Salads can make a great meal. Especially when it starts to get warm out, or if you’ve had a lot of heavy meals or just been eating without a lot of fresh ingredients in your diet. They often hit the spot. I try to target …
Curry is something that I never really got into until later in life. It always seemed so vague and broad of a topic. Regional curries, colors of curries, powdered curries, curry pastes … where do you even start? Aside from that, I hadn’t really eaten …
I’m always on the lookout for recipes that call for humble ingredients and use them really well. Coq au vin, translated “chicken in wine,” is a traditional French dish. I’ve only made coq au vin twice – once a white wine recipe and the second a red wine. I am no expert – just now discovering the variations of this dish – but this is a recipe worth keeping around. I was first inspired to try it when I came across it in a special edition of Gourmet magazine showcasing comfort foods dating back to Winter 2016. In the issue, they published a white wine recipe version with crème fraiche. We really enjoyed the recipe, and I’ll share that soon. But today, I’m sharing a red wine version of coq au vin.
Pat the chicken pieces dry with paper towels and then season well with salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to 350F.
Cook the bacon over medium heat until crispy. Set aside.
In a large Dutch oven (I use an enamel coated Le Creuset, but there are many suitable brands out there), brown the chicken pieces in batches over medium to medium high heat until golden brown on each side. This should take ~5 minutes per side. Remove the chicken and set aside.
Sauté the mushrooms over medium heat until lightly softened and browned, about 5 minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside. Repeat process with the pearl onions, and set aside. Sauté garlic for 30 seconds or so until aromatic. Add 1/2 the bacon, the chicken, red wine, cognac, broth, tomato paste, Dijon, balsamic, fresh and dried thyme, bay leaves, carrots, salt and pepper. Cover and place in the 350F oven for 30 minutes. If adding potatoes, add them at the same time so that they can cook through. After 30 minutes has passed, check the temperature of the chicken parts - I find that the legs take a little bit longer to cook through.
In a bowl, mix butter and flour together into a paste. Once the stew is finished cooking, place the Dutch oven on a burner to simmer. Add the mushrooms and onions and use a whisk to incorporate the flour/butter mixture into the sauce. Simmer for 8-10 minutes until the sauce is thickened and delicious. Garnish with remaining bacon and fresh parsley.
This dish can be served over mashed potatoes or with steamed creamer potatoes. We opted to add potatoes into the pot when it went into the oven.
Inspired by:
Gourmet Magazine
Feasting At Home
Week 2 of this 4-week series brings me to a recipe that I can say is actually mine. I made it up with inspiration from a couple of different food experiences, but I’ve not seen this recipe on the internet anywhere, with the exception of …
One of my husband’s hobbies, skills, and crafts is bread making. As I’m typing this, my laptop “stand” is a stack of 4 bread making books detailing the process in different ways. I will have him on here to share his sourdough breadmaking and bagel …
All of us have recipes that we find and make over and over again. They’re classic staples for our menus. Recipes that we can return to and be just as pleased with as the first time we made it. In this 4-week series, I’ll be sharing mine.
I came across this pan roasted chicken recipe on a flight a number of years ago. I think it was shared through an in-flight food show. It was a series where chefs shared what their “go-to”, at-home recipes are.
I love recipes where you can use a whole chicken. There’s something about cutting up the chicken yourself, getting to partake in all the different cuts in one dish, and having the chicken back, carcass, and wing tips as an added bonus to make stock with later. It satisfies the frugal, use everything, and get an excellent quality stock out of it part of me. In addition to all of this, pan roasted chicken feels fancy, even when it’s actually quite easy. And the red onions and lemon slices combined with the pan juices and then topped with the charred scallion vinaigrette make this dish cravable and super satisfying. I would say it’s on my top 5 recipes that I love to make and love to eat, even more.
This is one of my classic recipes - a dish that I'll make over and over again until I'm gone. It's that good!
Place lemon and red onion slices in a large gallon size Ziploc bag. Add rosemary and thyme, salt, and olive oil to the bag. Close the bag and mix contents until combined. Add the chicken pieces to the bag, seal tightly and mix to combine. Marinate at room temp for 30-45 minutes or in the refrigerator for up to 2 hours. The acidity in the lemon will prevent you from wanting to marinate longer than 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 450F. Heat a large pan (I use one with higher sides to ensure it'll fit all of the contents of the bag) over medium heat. Add 2 TBSP olive oil to the pan and roast the chicken in batches, just until it gets nicely colored on both sides. Add all chicken bag to the pan, along with all the remaining contents of the ziploc. Place the pan in the oven and cook for 30-45 minutes. You'll want to use a thermometer to ensure the chicken is cooked through. The legs take the longest, but you can pull the wings and the breasts out as they finish cooking.
While the chicken is cooking, make the vinaigrette. Place a large cast iron pan over medium heat and char the whole scallions with a little bit of oil until nearly black on both sides. Remove from the heat. In a mixing bowl, combine the soy sauce, sesame oil, lemon juice, ginger, and garlic. Whisk in the remaining olive oil - about 6 TBSP. Chopped the scallions and add to the vinaigrette. Set aside.
Once the chicken is done, you can pull the leg meat from the bone and slice the breast meat. Serve with the red onion, lemon, pan juices and vinaigrette. You can serve alongside your favorite carb of choice. I like to serve with oven roasted creamer style potatoes, but it also goes well with couscous or rice.
Inspired by: Chef Gavin Kaysen
It’s the beginning of the month! How do you budget for the month ahead? This post will focus on budgeting tools. It’s a little ironic. If you think of your favorite financial gurus or even financial sites, you’ll be hard pressed to find personal budgeting …
My parents live across the cascade mountains from us. It’s a couple hours drive to them beginning in the lush green forests west of the mountains, cresting the cascades to the arid and open landscapes of central Washington. I’ve made this trip over the cascades …
At the beginning of the year, we sat down and wrote out our goals. They spanned topics covering food, work, marriage, spirituality, recreation, fitness/health, finances, and our home. Some are big and some are small, and some are stepping stones toward a larger vision that we have. All are very practical. One that made the list this year was more of a personal challenge that we both liked – buy no bread products, if we want it, we have to make it. It’s actually harder than you think it would be. My mind went to all the different types of bread we’d make instead of buying loaves from the store. But it also includes tortillas, buns, bagels, everything. Taco Tuesday? Gotta make tortillas. Enchiladas? Gotta make tortillas. Breakfast burritos? Gotta make big flour tortillas. And so we’re learning how to make tortillas – both corn and flour. We’ve made a few bad versions of each on the journey to learn how to make them.
Corn tortillas are a bit more technical than flour. First off, you have to have a tortilla press. Second, the masa flour you select has a big impact on the tortilla. And third, it takes practice and repetition to create bubbles or air pockets in a corn tortilla. But we’ve already reached the point where these are head and shoulders better than store bought. So there may be no going back. And they’re very simple – flour and water. There’s certainly still a place for the convenience of store bought tortillas, but if I have the time, I’ll take homemade every time.
Mix together masa and salt. Add warm water, stirring until well combined. Work the dough in the bowl with your hands until it all comes together and is smooth and somewhat firm, about 1 minute.
Divide the dough in 16 pieces and roll each into a ball. Place a few inches from one another and cover with a clean towel. Use a quart size Ziploc bag and cut the zipper top off, and cut down each side, leaving the bottom still attached.
Preheat a non-stick pan over medium-low heat, as well as a cast iron pan over medium heat.
Place the opened Ziploc in the opened tortilla press and place a tortilla ball in the center. Press until nearly the size of the press itself. You'll know you've pressed too much if one side is thinner than the other and too little if it doesn't fill the press. Peel the plastic off of the tortilla and gently place in the non-stick pan. You don't want it to brown here, just barely cook on each side - about 30 seconds per side. Transfer the tortilla to the cast iron pan for final cooking where you're looking to get puffing and coloring on the higher heat - about 1 minute per side.
Transfer the cooked tortilla to a clean towel and cover.
Inspired by: King Arthur's Corn Tortilla Recipe
Equipment needed: Tortilla Press
Masa Harina: There is a noticeable difference in smell and taste between King Arthur's Organic Masa Harina and other common brands like Ma Se Ca.
Sticky Dough: If you have trouble with the tortilla adhering to the plastic, you can first coat with a very small amount of olive oil. I rub it on my hands and then rub my hands on the plastic to avoid adding too much.
Week 4 of this 4-week series on eggs, brings us to the frittata. The frittata is the low-calorie version of a quiche. It’s crustless and typically there is nothing mixed into the egg other than salt, pepper, herbs, and maybe a little milk, but this …