Christmas Day

Happy Christmas everyone...old school 70's style!

Thanks, Play-doh

Remember your old school Play-doh days? The strangely and deliciously stinky cans of multi-colored clay that you squished and squashed and molded into myriad shapes, then left to dry and get crusty and break off into pieces that would get in the carpet and make your mom fuss at you? I've moved on from my Play-doh days, but it turns out I learned a valuable skill.

I made gnocchi!! If being a carb addict is wrong, I don't wanna be right. I love anything starchy or doughy - chicken and dumplings, potstickers, pierogies. Homestyle noodles, spaetzle, tortellini. Tater tots, even. Heck, I'd eat a whole loaf of sourdough one toasted buttery slice at a time. OK, maybe two at a time. Anyway...although I am smitten with all these things, I am not particularly experienced at making any of them from scratch. Enter potato gnocchi!

Earlier this week, I braised a pork shoulder with mushrooms, onions and tomatoes and wanted a good starchy side to soak up all the yummy gravy. I wasn't feeling pasta and didn't have any polenta, but I did have russet potatoes, eggs and flour. So I gave gnocchi a whirl, and it turned out surprisingly well. With guidance from a few online recipes, I baked a few potatoes, peeled off the skin, ran them through the ricer and let the fluffy potatoes cool. Then I blended in some all-purpose flour and an egg yolk, rolled the resulting dough into long skinny ropes (Play-doh style), cut them into little dumplings and rolled them against the tines of a fork to produce the requisite ridges.

You don't want to add too much flour or work the dough too much or the gnocchi will be heavy and tough. I think I was nervous about that, so I went the other way and maybe didn't add quite enough flour. They turned out nice and light, but after I cooked them in the water and tossed them with butter in a hot pan, some of them fell apart a little bit. But with some cracked black pepper and a sprinkle of parmesan, they tasted just fine...definitely worth another try. Inexpensive, fun to make, and way tastier than Play-doh.

Speedy Monday

I really do love to cook things that take all day, I really, really do...it's one of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday. But this ain't Sunday. I was hungry, it was getting late, and I had other things to do (online Christmas shopping, anyone?). Sear a piece of tuna - a touch over-seared in this case, I'm afraid - the picture looks a bit more like pork tenderloin, doesn't it? Chop up some avocado. Drizzle it all with sesame shiitake vinaigrette. Full disclosure - I used Annie's. Yes, I could have made my own vinaigrette, but I didn't...so let's move on. Throw some cilantro on top, and you have dinner. Dinner that tastes way better than the time it took to make it would suggest. Onto shopping!

Monday breakfast: chunky peanut butter swirled into brown rice grits with some greek yogurt on top is a whole lot of creamy yummy goodness. Have a good week!

My Latest Thing

Chicken. I know, right? Kinda boring to be my latest thing. And I'm not really sure why I'm so into it right now. Maybe I can describe it in chicken vs. egg terms (and I'm sorry to bring up our new Whole Foods again, but I just can't help myself). Is the chicken at the WF really of such superior quality that it tastes that much better? Or am I so inspired and motivated by all that the new WF has to offer that I am experimenting more with cuts I am less accustomed to using? Probably some of both, I suppose. All I know is that in the past couple of weeks, I have a new crush on skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts, and on chicken thighs, with skin and bone or not. Both cuts are so much more flavorful and juicy than generic boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and I'm quite sure it's not due to anything special I have done in the preparation. I've seasoned each cut pretty basically - salt, pepper, and a generic all-purpose spice blend - and either seared in the cast-iron and finished in the oven (for the breasts) or cooked through on the stovetop (for the thighs). I then proceed to light into the finished chicken without bothering with any sides, with maybe just a dollop of dijon for dipping. And that's dinner. Seems as though boring can be surprisingly tasty.

Sweet Potato

I love happy kitchen experiments! I broke out the cast iron pan this morning to whip up a big batch of my candied pecans - pecans, butter, brown sugar, chili powder, salt - and once that was all tossed together and in the oven, I had a cast iron pan still slicked with the butter, sugar and chili powder. It was time for breakfast and I didn't feel like cleaning out the pan and starting over, so I cubed up some russet potato and threw it in the hot pan, sugar and all. Now, I may have sprinkled chili powder on crunchy potatoes before, but the brown sugar was a new spin...and I think I might really like it. There wasn't enough sugar still in the pan to add more than a subtle sweetness, but I liked what sweetness there was enough to give this a whirl another time adding a bit more sugar on purpose, instead of relying on what was left in a dirty pan. Laziness has yummy results sometimes, I think I'll stick with it!

Brown Food

You know how they say that to have a healthy diet, you should eat all the colors of the rainbow? Well, tonight's dinner will allow me to check the brown wedge off the color wheel. Inspired by a recipe in Emeril's 20-40-60 book, I made a risotto with chicken thighs and mushrooms, using some balsamic vinegar and red wine instead of the more typical white wine step. The balsamic certainly added a tangy sweetness, and although the butter I added at the end cut it a bit, it still seemed a little sharp...so maybe a touch less vinegar next time? Also, because I have lazy tendencies, I sauteed seasoned whole chicken thighs in butter and olive oil instead of cutting them into bite sized pieces and incorporating into the rice and vegetables, then just piled the chicken on top of the risotto. Not sure how the flavors might have changed if I had followed directions more closely, but that's just not how I get down. And come to think of it, is the color brown even in a rainbow?

Lame

Protein bar for dinner makes for non-scintillating blog post. No picture necessary, it won't make it any cooler. Hope your evening meal was more noteworthy.

Most Important Meal of the Day

Brown rice grits! Who knew? I needed a new breakfast option to get me started after my post-vacation hiatus, and while fruit and yogurt and protein bars are appropriate choices for sunny Florida, us Oklahoma girls need something a little more warm and cozy when waking up to a 19 degree morning. I'm not much of a cold cereal eater, but during the colder months, I do love a hot one. Oatmeal is fine, but I tend towards the Cream of Malt o' Wheat Meal types. Enter my new favorite...brown rice grits! I discovered them at my most recent visit to my happy place (the Whole Foods), and they have definitely earned a place in my winter morning rotation. Throw a fried egg on top, with some butter and hot sauce (which anyone who likes buffalo wings knows goes together perfectly)...and I just might have the energy and motivation to bundle up and leave my house. Or to climb back under the covers for a nap.