Artichokes

Springtime means artichokes to me. I've planted some artichoke plants this year, but that means I won't be picking them until at least next year. In the meantime, the prices were finally low enough that I succumbed and bought some at the market today. Our never-ending rain here in California means that artichokes and asparagus have been in short supply.

I still cook them the way my mom did. I cut the stem end off just a bit above the base of the stem, then cut about 1" off the tips of the leaves on the other end. I never both using scissors to snip the sharp points off the leaves in the middle as the books tell you. I do rub the cut parts of the artichokes with half a lemon, then squeeze the rest of the lemon into the cooking water. And I do simmer them, not steam them. I usually throw a few cloves of garlic in the pot of water as well, peeled but not squished too much.

I often cook them a day ahead of when I want to eat them, Whenever you cook them, drop them in a pot of boiling water (preferably with the lemon juice and garlic) and cook about 25-35 minutes, depending on the size. Poke the bottom with a fork to test for doneness. When the fork pierces the heart easily, they're done. Drain them upside down on a plate, squeezing the excess water out once they are cool enough to handle. I then refrigerate them until dinner (or lunch) the next day, or just let them cool to room temperature if we're eating them that night.

I serve them with just a bit of mayonnaise mixed with lemon juice. Pull the leaves off, dip the heart end of them in a bit of the mayo mix and pull them through your teeth to get to the meat. Provide a bowl at the table for the leaves. When you've eaten all the big leaves, pull the last clump out in one bunch and eat as much of them as you can. Then use a knife to cut the "choke" part out, the purple thistle looking section. (Note: If you grow these, it's worthwhile to let a few flower and see this magnificent purple flower that comes out when they open up!)

The heart of the artichoke is the goal, the reward, the prize. Scrape any fuzzy bits off with a flat knife or spoon, then eat!

Quick and Dirty Meat Sauce

Sometimes I make meatballs. Sometimes I buy those frozen meatballs. They periodically go on sale for a price that rivals the cost per pound for ground beef. But sometimes I also just make a meat sauce with loose browned ground beef. I vary the canned tomato products depending on what I have around. There's almost always a chopped onion, a few cloves of garlic minced up, some parsley, oregano, and basil. I suppose you could use those pre-mixed Italian seasonings but you have to find a brand you like. I've had some really bad ones so tend to just use some mix of my own dried or fresh herbs, depending on the season.

Sometimes I use a large can of pureed tomatoes and an 8 or 16 ounce can of tomato sauce, sometimes a large can of tomato sauce and a small can of tomato paste, etc. You could even use a large can of whole tomatoes in puree if you like your sauce chunky. Just break up the tomatoes a bit with a wooden spoon. Usually I add a bit of red or white wine, whichever's open. If nothing's open or you don't cook with alcohol, just skip this step. I'll serve the sauce over various shapes of pasta, but did the old fashioned spaghetti tonight--always a hit!

1 pound ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 cup dried parsley
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
28 ounce can pureed tomatoes
15 ounce can tomato sauce
1/4 cup white wine (didn't actually measure)

This came out fantastic!

Brown the ground beef with the onion and garlic in a large saucepan (thinking ahead to all the tomatoes you're going to add!), then drain any excess fat. Remember not to dump it down your sink! I always keep a couple of cleaned cans (from easy stuff to clean like tomato sauce) under my sink and pour any fat into there.

Add the basil, oregano, parsley, salt and pepper and stir in, cooking for another minute or so.

Add the tomato puree, tomato sauce, and wine. Stir in and bring to a simmer. Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes or longer. If it simmers a long time, it might get a bit thick. Add some liquid (more wine or just water) to thin it out a bit.

This is a very forgiving recipe. If you're having company and want to make the sauce ahead of time and let it simmer longer while you visit with friends, just leave it on very low heat and check it now and then. Add more liquid or cover it after 10 minutes or so, then uncover it when you put the pasta in the water. This can also be made a few days ahead and kept in the refrigerator and made a few weeks or months ahead and frozen.

Tuna Casserole

One daughter loves it; one hates it. Ah well. The 70's cookbooks call for cream of celery soup and crushed potato chips on top it seems. I went for the homemade white sauce last night. If I were to do it differently, I might add a bit of cheddar cheese to the sauce, or maybe just add some diced chunks when I mixed the sauce, noodles, and tuna. I also like a recipe that calls for sauteed diced celery and onion, plus some chopped pimentos. It's nice and colorful! This was good but a bit bland for my tastes, although it suited the girl just fine.

8 ounces egg noodles, cooked and drained

2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
1 tsp dry mustard
2 cups milk
a dash of cayenne pepper
salt to taste, maybe 1/2 tsp to start

12 ounces tuna, drained and flaked
1/2 cup chopped green onions (optional)

2 Tbs butter, melted
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs or 1/2 cup fresh

Cook the egg noodles. Preheat the oven to 375.
Meanwhile, make a white sauce. Melt the butter of medium-low heat. Stir in the flour and mustard and cook a couple of minutes, stirring almost constantly. Turn up the heat a bit and slowly whisk in the milk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then reduce and simmer a minute or two until thickened. Stir in the noodles and tuna, then pour into a 2 quart casserole dish (8x8 pan works great).

Mix the melted butter and bread crumbs, then crumble over the casserole. Sprinkle with paprika.

You can make it ahead to this point, cover and refrigerate. Bake it an extra 10-15 minutes to make sure it's heated through.

Bake uncovered for 20-25 minutes.

Easy Garlic Chicken Breasts

This is from Saving Dinner, which I borrowed from the library after reading so many rave reviews. The recipes in here are fairly simple, mostly use what I consider "real" ingredients, and so far the ones I've tried have been quite tasty. There is a lot of recipes for boneless skinless chicken breasts. Perhaps too many. There are no pork recipes. There are a fair number of fish recipes I'm keen to try.

I'm not one to have someone else make up my weeks' menu for me, but if you want to follow a preset plan complete with shopping list, this book is worth checking out. You'll get a nice variety of what seems to be pretty good recipes. The book generally covers only the main dishes but gives you ideas for side dishes that go well. I saw a ton of recipes for boneless skinless chicken breasts that would be interesting gathered together. I get frustrated by the book because I can't turn to one place and see all the recipes in a row, since it's organized by week and aims to provide a variety throughout the week.

1 Tbs oil
6 or more garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbs brown sugar
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts

I used fewer chicken breasts and perhaps more garlic than called for and it came out great. Perhaps my love of garlic is just stronger than normal!

Preheat the oven to 500F.

Heat the oil over medium heat, add the minced garlic and cook slowly, stirring constantly, until softened. Make sure the oil is not too hot. You don't want to brown the garlic and it can get to that point quickly if you're not careful.

Take it off the heat after 5 minutes or so and add the brown sugar and stir it in.

Line a shallow roasting pan with foil and spread oil across the foil. Lay your boneless skinless chicken breasts across it, spread the garlic/oil/brown sugar mix across the chicken. Bake for 15 minutes, or until done.

I served this with Green Beans and Garlic and couscous.

It reminded me a bit of Worcestershire Chicken Breasts, with the brown sugar variation.

Easter Dinner

Awesome Pork Loin
Twice Baked Potatoes
Steamed Broccoli with Orange Sauce and Sesame Seeds
Rolls
Fried Apples and Onions
Deviled Eggs
plain applesauce
sliced strawberries and shortcakes with Cool Whip

The broccoli recipe you'll have to beg my niece for. I know we steamed the broccoli but she brought the orange sauce already mixed up and the sesame seeds and just poured them over the freshly steamed broccoli. It was a great traveling recipe!

My neighbor and his daughter brought some wine and his nephew came as well, who's out here from Illinois. The nephew gave my piano a nice workout both before and after dinner, which I just loved! Very talented guy.

Great food. Great music. Great conversation. All in all, a nearly perfect holiday dinner!

Fried Apples and Onions

I used to have some celebrity cookbook that I can't quite recall. It was by a southerner, a movie star maybe, female I think. The recipes were mostly stuff I would not eat but was fun to read about: fried this and that, lots of salt pork and butter and bacon grease--great tasting stuff I'm sure! I do remember making something at one point that called for a cube of butter in it. Man it was good--but I just don't eat like that very often. At some point I got rid of the cookbook but I wish I'd kept it. Ah well. Today when I started thinking about frying up some apples to go with the pork loin I thought of this cookbook and thought of the fried apples and onions.

I often saute sliced apples with a bit of butter when we have pork. When they're good and soft I sprinkle with some brown sugar and serve them up. They're a kid favorite around here whenever we have pork or sausage.

I Google'd fried apples and onions and found a variety of recipes of course. I didn't have any bacon in the house and didn't feel like thawing out the bit of salt pork I have left in the freezer from when I made pinto beans the other night. So I just started with my usual fried apple recipe and added sliced onions. I still added the brown sugar after everything was cooked.

Man these were good! As predicted, the kids complained about "ruining" the apples with the onions but I'd put some plain applesauce on the table so they were happy. I liked the different textures and flavors. The onions are sweet but not as sweet as the apples and I liked the combination better than just plain apples.

Twice Baked Potatoes

These are a bit more work but you can do it all ahead of time. That makes for a good dinner party recipe in my book! These also freeze well. After you've filled the shells and topped with cheese, flash freeze them, then bag so you can just pull out however many you need for lunch or dinner.

baking potatoes
sour cream
a bit of milk
butter
salt and pepper
grated Cheddar cheese

It's hard to give a recipe for this because so much depends on the size of your potatoes. Start by baking them at 400 degrees for about an hour, until soft when you squeeze them.

Don't let them cool too long or they'll be impossible to mash. Instead, while still hot, slice them lengthwise. Scoop the white insides out into a mixing bowl and lay the shells down on your baking sheet. Add the butter and mix with an electric blender just until not lumpy. Add the sour cream and milk, salt and pepper, and mix until there are no lumps. Stir in some grated cheese.

Fill the potato shells with the mashed insides and top with a bit more grated cheese. If you'd like, stop here and refrigerate or freeze until later. Bake at 350 or so (flexible depending on what else is in our oven) until warmed through.

If you want to make these more of a main dish, which makes a great lunch, add some diced ham to the mashed potatoes before you stuff the potato skins.

Awesome Pork Loin

The Pork Loin (served 7 plus lots of leftovers)

Pork loins were on sale this week. I do not know my meat cuts well at all so I really enjoy this book my sister gave me, The Complete Meat Cookbook. There are great explanations at the beginning of each chapter about the different cuts and how best to cook different ones. What I most appreciate is when a recipe lists a few different cuts that will all work well.

I bought a pork loin that weighed almost 8 pounds. I knew that was way too much for us but they were all about the same size. Since I just bought a Foodsaver, I cut the loin in half and froze half. The other half I decided to brine, as the book recommended. Not having two loins side by side to compare, I'm not sure how much the brining did. The herb rub I put on was pretty strong (and delicious!) and might have overshadowed any flavor from the brining, which was a vanilla infused brine.

I was also confused a bit by the fact that the directions in the brining section said to cut off all visible fat. The directions in the roasting section said to leave a thin layer of fat. I'd already cut it all off by the time I saw that. I would think that since you cook it fat side up, it would add some flavor to the meat as it drips down. The advantage of having cut it all off was that there wasn't much fat in the bottom of the pan when I went to make the pan sauce.

The herb rub I modified a bit because I didn't have any fennel seeds. I'm not a big fennel fan anyway and I have to say the pork was absolutely delicious the way I did it, so if you like fennel, go ahead and add some but it's great without it.

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbs dried sage (or 2 Tbs fresh if you have it)
1 Tbs kosher salt
1 tsp black pepper

1 3-4 pound boneless pork loin

10 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
a bit of oil

That's it! Mix the herbs together and rub them all over the pork. Preheat the oven to 450. Oil the bottom of your roasting pan lightly and lay the garlic slices down, then put the pork loin on top, fat side up if you have some fat. Cook the pork for 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 300 and cook another 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on how big your loin is. Use a thermometer and cook until the inside of the pork is about 145.

Remove the roast and cover with foil while you make the sauce.

1/4 cup white wine
1 cup chicken broth

If you have a lot of fat in the pan, pour it off. I didn't have any. Heat the pan on your stove top and add the white wine. Bring to a boil and use a flat wooden spoon to scrape up all the browned bits. Add the chicken broth and simmer until the sauce is reduced by about half. Strain the garlic pieces out of the sauce. Salt and pepper to taste but remember the pork is heavily spiced. Slice the meat into 1/4 slices and serve with the sauce.

This was truly awesome. The pork came out perfectly moist and good. Perhaps that's to the credit of the brining. The herb rub was awesome. I'm sure part of it was because I have a wonderful rosemary plant and can just go cut fresh rosemary whenever I want. I love cooking with fresh herbs. My sage is still soggy and poor looking so I used dried.


Oh, the brine. If you want to brine, I found my crockpot made a great pot to hold the brine and meat. There's no way I had a pot big enough to brine the whole loin at the same time so it's good I only needed half. I put the pork loin in the brine last night and made sure it was all covered. The meat was truly very moist so even though I couldn't taste any vanilla over the herb rub, I think it had a positive impact. I modified this a bit so that I didn't have to wait for the hot liquid to cool.


4 cups hot water
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup kosher salt
2 Tbs pepper
4 cups cold water

Mix everything but the cold water together until the solids dissolve. Stir in the cold water. Brine a pork loin overnight in the refrigerator. Smaller cuts need less time. Drain and pat dry before cooking.

Those Nights You Can't Cook Much

We all have them: those nights when getting dinner on the table is difficult or you'd just rather be doing something different! A friend said "That's why you should keep some frozen Lean Cuisine's in the freezer." Well, no. That's not my answer. I do keep some dinner "starters" in the freezer however. This might be meat frozen in a marinade, which makes for quick grilling or broiling, homemade casseroles, meat loaves, or even just cooked diced chicken, which can quickly turn into chicken quesadillas, or diced ham, which can quickly make some scrambled eggs a bit special.

Tonight, I pulled out out a bag of chicken pot pie filling and a frozen pie crust. When I make chicken pot pie, I make a double batch, hardly any more effort, and put half in a quart-size freezer bag for another night. When I mix up a pie crust, it's just as easy to make two and throw a ball of dough in the freezer for something like this. If I hadn't had the pie crust there, I might have just mixed up biscuit dough instead.

I don't like like to do the full "cook for a month" style of freezer cooking. I do like having starters in there though. Cooked ground beef or diced chicken or ham, raw marinated meats of some variety, twice baked potatoes or even mashed potatoes for a nice side dish, quiche in a bag if you're faced with a ton of eggs and need to use them up somehow (just scramble them with your filling of vegetables and/or meat and freeze in a quart bag)... stuff like this is definitely an aid on a busy night.

And if you're really stuck and need dinner in a hurry, think about:
scrambled eggs and fried potatoes
Pancakes
Quick Beef and Rice
Chicken Baked with Rice
Macaroni and Cheese
Easier-Than-Stir-Fry Chicken
Welsh Rarebit / Rabbit

Dinner Delivery

However much I like to cook, and however much I like pizza, there are times when I wish I could have something other than pizza delivered for dinner! Saw this site written up in my local paper today and had to go see what I was missing. Enter your address and they'll show which restaurants deliver in your neighborhood. The Grub Hub. So far they're concentrating on Chicago (where it started) San Francisco, New York, and Milwaukee so if you live elsewhere you're out of luck for a while. Their site says they're adding an area a month though. Great idea! Unfortunately, I'm still limited to pizza and one Chinese restaurant.

Discussion Group

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SF Bay Area Locals - Particularly East Bay

Diablo Magazine is having a "best of" contents and they have a category for local blogger! If any of you would care to vote for Chronicles of a Curious Cook I'd love it! By voting, you get a chance to win a trip to Hawaii so maybe we'll both win!

Easy and Delicious Pot Roast

Pot roast. What a great Sunday dinner! I just learned, from watching Alton Brown's show on pot roast, that a 7-blade roast is called that because the bone looks like a 7. I admit to having stayed away from them in the past because I wasn't sure what they were and thought "7 bones" seemed like a lot! Alton's recipe looked great but the idea of cooking in tin foil bothers me somehow. Aluminum foil these days I guess. Showing my age!

I cheated and used a can of cream of mushroom soup here, but I suspect it would have been nearly as good with just broth, water, red wine or some combination. I added a chopped rutabaga because I had one left to use up from a few days ago. Whoops! Went to link to the recipe and realized I never posted it!

This pot roast takes a few minutes of time up front to brown the meat, then you pop it in the oven for an hour or 2. Chop up the vegetables you want and add them for the last hour of cooking. Total cooking time is 2-3 hours so it's another great company dinner because you can sit and visit that last hour while dinner's cooking away!

2-3 pounds chuck roast (7-bone blade roast is one of several cuts that will work)
1/2 Tbs oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 onions, cut in quarters
1 can cream of mushroom soup
a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce
1 cup water or red wine or beef broth
3-4 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 rutabaga if you have one lying around
6 carrots, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup flour
1 cup water

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or some other heavy pan that can go in the oven. Brown the chuck roast on both sides. Sprinkle with salt and pepper as you brown it. Add the onions and cook another 5 minutes or so, stirring now and then. Cover with the soup and 1 cup of water, wine, or broth. Put in the oven at 300 for 2 hours.

After two hours, prepare the other vegetables and add to the pan, then return to the oven for another hour.

When the pot roast is done, remove the meat and vegetables to a serving dish. Mix together the flour and water, then stir into the liquid on the stove top. Bring to a simmer and cook a few minutes, stirring constantly. Serve this gravy in a gravy boat or just pour over the meat and vegetables if you'd rather.

Goes great with a loaf of French bread!