Black Beans and Rice

There’s really no good way to start a post about beans and rice.  What am I supposed to tell you?  That we’re broke and can’t afford meat?  That we’re fat and shouldn’t eat meat?  That I’m always looking for an excuse to sneak a little extra bacon into our diet?  Well, it’s all true, so go ahead.  Pick one.

Then chop up five pieces of  bacon.  Five pieces of bacon is plenty.  Unless it’s been a seven-slice kind of day.  Am I right?

Fry the seven five pieces of bacon in a big skillet and smack your kids’ fingers with a wooden spoon when they try to sneak bites.  

Chop up an onion, a green pepper, six cloves of garlic, and two or three stalks of celery.  You wouldn’t believe the tears I cried over these vegetables.  I don’t know what is going on these Hawaiian onions, but they are industrial strength!

Add the veggies to the skillet.

If you have any extra tomatoes sitting around, chop them up and add them, too.  Aren’t these pretty? They’re from California.

Season with 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon oregano, a goodly amount of fresh chopped parsley, salt, and red pepper flakes.  I’m sorry I can’t be more specific than that; I rarely measure anything.

When the veggies are soft, add 1/2 pound cooked black beans to the skillet. 

Don’t forget the wine.  Wine is good.  

Add about two cups of chicken stock and simmer until, well, I don’t know.  Until it looks right.  Maybe 30 minutes?  It’ll be a nice, rich brown color.

Serve over rice and garnish with cilantro.  I like to add a pat of butter and fresh lime juice to my rice before I top it with beans.  Sometimes I even skip the beans.

This is a good dinner to have on my “out and about days.”  (Oh, wait.  That’s every day.)  I cook the beans in the morning, and in the evening when we return home, I have a Goober reheat them while the rice is cooking.  By the way, that is JellyMan’s second bowl of black beans and rice.  The boy eats a LOT. It’s no wonder I can’t afford meat!

Chicken and Lentils

I know, I know.  Two food posts in a row - I'm all out of sorts!  I blame The Goobers.  I'd tell you all about it, but you have your own math Goob issues to deal with so I'll just give you my version of this old Frugal Gourmet recipe for chicken and lentils.  It's a family favorite and feeds us for two days.

First, sort and rinse a one pound bag of lentils.  Place them in a pot along with two crushed cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, and about 1/3 cup of chopped oregano and dill.  (You can also used dried herbs, in which case you'd want about 2 teaspoons of oregano and 1 teaspoon of dill.)  Simmer in chicken broth (I use a 32 ounce box of Swanson if I don't have any homemade) for about an hour, or until soft.

While your lentils are simmering, cut up a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts into bite sized pieces.  (You can also use whole chicken pieces if you like.)  Brown the chicken along with one minced clove of garlic in a bit of olive oil.  

Place the chicken in a casserole dish.  Squeeze the juice of one lemon into the lentils and salt to taste. Pour the lentils over the chicken.  (You can top the lentils with 1/2 cup grated parmesan at this point, but if you forgot to buy a block of parmesan even though it was right there on your commissary list, don't sweat it.)  Cover and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour.

Serve over a bed of spinach leaves and top with a dollop of plain yogurt.  Delicious!

Shrimp and Rice

I want to talk to you about dinner, because if I'm telling you to chop up an onion, a green pepper, three stalks of celery, and three cloves of garlic, I'm not telling you about how the constant construction - BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP - on Oahu is seriously compromising my mental health. 

And if I'm telling you to saute the onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic in a half a stick of butter, I'm not telling you how I've searched the island for vital wheat gluten only to have The Man walk past a shelf at the commissary and say, "Oh, there's some."  

And if I'm telling you to add a big can of crushed tomatoes and about a cup of water to the skillet, I'm not scratching my head at the local custom of driving PAST the parking space you want and then backing into it.  I don't mean parallel parking on the street.  I mean parking in a regular old parking space in a regular old parking lot. Why?  Why?  WHY?  Oh, and if I'm telling you to add about two teaspoons of dried parsley, two bay leaves, and as much crushed red pepper as you can stand, I'm not complaining about how inconvenient it is to have to wear corrective lenses while participating in water sports.

And if I'm telling you to let that simmer for twenty minutes and then add a pound of medium shrimp, I'm not dwelling on the 75% Anemone just made on her math test or the 80% JellyMan just made on his Latin quiz or my sneaking suspicion that I will have adult children living in my basement for the rest of my natural life.

And if I'm telling you to heat the shrimp through and then serve them over rice, I'm not telling you how lonely the first year at a new duty station can be or how much I miss my family.

See?  Cooking is so much better than complaining.  I should take my own advice and try it sometime.

Friday Soup

This is a family recipe passed down from my Roman Catholic great grandmother who immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 1920s.  I never met her, but I love her soup.  It feeds us for days, costs less than $.50 per serving, and is the perfect pantry meal - I always have the ingredients on hand for those days when I just can't bear to go grocery shopping.  (I don't fall far from the tree.  My great grandmother hated grocery shopping, too, so one day she took the week's grocery money and blew it all on a dress.  I've done that, only I bought books.)

Friday Soup

1 large can whole tomatoes
1 large can tomato sauce
1 large can crushed tomatoes
2 cans kidney beans
1/2 pound small pasta (acine de pepe or orzo)
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
olive oil
red wine
dried oregano
dried basil 
dried thyme
2 bay leaves 
salt/pepper

Chop the onion and garlic and cook in a few glugs of olive oil in a large pot.  Add a bit of red wine (my method for measuring olive oil and wine is the same- upend the bottle and count to two) if you have it, but it isn't necessary.  Add the tomatoes, breaking up the whole tomatoes with your fingers or a spoon.  Add the spices.  I don't measure the spices, but I think I use about one and a half teaspoons each of oregano and basil, and 3/4 teaspoon of thyme.  Add enough water for it to look "soupy," cover, and simmer for an hour or so.  Add the pasta and stir constantly to prevent it from sticking.  When the pasta is nearly done, drain the beans and add them to the soup.  Cook until heated through.  Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve with salad and crusty bread.

And since I have been inundated with requests for pictures of my new crib, here are a few of my kitchen before our furniture came.  Here it is viewed from the eating area:

And from the family room:

I've never had so much counter space.

I was cranky when I wrote this.

Holy crap, I'm cranky.  As such, it's time for a cooking post.  Don't get all excited, because today I'm even cooking like I'm cranky.  This dinner isn't as delicious as my carnitas, but it's a hell of a lot easier and frees up some time to pinch a baby or drown a sack of kittens.  

Sorry.  It's been that sort of day.

First you buy a package of pork tenderloin.  Then you throw it on whatever sort of roasting pan you have handy and drizzle a good amount of olive oil on it.  Then you bust out the secret ingredient:

Yeah, baby.  Sprinkle McCormick's California Style Coarse Grind Blend Garlic Salt with Parsley (were all those words really necessary?) over the tenderloin.  Flip the meat over and and get that side, too.  Make sure the meat is sitting fat side up in the pan, and then throw it in the oven at 425 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until it's done.  (This extreme meat close up is for Tressa.  Everyone else can look away.  Come on, Tressa.  You know you love it.)

If you're having the kind of day I am, one piece of meat will be twice as thick as the other.  You have two options.  You could remember to take the smaller piece out of the oven first, or you could say "Screw it," and shred that charred little bastard for future enchiladas, feeding the crustier bits to the dog, who isn't all that discriminating when it comes to protein.  I went with option two, but you do whatever you want.

(Did you notice how I just referred to the dog as a who instead of a what?  That about sums up my opinion of humanity today.)

The Goobs love this stuff.  They call it Juicy Pork (you can totally hear the capital letters when they speak of Juicy Pork) and they look at me like I'm some sort of domestic goddess when I plunk it on the table, even if I've overcooked the meat and burned the bottom of the rice.  

They like white rice with soy sauce and green beans with bacon grease alongside their Juicy Pork.  Weird, right?  It must be the smidge of Japanese from The Man and the full dose of Appalachian from me.  Those Goobs get the best of everything.

Recipes, as Promised

I'm blogging about food, and I'm not even cranky.  Dinner was just so good last night that I wanted to share it with you.

I'll start with the chicken.  It's from one of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, but I can't remember which one, and I'm too lazy to check.  I don't even know what it's called, so let's just call it Lemon-Thyme chicken, shall we? (I'm sorry, Ina.  It isn't your fault that your recipes are so good and so simple that even a moron like me can make them without a cookbook handy.)  You'll want to start out with roughly equal amounts of freshly squeezed lemon juice and olive oil.  I had four lemons last night, so that's how many I juiced.  (And the lemons were practically seedless.  Why are they never seedless when I'm making lemonade or sorbet?  Huh?  Why are they seedless when I'm making a stupid marinade and it doesn't matter if there are 500 seeds?  Why?)  Dump the juice in a 13x9" baking dish along with about 3/4 of a cup of olive oil.  Or maybe a whole cup; I'm fairly liberal when it comes to olive oil.  Now add a goodly amount of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper (I'm going to say about a teaspoon of salt and 12 twists of pepper) and whisk it all together until the salt dissolves.  Now you'll want to add the fresh thyme leaves.  I don't know how many thyme leaves I put in.  I just stood there at the counter, listening to The Goobers argue about whose turn it was to clean the hamster cage and ripping thyme leaves off their stems until I got bored and called it good.  Now cut up three boneless, skinless chicken breasts lengthwise into three pieces each and put them in the marinade to soak.  I left them in the fridge for about 10 hours, but anywhere from 6 to 24 hours is just fine.  Now you have to grill them, but I can't help you with that part because The Man always does that for me.  Sorry.

While The Man was outside grilling the chicken, I was standing in the air conditioning making the tomatoes.  I think I'll call them Thymaters, because this is my blog and I can do anything I want.

First I cut up a package of cherry tomatoes and sprinkled them with one large clove of minced garlic, kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and fresh thyme leaves.  Then I drizzled them with olive oil and popped them under the broiler for about five minutes.  Easy, nutritious, and oh, so delicious, especially when served up with this fantastic bread.

It's the master recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  I wasn't going to order this book, but I finally beat down my inner skeptic and man, am I glad.  This bread is worth any amount of internal struggle.  The basic recipe goes something like this:

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast
• 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

You mix all that together (no yeast proofing, no dissolving, no kneading) and stick it in a large, covered container to rise for two hours.  Then you pop the container in the fridge and let it sit there overnight, and THEN, for the next two weeks or so, you just whack off a grapefruit sized piece of dough whenever you want a loaf of bread.  (We Squares are pigs and gluttons, so a double recipe only kept us in bread for about ten days.)

To bake your loaf, you dust the ball of dough with flour and quickly shape it into a ball. It's supposed to be sticky, so don't try to work the flour into the dough.  Let it rest for 40 minutes on a pizza peel that has been dusted with semolina or cornmeal or whatever.  After 20 minutes, turn your oven to 450 degrees to heat up your baking stone and a broiler pan.  (Place the pan so it won't interfere with the bread's rising.)  When the dough is finished rising (it might not rise much on the counter; that's okay), dust it with flour and slash it with a serrated knife.  Transfer it to the baking stone and quickly pour one cup of hot tap water into the broiler pan and shut the door.  Bake for 30 minutes.

The bread is crusty on the outside and soft on the inside, with just the right amount of tang, and it really only takes five minutes of your life.  The rest of the time the dough is just sitting around and minding its own business; it's the perfect house guest.  Go buy this book - it's great. I haven't made any of the other recipes yet, but the Montreal bagels are calling my name so loud I can barely hear myself think.

So that was my dinner last night.  What did you have?  Oh, wait a minute - I have to follow the food blog rules and show you the plate again:

Wow, I'm so glad I don't have a food blog.  If I had a food blog, I'd say, "Dammit, you lazy bastards, scroll back up to the beginning of the post if you want to see the dinner again.  Jeez!" 

Or something like that.

Vegetable Enchiladas

Yes, I'm cranky.  My dog woke up sick at 1:30 in the morning and that, so far, has been the highlight of my day.  I think I'll drown my sorrows in melted cheese and sour cream.  Not that it will really help my mood much.  You see, about six years ago I made the best enchiladas I've ever had IN MY LIFE.  Really.  I combined a recipe I found in a library book with a recipe I found on google, and it was perfect!  So what did I do?  Well, I can tell you what I didn't do - I didn't write it down.  And of course I eventually forgot which library book and which website, and I've spent the last six years trying to recreate them and failing every time.  But these aren't bad.  The original recipe is from one of those little Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazines, but she made it all healthy.  Everybody knows enchiladas are not supposed to be healthy.  Olive oil and vegetable broth?  Please.

I have long puzzled over those teeny tiny 6 oz. cans of tomato paste at the store.  I say to myself, "Self, why on earth would anyone need exactly six ounces of tomato paste?"  Well, now I know.  Another question answered - I'll be able to die in peace pretty soon.  You need the 6 oz. can of tomato paste so you can cook it with 1/4 cup of flour in a goodly dollop of vegetable oil.

Then you slowly stir in about 2 1/2 cups of chicken stock.  It's best if you use homemade stock, of course, but we all have those days when we wake up to dog vomit and just can't manage it.  Canned broth is just fine.

I like to stir the broth in with a spoon, and then switch to a whisk to get all the little lumps smoothed out.  You don't want lumps in your enchilada sauce.  (It took me years to be able to make any sort of sauce or custard without lumps or clumps - I used to strain everything before serving.)  After you've got the flour properly distributed, whisk in your spices.  Start with 1 teaspoon of cumin, and go from there. In this batch I sprinkled in salt, pepper, Mexican oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder, crushed red pepper, and a pinch of cinnamon.  I hardly ever measure spices - just add however much you like of whatever you like.

This is where I like to top off the sauce with a swirl of heavy cream, but Anemone has requisitioned all the cream to make her deliciously fattening desserts.  Far be it from me to argue with that!  So instead of cream I added a sizable lump of butter, then set the sauce aside and assembled the filling, which includes a 10 oz. box of frozen spinach (defrosted and squeezed dry), 10 oz. of corn, 1 can of drained and rinsed black beans (sometimes I use leftover Quick "Refried" Beans instead - it's better that way), somewhere between 2 and 3 cups of shredded cheddar cheese (I use a cheddar/jack combo), a few sliced green onions (or half a yellow onion, diced, or a whole scallion, sliced - doesn't matter), 1 teaspoon of cumin, and salt and pepper.  If you have some leftover roasted chicken, go ahead and shred it up and throw it in - I won't tell anybody.

Fill 11 tortillas with 1/3 cup filling each and put them into a 13x9" baking pan. (I happen to think blue ones work best.) Do you see that half an enchilada in the lower right hand corner?  I'm eating the other half right now.  Pour the sauce over the tortillas, and top with an obscene amount of shredded cheese.

Bake your tortillas at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or so, until they're all gooey and bubbly and have a little rim of burnt, crusty cheese around the edges. I love that.

Top your enchiladas with whatever you like; I like sour cream and cilantro. And now, because it seems to be the law of recipe posts, I will close with another picture of the finished product:

I don't know why that is the law, but I wouldn't want to confuse anyone by deviating from the food blog standard. Another thing about food blogs - the pictures are wonderful! I mean, look at this.  And this.  And this.  That's why I don't have a food blog. Well, that and I would probably hang myself in despair eventually.  I hate cooking.

Vegetable Enchiladas

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Sauce

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup flour
2 1/2 - 3 cups chicken broth
1 tsp. cumin
salt and pepper
various Mexican-type spices

Filling

10 oz. box frozen spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
10 oz. box frozen corn
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
several green onions, sliced
2 cups grated cheddar
1 tsp. cumin
salt and pepper

Make sauce:Cook flour and tomato paste in the oil. Slowly add the chicken broth, whisking to smooth. Add spices and set aside.

Make filling: Combine all ingredients for filling and mix well.

Assemble enchiladas: Fill as many tortillas as you can fit in a 9x13" pan with 1/3 cup filling. Pour sauce over, sprinkle with 1 - 2 cups shredded cheese. Bake for 30 minutes or until heated through.

Roasted Kielbasa

If I have to eat kielbasa (que pasa?) this is how I cook it.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Poach sausage rings in simmering water for 15 minutes (or for however long it takes you to remember you have something on the stove).  Place on baking sheets; roast 20 minutes, until skin crackles and begins to turn brown (or until you remember you have something in the oven).

Martha serves this with rye bread, strong horseradish and beets, and that sounds great.  But mac 'n cheese, brown mustard and broccoli is more our speed these days.

Asian Chicken Salad

This is great meal to prepare ahead.  Wonderful on picnics, too.  I got this from Barefoot Contessa Parties! Ideas and Recipes for Easy Parties That Are Really Fun by Ina Garten (I LOVE this cookbook even though my parties never have more than four people on the guest list) and it is the only way The Goobers will eat asparagus.

6 chicken breasts, bone in and skin on

olive oil

kosher salt

black pepper

1 pkg of asparagus, cut into chunks

2 large (or three small) bell peppers - I like to use red, orange, and yellow

4 green onions, white and light green parts (or scallions if your market carries them) thinly sliced

2 tablespoons white sesame seeds, toasted

Dressing

1 cup vegetable oil (I go easy on the vegetable oil - I probably use less than 3/4 cup)

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup soy sauce (I go a little heavy on the soy sauce - probaby 1/2 cup)

3 tablespoons dark sesame oil

1 tablespoon honey

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced (I go a little heavy on the ginger, too)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

4 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

First cook your chicken.  Rub with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and cook skin side up in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.  Discard the skin (or feed it to your dog, who will keep watch while you shred the meat into large bite sized pieces.)  You can keep the bones in the freezer if you like, and after you've made this a few times you can make chicken broth. 

Blanch the asparagus in boiling, salted water for about three minutes.  Plunge into an ice bath to stop the cooking, then drain.  Cut the peppers into strips.  Combine chicken and veggies in a large bowl.

Whisk together all of the dressing ingredients and pour over the top.  Add the scallions and sesame seeds and then play with the seasoning as needed.  You can eat it right away or serve it cold.

Carnitas

We love all things Mexican at our house, but carnitas are a particular favorite.  You will need: 

You will send your husband out for a 2-3 pound boneless pork shoulder, and when he comes home with a hunk of meat with a great big BONE in it, you will still love him but you won't give him any carnitas.  You will cut up the meat into 1" chunks, and you will NOT remove the fat because the fat is what makes it good.  In fact, if you use a lean cut of pork like the tenderloin, you will need to add some lard to your skillet.  After you cut up your pork, you will chop up your garlic.  I'm sure most everybody reading this is sharper than I am, but I recently learned that if you position your knife and your garlic just so:

and then smash your hand down on the blade, the garlic will smoosh and it will be much easier to peel and mince.  I am nearly in tears thinking of all the time I've spent peeling the skin off of garlic.  Anyway, after you mince your garlic you will pry the lid off the tin of Mexican oregeno.  This will take some time, because Dean & Deluca thinks it's hysterical to charge an arm and a leg for pretty tins that won't open.  They're laughing at you right now.  After you get the tin open, you will scoop up the oregeno that is scattered all over your kitchen (about a teaspoon's worth) and add it to the skillet along with about a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, maybe a bit more if you've got a lot of meat there.  You don't need to make it too spicy, as you will be dumping your condiments of choice on it later.

Then you will add a good amount of water.  Not too much, though.  Let some of the meat break through the surface.  Now bring it to a boil.

It will look nasty.  You will ignore the self doubt and the gag reflex, turn the heat down to medium low, and let it simmer for 45 - 60 minutes, until the water cooks down.

Be sure to check on it every once in a while.  You will probably be very conscientious for the first 30 minutes or so, but then your mother will call or you'll decide to grade your son's grammar exercises (you know, the ones that have been piling up for the past two weeks or so) and before you know it, you'll smell something funny and remember that you're needed in the kitchen.

That's right, your carnitas are burning.  But you don't mind, because your picky children won't eat charred carnitas and that just means there is more for you.

Be forewarned: someone who claims to love you may barge into your kitchen and take your picture.  This person will use flash, and unless you are Michelle of Applie's Place, aka June, admirer of the Vita-Mix, you will look like a slob and resolve to go on a diet.  ( Just as long as that diet includes carnitas, because darn it, you have already put a lot of time into this meal and you are going to eat it.)

By the time your carnitas are nice and brown, your cast iron skillet will look something like this:

Be not afraid.  Cast iron skillets are easy to care for as long as you follow a few important rules.  The first is to never, ever use soap on your skillet.  The second is to never, ever grab hold of your skillet with your bare hands while it is still hot.  Always assume that it is still hot, or you'll end up with a blistered palm.  Okay.  First, gently wipe the gunk out of the skillet with a handknit dishcloth.  The handknit dishcloth is very important.  Then dry your skillet, and rub it with a very thin layer of Crisco.

After you're done, your skillet will be ready to heat up the tortillas you did not make yoursef because you were very busy with other things, like knitting your dishcloth.  Store bought tortillas are awesome, but they are even better when you heat them for a few seconds on each side, like so:

You will have already made your guacamole and salsa, so you're all set.  Slap a tortilla on a plate, dump some meat on top, then slather with whatever condiments you like. 

Pig out and go back for seconds.  There's plenty, remember?  Your husband is being punished.  What?  You fell for the back rub and the kitchen clean up duty?  Sissy.