Work at Home Lunches

Working at home as I do, my lunches are usually leftovers, salads, soups in the winter, or sandwiches. Leftovers for lunch are great unless I'm planning on having them for dinner as well. Same with the soup. And I get bored with plain sandwiches pretty quickly. Adding some avocado to a turkey sandwich makes it a treat. And yesterday I discovered the ultimate sandwich add-in: chermoulah!

I may have just added a new Sunday chore to my list and will need to make a batch each week. Adding these cooked and spiced peppers into my turkey sandwich made all the difference between having a "turkey sandwich," again, and having a great lunch!

Sunday Dinner: Chicken Fried Steak

School starts tomorrow here. I asked the girls what they wanted for dinner tonight. One said "mashed potatoes and anything." The other said "steak." So I decided to make chicken fried steak, which fit with the "cheap" cooking theme since round steaks (aka London Broils) were on sale locally in a buy one get one free mode. I've never made chicken fried steak before. But what I think of as Southern "poor man's food" has always been a taste treat for me somehow. I mostly followed the recipe in the book my sister gave me for my birthday, The Complete Meat Cookbook, which I think is pretty traditional. Some variations I saw in other recipes included using cracker crumbs rather than flour and various different herbs mixed in with the crumbs or flour, as well as stuff like Worcestershire sauce in with the egg (which I have done quite successfully with chicken cutlets before).

Basically, you slice a thin (1/2") piece of round steak and pound it even thinner (to 1/4"). Then you dip it in flour, dip it in egg, and dip it in flour again (or cracker crumbs) and fry in oil, bacon grease, lard, or whatever fat you have lying around. I happened to spot lard at the grocery store, although I swear I was not even looking for it. But once I saw it, I decided to try it. I have been tempted before to try pie crusts with lard and I may now have an excuse. But tonight I just fried the steaks in it.

I'm not sure where to give the credit (the lard, the meat, the frying, the seasonings) but these chicken fried steaks were out of this world. So simple and so good! My eldest, who dislikes chicken at the moment, was not all fond of the name of the dish but once I assured here there was no chicken involved, that it was merely named after the style of cooking/frying, she dug into it and pronounced it wonderful.

If you haven't pounded meat before, I find it easiest to place the meat between two pieces of plastic wrap and use the flat side of a meat tenderizer or I suppose anything else heavy and flat. Just whack away at it until it's as thin as you like.

4 pieces of round steak, cut 1/2" thin and pounded to 1/4", about a pound total
1 cup flour
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 eggs
3 Tbs lard or other fat

If you want gravy:
2 Tbs flour
2 Tbs diced onion or 1 Tbs dried onion flakes
1 and 1/2 cups milk or milk and chicken broth or milk and water mix
salt and pepper to taste

Pound the meat and set aside. Heat the fat in a frying pan large enough to hold 1 or 2 steaks.

Put the egg in a pie pan and mix it up. If you like, you can add a bit of milk or half and half or water. Put the flour and seasonings in another pie pan and stir together.

When the fat is hot, use two forks to lift a pounded steak into the egg and coat it, then over to the flour and coat it on both sides, pressing down slightly to make it stick. Put the steak into the fat and cook for about 2 minutes on each side. Remove to a plate and keep warm until all are done.

To make gravy, drain off all but about 2 Tbs of the fat. Add the onion and cook a minute, then sprinkle the 2 Tbs flour over it and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes or so. Slowly add the liquid, mixing each addition in so there are no lumps. You can use a whisk for this or one of those springy things my girls called the "bungee mixer" to get the lumps out. Stir constantly a few more minutes, until it cooks down to the thickness you like.

Serve the chicken fried steaks with mashed potatoes and the gravy and some sort of vegetable. Tonight I did another squash and onion and tomato saute.

Postscript: I hadn't realized that frying was the theme of Is My Blog Burning this month until I read some of my favorite cooking blogs this morning. At Our Table is the host so go check out the other honest entries, as opposed to my happenstance one!

Sunday Afternoon: Chermoulah

Sunday afternoons often find me with some free time and the desire to make a few things in the kitchen that cause the weekday dinners to go easier. School starts tomorrow for us. So I might normally think about baking a batch of muffins "egg McMom's", pancakes, or breakfast burritos for weekday breakfasts. In the summer, I might make a pasta or potato salad to serve up a few days in a row. In the winter, I often make a big pot of soup. In terms of a main course, I might roast a chicken and then have some "planned over" burritos (sounds much nicer than leftovers doesn't it?). Or cook a roast and make hash or burritos or fried rice another night.

Today I made chermoulah. This is a recipe I found in Fine Preserving: Jams and Jellies, Pickles and Relishes, Conserves and Chutneys and Brandied Fruits for City and Country Cooks. I had actually begun to collect cookbooks long before blogging. When I moved into this house, with its 14 fruit trees, I was struck by the idea of canning. My own mother had canned a variety of home grown produce and fruits when I was growing up, everything from stewed tomatoes to applesauce and jams. I guess it just seemed natural that I try my hand. I found this book and bought it, long before I knew who MFK Fisher was, although in fact it was her annotations that made the book interesting to me. I've made a spiced cherry jam that is to die for, lemon marmalade, and chermoulah, peppers cooked in oil and vinegar, MFK Fisher's favorite in the book as well as my own. When I saw green peppers on sale at the grocer, I remembered this recipe and made up a batch today. Like MKF Fisher, I like to make mine with a mixture of different colored peppers, although you could more easily just make it of a single color. The original recipe calls for green peppers only.

You cook up sliced peppers and whole garlic cloves in a mixture of olive oil, vinegar, paprika, coriander, salt, and pepper, then refrigerate. Serve it as a side dish, an appetizer, or whatever. If you've got some crusty French bread, the oil and vinegar mixture is to be sopped up with the bread. I could easily make a meal of the chermoulah and bread.

1 cup olive oil
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp ground coriander
salt and pepper to taste (1/4 tsp each maybe...)
2 peppers, seeded and sliced into 1/2" strips

Cook this all together over a low heat. I do it so that the oil is barely making bubbles. The original author, Catherine Plagemann, says 15-20 minutes. MFK likes it a bit crisper and does 10-15 minutes. Cool and refrigerate. It should be eaten within a few weeks, although, like MFK notes, it never lasts long enough in my house to push that time limit.

Today I did one batch of green peppers and one of red peppers, then combined them afterwards. It is a beautiful concoction, in addition to tasting heavenly!

Weeknight dinners: Pasta with vegetables and leftover chicken

Reading Tomatilla's post about weeknight cooking and pulling dinner out of a hat must have sparked this... The dinners you create out of what's around, with no clear plan from beginning to end, are often the best dishes.

My original plan was to make a quiche tonight, because I had lots of eggs and was going to do something vegetarian. But then one of the girls asked for macaroni and cheese. That sounded too heavy but I said I'd do pasta and something. I put the pot of water onto boil and went out to the garden. I picked some cherry tomatoes, both red and yellow pear ones, some small yellow crookneck squash, and some basil. I was thinking of a pasta primavera kind of thing, so I heated up some olive oil and chopped half an onion and a garlic clove and started them sauteeing.

While they were cooking, I sliced up the yellow squash and halved the various cherry tomatoes, then sliced up the basil into thin strips. (I know there's a word for that but I cannot think of what it is. Chiffonade maybe?) I also sliced up some baby carrots (from the grocer alas). I added them all to the onions and garlic after a few minutes. They smelled good--and even better after I added some seasoned pepper and salt. As I was pouring a glass of cheap white wine ($2 Chuck: this is CheapCooking after all!), I figured the wine would help the vegetables so added half a glass to the pan.

When I put the wine back in the frig, I spotted the leftover tarragon chicken from last night. I chopped up one of the pieces and added it and some of the leftover sauce to the vegetables. When the pasta was done and drained, I put some on each plate and topped with the leftover vegetable chicken mixture.



One child had not liked the chicken last night. I think it was the tarragon. Of course, she actually doesn't like chicken these days so it's hard to tell. But she loved this dinner tonight! Maybe it was the fact that the chicken was not the focal point, but merely an accent. The other child had liked the chicken last night and also loved this dinner. Both pronounced it a "repeat"--our highest praise.

I'm afraid I won't be able to fix it again, exactly the same of course. Such is the bittersweet reward of dinners like this. All I can do is make note, as I've done here, and hope that I'll be similarly inspired some other night when everyone's starving and I've not much time to put dinner on the table.

What's For Dinner? Chicken with Tarragon Sauce

I love exploring new cookbooks. The fancy ones with beautiful pictures are fun to look at but when it gets down to the nuts and bolts of putting dinner on the table reliably my favorites are often not much to look at but chock-full of good everyday recipes most people I know would like. Clear easy to follow directions, ideas for side dishes to go with particular entrees, and notes about which recipes are "entertaining worthy" and which be made ahead or prep work started ahead at least are big plusses for me.

"What's for Dinner" by Maryana Vollstedt has it all so far. The subtitle is "Over 200 delicious recipes that work every time" and I can believe it. The other night I was looking for an easy "little attention required" chicken dish. I found several that sounded promising and could be made from things I already had in the pantry or frig.

Tarragon is one of those herbs I don't use very often for some reason, although I like it. This dish caught my eye because of the tarragon. It was super easy to do and I wouldn't hesitate to do it for company. I like dishes I can prepare ahead of time and then have cooking in the oven while I visit with my guests.

Chicken with Tarragon Sauce

4-6 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs Dijon mustard
1/4 cup white wine
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp dried tarragon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Spray or oil a baking dish large enough to hold your chicken and lay the chicken breasts down in it.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter, then over low heat add everything else and stir with a whisk until smooth. Pour the sauce over the chicken. Bake until the chicken is done, about 35 minutes. Serve with the sauce spooned over the chicken.

This would go excellent with rice to spoon the sauce on, although I made it with some leftover red potatoes that I sauteed.

Salsa

The tomatoes are in full swing in the garden. Ya gotta love August around here! I've got tomatoes, squash, apples, lemons, and various herbs available for the picking out back. I skipped planting my winter crops of garlic and onions last year and am really missing them when it's time to make salsa! I'm pretty flexible with my salsa. Sometimes I add garlic; sometimes I leave it out. Sometimes I add jalapenos or green chiles; sometimes I leave them out. The essential ingredients, for my taste buds, are:

fresh tomatoes, seeded and chopped
onion (white or green), chopped
fresh cilantro
salt
a squeeze of lime juice if you have it, but it's okay to leave it out

Optionally add:

minced garlic
minced jalapeno or green chiles

You can expand beyond the basic tomato and cilantro version by adding chopped ripe mango or peaches and some fresh minced ginger. Then it makes a great topping for fish or pork.

Cooking on vacation

Back from a week at the beach and a week cooking in someone else's home--always an adventure. When you rent a home for the week, you're never really sure what you're going to be faced with in the kitchen. I've had exquisite cookware and horrid stuff you wouldn't even find in a decent thrift store! Will there be a spatula? A corkscrew? Decent knives? I suppose I could pack up everything important, but the car is typically stuffed just bringing the "essentials" since we're required to bring our own linens and towels. And with two kids at the beach and a hot tub at the house you can imagine how many towels we need!

This most recent house was actually quite nice, except the pans were mostly warped so you couldn't get the whole bottom on the burner at the same time. It was also an electric very-slow-to-heat stove and I'm spoiled by my gas now, which I just got a couple of years ago. Still, we managed to have some great memorable meals and only one dog, the night I tried to cook some red snapper and really didn't know what I was doing.

The best meal was some fresh salmon steaks. Since I didn't bring my herb garden with me either, I tried a jar of spice mixture my youngest spied at the fish counter, Chef Paul's Magic Seasonings, this one specifically for salmon. I wouldn't normally buy this at home, preferring to mix up my own blends usually. But this was really quite good. I sprinkled it on both sides of the salmon and grilled them over the coals, flipping them once.

I also cooked up some green beans and red potatoes and had some sliced tomatoes from the garden. The tomatoes were about the only food I brought with me. I always manage to go on vacation right when the garden is in full swing, so we picked the plants bare the morning we left and had enough to last the week.

Paper Chef #9

It's time for another Paper Chef, hosted by Tomatilla. I've only taken part in one other one but with swim team season finally over (for a few weeks at least), I decided to join in this time.

The required ingredients were peaches, dried, chiles, edible flowers, and "something local." My first thought was a salsa but I wasn't sure about the edible flowers. I saw a neat-sounding recipe for pork chops rubbed with lavender, rosemary, and thyme and thought I could rightly combine an herb rub with the peach salsa I've made before, substituting some diced dried chipotle peppers for the jalapeno. I normally either skip the jalapenos in a salsa or walk softly, given that I'm cooking for children. I decided to do the same thing with the peppers I found at the grocery store. In this case, I used a combination of Abe Lincoln tomatoes, red cherry tomatoes, yellow pear cherry tomatoes, ginger, chipotle peppes, lime juice, and... I sprinkled some of the herb rub mixture in for good measure. In the local category, the peaches came from our local farmer's market, from Hollister I believe. My own Indian Blood Peaches aren't ready for another month or so or I could have been a lot more local!

I rubbed the pork chops with a mixture of herbs, mostly from my own garden, so about as local as you could get: rosemary, oregano (with flowers!), basil, thyme, and sage, as well as some salt, garlic powder, and pepper. I let the meat sit with the dry rub on it for an hour or so and then barbecued the chops. Mmmmm! I topped them with the peach salsa, which also included tomatoes from my own garden--so another local bonus point.


As we were wandering the farmer's market this morning choosing peaches, my youngest spied some English peas and asked for them. It's really hard to say no to a request for locally grown fresh vegetables so we bought a bag. They were decidedly not a cheap dish, but they were delicious. She wanted to help with dinner so I showed her a couple of recipes for freshly shelled peas and she chose one. She and the neighbor child sat outside shelling peas, deciding they wanted to "play pioneers" later. as they'd read about shelling peas before. She diced up a few green onions and some mint. I put a pat of butter in the pan and she added the onions and stirred them. After a few minutes, we added the peas, some water, some lemon juice, some sugar, and the mint. We brought them to a simmer, covered them, and cooked till barely done. She loved them!

So we ended up with:

Barbecued pork chops with fresh herb rub
Peach-tomato salsa with chipotle peppers
Minted peas

Sauteed Summer Vegetables

When the garden is abundant (or if you've just been overtaken with greed at the largess at your local farmer's market), here's an easy and delicious way to quickly cook up a variety of vegetables. I've done this with various combinations of different summer squash, tomatoes, onions, garlic, red pepper--and probably more I'm not remembering.

The other night I did it with almost all homegrown vegetables. I did buy the green zucchini because it caught my eye. For the longer vegetables, I cut them in half lengthwise, then slice horizontally. If they're bigger than normal, I quarter them lengthwise, basically ending up with pieces 1/2" to 1".

2 small yellow squash
1 small green zucchini
1/2 an onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
a handful of red cherry tomatoes
a handful of yellow pear cherry tomatoes
a few pinches of fresh oregano, basil, or thyme or whatever you feel like and have available

While you're cutting everything up, heat a small bit of olive oil or butter in a skillet and swirl it around to coat the bottom. You want it at a medium heat. Dump all your chopped and sliced vegetables in and cook until just softened. Sprinkle on the herbs and some salt and pepper. If you don't have a garlic clove handy, use some garlic salt instead. Taste and adjust as necessary.

A Bit of Local Press

A bit of local press for me, the web site, and Digital Dish from the Pleasanton Weekly. The reporter attended the book-signing last week and they came out and snapped a few pictures earlier this week. You can't see the pictures online of me chopping tomatoes for bruschetta but suffice it to say it came out great!

The Cook Next Door - Meme

Tagged by Karen over at The Pilgrim's Pots and Pans for this food blog meme--my first ever and I'm very late.

What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?

Probably baking chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Like my own kids are now, I was much more interested in sweets so would bake cakes, cookies, and such. As far as cooking, maybe scrambling eggs for breakfast. Or frying up hamburger patties with onions for dinner.

Who had the most influence on your cooking?

My mom taught me to experiment, although I don't think I realized it until much later. It was nothing overt. She was just always trying new recipes, substituting this for that, and turning out great meals. She made it look easy and effortless so I didn't pay it much attention while I still lived at home!

Do you have an old photo as "evidence" of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?

No, no photos in the kitchen. Does a first tea party count? My faithful first border collie, who followed me everywhere, is the black blur at my feet.

Mageiricophobia - do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?

No, although there are things that sound totally unappealing to me. But ti's not a matter of fear, just taste!

What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest letdown?

My most valued would have to be the big KitchenAid mixer. My ex-MIL encouraged its purchase and I must use it 3-4 times a week. The biggest disappointment? Hmmm... maybe the pressure cooker I have yet to use!

Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like and probably no one else.

I like to put pickle relish inside my grilled cheese sandwich. I can eat almost anything that's been pickled.

What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don't want to live without?

Dairy would be very hard to do without: cream, cheese, and butter. If that can count as one, then add onions and garlic.

3 quickies:

Favorite ice cream: coffee

You will probably never eat (again??): durian

Signature dish: There's a foccacia I make that everyone in the extended family loves. But for non-family, I probably do chicken cutlets and olio e aglio for more entertaining than I should! For potlucks, everyone has come to expect deviled eggs or bruschetta in the summer.

I followed my meme forebears here:

Question added by Zarah: On average, how many times a week would you cook something to satisfy your sweet tooth?

Never, now that my kids have taken over the dessert tradition!

Question added by Cathy: What do you usually eat for breakfast?

In the summer, toast and sliced tomatoes, sometimes with scrambled egg. In the winter, a fried egg and a piece of toast and juice or fruit.

Question added by Alice: What are your stand-by dinner options when you don't have the time or the inclination to follow or create a new recipe?

Spaghetti and meat sauce if I have ground beef around. White chicken chili and rice. Barbecued meat of some variety!

Question added by Karen: What would you like to cook someday that you haven't tried before?

I can't think of any one thing. I am trying to cook more fish these days.

Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce

I absolutely love this time of the year, when I can wander into the garden and gather food for the next meal. Tomatoes are the star of my garden this year. I got lazy and didn't plant any experimental crops, although I did try some new varieties of tomatoes. I've got Beefsteak, Abe Lincoln, Early Girl, Sweet 100, and more. The Abe Lincolns surprised me by beginning to ripen ahead of the Early Girl--and they're delicious besides.

There's an article coming out about Digital Dish and me and CheapCooking in our local paper, so they sent a photographer over Monday for some shots. Given that I'd given them a bruschetta recipe to use in the sidebar, they took pictures of me chopping fresh tomatoes. I chopped some tomatoes, minced a garlic clove, and threw in some chopped onion along with the fresh basil. After they left and after my youngest scarfed down what she wanted of the bruschetta on some French Bread, I decided to use the rest for my lunch. I threw in some cubed mozarella and drizzled some olive oil over it all and let it sit a bit. After I cooked up some pasta I put it all together and had a wonderful fresh lunch.