There's a first time for everything

Looking back at all the blogs I couldn't believe I've never done a post about chicken wings. We are talking about some of the best wings ever, having won firehouse cookoffs and being requested at holiday parties. Granted, these wings are on a different level than your typical plain old buffalo wings. They are fall off the bone tender, sweet and sticky, and a pleasant breakaway from what you're used to. For those health nuts out there, they're not deep fried (though I wouldn't go so far as to say they are a healthy food...just an upgrade in the saturated fat category). It's safe to say I don't think you'll find a recipe quite like this one.

Recipe of the day: Sticky wings
1 package chicken wingettes
S&P
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 c soy sauce
1/4 c honey
2 tbsp ketchup

Toss the wingettes in the oil, line up in the pan and season with salt and pepper. Bake at 350 for an hour, turning every 15 minutes to prevent sticking until golden brown.

Stir together the honey, soy sauce and ketchup and pour half of the sauce onto the wings and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Remove from oven, pour remaining sauce over wings, then serve immediately.

Julie/Julia revisited

Since my better half came down with some sort of fluish head cold ick, I thought I would take advantage of needing great soup without too much in-kitchen time and make a classic: Potato Leek Soup. To be fair, it is very vegetarian and fits into the 5 ingredients or less category. To be unfair, it is extremely not carb free. Sorry ladies. But even the pickiest of critics seemed to enjoy it, and that is a win in my book. The recipe was originally written in 1931 by Irma Rombauer, well loved by Julia Child as one of her go to recipes, and trimmed down by me to fit into a teensy weensy pot in a teensy weensy kitchen.

Recipe of the day: Potato Leek Soup (Potage Parmentier if you want to get fancy with it)

1/2 stick butter
3 leeks (white and light green parts), sliced about 1/4" and soaked in water
4 russet potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
3 cups fat free low sodium chicken broth
Fresh ground pepper

Melt half stick of butter in a large pot and add sliced leeks. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes stirring frequently (see first photo) until very soft.

Add in stock, sliced potatoes, and pepper and cook for 30 minutes: use the back of the wood spoon to lightly mash when you go to stir it. (See photo 2).

Serve hot with toasty bread with melted mozzarella for dipping (last photo).

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. And so good!

Making Life a Little Easier

A while back I posted a recipe for honey soy chicken, and it is still my fallback in terms of being something easy to throw together with flavors that even the pickiest of eaters will enjoy. But now that work seems to frequently interfere with how much free time I have to cook, I wanted to convert my go-to favorite to something that doesn't require much attention.
Recipe of the day: Slow Cooker Honey Soy Chicken Thighs

2 lb pkg boneless skinless chicken thighs
1/2 c soy sauce
1/2 c ketchup
1/4 c honey
1 tsp sesame oil

Place chicken thighs in the bottom of your slow cooker, overlapping if necessary. Add sauce ingredients on top of slow cooker and cover. Set to High 4 hours.

Occasionally, turn the chicken thighs over. If you are not around to do this frequently don't worry, they will be fine.

After four hours, your chicken will be tender enough to shred with tongs or two forks with minimal effort. If you had time to flip the chicken through the cooking time, this should happen on its own after a few hours.

We served this with 5 minute fried rice and a mix of frozen peas and steamed fresh broccoli. Total prep time for the entire meal was about 15 minutes. Enjoy!

You have got to be kidding me

I'm watching Paula Deen cook away fiercely on tv as I get ready for a long night of work and I am simply horrified. She is complaining of having no time to cook with a busy work schedule, so her solution was sautéing cabbage in bacon grease and  a stick of butter, then crumbling in corned beef from a can. It popped out of its container like a jello molded egg for Easter and held its shape so well then she has to break it apart like she was clawing at the last piece of meat on the planet. Are you kidding me? Now we are all very, very busy with work but I doubt that the solution rests in cans of spam and "potted meats" as she described so fervently on her program today. So we shall focus on a popular yet traditional meat dish as well, that has not yet been ruined by excessive sodium, sugar, and fluid overload that probably takes less time to prepare as that cabbage thing she calls a recipe.

Recipe of the day: Mini BBQ Meatloaf

1-1.5 lbs 85% ground sirloin
3 ribs celery, finely chopped
1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
S&P
1 egg
1 cup Honey Bear BBQ Sauce (see recipe from post on 5/27/11), divided
1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs

Place the ground beef, chopped celery, chopped onion, salt, pepper, egg, half of the BBQ sauce, and the breadcrumbs. Use your hands to mix until well combined. Divide the meat into six equal parts, and form each into an oval shaped mound. Place mounds on a baking sheet covered with nonstick aluminum foil, spaced equally apart. Place in a 350 degree oven, and bake 8 minutes. Remove from oven and coat each meatloaf with a small amount of the remaining BBQ sauce. Place back in the oven for another 5-7 minutes, until the juices are running clear out. Remove from oven, and coat in BBQ sauce one more time prior to serving.

I served this with frozen peas and quick mashed potatoes for a true 30 minute meal. Enjoy!

Quick, sweet, and to the point

I'm quickly becoming even more of a leftovers fanatic. As mentioned yesterday, I made pasta salad as one of the side dishes to have with the grilled pork over the weekend. It is very difficult to turn pasta salad into anything besides just that, but I think that the recipe itself should count as a repurposed recipe because it combines pasta salad, which on its own can be very bland and boring, with broccoli slaw similar to the "stolen broccoli slaw" recipe featured earlier this year. Combining these two ideas together created something I had never really experienced before in one bowl. And for those who were sitting at the table that evening hopping on the "I don't like fruit in my salad" train, pooh on you because you don't know what you're missing. And after having tuna sandwiches for dinner last night (no, I couldn't bring myself to blog about that. Next you'd see a recipe on the blog for peanut butter and jelly with a glass of milk and I don't need to stoop to that level yet at this point in my cooking life), the tuna salad and this pasta salad came together in the same bowl to make the perfect 'run out the door to go take care of the Chicken Nugget kindergarteners' kinda meal. The sweetness of the cranberries is really what makes this unique, and will make a great side salad all summer long.

Recipe of the day: Broccoli Slaw Pasta Salad

 

1/2 pound bowtie pasta, boiled in salted water to al dente
Half of a 10 oz. bag broccoli slaw
3/4 cup mayo
1 tbsp honey
4-5 dashes Frank's hot sauce
1-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar (enough to thin out the mayo but not make it too soupy)
S&P to taste
2-3 handfuls dried cranberries
1 package of plain ramen noodles, flavor packet removed (crush the whole bag, and put half of the contents into the salad)

While the pasta is cooking, mix up the dressing. Combine the mayo, honey, Frank's, cider vinegar, and S&P in a bowl and whisk until smooth.

Drain the pasta. Add the pasta back into the bowl, and add about 2 tablespoons of dressing to keep the pasta from sticking together. Place in refrigerator to cool.

Once cool, add remaining dressing, broccoli slaw, dried cranberries, and stir to combine. Place back in refrigerator to cool until ready to serve. Once ready to serve, add ramen noodle crumbles, toss to distribute and serve. Leftovers keep for 3-4 days in an airtight container. You can also add sunflower seeds for an extra crunch, though I did leave them out of this version because I didn't feel like going back to the grocery store for a third time.

A Fig Tree for the Blog's Birthday

The blog turns one today...I feel awful that it's taken me more than two months to write again but I can't believe how crazy busy I've been and how time really flies when you're having fun. So for a few updates and then a very quick recipe or two that I can't really call recipes at all, more so than guidelines to really good and really fast not-deep fried (most of the time) food.

The Garden:

 

Enough said.

The new fig tree:

 

And you say to yourself, who actually eats figs? I said that too until we were standing around at the family reunion at about 11:00 at night absolutely starving after eating what they called chicken for dinner in the dining hall. Maybe it's like having a cup of ramen noodles at 3am when you're in college, or warm cookies and milk as a preschooler, but slices of french bread with brie and fig jam is probably my newest obsession and the greatest thing that more than a few of us experienced that weekend:

Grocery shopping:

Yeaaaa not going that great either (can't say I bought 2/3 of those items either but I am fortunate enough to have a very loving, understanding family including a boyfriend who just shakes his head, goes to the store so we don't starve, and says we are going to add it to the "things to work on" list of goals along with vacuuming which I hate because of the dreadful noise-still waiting on that Swiffer btw ;) ).

I think it's pretty safe to say that all of the rest of my successful time spent is devoted to work, so I'm trying to develop something similar to Sandra Lee's Round 2 recipes where food can be repurposed so you're not eating just plain old leftovers. This past weekend, I made grilled Asian pork tenderloin, broccoli slaw pasta salad, and grilled vegetable salad. In a hurry before work yesterday, I threw together a pork stir fry that tasted incredible and it only took about 15 minutes. So to celebrate the blog's birthday, and getting back to cooking that fits within a crazy busy work schedule, that's what shall be featured! Enjoy.

Recipe of the day #1: Grilled vegetable salad

• Whatever vegetables you'd like: (I went with onions, red peppers, green peppers, asparagus, and zucchini)
• Ken's Creamy Balsamic Dressing (feel free to make your own, but you don't have to)

Preheat the grill to about 300. Place pieces of aluminum foil over the grill grates to cover. Slice all of the vegetables in half-don't cut them in the shape you see above until the very end or they will be too difficult to flip over. Place the vegetables on top of the aluminum foil on the grill and cook until the vegetables have charred edges and they are soft enough to tear with your hands. Remove from the grill and allow to cool in a bowl in the refrigerator. Cut into equal sizes and serve with dinner!

Repurposed recipe: Pork stir fry

• leftovers from grilled pork tenderloin (if you have leftovers of another protein, go with what you have), cut into bite sized pieces
• leftovers from grilled vegetable salad
• 1/2 pound spaghetti, boiled and drained and sprinkled with sesame oil to prevent sticking
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup sesame oil
• 1/4 cup chicken broth

Place the pork and vegetables into a hot skillet. Add soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and chicken broth and stir until pork and vegetables are heated through.

Add the boiled spaghetti, and toss with tongs to distribute sauce onto noodles. This can be served hot, room temperature, or cold.

Put a Lid On It

Well folks, it's 2012. Yes, almost March, at that, but things have been ridiculously crazy with just about everything. Between the chicken nuggets (the 73 school aged childcare ones, not my own-the reason they got titled the nuggets in the first place to avoid any of that confusion), the EMT drumsticks (that was to be able to differentiate between the young kids and the can't quite call them grownups even though some of them are almost 30!) finishing their class amidst the start of the new curriculum, and being a real-life grownup working as a paramedic...the blog has been on pause.

But it's back to cooking, and my most recent adventure was defeating the always scary pork chop. Until yesterday, I've never really had a pork chop that tasted like, well, pork. My father's go-to meal was a one pot concoction of pork chops, sauerkraut with onions, and roasted potatoes baked to an oblivion until the pork chops could have been confused with shoe leather. He got points for trying, but I've always been nervous to try to cook them myself. Last year, I wrote a blog about grilling them, and they turned out juicy but not quite as tender as I had hoped (though if I'm going to go out on a limb and toot my own horn, the grill marks were picture perfect if nothing else). But with preparations for participating in barbecue competitions under way and fire extinguisher in hand, I'm hellbent of perfecting ways to stew, smoke, roast, braise, boil, broil, grill and saute every part of the once considered evil oinker that got us into hot water on the First Annual Halloween Birthday Celebratory Snow Pig weekend this past October (the only good thing that came of it was the meat was used in a chili cookoff where Don placed 2nd overall! Congrats btw)

It was with great success that these humble little pieces of porcine transformed into a tender entree that left many texting me, "why didn't you invite me over!?" as soon as the pic went up on fB. After almost 48 hours straight of being awake, it occurred to me that the answer to this was in front of me all along. Give it a little wine, and put a lid on it. Many would say that is a good piece of general advice, but particularly in this case where a few simple ingredients meshed together to form an aromatic balance of tart, sweet, and spicy flavors pulled together by a couple tablespoons of organic cranberry chutney that I purchased at Whole Foods.

Recipe of the day: Stovetop Chops with Sweet-Spiced Demi-glace
4 thin cut pork chops
2 tbsp (total) olive oil
4 tbsp (total) dijon mustard
salt and pepper
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 onion, chopped
2 tbsp cranberry chutney-use canned jellied cranberry sauce if you don't have any

Place the pork chops in a ziploc bag with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 2 tablespoons Djjon mustard, and generous amounts of salt and pepper to season. Seal bag and squish to coat. Resist the temptation to beat up the pork chops as they will become too tough.

In a nonstick pan over medium high heat, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a pan until it's almost smoking. (If the oil starts to smoke, your food will taste burnt so be sure to keep an eye on it). Gently place the pork chops in the hot pan.

After about 4-5 minutes, flip them over...

...and cook for another 4 minutes. If they are not completely cooked through, that's okay. Take them out of the pan anyway. In the same pan, add the chopped onions and use a silicone spatula to pull up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. There should be enough oil left in the pan to cook the onions, but use your judgement to add more if necessary. Cook the onions over medium heat until they are browned (not black) over medium heat, which should take about 7-8 minutes. Add in the wine, turn the heat back to medium high and using a whisk to stir the sauce continuously add in the mustard as well. Continue to whisk until the mustard dissolves completely. (If you skip this step, you will have giant bits of mustard floating throughout and I doubt your hungry eaters will find that too appealing). Add in the cranberry chutney, stir until dissolved, then add your pork chops back in.

This is where the magic is begins...place a lid on the pan and cook until steaming, about 3-4 minutes. This will create a quick-braise type of cooking that makes the meat fork tender. Remove the lid and serve hot. Mashed potatoes and applesauce went with the sauce beautifully.