Lemon Pork Medallions

Dinner the other night:  Pork Medallions with Lemon and Parsley.  Recipe courtesy of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" cookbook.

OK.  I love pork.  I love lemon.  Pork and lemon go well together.  However, this was very.....lemon-y.  Almost pucker-y which I'm not crazy about.  The recipe called for quite a bit of lemon juice, I don't remember exact measurements because I wasn't the one cooking.  It also said to slice a lemon, for passing around at the table.  Let me tell you....there was no "passing lemon at the table" because not only would it be redundant, it would've possibly made the meal inedible.  While there is no such thing as too much garlic, there is such a thing as too much lemon!

Kids had the same meal, minus the lemon-parsley sauce.  Unfortunately, the only thing that went over well was the pasta.  Scratch that....Will loves pasta and Sean is going through a phase (a really LONG phase) where he cries before even trying anything in front of him.  We went through this with Will though, so I know that there's a light at end of that tunnel.  Will is game to try anything nowadays, and has even gotten to be polite about saying that he doesn't like something.  And the rule in our house is that if someone tries something and doesn't like it, there are alternates.  Let's just say....the kids eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly, or Cheerios and milk.  But we keep trying!!

Zucchini Feast

What do you do when you have a bumper crop of zucchini?  Well for starters, you share it.  So far my daycare provider and coworkers have both benefitted from the tons of zucchini that I've managed to grow this year, as well as two of my neighbors!  After that, you start to cook with it.  A lot!  Although I love zucchini grilled or sauteed, we need some other ideas.

We had friends over for dinner the other night and I tried something I'd never done before:  fried zucchini.  It was, in a word, awesome!  I never realized how delectable fried zucchini is.  The recipe came from Joy of Cooking  and was very simple.  Flour, club soda, parsley and dill.  Dip the zucchini in the batter and fry for a few minutes.  We dotted it with a little cider vinegar and the four of us polished it off!

Chocolate zucchini bread.  This recipe yielded two delightful loaves of bread, and they smell heavenly!  Plus the boys have been fooled before....can Mama pull it off again?  Only time will tell...

Mark Bittman's Lemony Zucchini Risotto.  Fried eggs this time instead of poached, and it was every bit as good as the first time!  I seriously wanted to lick the bowl.  There's leftover risotto for lunch at work tomorrow, sans eggs.  If only it wasn't messy to bring an egg to fry!

Guess what?  Still have a ton of zucchini.  Some of it is shredded in the fridge, waiting to become Cheddar Zucchini Bread.  The rest?  Not so sure.  I'm still looking for new and exciting recipes.

Day Four: A Favorite!

One of my favorite things:  chicken lettuce wraps!

Usually I kind of just make this up as I go along.  This time, we used Mark Bittman's recipe from "Kitchen Express."  It was good, but was missing something.  I like a bit of crunch with this, some carrots or even broccoli slaw.   Though flavorful, it was missing the crunch.   Didn't dislike it though, since I had four of them and there's a little leftover for tomorrow's lunch.  Tomorrow it'll be with peanut sauce and on a flour wrap, since we're out of Bibb lettuce.

The kids?  No way were they eating that, they had leftover cheeseburgers.  Have you ever noticed that if you have more than one child in a photo, only one of them looks at the camera at a time and smiles?

Springtime Risotto

Risotto makes for a nice Sunday lunch.  It takes a bit of time to prepare, but it's so worth it.

This week's special in our house is Lemon Zucchini Risotto, topped with a poached egg.  Courtesy of Mark Bittman's "Food Matters" cookbook.  That makes it a vegetarian dish as well!  (Not trying to become a vegetarian here...just trying new recipes.  And yes, I'm aware that it's vegetarian but not vegan)

Lots of fresh springtime flavors:  Fresh lemon juice, arborio rice, grated zucchini, onion and fresh basil, stirred by Hubby.

Plus Poaching eggs, once a challenge for our cook but now easy.

 equals Risotto in a bowl, crowned by the egg:

Yields:  Two happy adults, who cleaned their plates and briefly considered licking the bowl.  Well, I did anyway!

Cook Once, Eat Twice

This was from last week, so I'm playing catch-up.

Friday night's dinner:  fried chicken with honey sauce from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express.  Only it was minus the sauce...in the middle of cooking it was discovered that there was no honey in the house.  Ah well, it was good anyway.  And fried chicken at home tastes so much better than KFC, less greasy.

However, the chicken breasts were so big.  (AND how big were they, Ginny?  :))  that we ended up putting one in the fridge for later.  On Monday I was looking to put together lunch for three people.  (Me, Brian and my friend Tracy.)  Eureka!  Sliced fried chicken breasts, on a flour tortilla with light honey mustard dressing, chopped tomato and  a little shredded Monterey Jack cheese.  (my favorite kind of cheese)

 mmmmmmm.....tasted like a restaurant for no extra $$$.  Gotta love meals like those!

Pork Tacos with Apple-Fennel Slaw

Another one from Mark Bittman's "Kitchen Express" cookbook.  This book is very different in the sense that the recipes don't really have a lot of measurements for their ingredients.  So it's more of an advanced cookbook, you have to have an inkling of what you're doing when cooking from it.  (Which is why many times it's Brian doing the cooking from "Kitchen Express" and not me! Ha!)

This recipe called for treating the pork with a dry rub, though for tacos I think that a sauce or marinade would be better.  We served 'em on corn tortillas and put the slaw on the side.   The slaw was delightful and very fresh, with granny smith apples and a bulb of fennel.  Two tastes that I wouldn't have put together but it really works! Corn tortillas are um....drier than flour tortillas.  I think that perhaps if they were warmed in a skillet first, they might be a little better.  Just "as is" was a big disappointment.

The next taco experience I'd like to have are fish tacos.  I love fish tacos!  And I know that Brian would too if he'd just give them a try.

Stockin' Up

In almost every cookbook, every food-themed magazine, I have read about the importance of fresh chicken stock.

Mark Bittman swears that it makes every dish that he makes taste that much better and keeps it on-hand in the freezer.  In "Kitchen Confidential" Anthony Bourdain insists that people who are serious about their cooking use it.  And though I haven't heard it myself, I'm sure Brian's hero, good ol' Alton Brown, probably has an episode in the can of how easy and how much better homemade chicken stock really tastes.

Let's face it, canned or boxed chicken broth has something that homemade stock doesn't: CONVENIENCE.  In a household where both parents work full-time and quite often dinner is a 20-minute affair, convenience of an ingredient weighs in heavily in preparation. But....making my own applesauce tasted so fresh and unlike its jarred counterpart.  And pumpkin processed by us instead of paying for a can at Thanksgiving time?  Heavenly!!

So, I have my eye out for a sale on whole chickens.  There's going to be a weekend experiment; not just for flavor, but how much more difficult is it than just reaching for your can opener?  Does it freeze well, and how much stock does one pot make?  Is it worth coming off "the box?"    Coming soon to a stockpot near you......

Post-Christmas Cooking

Santa was very good to us this year.  Brian got a full-size food processor!  This is going to make a big difference in our kitchen, as a mini-processor is great but can't do all jobs.  He also got many different spice blends and a bottle of real vanilla extract.  But the coolest gift of all?

A cast-iron enameled dutch oven!!

Dude, this thing weighs a ton!  When "Santa" bought it at Kohl's, (s)he had a four year old boy with him/her and the boy wanted to run off in the parking lot.  Imagine running after that kid with a cast-iron dutch oven in one hand, AND your car is parked at the far end of the lot.  Yep....good times.

The first meal in the Dutch oven:  Mark Bittman's "Chicken and Garlic Stew" from "How to Cook Everything."  One of our favorites, as there's a saying in this house, "there is no such thing as too much garlic!"

It was a very Mark Bittman year in our house.  I got a copy of his "Food Matters:  A Guide to Conscious Eating" for my birthday on December 19th and his "Kitchen Express" book for Christmas.  What can I say, I love the guy's work.  Not quite as much as Brian loves Alton Brown (whose Good Eats:  The Middle Years" was also under the Christmas tree)  but I do love his fresh ingredients and easy preparations.  Brian also got a cookbook from Taste of Home for busy families, that one should be interesting.  

Merry Christmas to All!  A little late, but always welcome.  :)

Summer Nights

I got a new (to me) cookbook out of the library called "Kitchen Express" by Mark Bittman.  I loved his book "How to Cook Everything" and I will definitely be adding this cookbook to my wishlist.  Everything in the book requires only a few ingredients and tastes really fresh. This book is divided by season, with about 100 (?) recipes per section.  This week we tried Lemon-Parmesan Chicken and Spicy Grilled Pork with Peaches.

The Lemon-Parmesan chicken was really a new variation of an old favorite of mine:  breaded chicken.  This version had grated lemon zest and parmesan cheese mixed directly in the breadcrumb mixture.  I'm not a fan of breading the chicken, but I love the finished product so I got in and got my hands dirty!  (I hate rolling my own meatballs for the same reason.)  Also, pounding the chicken into a thin cutlet is a great stress-reliever!   I did change one thing; instead of cooking the breaded chicken cutlet on the stove in butter until it was cooked through, I browned it in butter on both sides and then finished it in the toaster oven.  Anytime I've e ever attempted to cook a breaded chicken cutlet on the stove alone, I've burned the coating into a black mess.  This resulted in a golden, crunchy crust with just the right amount of butter.  Paired with boiled fingerling potatoes and fresh green beans, and this was lovely!

Spicy Grilled Pork with Peaches was a little different from how we usually have pork around here.  The recipe calls for peach butter, which, thanks to my friend Mrs. I, we had an unopened jar in the house!  You mix some fresh garlic and some spices with the peach butter, and coat the pork chops before putting them on the grill.  I had gotten some peaches, but unfortunately, they weren't quite ripe.  Brian grilled 'em anyway, and they just didn't taste how I expected.  Then I got a couple of bites from the other peach half on the plate and it was just like peach pie filling, hot and sweet.  (minus crust, of course.)   I'd try grilled peaches again sometime, only making sure they're ripe first.  The pork was fantastic!  This one is definitely something I want to make again and again.

So there you have it, two dinners worth their salt on these waning summer nights.  Pretty soon September will be here, the nights will be cooler, and these two delicious dishes will be a distant, sweet memory.