Back in the saddle again

Tonight's Menu

• grilled boneless lamb leg steaks
  
• couscous
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Oh, people. I am very sorry for not posting much at all this summer. It was brutally hot here (SIXTY EIGHT days with temperatures over 100 degrees F)(and the other days it was like 99 or 98 degrees) and I just felt so uninspired the whole time. Now that the seasons are changing, I can feel my cooking mojo returning ever so slowly. The sun is moving south, the back patio (where my grill is located) is once again in full shade during dinnertime, cool breezes are blowing in the evening, and I'm getting excited about cooking some fall food!

Er, not that there was anything particularly fall-ish about this dinner. I'm just sayin'.

Okay, so these were boneless lamb leg steaks. Think like a ham steak, but with lamb. And no bone. Am I overexplaining this? Probably so. Anyway, I put them in a plastic zipper bag, pressed a couple of smashed garlic cloves (not smashed to smithereens, just sort of flattened/squashed and peeled) and a sprig of fresh rosemary up against both sides of the meat, then drizzled in a little olive oil and smooshed it all around before sealing the bag and sticking it in the fridge for a few hours. Before grilling, I sprinkled each side of the steaks with some coarse sea salt. Then I just grilled them over high heat for about four minutes per side. They came out medium, which is how the boys like their steaks, but when I make this again with steaks this thick (about 3/4 inch) I'd only cook one of them for maybe 3 minutes per side and then rest it longer. I like mine a little more pink, yo. Anyway, they were really tender and super delicious! DH thought they tasted just like a really good cut of beef.

The couscous was boring and plain. Just 1.25 cups of water brought to the boil with some butter and salt, then dump in 1 cup of dry couscous, cover and take off the heat. Leave it for at least 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork, adjust the seasonings and serve. BORING. But I can make a salad or something out of the leftovers.

The salad bar tonight was chopped romaine with little bowls containing shredded carrots, sliced cucumber and tomato wedges. Also boring, but everyone likes it.

Here's the timeline:

• Earlier in the day, prepare the meat (with the garlic and whatnot) and stick it in the fridge. You can do this the night before if you prefer.
• About 30 minutes before serving time, take the meat out of the fridge and prepare the salad.
• About 20 minutes before serving time, preheat the grill (this is for a gas grill; adjust accordingly if you're using wood or charcoal).
• Make the couscous, cover and remove it from the heat.
• Put the meat on the grill (about 3-4 minutes per side, depending on thickness).
• Take meat off grill and tent with foil to rest.
• Fluff couscous, season and dump into serving dish.
• Carve meat into serving-size pieces (I did two steaks for four people) and ring the dinner bell!
  

A cool-kitchen supper

Tonight's Menu

• grilled shrimp
  
• garlic bread
• grilled asparagus
  
• green salad "bar"

Oh people. It is already SO HOT here in central Texas. Too hot to sit outside while the food grills, unfortunately. The good news is, this meal pretty much cooked itself on the grill while I sat inside in my nice, cool, air-conditioned kitchen! Yes!

I deviated from the script a bit with this shrimp. We love our usual recipe, but I've been making it like once every 10 days or so and wanted something just a little bit different. So I mixed together about 1/2 cup of canola oil, 1/4 cup EVOO (I would have done ALL EVOO, but I was running low), a few glugs each of Worcestershire and hot sauce, a tablespoon or so of honey, the juice of one orange, one lemon and one lime, a bunch of minced fresh garlic, a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper and poured it over two pounds of peeled jumbo shrimp. This marinated in the fridge for about 4 hours before I threaded the shrimp onto skewers and grilled them for 5 minutes per side over medium heat. They were really good!

The garlic bread was purchased at the store. I wrapped it in foil and stuck it on the top rack of the grill to warm up while the shrimp was cooking.

The asparagus was dead easy. I grilled it on a grill screen after I'd pulled off the shrimp. I drizzled it with EVOO and sprinkled it with salt and pepper, then grilled it for maybe 8 minutes total, tossing it around with tongs to brown it all over. Yum! This is my favorite way to eat asparagus (roasting it in the oven is a close second).

The salad bar was just chopped romaine, sliced carrots, sliced cucumber, and wedges of tomato.

Easy dinner, and the house stayed nice and cool! Good thing, because it was about 98 degrees out on the patio -- yikes!

More lamb!

Tonight's Menu

• grilled boneless leg of lamb
  
• red onion & rosemary focaccia
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I have no idea what possessed me to buy this boneless leg of lamb at my new neighborhood farmers market last weekend. At $9 a pound, it's by far the single most expensive piece of meat I've ever purchased or prepared. As such, I was terrified of screwing it up, so I turned to Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything, my go-to cookbook when I'm preparing something unfamiliar for the first time. And he didn't steer me wrong!

Guided by Bittman, and adapting based on the flavors my family likes and the ingredients I had on hand, here's what I did. First I butterflied the leg out so it was a bit more even in terms of thickness and whomped it into a Pyrex baking pan. Then I mashed up several garlic cloves (seriously, like half a head) with some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper in my mortar and pestle. I dumped the garlic into a bowl, then added a giant handful of chopped fresh herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, fennel fronds and cuban oregano. All but the parsley was from my own herb patch (my parsley has gone completely to seed -- boo!). I mixed that together as best I could, then drizzed in some EVOO until it formed a loose paste. Then I rubbed this mixture all over both sides of the lamb, being sure to get it into all the nooks and crannies. I covered the lamb tightly with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge for a few hours, then I brought it back up to room temperature before grilling it over high heat for about 13 minutes per side. After letting it rest for about 5 minutes, I sliced it very thin to serve.

Oh. Mah. Gawd. It was SO GOOD. The thinner ends were done medium and the thicker bits were medium-rare. The whole thing was SO flavorful and tender! The boy thought it tasted a bit like beef, and it really kind of did, but it was like really GOOD beef. So yummy! This is definitely going on the menu at my next big backyard barbecue! (Sorry, vegetarian peeps. I'll have stuff for you too, I promise!)

I've made the focaccia before. It's from the bread book. I made it with the olive oil dough and it was tender and delicious.

It's been a while since we had a green salad up in here! There are so many other good veggies to be had right now, but our cupboards were kind of bare so salad it was. This was romaine with sliced carrots & cucumbers and little grape tomatoes. Kind of boring, but it worked well with the rich meat.

Here's the timeline:

• Earlier in the day, mix up the garlic & herbs, rub it into the lamb, and refrigerate.
• About 45 minutes before serving, pull the lamb out of the fridge and prepare the focaccia from refrigerated dough.
• Make the salad while the focaccia is resting.
• Preheat oven; light grill.
• Put focaccia in oven and set timer for 25 minutes.
• IMMEDIATELY put lamb on grill.
• Turn lamb halfway through the 25 minutes.
• When timer goes off, take focaccia out of oven and lamb off grill.
• Rest lamb for 5 minutes (the focaccia will be fine sitting during this time).
• Slice lamb thinly.
• Slice focaccia into wedges.
• Serve it up!

Homemade lasagna

Tonight's Menu

• beefy lasagna w/homemade noodles
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Is there anything more comforting than a big ol' pan of lasagna? I think not, people. This one featured homemade noodles and sauce, and I'm not going to lie and say it was fast and easy. But it did seem a whole lot less fiddly and meticulous than the ravioli experiment, which made it FEEL easy. Ish.

Okay, for the noodles I made my usual pasta dough and just rolled it into sheets and let them dry on the counter for a couple of hours. That part WAS easy, now that I've gotten the hang of my cheap-ass pasta machine.

For the sauce, I chopped up an onion and minced several cloves of garlic and cooked them in a big pot in a little EVOO until they were soft. I kept them on a low-ish heat because I didn't want them to brown or anything, just soften. Then I dumped in a large can of tomato paste (the ones that are about the size of a soup can) and stirred that around a bit until it started to smell kind of toasted. I thinned it out with a bit of red wine (pinot noir -- it's what I had), then dumped in a huge can of crushed tomatoes. (It would have been helpful if I'd noted the ounces on these cans before I chucked them, huh? This one was about a quart, maybe? I dunno.) I was worried the sauce was still too thick, so I thinned it out some more with water, then stirred in a couple of tablespoons of sugar, some dried oregano, basil, salt and pepper and let it simmer uncovered for maybe 30-45 minutes.

For the meat, I browned some ground bison (feel free to use beef, turkey, whatever floats your boat) over medium heat in a skillet, then turned the heat down to low and stirred in a couple spoonfuls of sauce to moisten it. Then, just for the heck of it, I stirred in whatever was left of the ravioli filling from the other night (would you believe I STILL had some left, even after stuffing mushrooms with it?).

Then I just layered the noodles, meat, some fresh mozzarella (you could use ricotta, but DH doesn't like it) and the sauce in a 9 x 13-inch pan and baked it uncovered for about 40 minutes at 375 degrees F. It was super tasty and definitely worth the time it took to make it.

The salad bar was the same as last night.

Remind me from now on to BUY my cheese ravioli, but make my lasagna from scratch whenever possible, okay?

The long-awaited reappearance of trout

Tonight's Menu

• sauteed trout fillets
  
• ricotta-stuffed mushrooms
  
• green salad "bar"
  

It's been forever since I made fish for dinner and I'm not really sure why. We were eating a lot of tilapia for a while there, and I guess I kind of got sick of it. Anyway, my supermarket had some really nice rainbow trout fillets today, so I bought a couple and just seasoned them with a bit of salt and pepper before sauteing them in EVOO on the stovetop. I always start them skin-side down but I have no idea if that even matters. They were delicious and the boy had seconds and made a point of telling me how good they were. Remind me to start cooking fish more often!

I had a bunch of cheese filling leftover from when I made ravioli the other day and was looking for a way to use it up. I figured I could either make more ravioli (um, no), make lasagne (maybe, but that would involve the making of a meat sauce, which takes a while) or stuff mushrooms with it (bingo!). I modified the cheese filling slightly by mincing the mushroom stems and a couple of cloves of garlic and cooking those together in a skillet with some EVOO until soft. Then I cooled them and mixed them with the leftover ravioli filling, stuffing the mushrooms from whence came the stems and baking them in a foil-lined pan for about 30 minutes at 375 degrees F. I thought they were absolutely delicious, but DH is not a huge fan of ricotta and prefers the cream cheese-based mushroom stuffing. WHATEVER. More mushrooms for me!

The salad bar tonight was chopped romaine, sliced cucumbers and the last of the carrots from my garden (sliced). Time to make way for the spring veggies!

Even MORE adventures in homemade pasta

Tonight's Menu

• homemade cheese ravioli
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I will be honest with you: I don't know that I'll be making homemade ravioli all that often in the future. It's not that it was difficult at all, but OMG, it was SO TIME-CONSUMING. I'm not sure the results were worth all the time that went into this dish. I mean, the ravioli was really good, but I don't know that it was two hours worth of good, you know?

ANYWAY, what I did was mix up a batch of pasta dough (two cups flour, one teaspoon salt, three eggs, whizz it all up in a food processor then wrap it in plastic and stick it in the fridge) and roll it out into sheets. That part was easy.

For the filling, I combined some whole-milk ricotta (if yours is runny or weepy, drain it first) with some shredded parmesan (NOT the stuff in the green can), chopped fresh parsley, salt and pepper. Also easy.

Then, I think I may have done something stupid. I'm pretty sure most people who are crazy enough to make ravioli at home dollop the filling onto the pasta sheets and then lay another sheet on top, sealing everything around the dollops of filling and then cutting the raviolis apart. But I'm such a doof, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get everything spaced out right. So I cut my pasta sheets into squares and made my raviolis one at a time and OH MY GOD, never again. It just took FOREVER, and they were kind of jacked-up looking. Maybe I just need practice.

But whatever, I boiled them in salted water for about five minutes and served them with my usual tomato sauce and they were fine. Really good, even! But holy cats, y'all. My back is killing me from all that ravioli assembly.

The salad bar was just romaine lettuce, sliced cucumbers, and sliced carrots from the garden.

Lamb pita FTW!

Tonight's Menu

• tiny spiced lamb meatballs w/tzatziki
  
• whole-wheat pita
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Hey, so I cooked lamb for the first time ever tonight and it was surprisingly (because as you longtime readers know, I don't have such a great track record with kitchen experimentation) delicious! It almost tasted like I knew what I was doing! Weird!

What I did was take a couple of cloves of garlic and some fresh herbs from my garden (mostly parsley, with a bit of oregano and mint -- my mint is JUST NOW coming back from winter) and whiz them up in a little mini food processor that I always forget I have. It made a sort of paste, which I added to 1.5 pounds of ground lamb, some salt and pepper, dried cumin and coriander, chili powder, garam masala, an egg and some dry bread crumbs. I formed it into teeny tiny meatballs, using about a teaspoon of lamb mixture for each ball, and put them on a foil-lined baking sheet. Then I popped them in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 25 minutes. (Digression -- I ALWAYS bake my meatballs instead of frying them. It's so much easier, and there's less to clean up. Plus they are lower in fat, without the added oil and whatnot. Try it!)

Oh, people. They were so good! Really aromatic without any one spice overpowering another. I only wish I had measured the spices, so I'd know how much to tell you to use if you make this. You'll just have to wing it like I did!

I had never made tzatziki before tonight, either. I know! I love it and could eat it on just about anything, but I've never actually MADE it, and it was so easy! All I did was peel and grate a bit of cucumber (I used the seedless kind, but if you use the regular just scrape out the seeds before grating) onto a paper towel, then wrap it all up and squeeze it over the sink to get most of the water out. Then I dumped the cucumber into a bowl and added a couple of very finely minced garlic cloves, the juice of half a lemon, and a bit of EVOO. I tossed that around with a fork to combine, then stirred in about a cup of Greek-style yogurt (I found this at my local SuperTarget, believe it or not) and a wee bit of salt to taste. I refrigerated it for a few hours to let the flavors meld before serving. It was really good, but I used a WEE bit too much garlic, I think. I'm sort of breathing fire now. At least I don't have to worry about vampire attacks for the next few days. Hee!

The pita was purchased. I've heard it's easy to make and keep meaning to try it, but not tonight!

The salad bar was chopped romaine lettuce, sliced green onions, sliced carrots from the garden, and the last of the cherry tomatoes.

What I did, and no one else really followed my example, was fill my pita with chopped romaine, top that with some meatballs, and drizzle some tzatziki on top. It was pure heaven, people. Thank goodness there were leftovers!

More adventures in pasta

Tonight's Menu

• homemade spaghetti w/quick meatless tomato sauce
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I am determined to get this homemade pasta thing right, y'all. After posting about my most recent attempt at it on my other blog, some kind readers offered tips and I incorporated those this time around with very satisfactory results!

I used the same recipe as last time (two cups flour, one teaspoon salt, three eggs -- is it weird that I have that memorized now?) but after rolling the dough through on a couple of different settings, I folded it in thirds and went back to a larger setting and rolled it through again before repeating the process a couple of times. This time I was able to get it to a #6 thickness before chickening out. My crappy pasta maker has a built-in cutter for spaghetti so I tried it and it worked! I tossed the strands with a bit of flour, then hung them on a kitchen towel over the back of a chair to dry for a couple of hours. They cooked up in about three minutes and were really, really good! Yay! Success!

The tomato sauce was my usual. And actually, it was left over from some purchased tortellini I made several days ago. It keeps well in the fridge.

Tonight's salad bar was chopped romaine and green leaf lettuces, sliced green onions, sliced carrots from the garden, and some tiny cherry tomatoes (I caved and bought some at the store, which I would not normally do this time of year, but I NEEDED tomatoes, y'all).

I am SO excited about this whole pasta thing, can you tell? If I ever get brave enough for homemade tortellini or ravioli, you all will be the first to know.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Tonight's Menu

• grilled chicken thighs
  
• whole-wheat couscous w/green onions
  
• green salad bar
• King cake!
• hurricanes!
  

Hey! Happy Mardi Gras, y'all!

I told myself I was going to wait until daylight saving time (only a week and a half away now!) to start grilling every damn thing but, well, I lied. To myself. It happens. It was sunny and in the low 80s today, people -- how am I supposed to resist grilling under those conditions?! I ask you.

So yeah, I grilled some chicken thighs. They were bone-in, skin on and I just sprinkled them on both sides with some garlic pepper and Jane's Krazy Salt. I grilled them skin-side-down over medium-high heat until the skin was nice and golden brown with sexy grill marks, then I flipped them skin-side up for a few minutes, then I moved them to an unlit burner (with the other two burners turned up to high heat) and left them alone for a good 45 minutes. So, so yummy! I swear, grilled chicken thighs make EVERYTHING better (even having two members of the family on antibiotics at the same time, oy).

The couscous was packaged. I just stirred in some sliced green onions before serving. Easy!

The salad bar tonight was green leaf lettuce, sliced carrots from the garden, and more sliced green onions.

The King cake was purchased at my local supermarket bakery this morning. I'm guessing not every grocery store in the nation rolls out the King cakes on Fat Tuesday. Gotta love the South, y'all! My supermarket's version of a King cake is really just a big cinnamon roll type thing with powdered sugar icing and colored sprinkles. It's SO good, though. I'm going to have more for breakfast tomorrow with my coffee!

I improvised the hurricanes. They are NOT traditional -- I was just working with what I had. But for what it's worth:

6 oz. pineapple juice
6 oz. orange juice
1 oz. grenadine
2 oz. silver rum
2 oz. dark rum
2 oz. spiced rum (Bacardi 151 is traditional, but I didn't have any)

Shake all ingredients together and serve over crushed ice in hurricane glasses with straws. Makes about 2 or 3 depending on how big your glasses are and how much ice you use.

Woo! I am stuffed. Fat Tuesday, indeed!

Pasta & 'shrooms

Tonight's Menu

• spaghetti w/mushroom-herb sauce
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I am in such a rut with pasta that I usually don't even bother to tell you when I make it. I tend to do one of three things with it: spaghetti with my quickie tomato sauce, some sort of pasta shapes (penne, usually) with Knorr Parma Rosa sauce (a packet of powder to which you add milk and butter), or any sort of pasta with just butter and shredded cheese mixed in.

I know, right? BORING.

So tonight I decided to experiment. I know what you're thinking -- that NEVER ends well, at least for me -- but this time it came out pretty darn tasty! As usual I didn't measure anything, but here's essentially what I did.

First I sliced some crimini mushrooms (these are sometimes called baby bellas) and minced some fresh garlic. I melted some butter over medium heat in a skillet, tossing in the mushrooms and garlic and letting them sweat out fairly slowly without picking up any color. Then I added some fresh thyme, some minced fresh rosemary, salt and pepper and just tossed it around a bit (this smelled AMAZING) before adding in some heavy cream (left over from the pork and gnocchi the other night). I let that simmer over low heat until the cream had thickened just a bit. Then I drained the spaghetti (which had been cooking all this time) and dumped it right into the skillet with the mushroom sauce. Toss, throw on some chopped fresh parsley, and serve! This was really pretty darn tasty and a nice change from our usual boring pasta dinners!

The salad was still boring, though -- just green leaf lettuce and sliced carrots from the garden. We ate up the last of the CSA greenhouse tomatoes last night when I made hamburgers so this salad was even more bare than usual!

Cookbooks to the rescue!

Tonight's Menu

• mustardy pork chops w/gnocchi
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Whoops! Didn't mean to disappear on you for a couple of weeks there. Would you believe I got sick AGAIN? This time with some nasty fever virus thing that mutated into a sinus infection. Fun! So yeah, there's been a whole lot of takeout pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches happening around here.

HOWEVER, tonight I did something different. I have a metric ton of cookbooks but I've realized lately that I hardly ever actually cook from them! Determined to remedy that, I was flipping through Nigella Express looking for something that would use ingredients I already had on hand and came up with this one. It wasn't bad -- I don't usually cook bone-in chops in a skillet without braising them because they always end up tough and dry, and these did, but the sauce made up for it somewhat. The gnocchi were just packaged (I DID have to go out and buy those, and the cream), boiled quickly and then tossed in the mustard cream sauce.

Tonight's salad was just green leaf lettuce, wedged tomatoes (greenhouse-grown, from our last CSA box) and sliced carrots (from my garden!).

Did I tell you all we let our CSA subscription expire? We picked up our last box last week. We just weren't keeping up with the supply of vegetables, and I HATED wasting them. I've decided to redouble my efforts to feed us from my backyard garden, along with making more frequent trips to our local farmer's market(s) and food co-op. We'll still be eating local food as much as possible, never fear!

Just like Mom used to make

Tonight's Menu

• beef roast with veggies
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I've had some sort of rotten head cold for the past several days and now that I feel good enough to actually cook dinner, I want comfort food! I had a big hunk o' beef in the fridge and a bunch of veggies in the crisper, so I decided to make a pot roast similar to the way I remember my mom making it when I was a kid. (I could have actually called her to get the recipe, I suppose, but I enjoy trying to reconstruct dishes from memory. I'm weird, I know.)

ANYWAY. What I did was generously season my hunk o' beef on both sides with salt and pepper, then brown it in a big enameled cast-iron dutch oven. After removing the pan from the heat, I arranged some red-skinned potatoes, yellow onions, celery and carrots, all cut in fairly large chunks, around the meat. Then I poured in some wine (a Malbec, I think -- something red, anyway) and sprinkled on maybe a tablespoon of whole peppercorns before nestling some fresh thyme sprigs and bay leaves in amongst the veggies. After that I covered the pot, stuck it in the oven, and let it cook for about three hours at 325 degrees F. It was delicious! Mom would be proud.

I put the roast and veggies in the oven right after picking up the girl child from school, and there was absolutely nothing else I had to do (for dinner) for the rest of the afternoon/evening except make the salad! How easy is THAT?

Oh, and the salad was just green leaf lettuce, shredded carrots, sliced radishes from the CSA, and wedges of tomato (ditto).

Couscous FTW!

Tonight's Menu

• citrus shrimp w/couscous
  
• green salad "bar"
  

For the past two nights we've been eating pork spare ribs (with chuffed potatoes the first night, beer bread the second night, and coleslaw BOTH nights) so tonight I wanted something light. Or lightER, anyway.

So, I had two pounds of raw, peeled, deveined, individually quick-frozen shrimp, which I thawed in a colander by running cool water over them. Super easy.

I juiced two oranges (from the CSA) and two limes (from the grocery store), added three minced garlic cloves and a couple of tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) and marinated the shrimp in this mixture on the counter for about 15 minutes while I made the salad. ALSO super easy!

Then all I did was cook the shrimp in a skillet with EVOO in a couple of batches before setting them aside in a serving bowl covered with foil to keep them warm. I dumped the rest of the marinade into the skillet along with a couple of green onions that had been thinly sliced on the diagonal and brought that to a boil, letting it reduce a bit and seasoning it with some salt to taste. Then I added the shrimp back to the pan, tossed them around in the sauce to coat, and drizzled on just a TEENY bit of raw, local honey (Goodflow, for you Austinites) before dumping them back into the serving bowl along with the sauce.

The couscous was a whole-wheat, organic variety that I prepared according to package directions. Timing-wise, I started the couscous while the skillet was heating up for the shrimp, then dumped the first batch of shrimp into the skillet when I turned off the heat for the couscous. If that makes sense. It will if you have a package of couscous handy.

The salad bar was just organic green leaf lettuce, sliced organic cucumbers, and shredded organic carrots. I know, with the organic! Here is the thing: we hardly ever eat out, so the money we save not eating in restaurants lets us buy organic produce more often than not. I'm not going to insist YOU do that, I'm just telling you what WE do and how we manage it. Organic produce ain't cheap, yo.

This meal got an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the entire family, which is INCREDIBLY rare around here. Even DH, who is a self-proclaimed couscous-hater, declared that it worked great for soaking up the yummy shrimp sauce and really complimented the dish. YES!

I am SO full of myself right now, I can't even tell you.

Skillet supper

Tonight's Menu

• sausage and potato skillet with cabbage and onions
  
• green salad "bar"
  

This was one of those "throw it together" suppers. I honestly had no idea what I was going to make until about five minutes before it was time to start dinner. Thank goodness for a well-stocked refrigerator!

I had some smoked beef sausage -- the kind that comes in a big ring, usually found near the kielbasa in the supermarket -- so I sliced some of that up and tossed it in a big skillet over medium-high heat with a little bit of canola oil. When the sausage started to brown, I added one small yellow onion cut into chunks and maybe 6-8 very small red-skinned potatoes cut into quarters. Once the onions and potatoes had picked up a little color I added about a cup of chopped green cabbage (you could use any kind, really) and snipped in some fresh rosemary. I stirred this around for a bit before grinding on some fresh pepper (I didn't add salt because the sausage was salty), then I added a couple of tablespoons of water to the pan, covered it, and turned the heat down to low to let it all simmer until the potatoes were tender (this took about 15 minutes).

This is one of my favorite comfort meals -- sausage, potatoes, onions and whatever veggies are lying around, all tossed together in a skillet. It's definitely not DH's favorite, but guess what, y'all? The boy child had THIRDS of this! He was crazy about it! I'm pretty sure he wouldn't even TOUCH it the last time I made it, but that was quite a while ago. Kids! They keep you guessing, that's for sure!

The salad tonight was just green leaf lettuce, shredded carrots, and sliced cucumber (out of season, and you have no idea how it pains me to buy it, but DH and the kids insisted).

Fall supper

Tonight's Menu

• pork chops with apples & onions
  
• steamed potatoes with brown butter
  
• green salad "bar"
  

It finally looks and feels like late fall around here, what with the brown leaves and the chilly dampness and whatnot. I am all about pork, onions and apples in the fall.

What I did was season some boneless pork chops with salt and pepper and then brown them in a skillet with just a wee bit of EVOO. I removed the chops and set them aside, then added sliced Granny Smith apples and onion slivers to the pan, tossing until they had picked up a bit of color. Then I poured in maybe half a cup of water (you could use cider, white wine, stock, whatever) and added some fresh thyme and thinly sliced fresh sage leaves. I laid the chops on top of the apple/onion mixture, covered the pan, and let everything simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes. SO yummy!

For the potatoes, I cut some small red-skinned potatoes (you could use any waxy potato) into quarters and steamed them in the microwave. While they were steaming I put a couple of tablespoons of butter into a small pan on the stovetop over medium heat, swirling the pan every so often until the butter had melted and JUST started to turn a golden brown. You'll need to watch it really closely so the butter doesn't burn -- you want to catch it just at the point where it starts to turn golden. I sprinkled some chopped fresh parsley over the potatoes, drizzled them with the brown butter, sprinkled on some salt and then tossed everything to coat. These were really good and a nice change from our usual chuffed potatoes.

Tonight's salad bar was butter lettuce from the CSA, grated carrots, sliced cucumber and fresh snow peas. Easy!

Can you tell I'm making an effort to cook with more herbs from my herb garden lately? This time of year I tend to rely on rosemary and thyme exclusively, forgetting that I have a bunch of other stuff out there that isn't dead yet! The sage was a nice accompaniment to the apples, onions and pork; and the parsley really brightened up the potatoes. Now I need to find something to do with fennel tops -- mine are going nuts!

CSA day

Tonight's Menu

• cold boiled shrimp
  
• sauteed tatsoi with garlic
• green salad "bar"
  

We've already discussed this shrimp, and the salad was just green leaf lettuce, grated carrots and sliced cucumbers, so let's get right to the tatsoi!

This stuff showed up in our CSA box today and it was a new one on me. I had never even HEARD of it before, much less cooked or eaten it. I googled for recipes and most of them featured Asian flavors, which wouldn't work for us due to DH and the girl child being violently allergic to soy. After manhandling the raw veg for a bit it seemed to me that this stuff was vaguely spinach-like, so I decided to season it the way I would spinach.

What I did was cut the tatsoi, stems and leaves, into maybe 3/4-inch pieces. Then I minced two huge cloves of garlic. I sauteed the tatsoi and garlic in a skillet with EVOO, seasoning with a tiny bit of lemon zest (from the first lemon off our "improved" Meyer lemon tree!), some crushed red pepper flakes, and a bit of kosher salt. I only sauteed it until the stem pieces were tender -- this did not take long at all. Then I served it up, and I'm here to tell you, it was goooood! The boy thought there was too much garlic, but I'm of the opinion that there's NO SUCH THING. The lemon zest gave it a bit of brightness and the pepper flakes added just the right amount of zing. Yum!

I LOVE it when my cooking experiments actually work out. It doesn't happen very often, you know.

Which is to say, no more OUTDOOR grilling

Tonight's Menu

• grilled NY strip steaks
  
• baked potatoes
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Hey, I almost forgot I have this nifty IKEA grill pan thingie! So I can still grill SOME things; I just have to do it inside, on the stovetop.

These NY strip steaks were about an inch thick. I just seasoned both sides with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, then popped them onto the grill pan for about 4 minutes per side. I let them rest for a good 5 minutes or so, tented with foil, to come up to medium rare before serving. Easy!

Potatoes were baked in the oven and served with butter, sour cream, shredded cheddar and crumbled bacon. Also easy!

Tonight's salad was green leaf lettuce with shredded carrots, sliced cucumber, and sliced radishes from the CSA. Easy some more!

Sometimes the simple things are best, yo.

Bison loaf!

Tonight's Menu

• meatloaf
  
• twice-cooked potatoes
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Okay, I'm just going to come right out and say this: I've been buying ground bison instead of ground beef. Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. My local supermarket carries it and it doesn't cost much more per pound than the "natural" ground beef I had been buying, plus it's supposed to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol AND it's free of growth hormones and antibiotics. Best of all, it's darn tasty!

So this meatloaf was made with ground bison. I didn't measure anything -- just tossed a pound of ground meat into a large plastic zipper bag, then dumped in some dry bread crumbs, an egg, some chopped onion, some chopped fresh parsley, garlic powder, salt and freshly ground pepper. I also added about a tablespoon of bottled barbecue sauce, just for grins. Then I kneaded the bag until everything was mixed thoroughly.

I prepared my loaf pan by spraying it with cooking spray, then covering the bottom with a sprinkling of brown sugar and a drizzle of ketchup. I read a recipe years ago for meatloaf prepared with this sweet glaze on the bottom of the pan, and I've been making it that way ever since. It sounds weird, but it's so good! Anyhoodle, then I dumped the meat mixture into the pan and, just because I was feeling EXTRA NAUGHTY, I layered strips of bacon on top. (I know, right? I'm pretty sure I negated any health benefits of using bison vs. beef in this recipe, but whatever.) Then I just popped it in the oven at 375 degrees F for about an hour. It was really yummy -- I haven't made meatloaf in forever and it's a total comfort food for me. Perfect for a day when I was feeling kind of gross.

The potatoes were a variation on my usual chuffed potatoes, except that this time I used russet potatoes (instead of the waxier red-skinned variety) and cut them into bigger chunks. I simmered them for about 20 minutes in a pan of water, as usual, then cooked them again in a hot skillet with butter to get them nice and brown and crispy on the outside. I also sprinkled in a bit of garlic powder along with the usual salt and pepper at the end. Delish!

Tonight's salad bar was mixed lettuces (I had a moment of weakness and bought a bag of salad mix last week when DH was out of town and it was just me and the kids at home) with sliced green onions, sliced celery, and thinly sliced carrots on the side.

Short ribs!

Tonight's Menu

• slow-cooked beef short ribs
  
• steamed rice
  
• green salad "bar"
  

It's finally fall, and that means short ribs! Our favorite recipe is this one from Allrecipes.com. They slow-cook in the crockpot all day -- what could be easier? I used boneless short ribs and thickened the gravy on the stovetop instead of in the slow-cooker (my crockpot is ancient and doesn't do high heat well), but otherwise I followed the recipe exactly. Yummy!

The rice was steamed in the microwave, and the salad was left over from last night. WAY easy!

A lovely night to grill

Tonight's Menu

• grilled pork chops
  
• crispy potatoes and onions
  
• garlicky grilled zucchini
  
• green salad "bar"
  

It's been SO NICE in the evenings here lately. Temperatures in the upper 70s or low 80s, no humidity, and now that the sun has moved south, my back patio and grill are once again in the shade for the later part of the day. Heaven!

Soo, I have been grilling. These were pork loin chops on the bone, which I just sprinkled with Jane's Krazy Salt and garlic pepper, then grilled over high heat for about 4 minutes per side. SO yummy!

The potatoes were a variation on my "chuffed" potatoes, but with onions added. I get a lot of requests for detailed instructions on the chuffed potatoes, so here is exactly what I did. First, I cut several small red-skinned potatoes in half. You could also cut them in quarters or eighths depending on how big they are. Put them in a pot and add enough water to cover the potatoes by about an inch. Then put them on the stove, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer them for about 15 or 20 minutes before draining off the water. You want them pretty tender, but not mushy.

Then melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a skillet and add the drained potatoes. (I also added half of an onion, cut into slivers, this time but you could leave that out.) Toss the potatoes around in the butter over medium-high heat until a nice brown crust forms on the outside. The more violently you toss them around, the more crust you'll get. Once they've gone nice and golden brown on the outside, season with salt and pepper and serve! They should be soft on the inside -- if not, then you didn't simmer them long enough in the first step. Of course, you can adjust that to your liking if you prefer a firmer potato.

That's all there is to chuffed potatoes!

For the zucchini, I bashed up a couple of garlic cloves in my mortar and pestle, along with a little kosher salt. This acts as an abrasive and makes it easier to really smush the garlic into a pulverized paste. Then I mixed a bit of EVOO in with that to make a really garlicky oil. I cut a couple of zucchini into quarter-inch slices lengthwise, brushed them on both sides with the garlicky oil, then sprinkled with a bit of pepper. Grill them off for maybe 2 minutes per side over high heat and they're done! The boy LOVED these and I don't think I've ever seen him eat zucchini before except in quinoa pilaf!

Tonight's salad bar was torn green leaf lettuce, sliced celery, shredded carrots and wedges of tomato from the CSA. My kids STILL stubbornly refuse to eat salad since I switched from the pre-bagged greens. But DH and I are loving our salads lately!