Easy-easier-easiest: Cauliflower

Cauliflower can be a messy vegetable to prep.  I find the least untidy way to deal with it is to break the green leaves off by hand, then cut the whole head in half down the center, then cut the core and stem out in a U-shape.  Break large florets into bite-size pieces. 

I'm not crazy about raw cauli, but my son adores it.  To each their own.  Here are my favorite ways to prepare it.  As always, roasting tops the list because the cauli simply turns into a different creature under the influence of the Maillard reaction.  You really do need fresh cauliflower for this one.

Pureed cauli is very hip among the low-carb crowd, but the addition of horseradish gives it an unexpected depth without wicked heat...my younger veggie-avoidant son loves this dish.  This one can be made with frozen or fresh cauliflower.

The cauli curry is a more complicated recipe with flavors that can become too competitive as a side dish, but is absolutely worth being on the radar.  Serve the curry with plain baked chicken or a simple roast, or throw in some cooked lentils for a complete vegetarian dish.  Make this with fresh or frozen cauli, or leftover roasted cauliflower (plan ahead and roast 2 heads of cauli).

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Doomsday Chicken and Peppers

Doomsday Chicken n Peppers with rice and bok choy salad

I misread a blog post title here and I can't get the idea of Doomsday Peppers out of my mind now LOL  Red, orange and yellow peppers are on big sale at my grocery store this week, so I am taking advantage!

Actually, if you had to throw together dinner quickly b/c the world was about to end, this might the recipe for you ;)  I'm prepping it ahead b/c I am doing Big Things later today but the prep is so quick that you could easily do this at the last minute without turning a hair.  You could freeze this as a kit as well since you cook the peppers and onions into a soft, chunky, peperonata sauce anyway so the fact that they loose their crisp in the freezer isn't an issue.

The red-yellow family of peppers is certainly attractive and highly nutritious with all those colors, but if you'd prefer, you certainly can use green peppers.  If you do have an abundance of inexpensive colored bell peppers available, you can roast them and freeze them in bulk or incorporate some of these recipes into your weekly menu:

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Party Wings

My husband, like most Y chromosome-bearers it seems, is a fan of wings.  I could go on and on about why I'm not such a fan, but talking down on food seems a strange choice for a food blog.  Instead, I'll say this...if I ever leave my husband for another man, it will be Chris Kimball of America's Test Kitchen.  If I ever leave Chris Kimball, it will be for Alton Brown.  And I ever leave Alton, it might be for Gina Neely. 

This recipe is a mashup of Alton Brown's wing preparation technique with the Neelys' wing seasoning mix.  The result is a crispy, spicy, flavorful oven-fried wing that doesn't need to be batter-slathered or drowned in butter, doesn't get sauce all over your fingers  and can be made pretty easily in large quantities with not a lot of attention from the cook.  Ka-chow!

I'm still working on the best way to make this for everyday eating.  This cooking method requires a rest between two stages of cooking...not hard to do, but hard to accomplish on an average weeknight. Alton Brown recommends steaming (therefore, partially cooking) the wings to eliminate some of the fat, then letting them air-dry in the fridge for no more than an hour (since you don't want partially cooked poultry hanging out too long...a big USDA food safety no-no), then baking them off. 

It makes ahead very well for a party as it can sit happily warming in a crockpot for a few hours.  If it's the weekend, and you've got the time to get through all those steps, it's just fine for a regular meal. I *think* the best thing to do if you want them for a weeknight meal would be bake them off entirely the night before (say on Sunday for Monday night dinner) at a slightly lower temp for less browning, fridge them, then reheat them under the broiler for a few minutes on Dinner Day.  But I haven't tried this, so I can't guarantee it.  If anyone does try it, report back please!  And it is prep-ahead freezer-friendly in that you can prepare the spice rub and apply it to the chicken wings then freeze them.

The step-heaviness of the process is SO worth the flavor and the bite of these little guys though.  You can of course adjust the spiciness by using more or less of the cayenne pepper, red chili flake and black pepper. 

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Wretched excess, grapefruit style

Sauteed Grapefruit Chicken with Salad and Grapefruit Honey Dressing

It's that season...big boxes of all manner of citrus fruit everywhere...in the grocery stores, being hawked by your local high school band members, in the mail from far-away relatives.  Tangelos, tangerines, big navel oranges, small blood oranges, and of course grapefruit.

Personally, after one grapefruit breakfast, I'm done for the year.  But I've still got plenty to use up in the pantry.  The obvious secondary use for excess grapefruit is cocktails, but one Greyhound (like a Screwdriver, but with grapefruit juice) is also enough for me. 

And so I start marinating stuff.  Shrimp, chicken, salad...grapefruit brings a surprisingly sparkly and probably novel flavor to the party.  Here is a recipe I've previously blogged about for grapefruit marinated shrimp.  Today I've zested and juiced 2 medium grapefruit and I plan to get 3 dishes out them for 2 meals. 

Juice and zest divided: 4 tbsp zest with salt and pepper
for Sauteed Chicken (bottom left), 1/2 tsp zest and
1/4 cup juice for salad dressing (top), 1 cup juice
for Un-Buffalo Chicken Tenders (bottom right)

The salad dressing is a variation of a recipe from the classic red gingham Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and makes enough for 8 servings, so you can serve it with 2 separate meals.  The Un-Buffalo Chicken Tenders is a variation of this recipe that I created for my husband's grandmother so that I could "split" the recipe between a spicy version and non-spicy version without needing to cook a totally separate meal for those who prefer to skip the heat.  An overnight marinade in any type of acid (like hot sauce, citrus juice or apple cider vinegar) makes for beautiful fork-tender sauteed chicken. 

Both meals can be prepped ahead, though only the zest-marinated chicken can be frozen for any significant length of time.  The dressing will keep several days in the fridge.  The dressing will also require an immersion blender, electric whisk, food processor or stand blender to properly combine the honey with the other ingredients.

Be sure when you season your dishes not to go overboard with salt.  Citrus hits the same points on the tongue as salt so even a moderate amount of salt will be intensified in combination with citrus zest.

A tip about juicing any citrus fruit...put the whole fruit in the microwave for 10 seconds before juicing, especially if you've taken it straight from the fridge.

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Cinnamon Marinated Fish

Cinnamon is usually thought of as a sweet spice, but it has a savory side.  In the absence of sweeteners, cinnamon has a peppery smoky quality that pairs nicely with fish.  The cinnamon comes across more strongly in the aroma of the finished dish and is subtle in the flavor.

If you want to do a "taste-test" batch of cinnamon oil, use just 1 cinnamon stick and 1/2 cup of vegetable oil.  It will be enough for 2 or 3 marinades.  When you crush up the cinnamon sticks, just pound them in a plastic bag with a meat pounder until they look like mulch. 

It's tempting to buy cheapie spices for this or use cinnamon sticks that have been hanging around since last autumn's spiced cider kick, but the fresher and more strongly flavored the cinnamon is, the better the marinade will be.

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Fresh salsas

A great way to spice up a plain ol' baked chicken breast, sauteed pork chop or grilled burger.  You can make these on the weekend, and serve them all week as a finishing sauce for simple, quick dishes or just as a "filler" side dish.  And look! it's another way to use zucchini! 

Patience and attention to detail will be rewarded here...a very fine dice makes the difference between a sauce and a coarse salad.  Sharp knives are a help, too.

Blanching the onion takes a bit of the bite out of the salsa, but feel free to leave them unblanched if you like a rawer flavor.  You can also choose how hot to make your salsas...if you like a hotter mix, use serranos or jalapenos, but if you want a milder dish, use poblanos or cubanelles.

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Piri Piri Chicken

This was meant to be a one-off recipe...some friends (thank you again, Jason and Michelle) had gifted us some homemade piri piri (a lightly spicy pepper and oil condiment) that I needed to use up.  I marinated 2 spatchcocked whole chickens in it, grilled one, roasted another, and thought I was done with that.  Well, it turned out to be the best chicken we had ever had, so I was obligated to get the piri piri recipe from our friends and make more. 

I can't vouch for freezer-stability of this recipe for more than 2 weeks...there's a pretty high concentration of acid in the piri piri marinade which could begin to have a negative effective on meat quality after some point (how long? I dunno), but I can attest to 2 weeks' worth of frozen marination resulting in uber-tasty results.

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Salsa V.

Despite looking like paper-covered green tomatoes, tomatillos are related to gooseberries, which probably still doesn't tell you much about them. Underneath the inedible papery husk, they are a bit sweet and tart all at once, rather like an unripe berry. They have the "green" flavor of a green tomato, but with a fruit-like acid tinge. And I caught my 18-month-old chomping on peeled tomatillos today like they were apples...there, does that help? 

I grow tomatillos in my garden for the express purpose of making salsa v.  One or two plants should do you, unless you REALLY like salsa v.  They tend to come in all at once (at least here in Zone 5B) which makes them ideal for this type of "putting up".  Rake in your whole harvest, make salsa and process...bing, bang, boom.  Any stragglers can go into late-summer fresh salsas.  This recipe scales up or down by the pound/pint, so you can make as little or as much as you want...the basic proportion for 1 pint of salsa v. is 1 lb. tomatillos, 1 jalapeno, 1 garlic clove, 1/2 onion, 1/2 tsp salt, 2-3 tbsp herbs.

Roasting the tomatillos before turning them into salsa gives a dimension of flavor not present with unroasted fruit.  You can sear them over a grill, under the broiler or on a cast-iron pan...or not at all, your choice.  Toss the dehusked fruits with a bit of oil, and give them a good 10-20 minutes of high direct  heat, until the skins are brown and the fruits are popping open.

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Caribbean Ratatouille

The South Beach cookbooks (whence the original recipe here comes) just say summer...lots of veggies, in all flavors and colors.  The OR for this dish calls for a variety of veggies that were pretty easy to locate in my grocery stores when I lived an hour away from South Beach...calabaza squash, chayote, green plantains...but which are hit-or-miss finds now that I live in the Corn Belt.  What follows is my Midwestern Caribbean Ratatouille which takes advantage of the current agricultural overlap in late summer and early fall produce.  It's full of color which means it's full of nutrients and vitamins...talk about cooking the rainbow!

This is a fast and light stew...goes together in less than 20 minutes once all the veg is chopped and the seasonings measured and sorted.  It *can* be frozen once it's cooked, but I think it loses a bit of its bright, fresh flavor.  It is perfect though for prepping ahead for same day or next day cooking.  Just chop all the veg, sort into containers, and combine the cooking liquid and seasonings for fast-fast dinner execution.

When you "peel" an acorn squash, don't sweat getting every last bit of peel off.  Once the squash is cooked, the peel will come away very easily from the squash meat.  Note: If you do use a green plantain instead of a green banana, start it with the squash and onion...they're more like potatoes than bananas when they're green and unripe.

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Beef and berry stew

WHAT kind of stew??  (I can hear some readers asking already)

Beef stew.  With blackberries.  Calm down, it's delicious.  And easy with only 5 ingredients.  And seasonal.  And a lesson in our nation's cultural heritage.  According to the Frugal Gourmet (from whom the original recipe comes), this is a Sioux recipe that would have been made with bison meat charred briefly over an open fire with wild berries picked at the height of summer. 

This is a great recipe for me as my blackberry plants only produce a handful of berries at a time toward the end of the season, where most blackberry recipes call for several cups.  If you use frozen berries and plan to make freezer kits, one 12 oz. bag will make 2 batches of this stew so go ahead and get double the beef and broth and make one batch for dinner and one batch into a freezer kit.

Stew beef is a more convenient choice than a slab o' buffalo IMHO. And cooking it in a crockpot instead on the stovetop is a far more convenient choice.

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Easy-Easier-Easiest: Cabbage

Cabbage seems to be regarded any more as an old-fashioned vegetable, one whose popularity is passed and one that gets overlooked in favor of trendier produce items.  I think that's a shame.  Cabbage is a sturdy stand-by, a crop that plugs along when others fail and always easy to find at any grocery store or farmers' market.  Not to mention its value...you get a lot of bang for your penny with cabbage.  A medium-sized 3-ish pound head usually costs less than $2, even less in season (fall), and makes 10-12 servings. 

There are many types of cabbage.  I think they fall into 2 main types...hard and soft.  Hard cabbages are the traditional green, red/purple and brussel sprouts...densely leaved and heavy headed those.  Soft types are trendier...bok choy, napa cabbage, savoy cabbage...these types often feel light for their size and have thin crinkly leaves that cook quickly.  Soft cabbages are excellent in stirfrys or as a quick sauteed side for dinner.  Hard types require longer cooking in general. 

Even when a hard cabbage is meant to be used raw, as in cole slaw, I think it still benefits from a quick blanch in boiling water.  To prepare cole slaw, core a cabbage and slice it thinly.  Pour boiling water over all and drain after 1-2 minutes.  It softens the cabbage just a bit and seems to make it, in my experience, a little less digestively challenging.

A lot of the recipes I have for cabbage use it as a partner in a larger casserole dish, especially for making cabbage rolls.  That is certainly one option, though if you have a head of cabbage sitting in your first but don't want to invest the time in a recipe like Savoy Cabbage Rolls, Beef Cabbage Casserole, or BBQ Lasagne, I have a few other thoughts which follow.

My husband's grandfather was fond of cabbage, and the first recipe is how he typically prepared it.  A pinch of sugar in the cooking and vinegar at service are the secret ingredients.  The second recipe is my own version of his recipe.  The cabbage tastes, well, like butter.  The final recipe is a great way to incorporate cabbage into a meal on the grill.

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Chicken Francese for a crowd

I love chicken francese, but it's a fairly last-minute intensive dish to prepare...frying those cutlets can really eat up time, especially if you're cooking for a crowd. 

I tried a new twist for a "dinner party" (can you really call it a dinner party when you're eating off paper plates?) wherein I baked many chicken breasts that were seasoned with lemon pepper and served the lemon-caper sauce as a relish on the side.  Captures the same flavors with far less work.

If you prep this in advance and put your chicken in a baking dish in the fridge, plan for extra cooking time (I screw up so you don't have to).  The cold dish slows down the chicken's progression to an appropriate final temperature, and it took an extra 20-25 minutes of cooking to get my chicken up to temp.  Better yet, prep the chicken, store it in a ziptop bag and put it in the baking dish at the last minute. 

I don't have pictures because it was a dinner party and I had better things to do than take pictures of food LOL

Edited to note...this is evidently my 100th "freezer" recipe!  I guess I do more of this sort of thing than I realized!
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Spiced Braised Pork Chops

Adapted from Art Smith's Back to the Table.  I was looking for a recipe that would suit bone-in pork chops and discovered Art Smith's Spiced Pork Loin with Vidalia Onion Sauce.  I am using thick-cut pork chops rather than a loin and regular onions instead of sweet, but you can make changes to my changes.  If you want to make this for a roast, make up a double batch of the braising/spice mixture and cook the roast for 1 1/4 hours. 

This sauce mixture is so easy to put together, you should consider making extra for more than one kit.  Or you can make a double batch, cook one half for dinner tonight and freeze the rest to get two dinners for one night's work.

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Microwaved Beet Chips

These are delicious and cooking them won't heat up the house because it's done entirely in the microwave.  Woot-woot!  Beets are a sweet veg, and the flavor-texture result here is crunchy but melt-in-your-mouth, lightly sweet and lightly salty all at once.

The two in the back left are a leetle burned, but the rest are as they should be

The tricky part is that I can't tell you how long to nuke 'em.  It depends on how thinly you've sliced the beets, how powerful your microwave is, how many slices you're cooking at once.  I can tell you that these will burn between one second and the next if you're not careful though.  Start with a short time frame, then add time in 1 minute or 30 second intervals when you're getting close.  And watch them like a hawk with your finger on the STOP button in case you start to see or smell carbonization.  As usual, I screw up so you don't have to.

What I can tell you is what I did.  I have a "mid-size" microwave (don't know offhand how many watts).  I used 4 2" diameter beets and hand sliced them as thin as possible (pretty thin, but not totally regular or even).  I made the first batch with as many slices as I could fit in the microwave (about 3/4 of the slices).  You'll see the slices go from hard, to softened, to slightly curled to leathery to burned.  I started with 3 minutes.  They were just starting to look softened, so I added 3 minutes.  Then I added 1 more minute.  After 7 total minutes of cooking, they looked a little leathery but I thought they could use more time.  At 7 minutes 45 seconds, they were done but I didn't pull the emergency stop fast enough.  Fifteen more seconds gave me smoking briquettes and a reeky microwave. 

The second batch was much smaller, so at 3 minutes they were looking just leathery.  I gave them 30 more seconds, and stopped the microwave with 12 seconds left to go.  I spread the cooked chips on a paper towel and let them stand a few minutes.  They crisped up as they cooled. 

Four tennis ball sized beets will give you four small (about 1/3 cup) servings of chips.  Or one big afternoon snack.

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No-work freezer meals

These aren't recipes, really, but just ideas of very quick ways to perk up plain-jane food and a reminder that you can usually do what little work there is ahead of time to make life just that much easier on yourself. 

For the salad dressing chicken, I made a double batch to use up all the dressing from one bottle (2 batches of 1.5lbs. marinated chicken breasts each).  Salad dressing tends to hand around at my house, and I'd rather just use it all up in one fell freezer swoop.  I used Greek Vinaigrette and Roasted Red Pepper Italian flavors, but just about any kind of prepared dressing would be good.

Pacific sockeye salmon is particularly good RIGHT NOW (it's the season for Copper River sockeye in particular), so give this one a try even if you think you don't like fish.  Especially if you think you don't like fish b/c it's dry.  Baking it at a lower temp makes a huge difference in the final product, and I'm not sure I'll ever fix salmon another way now.

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Sichuan Pepper Dry Dip

(Edited: I've since decided that I prefer this with the salt untoasted and unprocessed...it's what I'm currently using as my "house" salt-and-pepper seasoning on EVERYTHING)

I'm on a Frugal Gourmet kick this week.  Three Ancient Cuisines is the cookbook I'm working with.  To go with Sesame Almond Chicken Wings (also from 3AC), I made Sichuan (or Szechuan) Peppercorn Dry Dip.  This salt and pepper combo was just right with the relatively low-salt wings.  Also a nice change from sloppy wet sauce.  I think it will also be delicious with hard-boiled eggs (!!) and sprinkled on grilled veggies.

Sichuan peppercorns are peppery and floral at the same time.  If you don't have any, I'd also try using a floral dried herb like rosemary, thyme or marjoram. 

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Pistachio Tilapia

Sort of a lower-carb fish amandine recipe.  Suitable for a freezer kit or prepping ahead for same-day or next-day cookery.

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Crockpot Onion Soup

It's not really *soup* season but it is sweet onion season, so now's the time.  The crockpot is a beautiful thing for this recipe...you use it to caramelize the onions overnight and then cook the soup.  I have seen recipes that call for one process or the other (or ofc for doing it all on the stovetop), but not both and quite frankly I think doing both is a brilliant proposal.  Especially when I do not want to babysit a pot of soup on the stove or even turn on my stove right now. 

Like any soup, leftovers reheat very nicely so you can make this totally in advance if you wanted.  Though since it goes in the crockpot, all you need for convenient cooking is to premeasure the second-stage ingredients and have them ready to dump in after the onions are brown.

I really like a little heat in this recipe.  The sweetness of the onions mellows the chipotle, and the chipotle keeps the onions from being sickly-sweet.  But if you don't do heat, don't add the chipotle.  One can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce will go a LONG way.  I go ahead and chop up the whole thing, and freeze the leftover smoosh in ice cube trays or pressed thinly in a ziptop bag for future recipes. 

A classic element of French Onion Soup is that melty, cheesy mess on top.  I loathe that part.  It's a pain to execute and a pain to eat.  I prefer to have grilled cheese alongside an unadorned bowl of soup.  I figure a grilled cheese sandwich hits all the same flavor and texture notes as a broiled cheesy baguette slice.  If you are *really* pressed for time on Dinner Day, you can butter the bread and stack the sandwiches the night before when you start the onions and just put the prepped sandwiches in a panini press or on a griddle, saving you a few minutes' prepwork and cleanup.

You do want to use the biggest crockpot you have, a 6 quarter preferably.  A 4 quarter will be very full, but if you reduce the amounts of the ingredients to 75%, you should be ok.  For one of those cute little 2 quart crockpots, you could reduce the ingredients by half and have a nice little dinner for 2.

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Roasted red peppers: Roasting (or grilling or broiling)

If you're playing "Mystery Dish" with me at home and you've bought some on-sale red bell peppers, it's time to roast them! 

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Mint (or cilantro or parsley) chimichurri (or gremolata)

Come summer, I really don't like to do too much to my food.  It's too hot for one thing to be doing fancy-schmancy cooking, and everything is at its freshest and best during the season so you don't need to do much to get the best flavor.

I like chutneys, chimichurris and gremolatas because they dress up a very plainly prepared protein or vegetable without overwhelming the innate best flavor of the ingredients.  They're easy to put together, keep in the fridge for days and can be used as a quick finish to any number of simple meals. 

They're also a great way to "split" a menu to accomodate different palates at the same table...you cook the protein the same way and offer the chimichurri to those who want a stronger, more complex flavor and leave the dish plain for those who prefer a milder, simpler flavor.  I would serve this with chicken breasts, steak, pork chops, burgers, bean patties or even a heartier fish.

I use mint as the base for this chutney/chimichurri because I have a ton growing in my garden and because I am one of those people to whom cilantro tastes like rubber.  But if you prefer cilantro or parsley, by all means, use one of those herbs (or any combination of the three) as the base.  You can make this sauce thinner and more pourable by adding a bit more olive oil, or you can make it sprinkable (as a gremolata) by halving the oil and stirring in breadcrumbs.  Again, so many choices here.

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