Chicken Parmesan (Light?)

I wanted to try Cooks Illustrated's Light Chicken Parmesan, mostly because I hardly ever equate Cooks Illustrated recipes with anything light.  Unfortunately, I was so absorbed in the recipe that I forgot to take pictures during the first few steps.  It involved toasting panko bread crumbs, combining those with parmesan cheese, and filling two other shallow dishes with a flour/garlic salt mixture, and two egg whites mixed with water.  I dipped the chicken first in the flour, then in the egg whites, then in the bread crumbs.  I put the chicken on a foil lined baking sheet with a wire rack set inside and baked it at 475 for 25 minutes.


Meanwhile, I made a simple tomato sauce to go with the chicken.  First, I sauteed tomato paste, four cloves of minced garlic, and crushed red pepper in olive oil.

Then I added two 15 ounce cans of diced tomatoes that I had pulsed in the food processor

The recipe called for fresh basil, but I only had dried, so I added that in and then simmered it for about 20 minutes.


Once the chicken was cooked through, I took it out of the oven and topped it with a few tablespoons of sauce and a few tablespoons of shredded mozzarella cheese.  Then it was back in the oven to melt the cheese.  I turned on the broiler at the end to get the cheese brown and bubbly.  


The chicken pieces were so thick from the breading and sauce and cheese that we each only had a half portion.  We ate this delicious creation on a bed of whole wheat pasta topped with more sauce...and of course, with a glass of red wine

Carnitas!

Dinner Monday night was the perfect opportunity to use our pressure cooker.  We got back from the grocery store with a pork roast and not a lot of time to cook it before we had to resort to eating our utensils.  As we munched on chips and salsa, our dinner cooked away in the hissing pot.


I'm always grateful I have Nick around to cut meat.  It's just one of those meal preparing jobs I hate doing.

The braising liquid the recipe called for was a delicious smelling mixture of lime juice, orange juice, an onion sliced in half, cumin, and two cups of water.  We were supposed to add oregano and bay leaves, but I mysteriously had run out of both.  Instead, I added ground coriander.  Seemed  close enough!

We pressure cooked everything for an hour

Once we opened the cooker, Nick removed the meat and other solids and I shredded the pork.

The great twist on these carnitas was turning the braising liquid into a syrup to flavor the pork even more.  I reduced and reduced and reduced.  It took almost fifteen minutes, but I was finally able to move a spatula through it and leave a trail.

I tossed the liquid with the pork and spread it out on a foil lined baking sheet with a wire rack.
Then, I stuck it under the broiler for a few minutes to get it crispy, flipped the pork over, and stuck it back under the broiler for another few minutes.

The result was amazingly crisp, juicy, flavorful pork with great flavor.  We enjoyed the pork in warm tortilla after warm tortilla, and of course topped with lots of yummy thing :)

Snow Day Comfort

Monday we were snowed in.  I wanted to make something comforting for lunch, and the last of the bacon in the fridge was calling my name.  What better to make with a few strips of bacon than Loaded Baked Potato soup?  Health food it is not, but comforting it is!


Once again, I started by rendering pieces of the bacon

Then I diced five russet potatoes (I never bother to peel potatoes...what's the point?), and once I removed the bacon I added the potatoes to saute in the fat.

Sometimes I add chicken stock, sometimes I add water.  Today, it was water (I'm warning you this is not a pretty soup)

Yummmm.....grilled cheese...

Once the potatoes were cooked, I took the immersion blender and blended it until mostly smooth (I like some chunks for the full baked-potato effect)

Once it was blended, I added the real baked potato toppings: sour cream, cheddar cheese, and bacon.  Yummy...the perfect snowed in lunch!

Bacon Explosion!

Ok, we might be slightly obsessed with bacon in our house.  If it's in the fridge, I think "Why not use it for every meal"?!?  After our pancakes Sunday morning, I decided to make pasta with the bacon Sunday night.  It's an old stand by recipe (although it's so easy, I'm not sure you can call it a recipe).  Sometimes when I make this, I use the pasta maker attachment to my Kitchen Aid and make homemade linguine.  Tonight, we just used whole wheat rotini pasta.


First, I sauteed bacon in a little olive oil until it was crispy and had rendered most of it's fat

I skimmed out the bacon, leaving the fat behind, and added a diced onion to cook in the fat

Once I added the onion and let it cook, I opened a can of diced tomatoes and poured it in

I cooked the pasta while the tomato sauce simmered.  Once the pasta had cooked, I reserved some of the pasta water to add into the sauce.  This is my secret way of thickening the sauce with starch from the pasta and adding flavor with the salty water.

The final step was cooking the sauce for another ten minutes, and then all you have to do is add the cooked pasta and bacon!  We topped with parmesan and enjoyed the dish with a nice glass of red wine :)

Sunday Morning Pancakes

I love going to church on Saturday night, it means I get to sleep in on Sunday morning!  This Sunday, I did what my husband calls a Hansen girl sleep...I might not have gotten out of bed until 11 am :)  I even missed Meet the Press!  Another great part of sleeping in Sunday mornings is making pancakes in my pajamas.  We had a little bacon too!  Usually I make Mark Bittman's light and fluffy pancakes, which require separating the eggs and beating the whites until stiff.  Instead, I decided to try the Cooks Illustrated recipe from the awesome America's Test Kitchen cookbook my sister in law got for me for Christmas.  It calls for a whole two cups of buttermilk!


I started off with the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder

Then I added the buttermilk, which I had mixed with eggs and melted butter

We have this awesome combination grill/griddle/panini maker.  We got to make pancakes AND bacon at the same time!

Pancakes, bacon, pajamas all day, and football.  Pretty much a perfect Sunday!

Pizza Night!

Friday night is pizza night in the Dailey house.  It's also trivia night, which is why I'm just posting now.  We had easy prep because Nick made a full batch of Cooks Illustrated pizza dough earlier in the week for the bread sticks we had for Sausage Lasagna.  The only things left to do were defrost the dough in the fridge overnight, along with a food saved bag of frozen mozzarella (we buy in bulk from Costco and then divide into smaller bags for easy weekly pizza use), and make the tomato sauce!  I didn't have the small can if crushed tomatoes that I normally use, so I took a can of diced tomatoes and whirred it in the food processor.  My standard way of making pizza sauce is to saute garlic in olive oil, add the crushed tomatoes, and then spice it up with crushed red pepper and some of Penzey's delicious Italian herb blend.  I actually forgot to add salt this time, which turned out fine because it was pepperoni pizza week and that was salty enough!

I'm in charge of stretching and topping the pizza because when Nick does it, there is a lot of frustration and torn dough.  I stretch out the pizza into the desired shape, make sure our pizza peel is dusted with cornmeal, and then I transfer the dough to the peel for topping.  We had a pretty boring topping this week, just pepperoni.  Sometimes I top with veggies just for me :)

The key to our delicious pizza is a super hot oven (545 degrees), and our trusty pizza stone.  Nick uses it for bread baking and the stone tends to get a little black and crusty, so it's not really camera-ready!  Instead, I'll just show you the finished product.  Trust me, this is the best pizza you can get outside of a Neapolitan pizza joint!

Unappetizing Name, Delicious Outcome

It only took me six years to make Nick's favorite dish: meatloaf.  As gross as it sounds, I got over my fear of the loaf of meat and made the Cooks Illustrated version tonight.  It was a fairly straightforward recipe, though we added our own twist by buying whole cuts of beef and pork.  Nick loves to use the meat grinder we got for our wedding:

The mixture was, as I understand it, a fairly straightforward combination: beef, pork, beaten eggs, thyme, salt and pepper, sauteed onions and garlic, oatmeal, milk, Worcestershire sauce, and parsley.

 The glaze recipe was a mixture of ketchup, brown sugar, and apple cider vinegar.  Very authentic according to my mother, whose recipe comes from my grandmother.

I chose not to wrap the meatloaf in bacon, partially because we ran out of the good nitrate-free stuff from Costco, and because I made some delicious mashed potatoes (with butter and half and half) to eat along with it (comfort food, yes, healthy, no).
I put a second coat of glaze on the meatloaf after 45 minutes of baking.  The remaining 15 minutes of cooking and 20 minutes of resting seemed like an eternity to my salivating husband.

 I treated the meatloaf as a more of a free form meatball, and was able to enjoy it.  I even enjoyed making it, though I have to admit I had Nick form it into the loaf shape...some things are better left done to the person requesting the meal :)

Sausage Lasagna

After yesterday's complicated dinner, I decided not to do the full Cooks Illustrated recipe for Meat Lasagna.  This is also due to the fact that the sauce recipe includes cream, which Nick does not like in pasta sauce.  So, I made up my own sauce, anchored by mild Italian sausage removed from the casing and crumbled.  I added garlic, salt, pepper, dried basil, a 30 oz can of crushed tomatoes, and a little water. 

I have to admit, I did use the Cooks Illustrated ricotta filling recipe.  This involves mixing ricotta, a beaten egg, salt, pepper, dried basil, and parmesan cheese.  

I layered everything in a 9x13 inch pan, starting with the sauce, and followed by the no-boil lasagna noodles, ricotta mixture, mozzarella cheese, and more sauce.  I swear, every time I make homemade lasagna I run out of something before I get to the top.  This time, it was the sauce, and then a little mozzarella at the top (probably because I did not use the full 4 cups called for). 

We are enjoying this lasagna with some delicious bread sticks courtesy of Nick.  Of course, they are parmesan cheese-topped because we bought a block at Costco today and we are looking for every excuse to use it! 

Cooks Illustrated Favorite Chili Not My Favorite

Since I had a lot of time on my hands this New Years Day, I decided to try an extremely complicated chili recipe from Cooks Illustrated.  In typical CI style, the steps were long and many.  I started off toasting some arbo chilies, then added them to various spices and cocoa powder (!) in the food processor.  Adding chicken stock while the food processor was running made everything come together into a paste. 

Next, I pulsed the onions and jalapenos into a chunky pieces and then dumped them into the dutch oven to soften.  

When they were ready, I added garlic and then mixed in the paste along with some diced tomatoes.  The chili started to take shape when I added more chicken stock and some pre-soaked pinto beans.  

As this mixture simmered, I browned cut up pieces of beef (thanks, Nick!!).  

The recipe called for the browning pan to be deglazed with a lager.  We had Modela in the garage, so I used that.  What seemed like an eternity after I started the chili, I brought everything to a simmer and put it in the oven to simmer for a couple hours.  When Nick's delicious cornbread was done, we took out the chili and had a wonderful meal!  

While the chili's deep color and smoky flavor were extremely appealing, I thought it wasn't worth all the labor intensive preparation.  Next time, I think I'll skip making my own chili paste and save time by using a powder, such as Chili 3000 from Penzey's.