If I didn’t live on the 4th floor, I would have done the chicken on the grill.  It was still pretty darn good in the oven.

Jerk marinade / sauce:

• 1 habanero, Scotch bonnet or jalapeno pepper (remove seeds & ribs if using habanero or Scotch bonnet)
• 2 scallions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 tbsp allspice, freshly ground if possible
• juice of 2 limes
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup pineapple juice (or 1/2 cup pineapple - it’s all going in the blender anyway)

Combine everything in a food processor, puree until smooth.  Reserve 1/2 a cup for dipping.

Combine the rest with 1 whole chicken (cut up) and marinade overnight.

Preheat the oven to 400F.  Cook chicken for about an hour.

Serve w/ beans and rice (those recipes have already appeared in this blog).  Make sure you have extra limes for squeezing on top.

Dylan Report: He loved the beans but wasn’t interested in the chicken.  He generally doesn’t like rice, so we haven’t tried this version on him yet.  (Maybe I’ll make a rice cake and tell him it’s a spinach pancake…)

So, apparently I haven’t posted in 2 and a half weeks.  I am officially the World’s Worst food blogger.  But I have been cooking, so here are some pictures:

This is a very standard recipe, and a successful one.  The crust could use a bit more flavor, so if I make this again I’ll up the salt and maybe adjust the flour ratio so there’s more whole wheat in there.  (And definitely make it with olive oil - canola is just bland.)

Continue reading →

I think the title of this one may be too much for Twitter.  We shall see!  It looks like a lot, but the only part that was any real work was the meatballs (the cauliflower I had in the fridge already).  Continue reading →

I didn’t expect much of this one going in, but it turned out to be really tasty! I think next time I’ll make the “batter” in the food processor. It won’t be quite as pretty without the flecks of spinach in the crust, but it will adhere better to the cutlets.

This can be made with chicken or turkey (or veal or pork or seitan, really). I didn’t feel like pounding my own cutlets, so I went for the precut turkey. This recipe makes enough batter to coat about 1 lb of meat, but you can easily halve it to make less. (To reduce it further, you could always use an egg substitute, but a half recipe will feed 2 people if you have a side starch and a salad to go with it.) Continue reading →

This recipe comes from Cooking Pleasures magazine, and was almost there.  It needed either a hint more richness (I certainly could have reduced the sauce more) or some spice (crushed red chiles, or maybe mustard?) or something.  Maybe a little lemon juice at the end to brighten it up?

Anyway, it was still pretty good, just missing something.  Good enough to make again and figure that out. Continue reading →

This recipe was published in the Washington Post several years ago and is one of my favorite chilis.  It’s mind-bogglingly easy, and also quick if you let the slow cooker do the broth overnight.

The toppings listed are very nice (especially olives!), but not essential.  I’ve frequently made this in the dead of winter and left off the fresh tomatoes rather than buy them out of season.  (The tomato in the broth doesn’t have to be at peak freshness - you’re going to cook the life out of it anyway.)

For the broth:

• 1 5-lb chicken
• 1 large tomato, quartered
• 1 large yellow onion, quartered
• 2 bay leaves
• salt
• 2 jalapeno peppers, sliced

Combine in a slow cooker with water to cover (don’t overfill!) and set on low for 8 hours, or overnight.  (Alternately, do this on the stovetop in a large pot for 1-3 hours.)  Strain the broth, reserving the chicken.  Discard the vegetables.

You will only need about 4 cups of broth for the chili, and will probably have about double that with this recipe.  If you freeze the extra you can make this again with a rotisserie chicken and it will be the fastest chili in the world. Continue reading →

This is one of those recipes from Gourmet that you almost think must be a misprint, it’s so simple.  But it’s become a household staple of ours, the kind of thing we have when it’s the end of a long week and we want something comforting but not heavy, and something not requiring any specialized grocery shopping.  Here is a link to the original recipe - I don’t normally follow recipes to the letter, but this one is so simple that it really doesn’t require any improvisation.  (Okay, except for the kind and amount of peppers.  You can substitute almost any combination of sweet bell peppers in here.  My supermarket sells “rainbow packs” of red, orange, and yellow organic peppers so I usually use one of those along with a few Cubanelles.)

I have once or twice made my own hummus for this, but the Sabra Supremely Spicy is so good that I usually don’t bother.  (Until I discovered Sabra, I never bothered with store bought hummus at all, as every other brand I’ve tried has been bland and unpleasantly grainy.  If you’ve never made hummus I suggest starting with the recipe on the back of your jar of tahini paste and adapting from there to suit your taste.) Continue reading →

Seriously, I suck at this!

Last week at some point I made Pomegranate Glazed Chicken, and it was okay.  Not great, and so apparently not worth posting about.  (The pomegranate syrup that I made to substitute for the pomegranate molasses I couldn’t find has made its way into a few cocktails and glasses of seltzer, however.  Nom nom nom.)

After that I made what was supposedly Fettucine With Parsley And Parmesan, but wound up being kind of a repeat of the Fettucine With Broccoli and Pine Nuts because I had both on hand and wanted something more substantial than just a bowl of pasta.

Today I went to the farmer’s market and bought really good turkey burgers from the turkey guys.  (As well as a bag of “parts” - mostly necks - that is currently simmering its way to stock in my slow cooker.)  I also bought a few parsnips and made the parsnip “fries” from this recipe.  This is one of my favorite sides and I always forget about it because who ever thinks to buy parsnips?  Fortunately, the farmer’s markets in the Northeast are still all about the apples and storage veggies, so the parsnips were looking pretty good.  Parsnip parsnip parsnip.  The word has lost all meaning.

Next week I’ll be returning to The Book once or twice, but as I said a couple of weeks ago, I’ve kind of reached the point where the remaining recipes just don’t look all that appetizing.  (Or healthy, for that matter.  Half the side dishes in this book are variations on mashed potatoes.  Do I really need a recipe for that?)

This was more time-consuming than I expected (I didn’t mentally account for the extra 20 minutes needed to bake the empanadas - oops!) but the results were really good.  I really wish FreshDirect sold regular ground turkey instead of just the all-white-meat version - fat free ground meat is pretty much the definition of useless.  (When I buy my KitchenAid meat grinder attachment, I can buy boneless skinless thighs and grind my own.  In the meantime, I just use a little more veg oil in the initial saute.)

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 1 each chopped: med onion, red pepper, green pepper Continue reading →