Chicken, Artichoke, Mushroom

Well, I'm on my own a lot for dinner these days, so I'm trying to remember both quantity (no need to make enough for 2!) and short recipes. I'm crazy busy these days, so quick one pots meals are important. At the same time, I don't want to subsist on frozen things or totally unhealthy things.

So, tonight I was inspired by the chicken defrosted in the fridge and the package of mushrooms threatening to go bad. I decided that they'd go well together, especially with the addition of some artichoke hearts.

I started by sauteing the sliced chicken in evoo until nicely browned. I tossed in a little chopped garlic, salt, and red pepper flakes. I didn't worry about cooking the chicken all the way through, but instead put the chicken in a bowl once it was nicely browned. Then I heated a little more evoo and sauted the quartered mushrooms (maybe 4 or 5 medium sized ones). I added a little more garlic, dried oregano, more pepper flakes, and a little salt and let them brown. Once they looked pretty, I tossed in drained quartered artichoke hearts (not the marinated ones, just the regular canned ones). I let everything heat and come together. Then I added back the chicken and heated the whole thing until the chicken was cooked through.

I served this with a slice of toasted sourdough bread.


Notes and Next Time

• this would be good tossed with pasta too
• asparagus or green beans would be good in place of the artichoke hearts
• the red pepper flakes are a good addition
  

Ingredients/Recipe
to serve 1

• 1 chicken breast
• 2 cloves garlic
• red pepper flakes
• mushrooms, 4-5 quartered
• artichoke hearts (1/2 can, not marinated)
• oregano
• s&p
  

Pork Cutlets with Broccoli and Quinoa

We made Pork Cutlets again, since we have a freezer full of pork chops. I won't go through the whole thing again, but I will say I followed some of my previous notes, and things worked out much better: I only cut the pork chops once, then flattened by pounding; I soaked in milk only briefly; and trimmed the fat prior to breading.

For our broccoli, we steamed it in a saute pan, with some water. We like our broccoli on the verge of raw, so we drained it pretty quickand just drizzled a little evoo over it for eating.

As for the quinoa, we cooked it using the standard 2 c water to 1 c quinoa ratio. We added some sun dried tomatoes, with its oil, at the end to try to add some flavor. Unfortunately, the quinoa was a little tough and bitter. Not exactly sure why it happened, but it did.

Notes and Next Time

• We need to play with the quinoa some more to make it better. Not exactly sure how to do that, but we'll see. I really like quinoa, so I'll make it work.
  

Ingredients/Recipe

• Boneless, skinless pork tenderloin 'chops', maybe 1/2 # each
  
• Bread crumbs, fixed to your liking
• Milk, or egg, for soaking
• EVOO for cooking and garnish
  
• Broccoli
• Quinoa
• Sun dried Tomato
  

Gnocchi, the follow up

So we had the gnocchi that Peter froze tonight, and they were the absolute best gnocchi he's made thus far! Certainly, I do refer to gnocchi in general as "little pillows of love" among other monikers.But I think the small amount of flour that he added this time really made them tender and delicate. They cooked very quickly, just a minute or two in the boiling water and they floated to the top. We tossed them with homemade sauce and topped with a little freshly grated Parmesan.


Mmmm... too bad there aren't any leftovers!

Tomato Sauce

Tomato sauce was the first thing I ever cooked once I moved out on my own. When I asked my mom how she makes hers, she said that you just cook the tomatoes until they were done. While this is great advice, it's not very helpful, especially when looking for ingredients, ratios, etc. Over time, I picked up some tips from my mom and Grandma, and can consistently cook a pretty good sauce.

In my opinion, the beast sauces start with pork. Sometimes I use a cheap cut, like a pork shoulder, that will be tender and soft after a long simmer (you can't really use something like this if you're trying to make a quick sauce). You can also use any other kind of meat, or veggies, or no 'meat' at all.

I started by browning the meat - in this case, hot Italian sausage - in a little evoo. I used our Les Crueset, which is heavy-bottomed and cast iron, and allows for even, consistent heat. After they browned nicely on all sides, I took them out of the pan and let them rest a little; at this point, they were not cooked all the way through.

In the same pan, I then threw in a bunch of chopped garlic with a little more evoo. I like to cook my spices a little too, so I threw in the oregano, thyme, basil and red pepper for a little bit. Before the garlic or spices got too brown/toasted, I added the tomatoes. I really like the crushed tomatoes, since they don't have many chunks and the juice isn't too thin. I also cleaned out the cans with a little water, which killed three birds (cleaning cans, getting small amount of tomato still in can out, and adding water) with one stone.

[When I was little, I always like my Aunt Nina's sauce more than my mom's or Grandmother's, because it was thicker. So when I started making my own sauce, I was intent on not adding water to thin it out. However, over time, I have come to realize that a little water is needed and the sauce will still thicken up as the water evaporates over the long cooking time.]

Once everything is in, I added the s&p and bay leaves and bring the whole pot up to a boil. Once it boils, I turned down the heat to simmer the sauce and added the sausages back in. I usually allow the sauce to simmer anywhere from 1 to 3 hours, depending on how much tomato is used. You will 'know when it's done' from 2 things: 1) the evoo will look cooked and will come to the top and 2) it will taste good.

I make 2 or 3 cans of sauce at a time, which is good for anywhere between 3 and 6 meals. The sauce freezes easily in ziploc bags and keeps for some time.

I used 2 cans of tomatoes for this iteration. We used the sauce for our gnocchi, but have enough for 2 bags in the freezer.

Notes and Next Time

• Taste is most important in determining if the sauce is done. You'll know if it's still raw simply by taste.
• We've been using the hand blender to blend up the sauce occassionally; that's a great technique and makes the sauce taste/feel lighter.
  

Ingredients/Recipe

• Canned tomatoes (I prefer the crushed tomatoes)
• Spices (thyme, oregano, basil, bay leaves, crushed red pepper)
  
• s&p
  
• evoo
  
  

Marinated Chicken with Soba Noodles

This was a classic 'clean out the fridge night.' We had some chicken breasts lying around, so I tried an experiment by marinating the chicken overnight in some Balsamic Vinaigrette (which we had taking up space in the fridge).

I ended up struggling with side dishes, since we didn't have much for veggies in the fridge. For some reason, I kept thinking of these soba noodles we had in the cupboard; I wanted to dress them in soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds, but that didn't seem to work with the balsamic chicken.

We ended up cutting the chicken in strips and sauteing it with some veggies, then putting in on top of a noodles. It was fine, but certainly not great. I think the marinating of the chicken is a good idea, but the sauce needs to take into account the sides and be a better complement.

Notes and Next Time

• The chicken should be skewered some with a fork to allow the marinade to infiltrate the chicken.
• Soba noodles are good, but I think it would be better paired with Asian-themed marinades and veggies.
  

Ingredients/Recipe

• Chicken
• Marinade (aka salad dressing)
• Soba noodles
  

Gnocchi

Yesterday, we made stuffed gnocchi, for which we needed to make a basic gnocchi. Kimberly likes to refer to gnocchi as 'little pillows of wonderful;' I agree whole-heartedly.

I usually use leftover mashed potatoes to make gnocchi, but we didn't have any this time, so I needed to start with cooking the potatoes. We used yellow potatoes, cooked whole, then peeled and mashed. I added a little evoo, but not much.

After mashing, I was worried that the potato mixture would be too dry. After consulting our America's Test Kitchen cookbook, my fears were assuaged. As it pointed out, the drier the potatoes, the less flour I would need to add, the lighter the gnocchi would be. This was great, because I've found that when I use leftover mashed potatoes, I always add a ton of flour, and the final product is pretty dense; I am always envious of the light gnocchi at restaurants.

As I added the flour, I certainly didn't add as much as usual, which I think would be good. At first, it wasn't coming together, but as I kneaded the potato-flour mixture, it became a nice and smooth, not unlike a bread dough, but with less bounce.

I then rolled out the dough in a small tube (diameter of a quarter, maybe), then used a fork to cut each little dumpling, maybe half an inch long. I then rolled each gnocchi on the gnocchi-board my aunt in Italy gave me (it's wooden, with grooves in it). It made nice little balls, with grooves, just like in a restaurant.

We didn't end up eating any plain gnocchi, I simply froze them (individually on a sheet pan, then when they froze, put them in a ziploc bag). When we want to eat them, we'll just throw them in a pot of boiling water still frozen; once they float, they'll be ready to eat.



Notes and Next Time

• Any kind of sauce is good for gnocchi: red (tomato), white (cream or butter), pesto, etc. One of the best ways is to simply drizzle nice evoo over the cooked gnocchi, then grate parmigiana over them.
• When we finally cook them, we'll put tasting notes in there.
  

Ingredients/Recipe

• Yellow potatoes
• Flour
• evoo