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ziti with zucchini and sausage
It’s been awhile since I have posted anything in the well-fed section. I have been blogging with Babble.com so much that I feel like I’ve gained ten pounds, so Plus, my last several entries here have been a long list shameless desserts.
Anyway, I thought it was high time I posted something we ate for dinner around here. This pasta dish was something I came up with from stuff I had in the fridge, and I must say I was a bit unimpressed with it at first, but the more I sampled, the more I loved it. I used some zucchini someone gave me from their garden and some chicken and apple sausage I had in the freezer. I thought these flavors seemed very fall-ish and wonderful, so to them I added some fresh sage. However, since it’s still hot here, and I’m not quite ready to curl up by a fire, I thought I’d add a dash of lemon to keep the dish bright.
One thing I want to mention: tomorrow I will be on AmberLee’s The Giver’s Log blog for a bit. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you the link when it’s up!
chicken tikka masala in a slow cooker
I’ve been working on this recipe for awhile, and though I still haven’t gotten it exactly the way I want it, it’s pretty good. The thing with Indian food is it’s tricky to get a perfect recipe because everyone has their own. I have put this together based on what the nice people down at my local Indian restaurant have told me, the ingredients list on the back of a Tandoor Chef box, America’s Test Kitchen’s The Best International Recipe, and bits and pieces from the Food Network. I imagine I will make improvements to this as I make it through the years.
not sure what to call these . . . brazilian fajitas, maybe?
When I say “dinner party” here, I mean the dinner itself is the party. By no means am I suggesting you invite guests to eat these with you. That would mean you’d have to share.
A nice old man was giving away samples of this Brazilian sausage on Saturday. It was so good, and it reminded me of Paella. The next thing I knew, I was hunting around for some shrimp to go with it. But honestly, after a month of cooking like a crazy woman for my other blog, the last thing I wanted to do was get out a humongous pan and throw everything under the sun into it. For starters, I’d be the only one eating it, and secondly, there’s only one of me, and that would be a lot of food. Two of my kids are occasionally brave, but all three tend to avoid dishes where everything is sort of thrown together.
healthy and easy pad thai
Yes, my friends. That’s what good Pad Thai is: pure happiness.
When my friend Julie and I were in England a couple of summers ago, we discovered how important it was to make reservations at restaurants on Saturday nights. Unfortunately, we learned a little too late. After we had sat in the Loch Fyne in Henley-on-Thames for about an hour, we realized getting a table might just take until the next morning. We left and wandered in the drizzle to a nearby Thai restaurant. Looking back on that night, I realize the Pad Thai we ordered was not that great, but since we were so hungry, and so tired, it tasted like food from the gods.
The very first time I ate Pad Thai was when Shannon made it for me. She followed the recipe in America’s Test Kitchen’s The New Best Recipe
However, since I can easily down the full recipe by myself in one day, I decided it would be better to make with whole grain noodles instead of the traditional rice stick which is made from white rice. I also cut back on the sugar by replacing it with Agave nectar.
The way I make this is a mixture of what I learned from that book, how I saw Shannon make it, and how I have adapted it myself over the years. I hope you enjoy making it.
The ingredients I list can be hard to find, but some of them are really crucial to the taste. Since that is the case, I’ll give you links to some of the products for those of you who don’t have a nice Asian store to buy them.
fish sauce
chili sauce
tamarind
The only other real option for substituting tamarind is tamarind paste. It will make your noodles darker, but it tastes okay. Here is a link for it
chicken hand pies
Apparently, these are really called pasties in England, so you can call them whatever you want.
I decided on these for the winter picnic because I wanted something that was warm and not messy. I kept thinking of a calzone, but those can get tomato sauce everywhere if you aren’t careful. Plus, I wanted to make something that was a little more around-the-campfire-ish feeling, and I couldn’t think of anything more homey and inviting than a stew.
All I did was make a chicken stew, or the insides of a chicken pot pie. Then I cooked it inside a pie crust. They were really tasty, and perfect for an outside meal in the cold.
pumpkin orecchiette with goat cheese and toasted pepitas
Orecchiette is a pasta which literally means “little ears.” I love it because each piece acts as a little dish for the sauce. If you can’t find it at the grocery store (I found mine at Super Target), then you could substitute shells, rigatoni, penne, or anything you like that will trap the sauce and produce the most flavor.
I wanted this dish to taste like fall, so I used some lovely fresh sage leaves and chicken stock, but if I could do it again, and if I didn’t live next to all the grocery stores that don’t carry it, I would have added some shallots. Whenever I cook those, the whole house smells like Thanksgiving. They’re perfect.
The goat cheese brings a nice tang to the dish and balances out the flavors, and the toasted pepitas add a bit of crunch and texture.
roasted shrimp on a bed of thai fusion succotash
Alright, alright, the succotash has a lot of ingredients, and so maybe this isn’t the most simple recipe, but just look at it sitting there all by itself. I said simplicity more for the way it looks.
Have you ever tried making succotash before? It’s great. You just start with the corn, and then throw in anything that sounds good. I also tried making this with bacon and cream. It was good, but a little heavy. The Thai-ish version is a bit lighter for summer.
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kung fu panda soup
We’ve been watching a lot of Kung Fu Panda lately. The movie stirred up strong craving for noodles in my nine-year-old. This is what I came up with. He insisted on eating the soup with chopsticks.
I now present to you: Kung Fu Panda Soup.
a family recipe: spaghetti sauce with chicken and sausage
My grandmother on my mother’s side married the son of Italian immigrants. I am not sure how well she cooked before before she married, but for a woman who came from a long line of English-Americans, she adapted well and made the most wonderful spaghetti sauce. She made it often when we came to visit, and the whole house would smell amazing.
Because she cooked it so long, the chicken would fall off the bone, and so would the ribs. Oh, I didn’t mention the ribs? Or the meatballs either, I suppose. Yes, her sauce actually had about 4 types of meat. It was out of this world. But probably not as healthy as we’re trying to be these days. If you want to add them in, simply cut out some of the chicken and sausage, and then brown up some ribs and meatballs when you’re cooking the rest of the meat. Then just add it back in at the end like you do with the chicken and sausage.
My mom always says the secret to her recipe is to cook it on VERY low heat for a very long time — all day if you possibly can (Don’t cut corners and make it in a slow cooker. I tried it like that once and it tasted terrible. I don’t know the science behind why it happened, but it was very acidic, like it had been cooked with rust and aluminum.)
Though we all know the secret, none of us can ever get it quite like she made it. I don’t even think she had an ingredient she wouldn’t tell people about (though I wouldn’t put it past her — I can totally picture her tossing in that one ingredient when no one was looking and having a good laugh all by herself).
Could the secret be love? Maybe?
This is a major tangent, but I have to tell you this one story. Once, when I lived in Canada, some women from Trinidad made me and my friend the most amazing beans and rice. I couldn’t get over how good they were. We kept asking what was in them, and they listed the ingredients. They were like, “Oh, onions, a little garlic, some peppers, and love.” Hm. Love. I wonder now if the “love” was marijuana. Could I have have been that naive?
Anyway, here is my grandmother’s sauce. Best of luck, and I hope you can get it as good as my Mom-mom made hers.
fish & chips, or as we yanks might call it: homemade fish sticks and oven fries
Lately, more than usual, I find myself strapped for time. Keeping up this blog is definitely one of the reasons. Not wanting to cut back on posts, nor have my kids need to go out and join Big Brothers Big Sisters, I’ve decided they’re just gonna have to help in the kitchen. Now we can spend more time together, they can learn how to cook, and the best reason of all: they’ll look cute in the pictures.
I used halibut in this recipe. It’s firm, white, tender, and cuts clean to make perfect fish sticks. The major drawback is price. These fish sticks were not cheap. So, use another firm white fish, such as cod, if you can’t find halibut on sale.
