I love a good tool

Conventional kitchen wisdom says you only need a few quality tools in the kitchen to cook pretty much anything. I counter that certain tools, though "they" may call them superfluous, really do make it easier, and more likely, for the home cook to try certain things. That's been the case for me, anyways.

Take my food processor, for example. Once I got it, I made a lot more (and a lot better) pesto. Also, blended bean dips and other thicker dips made a more regular appearance at the table. There were just some things that my blender couldn't do very well.

My crock-pot allows me to cook when I don't have the time or the energy. I just put good ingredients in, turn it on, and walk away. It saves me time, and saves me from eating out and spending money.

Then there was the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Since it's arrival, I'm much more likely to do a cake from scratch, to make frosting, and to make bread even when I'm super busy.

And, of course, I can't forget the knives. My first Wusthof, then my santoku, opened up a whole new world of effecicient, effortless chopping.

My most recent purchase was a large skillet with a wide bottom. It's heavy like a cast-iron, but non-stick. And, the large surface area makes reducing a breeze. I've made sauces in a snap, shortened cooking time on soups and stews, and have finally learned how to saute properly.

Though most of these--other than the knives--aren't essential for a kitchen, they are now essential for my kitchen.

Here's a quick recipe that uses two of my tools to make a fast, tasty, fresh pasta sauce.

Slow Cooker tomato sauce
Several fresh tomatoes
large handful basil
1/4 cup red wine
4 garlic cloves, peeled
salt and pepper to taste
You'll also need a slow cooker, a blender or food processor, and a wide-bottomed saute pan with a lot of surface area.

Cut the tomatoes into big chunks. Toss them into the slow cooker with the other ingredients. Turn to low, and go to work.

Come home, and stir. Turn off heat, open lid. Carefully put mixture into blender. Blend until smooth. Be careful as it will be hot so pulse the blender until you're sure the lid won't pop off.

Transfer sauce to wide-bottomed saucepan. Taste for seasoning, and adjust as needed. Go for a little less salty than you think you need since it will be saltier when you reduce it.

Turn burner to high, and heat sauce until it starts bubbling. Turn heat to medium low and cook, stirring frequently, until the sauce gets the thickness you want. For pasta, you'll want it thinner. For pizza, you'll want it pretty thick.
When the sauce gets as thick as you want, turn off the burner, and taste one more time, and see if it needs more salt or pepper. Here is where you'd add fresh herbs, a little more salt or pepper, some heavy cream, or even a shot of vodka.

Serve on whatever you like.

Improv Recipe: Chicken Agumba (corn, salsa, tequila, shallots, avocado)

Chicken Agumba. It's my dad's faux-Italian shorthand for an improv chicken dish when you're short on time and money. The Mister and I were both this week--and the CSA veggies were threatening a refrigerator revolt. As always, sub whatever you have on hand.

1 large frozen chicken breast, thawed and pounded flat
2 ears corn, sliced off cob (canned is fine if it's all you got)
1/2 jar salsa (mine was medium)
1/4 cup tequila
2 shallots, sliced
1-2 T citrus juice
1-2 T oil
1/2 avocado.

Cut chicken breast in half and season.
Put oil in medium saute pan, heat up, add chicken. Cook 3 minutes a side, flip, cook another 3 minutes.
flip, cook another 3 minutes, flip, cook another 3 minutes.
Move to plate.
Turn off heat. Add tequila and deglaze pan.
Add corn and salsa and shallots. Cook for 2 minutes until liquid goes down a bit.
Add chicken breasts back in, cover Cook for 2-3 minutes. Turn off heat.
Cut avocado into cubes.

To serve: Put chicken and some of the corn sauce on plate. Top with half the avocado cubes.

Improv recipe: Butter, Scotch and butterscotch

I was talking with a Facebook friend the other day, and he mentioned that butterscotch doesn't taste like butter or scotch. I disagreed. I thought it tasted a fair bit like butter.

Anyway, it got me thinking. So when the grocery store had butterscotch chips on sale today, I decided to pick up a bag and see if I could make a butterscotch sauce out of butter, scotch and butterscotch.

I only made about a half cup of sauce, and eyeballed the proportions, but, for the most part, it came out well. Well enough for The Mister and I to fight over the last of the sauce during dessert.

Just watch that you don't burn the butterscotch chips in the microwave. Also, make sure you add enough liquid to them. If you don't, it will get gritty and clumpy. If this happens it's an easy fix, just add a little more butter or scotch and stir until melted and smooth.

Butter and Scotch Butterscotch Sauce
Enough for 2 generous servings

1/4 cup butterscotch morsels
1-2 tablespoons butter
2-4 tablespoons scotch.

Let butter come to room temperature. Put butterscotch chips in microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 20-30 seconds at a time, stirring, until butterscotch chips start to melt. Add 1 tablespoon of butter, and microwave for 10-15 seconds more, just until the butter is melted, stirring. Don't worry too much if it seems clumpy and grainy. Add 2 tablespoons of scotch and stir. If it's still grainy and isn't coming together, add a bit more butter and/or scotch until it gets smooth.

Serve over ice cream or pound cake.

Improv recipe: Roasted Curried Sweet Vegetables

This is not the healthiest dish out there, but it sure is tasty. You could probably tone down the amount of oil used, and omit the butter entirely, if you are trying to be a bit healthy. You can, of course, make things less spicy if you don't do well with heat. Make sure to taste the mixture to see if it's to your liking before you slather it on your veggies.

One last note: Unless you are an expert with a knife, do not attempt this recipe without a sharp vegetable peeler. Acorn squash are kind of a pain to peel. You can substitute a small butternut squash, which is a little bit easier to peel.

Roasted curried sweet vegetables
Serves 4 as a side dish

2 sweet potatoes
1 medium acorn squash

¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup brown sugar
1 clove garlic, crushed
1-2 Tablespoons curry powder
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 cloves
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Peel vegetables, cut into 1 inch cubes. Combine the rest of the ingredients except for the butter. Taste mixture and adjust seasoning as necessary. Coat vegetables with mixture.

Put vegetables in large oven-safe dish or wide-lipped baking sheet. Dot with butter.

Cook for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, or until veggies are tender.

The Secret of Salads

I may have finally discovered the secret to salads.

But first, a little background.

My grandma J was the salad making expert of the family. Anytime we got together for the holidays, she'd bring a crisp, veggie-filled layered delight. Every bite seemed to be full of mushrooms, radish, tomato or bell pepper. And her salads rarely had cheese. Which makes it especially surprising that I loved them so much.

I thought I hadn't gotten the salad making gene from her, for all my salads tended to be lettuce-heavy and short on veggies. Any veggies I did add were chopped small and tended to sink to the bottom of the bowl.

Last night, while making a salad, I had an epiphany. I must give much of the credit to the ingredients I had on hand. The salad was to be the main course, so I had procured some end-of-summer tomatoes, thick chunks of fresh-boiled chicken, two types of nuts, homemade croutons, and goat cheese. It's kind of hard to go wrong when you start with good ingredients.

For all these years, I'd been chopping my veggies much too small. Sure, that's how my mom did it, but she always portioned the lettuce first into bowls, then sprinkled the veggies on top. Thus, no sinkage. But for salad in the big bowl, if the bites were larger, they rest much better on top of the lettuce.

Comparing this salad to others I'd made, I realized I had put a lot more non-lettuce ingredients into this one. Increasing the amount of other stuff in the salad made it tastier and more interesting.

I also needed to layer like a lasagna. So, a layer of lettuce, then a layer of each of the other ingredients, before I got back to the lettuce. For my normal salads, I had been putting a layer of lettuce between each other ingredient, which meant too much lettuce, not enough other stuff.

With those concepts in mind, I have created a simple salad formula. I'm confident this formula will help me remember what I've learned, so I can create successful salads in the future.

Secret of Salads

1. Start with flavorful ingredients. At least one of the ingredients should be nuts, cheese, dried fruit, bacon, or some other ingredient that packs a flavor punch.

2. Make the ratio of lettuce to other ingredients 1 to 1. e.g. make sure the amount of "guts" of the salad (meat, cheese, nuts, veggies) is at least as much as the lettuce.

3. Ingredients should be in large bite-sizes.

4. Layer like a lasagna.

Here's the salad I made using those rules.

Hearty Chicken Tomato Salad
1 bag pre-washed lettuce
2 cups chicken breast, pulled apart into large bite-sized chunks
1/4 cup nuts
1 cup cherry tomatoes, split in half
2 ounces goat cheese
Bacon Salt croutons (recipe follows)

Put a small layer of lettuce in the bottom of a large bowl. Sprinkle with half of chicken, tomatoes, nuts, croutons. Crumble half of goat cheese and sprinkle on top. Repeat, adding the rest of the lettuce and the rest of the other ingredients.

Serve with large salad tongs so you can get pieces of everything in the salad. Dressing is optional.

Bacon salt croutons
half a loaf of Italian or French bread
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon olive oil
2 Tablespoons Bacon Salt (Click here to find Bacon Salt near you)

Slice bread crosswise. Cut into large bite-sized cubes.
Set bread aside and heat butter, olive oil, and bacon salt in a large skillet, over medium heat. Stir to combine.
Once butter is melted, add bread cubes. Stir, making sure that each bread cube gets a little bit of the bacon mixture soaked into it.
Stir frequently until cubes start to brown slightly. Remove from heat. Can store in an airtight container at room temperature for a day.

Magical biscotti

I was home sick one day this week, and had some Amish Friendship sourdough starter that needed to be used up. But, since I wasn't feeling well, I didn't follow the recipe exactly.

I forgot to add the sugar.

Did I mention I wasn't feeling well?

I tried a piece, and it wasn't all that bad. The flavor and texture was OK, but the loaves were a little crumbly and not very sweet. I suppose I could have served it as a savory side bread, but it was kind of bland.

As I looked at the slice of bread, my illness-addled brain realized how closely it resembled biscotti in shape and texture.

Thus, magical biscotti was born.

I whipped around the kitchen to find a baking sheet. Since the bread-cum-biscotti needed something extra, I also made a quick chocolate glaze to drizzle on the finished product. I found some chocolate melts, some butter, some vanilla, and some orange oil, and I was good to go.

While the biscotti were baking, I microwaved the chocolate, then added the other ingredients until the sauce was dark, shiny and smooth.

As the biscotti cooled I went all Jackson Pollack on them.

The finished product looked awesome. They tasted slightly less awesome. The texture was a little off, and they tasted more like pieces of toast than actual biscotti. But I'd gotten my mind of my illness for a couple hours, and I'd discovered a good way to use up leftover quick breads, which are notorious for going stale. I'd call that a win.

Magical biscotti
Obviously, these are nowhere near authentic, and I sincerely hope my dead Italian Grandma will forgive me for this. The recipe works best with sweeter breads, like banana bread, zucchini bread, amish friendship bread. To use savory breads like cheese or herb bread, see the savory variation below.
part of a loaf of quick bread
1/4 cup chocolate chips
butter
chocolate chips
vanilla extract
1 drop orange oil

Preheat oven to 350. Slice quick bread into 1-inch slices. Cut slices in half, lengthwise, so you have roughly a finger-sized slice of bread. Carefully place on baking sheet, making sure the bread does not crumble.

Bake 10-15 minutes. You do not want the biscotti to brown. They will get harder once you remove them from the oven.

While biscotti are baking, Make sauce. Microwave chocolate chips until melted, stirring every 30 seconds. Add a tablespoon of butter. Add vanilla and stir. If chocolate gets gritty, add more vanilla until it smooths out. Add one drop of orange oil.

While sauce is warm, drizzle over biscotti. You can also dip one side of biscotti completely into chocolate if you like.

Savory variation
5 minutes before end of baking, sprinkle biscotti with any shredded cheese of your choice--sharp cheddar, Gruyere, freshly grated parmesan, or a mix of cheeses would be great.

Chicken Agumba #1

Chicken Agumba ("a-GOOM-bah") is a meaningless Italian-sounding word my dad made up one day when he was cooking dinner. In my family, it's come to mean "improv chicken dish."

It's the recipe you throw together when the frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts are on sale, you're tired of the same old chicken meal, but you're too tired to seek out a recipe.

Chicken Agumba can be fried, baked, sauteed, roasted, poached, or whatever. Nothing is measured, and you never make it the same way twice.

Here's my chicken Agumba from Thursday night.

4 chicken breasts
1 cup brown rice (I did measure the rice)
2 cans cream of tomato soup
about a cup of frozen corn
1 can of green beans
A little less than a green bean can full of white wine
2 small red bell peppers, large dice

In the morning, before you go to work: Put chicken in crockpot. top with rice, and add all the other ingredients. Add pepper to taste. No salt needed because of the soup. Cook on "low" setting for at least 6 hours. Eat when you get home, with a dollop of sour cream if you like.

This is not terribly sophisticated, but tasty. And, presumably, good for you, with the fiber and the veggies and all. I'm not a huge brown rice person because it tends to be too chewy, but in this recipe, it became smooth and creamy after the long cooking time.

Improv recipe: Mint hot chocolate

Cold day. Wanted hot chocolate. Came up with this recipe.

1 cup milk
1/4 cup chocolate chips (I prefer semi-sweet)
1 large spring of fresh mint

bruse the mint by rubbing it around in your hands until the leaves are smoooshed and you can really start to smell the mint. Add mint, chocolate chips, and milk to a microwave-safe mug.

Microwave for 1-3 minutes, stirring after every minute. When the chocolate chips are melted and the mixture is hot, let sit 3-5 minutes to let the mint steep.

The more you bruise the mint, the more minty the flavor will be.