Adventures in Spaghetti Squash
Ever since I was in Weight Watchers (senior year of high school) and some cookbook or pamphlet tried to sell me on spaghetti squash as a healthy alternative to pasta, I have been fairly pissed at that whole cooking trope.

Sure, it may cook up into stringy bits that are morphologically like spaghetti, but that doesn’t mean it tastes the same or should function the same - it’s a squash! A little marinara sauce on top is just gross.

I’ve ranted on this point many times over the years, just not before to you.

But then today I somehow managed to cook spaghetti squash so that it tasted just like cheap ramen. Kid you not. No idea how. I just sliced it in half, removed the seeds, filled the hollow with homemade stock, and baked it for an hour or so (cut side up because it’s tidier that way and doesn’t get as sodden as cut side down in water).

End result? just like ramen. So I added a drizzle of sesame oil, some soy sauce, and a bit of pepper.

***

Chicken wings
All right, so they weren’t chicken wings - they were cornish hen wings. See, my parents don’t eat as much as they used to, so after my mother made a dinner where each of them had a wee cornish hen my father had eaten half of one breast and my mother had eaten most of one breast and one thigh. The rest went to me.

And while I boned the chicken, I wasn’t going to strip the meat off the wee little wings because that was too little return for the effort - so I just pulled them off whole.

So you’d think a cookbook that was all chicken all the time and nothing but chicken would have a recipe for wings. Not so much. But I found a likely recipe for random chicken bits. I ended up summarizing the pepper, cilantro, garlic, lime, whatever, paste for the marinade as a heaping teaspoon of the thai paste I had leftover in the fridge. After a couple hours, I cooked the marinated wings in a bit of oil and then right at the end drizzled oil and say sauce over them for the sauce.

Tasty!

Tags: chicken, winter squash

Before I moved out on my own, stock came in cans from the supermarket. Homemade stock is a completely different animal, and surprisingly easy. All you need is a bit of time and weather that is not too painfully hot and humid so that extended cooking is still possible.

Stock philosophy: I’m not making consumes, so these recipes won’t give you light, translucent broths. Nope, these are rich and yummy things food of goodness and nutrients.

Ps and Qs chicken stock
Boil together:
chicken bits (whole chicken, chicken backs, chicken feet & necks, whatever)
carrots
celery
parsnips*
parsley*
*(ideally, there’s the stuff called parsley root which is a less sweet parsnip with lovely, tasty parsley green attached - that was always my first choice.)
peppercorns
garlic cloves (not peeled, just cut in half)
onion (not peeled, cut into quarters)
sprigs of thyme
a bay leaf
sprigs of rosemary
water to cover

*boil* *boil* *boil*

Remove the parsley before letting it sit overnight left the broth end up with a greenish tint. If using whole pieces of chicken, pull them out, strip off the meat, and then put the detritus back in the pot.

*boil*

*cover and let sit overnight*

Next day:

*boil at least 20 minutes to kill of any bacteria*

*boil until concentrated as much as looks tasty*

*let cool just a little (so you don’t die when splashed with the liquid)*

*strain and refrigerate*

Next day:

Pop off the layer of fat, and you’re good to go.

~*~

And then on some cooking show there was a cook suggesting keeping scraps (onion peelings, etc.) in the freezer to make stock. So now I have a bag into which I put the peels of just about anything of the allium genus (if able to be washed reasonably clean), extra herbs that are getting dubious or stripped herb stems, and the occasional carrot or piece of celery near the end of its life.

Even though stock was already fairly economical, I no longer end up using things that would otherwise be food in my stock.

Even easier chicken stock
chicken bits (still whatever is cheapest. You can also save bones and stuff from simple roast chickens and use them)
yellow & white onion peels
garlic peels and ends (maybe a feel cloves of garlic, if those are scanty)
rosemary, thyme, parsley, bay leaf
peppercorns

optional:
carrots or celery, if frozen anyway
whole dried red pepper
ginger peelings
sprig of fennel
2-3 cloves

*boil* (for as little as 45 minutes after it actually starts boiling enough that things are pretty well thawed)
*cover and let sit overnight*
*boil* (minimum of 20 minutes at a hard boil*
*strain and refrigerate overnight*
*pop off fat layer*
*Yum!*

Still every bit as tasty, but now something that can be done in the evening after a chicken dinner instead of a whole project on its own

Notice there’s no step in here about skimming off foamy scum? That’s because after the very first time I tried it, I couldn’t be bothered. After all, you are still going to strain the soup, and the main reason cookbooks give for that anal retentive bit is to have a clear and lovely soup, and I like mine thick and a bit opaque.

But now that it’s so easy, what about other kind of stock?

Well I’ve successfully made pork stock, but unless you are using it for something that will taste strongly of pork (red beans & rice, greens… and that’s about all I’ve come up with), it’s a bit too strongly pork flavoured and tends to take over the dish. (but it’s the same recipe as lamb, so keep reading)

Beef stock - is a pain in my ass! It was such a relief later to read in the Best Recipe cookbook that it was also a pain in their ass. Either you have to use almost a 1:1 ratio of beef to water, or you have to add a few chicken pieces to give the stock some body while you hope the beef flavor is stronger than the chicken one. It’s not worth doing unless you have a craving for homemade onion soup that neither restaurants nor Trader Joe’s can satisfy, but you won’t be saving yourself any money to make it at home.

Tags: chicken, stock

A friend of mine at work is getting married. So when word came around that there might be a bridal shower, I mentioned that I studied little tea sandwiches in college.

…sadly, this is not much of an exaggeration.

So I am contributing at least part of the food.

Here be menu planning
Limiting conditions:

• I don’t want to give anyone food poisoning
• *maybe* a microwave for heating things
• Everything should come out in one go and appear effortless
• Guest of honor does not like seafood

Coronation chicken (maybe with sultanas) in parkerhouse rolls with a bit of lettuce
- pre-bought rolls
- container with chicken
- stuff at work

Roasted tomatoes with basil & feta in parmesan cups
- make parmesan cups ahead of time, cool, and just put in a plastic bag to transport
- roast tomatoes that morning so they don’t have a chill from the refrigerator and that should be warm enough

Veggie (& Chicken?) stir-fry in wonton cups
- again, make cups ahead and bring in a bag - no not trip on the way to work
- microwave stir fry and fill cups - with as little liquid as possible because that makes for a nasty surprise

[Redacted]’s bacon horseradish dip on triskets
- pretty container that can just be opened and put on a serving tray

And maybe some real little sandwiches, but I don’t have much patience for them.
I think I like this web page for that, and the likeliest suspects are:

• Cucumber sandwiches
• Pepper Cheese sandwiches
• and possibly my own egg salad recipe

Tags: chicken, tomatoes

Ziti with Roasted Eggplant and Ricotta Cheese
Uses up:

• eggplant
• 2 cans of tomatoes
• ziti rotelle
• ricotta

Mashed Potatoes
Uses up

• potatoes
• any miscellaneous dairy products
• some chicken stock

Pesto Chicken
I just have a leg marinating in pesto that I need to cook so I can have random chicken pits in sandwiches or salads (or real food) throughout the week.

food that will still need to be dealt with
Produce
red bell peppers
cucumbers
zucchini

plums
nectarines
strawberries

meat
a huge honking pork roast (leftovers)
chicken stock
a cooked chicken leg

Tags: chicken, eggplant, pasta, potatoes

It has been brought to my attention that the proper recipe for Coronation Chicken might be a little bit horrifying.

I first had it at a random sketchy sandwich shop on a tiny out of the way street in Stratford-upon-Avon (we chose that one because there was seating outside and even though our feet were tired, we were enjoying perfect weather and beautiful scenery), so it was food rather than tradition.

I was rather pleased (i.e. orgasmic) with the results when I made it this way:

Coronation Chicken

1 tsp butter
1/2 medium onion, diced finely
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp ketchup
1/4 c. red wine
1 bay leaf
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tsp apricot jam
mayonnaise

I had some cooked chicken leftovers, so I vaguely cut/shredded those.

In a small pan, I melted a pat of butter and cooked half an onion that was diced as finely as I was physically capable of doing.

When the onion was soft, I added the curry powder, ketchup (the source recipe called for tomato paste, but I didn’t have any), Manischewitz (best cooking wine ever!), a bay leaf, and the lemon juice.

Once that was all nice and saucy, I looked in my fridge because I knew I had some sort of light colored jelly in the fridge, and I was determined to use it whatever it was - only I had apricot! So that went in and was cooked until it melted into the sauce. At this point, I would have been quite willing to just eat this reduction straight.

But I soldiered on. I pulled out the bay leaf and poured the rest into a bowl (why bother cutting the onions fine, if you are just going to strain them out? besides, the cooked onions were lovely still in there). When it was cook enough to not melt the mayonnaise immediately, I beat in a forkful and then another until I had a smooth, creamy consistency. And then I added the chicken.

OMG! So tasty! And very, very rich. This was better than the stuff I had in england, which tasted like regular chicken salad with a bit of curry powder and a touch of fruit (raisins, if I remember correctly).

Tags: chicken

Food I Have:
dairy
some half & half
gorgonzola
pepper crusted goat cheese
cream cheese

meat
chicken stock
3 chicken thighs, thawed, marinated in soy sauce and rice vinegar
pork roast leftovers

bread
2 english muffins
3 hamburger buns
several pitas
corn bread muffins
biscuits
bunch of nifty noodles and spring roll wrappers

produce
leeks
habanero peppers
lettuce
baby bok choy
bean tops (tasty greens)
parsley
broccoli
chinese lettuce/cabbage
lemongrass

Meal planning:
Tuesday, January 23 - bring rice in from car - freeze stock in ice cubes
cook the chicken thighs with some onion, garlic, and ginger
Make half of the bean greenery, sauteed with garlic
cook short grain rice with lemongrass
freeze leftovers

Wednesday, January 24 - pick up laundry - buy potatoes & tortillas
make samosa filling
eat some for dinner
salad: lettuce, gorgonzola, grilled onions, toasted almonds

Thursday, January 25 - buy greek yogurt
stir fry broccoli, pork leftovers, shredded cabbage, onions, garlic, habanero and then toss with slice noodles
freeze leftovers

Friday, January 26 - assemble samosas. freeze some, refrigerate some - make shrimp dip
dice pork, freeze bone and skin in one bag, and most of the meat in another
cook some pork & what greens are left with a bouillon cube and a can of tomatoes, eat over rice in pitas.

Saturday, January 27 - bridge
samosas, shrimp dip & crackers… I need at least one other finger food option.
Okonomiyaki?

Tags: chicken, greens, napa cabbage, pork, potatoes

I made surprisingly tasty chicken this weekend. Well, it was a surprise to me.

See, I don’t like cardamom.

Let’s go back to the beginning. It all started with a surfeit of brussel sprouts and a recent encounter with tasty cabbage curry at an indian buffet. But once putting the brussel sprouts to curry (like putting them to pasture, but different) came up, it was mentioned that Nigella Lawson has a really good recipe for Golden Cardamom Chicken that would be the right thing to go with.

Since there was a chicken in the refrigerator, it was all around decided that this was a good plan.

Two hours to dinner, I get out the chicken and the cookbook and find that they are not entirely compatible. See - the golden chicken is actually smaller pieces of chicken that are marinated and then fried. That was not going to happen to this chicken. Therefore, I took that as a starting point, and ended up with a damn tasty bird.

For the sake of this recipe, we are going to pretend I had the allspice that the recipe called for, but in reality I cursed and substituted cinnamon and nutmeg instead.

Step 1: put into a small dry skillet - 2 or 3 whole allspice, 6 black peppercorns, 6 cardamom seeds (or a pod or two, if that’s what you have, but I am not fond), 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, 1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds, 1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary. Dry roast these. After a minute, also add 1/4 teaspoon turmeric and 1/2 teaspoon paprika. Right before the powdered ingredients burn, pour them out of the skillet and into a mortar (or spice grinder) - grind into as fine a powder as you can. Mix with a little bit of olive oil to form a paste.

Step 2: into a large measuring cup (you can use a bowl, but I have a fondness for measuring cups for this) grate the zest of 2 lemons. Squeeze the lemons, remove the seeds, and add the juice to the measuring cup - reserve the leftover lemon bits. Add some soy sauce, olive oil, orange juice, and maybe some white wine until the cups is decently full.

Step 3: Take out the chicken, make sure it is empty and all that. Now dump into the cavity: leftover lemon bits; a medium onion, quartered; as many garlic cloves as you feel like peeling (7ish); and 5 cardamom pods. Separate the skin from the breast meat a bit and rub the paste from step 1 mostly between the skin and the breast meat, but also rub it over the outside of the skin.

Step 4: Put in a roasting pan. Roast as you would a chicken. Every now and then, baste with the stuff in the measuring cup from step 2.

Step 5: eat.

And then in the comments, there was a question about how to convert this recipe to using chicken parts - so I offered up a formula:

Take a casserole dish. Layer the bottom with your onion and garlic and whatever you’d be putting inside the chicken (since I have never tried to deal with stuffing actually cooked inside my meat product). I find the layer tends to make cleaning the pan a little easier afterward.

Then make a layer of chicken that is as close to 1 chicken bit deep as possible.

Then you can treat the skin as the recipe expects you to treat the outside - smear overtop with the paste and feel free to either baste as you go, or cut the amount of liquid until it just comes up to the level of the chicken in the pan, but certainly does not cover the meat. If you are doing a higher proportion of leg bits with skin, you want less liquid because of all the fat that will drain and fill your pan, but if you are doing mostly breast meat, you want more liquid.

If there are any herbs or thing in the rub that you have whole, feel free to just add chunks of them instead, since more flavor tends to get into the chicken with this method of cooking: e.g. just have a handful of cardamom pods, instead of any powdered - or just slice a whole lemon and put that in instead of dealing with rind, juice, and bits.

I usually pop a piece of foil on top for the first bit of cooking and then pull it off for the last bit so that things get brown and juicy.

I tried to phrase this as a general case, but I can re-write it for the specific recipe, if that would please you more.

Tags: chicken

No, really, this is just me scheduling food.

So Here’s the almost current food list.

Over the weekend, I acquired roast pork, ten oranges, and four grapefruit leftovers from my parents. At the produce truck, I picked up 5 red bell peppers, a bunch of scallions, carrots, a bunch or parsley, 1/2 pint of blueberries, and 2 1/2 pints of blackberries (I went back for more twice!).

Monday, December 11th
film screening - so chili because that will reheat quickly. Pity I didn’t think to pre-bake a potato
Ooo… or how about a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries instead?

Tuesday, December 12th
Thai chicken with leeks, red bell peppers, carrots, and rice noodles. Coconut milk is a maybe.
*take ground beef out to thaw*

Wednesday, December 13th
Indian buffet at New Delhi before a movie
dessert of blackberries and cream

Thursday, December 14th
*bone and cut up pork roast - make stock with pork bones - freeze meat*
mexican ground beef casserole/giant layered dip of goodness
*taco seasoned ground beef
*avocado
*diced tomato
*scallions
*lettuce
*sour cream
*tortillas? tortilla chips?

Friday, December 15th
Library holiday party with tasty food
late supper of either chili or mexican thing leftovers
*bake something? something that’s not sticky or too crumbish*
*finish cooking and strain stock*
*set beans to soaking*
*buy chicken thighs and london broil on last day of sale, if they have any left*
If there are any blackberries left, eat them.

Saturday, December 16th
birthday freaks & geeks
*start cooking pork and beans in pork stock*
salad o’ leftovers?

Tags: blackberries, chicken, pork

I am so hungry. Every now and then - two or three times a year, I’ll be at a point where it feels like I can eat infinite quantities of food and still be hungry (or at least able to eat more). It’s a bit weird since just last week, I was getting full at the drop of a hat (or fork, as the case might have been), but I can roll with it.

I have fun food things going on.

I made an amazing dinner last night.

It started off with the acquisition of a mango.

So I looked through my spice rack (which is painfully small due to the amount of space int he apartment) and came up with one of the odd spice blends I have adopted due to my mother’s neglect. Cowboy Barbecue Rub. Who can resist that name? Its ingredients are: chile powder, garlic, onion, black pepper, cilantro, cumin, oregano, basil, cinnamon, clove, cayenne - and it always smells like it has dry mustard in it, but apparently it doesn’t.

So I pulled out one of the packages in my freezer with two chicken breasts and dumped a lot of the seasoning in there - and then left it to thaw/marinate in the fridge for a couple days.

Last night, I started off making a mango salsa by slicing purple onion very thinly, cooking it until caramelized, adding a little bit of the seasoning, and then adding the diced mango to the pan just briefly. Then I poured it into a container and added red wine vinegar (less than a teaspoon, I think) - popped that in the fridge.

Then I cooked the marinated chicken on slow heat because I was worried about the whole breasts cooking through - I put some aluminum foil loosely over the pan to keep some of the moisture in.

I assembled all the other ingredients I had to make the meal - red oak leaf lettuce, sharp cheddar cheese, tortillas, sour cream, and an avocado - and then I had an anguishing decision (and called both my mother and Meghan for advice): do I serve it as a plated meal, a quesadilla/fajita kinda of thing, or as a salad?

Oh, yeah - there was also a random sweet potato that I cut up and turned into french fries while I was making the meal.

Both my advisers agreed that it should be fajita night. Oh, man - great decision! MMmmmm!

There’s some salsa and a breast and a half of chicken left over, so I put them together to co-mingle until I turn them into another meal.

~*~

So tonight, I am thinking of putting together ground beef, mustard greens, and possibly an eggplant. To me, this says spicy chinese food. None of my chinese cookbooks agree with me. I think I just don’t have the right cookbook.

So plan is - clean as much of the greens as I can be bothered to do. Pickle them (cook briefly in boiling brown sugar and rice vinegar). Then brown and drain the beef. Add onion, garlic, and eggplant. Add some five spice powder. Perhaps mix some spicy stir fry sauce with some oyster sauce so that it doesn’t blow my head off. Add greens.

I have a feeling that this will taste more like an experiment than something good, but we’ll see.

~*~

When I start cooking tonight, I shall also be putting a pumpkin in to roast and lentils to soak because I’ll be setting up the soup that [redacted] suggested in the comments to the last entry. I don’t have lemongrass, but other than that, I’m good - limes are even on sale this week.

It sounds like I won’t actually be using a whole can of coconut milk (it’s just a small pumpkin) - so either the rest will go with the chicken and mango somehow (Oooooo) or I can make sweet coconut rice.

Okay, so I need to do a quick inventory of which perishables will not be used up in this clever plan.

produce
1 zucchini
3 apples
2 (peeled!) sweet potatoes (yeah, so either I vastly underestimated the size of a cut up sweet potato or overestimated my capacity - basically I had three potatoes, so that’s how many I peeled) - they might end up wasted… or maybe I’ll make some random mashed potatoes.
probably some of the mustard greens will be left over
1/2 head red lettuce
scallions (can totally go in the chinese food)

meat
1 cup beef stew
duck stock! (duh! So freeze half in the beef stew container once you empty it, and use the rest to make the pumpkin lentil soup)
lots of meat is on sale this week. I need none of it.

bread
breadcrumbs - so these aren’t really perishable, but I have leftover bread I dried to turn into bread crumbs, but my container is all full.

dairy
2% milk
light cream
greek yogurt (which I bought without a plan because it was there!)
sour cream
cream cheese
gorgonzola
italian seasoned cheddar (open!)

Tags: beef, chicken, greens, mango, tofu, winter squash