Krafty Kids

To celebrate Father’s Day, we entertained two of our children and four of our grandchildren. I told my husband I would make whatever he wished in honor of the day, and he, of course, chose fried chicken. If given a choice, he will choose it every time.

What I cook for side dishes doesn’t really matter, as long as there is fried chicken on a platter in front of him. However, I know he likes macaroni and cheese – and the creamier, the better.

Making mac and cheese is not rocket science, and though preparing it from scratch certainly is more time consuming than opening a box of processed mac and cheese, it really doesn’t take all that much time to put together a cheesy macaroni casserole.

Because there was going to be a total of four kids 8 years old or under, I decided that I would make a full recipe of macaroni and cheese instead of cutting it in half as I normally would. What kid doesn’t like homemade mac and cheese, after all?

Well, it turns out, there are at least four.

I have seen these four children consume, as though they haven’t eaten for several days, macaroni and cheese that is nothing more than pasta, milk, and a powdery substance full of salt and chemicals, with perhaps a cheese wand waved over it at some point. Yet, they nibbled politely on a few pieces of the macaroni, checking to make sure they could still eat dessert if they didn’t finish their serving.

While I was surprised, my feelings weren’t hurt. They really weren’t. I remember, after all, eating that self-same boxed macaroni and cheese as a child, and LOVING it.

I checked on line and learned that Kraft began making their boxed macaroni and cheese in the mid-1930s. It was originally called simply Kraft Dinner. I had forgotten that fact, but was immediately transported back in time and heard Mom telling us that we were having Kraft Dinner for supper. That always made me so happy. I’m sure if I looked at the ingredients (which I don’t think I ever will) I would find out that it’s loaded with lots of sodium, probably some sugar or corn syrup, and lots of things with names I don’t recognize (what in the name of heaven is xanthan gum anyway?).

No matter, once kids have dined on Kraft mac and cheese (or probably any boxed mac and cheese) they apparently turn their little pug noses up at the real McCoy.

As a result, I had made-from-scratch (and quite delicious) macaroni and cheese coming out my ears. My husband and I have been eating it for several days now, and I’m about ready to eat the last bite. I have learned my lesson.

Here is my recipe:

Creamy Macaroni and Cheese

1-16 oz. bag of macaroni
9 T. butter
2 c. shredded cheese (you can use any kind, but I use a mixture of sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack
8 oz. Velveeta, diced
1-1/2 c. half and half
2 eggs, beaten
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook macaroni until desired doneness. For macaroni and cheese, I like it cooked thoroughly. Drain well. Melt 8 t. butter (frankly, I often use a bit less butter), and stir into the pasta. In a large bowl, combine all of the cheese (including Velveeta) and mix. Add half and half, 1-1/2 c. of the cheese mixture and eggs to the macaroni, and mix together. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a large casserole dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and add 1 T. butter.

Bake for 35 minutes.

I generally cut the recipe in half, and it still makes way more than I need.

Now, here is a tip: If you like your macaroni and cheese really creamy, double the amount of shredded cheese (not the Velveeta), and only bake for about 20 minutes. Creamy goodness, if not exactly health food.

Getting Harry'd

On a business trip to Chicago many years ago, my husband and I had the opportunity to eat dinner at Harry Caray’s Restaurant in downtown Chicago. Harry Caray, of course, was the legendary bespectacled Chicago Cubs’ announcer who subsequently became known for his dining establishments around the city.

Since the original restaurant opened in the late 1980s, none of the infamous Chicago mobsters of the 30s ever dined there. Nevertheless, its atmosphere is such that you keep looking at the door, waiting for Al Capone to enter, machine guns blazing.

I don’t remember what I ate, but I remember that my husband had Chicken Vesuvio. I had never heard of this particular dish, which originated in Chicago in the 1930s. Chicken Vesuvio is one of those Italian-American dishes that didn’t come from Italy, though I assure you, it would be enjoyed by any self-respecting Italian (and probably is by now).

Roasted chicken with crispy skin, potatoes cooked in white wine, chicken broth, and garlic – how can this dish be anything but delicious?

Still, I never really gave the dish another thought for a very long time.

However, recently an 80-something Italian friend mentioned she had recently prepared Chicken Vesuvio for her family. My friend is an outstanding Italian cook (about whom I will talk in future blogs), and I asked for her recipe. She, of course, had no recipe, but was happy to tell me how she made it. I was unprepared to write down what she told me, but I knew I could get her recipe (or something close to it) on the Internet. You can get anything on the Internet.

A search for Chicken Vesuvio, of course, brought up a link to Harry Caray’s Restaurant, since they are said to have the best in town (and that is no small thing in a food town like Chicago). So it was Harry Caray’s version of Chicken Vesuvio that I made, and it was extremely good.

Harry Caray’s Chicken Vesuvio

1 cup frozen peas
2 whole cleaned (4 pound) roasting chickens
1 cup olive oil
4 large Idaho potatoes
10 cloves whole garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon dry oregano
1 tablespoon granulated garlic
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 1/2 cups chicken broth

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.Blanch the peas by putting them in boiling water 1 minute. Joint each chicken into 8 pieces.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters lengthwise. In a large roasting pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the potatoes and garlic cloves and sauté the potatoes until golden brown, stirring so they cook evenly. Remove the garlic cloves from the roasting pan and discard them. Remove the potatoes and set aside.

Add the chicken to the pan and sauté lightly on both sides of each piece until it is golden brown. Deglaze the pan with the wine and reduce by half.

Return the potatoes to the pan. Season the potatoes and chicken with the salt, pepper, oregano, granulated garlic, and parsley. Add the chicken broth and transfer the pan to the oven for 45 minutes or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 155 degrees.

Place the chicken on a serving plate and arrange the potatoes around the chicken. Pour the sauce from the pan over the chicken and sprinkle the peas on top.

I use chicken thighs, and cut the recipe by at least half. I leave out the peas (though they are present in the photo) as my husband is not a big fan of the pea, and they really are mainly for color. Giada De Laurentis suggests artichoke hearts or lima beans, but neither of those would make my husband jump for joy either, so I leave out a vegetable.

There is a Harry Caray’s at Chicago’s Midway Airport. I always need a stiff drink before I take off from that particular airport where the airplane must begin a steep ascent immediately upon taking off since the airport is located in the middle of a neighborhood. You can practically see what the residents have on their grill as you ascend. Every time I order my glass of wine or martini, the server asks to see my identification. Now, I know that they are required by city law to do so, but I always pretend they simply aren’t certain that I am of age. It gives me great pleasure.

Sexy Salmon

The price of Copper River salmon can take your breath away. Ranging from $15.99-to-unthinkable-per pound, the taste had better be good to justify the price.

It is.

I had never heard of Copper River salmon until a few years ago, when a co-worker who is a very good cook mentioned it. I’m a fan of salmon, so I was very interested.

The Copper River salmon season is very short (May and June), which likely accounts for its price tag. The poor, unsuspecting wild salmon are caught while swimming upstream in the Copper River in Alaska where they will breed. Wild salmon have more flavor than farm-raised, and these salmon are particularly delicious because they have to store a lot of fat to make the 300-mile trip upstream. Fat = Flavor.

But it doesn’t matter to my husband whether the salmon was farm-raised or caught wild. He doesn’t care how far they traveled to spawn. In fact, they could have tweeted their sexy fishy parts to lady salmon in Scotland, and it wouldn’t make my husband any more interested in eating salmon – expensive or otherwise.

Every once in a while, I will use the Omega-3-is-so-good-for-you argument, and he will allow me to serve salmon, but I don’t push the envelope. Instead, I simply order salmon at restaurants whenever possible. Sometimes I will go to Whole Foods and buy a hamburger patty for him and a salmon burger for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to see if he would be willing to eat Copper River salmon for dinner. I didn’t want to fork out that much money only to have him pick at his fish and yearn for a pork chop. I explained how delicious Copper River salmon is, and, of course, reminded him how good Omega 3 is for us. He acquiesced.

My original plan was to cook the salmon on the grill. I could taste the simple yumminess of grilled salmon with maybe just a couple of lemon slices on top and some capers. Then I suddenly got an idea.

“Eureka,” I said. I had just remembered a recipe I had discovered many years ago in a snooty cooking magazine called Saveur. (I only call it snooty because I don’t know what the word “saveur” means, being it’s French and all. The magazine was actually quite interesting and many of the recipes were delicious.)

The recipe involves bacon. If a salmon filet doesn’t excite my husband, at least the addition of bacon would make it that much more palatable.

Here’s what you do:

In a skillet, brown a few pieces of bacon. For my two filets, I browned (until crispy) four slices of bacon. Once the bacon is brown, remove it from the pan and drain it on some paper towels. Once it is cool, break it into pieces.

In the bacon grease that remains in your skillet, brown your filets on both sides. You want it fairly crispy, so cook it for maybe five minutes or so on each side. By the way, if the bacon you cooked didn’t render enough fat, add some olive oil (or even better, add some bacon grease that you have in a little jar in your refrigerator left over from previous breakfasts – oh, wait a minute; that’s me, not you). Once the salmon is caramelized, cover your skillet and cook on low temperature for about five minutes, until it is translucent.

Once the salmon is cooked through, set it aside. Pour some red wine vinegar (maybe a third of a cup or so) to the bacon grease in the skillet. This will splash, so stand back, and be prepared to clean your stove top later. Add a bit of sugar to the dressing that you have just prepared. Pour the hot dressing on top of a salad, top with the bacon, and serve along with the salmon. If you wish, a hard-boiled egg would be delicious on this wilted lettuce salad.

My husband ate the entire piece of fish and proclaimed it to be delicious. The moral of the story is when all else fails, add pork.