A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Chicken Chow Mein: Better For You Than Mom's--Sorry Mom!

Chicken Chow Mein (my Mom's) was my childhood favorite.  We each got to request our dinner and cake for our birthday and Chicken Chow Mein was always my menu. 

Now....there's a funny family story about our cake choices as kids.  My "cake" was always my Nannie's banana bread. My brother Kenneth's choice was always Angel Food Cake with NO frosting, dad's choice was pie, and at the moment it escapes me what my other siblings' (Suzanne and Carl) choices were. I'll have get them to comment to remind me.

Nothing funny, right?  Here's the punchline. Our Mom was a cake decorator.  After making cakes for every kid in town (and us getting all the mistakes and leftovers all the time), and even telling us she'd make us any kind/design we wanted no matter how involved, we were so burned out on cake we all denied our Mom the pleasure of making our birthday cakes. Were we brats, or what?  Yes!  (Laughing) What Mom on the planet has to put up with kids who cry "Please, Mom, please! Don't make us eat cake for our birthdays! Please!"  Brats. We were cake-spoiled brats!

My Mom's Chow Mein, was great and I asked for it every year. It was also healthy. Except...when I started making it as an adult I realized that for a dish with lots of vegetables there was very little color:  water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, baby corn, and bean sprouts, are all pretty boring looking.  To dress up the aesthetic and the vitamin content, I've included many more colorful vegetables in my version.

Taste of the Ozarks: Beans & Greens

Even I will admit that maybe that doesn't look all that delcious, but I swear on a stack of Bibles, it's delicious.  Beans & Greens has long been a down-home dish throughout most of the southern U.S. and we're no exception.  We love our "brown" (pinto for the uninitiated) beans and cornbread, which btw, form a complete protein. Couple that with kale, collards, or spinach, and you're really looking at a protein/vitamin powerhouse. To be completely honest, you see the green but you don't really taste it.  Until I told him, Gene thought I'd just gone really nuts with the parsley.

This is my version using country sausage with lots of sage, collard greens, and pinto beans.  It's an easy-peasy workday recipe where you throw everything from the pantry/freezer into the crock-pot and either go to work, or like me, go to sleep. Dinner is ready when you are.  Add crackers or cornbread or dinner rolls and you've got a happy Gene, I mean, whatever your spouse's name is.

Better Than Mom's (Sorry Mom!) Lasagna

 

 

Sorry, Mom, even though you were a fabulous cook, I think in this one instance I beat you at your own game. 

I love lasagna but with only two of us it's something I only get to make when we're having company.  You just can't make a small lasagna!

So for New Year's Eve, that's what I did, although I stepped up a few of the ingredients my Mom used to use, switching out ricotta and cream cheese for the cottage cheese, and using a 50/50 mix of ground beef and country sausage for my Slow Cooker Meat Sauce. 

We were all pretty pleased, patting myself on the back. The result was rich without being overwhelming and not too wet, not to dry, perfect texture. Will be making these changes always from now on.

 

Christmas Eve Traditions: Mushroom, Goat Cheese, & Spicy Chicken Sausage Lasagna

 Newlywed bride Sarah made this incredilble looking lasagna for hubby Sebastian and put these photos up on Facebook--is this not beautiful looking and scrumptious sounding? I'm going to give this one a try as soon as I get through this work stretch. 

Although I will be working Christmas Eve, I love the tradition of other friends of ours, Janell and Jerry, who always have lasagna on Christmas Eve with just their kids and then get together with all the family members on Christmas Day. I've always loved their tradition. It feels right to have your immediate family home on Christmas Eve for a cozy meal and small family night and then let the holiday bloom out the next day in all of its family-ness.

Just in case I get next Christmas Eve off...this is what Gene and I will be eating.

 

Chicken, Rice, & Vegetable Casserole the Old-Fashioned Way (No Campbell's Soup)

 

I've grown up as part of the Campbell's soup generation.  Mom used it a lot for things like "Stroganoff" made with ground beef and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup over egg noodles, "Smothered Chicken" or "Smothered Pork Chops" with any of the "Cream of's":  Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Chicken, or Cream of Celery, "Chicken Enchiladas" or "Chicken Pot Pie" with it's mandatory Cream of Chicken soup as the base sauce/filler. I enjoyed those dishes so  I'm not going to go into a huge anti-Campbells rant here becuase it is a quick and easy fix and it does taste good in that very comforting country creamy Paula Deen way. That's not a slam.  I do like those types of casseroles and homey dinners.  What I am going to say is there is another way, a better way, a healthier and cleaner way to cook/eat that doesn't have as many chemicals and salt and, I promise!, is not labor intensive.  If you have a little flour in your pantry and milk in the fridge you can skip the "Cream of".  Have a can of chicken broth?  Even better!

 

Dexter Dinner: Aunti Miranda's Chicken Vindaloo

Auntie Miranda brought dinner to last week's Dexter Dinner and OMG it was wonderful. The even better part was that it was good for us too!  This is the perfect winter meal:  rich and soothing, deceptively simply looking but with complex flavors from the spices and pureed vegetable base. I'll be making this myself again and again.  Thanks Auntie!

Timpano di Maccheroni: The "Mythic Pasta Dome"

  

This recipe was so much fun to make!  I'd seen it years ago, a classic Italian dish made famous by Stanley Tucci's movie "Big Night" , the story of two restauranteur brothers (Tucci and Tony Shalhoub, more recently starring as Adrian Monk) whose fortunates are on the wane.  In a last mad dash, they have one "Big Night" extravaganza to save the restaurant and this is one of the dishes they served.

I served it our Dexter Dinner group to celebrate the season six premiere of Dexter. We gathered for Timpano, Death in the Afternoon cocktails, and Dexter (Apple) cake. Everything, including Dexter, was delicious!  This recipe is definitely a showstopper and very flexible. I'll be serving it again.

Several years ago, I had planned on making it for my pasta-lovin' niece Jordan's birthday party as a truly celebratory entree but at the last minute I flinched, afraid I would leave the whole family in the lurch if I messed it up, and simply served baked mostacciola instead. While the dish does have several steps, almost all of them can be made ahead and the whole dish can easily be finished early on the day of serving and baked a bit before serving.  Actually, with at least a half hour cooling time it's a great dish to take to a potluck or to serve at an open house. I only made a 2qt bowl full and not only was it plenty of food for the four of us watching Dexter that night, there were leftovers, and during the dinner, the dish was still warm to the touch 45 minutes after cutting.

As much as I sort of dreaded and anticipated and was scared and excited all at the same time about preparing this dish, it really is much easier to make than it looks! I promise.

Slow Cooker Meat Sauce for Pasta

 

The first step in preparing for the "mythic pasta dome", Timpano is to create meatballs (traditional) or chunky meat sauce for the pasta.  Although I eat meat, I've found that many times I have a little texture problem when it comes to meat and I find myself pushing away the ground beef or meatballs and eating the pasta and sauce.  I do the same thing with chili with beans: I tend to eat the beans and work around the larger chunks of meat. Not any more.  Since experimenting one time with chili by putting the raw ground meat into the crockpot and slow cooking it for 10+ hours I've found that I know longer push aside the meat. The long slow cooking breaks down those tougher textures for a silker, more homogenous sauce.  I now always make my chili and pasta meat sauce this way.  The convenience is great also: throw it in the slow cooker and forget it.  This recipe makes approximately seven cups, three of which will be used in the Timpano.  The other three cups freeze very well for another meal another time. 

Dexter Dinner: Timpano, Dexter Cake, & Death in the Afternoon Cocktails

 

Dexter premiered season six last night and we were there! Last year, my cousin, James, came over to the house on Sunday nights so we could all watch Dexter together since we were all huge fans.  We adopted Auntie Miranda into the cult and have been a Dexter Dinner foursome ever since. We always meet at Gene's and my house and I make dinner, usually using them as guinea pigs to test new recipes.  It's a win-win for me and for them and the safety net is that if it's ever is a win-lose, there's always pizza that can be delivered.

 

Literally, for years I've been wanting to make Timpano, the classic "mythic dome pasta" (Mario Batali) dish made famous by the movie Big Night from 1996 where Stanley Tucci, as one of two restanteur brothers (Tony Shalhoub is the other) makes this dish for their "big night" make it or break it extravaganza.  My understanding is that Tucci himself came up with the idea to use this recipe in the movie since it's one that his family actually makes for special occasions in real life. In 1999, following the popularity of the food from the movie Tucci's mother and the chef who consulted on the film authored a cookbook "Cucina & Famiglia: Two Italian Families Share Their Stories, Recipes, and Traditions" by Joan Tropiano Tucci and Chef Gianni Scappin.

This week I'll be blogging my version of the Timpano recipe starting with a 15 hour slow cooker meat sauce for pasta, Auntie's fruited salad and vinaigrette, the apple cake with caramel apple filling, and Death in the Afternoon cocktail created by Ernest Hemingway using Absinthe which is now legal in the U.S. again.

Let's begin with the meat sauce...

It's Not That Complicated: Julia Child's Croques Monsieur/Croques Madame

 

While watching the movie "It's Complicated" on cable recently I found myself salivating at Meryl Streep's character's chocolate croissants, roasted chicken dinner, and something I'd never heard of before: Croques Monsieur.  In the movie she serves it to Steve Martin's character on a business-ish date while "hilarity ensues" from Alec Baldwin's character as he window peeps on them.  The dish, that they ate with knife and fork, appeared to have been baked and looked creamy and cheesy melty.  She makes reference to having learned to make this dish while in France studying pastry and the reference is repeated by Alec's character talking about how much he misses this dish and how special it was to him.

I thought to myself "Self, you need to investigate, create, and blog this wonderful cheesy thing they're spreading Dijon mustard on and eating with a knife and fork."  As myself often listens to me, I did, and I found that, like my polenta adventure, I was pretty familiar with the dish and remembered how much I liked it:  Grilled Ham & Cheese Sandwich.  That's the basic form and I've included that stripped down bare bones version as Julia Child made it.  There are gussied up versions that include baking in the oven rather than grilling in a pan, and added vegetables, eggs, and sauces, but the basic idea of the Croque Monsieur, or "Crispy Mister" is a Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwich that was originally served in France in casual bistros around 1910 and has survived ever since. Why? Because it's yummy!  The key difference between a Croque and it's American cousin would be quality of ingredients.  It eschews Wonder Bread for a nice homemade loaf, Kraft American Slices for gruyere or Havarti or Swiss, and a nice ham slice. 

Crispy, hot, and cheesy, it's yummy comfort food with an exotic name.