Three-Way Taco Topping

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Big Brother's Onion Chicken

I was away this week at a writing conference, and since Middle Sister has been doing a show, it fell to Big Brother to handle the cooking for two nights. He's a good cook, so I just made sure there was food in the house and he took it from there.

On Thursday, we had a long textversation about the oven-worthiness of my favorite skillet. Then, at dinner, I got a text informing me that dinner had been a success.

Obviously he inherited his minimalist style in recipe writing from his great-uncle.

(And I love how he included "eat" in his directions.)

Big Brother says I should try this recipe. I'm going to need a few more details first. And apparently the type of wine is important--Pinot Grigio, not Chardonnay.

I'll update this when I fill in the blanks.

Sweet and Spicy Asian Chicken

We seem to be on a chili-and-honey kick right now. Let's see how many ways we can use those ingredients on chicken! Tonight's dinner was a variation on a theme:  it's what happens when you realize you were supposed to marinate something just as you get ready to cook it. (Oops.) I think I liked this dish better than the original that inspired it:  Chili Honey Chicken. It cooks quickly; start the rice before you start the chicken!

Visit my new blog, Cook and Count, for this recipe and nutrition information!

Chesapeake Bay Shrimp

A shrimp dinner is definitely an extravagance, so I only buy shrimp when it's on sale. I also make the meal stretch by serving lots of vegetables or pasta with it so that no one's tempted to inhale an entire pound of shrimp. If you're buying medium shrimp (51/60 per pound) then a dozen shrimp per person is a good rule of thumb.

One of the standbys in my freezer is a bag or two of individually quick-frozen shrimp. I like to keep both raw and cooked shrimp around for quick dinners. When you use precooked shrimp, as in this recipe, you only need to thaw it, then warm it up. I started the rice, then cut and steamed the broccoli, then got to work on the shrimp--and was still waiting a couple of minutes for the rice to be done.

This was fairly spicy, so if that's a deal-breaker, skip the crushed red pepper.

Get the recipe with photo and nutrition facts at Cook and Count!

Chicken with Tomatoes, Fennel and Basil

This dinner tasted (and smelled) restaurant-quality. It is based on Amanda's Spiced Chicken and Mezzi Rigatoni, with a few changes. Total cook time is 35 to 40 minutes, unless you have an enormous pan to cook the chicken. I had to do the cooking in batches so the chicken would saute instead of steaming.

CHICKEN WITH TOMATOES, FENNEL AND BASIL
Serves 6

Get the recipe and nutrition facts at Cook and Count!

Iron-Skillet Chicken Caroline

I tweaked my Chicken Caroline recipe so I could cook it in my cast-iron skillet. I thought it was even better this way--but if you want to cook more than 4 pieces you'll need more than one skillet. This would be delicious on a sandwich; I served it with oven-roasted Yukon Gold potatoes.

CHICKEN CAROLINE

olive oil for the pan
1 onion, sliced very thin
2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 TBL minced garlic
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Italian seasoning
salt
pepper
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded (I used a combination of mozzarella and provolone)

In cast-iron skillet, slowly saute onion in olive oil until it begins to caramelize. Push onion to sides of the pan. Add mushrooms and cook until soft. Stir in minced garlic and cook 2 minutes. Remove all vegetables to a dish and add chicken to pan. Drizzle top of chicken with a little more olive oil, then season with Italian seasoning, salt and pepper to taste.

Bake at 400 about 20 minutes. Top chicken with the cooked onion, mushrooms and garlic, then sprinkle cheese over it all. Return to oven for 5 more minutes until cheese melts.

Waste Not, Want Not: Potato-Chip Chicken

One of my neighbors works for a potato-chip company, and every so often he brings samples of new brands or new product lines to us for a taste-test. Yesterday he handed us a couple of bags of no-salt-added potato chips. 

If I'm going to eat chips straight out of the bag, they need to have a little flavor, like salt & vinegar or Honey BBQ. Not wanting these to go to waste, I figured out another way to enjoy them.

First I opened the bag, let out the air, then held the bag closed and crushed the chips. Then I poured some Old Bay seasoning into the bag, closed it tightly, and shook until the potato-chip crumbs were spicy. This became a delicious, crispy coating for oven-baked chicken drumsticks.

Here's the recipe for POTATO-CHIP CHICKEN

10 large chicken drumsticks

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1 5-ounce bag unsalted potato chips, crushed

1 TBL Old Bay (or more to taste)

Cover a cookie sheet with foil and brush with olive oil. Preheat oven to 375.

Add Old Bay to the crushed potato chips. Close the bag tightly and shake until the crumbs and spice are well mixed. Pour into a shallow bowl (I used a pie plate).

Beat egg and milk together and pour into another shallow bowl.

Dip chicken drumsticks in egg mixture, then roll in chip crumbs until coated.

Place on prepared cookie sheet.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes.

You can use any spice you like with this, and you get to control the salt. This is also a good way to use up the broken chips in the bottom of the bag. (You can freeze the chips until you get enough to use for one batch of chicken.)

Soccer-Mom Friendly Dinner: Chicken Caesar Sandwiches

Sometimes it pays to procrastinate JUST a bit. I was working on my meal plan over the weekend and browsing Twitter instead of focusing on the task at hand. Fortunately, I follow Jeff Young, the Catholic Foodie, and he tweeted a link to a recipe for Creamy Chicken Caesar Sandwiches.

My kids are fans of Caesar salad, especially when there's chicken involved. (Little Brother will eat just about anything if it includes croutons; in his world, croutons should have their own food group). With Little Brother and his crouton obsession in mind, I decided to serve these sandwiches on garlic bread instead of just plain rolls. (If you're local, I got the rolls from DeLuca's in Riverside.)

The original recipe is linked above; I'm writing it here as I made it.

Get the recipe at Cook and Count!

Dutch Oven Macaroni & Cheese

With an eye to planned leftovers that can be used for a quick lunch or dinner this week, I put together some baked macaroni & cheese.

3/4 pound small macaroni (mini penne, mini shells, elbows or cavatappi all work), cooked al dente
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
10 ounces extra-sharp Cheddar, grated (3+ cups)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground mustard
salt, to taste
1/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs
Cook pasta as directed on the package.

Heat milk in a small saucepan, making sure not to boil it, or heat it in the microwave for 1 minute. Meanwhile, melt butter in a Dutch oven. Whisk in flour and then the hot milk and cook until thickened and smooth. Remove from heat. Add cheese, pepper, salt and mustard. Stir until combined. Fold in cooked pasta. Sprinkle with bread crumbs. Cover and bake 20 minutes at 350, then remove the cover and bake 10 minutes at 300 until the sauce is bubbly and the casserole is browned on top.
This is great with a salad and crusty bread!

Original Recipe: Pasta with Beef and Fennel Sauce

Much as I may claim that "laziness is the mother of invention," there are times when I agree that necessity deserves that title. It's certainly true in cooking. This recipe was born out of a moment of panic when I realized that somehow I had run out of spaghetti sauce with meatballs without realizing it--and I'd planned that very thing for dinner (and had no time to start up a big batch).

I did have some sauce without meatballs, though, and some ground beef. So I thought I'd make a baked ziti with meat and cheese...but that's not really what I wanted for dinner. That's when I got busy inventing. The result was a big hit; it has the flavor of Italian sausage without all the grease.

The whole thing cooks in the time it takes to boil a big pot of water and cook pasta, so it's a quick and easy meal.

PASTA WITH BEEF AND FENNEL SAUCE
Serves 6

3 to 4 cups spaghetti sauce without meat
1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 medium onion, chopped fine
1 TBL olive oil
1 TBL fennel seed
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper

Brown ground beef and onion in the olive oil.  Drain, add fennel and pepper, and cook 2 minutes more until spices are fragrant.  Stir into spaghetti sauce. Heat until warmed through and serve over your choice of pasta.

Skillet Chicken Parm

My husband's favorite dinner is Chicken Parmesan. But while I am a big fan of pasta with red sauce, Chicken Parmesan is not high on my list of best-loved dishes--either to make or to eat. Breading, frying, then baking the chicken is a mess and a chore. Today I bought a new cookbook: The Cook's Country Cookbook (from the America's Test Kitchen editors) and found a Skillet Chicken Parmesan recipe in there.

I know that the America's Test Kitchen people are all kinds of scientific and they think they have found the One Best Way to make anything. Honestly, though, I didn't buy this cookbook for the recipes but for the information on technique (like shaping rolls and boning chicken) that had lots of useful photographs. So while the recipe below was "inspired by" the ATK one in the cookbook, there were a lot of changes that I made to accommodate the ingredients I had on hand.

This version of Skillet Chicken Parm cooks in about the same time as a big pot of linguine, so it's great when you want to have dinner on the table in under 30 minutes!

This was way easier to make than conventional Chicken Parm, and there was plenty of sauce to go around (that's my favorite part!) I used my own homemade pizza sauce, but you can use your favorite thick spaghetti sauce.

SKILLET CHICKEN PARM

Get the full recipe plus nutrition information at Cook and Count!

Blueprint Recipe: Chicken Thighs with Rosemary

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Trinity Rice with Almonds

There's a whole bunch of things you can make with leftover rice:  rice pudding, fried rice, and breakfast rice to name just a few.  Today, though, I didn't want to make any of these.  I was looking for a way to use up about 2 cups of cooked white rice.  I found a recipe here that looked good, changed a few ingredients (wasn't in the mood to put raisins in it) and everyone was happy with the result.  This recipe would be just as good with brown rice as it was with white.

I called it "Trinity Rice" because it uses the vegetables that, in French cooking, are called the "trinity"--carrots, celery and onion, all chopped the same size.

TRINITY RICE WITH ALMONDS

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Sally's Magic Chicken

When I was in the hospital after surgery last month, a good friend showed up at our house with dinner for my family--twice during my 5-day stay. One of the meals included chicken drumsticks with a delicious sweet and spicy sauce. After returning home, I thanked her for the meals and asked for the recipe for the "Magically Delicious" chicken, because all my kids had been raving about it. That's when she looked embarrassed and told me that her husband had picked up the chicken all prepared and ready to bake at a local grocery store. Then she decided to figure out how to make it herself.

A few weeks later she showed up at choir practice with a half-full jar of the Secret Ingredient: Frank's Red Hot Sweet Chili Sauce.  That's pretty much all it is:  just this sauce, poured over chicken drumsticks and baked until done.

This is a simple, can't-miss, 3-ingredient chicken dish.

Get the recipe with nutrition information at Cook and Count!

We served it with sauteed broccoli rabe and red potatoes with parsley.

Beef Paysanne

This is a dinner I've been making for years.  It's a great way to re-invent leftover pot roast; I always make enough pot roast for two meals and freeze half of it so we can have this dish sometime down the road.  Freezing hint:  add some beef broth or some of the pan juices to the freezer container along with the meat to help keep it moist.

Get this recipe with nutrition facts at Cook and Count!

Variation on a Theme: Spanish Garlic Shrimp with Vegetables

One of the best things you can keep in your freezer is a bag of frozen, deveined shrimp.  I buy them when they go on sale.  It's easy to take out as many as you need for a particular meal.  Spanish Garlic Shrimp is a longtime family favorite.  

Spanish Garlic Shrimp with Vegetables

Get the full recipe and nutrition information at Cook and Count!

Balsamic-Rosemary Chicken

This is a very simple way to serve boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  It's a snap to adapt this recipe to any amount of servings, and since it requires only about 30 minutes (including marinating) this is an easy weeknight recipe.  Even a beginner cook won't have a problem making this one.

I got this recipe from Barbara at Bless Us, O Lord; she adapted it from a Rachael Ray recipe.  It's delicious eaten "as is" or sliced and served (warm or cold) over a green salad.

Here's the recipe along with nutrition info at Cook and Count!

I'm adding a new label:  College.  My older son, a college student, plans to live in a campus apartment next year and has told me that he'll be using this blog as his main cooking resource.  This label will make it easy for him to find dishes he can make easily.  I'm just glad he doesn't plan to subsist totally on Ramen noodles and Lucky Charms.

Home Cooking Beats the Dining Halls

Guess who's signing up for Cooking Lessons with Mom this summer?  My very own college student, who has announced that next year he intends to abandon dorm life for an on-campus apartment.  (Given the neighborhood in which he attends school, an off-campus apartment complete with slumlord is the other option, and my husband and I won't hear of that possibility.)

He pretty much admitted that he knew I'd keep him in spaghetti sauce with meatballs.  Now I know what to do with all those containers that seem to multiply in the cabinets when I'm not looking!

I know that he can make a mean Pork Roll and Egg sandwich, not to mention French Toast.  He's got Breakfast For Dinner covered.

And I think this is going to be a time when I really start figuring out how to turn some of his favorite meals into easy-to-make "dinner kits" that can be kept in the freezer.  I've done this already with Beef & Noodle Skillet Dinner.  There's no reason Beef Paysanne couldn't be made the same way.

Meanwhile, I'm looking for deals on a rice cooker and some other essentials.  Got any suggestions for things I should add to his "Kitchen Essentials" box?

The only drawback here is that if I teach him how to make all his favorite foods, he'll visit even less often than he does now.   Hmmm...I'll have to make sure to ration out that spaghetti sauce.  He'll run out eventually, and he knows better than to buy Ragu.

Frugal Hydration at College or Anywhere

Big Brother went back to college yesterday. Last week, when he was making his grocery list, he observed that even though there's a supermarket down the block from school, everything is twice the price that it is at home. I do what I can to keep him in Dr. Pepper and a few other things that are impossibly priced in his school's Philadelphia neighborhood. (He took 4 cases of soda to school with him yesterday).

He's also a water drinker, and last year he'd hike the block to buy a case of water bottles and then lug that back to his dorm. This time, he mentioned that he'd do that when he got to school. Then he had another idea. "Maybe I'll just get a Brita pitcher and use that. I've got a sink in my room."

A water pitcher plus one extra filter will be enough to get him through the semester, and it weighs a whole lot less--and takes up much less space--than a case of water bottles that lasts 3 weeks at most.  He's got a reusable bottle if he wants to carry water to class; otherwise, there are plenty of cups and mugs in his box of stuff.

Honey Mustard Pork Chops

Here's an easy way to make juicy baked pork chops. Since you bake them in a foil packet, clean-up is really easy.

HONEY MUSTARD PORK CHOPS

4 center-cut boneless pork chops (you can use bone-in but add at least 10 minutes to cooking time)
1 TBL olive oil
2 TBL honey mustard
Garlic powder
Freshly ground black pepper
1 small onion, thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 350.
Line a 9X13 baking pan with foil, leaving enough overlap so you can close the foil over the top of the pan.
Brush the bottom of the lined pan with olive oil. Place pork chops in a single layer in the pan.
Spread honey mustard over the top of the pork chops. Sprinkle garlic powder and pepper on each.
Top the pork chops with the sliced onions.
Close the foil so the pan is covered tightly.
Bake 45 minutes.