Popcorn Chicken

I love this!  We eat rather a lot of popcorn here and sometimes have leftovers.  I mean, I know it's *just* popcorn, but I hate to throw out the extra (which is why sometimes my kids get to eat popcorn for breakfast ::blush::).  I saw a recipe in one of those free parenting magazines that seem to come incessantly for using popcorn as a crumb coating on chicken...brilliant!  They had some particulars for seasoning, but I think the basics are good enough.

Kids liked it, husband liked it, I liked it...this one is a keeper!  The popcorn flavor is still there even after pan-frying, and it forms a really nicely crispy coating.  It's good to crunch into, and also makes the pieces a bit "stiffer" and easier to flip in the pan.

Note: this probably won't freeze well as a prep-ahead option...I think the popcorn would get soggy in the freezer.  But I did put some leftover popcorn in a ziptop bag, pressed the air out very well and fridged it for several days before using it for this recipe with good results.  You can prep ahead the dredging elements, but I wouldn't actually do the dip until right before cooking.

I made it with chicken tenderloins, but chunked up breasts or boneless skinless thighs would work too.

Pin It

San Francisco Pork Chops

Original recipe here.

These are just so good!  The finished reduction is a mite salty thanks to the soy sauce, so I strongly recommend using low-sodium soy sauce and maybe even going halfsies on the soy with some no-salt broth.

These are completely prep-ahead and freezer-friendly.  Just mix up all the sauce ingredients in a container to fridge or freeze, make sure you've got pork chops available and have cornstarch in your pantry. 

The sauce reduces as the pork chops cook on the stovetop, giving a thick, glossy, flavorful glaze that is just out of sight.


Pin It

Lemon Turnips

Totally gratuitous butter shot...cuz butter is purty ;)

It's pretty easy in my opinion to come up with tasty ways to prep meat-based dishes ahead and freeze them for convenience.  Not so easy when it comes to vegetables.  So I'm on particular lookout for recipes that do work for vegetables in the freezer, like this one.

Turnips are maybe not everyone's favorite, but lemon butter makes everything delicious.  They do nicely in the freezer and are lower carb than potatoes.  They pack a good wallop of vitamin C and fiber, and even have a significant amount of calcium per serving.

If you want to do these as a freeze-ahead dish, you will need to basically prepare the turnips in advance and package them up for reheating.  You want to stop just short of fully cooking them so they don't get squishy.  I reheated mine as an oven packet while baking off Chicken Wellingtons, but they could get reheated on the stovetop if it's more convenient to your menu.

Pin It

Shrimp Amatriciana

This is a Rachael Ray recipe originally.  She wraps the shrimp in pancetta for beautiful presentation.  I don't worry so much about that presentation crap.  My less-attractive-but-still-delicious way of prepping this dish ahead also lets you organize it as a freezer kit, which I don't feel comfortable doing with shrimp that you've had to thaw and handle as you'll do if you wrap it with pancetta.

I've made this dish with regular ol' American bacon instead of pancetta and it's quite tasty.  The difference between Italian pancetta and most conventional bacons is smoking...bacon is smoked, pancetta is not.  Bacon is also usually cut much thicker than pancetta is.  So if you want to use it to wrap the shrimp in, unless you have really big shrimp or really thin bacon, you'll need to halfway-cook the bacon first to keep from having overcooked shrimp with still-raw bacon wrappers.  Of course, if you skip the wrapping (like I do), you don't need to worry about this at all.

To make a freezer kit, dice up your bacon/pancetta and wrap well.  Dice the onion and put in a freezer container.  Combine white wine and basil (I have basil puree already frozen and just take a lump out of that stash) in a freezer container.  Package all together with shrimp and cooking instructions.  Make sure to have some whole canned tomatoes in the pantry along with your pasta (I label the boxes and cans that belong to a kit so I don't forget and use them for something else). 

Mise-en-place

If you're just prepping ahead for same day or next day cooking, you can use fresh tomatoes.  I'm using 1 pint cherry tomatoes and 3 medium normal tomatoes cuz that's just what I have on hand.  Chop/combine ingredients as suggested above and fridge.

Slap a note somewhere in your workspace when you start cooking that you'll need to grab 1/2 cup of pasta water before draining.  I *always* forget this part.

Pin It

Cheese stuffed apples

Absolute heaven in a slice.  The creaminess of the cheese with the fullness of the Camembert flavor against the tart, crisp apple...I'm breathing a little hard right now just thinking about it.  Really...appetizer orgasms people!

The only difficulty I had in making these was getting the cheese to "adhere" to the apple.  I think I didn't get the apple surface sufficiently dry.  Doesn't matter though, they were still amazing to taste.  They'll need to be made at least a day ahead to let the cheese firm up enough to slice well.





Pin It

Blue cheese bites

This recipe is from my mom's 1970-something edition of the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.  Prepped it ahead in the afternoon to throw in the oven at dinnertime to jazz up a pretty plain meal of broiled ham and steamed broccoli.  If you want, you could make your own biscuits instead of buying "whomp" biscuits (so called cuz you whomp 'em against the counter to open the package).  Double the half-recipe here for an equivalent amount of biscuits for the following recipe.

The end result is a pseudo-fried biscuit with a blue cheese zing.  The bottoms get golden and crunchy from the butter, and the creamy tang of the cheese pops up here and there without taking over the dish. 

Probably you could freeze the prepped dish, well-wrapped, but it's so fast to put together that I doubt you'll need to bother. 

Just don't freeze sealed cans of whomp biscuits, okay?  BANG.  'Nuff said.

Pin It

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



Pin It