Charlene's Kitchen in Philadelphia: Chicken with Grated Beets

Last month I had an abundance of beets on my hands. I had received some golden yellow beets in my CSA share and never got around to cooking them (good thing they keep forever in the frige). Then, red beets were part of the next share. While I like beets, I was feeling bored with the typical roasted beet and goat cheese salad. Epicurious to the rescue! I found a really simple recipe for grated beets and chicken topped with orange butter: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chicken-Grated-Beets-and-Beet-Greens-with-Orange-Butter-355772



I did as the recipe suggested and grated the beets using my new food processor. Very fun! The recipe is nice because both the chicken and the beets are cooked in the same pan - great for easy clean up. And it utilizes the beet greens, which are a delicious bonus (too bad they cook down so much). Shallots and sherry vinegar gave the beets and greens a nice zesty flavor, which tasted great alongside the refreshing orange butter.

We recently planted beet seeds in our backyard garden and the greens are starting to pop up, so I can definitely see this dish making an appearance in my kitchen again!


Chicken, Grated Beets, and Beet Greens with Orange Butter
serves 2
from Epicurious.com

1 1/2 tablespoons butter, room temperature, divided
1/4 teaspoon finely grated orange peel
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided
2 skinless boneless chicken breast halves
2 tablespoons chopped shallots
2 medium red beets with greens, greens stemmed and coarsely chopped, beets peeled and coarsely grated
2 teaspoons Sherry wine vinegar, divided
1/3 cup water

Mix 1 tablespoon butter and 1/4 teaspoon orange peel in small bowl. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Heat 1/2 tablespoon oil in medium skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Add to skillet and sauté until cooked through and golden brown, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Place 1 chicken breast in center of each plate; tent with foil to keep warm.

Melt remaining 1/2 tablespoon butter with 1/2 tablespoon oil in same skillet over medium-high heat. Add shallots; stir until tender and beginning to brown, about 1 minute. Add beet greens; toss until leaves are tender but still bright green, about 2 minutes. Add 1 teaspoon Sherry wine vinegar; stir 30 seconds. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Spoon greens alongside chicken; cover to keep warm. Add grated beets and 1/3 cup water to same skillet; cover and cook 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and continue cooking until beets are tender and water is almost evaporated, stirring often, about 1 minute. Add remaining 1 teaspoon vinegar; stir 30 seconds. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Spoon beets onto plates. Spoon orange butter atop chicken and serve.

Charlene's Kitchen in Philadelphia: Chicken with Grated Beets

Charlene's Kitchen in Philadelphia: Chicken with Garlic and Parsley

It's no secret that I have a culinary crush on Jacques Pépin. I first saw Jacques on the PBS series "Fast Food My Way" (2004) and since then his recipes, techniques, and philosophy of cooking have influenced my meal times. He emphasizes that preparing food, especially for guests, doesn't have to be stressful or time consuming, and that sharing meals should be enjoyable.

His recipes from the show and companion cookbook use mostly basic ingredients and have a reasonable number of steps. He takes everyday ingredients and turns them into a delicious, easy meal. For example, chicken stock, bread, Gruyère cheese, and freshly ground pepper can be made into a satisfying soup in five minutes. He also presents traditional and seemingly complicated dishes, like bouillabaisse, as meals that can be prepared simply by home cooks.

I love how simple and tasty Jacques' recipes are. I've come to rely on Fast Food My Way for many of my weeknight dishes and I highly recommend the cookbook. Below is one of my favorite recipes for chicken, garlic, and parsley that I make regularly. It's so simple I'm almost embarrassed to be posting it with A Kitchen In Brooklyn's other recipes!

As Jacques would say in his adorable French accent, with a smile on his face and a glass of wine in his hand, "Happy Cooking!"

Chicken Breasts with Garlic and Parsley
serves 4

From Fast Food My Way by Jacques Pépin
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004)


Helpful tips from Jacques: use Wondra flour preferably, and toss the chicken in the flour just before adding to pan (otherwise it will get soggy)

3 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (each about 7 oz.) cut into 1- to 1 1/2-in. cubes
2 Tbs. Wondra flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. chopped garlic
3 Tbs. chopped fresh parsley
2 Tbs. unsalted butter
1 lemon, quartered

• Combine flour, salt, and pepper in bowl.
• Dry chicken cubes and toss in flour.
• Add to very hot, but not smoking, 12-in skillet over high heat. Cook in one layer, turning occasionally, for about 3 1/2 minutes.
• Meanwhile, combine garlic and parsley in a small bowl.
• Add the butter and garlic and parsley mixture to pan and sauté for one more minute, shaking the skillet to evenly coat the chicken.

Serve with lemon wedges.

Charlene's Kitchen in Philadelphia: Chicken with Garlic and Parsley

Sasha's Kitchen: Angel Hair Pasta With Grape Tomatoes, Garlic & Pine Nuts

Last night's dinner was a simple recipe adapted from one of my mother's classic fresh pasta dishes.  This dish is fresh and delicious, and is quite simply all about the quality of the tomatoes used in the recipe.  I used fresh organic grape tomatoes that would have been delicious on their own, but were heavenly with a mix of diced garlic, olive oil and pine nuts.  In addition, I flavored the dish with a couple of tablespoons of Round Pond Estate's Blood Orange Olive Oil, a favorite from our last trip to Napa Valley.  The blood orange flavor was a lovely complement to the other flavors.  It makes the dish feel very light and enjoyable.  My husband likes to add a bit of parmesan cheese, as well.

Sasha's Simple Angel Hair Pasta With Grape Tomatoes, Garlic & Pine Nuts
2/3 box of angel hair pasta
2 pints of organic grape tomatoes
1/3 cup of pine nuts
4-5 tsp of diced garlic

To prepare this dish, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Cut each of the grape tomatoes in half and roast in the oven at 400 degrees for about twenty to thirty minutes.  In the meantime, toast the pine nuts until lightly browned.  Cook the pasta and mix with the other ingredients.  Before serving, mix in two tablespoons of the Blood Orange Olive Oil.  This is  short post and an easy recipe to make during the week after work, but makes for a fresh, satisfying meal.

Sasha's Kitchen: Angel Hair Pasta With Grape Tomatoes, Garlic & Pine Nuts

Sasha's Kitchen: My Favorite Classic Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella Pizza

One of my favorite easy meals to make during the week is homemade pizza.  This newest pizza was prepared just a couple nights ago using a pizza stone and conventional kitchen oven.  I have subsequently learned that there are couple of other excellent ways to prepare homemade pizza, including both "pizza stone" pizza and grilling pizza.  I have several friends who have been experimenting with grilling pizza, but living in a brooklyn condo, this isn't something I have been able to try at home.  I look forward to grilling pizza when visiting family at summer barbecues.  But, until then, I would like to share my homemade, pizza stone crispy crust pizza, which I think presents an excellent alternative for those of us without regular grill access.


Usually, I like to make adventurous pizzas with a variety of different toppings when preparing homemade pizza.  For a discussion on homemade pizza making and pizza stones in a prior post, click here.  That post also includes a recipe for my pizza with asparagus, goat cheese, yellow tomatoes, zucchini and caramelized onions.  Once an awhile, I prefer a plain marinara pizza classic.  Thus, a couple evenings ago, my husband and I prepared our tomato, basil and mozzarella classic.  The crust on this pizza was truly sensational, proving that my $18 pizza stone was truly money well spent in preparing a classic puffy, yet crispy crust.  I consider this crust to be so good that it qualifies as a homemade classic - it's just that good.


With such a basic pizza, it's all about the quality of the cheese that you use.  I used homemade mozzarella in making the pizzas from M&S Prime Meats around the corner.  As a make-it-yourself from scratch kind of girl, I have been itching to make my own mozzarella and ricotta cheeses to incorporate into both my pizzas and lasagnas.  However, the homemade mozzarella at M&S Prime Meats is always delicious and prepared fresh each day.


Pizza Dough
1 cup warm water
2 packages dry active yeast
1 1/2 tsp sugar
2 T extra virgin olive oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt


First, activate the yeast in the warm water with the sugar for about 10-15 minutes until it becomes bubbly and frothy.  Then mix with the other ingredients until it forms a dough.  I usually do this in my mixer, but it's not too hard to mix the pizza dough by hand.  Allow the crust to rise in a well-oiled (sprayed with PAM) covered bowl for about an hour and a half.  Cover the bowl with a damp towel.  Then top make the pizza, stretch out the dough into a pie.  I usually have enough dough for two pies based on the size of my stone.  The dough should be nice and stretchy so that you can pull it into a pie shape with your hands.  It takes a little bit of practice to stretch a pizza pie, but you'll get the hang of it with a little bit of practice.  It's an art.


Top the pie with plain tomato sauce, sliced mozzarella and oregano.  Bake for about 30 to 4o minutes at 400 degrees on your stone until the pizza is crispy.  Add fresh basil leaves a few minutes before you are ready to take your pie(s) out of the oven. 

Pizza

Sasha's Kitchen: My Favorite Classic Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella Pizza

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Grey Sole with Orange Almond Panko Crust

This one was definitely off the top of my head. Jenn and I were talking about using Panko crumbs on fish and I knew we had some leftover raw sliced almonds and thought they might go well with some orange zest. We went to the A&P near us and one of the few really nice looking fresh fish options was this Grey Sole. It was a little more expensive but I decided to go for it because it looked so great.

Panko crumbs are very light and fluffy and available now in most grocery stores. Once I toasted the almonds in my toaster oven I put them in a mixing bowl and crushed them with a spoon. One of these days I'll finally get a mortar and pestle but I seem to get by pretty well without one. I then took a navel orange and used a peeler to shave off small bits of the zest and mixed these into the bread crumb mixture. I dredged the fish in wheat flour and egg whites and then got a nice coating before putting them on the hot pan with some sesame oil and olive oil. They turned out nicely and were a relatively quick and easy dish.

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Grey Sole with Orange Almond Panko Crust

Sasha's Kitchen: Chipotle-Horseradish-Maple Syrup Glazed Veal Chops

Tonight's dinner was a simple meal that was quite enjoyable.  I much prefer the taste of veal to chicken, which is generally my least favorite meat.  However, veal chops can be expensive and often dissapointing because they are usually too fatty and require quite a bit of work to get to the meat around the bone in the chop.  Tonight, I was able to prepare an excellent veal entree using boneless veal chops that I purchased online from Fresh Direct.  Most of the meats I have ordered from Fresh Direct over the years have been high quality and reasonably priced.  Thus, this is an excellent source of meat in the New York area.

Tonight's veal recipe was inspired by one of my favorite Food Network chefs, Bobby Flay from his Mesa Grill Cookbook.  However, I modified the recipe by adding the smokiness of chipotle.

Marinade:

1/2 cup maple syrup
2 T dijon mustard
2 T gold's horseradish
2 tsp chipotle
1 T ancho chile powder

Coat four veal chops in oil, salt and pepper. Grill the chops on medium-high on a grill pan for about five minutes (adjusting the time depending on the size of the veal chops).  Turn over the veal chops and reduce the heat to medium for seven to nine minutes, covering the chops with an aluminim foil tent.   Glaze the veal chops with the marinade about three minutes before they are done cooking, using a pastry brush. Voila, an easy and delicious veal dish! This is a great dish to make if like me, you had a long day but still want to cook, yet don't have hours to spend preparing the perfect meal.

Sasha's Kitchen: Chipotle-Horseradish-Maple Syrup Glazed Veal Chops

Sasha's Kitchen: Simple Blueberry Goat Cheese Salad

My Dad and my stepmother, Kim, keep a kosher home.  My husband and I are not as great about keeping kosher, but we do try in certain regards (which is why I never prepare pork-based products, and use Empire chicken;  I'm not so great with sea-life, however).  When we first moved to Brooklyn, they gave us a kosher cookbook as part of our housewarming gift, called Kosher By Design, Short On Time.  This book actually has some pretty tasty kosher recipes, all of which are easy to make, including a recipe for blueberry salad.  My blueberry salad is very different from the one in that book, but it does contain blueberries and a blueberry colored dressing that is just the pretties shade of purplish-blue.  Also, it looks creamy, but there is no cream at all in the dressing and its actually pretty healthy (not to mention all those antioxidants in the blueberries).

Dressing
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
handfull of blueberries
2 T water
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 tsp honey

Salad
romaine lettuce or hearts of romaine
a couple handfulls of blueberries
1/4 cup chopped pecans
crumbled goat cheese

I should probably mention that it is a blustery and cold five degrees outside.  Blueberries are not in season and will not be in season for some time, but I had a blueberry craving, probably because I wish it was warm again.  Thus, although the blueberries I found at the grocery store are actually pretty high quality, they were a bit on the expensive side.  However, this does make wonderful and fresh summer salad, especially with a glass of Chardonnay.

If you prefer strawberries, I encourage you to check out Eric In Jersey City's Strawberry Salad, and if you like citrus fruit, check out my Mandarin Orange Salad With Caramelized Almonds.

Sasha's Kitchen: Simple Blueberry Goat Cheese Salad

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Strawberry Salad

This is actually my Mom's recipe but I like it so much that I make it all the time. She tries really hard to make healthy food taste great and I think this is her most successful recipe in that regard. It's also a very quick and simple recipe that you can pull together very quickly.

Ingredients:

1. Spring mix salad greens
2. Fresh Strawberries
3. Gorgonzola or Blue cheese crumbles
4. Sweet and Spicy Pecans (Trader Joe's has some great ones)
5. Brianna's Strawberry vinegrette salad dressing

My only recommendation with this one is to break the pecans up into more bite-sized pieces as they are pretty strongly flavored and to cut the strawberries into bite-sized pieces as well. Put on dressing as you see fit and enjoy!

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Strawberry Salad

Molly D.'s Kitchen in Seattle: An Introduction, and Oxtail Tacos

Introduction to My Kitchen

Hi from Seattle! I was all set to write my recipe for today, but as I thought about it I realized my cooking style needs a bit of an introduction:

I'm a lazy cook. I don’t want to plan my grocery shopping way ahead so that I can follow a recipe, and I don’t want to wash a mountain of bowls and measuring implements when I’m done.

I have a diverse background of food influences and I like trying new foods. My refrigerator door is full of Asian condiments, I have over 20 types of sweetener, and I’ll buy unfamiliar items because they sound interesting. But a home kitchen can only stock so much, and many items only stay fresh for so long, so I don’t count on having on hand standard recipe items like parsley and chicken breast.

I love understanding how techniques and ingredients work and what they do for a dish--what to put together and how to do it. In most cases I’m happier doing something on my own than following a recipe.

What this all adds up to is that my cooking tends to be thrown together based on what I have and what I feel like eating. Sometimes what I make works and sometimes it doesn’t, and I hope that as I develop my cooking sense, I’ll make fewer mistakes and more great meals! Today's post is one experiment that worked.

Oxtail Tacos

This afternoon I took the bus to Pike Place Market, one of my favorite places to find unexpected ingredients, and spent several hours wandering through the maze of little shops. By the time my feet hurt, my bag was full of chocolate bars, fresh corn tortillas, little bags of ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, a palmier, a jar of brined lemons, Turkish delight, ground chipotle and pasilla peppers, piloncillo, and a new-to-me hot sauce.

When I got home I was starving, and I figured I should start in on the huge stack of tortillas. I decided to combine them with the oxtails I’d been thawing in the fridge, and while I’d never cooked oxtails before, I had been told to go with braising, which was also perfect for chilly late fall. I know relatively little about Mexican cooking and even less about Latin America’s wide variety of peppers, so the pasilla was also an experiment. As usual, I put what I had on hand into the braising liquid. The combination and cooking method might not be authentic, but I chose flavors that would complement each other and taste good reduced into a rich, savory sauce.

Here’s the basic recipe; measurements are guesstimates.

Ingredients

3 oxtails

1 leek, cut into big chunks

2 or 3 cloves garlic, sliced

1/4 c rice vinegar

1 T ground pasilla pepper

1 T ground chipotle pepper

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 tsp. salt

Corn tortillas

Directions

1. Stand oxtails on their ends in a medium-sized pot/saucepan with a lid and put all other ingredients except tortillas into the spaces around them.
2. Pour water into pot until it reaches halfway up the sides of the oxtails.
3. Place on heat and bring to boil, then turn heat down to low and cover pot.
4. Come back every so often to make sure water hasn’t all boiled out and to turn the oxtails over once or twice during cooking.
5. After two or three hours (this recipe involves minimal work but a lot of waiting), the meat should be tender enough that you can push it off the bones into the reduced liquid.
6. Spoon chunks of meat into tortilla. Dip each bite into a vinegary, spicy hot sauce to cut the richness and add heat. So good.

 Serves two.

Notes on the Ingredients

• Vinegar: There wasn’t enough flavor initially, so, inspired by adobo, I added the vinegar. I’m sure it would be fine with a different type of vinegar or without any at all, but I wanted tang without extra flavors, and rice vinegar was the mildest I had in my pantry.
• Pepper: At first I used only the pasilla, but I found it too mild so I added the chipotle for heat and smokiness. I’m sure other pepper varieties or Latin-American-inspired spices would taste great, just different.
• Leeks: I had leeks on hand, but onions would probably serve just as well.
• Cinnamon: I had just bought the cinnamon and remembered it from other Mexican dishes so I thought I’d throw it in, though I can’t tell if the amount I used made any difference.
• Corn tortillas: I love flour tortillas, but I suspect they’d be a bit bland and doughy next to the deeply flavored oxtails. Also, I understand that there are several ways to soften tortillas, and I went with steaming because it was convenient. We ate our tacos over the still-simmering pot of oxtails, so I softened each tortilla one at a time by laying it over the little tripod of oxtail bones and covering the pot. Depending how much steam there was, the tortilla was tender but not yet gummy after anywhere between 30 seconds and a couple minutes. (This is also why there are no photos of the finished, plated dish--there were no plates!)

Notes on the Final Result:

• The oxtails turned out great. The braising liquid reduced into an incredibly rich and savory sauce for the chunks of meat.
• The best surprise was that the leeks totally collapsed into the richness of the sauce. I’ve never been a huge fan of leeks, but each time I picked one out of the sauce it felt like a treat.
• The fat and long simmer really tamed the heat of the pepper, so the final product was way less spicy than when I tasted it earlier in the cooking process.
• This recipe serves two, but it doesn’t make a lot of meat. Because it’s so rich you only need a couple tablespoons of meat per tortilla.

Molly D.'s Kitchen in Seattle: An Introduction, and Oxtail Tacos

Sasha's Kitchen: Simple (And Easy) Fall And Winter Dinner Souffles

Souffles are often confused as simply being for dessert, such as the standard chocolate souffle. However, souffles make great non-sweet dinners that are surprisingly easy to make. They are particularly well-suited to fall and winter vegetables and fruits, such as parsnip, potato, squash, apple, pumpkin and spinach. As crazy as it may sound, this is a good recipe to make during the busy work week, as neither really takes that long.

I have recently made two dinner souffles, both with good results. The first is a Martha Stewart recipe for a spinach-Gruyere souffle, which got me started on the souffle kick. The second used my own recipe - for a sweet potato, parsnip, apple souffle. While easy to make, souffles are also reasonably healthy, in that they do not contain a lot of sugar (for a vegetable souffle) and only use the whites of eggs. They key to getting the souffle to rise properly is beating the egg whites to the right consistency so that they form stiff peaks, before folding into and baking the souffle.

Sasha's Sweet Potato, Parsnip and Apple Souffle
2 medium sweet potatoes
2 medium parsnips
1 large apple
1/8 tsp salt
3 T sugar
1/2 tsp allspice
1 egg yolk plus 5 egg whites
2 T flour

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Peel potatoes and parsnips and place in the oven for 20 minutes. Peel the apple and cut into pieces and add apple. Wait another 20 minutes before removing vegetables and allow to cool for 15 minutes. Keep the oven on at 400 as having the right temperature at the right time is key with this recipe. Puree all vegetables in a food processor or blender. Add a small amount of water if needed. Mix in allspice, salt and 1 T of the sugar. Mix in the egg yolk and the flour. Set aside in a bowl.

Next put the egg whites in the bowl of a food processor (I used my artisan mixer) and beat at a very high speed until the egg whites form stiff peaks. As you beat, gradually add the remaining 2 T of sugar. Don't overbeat but you will have stiff peaks when the egg whites are fluffy and kind of foamy and form a peak when you test with a fork. Then gently fold the egg whites (Gently! don't beat) until mixed in. Then add to a souffle dish (spray with Pam first) and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Spinach Gruyere Souffle - from the December 2009 Issue of Everyday Food

2 T butter
1/3 cup plain breadcrumbs
1 bag of fresh spinach
2 T flour
3/4 cup plus 2 T whole milk
1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese (I am sure this would also taste great with cheddar)
2 large eggs, separated plus 2 large egg whites

Preheat oven to 275 F. Melt butter in a pan on medium heat and add flour to form a paste and cook for a few minutes. Add milk and cook 3-5 minutes. Take off heat and mix in the shredded cheese of your choice. Transfer to a bowl. Cook spinach in a few T of water until wilted on med-high for about 5 minutes. Blend in a food processor with the egg yolks. Add the cheese-flour mixture. Then beat the 4 egg whites as above (to make stiff peaks) and fold into the souffle. Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes.

Serve the souffles right away, so they will not fall. Also, it is important not to open the oven during the cooking process if you want them to rise properly. If you get too curious, like me, then you can turn on your oven light while the souffle cooks.

Sasha's Kitchen: Simple (And Easy) Fall And Winter Dinner Souffles