¡Viva Pollo Mexicana!

13 Nov

Perfectly roasted, perfectly seasoned. Really, this is a must try.

Okay, pretty soon this blog will need to be called “Tiny Chicken Stories” instead of “Kitchen” if I keep getting a chicken at the farmers market every week. But I must admit, I really did outdo myself this time, and it wasn’t even on the time-consuming pepita-cilantro sauce that accompanied the chicken. Sadly, we didn’t even need it, even though it was delicious. I will have to make some (chicken) enchiladas soon and use the sauce then.

So what did I do that was so amazing? I’m not sure if it was the spice mixture or the butter. Since I have been responding well to the sheep and goat milk products recently, I found some goat-milk butter at Whole Foods and decided to try it. It has a delicious flavor, not sour at all, as I expected. It also melts quicker too. But it tastes like the smooth, unsalted butter of Europe, and I’m hooked.

Last night as I’m cooking the sauce, I decide to take about half a stick of the goat butter and mix in some ground cumin. I went to toast some cumin seeds up to grind them, then found a mixture that I’d already made that had ground cumin, coriander and brown mustard seeds. What the heck? I thought, and mixed in about a teaspoon of it into the butter. Continue reading →

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Golden Balls: Mushroom Rice Balls Stuffed with Brie

11 Nov

Insert your favorite ball joke here.

I was so happy when I had leftover wild rice that I’d made with mushrooms and pasilla chile. I’d wanted to make arancini for some time, and this seemed like the perfect time.

Ideally you’d want to use leftover risotto, as it’s much easier to mold than this rice dish that I had made. It was basically the Lundberg Farms wild rice blend, cooked in mushroom stock and then added to sautéed onions and pasilla chile. It was a delicious side dish to one of the many Chickens Under a Brick that we’ve cooked since we found Lydia at the farmers market with her wonderful product. Continue reading →

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A Nice Twist on Pesto

9 Nov

These mini food processors are perfect for pesto making.

I like pesto, but sometimes it can be a bit, well…bland. Especially when you get it in a jar, and you realize you need to use almost the whole thing to get any flavor. It’s so easy to make at home, especially when The Husband buys a big box of basil at Trader Joe’s, which completely forces my hand.

I don’t like using just basil, though. Luckily The Husband had also picked up some arugula, which is a perfect green to mix with basil for a pesto with a little kick.

Also, since we are going through a recession, sometimes it’s hard not to get some sticker shock when you look at a bag of pine nuts. Continue reading →

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Vegans and Vegetarians, Look Away Now: It’s a Pork Roast

6 Nov

The finished product...yum!!

Sorry to my veggie and vegan friends, but there’s not much of this that can be vegan, except the roast potatoes. And I’d recommend them highly! But skip to that part, if you don’t mind.

Carnivores, read on! I’d been waiting for this for some time, and it took me years to find it. As I recounted in my roast chicken blog, a Sunday roast is an English tradition, and I got quite attached to a nice pork roast, especially the crackling. My English friends would agree—you just can’t have a roast pork without the crackling. It’s just not cricket, darling. Continue reading →

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Cilantro Garlic Chicken Under A Brick

16 Oct

These chickens from Lydia at the farmer’s market—yes, I finally found out her name—are freaking amazing. We have been getting one a week, and last weekend we found a magic combination of herbs and spices that just made the chicken sing. Not literally. That would be weird.

Mmmm....it's hard not to eat the whole thing in one sitting! But we didn't. I swear.

Last night we had a great opportunity to try the recipe out again, and on other people to see if it really was that good—both the flavor of the mix and the chicken itself. Both were given superb reviews. Continue reading →

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You Put the Lime With the Coconut….

15 Oct

A month or so ago, our dear friends The Horanimals returned from 10 days in Jamaica. These two crazy kids fly all over the globe—he’s a world-class, s**t-hot photographer and a rising star in his field, and she’s the best project manager I’ve ever seen. Recently, she’s turned her hand to helping his business grow, which means they are super busy all the time flying hither and yon.

You put the lime in the coconut and shake it all up.

They’re also some of the coolest people we know, and they are very kind to bring us back delightful bottles of this and that on their travels. This time they brought back some Blackwell rum. Continue reading →

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It’s Fall, and Time For Baking

9 Oct

Fresh from the oven, which is the best way to eat this banana bread.

In our tiny kitchen, turning the oven on heats most of the house. Which is great when it’s cold, of course, but in the middle of the summer, it’s uncomfortable to say the least.

But now that the weather has gotten a little cooler, I’m back in there baking up a storm. Okay, maybe not a storm. But I whipped up a double batch of Apple-Banana Bread today. This is a hybrid of a recipe I found and our family’s standard (and awesome) banana bread recipe. I’ve got no idea where the recipe came from, but it’s been in my family as long as I can remember. Continue reading →

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It’s the Sunday Roast

25 Sep

Well, yes. The Husband is required for carving. Haven't watched that video yet.

We’re very lucky to have, at our farmer’s market, a lovely lady who sells organic, free-range chickens and their eggs. She actually has photos of her daughter chasing them around the farm, so you know that they truly get outside, rather than just having access to the outside. Chickens, apparently, are not the smartest creatures and if they don’t know there’s an “outside” it’s rare that they will use a door to get to it. So it’s nice to see that “free range” lives up to its meaning for once!

I’m a big fan of anything that’s not mass produced or factory “farmed”, so it’s a real treat to have her there. Seeing as how her eggs are 50¢ more expensive than Whole Foods, and a whole chicken is just $14, and two chicken breasts at Whole Foods cost $10, buying her product is a no-brainer. (And, thanks to this very instructive video, I’ve learned how easy it is to cut up a chicken into pieces!) Plus, you can make your own chicken stock out of the bones—especially after you’ve roasted a chicken. Continue reading →

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The Grill’s Out of Gas, So It’s Pasta Night

18 Sep

This dish goes nicely with a glass of red wine, natch!

After we’d been grilling all summer, and even had a tank in backup, we ran out of propane for the grill. I was in a panic—what the heck was I going to cook for dinner?? For crying out loud, I’d even been putting pizza on the grill!

I finally pulled myself together. I mean, it’s like I’d never used the oven or stovetop before. Geez. The Husband can’t eat fish at the moment (not allowed by the acupuncturist for some reason) and we’d had chicken the night before, so I decided on some pappardelle that I knew we had in the cupboard. I wandered around the Gelson’s produce department, thinking about what would go with the Italian sausage or prosciutto that we had in the fridge. I settled on some beautiful, organic Swiss chard and a lovely red jalapeño, plus some nice pecorino Romano cheese from the deli. Continue reading →

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Barbecue as Pizza Oven

17 Sep

Now that's what I call a pizza, not those things that come in a box!

That’s right, you read it correctly. We got sick and tired of crappy pizza in our neighborhood (thanks, Gina’s, for changing your menu for the worse), and kept seeing some great grilled pizzas in my food magazines. I figured we’d give it a go—what could go wrong?

Exactly, said The Husband, and refused to try it when friends were over and wanted to do a test run. No problem! Strangely enough, the perfect opportunity came on a Saturday when we thought we had nothing in the fridge to rustle up. The Husband lamented that we had just been near Trader Joe’s and could have picked up some pre-made dough, but I scoffed. I’ve got yeast and flour and I’ll make fresh dough myself, no problems. Even though I always freak out that my dough won’t rise and everything will be ruined, it rarely happens. Continue reading →

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