Lemon Pepper Pasta with Capers

To make up for the gravy fries from the last post, let me point you in the direction of a lovely pasta in a light lemony cream sauce: Lemon Pepper Pasta with Capers from The Kitchn. And yes, I mean that. Each serving has a grand total of 1 tablespoon of cream in it, and you can easily nudge that already-pretty-low number down, or even use half-and-half instead.



We have Trader Joe's here, so I made sure to pick up a package of the Lemon Pepper Pappardelle the last time I was there. The girl who rang up my purchases told me she'd tried it with tomato sauce and that it just hadn't worked, but she didn't know what sauce to use instead.

This one is a nice simple option. Turns out you don't need a lot of cream for a convincing cream sauce; this one calls for 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) total, and I used even less than that. I added between 2 and 3 tablespoons of cream to mine and it was plenty. I also cut back on the capers and added what looked like a "good amount".

There's a lot of room to play around here. Toss in some veggies, add some chicken (or shrimp or shellfish, if you're someone who can do that without breaking into hives... which I'm not), use regular pasta and add the juice from the lemon to the sauce, etc.



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Recipe: Lemon Pepper Pasta with Capers from The Kitchn at Apartment Therapy

Space needed: Minimal
Two pans (one for pasta, one for sauce), and enough counter space to chop up the garlic.

Cost: Under $5 per serving
Actually, under $2 per serving. $1.79 to be exact, $7.15 for the full 4-serving recipe, going by what I paid for the ingredients here in Maryland.

Recipe amounts: Pasta - $2.00; Garlic - $0.10; Lemon - $0.50; Butter - $0.10; Olive oil - $0.15; Chicken broth - $0.40; Cream - $0.40; Capers - $3.50) = $7.15

Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic

Today was a yucky, rainy, gray day here in MD.

I wanted warm, carb-filled, unhealthy comfort food. The PERFECT excuse to make the Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic that Serious Eats posted a few weeks ago.



Oh, mama.

I feel bad even posting this, but it was so ridiculously easy and SO GOOD. A nice time-saver and space-saver is to use frozen steak fries. That's what I did, so I omitted the olive oil used on the potatoes. I ignored the cooking instruction on the package and followed the recipe: 40 minutes at 400 degrees, turning once. The fries and garlic were done at the same time, ready for the super-simple gravy. Cook flour and butter together for a quick roux, add beef broth, stir like crazy for a minute to get rid of the lumps, then let it simmer for 20-30 minutes.

The roasted garlic is such a great addition to this. The sweet, slightly caramelized flavor sets off all those savory ingredients very nicely.

I am ready for a happy carb nap now. :)

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Recipe: Eat for Eight Bucks: Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic from Serious Eats

Space needed: Minimal
Space to cut up the fries and slice the top off of the garlic, a saucepan for the gravy, and a baking sheet for the fries and garlic. If you use frozen fries, you barely need any counter space at all.

Cost: Under $5 per serving
This depends heavily on the cost of the cheese. Serious Eats used a Gruyère that was $15.80 per pound, and even theirs came in at $8.02 for 2 servings. I used some Trader Joe's shredded Mexican four-cheese blend that I had on hand, which was something like $4 per pound.

Pepperoni pasta

This was easy, fast, and incredibly good. :)



I came across this Cavatappi with Pepperoni recipe in foodandwine.com's "Quick Pasta" slideshow. Pasta, tomatoes, garlic, onion, bell pepper, and a very respectable amount of pepperoni to give it a bit of heat. I followed the recipe pretty closely. However, instead of dumping all the grease from the pepperoni, I kept a bit of it in the pan and used that to sauté the onion and pepper. I also used a couple of 8 oz cans of plain no-salt-added tomato sauce instead of the whole tomatoes in the recipe.



This was filling, but not heavy. Nice mild heat from the pepperoni, balanced by the sweet onions and peppers. It was done in under half an hour, not much cleanup... gotta love that.

Two thumbs up!

Fusilli Carbonara

Pasta + bacon + egg + leeks + 15 minutes = happy me.

And really, can you blame me for that? A bowl of hearty, filling comfort food (did I mention the bacon and eggs?) in about as much time as it takes to cook a pot of pasta. I even splurged a bit and got some Niman Ranch uncured applewood smoked bacon for this... out of this world. The leeks add a mild sweet onion flavor that complements the saltiness of the bacon very well.



Recipe: Orrechiette Carbonara (Bon Appétit, April 2008)

"Irish" meatloaf with holiday potatoes

I collect meatloaf recipes, ideally ones with an off-the-wall ingredient or something unexpected. When I came across this cheddar meatloaf recipe on The Fresh Market website, I was drawn to the use of quick-cooking oats as a binder, instead of the standard breadcrumbs. And as I was making it, it occurred to me that there were two very "Irish" ingredients in it: oats and cheddar. I didn't bother with mini-meatloaves, as you can see. Nor did I "finely chop" the onion, because I like larger chunks of onion. It ended up moist but not greasy, and held together pretty well even though I cut into it the second it came out of the oven. This is one of those "nobody would guess the secret ingredient" recipes; it certainly doesn't taste like oatmeal.

And since it's meatloaf, there's a law that it has to be served with mashed potatoes... another thing that people associate with Ireland. These here aren't normal mashed potatoes. They are the single most unhealthy potato preparation I've ever made; as you can imagine, they are also absolutely delicious. I guess in the interests of eating healthy, one could use low-fat cream cheese and leave out the butter. For special occasions, though, these potatoes (also from Fresh Market) should get the full shebang. I left the skins on mine, since these were just for me and I like potato skins.

In keeping with the theme, you could certainly bring color into it and have a green vegetable or salad on the side. For me, this was one of those meat-and-potatoes moments where I just wanted comfort food and didn't want to fuss with anything else for the sake of a "complete" meal. Broccoli would be nice, maybe roasted alongside the meatloaf and potatoes (bonus: both dishes cook for the same time at the same oven temperature).

Recipes:
Lil Cheddar Meatloaves (The Fresh Market)
Holiday Potatoes (The Fresh Market)

Onion soup

I'd been looking for something lighter to kick off the new year with. And as I sat there this morning paging through a Donna Hay cookbook, I realized: I don't *want* lighter. It's winter. I'm supposed to be having rich, slow-cooked, filling stuff, not salads. I realized this when I came to a full page picture of French onion soup and nearly started drooling.

And really, all it is is onions and broth... it's rich, but it's not wholly unhealthy, so I don't feel quite as bad about having this as my first "real" post of 2008. I started with the Donna Hay recipe, and then incorporated ideas from a couple of other onion soup recipes (the bourbon and red pepper flakes are all me, however). This would easily serve 4 as a starter, and 2-3 as a main course.



Onion soup

1 large red onion
2-3 small yellow onions
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh thyme or 2 tsp dried ground thyme
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 cup bourbon
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 cup water
about 4 cups beef broth (2 cans is fine, use the low-sodium option)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

Cheese toast:
1 slice of bread for each serving
Butter at room temperature
Shredded cheese

Thinly slice the onions. Heat the butter and olive oil in a large saucepan, then add the onions, thyme, and bay leaf. Cook uncovered over medium heat, stirring every couple of minutes, until onions are golden, 15-20 minutes (for darker onions, simply continue cooking at this point until they're the desired shade of brown). Remove and discard the bay leaf.

Add the flour and cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the bourbon and cook for 1 minute to remove most of the alcohol. Add the mustard, water, broth, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a slow boil and allow to cook, uncovered, until the liquid has reduced by half, about 30-45 minutes.

When the soup is almost done, assemble the cheese toasts. Preheat broiler. Butter one side of each bread slice, top with desired amount of shredded cheese (I go light on the cheese because this is a filling soup). Place the toasts in the broiler and cook until the cheese has melted and browned, about 5-7 minutes.

Ladle soup into serving bowls and top each bowl with a cheese toast.

*If you're without bourbon, you can substitute brandy, wine, sherry, or just leave out the alcohol entirely.

Chicken and Fall Vegetable Pot Pie

I know, I know, I just had a pot pie post fairly recently. I'm a pot pie fiend. Something about 3, possibly 4 food groups all smooshed together in one dish really appeals to me.



This particular one came up as the Epicurious featured recipe of the day a couple of weeks ago: Chicken and Fall Vegetable Pot Pie. Fresh Market had everything I needed except turnip greens, so I decided to substitute some baby spinach instead. Got three huge and absolutely gorgeous chicken breasts back at the butcher counter, and while I waited for my turn, I had some entertainment from the kids at the "make a creepy halloween cupcake" table. Cupcakes, frosting, and every kind of gummy creepy-crawly imaginable... The kids there were having a grand time.

Anyway, there's a reason that this has a 95% "would make it again" rate, with a 4-fork rating... it's really good. With the wine, leeks, and shallots in the sauce, and the departure from the normal "peas, carrots, onions" vegetable mix, this is a slightly more sophisticated version of a pot pie. It's very filling, full of lean protein, vegetables, and greens, with the only "unhealthy stuff" being the butter and shortening in the crust, and the heavy cream in the filling. I like to think the "good for you" cancels out the "not so good for you" in dishes like this.

This was a nice way to officially welcome fall to our corner of Maryland.

Turkey Cream Puff Pie

This is one that's been in the (virtual) recipe box for a while, just waiting for the first cooler day of the fall. It does not involve dessert cream puffs in any way; I think it acquired that name because the crust is a choux pastry, like what you use to make cream puffs... but it should probably be "turkey cheese puff pie" or "turkey gougere pie".



Making choux pastry is one of those times when you feel like something magic is happening in front of you. Every time I make a batch, I can't believe what happens. You dump the flour into your butter/liquid mixture and think, "Oh, this will never smooth out, I'm going to have a lumpy mess." Lo and behold, it smoothes out and all the lumps disappear. You add your eggs one at a time, and it looks like there's no way the dough will absorb each additional egg... and then you look and the egg you just added is gone. And all of this comes before you even bake it, which causes your sticky, buttery paste to rise and puff and turn a gorgeous golden brown.



I've made choux pastry a bunch of times, mostly for gougeres. The idea of using it as a savory pie crust, however, came from Gourmet magazine (recipe available on Epicurious). I subbed in my usual veggie combo of carrots, corn, peas, and broccoli, and also added a couple of tablespoons of sherry to my filling.

The smell of this baking is out of this world, by the way--my whole apartment is filled with the aroma of butter and cheese. The finished pie is pretty darn delicious. There's absolutely no confusing the choux pastry with a typical pie crust. It's dense and eggy and moist, with pockets of Swiss cheese throughout.

Something healthy next time, I promise.

Three days later...

Sauerbraten! I was pleased to see that none of the friends who had threatened to break into my place and steal this while I was at work today followed through.



The meat went in the oven at 7 am. I took it out at 10:45, then strained the braising liquid and made my gravy. I cut back the number of gingersnaps used to 12, because AB's gravy on the Good Eats episode looked almost too thick.



The meat was falling apart and very moist; gotta love a 3.5 hour braise. I had some buttered noodles on the side (organic pasta, even), and had a lovely lunch before I had to go off to work.

The one note I had was that the gravy, although very good, felt like it was lacking something. I was expecting much more of a hit from the vinegar, considering the sheer amount of vinegar in the dish. Something to make that acidity really pop, whether that's a bit more salt or a bit of lemon juice... whatever it needs, it doesn't need much. This is a darn tasty dish.

Sauerbraten, day one

I know, I know, I should be flogged for the lack of posts. I'm going to try to make up for it by taking three days to make sauerbraten.

I didn't even know I really needed to make sauerbraten. However, as I was sitting here Thursday night watching Good Eats, I realized that Alton Brown's sauerbraten was an absolutely essential project for the weekend.

Friday after work, I went in search of the one ingredient I anticipated having problems finding: juniper berries. My first instinct was to check at the natural market, and I was happy to see the berries hiding out in the bulk spice area, along with the mustard seeds and whole cloves that I needed.


I figured I'd see how much of the rest of the ingredient list I could cross off while there. Most of their products there are organic, but not too pricey. I managed to find everything I needed except the beef and gingersnaps, so there was a quick stop off at Giant to get those. I found a nice Angus 2.5 lb bottom round roast, which is a good size for a roast when it's just me. I'll have plenty of leftovers.

This morning, I gathered everything up and made the marinade:


After browning the beef, I poured the marinade over it and put it in the refrigerator. There it'll stay until Tuesday, when I stick it in a pot, put it in the oven, and forget all about it for 4 hours. Gotta love recipes like this: 20 minutes of work and let time do the rest. :D

Stay tuned...

Chicken with Black Pepper-Maple Sauce

If you're like me, you probably wish you could put maple syrup on everything. However, you probably also recognize that you'd get some weird looks if you hauled out the syrup bottle to use on grilled chicken...

Epicurious to the rescue! I took a stab at the Chicken with Black Pepper-Maple Sauce tonight, and it's absolutely a winner. The sauce is sweet from the syrup, spicy from the cracked pepper, tart from the vinegar--an excellent "grown-up" way to put syrup on one's dinner. :)



I did a few things differently than the recipe says. First off, I didn't feel like spatchcocking a chicken, so I grilled some boneless skinless breasts instead. Since I grilled these, I didn't have a pan that needed to be deglazed, so I just added the vinegar directly to the syrup mixture and let it reduce for another 10 minutes. It was a thin sauce; I probably could have reduced it further, but with all the sugar from the syrup, I didn't want to risk scorching it.

Braised chicken with balsamic vinegar

I had to wait a little whle until the painful stupidity of what I did with this had faded a little bit.

I decided to make a braised chicken-and-potatoes dish. It was done entirely on the stovetop, which is nice during the summer when one doesn't want to turn on her oven more than is absolutely necessary.

It serves 4, and there's just one of me. I loaded up all of my leftovers to take with me to work for lunch for the week... and left the container sitting next to my front door. After 9 hours of it sitting out at room temperature, I wasn't taking any chances, so I only had one meal from this. Luckily, it was a very tasty meal.



3 bacon slices, cut crosswise into 1/4" strips
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 medium onion, thinly sliced (Vidalia, if you can find one)
1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled, or 12-15 whole peeled garlic cloves
1 can (14.5 oz) low sodium chicken stock
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 lb waxy potatoes, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2" wide half-moons (peeling not necessary)

Cook bacon in a deep 12-inch skillet over moderately low heat, stirring, until crisp, about 8 minutes. Transfer the bacon to paper towels to drain, reserving the bacon fat in skillet.

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Brown the chicken (in 2 batches if necessary) in bacon fat over moderately high heat, turning once, about 10 minutes. Transfer the browned chicken to a plate, cover loosely with aluminum foil, and pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat from skillet.

Add the potatoes to the skillet and cook over medium heat until starting to brown, 8-10 minutes. Add the sliced onion. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are soft and slightly translucent, about 10 minutes.

Add the garlic cloves and chicken broth to the skillet, and bring to a boil for 1 minute.

Return chicken to skillet, nestling the chicken down into the sauce. Gently simmer, covered, until chicken is cooked through and potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes.

Transfer the chicken to a serving dish. Add the balsamic vinegar to the sauce and boil, uncovered, mashing the garlic cloves with the back of a spoon, until the sauce is slightly thickened. Serve chicken and potatoes together, sprinkled with crumbled bacon.

Lemon Vinaigrette Roasted Chicken with Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes

So, every month when I get the mailing from the cookbook club I'm in, there's a recipe printed inside the envelope. Usually, I forget about this entirely and throw it out. Luckily, I grabbed this one for Lemon Vinaigrette Roasted Chicken with Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes, which is from No-Fuss Dinners by Caroline Marson.



It wasn't exactly "no-fuss", I'll admit. However, it was an acceptable amount of fuss, especially considering the rather tasty result. The lemon and Gorgonzola complement each other very nicely.

Lemon Vinaigrette Roasted Chicken with Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes
2 unwaxed lemons
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, halved
6 boneless chicken breasts, with skin (about 6 oz. each)
handful fresh thyme sprigs
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp. cider or sherry vinegar
4 tbsp. honey
2/3 cup olive oil
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
wilted spinach and steamed or sautéed green beans, to serve

Gorgonzola mash:
3 lb. baking potatoes, peeled & cut into 8 pieces
3 fresh rosemary sprigs (optional)
1 cup milk, warmed
5 tbsp. unsalted butter
4 oz. Gorgonzola cheese, cubed
sea salt

small roasting pan

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Grate zest and squeeze juice from 1 lemon and set aside. Thinly slice remaining lemon. Scatter lemon slices, onion, and garlic over the base of the roasting pan. Place chicken on slices. Season well with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with thyme sprigs.

Whisk together the reserved lemon zest and juice, vinegars, honey, and olive oil in a bowl. Pour vinaigrette over chicken and cook in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Meanwhile make the Gorgonzola mash. Rinse potatoes and cook in a large pan of boiling salted water with rosemary (if using) for 12-15 minutes. Drain and mash. Put potatoes back into the pan, and stir briefly over low heat to remove excess moisture.

Beat in warm milk and butter and season well. Stir thoroughly until you have a smooth paste and a peaking consistency—add extra milk if necessary. Gently fold in the Gorgonzola just before you’re about to serve.

Remove chicken from the oven and then from the pan; set aside in a warm place. Place pan over a medium heat and bubble juices until syrupy.

To serve, place a large spoonful of mashed potatoes on each warmed plate and put a chicken breast on the top. Spoon over the lemon juices and accompany with wilted spinach and green beans. Serves 6.

MoJack Flank Steak

How yum does this look, non-vegetarians?

MoJack Flank Steak

A Jack Daniel's-and-citrus-based marinade? I'm intrigued. I've never cooked with whiskey... wine, sherry, vodka, but never whiskey. I'll have to try this out and report back. :)

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Verdict: Yum.



Giant didn't have flank steak when I went, so I grabbed a top round instead. I marinated it for about 5 hours, then slapped it on my electric grill. With all of the citrus in the marinade, I was a little worried that this would come out tasting like lime and nothing else, but I worried for nothing. All the flavors balance out nicely... and NO, it does not taste like bourbon, either. (Lesson learned today: bourbon is a type of whiskey. I learned this at the liquor store, after looking through the "whiskey" shelves in vain... and then finding the elusive Jack Daniel's in the bourbon shelves. A-HA!)

Crackers and breadsticks and chicken, oh my!

Here's what I did with my snowy Sunday...

I made whole wheat cumin seed crackers, topped with sesame seeds and kosher salt:



I experimented with an apricot chicken and rice dish:



I made a batch of crunchy herbed breadsticks (this batch had oregano and parsley, and romano cheese instead of parmesan):


To explain 2/3rds of what I did: I'm not buying any store-bought snack foods during Lent this year, so I'm hauling out various cracker and snack recipes to make in the meantime.

The whole wheat cumin seed crackers are part of a larger Charlie Trotter recipe for a seared tuna something-or-other... I thought the cracker part looked good (fish allergy, blah blah). The cumin seed flavor is actually a bit much in the crackers. I say that as someone who LOVES Indian food and is a fan of cumin seed in general. But, in these crackers, it's kind of overpowering. They're not BAD (half of them are gone already)... just not quite what I was expecting. Happily, I got a chance to test out a substitute "egg" wash that I thought would work nicely for these. Instead of using an egg + water, I mixed equal parts of honey and water, and brushed it on the crackers to adhere the sesame seeds and kosher salt. It worked very well. The honey gives a nice little touch of sweetness that works well with the whole wheat flour in these.

I've made the breadsticks before, and have talked about them here before... they're a nice snacking option, and I figured that I might as well make additional snack stuff while I had the time. :)

The apricot chicken and rice... let's just say that, when it snows around here, other people's driving gets incredibly scary. I decided to stay home and make dinner with what I had on hand. I don't normally make up recipes from scratch; I'll take an existing recipe and change half the ingredients around, but I don't usually just plop down a bunch of ingredients and say, "What can I make with this?" The fact that I came up with something that I actually want to make again... yay! I'll play around with it, and once I get a recipe for it, I'll pass it along.

Grilled Cajun Chicken Salad

Broke out my new countertop grill/griddle/panini press tonight, for the "grilling" part of this Grilled Cajun Chicken Salad with Spicy Ranch Dressing from Epicurious.



Tasty, yes. "Cajun" or "Spicy", no. I'll make it again, but with at least twice the cayenne pepper the recipe calls for, maybe a bit more. I found a nice arugula and baby greens mix for the salad, and had a hunk of sourdough bread on the side (because a carb-free meal is NOT a meal for me). The dressing is excellent; it could even be almost-healthy, if you used low-fat mayonnaise. It's creamy and tangy, exactly what ranch dressing is supposed to be like.

Semolina gnocchi

I have a bit of a tradition of making myself a nice dinner on the first night of the 24 season premiere each year. I'll sit there watching all the glorious violence, with my lovely meal and a glass of wine... Yes, the premiere of 24 is an event for me.



This year's offering was Giada De Laurentiis's Involtini of Beef, with her Gnocchi alla Romana (semolina gnocchi). Both recipes are from an episode of Everyday Italian about Roman cuisine. The gnocchi in particular were something I'd been wanting to make for a while. Semolina flour and chicken broth, cooked until it's the consistency of polenta, then mixed with an egg and spread on a cookie sheet to cool. As the mixture cools, it hardens to a point where it can be cut into pieces. Those pieces are arranged in a dish, topped with butter and cheese, and broiled. Relatively little work, really nice payoff.

I'm working my way up to potato gnocchi.



Kinda pretty, no?

The beef involtini are thin slices of beef rolled around a a veggie stuffing, cooked in a tomato sauce... also very good, but really, I made this meal because I wanted to try the gnocchi. :) They were a nice change from rice or pasta... this is a definite repeat dish for me.

Skillet chicken pot pie

Got this one from The Best 30-Minute Recipe, from the editors of Cook's Illustrated. Mine took a bit longer than 30 minutes because I went off from the recipe a little, but it was still quick.

Nice premise, though. Make a pot pie filling in a skillet, bake the top (I used biscuits) while the filling cooks, then top the cooked filling with the baked biscuits. And since the Cook's Illustrated people say that whack-a-dough biscuits are absolutely acceptable, I used a roll of Pillsbury Grands biscuits for the top. :)



For mine, I made the filling (chicken, onion, celery, carrot, peas, corn, with a sauce made from chicken broth, white wine, and heavy cream), then topped it with the uncooked biscuits and stuck the skillet in the oven. I wanted the biscuits to soak up some of the sauce as they baked, which added about 20 minutes or so on to the total time. It reheats very well, and the presence of LOTS of vegetables makes up for the heavy cream... at least, that's what I told myself. This was definitely a winner: one-pot meals RULE, and this one had a lot of flavor.

Ropa Vieja

I've tried a couple of different recipes for ropa vieja over the last couple of years. It's a Cuban flank steak, braised until the meat is falling apart, with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, and spices. The name comes from a poetic way of looking at the finished dish; the shredded beef and veggies DO look a bit like the tattered ends of a piece of old cloth (those of us who remember our high school Spanish might remember that ropa vieja means "old clothes").

Sara Moulton has a pretty good recipe for it in Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals. It's a "quicker" version, taking 3 hours from start to finish (and for this dish, yes, 3 hours is quick). Theoretically, you could get home at 5:30, start cooking, and have a late dinner around 8:30. My only complaint is that Sara Moulton's recipe calls for olives and some of the olive jar liquid, and all I could taste in the finished dish was OLIVE (and I LIKE olives, folks). Cut back on the olive flavor... it's a winner. Her recipe does a really nice job of making this time-consuming dish into something that someone COULD make during the week after work.

On the other hand, there's Daniel Boulud's recipe in Braise, which I made on Monday night/Tuesday morning. This cookbook is exactly what the title suggests: nothing but slow-cooked, braised dishes. His ropa vieja recipe calls for the meat to marinate overnight in a garlic and oregano rub, and then cook for 4 hours the next day. I ended up futzing with the schedule for it a bit. The meat marinated while I was at work Monday, and instead of cooking it for 4 hours in a 275-degree oven, I cooked it overnight in a 200-degree oven (which, yes, meant that I was getting up every couple of hours to flip the meat and make sure I hadn't accidentally lit the kitchen on fire). The meat fell apart as soon as I touched it Tuesday morning, and the sauce flavor is deep and rich. It's filling and satisfying without being heavy. I had white rice with mine, mixing the shredded beef and vegetables in with the rice.



Ropa Vieja (the extra-long version)
serves 4

3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 lb flank steak
1-2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and thinly sliced
1/2 cup sherry
1 14.5 oz can crushed tomatoes (low sodium or no salt added, if possible)
2 bay leaves
Fresh ground black pepper

Combine the garlic, oregano, and salt. Place the meat in a nonreactive container and rub on both sides with the garlic mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 6 hours to overnight.

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 200 degrees F.

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large ovensafe pot or Dutch oven over high heat. Scrape the rub off the meat and reserve. Sear the meat on both sides until browned, 5-7 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate and set aside.

Add another tablespoon of oil to the pot if needed. Add the onions to the pot and cook until light brown, 8-10 minutes. Add the bell peppers and cook for 5 minutes. Add the sherry (away from the heat!), bring to a simmer, and scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the tomatoes, 1 cup of water, the reserved rub, and the cayenne pepper. Return the meat to the pot, nestling it in with the vegetables. Add the bay leaves and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a simmer.

Cover the pot and transfer it to the oven. Cook until the meat is tender, 6-8 hours, turning the meat every 1.5-2 hours. (If the liquid level gets too low, add more water; the sauce should be thick, but not a paste.)

Remove the bay leaves from the pot, shred the meat, and serve.

Posole-Inspired Chicken and Rice Soup

I'm a big fan of posole, a Mexican soup using hominy. Of course, I rarely have hominy on hand, and I wanted something with those flavors that could be made with ingredients that I usually have on hand. Thus, this recipe.

To make this with hominy, leave out the rice, and add two drained 15-oz cans of white hominy.

Posole-Inspired Chicken and Rice Soup
serves 4

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1 cup uncooked rice
3 cups shredded or cubed cooked chicken (about 1 pound)
1/2 cup frozen corn kernels
1/2 cup frozen peas
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan or stockpot over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and cook until translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic, tomato paste, cumin, cayenne, and oregano. Cook, stirring, until the ingredients are evenly distributed.

2. Add broth, water, and rice. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender, 18 to 20 minutes. If you would like the soup to be thinner, add additional broth or water.

3. Stir in the chicken, corn, and peas. Cook until the chicken and vegetables are heated through. Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve. For something more like an "authentic" posole, also serve diced avocado, chopped lettuce, sliced radishes, tortilla strips, cilantro, grated cheese, and/or onions on the side so everyone can garnish their bowls.