the flour loses it’s starchy taste. Add a cup or so of chicken broth, a couple of baby red potatoes that you cut in half, and a big handful of fresh green beans. On top of it all, place a ham hock. Bring it to a boil, cover it, lower the heat, and let it cook for an hour or so.

You can serve this as a side dish, but I like it as my main course. Particularly when you can use fresh homegrown green beans in the summer.

That’s what I call eating low on the hog!

Recipe Fantasy Life

I’ve talked about my mom before. You will recall that she was a simple, yet spectacular cook. She cooked comfort foods before they were called comfort foods. She didn’t cook anything fancy. But almost every night she prepared a delicious meal for my dad and their four kids, and always made it seem easy.

I don’t recall that she particularly took time to teach any of her daughters how to cook. We learned from watching her, but even that took place mostly after we were grown up. We would sit at the counter and watch as she cooked, making mental notes. At least I did.

She died in 1995, and somehow I ended up with her recipe box. It is a hodge-podge of recipes written in her hand, recipes written in the handwriting of my sisters and me, recipes given to her by persons (with handwriting) unknown. Several recipes are even in the handwriting of a couple of her children’s ex-spouses! Guess she figured you could toss out the spouse and yet keep the recipe. The box is crammed with recipes on yellowed newsprint from years back.

The thing I have always found somewhat amusing about my mom’s recipe box is that almost none of the things we ate as we grew up are in that box. Almost like a secret fantasy life, my mom had recipes for things such as Shish Kabob Sauce, Coquilles St. Jacques au Gratin (I’m pretty sure the only scallop you would have been able to find in the Nebraska town in which I grew up in the 60s would have been at the bottom of a kitchen curtain), and no fewer than four jambalaya recipes.

Needless to say, jambalaya never graced our dinner table as a child. However, Mom did become much more experimental in her cooking as her kids grew up and left home. I don’t think my father ever complained.

As I went through some of her recipe cards, I noticed the names of the dish often included one of her kids’ names, i.e. Kris’ Eggplant Pasta Sauce or Jennie’s Party Pork Chops. One recipe name made me laugh out loud (and I’m writing it exactly as it was written in my mother’s hand): Beckie’s Chili (originally my chili). Only a mother would hand off a recipe (and the credit for it) to her daughter and not look back.

One recipe that I came across looked yummy, and I want to share it with you. Flank steak is a delicious, though not particularly inexpensive, cut of beef that generally requires a marinade to tenderize and flavor it. After it has marinated, a quick trip to the grill (or under a broiler) so that it is crusty on the outside and pink on the inside is all it takes.

Mom’s Flank Steak Marinade
1 to 1-1/2 c. beer
3 scallions, minced
1/3 c. olive oil
3 T soy sauce
2 T sugar
2 cloves of garlic, minced
¼ t. Tabasco

Mix the ingredients. Place your flank steak in a zippered plastic bag and pour the marinade over the meat. Marinade for six to eight hours, giving your bag a squeeze and a turn every once in a while.

The meat should be removed from the marinade and grilled or broiled for about five minutes per side (less if you like it really rare). Let the meat rest five minutes. Then slice the meat against the grain and serve with some roasted potatoes or hash browns and a veggie or a salad.

As an aside, as I began writing out the recipe, it started seeming familiar to me. I think the recipe came from me. Now I’m a bit hurt that it wasn’t labeled Kris’ Flank Steak Marinade. Sigh.

Cooking with Quills?

As a small child, my son was a picky eater. He would eat grilled cheese sandwiches, plain hamburgers, the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms, and tacos. And getting him to eat tacos required absolute dishonesty on the part of his father and me. We told him the lettuce on the crunchy tacos at Taco Bell was Mexican grass. For some reason, that appealed enough to him to get him to eat them.

Though we later divorced, his father and I went on to coauthor the bestselling Lying to Your Children for Dummies.

Eventually, my son became more tolerant of a variety of foods, though his love of tacos stayed with him into adulthood. As a teenager, he once ate 13 tacos at my dinner table. I had stopped telling him I used Mexican grass by that time. I had no interest then and have no interest now in knowing whether he was familiar with any other kind of Mexican grass at that point in his life (or ever). President Clinton didn’t invent “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Simply Cooking Simply recognizes that cooking for spouses is often as difficult as cooking for children – sometimes worse. But unless you’re a vegetarian, meatballs appeal to everyone.

Meatballs of all kinds. Swedish meatballs, Italian meatballs, sweet and sour meatballs – any time you mix ground meat with a egg and something to hold it all together, throw on a sauce, you have a comforting meal that will appeal to children and grownups alike.

Even as a small child, my son loved porcupine meatballs. I brought the recipe into my marriage from my mother’s recipe box. If you go on line, you can find all sorts of recipes for porcupine meatballs. Some are fancier than others. The recipe below is not fancy, and is exactly as my mother wrote it.

Porcupine Meatballs

1 beaten egg
1 can tomato soup
¼ cup uncooked rice*
2 T chopped onions*
1 T. snipped parsley*
½ t. salt
¼ t. pepper
1 lb. ground beef
½ c. water
1 t. Worchestershire sauce

In bowl, combine the egg and ¼ c. of the soup. Stir in the uncooked rice, onion, parsley, salt and pepper. Add ground beef. Mix well.

Shape into small meatballs, and place in a 10-in. skillet. (At this point, my mother never says whether or not she browned the meatballs. I do.)

Mix remaining soup with water and Worchestershire sauce; pour over meatballs. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 35 – 40 minutes, stirring often.

Makes 4-5 servings.

* I’m pretty sure my mother used dried onion flakes. I always use about a half of a finely minced onion. Also, I don’t believe I ever saw a bunch of fresh parsley in my mother’s house, unless it was curly parsley that she put around a molded jello salad. So, again, I’m pretty sure she used dried parsley. I always use fresh. Finally, I think you can probably use either instant or regular rice. I always use regular.

Mashed potatoes are required with this dish. I don’t believe you would be breaking any major federal laws if you use noodles, but I’m pretty sure it’s a misdemeanor in most states!

As for the name, I understand the reasoning, but they never really looked much like porcupines to me.

Chinese Eat-In

Mondays are my grocery shopping day. For the record, Monday is not a terribly good day to grocery shop because the shelves are often nearly bare following the busy shopping weekend. Nevertheless, when I retired, I designated Mondays as my shopping day, and, despite frequent frustration at not finding certain items, so it continues to be. But I’m not stubborn….

I used to like grocery shopping. That’s because I really like to cook, and it’s fun strolling around leisurely (now that I’m retired) looking at the various ingredients I can use in my recipes. Any more, however, I find shopping to be extremely depressing. Prices haven’t just crept up; in some cases, they have sprung to nearly unaffordable heights seemingly overnight. I picked up a pound of bacon today and nearly fainted at the cost. I’m not exaggerating. When I gasped, a woman who was also considering the bacon looked at me and said, “No sh**!” True story. Grocery prices are making nuns swear. (That part’s not true; she wasn’t a nun.)

Anyhoo, I am always looking at ways to save money. I recently watched a cooking show on television that is specifically focused on feeding your family inexpensively. This particular show featured Chinese recipes so delicious, the perky cook promised, that you will no longer feel any need to order Chinese delivery. Now, I appreciate her attempt to help me save money, because there is no way around it – when you order Chinese, you spend at least $20 to $30 plus tip. But, homemade Chinese food, unless you are Ming Tsai (the illustrious host of PBS’ Simply Ming) just does not compare to Chinese take out. Plus, you don’t have those cute little white boxes or the fortune cookies that taste like they have been in the restaurant’s pantry since the Ming Dynasty.

But remembering the price of that bacon, I went to my old recipe box in which I knew I had some Chinese recipes that I had clipped out of newspapers years ago and never made (because homemade Chinese food does not compare to Chinese take out). The first recipe I found was for hot and sour soup, which I love. As I perused the recipe, I noticed that the first ingredient was tree mushrooms. Ah ha. That’s why I never attempted homemade hot and sour soup.

Having said all of the above, I believe we can make really good food with the taste of China if we put our minds to it. We just need to recognize that we are not going to be making food for which a Chinese mother-in-law would yearn. But let’s face it. If your mother-in-law is Chinese, you will be eating as often as possible at her house anyway.

I recently found a wonderful and easy recipe for Chinese chicken wings at one of my favorite websites, Allrecipes.com. These wings are delicious, healthy (since they are baked rather than fried), and are really good if you serve them with some stir-fried vegetables. I like steamed broccoli sprinkled with soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds. Or if you want to make it really easy on yourself, just buy a bag of frozen stir-fried vegetables.

The recipe is for five pounds, so cut it down to meet your needs. Also, it calls for marinating the wings for eight hours or overnight. While you can make them without marinating them, they really are better if they sit in the marinade for a day.

Xiǎngshòu nǐ de shíwù (which means "enjoy your food").

Yo Yo

Last night I had a quadruple whammy.

Problem #1: Because of a health issue, I am currently (and temporarily) on a low- to no-fiber diet – not as easy as you would think;

Problem #2: A couple of nights ago, I came down with a cold, which for some reason has knocked me on my bee-hind;

Problem #3: We had plans to have dinner with my stepmother, but because of my cold, we had to cancel; as a result, I had nothing planned for dinner, and little to work with; and

Problem #4: It was Friday, and as a Catholic, I am not eating meat on Fridays during Lent.

But since I think I could be breathing my last breath and still be hungry, and because my husband does not cook (and I mean never – something I knew prior to marrying him so I can’t complain) and was looking at me with woeful eyes, I had to put on my thinking cap.

(As an aside, I’ll bet none of you under the age of 40 knows where that term thinking cap came from, and many of you over the age of 40 can’t remember – perhaps because you aren’t wearing your thinking caps. But I digress.)

There are a few things that I recommend you always have on hand in your pantry. Among those are fresh garlic, extra virgin olive oil, some kind of Parmesan cheese, and pasta. And I had all of those ingredients in my pantry. The result? I was able to put together a healthy dinner –Pasta Aglio e Olio – in literally the time it took to cook my pasta (which, since I used gemelli, was eight minutes).

Here’s how you do it.

Bring a big pot of heavily salted water to a boil. It is better if you bring the water to a boil and then add your salt as the water will come to a boil quicker without salt; however, when I do that, I almost always forget to add the salt. Sigh.

Once your water is at a rolling boil and is salted, add however much pasta you need. Typically, spaghetti is used for this traditional Italian dish. Last night I chose to use gemelli. Gemelli is one of my favorite pastas, and I find it hard to get. Gemelli means “twin” in Italian, and gemelli pasta is two short strands of pasta twisted together. I found it recently at a wonderful Italian deli and market in Scottsdale. Since I used it last night, I must wait until I’m back in Arizona to replenish. Sigh again. And again, I digress.

Once your pasta is in the water boiling away, put about ½ c. of extra virgin olive oil in a skillet and begin warming the oil. Mince anywhere from four to six cloves of fresh garlic – depending on how much you like garlic, but remembering that aglio e olio translated from Italian to English means garlic and olive oil. Garlic is key to this dish, and if you don’t like garlic, you shouldn’t be making this particular recipe.

Place the minced garlic into the oil in your skillet, and slowly brown the garlic. (I have learned the hard way that garlic turns from golden to burned very quickly, so I emphasize slowly. Keep your temperature down. Burned garlic is bitter.) Also add a pinch of red pepper flakes. Red pepper flakes are traditional in spaghetti aglio e olio, and I always have them on hand. However, if you don’t, forge ahead without.

Once the garlic is golden brown, add a ladle of water from the pot in which you are cooking your pasta. Let this water cook a bit in your skillet until the amount diminishes a bit, but doesn’t disappear. When your pasta is slightly undercooked, use a slotted spoon or tongs and put the pasta into the skillet with the garlic and pepper flakes. Mix thoroughly. Let it finish cooking for a minute or so, and then turn off your heat. Add Parmesan cheese and minced Italian parsley (if you have it, which I didn’t last night).

Serve with bread, a salad, etc.

A couple of notes: If you only have regular olive oil rather than extra virgin olive oil, use it, because I’d rather have you use that instead of not making the dish. However, you can buy extra virgin olive oil at a fairly reasonable price (you can also buy it at a price that would require you to take out a second mortgage), and you should really have it on your shelf if you want to be a serious cook. Do not use any other kind of oil in this particular recipe.

And regarding your cheese, parmigiano reggiano is, in my opinion, the most delicious cheese in the world (well, I could probably be talked out of that opinion since I love so many cheeses), but it is painfully expensive. Buy it when you can afford it. When you can’t, use regular Parmesan cheese. Don’t use, however, the kind that’s in a little container that looks like a sink cleaner. Buy it in the cheese department.

My favorite neighborhood pizzaria makes spaghetti aglio e olio, but has shortened the name to Spaghetti Yo Yo. Clever.

By the way, thinking cap comes from Tom Terrific, a cartoon character from what was my absolute favorite program as a child – Captain Kangaroo. It’s unnerving how many times I use names of characters from that program in my everyday life. For example, I kept referring to my husband, who recently painted our fence, as Mr. Bainter the Painter, and I’m not sure there was a single soul who knew what I was talking about. Of course, that’s nothing new.

Finger-lickin'

Who doesn’t like fried chicken? Seriously, I personally think fried chicken of any kind is delicious. And if I ask my husband what he would like for his birthday/anniversary/father’s day dinner, he will always (and I really mean without exception) request fried chicken.

But I must also tell you that fried chicken is a pain to make. Frying chicken makes a mess. So, unless you fall for the assertion that you can put crushed corn flakes on chicken breasts and bake it in the oven and it tastes like fried chicken, you are going to have to clean up a mess.

But, oh, it’s worth it. Every single time.

But I have a suggestion for frying chicken that won’t require you to haul out your deep fat fryer (Yeah, right. That’s what all newlyweds request on their wedding registry. Well, maybe if you’re related to Paula Deen. Or me.) It’s fairly quick, relatively unmessy, and makes really delicious, tender, and moist fried chicken.

The key is thinking ahead. Something I’m not terribly good at, I might add. I actually have to write myself a note to remind myself to do what I’m about to tell you. In the morning, before you go to work or before you get too bogged down with the details of your day, put your chicken pieces into a bowl. (And since I generally cook for just my husband and me, I buy pieces rather than the whole chicken. If you can find chicken pieces on sale, buy them, use what you need and freeze the remaining pieces until such time as you have forgotten about the mess.)

Mix together about a cup (more if you are using more than four or five pieces of chicken) of buttermilk with as much hot sauce as you would like to give it a zing – maybe a tablespoon or so – (I use Frank’s Louisiana Hot Sauce) and add a teaspoon or so of salt. Pour this mixture over your chicken and use your hands to slosh the pieces around in the buttermilk. The buttermilk breaks down the muscles of the chicken, which will help you produce tender and juicy fried chicken that evening. If you are home, occasionally stir the chicken pieces. If not, don’t drive home every two hours to do it because it’s not a big deal.

In the evening, pour about three-quarters of an inch of vegetable oil in a frying pan (I’m crazy about my cast iron skillet, but it’s not a deal breaker). Heat up the oil while you remove your chicken from the buttermilk. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

With a paper towel, wipe off excess buttermilk so that you don’t splash oil when you place the chicken into the skillet. Mix together about a cup of flour with some bread crumbs (seasoned or unseasoned, whatever you have on hand). Add some garlic powder (a teaspoon or so) to the flour, along with some pepper. Dredge your chicken pieces in the flour, making sure to shake off excess flour as well.

Carefully place the chicken pieces in the hot oil, and fry until the pieces are brown and crispy on the outside. The chicken won’t be cooked all the way through. It may take anywhere between five and 10 minutes per side. If you are doing a lot of pieces of chicken, fry in batches. If you fry too many pieces at a time, you will steam the chicken rather than getting a good crust.

Once the chicken is nice and brown on both sides, put the pieces onto a rack that you have placed on a large cookie sheet. (I would recommend you cover the cookie sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper to help mitigate clean-up.)

Finish cooking your browned chicken in the oven for about 20 minutes or so. Dark meat takes longer than white meat. A meat thermometer should read 170, but if you don’t own a meat thermometer, cut into a piece and make sure the juices run clear. And go out tomorrow and buy an instant read thermometer.

Unfortunately, you really can’t reuse the grease, so that will be your biggest mess. I pour the excess grease into a coffee cup, wipe out the remaining grease with a paper towel, and wash my pan. Once the grease is cool tomorrow, I will place it in a plastic bag that I seal really well and throw it in the garbage.

Making your fried chicken this way really is easier than you think, and I can assure you of crispy, delicious chicken that you will make again. Maybe not for awhile, however. And to make yourself feel less guilty, tomorrow serve grilled tilapia and steamed broccoli.

Don't Make it So Difficult!

Every cook, whether he or she is a professional chef or cooks for a spouse and kids, was at one time inexperienced. At some point, each of us had a lot to learn about cooking. As a result, most of us have a cooking horror story to tell. It’s inevitable.

Mine? Making some sort of forgettable dish for my brother and his wife, with the rice having the look (and taste) of wallpaper paste. My brother, who has a long memory and a heartless sense of humor, reminds me of it on a regular basis. Oh, and the first pie I made during which I got so frustrated while rolling out the pie dough that I said a bad four-letter word that sounds somewhat like fudge, and threw it on the floor.

Simply Cooking Simply thinks we make it too hard on ourselves. And as I look at different cooking web sites and blogs or watch cooking shows on television, it becomes clear to me why. I can almost hear young cooks saying....

“This recipe calls for gruyere cheese, and have you seen how much that costs?”

“I’m suppose to use unsalted butter in this recipe, and all I have is salted butter!”

“A tablespoon of freshly grated lemon zest? What do I do with the rest of the lemon?”

“What the hell are blood oranges?”

See what I mean? The chefs on television make it seem as though you simply MUST use these ingredients or your cooking world will be shattered. And if I’m just beginning to cook for a family and am on a limited budget, I don’t want to go out and buy expensive ingredients that will grow old in my refrigerator or pantry shelf and need to be discarded.

Simply Cooking Simply recommends that you look at recipes as simply an outline, a recommendation. For example, don’t let yourself believe for a moment that you must use gruyere cheese in your French onion soup. Substitute Swiss cheese that you get on sale at the market, and maybe add a little parmesan cheese for a sharp bite.

Here is a recipe for French Onion Soup from Melissa d’Arabian that is simple and really inexpensive to make. If you don’t have fresh thyme (or have reason to buy any besides this recipe), either use dried thyme, or leave it out altogether. The key to making this recipe work is to have your burner on a low temperature and carmelize (which just means cook them until they are a carmel color) for a very long time. She recommends an hour-and-a-half. Low and slow.

As an aside, remember when you substitute dried herbs for fresh, use a LOT less. As herbs are dried, their flavor is concentrated. Using the same amount would be overpowering.

Serve your soup with a fresh vinaigrette salad, and you have a fancy French dinner for not much money.

By the way, I’ll try to answer some of those other questions in future blogs.