Instead of individual chicken pieces, I decided to bake a whole roast chicken. With a hefty 6-pounder in hand (organic), I quickly scanned to-try recipes for a different method. I rarely turn to it, but I found a recipe in the book 365 More Ways to Cook Chicken. The recipe is a French style (really only the sauce), but it suggested baking it at 400 for 30 minutes, then reducing the temp for another hour or so. I did crank up the oven to 400, and reduced it after 30 minutes, but I used convection-bake on my oven, and it was done in about 45 more minutes of baking. If you have a meat probe, use it. I didn’t insert it to begin with, so only tested an instant-read one at the end – the breast meat registered 185. Perfect. The thigh is a better judge of done-ness, and it should come out at 180.

Meanwhile I made the quickly-assembled sauce. We had some home-grown tangelos (half orange, half tangerine) so used them as the cavity filler, and the juice and rind for the sauce. I sort of followed the recipe for flavors, but added some frozen orange juice concentrate to the mixture. Took about 10 minutes to make. That, along with some fresh asparagus and a leek/turnip puree and we had dinner. The chicken was perfectly cooked – ever-so juicy, and the sauce was tangy and tasty. I liked it all and will likely make it again. It wasn’t all that great left over. Don’t know why, but it wasn’t. Something happened to the sauce – it lacked flavor and zip the second time around. But first time through it was fine.
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A year ago: Borscht with Andouille Sausage

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If I hadn’t put a title in there you’d likely not even know what that lump of green stuff IS! Right? Not very attractive in the photo. I think it would be best using this as a bed for something, rather than a side veggie sitting there, green and all. Or else I should have garnished it with some Italian parsley. Or something. Anything. But the taste is what it’s all about, and this DID have good flavor.

I must admit, I’ve never given much thought to turnips. I haven’t particularly liked them, cut up and served like potatoes. I think my mother would occasionally serve them with a Sunday roast. Kind of dried and shriveled. And, they have . . . uhm . . . a kind of bitter taste. And from what I read about them, once turnips get to be mature, they do develop some bitter flavors. But then, I read that turnips have a low glycemic index. They’re only like a half a carb – I think I read that a turnip has less than 10 grams of carbs. So I wondered if I could eat turnips as a sort of carb, like as a mashed potato kind of carb. But I only had two small ones. Hence I prowled in the vegetable drawer and had leeks.

Next step was glancing at some turnip recipes. I turned to Deborah Madison’s tome, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and there was a puree recipe. I decided not to follow it closely, but at least used it for preparation advice.

First I cut up the leeks and washed them. Then combined them with water and the turnip chunks and simmered them until the turnips were tender. I pulsed the batch with a bit of chicken broth (very little since the puree was thin enough as it was) and a tiny splash of milk, then some butter, and that was it. Very easy, really. Healthy as long as you don’t count the butter. Ha. Anyway, it was delicious. Really, really good. The leeks did become the predominant flavor, and I hardly knew there were turnips in this. I don’t know if that was the idea or not. In any case, I liked it and would make it again. Next time I’d drain the hot veggies for a minute or two to remove more of the fluid before whizzing up in the food processor.
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Seems like there are just a hundred ways to make butternut squash soup. I’ve posted a few – my roasted butternut squash soup (the most complicated of all of my butternut soups, but probably the best tasting too) – and my next favorite, zippy butternut squash soup with jalapeno and ginger. Then there’s another one, roasted butternut squash soup with pancetta and sage too. All of those are made with oven roasting and/or on the stovetop. All the soups are do-able, but I thought hmmm, maybe I could use my new slow cooker and make the jalapeno and ginger one even easier than it already was.

I looked up the ingredients and piled them into the slow cooker. Which means this is one of those recipes when you can throw it in the pot and forget it. No pre-cooking of anything. I didn’t saute the onions, or garlic. All I did was set it on high for about 2 hours, then at low for another 3-4 hours. Then I put everything in the blender, (in batches) along with just a bit of heavy cream and it was lick-the-bowl delicious. I didn’t add the brown sugar because it didn’t need it. I didn’t have creme fraiche which was called for in the original recipe, either, but otherwise the ingredients were very close to the first one. Quantities were a bit different. What makes this great is you can put everything into the crockpot and not have to bother with waiting for it to simmer. If you’re not going to be home, just do the normal thing – set on automatic (the older crockpots did that for you – my new one doesn’t) and it cooks for 2 hours at high, then switches to low until you turn it off.

Once the soup was smoothed out in the blender, I reheated it and served the soup with some toasted pecans on top. If you are going to make this, I’d recommend using my Peppered Pecans (my all-time favorite spicy nut) to garnish the soup. I happened to have had some leftover pecans from the Radicchio Salad I made a week or so ago which had a touch of cayenne in them. They were great on the soup. I particularly liked the texture change – the soup needs something to give it a different texture from the silky smooth consistency of the soup. Or, if you don’t want to be fancy, just toast some pecans in a nonstick skillet. The recipe made about 12 cups (2 cup servings), so I divided up the leftovers and put them in freezer bags (pictured) to go into my ongoing soup library.
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A year ago: Coconut Banana Bread

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Costco sells these already-sealed packages of chicken. Boneless thighs come with about 5 in a package. Boneless breasts usually have two small in each sealed pouch. Makes it so easy to count them, even defrost them in a bowl of water since they’re totally sealed up and can be submerged. I have these pouches stashed all over in the freezer, which makes it difficult sometimes to find them. But oh well, I did find a package of thighs and had just read this recipe.

Andrea’s Recipes is a blog I read regularly, and she mentioned in a recent post that there is a fairly significant Japanese population in Peru. Who knew? Hence, there are a number of different recipes that have been adopted by the general population as Peruvian. The addition of lime juice makes this grilled chicken different than the usual yakitori from Japan. Plus the use of cumin, paprika and oregano!

The chicken is marinated in this concoction (very low on the soy sauce scale). There is just a tiny splash of vegetable oil in the mixture. I made a half recipe for my batch of chicken thighs. We grilled ours, but there are directions for baking or grilling (both gas and charcoal). These were delish. Since I like cumin and oregano a lot, it married well with the other ingredients. And the soy sauce is a very minor player in the mixure of flavors. Just make sure you have sufficient time to marinate the chicken for at least 8 hours, or up to 24. And thanks to Andrea for her great recipe.
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A year ago: Shiitake-Crusted Chicken in Sauce

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Oh, was this ever wonderful! It was just a few days ago that I was reading Elise’s blog, Simply Recipes, and this dessert was front and center. With a similar picture to the one above. Doesn’t it look good enough that you’d like to reach right into your screen and cut yourself a slice? We haven’t had any desserts around here for a month, so it was fun to make something. And this was special.

In mine there is a mixture of apples and pears (the pears are the lighter colored pieces, and in between you can vaguely see apples – they absorbed more of the caramel, I guess). Elise made hers with only apples. I didn’t have but one apple, but I did have pears, so I made mine with a mixture. My one apple was a Granny Smith (not what Elise recommended), and the pears gave off a LOT of fluid, so my cake may be more juicy than hers. But it was delicious nevertheless. And cooked through, which was a concern Elise had with her dad’s previous versions of this cake made with Granny Smiths alone.

The recipe is just a tad different than some – the fruit is mixed with a caramel you make right in a skillet and you cook the fruit until it’s nearly done. Then you pour that into a high-sided cake pan that’s been lined with parchment paper and buttered. Then you make the cake batter which contains just a bit of cornmeal. I didn’t have ordinary cornmeal, but did have fine-ground polenta, so used that. There isn’t a lot of sugar in this entire cake (3/4 cup for everything). And there is just one cube of butter. It’s not difficult, either.

In reading some notes over at Elise’s blog about this recipe, some people had difficulty with the caramel – once they added the fruit it seized up, but after cooking longer, it released and all was well. I had no difficulty – I thought the pears had given off too much fluid, actually. And I didn’t cook the fruit as long as Elise indicated in her recipe. I also cut the fruit into 3 wedges for each quarter also (Elise did 2). Just notes to you if you try it too. One reader made hers in an iron skillet, so she saved dirtying up another pan to cook the fruit.

The verdicts: beautiful looking, and delicious tasting. The fine polenta cornmeal in the cake adds just a tiny bit of crunchy – it was wonderful. The cake is light. The fruit is not overly sweet, which I liked. My DH was in heaven both times he’s eaten it – and tells me it’s one of the best desserts I’ve made in a long time. Elise suggested serving this with vanilla ice cream. I didn’t have any, but had heavy cream so ours was served with whipped cream, an able substitute, I believe. I’ll be making this again. Yesiree. Thanks, Elise, for sharing this recipe.
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A year ago: Scott’s Broccoli Salad

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I have the itch to take a trip at the moment, but all things considered, the economy and all, the status of our investments that we live on, well, it’s not in the cards. So I live vicariously through the travel magazines I subscribe to. And in December’s Travel & Leisure they offered a list of  “BEST TRAVEL WEBSITES.” So many of them sounded good that I needed to go enter most of them into my bookmarks. But why not share them with you, too. Herewith:

Farecast.com – Predict the ideal moment to buy a ticket
yapta.com – get your money back if a fare drops (only if you have booked a fare directly through an airline)
delaycast.com – find on-time flights at 60 U.S. airports
seatguru.com – snag a seat with the best legroom (I’ve used this site for a couple of years)
insidetrip.com – increase your odds for hassle-free flight (trip quality)
aboutairportparking.com – prime parking at 500 international airports
kayak.com and sidestep.com – get best deals on flights and hotels (both companies now owned by kayak
wegolo.com – book low-fare carriers within Europe
traffic.com – avoid roadblocks in 100 U.S. cities
radio-locator.com – from your PDA or iphone punch in your ZIP and download a list of stations in the area where you are – 14,500 in U.S. and 6,000 international
opentable.com – make reservations here and abroad (8,500 restaurants) – I’ve used it even for local restaurants
seriouseats.com – stay current on the local food scene – an obsessive community of about a million foodies talk about restaurants, recipes, chefs, local markets
tripadvisor.com -reviews of hotels, restaurants, attractions plus 1.3 mil photos too (I’ve used this site for several years when blocking out a trip, mostly for hotel and restaurant reservations)
tvtrip.com – compare hotels in a destination (8,000 properties) via short videos
tripkick.com – pinpoint the best room in a hotel (450 hotels in U.S. only)
uptake.com – search U.S. hotels for theme (romantic, cheap, pet-friendly)
insidetrip.com – organizes flights by price and creates scores based on 12 “pain points” including likelihood of a delay, minimum legroom, etc.
travelpost.com – similar to tripadvisor – user-generated ratings and rankings of hotels, restaurants
urbanspoon.com– only if you have an iphone – provides restaurant recommendations in your neighborhood
ilingo.com – also only for the iphone – download hundreds of useful phrases in foreign languages
i-escape.com – boutique properties with about 1,000 reviews
unusualhotelsoftheworld.com – quirky hotels like igloo in Switzerland, castle in Australia, prison in Turkey, using a colorful interactive map
zicasso.com – custom trip plans (you receive a trip itinerary from a travel agent)
triporama.com – coordinate group travel – great for planning a group or family trip – everybody gets “on board” at the site to make to-do lists, chat, build itineraries
lastminute.com – package deals one week out
tripit.com – create no-fuss online itineraries which can be forwarded via email (includes car, hotel, flight, restuarants, maps, weather conditions and driving directions)
luxurylink.com – bid on over-the-top hotel stays and cruises
quintessentially.com – fulfill singular requests ($1,800 annual membership)
maps.google.com – overall directions (the best of all the competition)
viamichelin.com – driving directions, suggested routes for 61 countries, and in some cases it can be sent to your own GPS
hopstop.com – navigate major U.S. transit systems (bus, subway and taxi) in 6 major U.S. cities
flipkey.com – vacation rentals – 50,000+ listings with photos, maps, ratings and reviews
tripbase.com – destination ideas
luggageconcierge.com – ship your luggage in advance (6-10 days in advance of your trip)

And, the tried and true sites with some new options:
expedia.com – new fare alert tool downloads to your desktop, tracks flights for your desired destination and price range
orbitz.com – new price assurance policy – they monitor any flights you’ve booked up until the day of departure . . . if anyone books the same itinerary at a lower price, Orbitz will send you a cash refund
travelocity.com – new insider’s guide shows you how to find best deals on airfare, hotels, cruises and car rentals with flexible-date shopping and dateless hotel searches

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A  year ago: Chocolate Scones (oh yum, yes!)

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Flemish Beef Carbonnade - serve over egg noodles

The title sounds kind of pretentious, doesn’t it? Well, it really isn’t. The Belgians aren’t noted for very much in their cuisine (except chocolates, perhaps) and this dish. If some of you readers are Belgian, my apologies to your cuisine, but I’ve just not heard about much else. Oh, well, maybe Belgian Endive. That is certainly something worth remembering.

I first had this dish back in the 1960’s, and was dutifully impressed with the flavor. It comes from the dark searing of the meat and the addition of beer. But in actuality, it’s not much more than a beef stew with beer. I wasn’t able to put my hands on the old-old recipe I used to use, but had two others that were very similar (beef, beer, onions), so I just used a combination of 3 different recipes. One called for thyme. Another for bay leaves, and the third for thyme and nutmeg. I used the latter combo.

We were taking dinner to our adult kids who live nearby, and I only had a few hours, so decided to make this in the pressure cooker. It was scrumptious, if I do say so myself. You don’t have to own a pressure cooker to prepare this, though. Just cook it longer on the stovetop (or oven), that’s all. I added mushrooms to it, although it’s not traditional. I did not include them in the recipe below, but you can certainly add them into the pressure cooker if you like them.

First you render a bit of bacon, then sear the beef cubes in the bacon fat (or some added butter and olive oil) until they’re all nice and brown on many sides. It took me three batches to brown 3 pounds of beef. Meanwhile I chopped up one heck of a lot of onions. I must say, although I’m certainly an experienced cook, 3 pounds of onions is a LOT, and I decided not to guess, but to weigh them.

Once you add the onions and cook the whole thing, the onions nearly disappear into the sauce. I cooked the whole thing in the pressure cooker for 20 minutes, then did the last fillip of adding the butter/flour mixture (to gravy-ize the liquid) while it bubbled on the stovetop. We served it over noodles, because that’s the Flemish way, but you could serve it over potatoes too if you’d prefer them. And in case you’ve never cooked with beer, there is absolutely no TASTE of beer. Just a rich sauce. This is a homey kind of dish, but would be perfectly acceptable for guests.
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A year ago: Pork Chops with Apple Cider Sauce

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A week or so ago we were entertaining for dinner, and I had some avocados that needed using. They’re in season at the moment (mine came from Costco), and they were just gosh-darned delicious. I made two avocado appetizers that night, of which this is one. Some preferred this one; others preferred the other one. Both were good. Both were different. This one has cream cheese as it’s main ingredient. And I used pecans, although if I make this again, I’ll use the pistachios called for in the recipe, or walnuts. The pecans didn’t blend well with the avocado, I don’t think. But I liked the cheesy mixture very much.

The recipe came from one of my favorite cooking instructors, Phillis Carey. And from her cookbook Fast & Fabulous Entertaining Menus. As printed, you mix this up by hand, but I decided to make a shortcut and let the food processor help me instead. It was an easy cheese log to make, therefore – with the avocado and cream cheese, some garlic, Jack cheese (nobody could taste it), some nuts and a squirt of Worcestershire. The hardest part was forming this stuff into a log shape. Even after it had chilled for awhile, it was still quite soft, but I was able to get it to sort-of roll it out onto a serving platter, then put a knife in it for easy spreading onto toasted baguette slices. Don’t keep it for more than a few days, though as it begins to turn brown.
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A year ago: Mashed Potatoes with Mascarpone Cheese

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There is no doubt in my mind that Abraham Lincoln is smiling proudly that so many people are more aware of his Presidency than ever before. That more people are reading biographies about him than ever before. And that roses named after him are blooming right now too. My DH went out into the rain to cut this rose to fragrance our kitchen. I dashed immediately to my photo area and snapped a few pictures of this rose. There’s nothing like raindrops to make one admire a rose.

A year ago: Red Cabbage with Apples

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Each time we’ve been to Hungary I’ve purchased paprika. (And tablecloths, and napkins, and spices, and a face cream only available there.) The last time I was there I purchased something called half-sharp paprika. It’s a combo of their standard-issue paprika and hot paprika. Hence they call it half-sharp. Here in the U.S. I’ve purchased the hot smoky paprika that adds such a huge boost of flavor to dishes. Supposedly paprika doesn’t last all that long, but I keep my paprika in the refrigerator always, and I still have one bag of both types of regular paprika in my pantry, unopened. I really enjoy paprika, and didn’t know how much until I used well-grown and flavorful paprika. The junk mostly available in our grocery stores is not very flavorful, and probably is best used just for color, not flavor.

Anyway, there are two parts to this story. One is about (1) my newest kitchen toy, and the other is  (2) the recipe.

(1) My New Crockpot
My old – and I mean OLD – crockpot dating from the early 1970’s finally bit the dust a few days ago. I’d noticed a hairline crack developing in the ceramic bowl/insert, but thought perhaps it wouldn’t grow. Well, it did. Actually, I was gleeful, since it gave me the reason to buy a new one. And because I have heard my friend Cherrie talking about how much she loves her All-Clad stainless insert slow cooker so much, I knew what I’d be buying. I called her to verify she was still happy with it (yes) and I snooped on the internet hoping to find a better price (uh, no).

It’s only available from Williams-Sonoma. There are other models of the All-Clad Slow Cooker, but the one with the nonstick coated aluminum insert is only available from Williams-Sonoma. (Well, e-bay had a couple, but I decided I wasn’t up to the game of bidding on them – I never seem to get what I want.) New, at Williams-Sonoma, it’s $279. I really needed to WANT this thing to pay that for a crockpot. But oh, is it ever fun. There are two important reasons to buy this: (a) you can brown food in this insert – it’s a metal pan. It can go right on the stovetop and can stay on the stovetop if you want; and (b) the crockpot housing has a programmable control on it – for high heat, low heat and warm, and can be changed to cook for as many hours as you want it to. Well, maybe there’s an upper limit, but if so I don’t recall reading it. It has a lighted LCD control panel on it so you know when it’s on. Once you’ve cooked for as many hours as you’ve selected, it switches to the warm setting for awhile in case you’re late.

(2) The Chicken Paprikash
The first night I cooked in it, it truly was a one-pot dinner. I sauteed onion, red bell peppers, mushrooms and garlic for awhile on the stovetop (in the insert), then put it into the crockpot base, added some chicken broth, sliced up raw chicken thighs, and the paprika, and let it stew away for about 5 or 6 hours. Using the recipe I had, I added some light sour cream mixed with flour to the crockpot mixture and let it sit for awhile. But it took longer to come to a simmer again, so I merely removed the insert and put it back on the range to bring it to a slow simmer until it reached the degree of thick that I wanted. SO easy. And really good, deep flavor. The paprika combination I used has a bit of heat to it, but not a lot. Adjust to suit your tastes. You can buy good paprika at penzeys.com, or perhaps at other specialty spice merchants.
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A year ago: Hot, Spicy Tofu Herb Dip (you’d think it was made with sour cream – honest)

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