A Pot Pie by Any Other Name...

So I started off with a plan--lots of veggies, chicken, a savory sauce, a nice top layer of crust. I even had two different recipes marked to follow, but as is typical, I wandered off and made something pretty unrecognizable to the makers of the recipe. The one really appealing factor in this recipe is that while I ate it all week long (it made enough for 11 lunches/dinners, and I added veggies to my eggs a couple of breakfasts as well), there was quite a bit of variation in what was on my plate. A versatile base, with lots of ways to build off of it. Take this as a model and build your own!

Ingredients:

 Veggies:

1 small acorn squash
8 oz baby bella mushrooms
1 red pepper
1 red onion
2 bunches asparagus
4 small carrots
4 stalks celery
1 large head cauliflower
2 small bunches broccoli
4 small red skinned potatoes 
1 clove roasted garlic

Meat:

2 chicken thighs
2 chicken breasts

Sauce:

chicken broth
1 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
3 tbs flour
1 1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp ground mustard
1 tbs spicy brown mustard
dash cayenne pepper
Salt and Pepper to taste

The first step is epic amounts of chopping--each vegetable needs to be diced pretty small, so it will be small in the pie. I had pre-roasted the squash and cooled and peeled it. Once that was prepped, I heated the butter in the pan and added the butter and oil to make a roux. That cooked until nice and golden, and I whisked in the broth and the seasonings and let thicken. Then I added the longer cooking veggies--the carrots, potatoes, onions, celery, peppers, mushrooms, cauliflower. The chicken was chopped and added along with some more broth (I shouldn't have added as much as I did, next time I'd go easier on it.) This cooked down until the chicken lost that pinkness, and I added the broccoli, asparagus, and squash. This continued until the chicken was fully cooked, and the veggies had a little bite.

I divided the mixture into individual oven proof dishes (a new purchase that I LOVE--got them BOGO in a 6 oz and 12 oz sizes) After I'd split them up, I changed my mind and ended up just cooking 4 pies the first day and baking off 3-4 at a time through the week. The rest of the filling went into the fridge.

I used 4 completely different toppings for my top only pies--phyllo dough sheets, cauliflower mash, yogurt biscuits, and cornbread stuffing. The most successful, in my opinion, for eating over the week were the ones topped with the mash and the stuffing. Each baked for 15-20 minutes until the tops were done.

The Verdict: This is a comfort food classic for a reason--it is warm and satisfying. The variety of veggies provide a nice contrast of textures and flavors, and it allowed me to give into my desire to experiment whole heartedly. I love that I can eat a huge bowl of veggies, and have room for a biscuit or stuffing!

Yogurt Harissa Marinated Chicken and Veg

 So once I made that lovely pot of harissa I wanted to find ways to use it, so I found a way to add it to one of my very favorite dishes roasted veg and chicken. I ate masses of roasted veg and chicken the entire time I was losing weight, though usually I did more of a southwest flavor. The thing I love about this is that you can have a lovely large portion of veggies with a little protein and the whole thing can be eaten in a whole bunch of ways over the course of the week.

Ingredients:

1 giant eggplant
3 medium/small zucchini
1 medium yellow onion
2 bunches of asparagus
1 1/2 cups butternut squash
8 oz baby bella mushrooms
2 large chicken breasts
2 small chicken thighs, skin and bone removed.

Marinade 

2 cups greek yogurt
3 tablespoons harrisa
lemon zest and lemon juice
1 cup cilantro chopped
1 tsp ras al haunot
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander ground
salt and pepper




This is a pretty basic recipe. Mix the harissa with the yogurt, spices, and lemon. Chop the chicken and veggies and toss them all in the yogurt marinade. I did do the chicken earlier than the veggies and did it separately because I didn't want the veggies to break down or spend as much time with the chicken juices. I stuck them all in the fridge for a couple of hours until I was ready to eat.





I put all the veggies on sheet pans lined with foil and stuck them in a 395 degree oven. I cooked them for 10 minutes and then added the chicken and asparagus I had reserved (since it doesn't need as long to cook), and cooked for another 20 minutes, or until the chicken looked done.

The Verdict: This simple dish has so much flavor from the harrisa, the lemon, and all the spices--the chicken is incredibly tender and moist, and the veggies are good cold or hot. I served it with a wedge of my crusty 4 grain bread, and have been eating it all week. I made enough for lunches and dinners, and have yet to get sick of the incredible flavors and textures. The eggplant is really flavorful, and the squashes are tender, and it is just one of those easy dishes that tastes so much better than the amount of effort it takes to prepare--plus it is super healthy!

Sunshine Salad

Pickle and Pineapple Gelatin from Mid-Century Menu

So I have a confession, I really love reading about vintage recipes, especially blogs where people go back and make the recipes again in all their disgusting glory. But I'm a coward. I don't want to make something that I don't want to eat--and I just don't want to eat something like pickles in my jello. I do like jello quite a bit--I even have a really awesome retro jello cookbook, with spinners to select the perfect jello to go with each meal. But almost all of them call for fruit cocktail or ketchup, neither of which I have. So today I just decided to be inspired by the retro recipes and make something new. Next time I'll make a special trip and get the ingredients and try one of the dishes in my cookbook, I promise to work up the courage. I may not eat it all, though, can't promise that!

So here's my modernized sunshine jello salad--to accompany my beef tagine.

Ingredients:
1 sml pkg sugar free lime gelatin
1 sml pkg sugar free lemon jello
half a pkg flavorless gelatin
1/2+ cup shredded pineapple
1/2+ cup blueberries
1/2+ cup fresh mango chopped
extra lime and lemon zest



So I have been collecting these lovely molds at the thrift store for the last little while--they are usually under a dollar and are fun and different. This one I like because it is not too big and has a fun and unspecific shape (not a lobster or heart). So this is pretty simple--mix up the lime jello, using about a half cup less water and add a little of the unflavored gelatin (it helps it hold its shape). That goes into the fridge to start to set.

Once that layer has started to solidify add the mango, then mix up the lemon layer--I used some of the pineapple juice in place of some of the water and let it start to thicken and add the pineapple and pour on top of the lime layer. That goes in the fridge to chill--once it has started to set I added some blueberries.

I added a little too much extra gelatin and it set up a lot quicker than I anticipated, so I didn't get the mango in before it had started to set. But on the plus side it took barely 2 hours from start to finish to completely set enough to be unmolded. That is really one of the best parts of making a jello mold--seeing it pop out all jiggly and pretty. To loosen from the mold I dip the outside in a bowl filled with warm water and run a knife gently around the edge. Sloshing it back and forth and then inverting onto a plate and here it goes!



The Verdict: If you like jello and fruit you will like this, because that is basically what it is. I topped mine with some whipped cream from a can and pretended I was living it up in 1965. It could use some more fruit, but I ate a lot of the mango before it made it to the salad.  It was very pretty, and I ate it all up really quickly. Big yum!

A Morrocan Beef and Vegetable Tagine

So I'm once again venturing outside of my cookbooks and my comfort zone to try something new and different. Inspired by my bright and sunny jar of lemons slowly being salted on the counter top, I ventured to North Africa to make a rich and savory Tagine--though I should say a stew since I made it in my crock pot not one of these gorgeous dishes. I don't have any cookbooks with Morrocan recipes in it, but with two key ingredients in mind and a little google-fu I found a bunch of ideas and made this dish up as I went along. This is largely inspired by Jamie Oliver's recipe as interpreted by this blog post. I made a number of changes and additions--but it is essentially a stew, so it is pretty flexible!

Ingredients:

12 oz beef sirloin steak
1 1/2 lbs butternut squash pealed and chopped
2 cans diced tomatos
3 cups vegetable broth
1 yellow onion
1 medium head cauliflower
1 large egg plant
4 cloves garlic
1 small bunch cilantro
Sea Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper
2 tsp  Ras El Hanout Spice mix
2 tsp ground Cumin
2 tsp ground Cinnamon
2 tsp ground Ginger
2 tsp Sweet Paprika
Harissa to taste

 The first step is to prepare the dry rub. I was surprised to find the ras el hanout at Winco--and it was 2$ for the whole jar--that is not a lot! I had the rest of the spices--though this cleans me out of cumin and ginger, both of which I use a lot of in my cooking. I cut the steak up into cubes and tossed it in the spice rub. Ideally, I would have left it in the fridge for the seasoning to really infuse the meat. But I didn't get going until too late--and it was only in the fridge for about an hour.

The meat is lightly browned on all sides and then diced onion is added along with the chopped stems of the cilantro. These are sauteed until they slightly softened and then I slowly added the broth to de-glaze the pan. There was so much of the spices that sort of stuck to the pan that this was an important step--it toasted the spices and got them into the broth, which thickened it.

At this point I poured it all into the slow-cooker, along with two cans of diced tomatoes. The original recipe called for garbanzo beans, but I felt like I had enough protein with the beef and enough fiber from all the veggies. That got stirred up pretty well, and cooked for two hours on high. While that cooked I pealed and chopped the butternut squash and cut and salted the eggplant.

I added half of the butternut squash after 2 hours of cooking, and the rest after 3.5 hours. This allowed some to really break down and become part of the sauce, while some still had some texture left at the end. I also added some of the harissa to the pot to increase the spice.

While that continued to cook, I chopped the cauliflower and tossed it with some harrisa and lemon juice to marinate before being added to the pot. That went into the pot at the same time as the rest of the butternut squash. The eggplant, which doesn't need as much time to cook was added at about 4.5 hours.

At this point it was almost 9 p.m. and I was pretty hungry--though I'd been nibbling on the butternut squash and tasting the beef all along. I stirred in more harrisa, and served it with some chopped fresh cilantro on top. Total cooking time was 6 hrs on high, though it should have gone a bit more. to get the beef equally tender.

The Verdict: This is a rich and hearty stew--with very complex and developed flavors from all of the time cooking. The veggies provide a variety of textures, from some very soft butternut squash, to the cauliflower that still has some bite. Some of the beef was really tender and some was still pretty chewy--I think this is more the type of beef I used, I should have gotten more of a fatty cut and cooked longer and lower. It was still very good and I'm excited to play around with these flavors!

Colorful Cauliflower 2 Ways

The first thing I ever made with cauliflower was a quick and simple soup--healthy and delicious. This is a variation of that first soup I made, a little more fancy, with a lot of flavor. I found colored cauliflower on sale at Winco and couldn't decide between the purple or the orange, so I bought both! I didn't want to put them both in the soup, because that sounded like a grey gross disaster, so I cooked them in two ways and combined at the end. This recipe is my invention, though I've taken inspiration from a few places.

Ingredients:

2 medium heads cauliflower
8 oz brown mushrooms
1 yellow onion
1 thai chili
10 oz chopped spinach defrosted
5 cups homemade chicken stock
Chinese 5 spice powder
1 head garlic
1 tsp olive oil
2 chicken breasts, 2 chicken thighs
12 oz plain greek yogurt
rice wine vinegar




I added about 1 tablespoon of the five spice powder to the yogurt and a few splashes of the vinegar to thin it out. That was poured over the chicken and half of the mushrooms, and the purple cauliflower that I sliced into thick slices. That marinated for a while to work the flavors in. I saw this technique on an Alton Brown Good Eats episode, though I didn't follow his specific recipe or even the full technique, which used a cooling rack and water under it to steam the cauliflower.

After that marinated, I placed the purple cauliflower and half of the mushrooms and the chicken thighs on a cookie sheet greased and lined with tinfoil. I covered the pan and placed it in a preheated 375 degree oven for 10 minutes and then removed the foil to continue cooking. I also roasted a head of garlic

While that was cooking, I chopped up the onion , pepper, and mushrooms and sautéed them in a pan to soften and then added the chicken breast to the pan to cook. At the same time I heated up the chicken stock in a large pan with some of the Chinese 5 spice and once it came to a boil I added the orange cauliflower roughly chopped into somewhat even pieces. It will be pureed so it doesn't matter really how it looks, just so it cooks evenly. That cooked for about 8 minutes, or until tender but not mushy.

Once the cauliflower was cooked, I drained the broth into a container to keep for thinning the soup. Then I added in the chicken mixture, and the drained spinach and the head of roasted garlic. Then I used the immersion blender to puree it, adding in the broth a bit at a time so it was fully incorporated. It was pretty thick, so I ended up adding more water to get a good consistency and then letting it simmer for a while.



The purple cauliflower came out of the oven once it was soft with some crispy browning (I did turn them all over about midway in the process) The chicken took quite a bit longer, which I wasn't prepared for, but I've not a lot of experience cooking chicken thighs on the bone. The cauliflower and mushrooms were very good and I snacked on quite a bit!

I served the soup on the bottom, topped with some of the cauliflower, mushrooms, and chicken thighs.

The Verdict: Spicy and delicious, with a rich and hearty taste and enough texture and heft to really fill you up. This is a cauliflower soup that I don't mind eating all week long. I have made this before many times, using squash instead of spinach or roasted red pepper or kale. But this is the first time I did the roasted cauliflower and homemade stock, it really elevated the dish to a new level of deliciousness. Either way this is my go to cauliflower soup recipe.

What a Croc! Giving the slo-cooker another chance

They want a 2nd chance, after a head bump

So I love the idea of turning on the crock pot when I leave for work and coming back to dinner ready to go--but both times I've tried it the food did not turn out well. Over cooked chicken one time and bitter parsnips and overcooked chicken the second time. Blogs and books sing the praises of the crock pot--and I so want it to work. So I'm going to give it another chance--this time with chili, a dish traditionally cooked for a long time. My plan is to prepare the pot on Sunday and keep it in the fridge to put on Tuesday morning with a timer to start two hours after I leave.So it will cook only 8 and not 10 hours, and then throw the fresh veggies in before I go to a water aerobics class Tuesday night, so when I get back it will be ready!

Chili is one of those dishes where recipes are hard for me to follow--I like it spicy, with lots of veggies and beans. I'm going to use chicken, because I already have it, and black and kidney beans because that is what I have. One of my cookbooks--Robin to the Rescue--has a recipe for a crock pot chili, and while I'm not following it (it is a Cincinnati style with cinnamon and not much spice), she did mention that it could be made two days before and stored in the fridge before cooking.

Ingredients:

1 can (15oz) black beans
1 can (15oz) kidney beans
3 cans (14.5oz) tomatoes (I used fire roasted, with jalapenos, and with chili seasonings)
1 can whole tomatos strained (this was the cherry tomatoes I mistakenly bought for the tomato soup)
1 green bell pepper
2 chicken breasts (about 1.75 lbs)
1 medium onion
1 bag frozen cubed butternut squash
1 pkt chili powder--I used parts of hot and regular
3 cloves garlic
2-3 chipolte in adobo
vegetable stock

This was pretty easy to throw together--lots of cans to open and combine! I drained and rinsed the black and kidney beans, and added them and the three cans of tomatoes to my crock pot. I roughly chopped the green pepper and the onion, and tossed it in with the frozen squash. I chopped the chipolte and tossed it in as well--I have never cooked with it before so I had to try it--SPICY but smokey and yummy! I stirred in the powders and grated the garlic. The chicken was cut in large cubes and added.

Because it was so thick and my pot is so large, I added some broth and some of the drained tomato juice. This should make a TON of chili--it is a good thing I just cleaned out my freezer! I have room in there for some of this yumminess.

So this morning I pulled it out of the fridge, gave it a stir, plugged it in, set it on low for 8 hours, and left for work with some trepidation. I always think I'm going to burn my apartment down when I do this. Fortunately, when I came home some 9.5 hours later my house smelled delicious, and not like smoke (well a little like delicious smoke.) I pulled out the chicken chunks, shredded them, and stirred them back in the pot.

 It smelled so good, but was a little more liquid than I would have thought after all that cooking. I guess the crock pot keeps a lot of the moisture from evaporating, and a lot of liquid must have come out of the veggies and chicken. Interestingly, I had thrown in a package of frozen chopped butternut squash, because I thought it would handle the long cooking well and add some veggies. But it cooked down and completely disappeared into the broth, but it added an important flavor component, so I'm not sad I added it.

As for toppings, I added a scoop of plain Greek yogurt, and some shredded chipolte cheddar. But I think it would be great with some cilantro, sour cream, guacamole, or even corn chips. I just wanted to dig into this chili and enjoy!

The Verdict:

This is a definite win for the crock pot--the end result was spicy, but with smokey and sweet notes from the chipolte and butternut squash. I'd read that the long cooking muted the flavors so I added plenty of chilies, in the tomatoes, in the seasonings, and with the chipoltes. I cut the peppers and onions into pretty big pieces and was surprised at how well they held up to the cooking--I could still get some texture to them. As I noted earlier, the butternut squash flavor was not apparent, besides in some sweetness and in the texture. It made a huge batch--I'll be eating this for the next week--with some spaghetti squash, with eggs, and anything else I can think of. It should also freeze well.