Super-Simple Crockpot Asian Chicken

This is stupid simple.

I LOVE it.

An easy-to-put-together sauce/marinade that can be frozen with or without the accompanying chicken parts or put together night before or morning of Dinner Day.  And it makes the house smell delicious and tastes yum.

I serve with rice (prepped ahead in a rice cooker on a delay timer) with steamed broccoli.  Super fast, super easy.

The OR calls for chicken thighs, which I like especially in the crockpot. Use whatever you like (I get this since I'm still married to the Chicken Princess who usually prefers chicken breast over dark meat), but whatever cut you pick...bone-in, thigh, breast, whatever...I would remove the skin or buy skinless.  There's no browning in this recipe, which is usually a bummer in a crockpot recipe anyway, and chicken skin will just be gross and flabby without that (troublesome) step.

Adapted from Blue Hill Slow Cooker & Family Recipes.

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Crockpot Black Beans

I loves a good bean recipe.  I served this the first night as our main dish with salad and bread (cornbread would have been an excellent accompaniment, but alas was not meant to be that night).  I served the leftovers (and there will be a lot unless you're feeding a small army or a couple of teenage boys) as taco filling the next night.

Even though these beans cook all day in a crockpot, you still need to presoak them.  Depending on what kind of schedule you have, that might mean soaking overnight (to put in the crockpot in the morning), through a whole day (to prep in the evening for the next day's crockpotting) or doing the boil-two-minutes-then-cover-and-soak-one-hour thing.

Crockpots keep food very moist, so be sure not to add too much stock, otherwise you'll have bean soup instead of beans.  Add stock until just before the beans would be totally covered; you should still see little lumpy-bumps of beanage peeking through the surface of the liquid.

Crockpot Black Beans
Makes 8-10 servings

1 lb. black beans, soaked several hours or quick-soaked and drained
2 tbsp oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 mild pepper such as anaheim or poblano, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 tsp seasoning salt
1 bay leaf
1 14 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp lime juice
4-5 cups vegetable or chicken broth

Prepare beans.  Heat oil in a skillet and saute onions, garlic, peppers and seasonings 5-10 minutes until soft.  Stir in remaining ingredients, except for broth.  Fridge or freeze, if desired (as a scheduling note, you could do the sauteing the night before Crockpot Day and start soaking the beans at the same time; the next morning mix it all together in the crockpot).

On Crockpot Day, put the onion-bean-tomato mix in the crockpot (still frozen is OK).  Add stock to barely cover the beans.  Cook on low 8-10 hours.


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Cheeseless Pizza

It sounds like pure heresy, no?

Unfortunately, my little girl is dairy-intolerant.  She's also a little iffy with soy foods and I'm not a fan of pretend foods, so a store-bought cheese substitute (which is usually soy-based) is out.  And that soy cheeze stuff doesn't melt well anyway.

So I went looking for *something* that would give that rich, mouth-round texture and flavor to a cheese-less pizza and found this sauce here.  I have made this sauce a couple of different ways now, and I have to say, each way was worked wonderfully.

You really do not miss the cheese.  I mean, I am highly motivated to find alternatives to my favorite cheesy foods because of my daughter, but my other two kids will spit out anything they don't find up to snuff, and this pizza sauce passed muster with them.

Even though we don't need to be tomato-free at our house, I did not use any tomato sauce with this pizza.  The garlic sauce is, well, a sauce after all, not a firm cheese-like product and two sauces just seemed too much.  You could absolutely use some sliced tomatoes as a topping though.

Extra bonus, as a way to enjoy a cheese-loaded favorite without the cheese (and also can be tomato-free), it's a boon for the dialysis diet.  Feeding two birds with one stone, if you will ;)

As far as the garlic goes, I like this sauce both with roasted garlic and sauteed garlic.  The flavors *are* different, so I'd say use whichever you prefer.  To roast a head of garlic, slice the top third or so off the whole head, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, wrap in foil and bake an hour or more at 350F.  Or if you're grilling, put the foil-wrapped garlic on the top rack in your grill and leave it there while the grill cools.

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Prosciutto Jalapeno Poppers

This is the quick'n'easy version of The Pioneer Woman's jalapeno poppers (which is delicious).  I made these guys with half jalapenos and half sweet mini peppers to give my kids a non-spicy option.  Worked very well.

The OR calls for a cheddar-cream cheese-scallion mixture that I circumvent by using herbed cheese such as Boursin or Laughing Cow, or when I ran out of that, sticks of Brie (yes, Brie is my "backup" cheese LOL)

The OR also calls for wrapping the poppers in pieces of uncooked bacon which is scrumptious.  I happened not to have any bacon on hand, but I had prosciutto so I used that (yes, prosciutto is my "backup" pork product LOL).  The nice thing about using the prosciutto is that it's already cooked so the cooking time for the poppers can be (read: needs to be) shortened from the hour originally called for.  I think using long, narrow strips of thin-sliced ham could work too in lieu of prosciutto or bacon.

The OR also calls for brushing the poppers with barbecue sauce or jelly such as apricot jelly.  I think beer jelly or garlic jelly would be OUTSTANDING here, but no sauce/jelly on top is good too (and is what I did this go-round).

I have made these in vast quantities for parties and you can absolutely make them ahead and freeze them.  I dithered about whether to freeze them before cooking or after, and decided that after cooking was less likely to result in a squishy jalapeno shell (since freezing uncooked veggies tends to make them, well, squishy).  I "revived" them for the party by baking them again for about 30 minutes to heat through and crisp the bacon back up.  To make them in advance to freeze, pull them out of the oven about 10 minutes before the final cooking time.  That way, the 2nd round of baking doesn't overbrown or burn them.

You can use toothpicks if you need to get the bacon/prosciutto/ham to stay in place, but it's a lot less time-consuming and easier to eat if you just wrap them so that the ends of the meat slice are on the bottom of the pepper.  Gravity will do the rest to keep them in place.

Lastly, the OR offers a variation wherein you place a thin slice of peach on top of the cheese before wrapping in bacon. This sounds weird, but is ohmygawd good...I highly recommend it.

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Fettucine with (vegan) White Pesto

Oh my, this is my 300th post!

One of my pet peeves about special diet (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, whatever) cooking is the convention of naming a recipe after a foodstuff that it kinda sorta resembles if you pinch your nose and squint real hard while you eat (e.g. Mock Sausage, Sugar-Free Caramel, Scrambled You-Won't-Believe-They-Aren't-Eggs, and all those plant-based "cheeze" sauces out there).

C'mon (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, whatever) folks...you know these are tasty recipes that stand on their own without trying to stand on the shoulders of a "missing" ingredient.  The practice reeks of an inferiority complex and besides, you're inevitably setting your dining companions up for failed expectations if you tell them you will be serving something like is *almost* like sausage/cheese/eggs/etc. but isn't.

This is one such recipe.  It's from Christian Pirello of Christina Cooks and she calls it Vegan Fettucine Alfredo.  Actual alfredo sauce is buttered heavy cream, cooked down until it's super-thick and finished with fistfuls of parmesan cheese.  It's a heart attack in a pot.

This heart-healthier, plant-based "fettucine alfredo" is really NOTHING like real fettucine alfredo.  My husband made the snooty-face when he first tasted it because he was expecting something alfredo-y.

What it IS is awfully darn good once you get around that misnomer.  Once he got over his "this isn't alfredo" reaction, my husband loved it (ofc he did sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top of his, because pasta just isn't pasta until there's a flurry of parmesan on top in his world).

What the recipe IS is a white pesto...the only difference between this dish and a "true" white pesto is the relatively small amount of parmesan cheese which is understudied in the vegan production by miso paste.  No need to pretend like it's alfredo...it's pesto!

My one serious deviation from her recipe (aside from changing the name) is to omit sweetener.  I'm not quite sure why, but she feels the need to put brown rice syrup in everything.  This dish doesn't need it.

Lastly, the pesto (as with all pestos) can be made in advance and frozen. Just thaw it and add it to cooked pasta.

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Shakshuka

I've seen and made multiple versions of the eggs-poached-in-chunky-sauce meal...one with a bed of sauteed spinach and mushrooms, another with caramelized shallots and a marsala-beef consomme reduction, among others.  This one is a recipe from the cookbook Jerusalem by Ottolenghi that uses a stovetop-simmered pepper-tomato sauce as the poaching bed.  A similar sauce that would probably also work well for cooking eggs this way is this roasted red pepper sauce.

The original recipe calls for harissa, a super-spicy pepper paste, that I don't have on hand.  I used some minced jalapeno and ginger from my freezer stash to bring a little heat and depth of flavor to the sauce.  If you like things hotter, use more or hunt down some harissa.

To chop your pepper finely enough for this dish, I highly recommend using the food processor.  Pulse quickly and stop short of pureeing them.  If you use canned tomatoes instead of fresh, drain them very well to shorten the cooking time needed to thicken the sauce.

I like how quickly the sauce went together and how well this recipe lends itself well to prepping ahead and freezing ahead.  You can chop all the ingredients for the sauce ahead of time and fridge them, or make the sauce completely in advance.  If you're going to freeze the sauce, you can even freeze it in individual portions for a quick meal-for-one.  Just bring the sauce back up to a simmer (from its frozen state even!), crack an egg into the sauce, cover and simmer 8-10 minutes.  Probably this thaw-and-poach process could even be managed in microwave...I don't know offhand how long to zap an egg to poach it, but if you do, let me know!

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Armadillo Eggs

Another "as seen as Pinterest, sort of" recipes.  Another Pin Win too.

This is one of those make-it-with-whatever-you've-got recipes...hot peppers or sweet peppers, ground meat of nearly any persuasion or combination, whatever cheese appeals to you and whatever sauce/glaze you can rustle up out of the fridge.

I had pork sausage, sharp cheddar, mini sweet peppers and garlic jelly in my fridge so here's what I did (though meatloaf mix, provolone and beer jelly or jalapeno jelly glaze sounds good too).  The original Pin also suggested grilling them...trying to keep 3 kids under the age of 5 supervised and clear of the grill is not my idea of a good time, so I baked mine on a rack placed over a lipped sheet tray.  But I bet grilled is good too.

I really, really, really wish I had made more of these and popped them in the freezer.

Last thought...this reminds me of a recipe from the 1973 Betty Crocker International Cookbook for "Scotch Eggs"...those are peeled hard-boiled eggs wrapped in breakfast sausage, then breaded and deep-fried.  I think the next time I make Scotch Eggs (which are outstanding post-Easter leftovers), I'll glaze them and bake them instead of breading and deep-frying.

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Pepperoni Broccolini Pasta

Adapted from the most recent issue of Food and Wine (March 2013?).  The pepperoni/garlic mixture will freeze nicely and is easy enough to make in double or triple batches.  Once it's combined with breadcrumbs, I bet it would make an outstanding breading mix on chicken breasts, pork chops or eggplant slices too.

Topping pasta with breadcrumbs seems like carb overload and isn't generally how most folks think of the "right" way to serve pasta.  But the breadcrumb finish is common in a pasta dish that uses seafood (as parmesan and its ilk don't go so nicely with fish).  And if you think about the "traditional" mac and cheese baked casserole, there are breadcrumbs all over the top of that pasta!  So it's not as odd as it seems.

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Garlic jelly

Due to a startling number of requests for the recipe, here it is! 

I use this jelly about 1/4 cup at a time...a little goes a long way.  Mix with a couple teaspoons of mustard and use it as a glaze on roasted chicken, meatloaf, ham, or pork roast.  Spread it on dinner rolls.  Or put a bit on a roasted chicken sandwich on rye...yum!

An overview of home canning is here.

Adapted from the Ball Blue Book (the authors of which didn't think to use yummy wine ;) ).


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Fez-Style Baked Fish

It's summer, which means on any given day, we're likely to be out playing right up until dinnertime.  So I try to get everything ready for dinner in the morning or the night before so that the most I have to do at dinnertime is stick a prepared casserole in the oven, dump a bunch of stuff into a skillet or even less if possible. 

This is a new twist (for me) on flavors for fish...I love the combination of tomatoes and olives, potatoes and saffron, garlic and cumin but I've never applied it to fish.  The original recipe calls for cilantro along with parsley, but I'm one of those people to whom cilantro tastes weird so I substituted garden mint (read: I can't remember what variety of mint it is anymore) for the cilantro.  I also didn't have cherry tomatoes on hand, so I used a 15 oz. can of cut-up, drained whole tomatoes instead. 

Here's what I did this morning...I mixed up the marinade for the fish (which is still thawing a leetle), parboiled the potatoes and put them in my baking dish, and sliced/assembled the rest of the veggies.  I put the fish in the marinade (even if it's not totally thawed) later in the afternoon before we went out.  When we got home, I put the 3 components together in the baking dish while the oven preheated and baked 30 minutes while wrestling the kiddos into a dinner-appropriate state of cleanliness.  If I had been prepping the night before because I'd be gone all day, I'd go ahead and marinate the fish starting in the morning but not overnight due to the acid content of the marinade.


Another make-ahead thought...if you have leftover boiled potatoes from another meal, use those in this dish!  A single layer of pre-cooked taters in a square baking dish will do you.

One more note...my husband liked this very well as a fish dish, but also thought it would rock as a chicken dish.  Just bake 30-40 minutes for chicken breasts, until they're cooked through.
Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/dining/baked-fish-fez-style-recipe.html



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Garlic Artichoke Pasta

I <heart> artichokes.  They're supposedly cancer-fighting and they're exotic and they're amazing with butter.  That's the first thing that made me want to try this recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Better Than Mom's Slow Cooker Recipes book.  The second thing was that this is a recipe that is made practically entirely from pantry goods without being one of those can-of-cream-of-death-soup type of recipes.  You can buy all the ingredients you need for this ahead and keep them on-hand as a pantry meal kit.  You can also prep the crockpot mixture ahead to fridge or freeze.

Until I had a toddler, we never had dairy beverages in the fridge routinely.  I had to buy milk or cream or half-and-half specifically for a recipe that called for it.  These days, I use whole milk for all recipes calling for cream or half-and-half because it is what we have in the fridge.  So use whatever you happen to  have here (or use canned evaporated milk, if you are like pre-toddler, dairy-drink-less me) if you throw this recipe together out of "ingredients on hand".  If you're planning to make a meal kit for this recipe, you can freeze an appropriate amount of milk or cream, rely on having some in the fridge on Dinner Day or buy canned evap milk for the "pantry kit". 

Comparatively, cream and half and half will be the highest in calories and fat, then evaporated milk and regular milk.  If you get non-fat evap milk, you'll get the best of both worlds...the lighter caloric/fat profile of milk with the rich mouthfeel of cream.

So a meal kit for this recipe will look like this: canned tomatoes, canned artichokes, box of pasta and can of evap milk (if using) labelled and stored in the pantry with garlic+dry herbs and milk/cream (if using) on hand or frozen in ziptop bags.  OR everything except milk mixed together and frozen with pasta/evap milk in the pantry.

The one gripe I have about this recipe is that it's a crockpot recipe that still requires significant cooking right before dinner.  The joy of the crockpot is that you don't have to cook at dinnertime, right?  Boiling pasta isn't hard, but getting the water up to a boil takes time...more time than I'm willing to spend to "finish" a crockpot meal. 

The solution is to cook the pasta almost fully in advance, toss it with a bit of oil or butter to keep it from sticking, fridge it and stir it into the crockpot at the end to warm up and finish cooking through.  Or you can boil the pasta at the last minute, whatever works with your schedule.  Just please don't rinse the pasta...rinsing washes away starch which will prevent the pasta from sticking to itself but then it also won't stick to the sauce.  Besides, the starch is where the flavor lives (yes, pasta does have a flavor of its own) so rinsing washes away flavor, too.

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Low-carb Bang Bang Shrimp 'n' Chicken

Taking a favorite dish and tweaking it for my family's dietary needs. 

The original of this dish comes from the Bonefish Grill restaurant chain.  The copycat recipe I've worked with for some years now is ridiculously easy to prepare and slap-yo-mama good.  But it's pretty high in carbs between the Sweet Chili Sauce in the dressing and the cornstarch coating on the shrimp (about 43 g carb v. 9g in my recipe, per calculations from SparkRecipes.com).  So I'm setting out to make it much more diabetic-friendly and making a variation to serve those who have food sensitivities to shrimp.

As much as I care about my family and want to cook as healthfully as possible for them, I must confess that what really kicked me into gear about revamping this recipe was how hard it is to find the blasted Sweet Chili Sauce.  I really didn't want to have to make a special trip to an international grocery store 15 miles away for this one ingredient.  Boy was I glad to find out that you can make it at home, and moreover that you can make it sugar-free.  Thank you interwebs and shesimmers.com (original recipe)! 

I didn't search exhaustively for almond flour to use as a low-carb cornstarch substitute, but I know it's out there.  I used whole raw almonds ground finely in the food processor.  The result was a more textural crunch-coat on the shrimp and chicken than what you'll get if you use a superfine starch like cornstarch or commercially milled almond flour.  It was still good, but be aware of the difference in the final dish.

Lastly, the best way to avoid cross-contamination for folks with food sensitivities is to not prepare the problem food in the first place.  BUT since shrimp was on our menu, I did all the chicken-handling before even touching the shrimp (well, actually my husband did all the protein-wrangling this time).  So the chicken got cut, dredged and fried before doing the same with the shrimp.  They were plated on separate serving platters and handled with separate cooking and serving utensils. 

Sorry the "final plate" picture is of leftovers, but you're lucky there's a picture at all since what you see is all that was left!

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Garlic Soy Pork Chops

This is such an easy-peasy marinade that makes blah pork chops sing.  It's no sweat to put together at the last minute, but it's also great as a freeze-ahead meal.  I like thin-sliced chops as they take no time at all to cook, but use thick-cut, bone-in...whatever floats your boat (and budget).  Just change the cooking time to accommodate.

This is a South Beach recipe that I have modified slightly to reduce the sodium content (which SBD is a leetle cavalier about IMHO) and to account for the fact that there is no harm in marinating these guys overnight or longer in the freezer.

Also, for those keeping track...carb count: 1g

No pictures again (sorry!) due to long and fun day at the State Fair (wherein I won a prize).

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Aglio e olio

I think by the time one graduates high school, everyone should know how to cook 4 dishes:

1. your favorite meal (so that you don't have to rely on anyone else to make you happy)
2. an inexpensive and relaxed menu for having a few friends over
3. something impressive suitable for special occasions
4. something you can throw together quickly and with minimal effort at the end of a long day so that you don't spend your life eating crappy take-out

This is my #4.  All the ingredients are pantry or freezer staples (freeze whole peeled garlic cloves), except the fresh herbs which can be left out if none are available. 
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The Single Tablespoon Quick Change

Compound butter and flavored olive oil.  Make some ahead, freeze it or fridge it, and turn Plain Anything into an Amazing Something with a tablespoon or two.  Pork chops, chicken breasts, fish fillets, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, rice, pasta, scrambled eggs...it is astounding what you can do with this stuff.

In general, I'd use the oil and clarified butter to cook in and the compound butters and chimichurri to finish a cooked dish.

Mojo de Ajo
Makes about 2 cups
Thank you to Jason and Michelle for this one!

2 large heads garlic, cloves peeled and smashed slightly
1 - 1 1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
red pepper flakes (optional)

Heat oven to 325F.  Stir together garlic, oil and salt in a baking dish small enough to keep the garlic submerged in the oil (9x5 works).  Bake 45-55 minutes.  Add lime juice and return to the oven for 20 minutes.  Remove and mash garlic into a coarse puree.  Add red pepper flakes to taste, if desired.  Store in a pint jar in a cool, dry place (I keep mine in the fridge and take it out a few minutes before cooking to let the oil liquify)




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Easy-easier-easiest sides: Mashed potatoes

Lemon Olive Oil Smashed Potatoes

You don't always have to do the full-out Thanksgiving mashed potato rigamarole.  I leave the skins on my taters because that's where the vitamins are (so says my mom) and it's way easier.  Here's how to do the mash with as little on hand as a couple of pounds of potatoes.  Two pounds of potatoes will give about 6 servings, at least that's what goes at my house.

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Watermelon Gazpacho

Ohmygosh, I am ready for summer!  When watermelon is plentiful, try this make-ahead and freezeable soup. 

The original Food & Wine recipe calls for a crab salad of sorts to go with the soup, but 1) ick and 2) the crab salad isn't prep-ahead friendly. 

The original recipe also calls for fresh lemongrass, but 1) puh-lease, I live in the Midwest and it's not something we find at the local Kroger and 2) it's a pain to work with anyway.  You can get tubes of lemongrass puree in the produce section of my grocery stores, so that's what I use.  Freeze the leftover puree in ice cube trays or a zip-top bag for other recipes.

Watermelon Gazpacho (makes 4 servings)

5 cups coarsely chopped seeded watermelon
2-3 tbsp lemongrass puree
3 tbsp finely chopped shallot
1 1/2 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
1 tbsp finely chopped garlic
1 1/2 tbsp mild olive oil
1 small hot green chile, such as Thai or serrano, finely chopped (seeded or not, depending on your preference)
2 tbsp fresh lime juice, or to taste
3/4 tsp salt, or to taste

Puree the watermelon in a blender or food processor and transfer to a bowl (don't wash out the blender).

Cook lemongrass, shallots, ginger, and garlic in olive oil over medium-low heat until golden, about 5 minutes.  Add about 1/3 of the watermelon puree and simmer over medium heat, stirring, for 5 minutes. 

Allow to cook slightly, then carefully transfer to the blender or food processor.  Add chile, lime juice and salt and blend until smooth.  Add remaining watermelon puree and blend.  Strain soup through a fine-mesh sieve, pressing on and discarding any solids.  Chill soup at least 2 hours before serving. Pin It