Good but Almost Ruined by a Rookie Mistake

I used curly parsley as the leafy green tonight but made the mistake of briefly rinsing it rather than giving it a good wash. GRIT!! Blech. The food was yummy but the occasional crunch of grit was disconcerting. Next time, the curly parsley will be treated to the same thorough cleaning as celery and leeks! Lots of soaking and swishing.

But the otherwise delicious dish at right is chicken and mushrooms over cheese polenta (corn meal mush). If you've saved a few cheese shavings, sprinkle these on top.

Ingredients (for two servings):

• Cooked chicken from one largish breast half, boned and cut into smallish chunks
• 2 Tbl. olive oil
  
• 1/2 cup or more coarsely sliced or chopped mushrooms
• 1 large shallot or small mild onion, julienned
• 1/2 jalapeño or other hot pepper, seeds removed and inner membrane removed, then diced. Delete or add more to suit your taste
• 1/4 cup chopped, oil packed sun-dried tomatoes or sun-dried tomato pesto. I used Classico Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
  
• 1/4 cup white wine or chicken broth
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 2 cups water
  
• 1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
  
• salt, pepper and nutmeg

Procedure:

1. Heat the olive oil in a medium sauté pan
2. Sauté the mushrooms, shallot and jalapeño
3. Add the chicken and sun-dried tomatoes or pesto and heat through
4. Add the parsley and wine or broth. Simmer until most of the liquid has been absorbed.

While the chicken mixture cooks, make the polenta (corn meal mush)

1. In a medium sauce pan, bring the water to a boil. Slowly pour in the cornmeal, whisking constantly.
2. As soon as most of the lumps are gone, turn off the heat and whisk in the cheese.
3. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Serve the chicken over the polenta. Warm, tasty, with a little bite from the jalapeño. Hopefully, yours won't be gritty! Ours won't next time. Lesson learned.

Last Minute Mashed Sweet Potatoes

They are sweet; add a little brown sugar and they are decadently sweet. They can be cooked using almost any method from microwave to stove top to oven. They are even good raw. They feel wonderfully starchy yet, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, sweet potatoes are better for you than broccoli!

If you need to hurry along sweet potatoes, they take well to being microwaved and mashed.

For two helpings of decadent mashed sweet potatoes:

• 1-3 sweet potatoes (depending on size)
• 1-2 Tbl. butter
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 Tbl. brown sugar
• Salt & white pepper to taste

Procedure:

1. Peel and thinly slice the sweet potato. The thinner you slice it the easier it will be to mash.
2. Place in a covered microwave bowl with about 1/3 cup water.
3. Microwave on high, covered, about 15 minutes, until the water has almost disappeared and the potatoes are soft.
4. Mash remaining ingredients into the sweet potatoes.
   
5. Microwave another minute to bring back to temperature.

In the picture it's served with pulled pork that has been heated with a mustard-based barbecue sauce typical of the South Carolina Midlands.

Green'n'Leafies

Green, leafy vegetables, the darker the better, may just be the healthiest things we can eat. I am not a rabbit so I strive to hide, disguise, and otherwise alter green leaves in a lot of my cooking.

Heidi's Hints for Tastier Green Leaves:

• Most salad greens can be eaten cooked.

Sauté mushrooms and add julienned Romaine or other leafy green for a minute or two. Baby Arugula (Roquette) is a great veggie to throw into soup or pasta.

• Hide spinach in strange places.

When making meatloaf or meatballs, whir spinach with the egg and other flavorings in the food processor. The meatloaf will be moister and you'll never taste the spinach.

• Parsley is a vegetable not a decoration.

Use whole bunches of fresh parsley (flat-leaf or curly) to add flavor and color to a pasta dish.

• Cabbage and its relatives only stink if you abuse them.

Do not boil cabbage. You heard me. Do not boil cabbage or Brussels Sprouts or Savoy or any other member of the cabbage family. Sauté, stir fry, steam, roast, or eat them raw. They taste much better and do not smell.

Save boiling cabbage for times when you want to get rid of houseguests.

Oo-oo! Moist Chicken Breasts!

Both pork butt (shoulder) and bone-in chicken breasts were on sale this week. Since I needed to have the oven at 250° for several hours for the pulled pork, I wondered about cooking chicken breasts at that temperature.

I love the internet. A little searching and you can find answers to all cooking-related questions -- or almost all. I Googled slow roasted chicken and found a variety of recipes. A little adaptation and we had some of the moistest chicken white meat I've ever cooked.

Ingredients:

• Large bone-in, skin-on chicken breast halves
• A sauce or marinade to spread on top and flavor the basting juices.
  

Tonight, I used about 1/2 cup of SAN-J Mildly Spicy Thai Peanut Stir-Fry and Dipping Sauce for four good-sized breast halves.

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 250°.
   
2. Place the breast halves skin-side up in a roasting pan.
3. Coat them with the sauce.
4. Baste with the pan juices about every 45 minutes or so.

Start checking to see if the breasts are done at 3 hours. They should be done by 4 hours. If necessary, a minute in the microwave can remove the last of the interior rawness without drying out the chicken meat. Just don't microwave too long or it will become chewy.

Giving Elegance to a Veggie -- Lemon Butter Breadcrumbs

Here's a quick way to make microwaved green beans, asparagus, or broccoli luxurious. For two to three servings:

1. While the veggies are cooking, melt a tablespoon of butter in a small skillet.
   
2. Add 1/4 cup of bread crumbs and gently sauté until lightly browned.
   
3. Add the juice of half a lemon. Optionally, add half the zest as well.
   
4. Heat through but do not allow to burn.
5. Toss the vegetable with the bread crumbs and serve.
   

Yummy!

Only for Asparagus Lovers: Spargel Ragoût

Spring is sprung and the asparagus at the grocery store is looking better and better. Although not much beats asparagus washed, quickly microwaved, and topped with lemon butter, Spring is the time of year for asparagus stew -- Spargel Ragoût. This recipe came down through my father's German relatives and has been modernized (and probably "Americanized") over the years. Don't be shy with the nutmeg.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds asparagus
• 2 Tbl. butter or margarine
• 2 Tbl. flour
• 2 pounds lean ground beef
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
  
• 1 Tbl. ground nutmeg (Use less if freshly grating the nutmeg.)
  
• Salt & pepper
• Brown or white rice, cooked, to serve as a base for serving the stew.
  

Preparation:

1. Wash & break asparagus into 1 inch pieces, throwing away the tough ends.
2. Boil the asparagus in two quarts of water flavored with 1 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. nutmeg until just tender. Drain, reserving both the water and the asparagus.
3. In the same pot, melt the butter and add the flour, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper, and 1 tsp. nutmeg. Cook while stirring to make a roux.
4. Slowly pour the reserved asparagus water into the roux, stirring to avoid lumps. Bring to a simmer.
5. Separate the eggs, beat the whites until stiff.
6. Mix egg yolks, ground meat, bread crumbs, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper, and 1 tsp. nutmeg.
   
7. Fold beaten egg white into meat mixture.
8. Drop meat by spoonfuls into the simmering asparagus stock.
9. When the meat is done, return the asparagus to the pot.
10. When the asparagus is hot, serve the resulting stew over cooked rice.

As the title says, only for asparagus lovers but if that's you, you'll love this.

Ground Chuck Bounty

Ground chuck was on sale for less than $2/pound, the problem being that the minimum amount was 4 pounds. With only two of us to feed, a way to use this bounty of cheap meat was needed. So, time to feed the freezer again!

We need meals that can be nuked when I have to teach at supper time and I think it's safer to pre-cook any mixture including ground meat. So, when all was said and done, 4 pounds of ground chuck, 4 eggs, some bread crumbs, and a variety of flavorings yielded 8 meals of meat servings for two, ready to be eaten with a short stint in the microwave.

Ground chuck has a higher proportion of fat than other ground meats but much of that can be cooked off. Thus, no olive oil was added to these, unlike meatloaves and meatballs made with ground turkey or chicken, where the olive oil is needed to add the flavor strengthening of fat.

Meatloaf is a wonderful place to hide a green leafy vegetable like spinach. We all need to eat more dark green leaves and this is a good way to slip them in where they aren't even noticed.

INGREDIENTS

• Ground chuck separated into 1 pound lumps (each pound results in four servings)
• 1 egg for every pound of meat
• A different set of flavorings for each pound of meat
• 1/4 pound of baby spinach or a bunch of parsley for each pound of meat
• 1/3 cup bread crumbs for each pound of meat.

PROCEDURE

1. Preheat oven to 375 for meatloaves.
   
2. Decide what ingredients you will use to flavor each meatloaf or set of meatballs.
3. Whir the egg, flavoring ingredients, and spinach or parsley in a food processor until well chopped.
4. In a large bowl, knead together a pound of meat with each one-egg mixture.
5. Shape into meat loaves, meat balls or patties.
6. Bake meatloaves until internal temperature reaches about 165°. Sauté meatballs or patties until no longer pink inside.
7. Allow to cool and freeze in meal-sized portions.

Among the flavoring ingredients that work well added meatloaf are

• herbs like basil, dill, or cilantro,
  
• exotics like sundried tomatoes, pitted olives, jarred pesto or tapenade
  
• vegetables like carrot, onion, celery, or shallots
• sauces like ketchup, mustard, horseradish sauce, or barbecue sauce
• Spices and garlic

Use your imagination to combine two or three of these together, for example

• garlic, chopped basil and sun-dried tomatoes
• Mustard, carrot and dill
• Cilantro, olives and bell pepper

Then, all you need do for supper is pull out a meat loaf and heat it in the microwave. Add a bag of frozen veggies or a salad and voilà.