The Roast is Clear

I’ve said it before and I will undoubtedly say it again. I love food. I love to cook it. I love to eat it. I love to smell it. And, what’s more, I love to look at it.

Very often on cooking shows, the chef will point out just how beautiful the meal looks. They will accent a dish by plopping a sprig of parsley or a rosemary branch or perhaps some basil leaves on the side of the offering, making it aesthetically pleasing.

I understand why they do it. I think that food ought to be pleasing to the eye if it is to be pleasing to the palate. I can’t say that I accent my food with sprigs of anything, but I really love to mix up the colors of the food I make.

I recently made a pork tenderloin. I don’t make pork tenderloin often because it’s simply not one of my favorite foods. Whenever I prepare it, I think it tastes good, and my husband always likes the leftovers between two pieces of bread (of course). Nevertheless, despite it’s relatively affordable price tag, it’s not something I make often.

But what I can get excited about are roasted vegetables. Don’t hate me because I’m a geek. I just like the sweet taste that roasting gives veggies, especially any kind of root vegetable.

I found a recipe for roasted pork tenderloin and potatoes, and got the notion to make it even more interesting by serving it with roasted vegetables. I went to the market and picked out two of my favorite (and what I consider to be the most beautiful) vegetables – brussel sprouts and carrots.

I know, I know. Brussel sprouts. I see all of you turning up your noses right now. But when you roast any vegetable, the sugars are released and even something quite bitter like brussel sprouts becomes sweet and tasty. Especially if you couple them with already-sweet carrots.

Roasted Pork and Potatoes (loosely excerpted from Food Network Magazine)

1-1/2 lbs. small red potatoes, cut in half (or quarters if they’re largish)

1 large handful of brussel sprouts, with the tops cut off and then cut in half

2 large carrots, cut in large pieces

2 T. olive oil

1-2 tsp. fresh thyme, pulled from the twig

Salt and pepper

1 pork tenderloin

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Toss the potatoes, brussel sprouts, and carrots with the salt and pepper (to taste), thyme, and 1 T. olive oil in a shallow baking dish (I used a 9 X 9 baker). Place in oven and roast until the potatoes are slightly tender, 20 – 30 minutes (it takes slightly longer in our high altitude).

Meanwhile, pat the tenderloin dry, and season with salt and pepper. Heat the remaining olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the pork and sear on all sides until golden brown.

Once the vegetables are slightly tender, transfer the pork to the baking dish and continue to roast until a thermometer inserted into the center of the pork registers 145 degrees (about 20 minutes more).

Let the pork sit on a cutting board for about five minutes before slicing. Serve with the beautiful roasted vegetables. I also served a side of applesauce, just to celebrate the beginning of fall.

By the way, if you simply can't abide the thought of eating a brussel sprout (perhaps your mother made you eat them as a child and you said you would never do so when you had your own home!), you can choose any vegetable you like. In fact, the recipe from which I adapted my meal actually called for red pepper and potatoes. Use your imagination.  

But make it pretty.

Dough a Dear

A few years ago, when Krispy Kreme finally made its way out west and the first one opened in the Denver metro area, there was literally a line of cars several blocks long for the drive-through window for over a month. People eagerly sought that sugary piece of dough, and they would purchase the glazed doughnuts by the dozens.

That enthusiasm has waned over the years, and now you can walk right up to the counter to get your doughnut without a wait. Maybe folks are more health conscious, or maybe they simply buy their doughnuts at the supermarket, where they are less expensive.

Being the child of a baker, doughnuts were available to me whenever I wanted one. People used to ask me if I got sick of doughnuts. The answer is, no. To this day, there is nothing that tastes better to me than a fresh doughnut. Every so often, my husband and I will treat ourselves after church on Sunday. I always choose the lemon filled glazed bismarck.

I must admit, however, that despite being parented by a professional baker, and despite so loving these doughy treats, I have never made a yeast doughnut from scratch. I can’t really say why. Maybe I just know they would never taste as good as my dad’s.

But that isn’t to say that I have never fried a doughnut. In fact, recently my 3-year-old granddaughter helped me make perfectly good doughnuts, and she loved every sugary bite.

The secret? Pizza dough. Often I will go to my neighborhood Whole Foods and buy their pizza dough. But since my idea to make doughnuts with little missy was a last minute notion, I simply used the pizza dough that comes in the cans you find in the refrigerated case at your favorite supermarket.

I brought out my trusty cast iron skillet and filled it with about an inch worth of vegetable oil. I turned on the heat on my stove to medium high, and let my candy thermometer tell me when the oil had reached the temperature of 375 degrees.

Meanwhile, I patted the dough out to about a half-inch thickness and gave little missy my biscuit cutter and let her have at it. She needed some help, but surprisingly little. Since I wanted my doughnuts to have holes, and since I don’t own a doughnut cutter, I simply took the lid from a bottle of water and used it to cut out the hole (which I also fried).

It only takes a minute or so on each side to become golden brown. Once they were browned on both sides, I let them drain on paper towels for a minute or so, and then rolled them in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. I considered also making a chocolaty glaze out of Nutella and heavy cream, but went for simple.

It only makes about a dozen, and Krispy Kreme doesn’t have to worry about competition, but nevertheless, the doughnuts were sweet and yummy and little missy and I both got a kick out of eating our hot treats, making sure to lick our sugary fingers after.

Sloppin' it up

I’m a summer person. I love the long days and watching the flowers and trees bloom. I love watching my grandkids swim. I love grilling dinner. I love hot dogs and hamburgers drenched in ketchup and mustard and sticky barbecued ribs.

But I have to grudgingly admit that I’m kind of relieved when dusk comes around a bit earlier and it starts to cool down somewhat at night. It’s fun to watch the neighborhood kids walking to school and home again in the afternoon. And, I must admit that I enjoy winter-styled cooking.

There is little that satisfies me more than cooking a tough (and therefore, inexpensive) cut of meat in my enamel and cast-iron Dutch oven at a very low temperature for such a long time that the meat relents and eventually falls off the bone. Scrumptious.

But today I wasn’t in the mood to braise a meal. Instead, I wanted something simple. Sloppy Joes came to mind.

When I cooked for my family when we were all younger, I would simply brown some ground beef and throw in a can of Manwich. It couldn’t have been simpler, and we all loved it.

I mentioned this to my sister this past weekend, and she was aghast. Why don’t you make it from scratch, she wondered. After all, you write a cooking blog.

So true, so this evening I gave it a whirl, and it was a success.

Homemade Sloppy Joes

1 lb. of ground beef (or ½ lb. of ground beef and ½ lb. of ground turkey)

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

¾ c. ketchup

2 T. water

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

½ tsp. yellow mustard

½-1 T brown sugar

splash white vinegar

Brown the ground meat until cooked through. Add the onion, and cook until the onions are transparent. Add the minced garlic, and cook for about a minute.

To the meat, add the ketchup, water, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Stir to mix. Add ½ to 1 T. brown sugar, enough to make it a bit sweet. To counteract the sweetness a bit, add just a splash of vinegar.

Cook for 20 minutes, and serve over hamburger buns.

I always eat my sloppy joes with pickles, so I opened up a jar of my homemade dills, and enjoyed the nip in the air as we ate on the patio.

Dill with it!

I’m a big fan of the dill pickle. When I was growing up, my mother used to make three-day dill pickles every year just as soon as the tiny pickling cucumbers became available. I still can picture the big green bowl in which she would place the sliced cucumbers that she covered with the mixture of vinegar and salt and dill. She would then put a plate over the pickles, and on top she would put a large can of tomatoes to hold the cucumbers down into the vinegar mix.

We would maybe give the pickles an hour. Before long, we began reaching our fingers under the plate and grabbing a barely-pickled cucumber. They literally never made it to the third day.

For some reason, though I have Mom’s recipe, I’ve never made her three-day dill pickles. It is perhaps because my husband really doesn’t care that much for pickles except to accent his hamburger. I do, however, make and can regular dill pickles, which I mostly give away.

This year, I bought a big bouquet of fresh dill at the farmer’s market for a grand total of two bucks. It was truly beautiful dill. I made my dill pickles, and had probably $1.87 worth of dill remaining. The dill was so beautiful that it broke my heart to think about throwing it away. I put it in a vase, just as I would a bouquet of flowers, and every time I would enter my kitchen, the fresh smell of dill would sweep me back to that Nebraska kitchen with the big green bowl of Mom’s dill pickles.

But what to do with the remaining dill? I was simply frantic to not waste that buck eight-seven. Then it hit me! Dilly beans.

Dilly Beans

2 lbs. fresh green beans, rinsed and trimmed

4 cloves garlic, peeled

4 dried red peppers

8 sprigs fresh dill weed

4 t. salt

2-1/2 c. white vinegar

2-1/2 c. water

Cut green beans to fit inside pint canning jars. Pack the beans into four hot, sterilized pint jars (I used the wide-mouth). Place a clove of garlic, a dried pepper, 1 t. salt, and 2 sprigs dill weed in each jar.

In a saucepan, bring vinegar and water to a boil. Pour over beans in each jar to about ¼ inch from the top.

Fit the jars with lids and rings and process for 10 minutes (I do it 20 minutes because I’m at high altitude) in a boiling water bath.

I used both green beans and yellow wax beans. They are delicious to eat right out of the jar, but they are especially good when placed in a bloody mary!

I recently had a three-year-old eat an entire jar. Minus the bloody mary, of course.

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.