Cassoulet and rainy days

It has been raining here. Epic, biblical, we-need-to-build-an-ark kind of rain. There has even been some thunder and lightning. The dog has had multiple mini breakdowns due to the thunder. Also, going outside to deal with his biological issues has been a chore. When he comes back in the house he is soaked and water touching him makes him kind of... well...insane is the right word.

 

 

 

That would be his butt just going around the back of the chair at high speed

I, of course, missed the thunder and light show. I was the victim of another practical joke played on me by the medical community. They find it endlessly entertaining to make me do ridiculous things (fast when I am 9 months pregnant, drink copious amounts of water and tell me not to pee and then make me wait more than 45 minutes (!) in their damn waiting room while other people drink water and relax to the ocean sounds on the Muzak. Thanks for that, by the way).

More on the medical tests in another post...when I am a little less bitter about it. In the meantime, here is a little photo to entertain you.

 Spooky tray of scary medical equipment

Go ahead and talk amongst yourselves and imagine the indignities I was forced to suffer for medical science. They are varied and many, believe me.

On a happier note, I made a wonderful dinner last night. I have been watching Michael Chiarello (At Home with Michael Chiarello: Easy Entertaining) for some time. Mr. Smith has a little bromance going with him. He just loves the looks of everything the man cooks. Hmmmm....

The delectable finished product

Anyway, I caught part of a show the other day. I just could not stop thinking about this recipe! It just sounded and looked so good, so yummy, so cozy and perfect for a rain-filled nasty day.

A little note: I could not face the notion of investing in enough fennel seeds to make the rub for the chicken. As always, I just made up my own recipe for the rub.


Vertigo B Herb Rub

1 tsp. fresh thyme
1 tsp. ground white pepper
2 tsp. course salt (divided)
1 tsp. Italian seasoning

That is just how I roll. I can't leave a recipe alone, I just can't. It annoys my mother. It annoys my sister-in-law. It annoys my aunt when she asks for a recipe and I tell her I don't really have one.

I also used partially frozen skinless boneless chicken breasts. Again, that is just how I roll. I can't deal with chicken on the bone. It is too icky and I am a sissy. There I went ahead and said it.

My advice, add three cans of white beans. Two was just not enough. The beans are to die for!

It does take a little prep time, but believe me, it is so completely worth it. The results are so warm and comforting on a nasty day.

Facing your fears

I have decided that 2010 is the year. This is the year I am going to face my fears. I am going to put on my "big girl panties" and face my fears.

Not only am I planning on facing my fears, I am planning on tackling my to do list and pulling myself together. I have been under water for over four years at this point. It is time. It definitely feels like the time. Time to clean, time to straighten, time to organize. Time, time, time. It is what I battle, it is what I never have enough of, what gets away from me.

Today, in about 20 minutes, I am facing a real whopper. I am going to the dentist. I have not gone to the dentist (I am completely ashamed to admit) since 2003. I am blushing with shame as I write that, but it is the truth. I have a million excuses for why I haven't gone. Pregnant...twice. Too scared...all the time. Too cheap...all the time. Afraid of what he would tell me...all the time.

The finished product

On Saturday, I faced another one of my fears. Making fried chicken. I know, I know, not exactly something to be afraid of, but I was nonetheless.

A work in progress

When I was in 9th grade, I attempted to make some deep fried donut item. It exploded and the airborne donut shrapnel burned my neck and arm. Pretty scary and painful stuff. Also, my mother is so freaked out by hot oil that I practically have to sedate her to make anything that is fried. Perhaps I inherited a little of her fear.

Pioneer Woman had a recipe for Fried Chicken Tenders on her site and the idea of making them has been percolating around in my brain for a while now.

These are so easy and so worth the little bit of extra work and planning. The best part, they taste great cold. The even bestier part (sorry, Mr. Smith), you can throw leftover strips on a cookie sheet and reheat them for about 15 minutes in the oven at 300°. Add your favorite condiment and go ahead and swoon over what you have created.

P.S. The trip to the dentist went extremely well. Turns out I just need a cleaning! See, I was afraid for nothing!

What have you been putting off? What are you afraid to face? Do you have something that you have been putting off because you are scared of what you might find out?

What we havin' for dinner?

Fresh snow peas and haricot verts

That was the question from H today when I got him up from his wonderfully long afternoon nap...3 hours, a mother's dream!

His sister, on the other hand, is a punk and only slept about 1 1/2 hours.



When my brother was little, he would ask my mother what we were having for dinner immediately after breakfast, sometimes while we were eating breakfast. It was if he had to plan the rest of his day based on what her answer was.

I could never figure out why he cared. The kid was a legend among the picky eaters, and he has been paid back in recent years. Neither of his sons eats voluntarily. A2 has been known to come dangerously close to inciting violence at the dinner table. I know because I witnessed it.

Snow peas in ice bath

I will never forget when I was visiting them and A2 asked the greatest question of all time, "Who picked this dinner?" My sister-in-law, in her continuing effort to appease her picky eaters, had instituted the system that allowed each family member to pick a meal they wanted on a given night. Unfortunately, on this night, A2 was not pleased with the choice. Obviously, the choice had been made by some other family member.

Roasting red peppers

The dinner that night was Chicken Pot Pie. A2 has a problem with various foods touching. The casserole concept as a whole runs counter to everything he holds dear. Thus his objection. I thought my normally patient sister-in-law was going to go across the table at him.

So, this afternoon when I went to get H out of bed, and he asked me, "What we havin' for dinner?", it just cracked me up. He has no intention of eating it, why would he care what we were having? He is my brother all over again and I am reminded of my brother as a child every day.

Tonight we are having Roasted Chicken with Pesto and Dijon with Pasta Salad with Roasted Red Pepper Dressing.

The finished product. I replaced the peas with haricot verts, just because those
are much more acceptable to the picky eaters here.

H ate yogurt and drew on his face, arms and hands with markers. He then announced, "Yo ho, yo ho, life is but a dream. Fast and curvy H's with no tails!" That is H-speak for, "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me. Avast you scurvy dogs. Dead men tell no tales!"

Yo ho, yo ho, life is but a dream!

As a totally unrelated aside, this is what greets us when we come in the door. Isn't this gorgeous?

Enchilada Time!

I know, I am kind of cheating. Okay, I am totally cheating.

I have already posted this recipe. However, it deserves to be posted again. It is THAT good!

This is a real favorite in the Smith house. Mr. Smith gets positively giddy when he hears that this meal is on the meal plan. He usually wants it the same night he hears about it. No matter what.

Yes, they are a little fussy. Yes, the enchilada sauce could easily be weaponized. Same with the chipotle in adobo...yikes that stuff can stain ANYTHING.

But the results are completely worth the stains, the orange hands, the reddish grout on the tile counter, the red splotches on my clothes.



The other beautiful thing about this meal, it makes two 9 x 13 pans (gotta love that 9 x 13 action...is there anything bad that comes out of a 9 x 13 pan...I don't think so.) of enchiladas. Cover the second one with freezer wrap and foil (don't put the foil directly on...the tomatoes will dissolve it). Take it out of the freezer when you want to serve it. Bake it for about 30-45 minutes on 350° and serve it with Spanish Rice (Mahatma brand is my personal favorite) and refried beans and everyone will be happy.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 pounds skinless boneless chicken breast
• Salt and pepper
• 2 teaspoons cumin powder
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon Mexican Spice Blend
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup frozen corn, thawed
• 5 canned whole green chiles, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 4 canned chipotle chiles, seeded and minced
• 1 (28-ounce) can stewed tomatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour
• 16 corn tortillas
• 1 1/2 cups enchilada sauce, canned
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar and Jack cheeses
• Garnish: chopped cilantro leaves, chopped scallions, sour cream, chopped tomatoes

Directions

Coat large saute pan with oil. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Brown chicken over medium heat, allow 7 minutes each side or until no longer pink. Sprinkle chicken with cumin, garlic powder and Mexican spices before turning. Remove chicken to a platter, allow to cool.

Saute onion and garlic in chicken drippings until tender. Add corn and chiles. Stir well to combine. Add canned tomatoes, saute 1 minute.

Pull chicken breasts apart by hand into shredded strips. Add shredded chicken to saute pan, combine with vegetables. Dust the mixture with flour to help set.

Microwave tortillas on high for 30 seconds. This softens them and makes them more pliable. Coat the bottom of 2 (13 by 9-inch) pans with a ladle of enchilada sauce. Using a large shallow bowl, dip each tortilla in enchilada sauce to lightly coat. Spoon 1/4 cup chicken mixture in each tortilla. Fold over filling, place 8 enchiladas in each pan with seam side down. Top with remaining enchilada sauce and cheese.

Bake for 15 minutes in a preheated 350 degree F oven until cheese melts. Garnish with cilantro, scallion, sour cream and chopped tomatoes before serving. Serve with Spanish rice and beans.

Recipe from The Food Network, Tyler Florence.

Chicken, Gravy and Biscuits

Left to right: Grace, Alice and Hilda (my grandmother) circa 1938.

Don't the look they The Three Graces?(thanks Wikipedia.org!)

This recipe is one of the perennial favorites in our house.

I have very fond memories of my great aunt Alice making this when we stopped to see her one day. You could just tell she would have made this meal if we were coming or not. A hot meal at lunch time was THAT important to her. We were just stopping in for a visit, but she insisted that we stay for a meal. Well, she earned my eternal admiration when she pulled out all the stops and served up Chicken, Gravy and Biscuits.

She was a truly great lady. She did not believe in dry cleaning. She figured if you couldn't wash it in the washer and dry on the clothes line or in a dryer, it wasn't worth having. I loved her a great deal. She was no nonsense. She baked her biscuits on a cake pan turned upside down. Oh how I loved finding that out!

She also did the New York Times Crossword Puzzle every Sunday...in INK! I actually witnessed her, sitting and working intently until she got the whole thing done. She was so dedicated and did not even look up until she had that think licked. We all just sat around talking while she toiled away.

She was married to Jimmy who was my grandfather's dearest friend. Jimmy was a bit of a troublemaker and a bit of a rabble rouser. He refused to use a map. He believed the compass was good enough. He called my Aunt Alice "Sally."

They were one of those couples that you see walking, and even though they are pushing eighty, they are still holding hands. And they are holding hands because they want to, not because they need to. I love love love those couples.

I can only hope that Mr. Smith and I are lucky enough to end up that way. That is the plan, anyway.

So, here's the deal.

Get yourself some chicken. You can start with raw chicken, if you are feeling terribly industrious. If you don't have much time, or you hate dealing with raw chicken, go get a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. It works just fine and cuts your prep time to virtually nothing.

You can use this method to cook the chicken.

It is so handy and can be done well in advance. Just get some heavy duty foil, put it on a cookie sheet, add some carrots, celery and onion. Peel the carrots, get a few stalks of celery and cut the onion into nice size chunks, nothing fancy. Make a "raft" in the center of the foil. Put the raw, skinless, boneless chicken breasts on top of the vegetables.

Seal up the foil so that you have a nice packet. Place in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. You will have some beautiful broth, some nicely steamed veggies and some cooked chicken ready to use in any number of ways.

You can go ahead and use it for Chicken a la King, which I highly recommend you try. Very nice for a large group.

Or you can just cut up the chicken, make yourself some gravy and serve it over biscuits. You can even use the herb biscuit recipe that Emeril used with the Chicken a la King.

This gravy recipe is pretty much fool proof. I have doubled it, I use it for Mr. Smith's Turkey Pot Pie, we have it every Thanksgiving.

It is unfortunately called Zippity Doo Dah Gravy. I didn't name it.

4 Tablespoons margarine

4 Tablespoons flour

2 cups water

2 teaspoons Chicken Better Than Buillion

Melt the margarine in a medium saucepan. Stir the flour in to make a nice roux. Wisk in the water and then add the buillion. Just keep stirring it until it thickens to the consistency that you like. Some people like thicker gravy. My father, heaven help me, likes thin gravy. Don't ask me why.

Once you have your gravy, cut up your chicken and stir it into the gravy. Are you getting hungry yet?

Now all you need is your very favorite baking powder biscuits, baked to perfection.

Split one or two of those babies and spoon the Chicken and Gravy over them.

After you swoon and recover, eat, enjoy and wax poetic about how wonderful simple food can be.

You are welcome!

Awesome White Chicken Chili

I am generally not a big fan of chili. Ok, truth be told, I hate the stuff. Its all red and meaty and yucky. Sorry. Not very appetizing for a food/cooking blog.

Kidney beans freak me out. First of all, there is that name. Do I really want to eat anything with the word "kidney" in it? Nope. Not going to eat actual kidneys, can't really stomach the kidney beans. They are big and have a pasty, grainy thing going on that I just can't tolerate.

Also, so many chili recipes have beef in some form in them and I am just not down with the red meat in soup notion. Call me neurotic, call me a picky eater...and you would probably be right on both counts.

This chili recipe is in a word...awesome!

It is from Cooking Light, so it is pretty healthy. It is also the tastiest chili I have ever eaten. In my opinion, you just can't go wrong with cumin, the stuff is such a great flavor. It adds such a great spicy flavor without heat that I love.

I made this when my cousin and his family were here for dinner. It is one of those recipes that is very easily doubled and you will be so glad that you did.

When I worked in an office (like about a million years ago, or maybe just four years ago) I would take this for lunch. After I warmed it in the microwave, everyone would be very jealous and asking what I was having. Pretty ringing endorsement, if you ask me!

Go ahead, try some White Chicken Chili, you know you want to!

Williams Sonoma Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

This recipe is originally from the Williams Sonoma catalog. This is old school, when the catalog was 5 x 7 and not the slick production that it is now.

I have always been a huge fan. When I saw this recipe, it just looked so good and sounded amazing. After a few days of discussion (my mother is not overly fond of trying new recipes, especially when they require ingredients that may be expensive/hard to find/never used for anything else ever again). This one only had a few oddball ingredients, so she gave in pretty easily.

The results were AMAZING! This salad has become a true favorite in our house. It is just the right balance of ingredients. Just enough chicken, just enough cheese, just enough lettuce. It just has everything.

Over the years, I have streamlined the process and have made the preparation must faster.

Rub for chicken

Skinless, boneless, about 1 1/2 pounds of chicken). I usually cube the chicken and just stir it into the "rub mixture." I then throw it in a pan and saute it until it is cooked through.

In a bowl make the rub by combining:

2 Tbsp. Olive Oil

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. cayenne pepper (I usually reduce this to 1/4-1/2 teaspoon, we are lightweights around here)

1 Tbsp. finely chopped cilantro (if you can find the stuff in a tube, it is so much easier than chopping the fresh stuff and the results are the same)

salt and pepper to taste

Rub the skinless, boneless chicken breasts with oil/herb mixture (if you are grilling them whole). Grill on both sides until tender, 15-20 minutes, set aside.

Salad dressing

4-6 tomatillos (Get some that are nice, plump and the color of green tomatoes under the husk. If they are starting to shrivel and feel mushy, don't get them. When you are ready to use them, just remove the husk. Make sure to rinse the tomatillo off thoroughly, they have a sticky coating on them. Cut it into quarters and add it to your food processor).

1/4 cup olive oil

2-3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

1-2 seeded ancho chilis (quarter and add to food processor)

1 Tbsp. finely chopped cilantro (again, the tube of cilantro will work just fine)

salt and pepper to taste

Process until pureed and set aside.

Wash, dry and tear 3 small heads of red or green leaf lettuce (I like to use a head of each) and arrange in a large bowl.

Cut chicken up (if you haven't already) and arrange in center of lettuce.

Arrange 1 cup each of grated Cheddar Cheese and Monterey Jack Cheese around chicken and pour dressing evenly over salad.

NOTE: This is a big salad, you may not be able to finish it in one sitting. If you want to be able to keep the salad, don't assemble it. Simply keep the components and assemble the salad when you are ready to eat it. It is wonderful if you make it ahead and serve for dinner, it is great the next day for lunch. You can take it to a party, etc. The chicken with the rub is also an awesome addition to nachos or a quesadilla.

I hope you and your family love this recipe as much as we do!

Let me know what you think.

Chicken a la King

This Chicken a la King recipe is a little fussy, but honestly, all the chopping and fussing is so worth it. This is another one of Mr. Smith's favorites and it has become a family favorite. I usually leave out the three egg yolks at the end, it just plain gives me the willies, but if you are okay with it, go for it.

I have to tell you, the method that Emeril uses to cook the chicken (in a foil packet with vegetables) absolutely set my world on fire! Now, at long last, I can cook the chicken while I am doing other things, have some beautifully cooked vegetables AND the broth to add to a million recipes. It also allows you to cook chicken that is frozen solid (just bake it a little longer) in a recipe. Love love love it!!!

The Herb Biscuits are too much trouble, so I usually just make Baking Powder Biscuits (recipe to come from the legendary Robin Hood Flour Cookbook). Occasionally I will throw in some herbs or some shredded cheddar cheese just to make things interesting.

Chicken Enchiladas

I made these Chicken Enchiladas tonight for dinner. As usual...fiasco, but the results were phenomenal! These are better than any enchilada I have ever had in any restaurant. Be warned this recipe is HUGE (two 9 x 13 pans full of really zippy enchiladas), but I can see that the leftovers will not hang around. Mr. Smith declared that he would eat these every day. He looked a little scared when I told him he might have to.

The fiasco part of the story involves the shopping trips (yes, trips) that Mr. Smith and I both had to make. He to go on the bigger shopping trip, since coordinating the naps around here is impossible. He did not feel confident purchasing chicken and could not find chipotle at the store.

After he got home, I was tied up feeding Pinkie (seeing as how she eats almost constantly). By the time that was done, Hamster was up from his nap (Mama talk to me on the walkie talkie), having his snack. Finally I was able to get out of the house, with the promise that I would not return without a new car for Hamster (this has become a real problem around here. Hamster feels that there should be a new car on his high chair tray after each of his naps).

Pinkie and I went to the store largely without incident. Got home pretty quickly, and was so glad to be pulling into the garage WITHOUT THE PROMISED CAR!!!! Quickly called Mr. Smith, and rushed to Target to buy the stinking car. Pinkie was not the least bit happy to be making yet another stop, but we were able to find a car that The Hamster does not have yet (not easy at this point, he has almost the entire Matchbox/Hot Wheels aisle).

Luckily Mr. Smith was kind enough the keep The Hamster outside long enough for me to get dinner ready. This was no small feat as The Hamster has discovered running in and out of the house...maddening to say the very least!

Anyway, Hamster says it is too spicy for him, but Mr. Smith LOVED it. Add it the repertoire and call it a day.