Beer Can Chicken

I'm behind on my posting-- this was originally written in July, and then set aside until I got around to uploading photos, six months later.  Pretend it's summer, and fire up the grill!

This has become a staple dinner for us; we've been eating it almost weekly all summer.  It's very easy, and turns out a perfect chicken every time, with juicy meat and crispy skin.  Except for once.  It turns out that turning off the middle burner IS important. 

Grilled Pizza

I think my husband put it it best when we were eating Donato's on Saturday.  "Great.  Now you've ruined pizza."  This method of homemade pizza not only beats any frozen pizza (not that hard, admittedly) but also gets you better pizza than calling up anyone that delivers.  

The problem with making pizza at home is usually that your oven only goes up to 500 degrees or so, while a 'real' pizza oven is at least 100-200 degrees hotter.  Your grill doesn't have that limitation.

Southwestern Pulled Brisket

Pretty much what the slow cooker was invented for.  This is AMAZING on either soft tacos (with spicy slaw and avocados) or as barbecue-style sandwiches on soft buns.

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Cream of Tomato Soup

Possibly the perfect meal when it's been raining all weekend.

A childhood favorite, but made with cheddar and asiago cheese on homemade bread instead of Kraft Singles on Wonder Bread.  Also:  my new favorite tomato soup.  Of all time. 

Simple Tomato Sauce

I hadn't heard of this recipe before it appeared on Smitten Kitchen, but it's apparently kind of a big deal in the food blogosphere.

This is incredibly simple, and you probably have the ingredients sitting in your pantry already.  They are:  tomatoes, butter, and an onion.  That's it.  No chopping (although I ended up cheating and using a blender at the end.)  It makes a wonderfully rich, mellow sauce that reminded me a bit of vodka sauce, but without the bite. 

Split Pea Soup

Alas, there is no way to make split pea soup appetizing looking:

On the other hand, it has everything else in the world going for it:  it's delicious, low-calorie, satisfying, easy, and cheap (unless, like me, you purchase a 10-lb. ham just to have a leftover ham bone.)

Chicken Parmesan

This is probably not a weight-watchers approved recipe (chicken! breaded! and fried! with cheese!), but is a delicious week-night treat.  If you pound out the chicken cutlets beforehand, this takes about a half hour start to finish but tastes like it required hours in the kitchen.   

Adapted from How to Cook Everything.  Full disclosure:  I did not make my own bread crumbs or sauce.  It was still awesome. 

Beef Stroganoff

One of my (very many) favorite meals for Winter.  My only complaint:  I ALWAYS overcook the beef.  It really only needs to cook for 5 minutes, and I never get the timing quite right.  Still, a problem with my timing, not the recipe.

It only takes a half hour to make, including time to slice the onions, mushrooms, and steak. 

Fast Sausage Ragu, now with less weird coloring!

The fast sausage ragu from Bitten looks much prettier if you use white wine instead of red.

It gets rid of the green eggs and ham problem-- the food is now the appropriate color.  You should, however, rinse out the measuring cup you use for your wine before you put milk in it, otherwise the milk curdles ever so slightly, which you will not notice until you stir it into the rest of the sauce.  It's still delicious, though. 

The wine used here was Woot Cellar's Triacipedis.  They have consistently delicious, reasonably priced wines.  Plus amusing descriptions.

Roast Turkey

Only a week to go until Thanksgiving!  Do you have your turkey lined up?  It is, after all, the centerpiece of Thanksgiving dinner:

This is a fairly simple, straightforward way to roast a turkey, taken from the always excellent How to Cook Everything.  It uses very high heat to start, which means nice, crispy skin; plus, it only takes 3 hours to roast a 12-lb. turkey, which means you get to sleep in a little the morning of Thanksgiving.  My only complaint is that it was a little bland; next time, I'll try brining.  However, the skin was crisp and the meat was moist. 

Vegetable Pot Pie

This is an amazing side dish for Thanksgiving; there's no reason pie has to be restricted to dessert!  Also works as a vegetarian centerpiece dish.

I was extremely pleased with myself for coming up with this; it's very, very loosely based on a chicken pot pie recipe.  Also only goes to prove, once again, that while vegetables are delicious, add about a pound of butter and they're AMAZING.

Pork Roast

This is so simple, it barely qualifies as a recipe.

The steps are:
1.  Throw a hunk of meat in the oven.

There is no step two. 

Polenta with Zucchini and Ragu

I love it when leftovers come together to make something different and delicious.  I already had leftover polenta and sauce, so it wasn't a huge leap to put one on top of the other and add cheese.

Still, this was fairly different from and actually more filling than just sauce on pasta.  Admittedly, my attempt at frying up polenta resulted in more of a blob than the neat wedges I was going for, but it was still quite tasty.

Beef Stew with Polenta

This beef stew is perfect for when there's a chill in the air.  Unlike many stews, this one is good on the first evening, although it's just as good leftover.
 

As with most soups, once the chopping is done, this requires a minimal amount of time actually spent at the stove.  The polenta takes 15-20 minutes total, concurrent with the last bit of stew simmering.

Fast Sausage Ragu

This turned out really well; I was a little leery of putting milk and tomato paste into the same sauce (although it's amazing with cream, so why not?), but it was fantastic.  And it only took about 20 minutes, start to finish.

For all that I keep wanting to color-correct this photo, the sauce did turn out purplish, since I used red wine instead of white... but I needed to open a bottle anyway, for the next day's stew.  Hence, purple sauce.  C'est la vie... it was delicious.

Favorite Roasted Chicken

What makes this recipe incredible isn't the chicken-- roasted chicken is ALWAYS good-- but the potatoes.

These are, without exaggeration, the greatest potatoes you will ever have.  And they SO simple:  potato slices, garlic, and fresh herbs roasted in chicken fat.

Best.  Potatoes.  Ever.

The only downside to this recipe is that you will need to wash your oven rack after, and if you're not very careful taking out the chicken, may need to clean your oven as well.

Kebabs

And... back at long last, delayed all week because I ran out of space on my hard drive and so my pictures were marooned on my camera.  Happily, I now have purchased an entire TERRABYTE of space (1,000 gigs!) which is, like, a zillion close-ups of bread crumb and such.

Anyway.

I made these kebabs because there was a grill available, and steak night was already taken.  They turned out really well; next time I will just make sure to cut the beef into more uniform chunks.  Mine were too large and took FOREVER to cook to medium.

Salad

Some of my favorite things to put on salads: strawberries, blue cheese, and basalmic vinegar.


This was: Romaine lettuce, onion, cucumber, chicken, strawberries, blue cheese, and olive oil and vinegar.

Scallops for Heather

Once again, scallops over spinach over orzo. But different... this time with a white wine and Parmesan cream sauce, which was even better than it sounds. Also better than it looks-- it's hard to take a decent picture of mostly beige food in a dark room.


I need a better name for this, possibly, but I made this for my sister's birthday. We had a ridiculously fantastic bottle of champagne (it was a present) and I wanted to eat something equally spectacular but complimentary.

I'm trying to write this down from memory (I would've taken better notes if I'd known it would be so delicious), but I put it together with a recipe from Cooking Light (ha!) and the general idea of some sort of white wine sauce, which turned into a cream sauce just because I had heavy cream in the fridge. This sounds a little complicated, but if you have everything prepped before you start messing around the stove, it should take about 10 minutes.

Heather's birthday scallops
(serves 3-4)
1 lb. sea scallops (12-16; there should be 3-5 per person, depending on how big they are)
1/2 box of orzo
bag of spinach
a whole lot of butter
a bunch of olive oil
3 shallots, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, diced
1 c. fresh parsley, snipped
1/4 c. heavy cream
1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 c. dry white wine

Boil water for pasta; start chopping everything into little bitty bits. Set scallops onto paper-towel lined plate; grind pepper and sprinkle a bit of coarse sea salt over the top. Flip them over; repeat.

Once your water is boiling and you have everything chopped and ready to go, start cooking pasta and heating heavy pan over medium heat, generously coated with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. When oil is shimmery, saute garlic, shallots, and half the parsley. Remove the mixture a small bowl. Add more olive oil and 1/2 T butter. Put half the scallops and remaining parsley in the pan; cook for 2 minutes and flip (tongs are extremely helpful.) Cook for another 2 minutes, then remove to plate and cover with foil to keep warm; repeat with the other half of the scallops. Do NOT overcook the scallops; it's easy to do and then they get all chewy.

Drain pasta; leave in colander for now. Deglaze the scallop pan with most of a glass of white wine; pour into empty pasta pot. Bring to a simmer; whisk in cheese and half of the shallot mixture. When cheese is melted, whisk in cream and another tablespoon of butter. Bring to a simmer; stir in pasta.

Meanwhile, put the rest of the shallot mixture, a splash of wine, and the spinach into the scallop pan. Stir until the spinach is all wilted. Add a little salt and pepper.

Plate with a layer of pasta, then a layer of spinach, then 3-5 scallops on top. Sprinkle with any parsley that's left and a couple of grinds of pepper. Serve immediately.

Shrimp sort-of-carbonara

This is a somewhat lighter take on a carbonara-type pasta; I subbed Canadian bacon for regular bacon, stock for cream, and used zucchini instead of some of the pasta. It turned out to be SO yummy... the dog was disappointed because the plates came into the kitchen pre-licked. (No company was present.) Also, as I'm writing this out, it sounds complicated but actually took only 15 minutes (25 including chopping/ prep time, with the caveat that I already had stock made and frozen)


Ingredients
1/2 lb. shrimp, shelled
1 zucchini, sliced or julienned
1/4 lb. pasta (I used fettuccine)
1/3 c. stock (I had chicken in the freezer, so that's what I used-- shrimp would be better...if you shell the shrimp ahead of time and simmer them in a really small pot with the the ends of the onion you're already using, you conveniently have all the ingredients, and you were just going to throw them away)
1 small onion or a couple of shallots, diced
kernels from 1 ear of corn
3 slices Canadian bacon (yes, real bacon would be good, too), julienned (cut into small sticks-- can you julienne meat? Somehow, you only hear about carrots)
splash of cream
1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
Olive oil for pan

1. Chop up everything; boil water for pasta; dump in pasta now

2. In large, heavy pan, saute Canadian bacon, 1/2 the diced onion, and the corn kernels until onion starts to go translucent and bacon browns a bit. Remove bacon-corn mixture to a bowl.

3. In the same pan, saute the zucchini and the rest of the onion until zucchini starts to turn brown. Remove to bowl.

4. Deglaze saute pan with your stock; drain pasta. Pour the stock (now with yummy brown bits from the pan) into a saucepan; put over low heat. (I used the same one I used to cook my pasta-- just left the pasta in the colander.) Stir in the parmesan cheese and the bacon-corn mixture; cheese will melt. Stir in cream; toss pasta and zucchini in sauce.

5. Saute the shrimp; this only takes a couple of minutes, so nothing will get cold.