Another Weeknight Invention

Here's a recent invention that turned out to be worth making again.

1 package (8 oz.) of quinoa linguine
Four mild Italian chicken sausages, sliced in thin rounds
1 large bunch of Swiss chard
1/2 cup of white cooking wine
10 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 cup of pine nuts
2 Tbsp of capers (drained)
4 Tbsp olive oil

Cut the chard in thin strips and wash very thoroughly.  Heat about a Tbsp of oil in deep skillet or pan and gently sauté about 2/3 of the garlic plus all of the pine nuts until the garlic starts to stick.  Pour in about half the wine, scrape off the garlic, and add the chard.  Turn up the heat and stir periodically until the chard wilts.  Turn down to low and simmer under a cover until the chard stems are tender.

In the meantime, heat the water for the pasta and add 2 Tbsp of oil to another skillet.  When it gets hot, add the rest of the garlic and the sausage.  Sauté until the sausage is nicely browned, being careful not to burn the garlic.  When the sausage is done, pour in the rest of the wine and scrape off any sticky garlic.  Turn off the heat and let the sausage sit while the chard finishes.

Cook the pasta and when it is done the chard most likely will be too.  Toss the chard, sausage and linguine together, adding the last Tbsp of oil and the capers in the process.

Chicken Roulade with Fennel & Pine Nuts

I've posted here before about a tasty chicken roulade that I've made a couple of times.  As it includes both prosciutto and cheese, though, it was not appropriate for dinner at a Jewish friend's house.  This presented the perfect opportunity to challenge myself to come up with a new version of the chicken breast roulade.  As I had some pine nuts left over from making pesto last weekend I tried to think about a filling that I could include them in.  I ultimately struck on the idea of combining roasted fennel with the pine nuts and some capers to make the delicious incarnation below that I served over Israeli couscous tossed with sautéed crimini mushrooms and onions.

• 6 - 8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 3 large fennel roots
• 1/2 cup of pine nuts
• 3 Tbsp capers
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• Salt & pepper

Cut the fennel into pieces and place in a baking pan.  Toss in 1 - 2 Tbsp of olive oil about about 1 Tbsp of balsamic vinegar.  Cover with foil and bake in the oven for about thirty minutes at 400 degrees.  Remove the foil and bake for another 5 - 10 minutes to get some carmelization on the fennel.  Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.  Turn the oven down to 350 degrees for baking the chicken.

When the fennel is cool, combine it with the pine nuts and capers in a food processor and process it into a paste.  Add salt a pepper to taste (it should be a little on the salty side as the chicken gets no other salt).  Beat the chicken breasts with a mallet to flatten them out (covering them with saran wrap or foil first helps to prevent flying bits of chicken).  With each chicken breast spread a 1/4 inch of the fennel and then gently roll it into the roulade shape.  If the roulade tends to fall open you can secure it with a grilling skewer or tie a piece of string around it.  Bake in the oven at 350 for 30 - 40 minutes (be sure not to let the chicken dry out).

Classic Brunch

Today we took a shot at that fantastic Manhattan tradition, brunch.  Last night we made a pesto and cooked a couple of chicken breasts in a broth of garlic, onions, and lemon juice based on the chicken marinade of the same ingredients.  This morning I bias-sliced them and drowned them in the pesto for an hour or two.  In the meantime we made a Hollandaise sauce and poached a few eggs.  When those were done we set them aside while we sliced some cantaloupe and made sandwiches using the pesto chicken, sliced tomatoes, and arugula on foccaccia.  The selection was rounded out by platter of lox, tomatoes, avocados and scallions.  Add a couple of mimosas and we were on our way.

Cashews are the new Mushroom

Last night I had a somewhat random assortment of ingredients available: a couple of chicken breasts, a couple of peppers, couple of carrots, some celery, onions, and garlic.  I asked Nina if she felt like stir fry (we eat a lot of stir fries).  Nope.  How about pasta?  (We'd already had past this week.)  No thanks.  So I mused for a bit and while I was musing happened to find a bag with about a cup of cashews in it in the freezer.  That's when the recipe below hit me, and it turned out so well I will definitely make it again.

1 cup cashews
1 clove garlic, minced
2 large onions, cut in ribbons
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 chicken breasts
1/2 cup white cooking wine
1/2 cup vegetable stock
2 bay leaves
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/8 - 1/4 cup flour

Heat the butter and oil over medium heat and sauté the cashews until they start to brown.  Add the garlic, onions and celery and continue to sauté until the celery is bright green and the onions are becoming translucent.  Add the cooking wine and then the stock.  Reduce heat to low and then place the chicken breasts in the middle of the pan.  There should be enough liquid in the pan to mostly--but not quite--cover the chicken breasts.  Cover an simmer until the chicken is done.  Remove the chicken and reduce the sauce by 1/3 to 1/2, adding salt and pepper to taste in the process.  Add flour and stir until the sauce just starts to thicken.  Serve the sauce over the chicken breasts accompanied by a favorite starch and/or vegetable.  The result is a rich, slightly sweet flavor that is somewhere between French onion soup and a mushroom sauce, but with the nutty deliciousness of the cashews.

Pork & Bok Choy Stir Fry

Here's something I put together that came out surprisingly well for a first go.  I bought a couple of pork loin chops, sliced them into strips, and marinated them for about four hours in a mixture of about a quarter cup of rice vinegar, a few tablespoons of toasted sesame oil, a few tablespoons of soy sauce, and a tablespoon each of brown sugar and roasted red Thai chili paste.  Then I took a couple of stalks of celery and a large onion and chopped them.  Next I cut two heads of bok choy into small pieces.  I got a tablespoon or two of toasted sesame oil hot in the wok and slightly browned the pork, then set it aside.  I added the onions and celery and sauteed them for a minute or two.  Next I added the bok choy and continued sauteing until it shrunk down.  Then I added the marinade plus a sauce made of about a half-cup of vegetable stock, a little fish sauce, and another tablespoon of the chili paste.  I then brought the sauce to a boil  (this is important since the marinade had the raw pork in it), then lowered the heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally in order to ensure even cooking.  After a few minutes I returned the pork to the wok and continued cooking until the bok choy was tender.

Carrots & Fennel

Here's a dish that I came up with recently that has three of my favorite attributes: is easy, healthy, and delicious.  The bitter earthiness of the celery is the perfect antidote to the aromatic sweetness of the fennel, while the carrots and onions round out the flavor.

Cube 2 - 3 large carrots and one large fennel root.  Dice half of a large onion and chop one or two celery stalks.  Heat about a tablespoon of oil or butter and sauté them over medium heat until the celery starts to get a bit brighter green.  Salt with a couple of pinches of kosher salt (I'm sure regular salt works too, just not sure how much to use) and continue sautéing until some of the liquid starts to come out of the vegetables.  Add about a quarter of a cup of white cooking wine.  Turn down to low and cover, simmering until the carrots are just soft to a prick with a fork.  Remove from heat and serve.

Potatoes: What are they good for?

Of course they're great for a lot of things, like providing the prime example of a Giffen good in Hal Varian's microeconomics text.  But this being the Hop and Hearth, after all, I'm going to talk about eating them.  The reason that I even ask the question is that Nina and I don't eat very many potatoes.  We tend to favor quinoa, or rice, or quinoa pasta for our dinner carbs.  Anyway, I bought a bag of mixed potatoes yesterday because Nina recently got into breakfast (I'm talking full-on American breakfast).  Yesterday I shredded a handful of potatoes and blanched them.  Then this morning I sauteed some onions in oil and added the shredded blanched potatoes (and a decent amount of salt).  I cooked them on pretty low heat in the pan--mixing them up occasionally--until they were pretty well browned all over.  Not too bad.

Come dinner time I still had a bunch of 'taters.  I decided to make an American potato salad (as opposed to German or Serbian potato salad).  I boiled the potatoes in salty water until they were just soft enough to get a fork into.  (I have learned that the #1 potato salad FAIL is to overcook the potatoes.)  I immediately removed them from the heat, drained them, ran cold water over them, and refrigerated them.  In the meantime I chopped some onions and celery and sauteed them in oil, salting them once they just started to get translucent.  I was careful not to over-do it, and soon removed them from the heat and refrigerated them as well.  I also hard-boiled two eggs and refrigerated them when they were done.  Shortly before serving time I took all out and mixed in a bowl with a healthy dollop of mayonnaise along with salt and pepper to taste.

It was one of the best potato salads I've made, and I think the reasons were:

• Plenty of salt in the water when I boiled the potatoes
• Didn't overcook the potatoes (as I said, this is critical)
• Use a lot of celery and onions: by volume there was almost as much of them as potatoes

Overall I was very pleased with the results, and definitely would make this again.