recipe

What to do with breasts. Specifically chicken ones.

~ Jenny ~ Leave a comment

We eat a lot of chicken in our house. For a while, I almost always bought skin-on split chicken breasts because they’re easy to roast and use in a lot of different dishes. They are also pretty much the only chicken parts that Ina Garten’s recipes ever call for, and we know how I feel about her. (Side note: if you like Ina Garten, you need to Google Ina Garten memes – so funny)

I used to avoid buying boneless, skinless breasts unless I was making chicken cutlets. I never knew how to cook them without them being dry and boring. However, in my efforts to save a few bucks, I’ve been buying big packs of them, so I had to find some tasty ways to use them. Good news…I found some!

Caprese Chicken – I found this one on Pinterest and I love it because it has a ton of flavor and requires very little prep or chopping. I shave two or three minutes off the cooking time on the chicken and use regular mozzarella instead of buffalo because I’m strange and don’t like buffalo mozzarella.

On a whim, I bought this Balsamic Reduction glaze and it’s so good. The caprese chicken is perfectly delicious with regular balsamic vinegar, but when you can drizzle this sweet syrup on it, why wouldn’t you??

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One-Pan Chicken Burrito Bowl – Here’s another one I found on Pinterest. I loved it so much that I think I made it three times in the month after I found it. As the title indicates, you only use one pan, which makes clean up easy IF you don’t use heat that’s too high. The second time I made this I guess I left it simmering a bit too high and there was a whole layer of cooked rice stuck to the bottom of the pan. Ugh.

The other change I make to this recipe is that I swap out the can of diced tomatoes for a jar (or really three quarters of a jar) of salsa. It adds some extra flavors and with the huge variety of salsas on the market, you can really customize the recipe based on your taste.

Chicken Chili – This one comes from Dinner: A Love Story (a great place for solid recipes) and it’s another fast and easy one. When I read through the recipe for the first time, I saw four tablespoons of chili powder and thought, “whoa! That’s a lot of heat.” I like a little spice but not too much. To be safe I used two tablespoons and I thought that was plenty of heat.

I had serendipitously just bought Whole Foods Organic Fire Roasted Corn and it was PERFECT in this recipe. Obviously regular frozen corn is fine too, but the flavor from charred corn was delicious and added zero extra work. If you don’t have a Whole Foods nearby, I’m pretty sure Trader Joe’s carries a similar product.

5 Ingredient White Chicken Chili – yet another Pinterest find! It’s really more of a soup than a chili and it’s so fast and easy that I felt guilty just pouring everything in the pot and saying, “Ok, I made dinner!” The secret to this recipe is salsa verde. If you’ve never had it, it’s a very mild salsa and it’s delicious.

The base of the soup is only the salsa verde, chicken, chicken stock, cumin, and Great Northern Beans but then you can add so many delicious toppings at the end. I like cilantro, avocado, sour cream, cheddar, and broken up tortilla chips.

Do you have any go-to recipes for chicken breasts?

Get cooking!

Twenty Minute Turkey Taco Salad

~ Jenny ~ Leave a comment

Quick dinner recipes are advertised all over the place: cookbooks, blogs, magazines, and of course, Pinterest. But what I often find is that the 20 or 30-minute recipes have ingredient lists that looks like this:

   2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cubed

   2 onions, diced

   1 lb butternut squash, peeled, diced, and roasted

   1 cup cooked chicken breast, shredded

While those are all delicious ingredients, they require lots and lots of time.  Those types of recipes should really be called, “Lots of prep the night before, but 20 minutes to assemble before you eat it.” Or maybe something a little catchier.

This dinner is so fast because there is almost no chopping. It’s also incredibly versatile and you can change it up based on what you have in your house.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 lb ground turkey (I prefer dark meat because I think the light is too rubbery)

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup salsa

1 can kidney or black beans, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon chili powder

1/2 tablespoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

romaine lettuce

tortilla chips

Topping Ideas: shredded cheddar, avocado, sour cream, chopped tomatoes, whatever you want!

Heat olive oil in large skillet and add turkey meat. Cook over medium heat, breaking up the meat until no longer pink. Add garlic and cook for an additional minute. Add chili powder, cumin, and salt and stir well, making sure all the meat is coated with the seasoning. Add salsa, beans, and a little water (I use the can the beans came in and fill it about halfway). Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to low and cover. Cook for ten minutes.

While the meat finishes cooking, arrange the lettuce on your plates, add some tortilla chips and get your toppings ready. When the meat is done, arrange it on top of the chips and then add your toppings. You’re done!

 

cozy things for the weekend

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It looks like another crummy, cold weekend ahead…

Head to the supermarket today before it gets gross out and pick up the ingredients for some comforting winter food.

Risotto is one of my favorite meals to cook (and eat, duh) in the winter. I love anything that’s made in one pot (fewer dishes), and it usually reheats fairly well. I don’t really mind the 20 or 30 minutes spent stirring at the stove to make traditional risotto, but when Barefoot Contessa published a recipe for risotto made in the oven, I thought it must be too good to be true. It’s not. The version she makes in the oven is a basic one with parmesan and peas, but you can absolutely take your favorite risotto twist and adapt it to this one. Whether it be mushroom, butternut squash, lobster, most of these ingredients can be added in the last steps of the recipe, after it has baked. Obviously, your add-ins should be fully cooked if they need to be.

I’ll also be making Smitten Kitchen’s Baked Potato Soup for the first time this weekend. It looks soooo good and I just bought the ingredients – they were cheap!

Watching a movie is always a good activity for bad weather. I’m WAY behind on seeing the big movies of last year. One that I actually saw is The Grand Budapest Hotel. I’m pretty neutral when it comes to Wes Anderson movies. I like some; I don’t care for others, but I really loved this one. It’s just a great story, it’s obviously beautiful because it’s Wes Anderson, and it’s funny and sweet. Good stuff.

Do you have a favorite cold weather recipe or cuddle-conducive movie? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

recipe chaos

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I have never been good at organizing recipes. Up until recently, if I wanted to find a recipe I would have to look in one of several places: an actual cookbook, a shamefully messy file folder of magazine cutouts and scraps of paper with handwritten notes, my various Pinterest boards, the Food Network website, and various other cooking blogs.  That’s not including the phone calls to family members with questions like, “Remember that thing you made for that thing? Where did that recipe come from?” It was time consuming and completely inefficient. The worst part about it is that I know I made a ton of good meals that then were never made again because I found the recipe in some far corner of the internet and then never printed or saved it. RIP creamy pasta dish I made that one time.

A few weeks ago, I decided enough is enough. I made a folder on my browser titled Recipes and then a few subfolders for different meals and types of foods. Since then, every time I make something I like, I bookmark it in that folder. I was tempted to add recipes I hadn’t tried yet, but then it was a little overwhelming. Instead, I made a separate folder to put those in since I don’t actually know if they’re reliable yet.

Screen shot 2015-01-15 at 12.19.08 PMAs you can see, I edited the names of the first three recipes to make them more concise and I’ll do the same with the others when I have some free time.

If you’ve been feeling a little stagnant with your cooking, here are some places to look:

Barefoot Contessa cookbooks – At Home, Family Style, and Back to Basics are my favorites, but they are all good. Many of her recipes are also on the Food Network website.

Smitten Kitchen – I especially love her website for baking

 Martha Stewart and her more casual offshoot, Everyday Food

(I picked this image because I love Seth Meyers)

Dinner A Love Story – the cookbook and the blog are fantastic

Pioneer Woman – she seems to only make the most gluttonous food on her Food Network show, but her website has a wider variety of great recipes and ideas

What do you do, friends? Have you abandoned your cookbooks to rely solely on the internet? How do you keep track of it all? For now, I’ve organized my recipes by meal and main ingredient, but I wonder if maybe it should be more lifestyle-related. Perhaps separate them into folders like, Make Ahead, Fast Dinner, Dinner Party, or Stuff Nolan Actually Eats.

life around here

~ Jenny ~ Leave a comment

It’s been an eventful eight weeks since my last post. We celebrated Thanksgiving, prepared our house for the holidays, celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas with our families, cooked up some delicious meals, and oh yeah, I had a baby.

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Will Henry was born on November 17th and his delivery was a complete 180 from Nolan’s. I hope to write up my birth story in the next few weeks before I’ve forgotten everything. Did you know Nolan’s was featured on Design Mom back in 2011?

Nolan has adjusted pretty well to being a brother. With Will being young and immobile, Nolan’s life hasn’t changed too much. We’ll see what happens when Will starts taking Nolan’s toys…

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For now, I’ve been soaking up this cute baby’s smile and cooking up a storm. I made this super fast and healthy-ish pasta for lunch today; this chicken chili was so easy and tasty, but I recommend using half the chili powder; this roast chicken is probably my favorite chicken dish of all time: juicy chicken, crunchy French bread croutons, sweet onions, yum.

 

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IMG_4334Stay warm, friends!
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homemade pizza in 20 minutes

~ Jenny ~ 1 Comment

I’m home sick today and wishing I still had some of this pizza left.  Calling it “homemade” might be a bit misleading because I don’t make the pizza dough; however, I still thinks this counts as homemade because believing that is good for my self-esteem.

Back to the pizza. I’ve made a bunch of variations but this one was my favorite.

pizza

Ingredients:

Pizza dough

Tomato sauce (if you use jarred sauce, Rao’s is my favorite)

Shredded mozzarella

Thin slices of prosciutto (about 2 ounces)

Dried figs, thinly sliced

Arugula

Olive oil

Whole Foods sells whole wheat pizza dough in the freezer section and it takes about a day in the fridge to defrost. If you remember, leave it out for a half hour or so before you make the pizza because it’s easier to stretch dough when it’s close to room temperature.  I never remember to and it always works out fine.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Spread a little olive oil on a sheet pan and place floured dough in the center. Gently stretch it out and flatten so the dough takes up most of the pan.

Spread a very little bit of sauce on the dough, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Sprinkle the cheese, again leaving the border. Lay strips of prosciutto on top of the cheese.

Cook pizza for 12 minutes and then place pieces of fig on top and return the pizza to the oven. When the cheese is bubbly and the crust is lightly browned (probably another 2-5 minutes), it’s done! If you want the arugula slightly wilted, add it and return to the oven for just a minute. Otherwise, you can add the arugula just before serving.

Enjoy!

cranberry white chocolate chip cookies (plus a few baking tips)

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Snow day #4 and counting…

These cookies are definitely among my favorites to bake (and eat). The dried cranberries make me think fall/winter but obviously they’re great all year round. Deb Perelman of  Smitten Kitchen modified the standard Quaker Oats recipe and came up with my favorite oatmeal raisin cookies. I made a few changes to give them a wintry twist and I hope you like them!

cookie

This recipe makes 50 small (think two or three bite) cookies

2 sticks of salted butter, softened but not melted
1 and 1/3 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of one orange
1 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt (regular table salt, not coarse salt)
3 cups rolled oats
1 and 1/2 cups dried cranberries
1 cup of white chocolate chips (more or less to taste)
 
Mix butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy.

Add eggs, one at a time and mix until fully incorporated.

Add vanilla and orange zest.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.

Gradually add dry ingredients to wet on low t0 medium speed until fully mixed.

Stir in oats, cranberries, and white chocolate chips.

Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour.  Colder dough makes thick, chewy cookies. If you use the dough right away, the cookies will be flatter and crispier (this is the case with pretty much all cookie recipes).

Preheat the oven to 350.  Scoop out rounded teaspoons of dough about two inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake cookies for 12-15 minutes until they’re lightly browned on the edges. Try really hard to let them cool a little so as not to scorch your mouth. Good luck with that.

For the ones that you’re not immediately eating, cool for five minutes on the sheet and then transfer to a cooling rack.

A few baking tips:

  • If you don’t have the time to soften butter by leaving it on the counter for hours and hours, microwave it in a bowl in ten-second increments until it’s very soft to the touch.
  • Never measure out an ingredient over the stuff you’re making. For example, don’t pour out a teaspoon of salt over a bowl of flour. Whatever you’re pouring out will inevitably spill and then your measuring is shot.
  • Make sure the baking sheet is cool before you put the next round of dough on it; otherwise, the butter in the dough will start melting before you’ve even put it in the oven and you’ll end up with weird, flat cookies.

new recipes in the rotation

~ Jenny ~ Leave a comment

For many people 2013 was the year of quinoa and kale. I wish I could say that was true for me!  My year of cooking’s keywords would be ones like cream, braised meat, and pancetta on everything. This year I want to do more cooking but make fewer dirty dishes. Because you know what sucks at the end of a delicious meal? Doing the dishes.

Here are two meals that I made a lot last year. Try them and let me know how it goes. Or better yet, make them and invite me over. I’ll bring some wine and a crazy toddler.

chicken thighs

Crispy-skinned chicken thighs – Inspired by this recipe from Dinner: A Love Story, I have been making this (at least) once a week for the past month or two. I follow the recipe pretty closely but I omit the mushrooms and I add a veggie to cook in the pan after the chicken is done.

It doesn’t matter if the chicken thighs are boneless or not, but they definitely should NOT be skinless. I’ve been using grapeseed oil instead of olive oil for recipes like this because it has a high smoking point and is pretty flavorless (in a good way).

To add the veggies, after the chicken comes out of the oven, remove it from the pan and let it rest on another plate. In the mean time, add a veggie to the pan with the onions and thyme and saute for a few minutes. Spinach works perfectly because it wilts quickly. If you’re using something firmer like carrots, string beans, or French beans, you may want to blanch them ahead of time so they won’t be completely raw when you throw them in the pan. Brussels sprouts would be great too.

Pasta with arugula in a lemon cream sauce – Ina Garten really can do no wrong. This recipe is published in her cookbook Barefoot Contessa at Home and is a bit different from the web version because there is no broccoli mentioned in the book.

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I like to add cooked pancetta or prosciutto (bake it on a sheet pan at 375 for 8 minutes or so until crisp and then blot with paper towels to absorb any oil). I use gemelli pasta instead of fusilli because I illogically hate fusilli (almost as much as I hate rigatoni). The recipe calls for two cups of heavy cream and I’ve experimented with using half and half, or whole milk and heavy cream, and while it tastes pretty much the same, I find that using something other than cream gives a curdled quality to the sauce. It really tastes fine but the lemon juice reacts strangely and makes it a little lumpy. Also, don’t get freaked out if your garlic turns blue. It has to do with the acid in the lemon juice. It has only happened to me a few times but it was unsettling and made me think of Bridget Jones’s blue soup.

S’mores Bars – Because s’mores weren’t fattening enough

~ Jenny ~ 2 Comments

This is the second s’mores-style dessert I’ve written about, which is strange because I’m honestly not that impressed by s’mores. The first one I wrote about here and they’re delicious and cute for parties. These s’mores bars are more rustic (to use a term Barefoot Contessa loves) and very easy to make.

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I found the recipe for these via Pinterest at The Apron Gal’s blog.  I had a little mishap in doubling the recipe last time and wound up with not nearly enough dough to make the top layer, so I did the fluff layer before the Hershey bar layer, and I flattened little pancakes of dough and scattered them over the top. As you can see from the picture, there are big pieces of exposed chocolate and marshmallow, but I actually think I like that better than a smooth layer of dough. Hooray for happy accidents!

A few tips:

  • To save a little time, you can buy graham cracker crumbs already made in the baking aisle by cake mixes.
  • The dough for this is very sticky – wet your hands with cold water before trying to spread it in the pan. Then the dough won’t stick to your hands as much.
  • Really grease the pan and try to leave a border of dough without marshmallow fluff. When the marshmallow gets on the side of the pan, it hardens and is tough to get out.
  • If you can’t flatten the dough in a Ziploc bag like the recipe suggests, it’s no biggie. (I never bother)
  • Definitely stick with Hershey bars and don’t try to jazz these up with fancy chocolate. The distinct taste that a Hershey bar has is what makes these taste like s’mores.

Happy fall baking!

Hey, I Like Your Cocktail!

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I was introduced to a very special friend, Vodka Gimlet, back in 2009. I went to dinner at Sweetwater Restaurant with my friend Katy and her husband  (Hi, my name is Jenny and I’m a third wheel) and I had a variation of a gimlet that was so delicious I’ve been drinking them ever since.

A traditional gimlet is made with gin, and although I can’t say I’ve ever had gin, I’m convinced I don’t like it.  There are tons of ways to jazz it up, but all you really need is ice, vodka and FRESH lime juice. If you try to make this with bottled lime juice (I’m looking at you, Rose’s Lime Juice), consider yourself a failure at making cocktails and go open up a wine cooler like it’s New Year’s Eve 1997.

Some prefer simple syrup to sweeten it up a bit, others like it shaken with some mint or basil (yum!). I recommend it on the rocks because I like a strong drink to be frosty cold. Depending on how strong of a drink you like, you can use anywhere from 1.5 to 3 parts vodka for every ounce of lime juice.

On a recent trip to the Berkshires, Matt and I stopped for a cocktail at Allium in Great Barrington and I loved how the bartender served my gimlet with a sliver of lime, not a slice or a wedge, but the thinnest little shaving. It looked so elegant and delicate. I’ll definitely be copying that next time I make them!