My DH said to me as I came home from a morning out, “Kerry’s wife is out of town, so I invited him over for dinner; hope that was okay!” Well, sure, it was, but I needed to scramble to figure out what to make. I defrosted chicken breasts and made a quick grocery list. DH went shopping for that as well as for all the food we’ll need this weekend for family coming to visit. I’m preparing all new stuff for that, with only one recipe I’ve ever made before, and it’s not on the blog. So a bunch of new recipes to come.

Digging through my files I came across one from a cooking class I took eons (like 20 years) ago, taught by Alan Greeley, a well-known chef/owner of The Golden Truffle. An institution in our part of the world. For whatever reason, we rarely go there. It’s a distance to drive (30 minutes), but their food is good, so don’t know why it’s not on our go-out-to-dinner radar.

First I found a quinoa recipe that sounded good, and to me, the grilled chicken was perfect to serve with it. The quinoa salad had a slightly Asian twist to it (recipe to come), so this chicken rendition, which also contained a squirt of soy sauce, was a perfect accompaniment. The chicken didn’t quite get to marinate the full 5 hours (recipe said up to 5 hours), but it got about 2 hours, and I used my handy-dandy vacuum container to help the chicken absorb some of it.

The sauce has a myriad of ingredients – jarred chile sauce, fresh lemon and lime juices, brown sugar, soy, garlic, coarse ground mustard, salt, Worcestershire, chipotle chile and balsamic vinegar. And you know that if a sauce like this has sugar in it, (there’s sugar in bottled chile sauce too) it will tend to burn and/or stick to the grill. Cooking at a lower heat is your secret to success. The sauce is piquant (one of my favorite words when something is both sweet and sour), which comes from the sugar and the citrus juices. The original recipe also called for the zest and juice of an orange, but I didn’t use that part. What makes this recipe Belizean is probably the use of the fresh citrus juices and the chipotle chile. The original recipe also called for some habanero, but I thought it was hot enough with just the chipotle. You can add a jalapeno chile if you’d like – mince it up and add at the beginning. What’s probably not Belizean is balsamic vinegar. But hey, it’s one of those great umami tastes, so why not?

Save a little bit of the barbecue sauce just after you make it, as it tastes good as a dollop on top of the chicken when it’s served. Do not serve any of the sauce that has been in contact with the raw chicken! Salmonella fast track there!

Grill the chicken as you normally would – don’t overcook it – the chicken breasts I used were relatively thin and didn’t need pounding, and they cooked through in about 3 minutes per side. Then I put a spoonful of the sauce on top and served it. I happened to have some fennel fronds on my chopping board (that went in the quinoa salad) so I put that on top. Cilantro would be the more obvious choice if you have it. I have leftover sauce (I made the full recipe, but only marinated 3 chicken breasts) so will make this again in the next week or so and try grilling the chicken on the outdoor grill; we’ll see how that works.

What I liked: how easy it was to make the sauce (simmered for about 20 minutes). It’s a different kind of sauce – not your typical barbecue sauce – much of the flavor comes from the jarred chile sauce, a tomato-based one. Tasting the sauce by itself it’s hard to pick out what is in it. It was great – not necessarily the most flavorful I’ve ever made, but it was very good.

What I didn’t like: how quickly you can burn the chicken (because of the sugar in the sauce), so do use a low temp.

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Periodically I mix up a batch of turkey sausage – the breakfast sausage type. When I want to feel a bit more virtuous. When I want to watch calories and fat. Usually I freeze them, 4 little patties to a package wrapped in plastic wrap, with plastic in between the layers. Will I say they taste just like pork sausage? Well no, they don’t. But they’re good enough, and certainly better for us. My DH and I have one little patty each with our breakfast of yogurt and fruit and a half a piece of whole grain toast.

They’re really simple to make – it’s just some fresh ground turkey (do use some dark meat otherwise the sausage will be very, very dry) – and add in the herbs. A couple of years ago I posted a recipe for some very spicy turkey breakfast sausages. They’re really highly seasoned with not only herbs but a lot of heat-spice too. These are different – they’re quite mild – similar to the kind of spice you’d find in store-bought pork breakfast sausage. My friend Sue made these for us when we visited her recently. A friend of hers had given her the recipe. It’s a good one.

My only advice is that when you sprinkle in the herbs, sprinkle them all over the meat. Turkey meat is harder to mix up (like when you’re making meatloaf with ground beef) and you may end up with one part of the meat with all the herbs. Form into patties and fry up them or freeze as I mentioned above. The photo at top is the raw patties.

What I liked: that it’s turkey, not pork; that it’s lower in fat; and the mild seasonings in it.

What I didn’t like: nothing really. Just know that it’s not trying to substitute for pork.

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Two years ago: Plums – everything you want to know about them
Three years ago: Summer Shrimp Salad
Four years ago: Green Beans with Shallots and Balsamic Vinegar

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If you are looking for an easy dinner for a warm, summer night, this is your ticket. It’s so tasty, delicious, and low calorie as well. Although don’t tell anybody that – they won’t know the difference. When we were on our recent trip to Colorado, Sue served this our last night there. It was a warm night – so warm that we ate inside with air conditioning. And it was so refreshing.

As soon as we got home and I needed a simple dinner for our friends Bud & Cherrie, I remembered Sue’s salad. The base recipe comes from Colorado Collage, the well-known Denver Junior League cookbook. A cookbook I already owned, but definitely hadn’t tried this recipe! Cherrie wanted the recipe – they both enjoyed it very much. Cherrie also owns MasterCook, the recipe software program we both use. Which is why I am now going to include – a MasterCook downloadable file (an MX2 file) at the bottom of every post (next to the PDF file). This is the first time I’ve done this, so if any of you use MC, would you please email me and let me know if it worked? Did the photo download (I’m not certain it will, but you can copy and paste it from the post)? I sent the file to Cherrie the other day and she was so surprised when she clicked on it in my email to her, MC came up and the recipe was complete. She was astounded!

The recipe is quite easy to make, although I made a few changes. I thought the buttermilk dressing would be enhanced with a bit of amp-up with some chipotle chile added in. I also added some citrus zest (I had kumquat, but you could use orange or lemon) and a small garlic clove too. There is no oil in the buttermilk drizzle that’s used over the chicken. The chicken breasts are pounded evenly, then dipped in cornmeal/flour, in egg, then again in the cornmeal/flour before sautéing in a bit of canola oil. Because they’re pounded, they don’t take long to cook – about 6-8 minutes maximum (total, not per side). Sue had used her electric skillet (brilliant idea) – because you want to serve these warm. She cooked them an hour or so ahead (so did I when I made them), then turned the electric frypan temp down to “warm.” An hour later they were still perfectly done and hadn’t dried out at all. That’s a win-win in my book. I put the lid on, but slightly ajar – you don’t want the crispy chicken coating to get soggy.

As for the salad – the recipe has you serve the chicken on top of a mixed tender green salad with some slivers of red bell pepper. I tossed the salad in a very light canola oil and sherry vinegar dressing – just enough to give it a tiny bit of flavor. I also added a bunch of fresh herbs from my garden (use your own mix of herbs to suit your taste) to the salad, and some cherry tomatoes and avocado too. I saved a few of the herbs to sprinkle on top of the chicken also. The photo at top is Sue’s (original) version, which is just fine, as is. But if you want to zip it up some, use some of my additions. Thanks, Sue, for preparing this for us – this will become part of my regular summer rotation!

What I liked: the ease of it all – and the make ahead part. The dressing with no oil – so it’s the low calorie and fat aspect, but you’d never know that. Liked the crispy coating – but it’s not thick at all – that I liked a lot.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. A great dish, particular for summer.

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Two years ago: Tomato, Blue Cheese and Saffron Vinaigrette
Four years ago: Asian Slaw (one of my favorites – great for a summer barbecue)

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During a recent cooking class with Phillis Carey, she began the introduction to this dish by saying that this is one of her very favorite dishes. And that she makes it very frequently for herself and has never tired of the combination of flavors. I scribbled notes on my recipe in a hurry there – I always listen closely when Phillis tells us it’s a favorite of hers because I’ve never not liked any of her favorites. And she mentioned that yes, making risotto is a bit of a nuisance, what with all that constant stirring for 30-35 minutes. But she assured us that we’d be glad when we tasted it. And indeed we were. We heard “mmmmm” all around the classroom. My mmmm included! I nearly licked the plate. For risotto. It was so gosh-darned delicious.

It’s a traditional risotto in how it’s made – nothing different about the preparation or the stirring, or keeping the chicken stock hot. It was the combination of the sausage, the leeks, the corn. And the prettiness of the added spinach. And the red of the tomatoes. Well, just all of it.

I made the dish a few nights later, as I said, with the identical ingredients (except I used pork Italian sausage) and my DH and I nearly licked the plate. Don’t skimp on the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Or the butter – that’s an important addition at the end. Do use fresh, baby spinach too. If you have some fresh basil, sprinkle a bit of that on top as you serve it.

So, how’d we like it? Well, I’d had it at the cooking class, so I knew I’d enjoy it. My DH was so busy eating it he couldn’t even look up to say anything. Meaning that he loved it. We both did. It did take about 45 minutes to make, but I didn’t have to stir it every second. I was close by to stir it around every 30 seconds or so and add more broth as I chopped up the tomatoes, cut the fresh corn off the cob. I made it last week for our friends in Colorado too, and they both thought it was delicious.

What I liked: I loved it all. The texture of the arborio rice – it came out perfectly. The sausage added some great taste, but wasn’t overwhelming. The color with the spinach and tomatoes. The cheese. Oh goodness yes, it was all good. And this is now going onto my “favorites” list if that’s any indication of how delicious it is!
What I didn’t like: well, I suppose the stirring gets a little tedious, but that’s it.

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When I served this to my hubby the other night, he announced that it was the best chicken breast dish I’d ever made. Well, I don’t know that I’d quite go that far, but it was really, really good. It had just plain good chicken taste, it had texture from the bread crumb and Parmesan crust, and it had this tart citrusy butter drizzle on top with some tarragon thrown in. The recipe came from my new favorite cookbook (are you getting tired of hearing about this cookbook yet?), The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century? I’ve been slowly reading my way through the cookbook – I mean, it’s over 1000 pages long, so it’s going to take awhile. I hadn’t gotten to the chicken chapter yet. But according to the index there aren’t all that many recipes for boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The original recipe appeared in the New York Times in 1987 – a Pierre Franey recipe from a column called “60 Minute Gourmet.”

First I pounded the chicken breasts to an even thickness. I’ve learned over the years, that I have to do that, so the chicken cooks evenly. That part isn’t in the recipe, but I added it in. Otherwise I stuck to the recipe exactly. Oops, well, I used some home made garlic croutons (crushed up) as the breading instead of the fresh bread suggested in the recipe. The chicken gets dipped in flour, then in a seasoned egg mixture, then in the combination of grated Parm and the bread crumbs. The pieces are sautéed in oil, only a few minutes per side (the chicken tenders required little more than a flash in the pan). Once removed you add a tablespoon or two of butter and some freshly chopped tarragon and drizzle that over the top. Done. Absolutely wonderful.

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A year ago: A photo of my citrus press – my favorite universal one
Two years ago: Grilled Lamb Chops with Herb Rub
Three  years ago: Flank Steak with Orange Marinade
Four years ago: A real favorite – Roasted Poblano Asiago Soup

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If I didn’t know better, as I look at that photo, I’d say it was staged. It’s almost too pretty looking, with the chicken, the sauce, the pile of rice, the asparagus fuzzied-up into the background. I’d have thought the blogger had found the photo online somewhere. But no, I took the photo myself. I’ve started placing captions or overlay text into the photos, including my website copyright so people don’t steal my photos. I haven’t been aware anyone’s been doing it recently, but they have in the past. I own the program Photoshop. It’s a sophisticated software program to manipulate photos. More for professionals, but I’ve been gradually learning how to use it, as it’s really very complicated. I crop and brighten pictures with ease now, and have just figured out how to fade text (like the copyright part up at the top, so it’s not so glaring, almost like a watermark). I fiddle with where to place the text. First I tried it at the top – the long recipe title – but it didn’t quite fit without part of it fading into the (dark) asparagus. So I finally put it on several lines on top of the rice. My background in the advertising agency I used to own (with a business partner) makes me very particular about how things balance. I’m not quite as adept at it in photographs, but I’m learning.

Back to the story at hand . . . a week or so ago I spent a whole lot of time miserably ensconced in my favorite chair in front of the television with my cough syrup, cough drops, refilling glasses of sparkling apple cider (my drink of choice when I’m sick) and a box of tissues nearby. I was suffering from a doozy of a bad cold. Way too many I’ve had this winter. Two of them I got from my grandson and this one my DH gave me. I tried SO hard to stay away from him. I washed my hands incessantly. But obviously it wasn’t enough, as I still got contaminated! So anyway, I watched a whole lot of TV – in fact I’ve now watched every single, solitary program I had on my Tivo queue. Now, as I’m recovering but still trying to rest a few hours every day (by sitting in front of the tv), I’m having to search for movies that I haven’t seen before; some of them so bad I couldn’t watch them all the way through.

I have watched a few good documentaries, though, including one called Ingalore. An hour long story – spoken by Ingalore, who is deaf  – and Jewish – of her life in a small town in Germany at the beginning of Nazi era, to a special school for deaf children. Back then, in the late 30s, I don’t suppose they had much to offer for the deaf – in the way of education or even training for mainstreaming into society. Ingalore couldn’t speak, really, until she went away to the special school. She was a very brave woman who nearly got sent to the prison camps in WWII. Her life was harrowing. [I cried, which was the worst thing possible for someone with stuffed up sinuses!] Eventually she and her parents got out of Germany, but not without her being raped by Nazi soldiers when she was 15. This was in 1940. The family got a visa to go to Holland – where the Nazis took all of their money – but they got on a ship there. Hearing her speak of the excitement and joy at their arrival in New York, in the early morning fog, of the Statue of Liberty, was emotional. Made me cry again. She has lived a very happy life from there on, eventually marrying a German-Jewish man, also deaf. She’s 85 or so now, but as smart as a tack. And happy and proud to be an American.

Sorry I took a long bypass in my post to tell you about that documentary. In my television-watching I also viewed America’s Test Kitchen, a program I record automatically. If you don’t already do so, you should! I think it airs on Saturdays in California. Anyway, this particular program and recipe was about boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and a new way to make them. I come from the Phillis-Carey-school-of-cooking-chicken-breasts, which means that you pound the chicken breasts to an even thickness, quick sear them and then bake until they’re just barely cooked through. And then make a sauce or something to go along with them.

This ATK program, though, approached boneless, skinless chicken breasts from a totally new direction. In this method you bake the chicken first, then later sauté them to get them brown. Polar opposite of most chicken-cooking methods.

The pictures you see at left: (1) the raw chicken breasts in a glass dish, ready to start; (2) a close-up of the Kosher salt-seasoned chicken – I hadn’t yet poked the meat with the tines of a fork; and (3) just removed from the 275° oven where you can see it’s still a bit pink (looks raw, but it’s not) in the middle. The chicken looked totally yukky at this point.

Anyway, here’s a step by step: first you salt the meat, poking a fork tine in several places in the breast, then they’re baked for about 30-35 minutes. At a very low heat – 275°. That’s really low! When the time is up – and they should be at about 145-150° at that point (and they’re still slightly pink in the thicker parts). You DO have a meat thermometer handy, right? You should – you’ll be able to cook this to the perfect point. Otherwise, it’s nothing but guesswork. Is it just right? Is it raw? Or, worst yet, is it overcooked?

At this point, drain off the milky stuff and blot dry the chicken (removing some of that salt while you’re at it), then coat them with a slurry. I’d forgotten about that word in the cooking lexicon – it’s a term more often used in Chinese cuisine, I think. In this case it’s a mixture of melted butter, flour and cornstarch. Plus some pepper. This gives the chicken a coating which will brown beautifully when you sauté them.

Before I started sautéing, though, I got all my ingredients ready – that mise en place stuff. I had all the rest of the dinner mostly in place too, plates at the ready, asparagus steamed, the saffron basmati rice hot and on hold, salad only lacking a final toss with dressing.

So then I began the sear. Do not use a nonstick pan for this – you need all of the browned fond on the bottom of the pan – it adds flavor to the sauce. I coated one side only with the slurry and plopped the chicken breasts into a hot frying pan with some hot, foaming butter and seared them for 3-4 minutes. Less on the thinner breast piece and the two little tenders. Then I coated the upside with what was left of the slurry and turned the breasts over and continued to sear for another 3+ minutes. One of the chicken breasts was very thick, so I let it sear for the full 4 minutes. The chicken was removed to a plate and covered with foil to keep warm. Then I made the quick pan sauce: shallots sautéed in the oil/grease in the pan, a dash of flour, chicken broth, and lastly some fresh minced chives and a bit of butter.

Do note in this recipe that it uses Kosher salt. Did you know that Kosher salt is less salty than regular table salt? So if you were to use table salt on this instead, you’d want to use half as much. Just so you know.

Results: an absolutely perfectly cooked chicken breast, with a delicious and easy pan sauce. It’s easy to cook down the sauce too much – you start with 1 cup of chicken broth, but when you add it to a hot 12-inch skillet, it reduces in a flash! I ended up with less sauce than I wanted, so added in a little water. Which was fine, but not the ideal way of making this! I could have done several things – watched it more carefully – or better yet, turned down the heat. Or, removed the pan from the heat for 30 seconds of so before adding the broth. I just didn’t know how hot the pan was when I poured in the broth. Just be aware, that’s all. If you have an hour to spend getting dinner ready (and 30-35 minutes of that the chicken spends in the oven) you should make this for a weeknight dinner. Doing this again, I’d make more sauce. And be sure to make some kind of carb that will like the extra sauce drizzled over it. Delicious.

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Two years ago: Snickery Squares (a delicious treat reminiscent of Snickers bars, but it’s a cookie, and a great Dorie Greenspan recipe)
Three years ago: Panna Cotta
Four years ago: Roasted Banana Ice Cream (or Gelato)

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This dish is a meal-in-one. It contains chicken (protein), rice (carb) and a fresh tomato and a cilantro sauce (the sort-of veggies, if you will). I adapted it from a Cooking Light recipe from back in July of 2008. I made a few changes – I didn’t have a poblano chile on hand so I substituted some chipotle instead. Certainly chipotle as a seasoning isn’t the same as using a poblano chile, but I made do. I also added some dried oregano in seasoning the chicken, after reading what other cooks thought of the recipe. It’s very low in fat, always a good thing.

My analysis is that the rice is star of the show here. It had tons of flavor in it – more than the chicken did, or the sauce. I switched things around a little and ended up drizzling some of the cilantro sauce on top instead of putting it all in the rice. That gave some added pizzazz to the chicken which was relatively plain. I did serve this with crumbled and roasted broccoli which went nicely with this dish. A green salad would have worked. Even some sliced tomatoes with a zesty vinaigrette would have worked too.

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A year ago: about our stay at the Bellagio in Las Vegas
Two years ago: Glover’s Mixture
Three years ago: Warm Honey Gingerbread

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Sometimes I DO go back into my own archives and make things that are favorites, as we all do, right? I’ve said it before – when you write a food blog there is always a need to keep trying new recipes, not revisit old ones. I do that, but sometimes I just crave an oldie but goodie. I’ve been working on a project for the blog – I’m creating a new (and hopefully, better) index, so when you need to find a recipe here at Tasting Spoons, you’ll have an easier time of it. It’s a big project, though, since I have over 800-900 recipes at this point in time, and I’m only a few hours into creating this new index. It requires me to type in each and every recipe title I’ve ever posted here and then create the link so you can just click to go to the post. I’ll let you know when it’s available. Anyway, as I typed in the title of this recipe, I knew I needed to make this again soon.

Many years ago I used to make honest-to-goodness stuffed cabbage. But I found it so tedious to partly cook the cabbage leaves, make the filling, roll up and carefully layer the stuffed rolls into a baking pan. Then make a sauce. It was a couple of years ago that I read a recipe for this – made with pork and beef, no pre-cooking of the cabbage needed. No rolled up cabbage rolls to make. But, this has all the components of sweet and sour cabbage, in a delicious soup-bowl kind of presentation. A year or so later I made it using ground turkey and thought it tasted just as good as the beef/pork version. I used 3 pots – one to make the meat mixture – the turkey, tomato, dried cranberry mixture, one to make the mashed potatoes and my pressure cooker to cook the cabbage for exactly 6 minutes (the cabbage can be made the traditional way without the pressure cooker – just steam the cabbage in chicken broth in a separate pan, that’s all).

The dinner was cooked and on the table in about half an hour. Now, I did take one shortcut. My friend Joan told me recently that she was amazed to find Costco’s instant mashed potatoes are a real winner. To say that I was skeptical, is an understatement. I made instant mashed potatoes once, back in the 1970’s or so, and have never revisited them. Until now. I bought the big box of Costco’s “Honest Earth” brand (not Kirkland), called “Creamy Mash.” It’s made with 100% real potatoes (from Idaho), butter and sea salt, it says. The big box contains 14 packets, each one enough to serve about 4 –  6 people (I’d say it serves about 4-5 at the most. It takes no more than 5 minutes or so to heat the water (and butter), then you add a cup of cold milk (yes, really), stir in the dry packet, let it sit for 10 seconds and it’s done. It’s already salted. Extremely simple. And they’re really quite delicious. I’m impressed. They’ve finally figured out how to make this stuff. Next time I make them I’ll add about another tablespoon of milk or water to the mixture – once it sits it firms up quite quickly.

Anyway, the mashed potatoes aren’t the star of the dish anyway – they’re just a quick and easy side and it was extra delicious with some of the sauce.

The mashed potatoes are on the left and the cabbage is peeking out on the right. The meat mixture I used was ground turkey, onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, a little bit of brown sugar, a bit of red wine vinegar (that gives it the sweet/sour flavor) and dried cranberries. It has a little bit of oregano, caraway and fennel in it too. A wonderful combination. Comfort food with a capital C. And it’s even pretty enough you could serve it to guests, which I’m going to do in a few days. But, on this particular cold spring evening, this was a perfect dish to warm our tummies.

Link to the healthier ground turkey version.
Link to the original beef and pork version.

A year ago: Goat Cheese Pesto Appetizer
Two years ago: Andouille Sausage and Shrimp

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The other night I made this stuffed chicken breast for a weeknight dinner. It was very easy to do and my DH just raved about it. It had lots and lots of flavor (from the spinach, the little hint of blue cheese, the shallots, garlic). The cheese is very subtle – you can add more if you want, but I didn’t want the cheese to overwhelm the delicate chicken. It made a very pretty presentation – and would even be nice for a company meal. The chicken does need to be cooked at the last minute, however.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are gently cut to open a small pocket in the thickest part of the breast meat. Meanwhile you’ve made the filling (shallot, garlic, spinach, blue cheese) and it gets stuffed into the pockets. The chicken breasts are gently browned in a skillet, then removed to a hot plate while you make the quick pan sauce (white wine, mustard, thyme, chicken broth and a bit of butter added in at the end). The preparation of this entire dish took less than 30 minutes.

Since I had a whole bag of baby spinach I used the remainder to make a spinach side dish. It did make for a whole LOT of spinach with that meal, but it was delicious anyway. Once all the chicken and sauce was removed from the pan I just pan sautéed the spinach with more garlic and olive oil and put it on the side of the plate.

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A year ago: Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce
Two years ago: Spanish Pork Braised Soup
Three years ago: Pork Tenderloin with Lemon Herb Pesto and Sherry

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Well, now. Let me just say, right here at the beginning, that this dish is just off-the-charts delicious. It may not look like that much in the photo – I mean, it is a casserole. But oh, the flavors in this! And although it’s called an easy cassoulet, it’s not something you can throw together in 30 minutes. Nope. Probably takes about 1 1/2 hours or so to do it all.

In case you aren’t familiar with cassoulet (pronounced cass-eau-lay in French), let me just enlighten you. It means a slow-cooked bean stew or casserole. Typically a cassoulet contains some pork, some sausage and some duck. This version contains pork (chops), smoked sausage (kielbasa chunks) and some chicken thighs. And canned beans, to make it as easy as possible. It has some other things, minor stars, to be sure, to add character and flavor or texture. I think I could eat this dish at least once a week – and likely in Southern France, many families do, with some leftovers from the last dish incorporated into the new dish, to keep the flavors moving onward.

The below photo shows the cassoulet with the topping – the croutons that are crumbled on top just before serving, along with the fresh herbs – Italian parsley and thyme. The meats (the pork chops and chicken and the coins of kielbasa) are scooped into a middle layer in between a bean layer on the bottom, and another bean layer on top. I topped mine with a thin layer of grated Parmesan cheese. Once it bakes until it’s bubbling hot, you add a thin layer of croutons and sprinkle on some more fresh herbs and serve immediately. To absolute raves.

This recipe, with a couple of modifications, came from Cathy Thomas, the food editor of our local newspaper, in a December, 2010 article. The original of this easy version started with a recipe from Bon Appetit. Cathy Thomas tweaked it some. She says this is one of her favorite company meals. You can make a double batch if you’re feeding a crowd. Now, I did tweak it a little bit too, from Cathy’s version, as I mentioned above – I didn’t have smoked pork chops. I had regular pork chops – so I used those and then added in two slices of smoked, thick sliced bacon. The other change I made is probably very non-traditional – I sprinkled the top of the casserole with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I wanted that umami taste. The croutons are a last minute garnish – I toasted the fresh bread cubes  (from a regular baguette) tossed in a little bit of oil for about 15 minutes in the oven, then I sealed them in a quart-sized ziploc bag and used a pounder to break the cubes into smaller pieces. Those, then, were sprinkled on the top just before serving, along with the fresh herbs that gave the dish some color. The croutons give a delicious crunch to every bite, and they soak up a little liquid from the casserole too. Definitely don’t eliminate the croutons – they help make the dish, in my opinion.

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A year ago: Shchi (a Russian pork and cabbage soup)
Two years ago: A silly post – 25 random things about me you never knew, and probably don’t care about anyway!
Three years ago: Shells with Pancetta and Spinach

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