Are you looking for something simple, satisfying and perfect for polite company or a living room full of game fans?  If so, I have just the recipe for you today.  It’s a mouthful of flavor in a small package.  The perfect finger food for a party of any kind.  In a word, it’s delectable.

I was thinking about the mushroom and Swiss burger at my favorite diner when I came up with this. It became something I just couldn’t shake.  I had to do something about the craving for mushrooms and cheese before it drove me mad (or to the Diner for a $9.00 burger plate I’d never be able to finish!)

The end result satisfied my cravings perfectly.  It also turned out to be an exceptional dish in its own right. It’s meaty, savory and perfect nosh food.  It’s good hot, great at room temperature and not too bad chilled.  the flavors are bold but the package is small, so there is no need to eat too much, just nibble to your heart’s content and enjoy the flavors.

One warning…  These are addictive, so you might want to make sure you have double the ingredients on hand, just in case…

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Popularity: 4% [?]

The holidays have passed and it’s time to start looking closely at what we’re eating again. For the next several months at least there will be little in the way of heavily buttered sauces or creamy casseroles.  It’s time to shed some of the pounds that copious amounts of Holiday dinners, desserts and alcohol have helped to put around our midsections and with that comes the return of counting points, at least for my wife.

Personally, I don’t worry about points values or Weight Watcher’s scales. I just make lighter foods with less of the bad stuff and more of the good stuff. That way I can eat more, still be quite full and enjoy the weight loss.  My wife on the other hand, prefers to regimen her diet, and if it makes her happy, I’m all for it, so I look to the weight watcher’s site for inspiration, then do my level best to keep her within her prescribed daily points.

This is the year’s first Weight Watcher’s dish, and I’ve got to say that I was very pleasantly surprised with the outcome.  The recipe is my own, but resulted in a heaping plate of food with a points value of only 8, which kept her well and truly within daily limits while still leaving me quite happily stuffed until dinner, which happened to be at 8:00pm that evening due to work schedules.

So to all of you who are craving a new low point recipe, have at this one, It’s sure to please without adding too much to your daily total points value and I’ll be the first to say that it won’t leave you hungry.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

I love Stir Fry.  I love it because it’s fast.  I love it because it’s simple, and I love it because it’s the easiest way I know of to use up anything you happen to have in your fridge or pantry.  You can stir fry just about anything and it’s gonna be good.  Add the right flavorings and whatever it is, it’s gonna be great.  This dish was absolutely fabulous.

Lunch needed to be quick yesterday.  All I knew was that it was going to involve two pork shoulder blade steaks I had in the fridge.  These guys were just begging to be used up before they went bad. I’m ot sure what inspired me to use this particular combination of marinade ingredients, but I’m very glad that I did.  The ork was tender, with a zing of ginger and more than enough flavor to induce a perfectly fed food coma after eating it.

The recipe easily makes enough for 4 to 6 people, especially if you pare it with a few extra sides, like pot stickers or dim sum.  Add in a bit of garlic chicken and you’d have a complete take out feast.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

If you’re looking for something a bit different, completely savory and sumptuous and more than a bit over the top, this is the meal for you.  Preperation is relatively simple and the flavors are something that most only experience in high-end establishments, thinking that something of this calibur could never be prepared in a home kitchen.  While there is a bit of long-term preparation involved the process really isn’t all that hard, it’s just the big fancy name that makes it sound daunting.

To quote the Grand Dame of the American Culinary Revolution:

“Noncooks think it’s silly to invest two hours’ work in two minutes’ enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.” ~ Julia Child

For most people, confit automatically brings to mind images of something cooked in duck or goose fat.  While this is the current trend, confit is actually a much simpler premise than that.  The definition of confit is quite simple:

Confit: [kohn-FEE] A meat slow cooked in its own fat with spices. Or a jam-like sweet spread.

In using this definition, anything cooked in its own fat is a confit, and to be tied to only using duck or goose fat would be a crying shame, since chicken confit is probably the simplest of all to make with just ingredients from your local BigScaryMegaMart, namely chicken leg quarters.

You know the ones.  You’ve seen them before.  They sit in the poultry section in a forlorn ten pound sack, partially packed in an impotent brine. These are the byproducts of the American love of the boneless-skinless chicken breast, cast off to obscurity because someone convinced an entire nation that white meat was the best meat.  In this case their loss is our gain.

The chicken sold in bulk bags is mostly from roasting chickens.  Roasting chicken are larger birds with a higher fat to body mass ratio and because of this have become less popular in todays marketplace.  Bulk chicken is also not trimmed for excess fat, it’s just sold by weight, meaning that the producers are not interested in making it look pretty.  It’s perfect for confit and it usually costs around $4.00 for 10 lbs of chicken!  The rest is almost blissfully simple.

So step out of your comfort zone for a moment and take a journey with me to the land of gourmet, where with just a bit of time and effort the most humble ingredients transform themselves into something more than you could have ever imagined where flavors and aromas transcend the parts that make up the whole and become something entirely wonderful.  The experience may only last a few moments, but it is very much worth the effort.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

We are lucky enough to live very close to the school where my wife works, so on most afternoons she just pops home fo lunch.  After two months of pretty hefty holiday meals, we’ve both been feeling the need to go a little lighter.   Even with my inherently carnivorous nature, there are times when I do not feel compelled to have a large meal with proteins as the primary ingredient, or in fact to have them present at all.  Last week was one such afternoon.

Lunch time was rapidly closing in on me, and I needed something on the table that we could both enjoy.  A quick rummage through the fridge provided the perfect simple light lunch that would still be full of flavor, texture and at the same time be satisfying enough to get us both through to dinner.

While we had this dish as a meal in itself, it could definitely play a supporting roll to any chicken, pork or beef entree that you choose to pair it with, and would be just as wonderful served chilled on a hot summer day as it was served warm on a chilly winter afternoon.

Enjoy!

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Popularity: 2% [?]

The first time I saw a werewolf movie as a young boy it gave me nightmares for a month. Mentioning the “classic” green bean casserole has the same effect on me. It’s terrifying. Overcooked canned beans smothered in a sodium heavy, vaguely mushroom flavored ooze and topped with rapidly softening fried onions.

Who thought of this? Who told us we were supposed to like it?

The components of a green bean casserole are all ingredients that I love, it’s the end result that I’m not fond of, and I know of a whole lot of other people who share that dislike. This is the green bean casserole for the rest of us.

The original concept for this dish came from an episode of Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello on Food Network. He chose onion rings as his garnish, but I find that making a proper onion ring, or any other deep fried onion for that matter, without a professional fryer is extremely iffy, so I went with caramelized onions instead. I also upped the mushroom content quite a bit.

The components are all things found in the classic, but with a new twist, and about 1/3 the calories of the original. Technically it’s not a casserole, but you can get around that by tossing the serving dish in the oven for 5 minutes at its lowest setting *wink*

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Popularity: 2% [?]

They look luscious don’t they? Rich, huge, decadent ravioli, just barely touched with an intensely flavored, yet extremely light tomato sauce. I love ravioli. I love mushrooms. Mushroom ravioli is a natural progression from those two factors. Unfortunately, I made a fatal error with these. I discovered that neither my wife or I can stand dried mushrooms.

The recipe for these ravioli looked and sounded wonderful, the end result was more like a combination of fish and shoe-leather covered in n absolutely wonderful sauce, though not wonderful enough to hide the flavor of the dried mushrooms.

In that bent, I’ll post the recipe for the sauce here. It would be wonderful on nearly any pasta, and will definitely top our next attempt at ravioli. I’ll wait to post the ravioli recipe until I get it right, I honestly wouldn’t recommend these, they just weren’t as good as they look.

Grape Tomato Sauce:

Ingredients:

1 pkg grape tomatoes, halved
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup chicken or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Sauté tomatoes in olive oil until heated through. Add stock, salt and pepper, reduce by 1/4. Mix in butter and remove from heat. Toss with your favorite pasta and enjoy.

What I would have done differently had I thought of it at the time:

I would’ve used fresh shitake’s… blech

Also, a little fresh basil tossed in the sauce at the last moment would be incredible.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Sometimes plans change at the drop of a hat in my kitchen. I’d planed on making a few omelets on Sunday morning for a nice sit down brunch with my wife, and then it happened. I reached into the fridge to pull out the basic “eggs/milk/butter” and some mushrooms I wanted to use up, and there was a half wedge of Parmesan Reggiano, just staring at me, all dried-up and neglected looking.

I couldn’t have that cheese looking all pathetic like that. I could tell that the Romano had been making fun of it, what with its wrapper intact and still looking like the prettiest girl at the harvest moon ball. (We’ll be fixing that in a day or so!) And then I remembered that Shawnda of Confections of a Foodie Bride had just posted on frittata and my path was set.

I don’t know why I don’t make frittata more often. They’re simple, versatile and oh-so delectable. Any combination of ingredients that you’d use for a regular omelet can be tossed in, and you never have to worry about getting the bugger to flip properly. The other added benefit is that it’s very difficult to under cook a frittata, so the whole “runny eggs” issue simply isn’t a problem either.

For this particular dish, I decided on spinach and mushrooms, sautéed with onions and garlic. Add in some fresh Parmesan and you’ve got a simple meal in about 30 minutes that tastes heavenly and looks like you’ve slaved over it for hours, which makes it perfect to serve guests as well. This is one of those meals that you really should have in your “go to” file.

Note: The list of ingredients below looks pretty daunting, but this is probably one of the simplest recipes you’ll ever find. Feel free to substitute whatever you’ve got on hand, it’ll still be great!

Ingredients:

7 eggs
1 10 oz package spinach (either fresh, or if you’re looking for instant gratification, a defrosted frozen spinach works just as well here.)
Approx 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1 small (8oz) packaged sliced button mushrooms
1 medium onion, chopped
4 large cloves garlic, minced (or 4 tsp minced garlic, if you prefer)
1 good handful chopped parsley (Flat leaf would work best, but I haven’t been able to find it lately)
1 tbsp Italian Seasoning
1 tsp sage (fresh is best, chiffenade about 5 leaves.. Again, I didn’t have any, so dry works)
Salt and pepper to taste
7 tbsp milk
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Method:

Preheat oven to 350°F

Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Sweat onions and garlic in 2 tbsp olive oil until just translucent and softened. Add Mushrooms, breaking up any very large pieces. Allow to cook until well browned. Add salt, pepper and spinach. (If using fresh spinach, cook until completely wilted. If using frozen, cook until heated through.) Remove from pan and place in strainer to remove as much liquid as possible.

Wipe pan clean with paper towel, add remaining olive oil and return to heat.

In large bowl, beat eggs and milk together. Add 1/2 of the cheese and all remaining ingredients, mix well. Pour mixture into skillet and allow to sit over flame until eggs begin to bubble. Place skillet in oven and cook until eggs are set (approx 20 minutes).

Sprinkle remaining cheese over the top of the frittata and return to oven until cheese is melted and slightly browned.

Let rest for 5 10 minutes and serve.

What I would have done differently had I thought of it at the time:

Nuffin… This was wonderful, and I’ll be pumping out other variations on the theme over time. Enjoy!

Popularity: 5% [?]

I think the inspiration for this originally came from Wolfgang Puck’s Cooking Class on Food TV some years ago, though it didn’t include a sauce. The recipe I remember was for stuffed chicken legs, though I can’t find the reference recipe on the Food Network site anywhere, so I may be mistaken as to the recipe.

No matter where the inspiration came from, I’m sure that I’ve deviated sufficiently from whatever the recipe was to call this a true Cooking by the seat of my Pants original. As a matter of fact, I changed gears at least three times during preparation, adding a bit of this and eschewing that, so if this is in-fact, based on any recipe by an award winning chef, it has surely been bastardized enough that they would no longer recognize it.

It turned out to be simply incredible. Sumptuous, creamy, mushroom-and-garlicky goodness that fills the palette with multiple levels of wonderful flavors. I may have improvised at every turn, but apparently I did so in the right order , and with the right ingredients.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Brown Rice and Barley are good for more than just soups. Barley is overlooked in American cooking. The most common uses of the grain in the U.S. are actually Malt production for beer and animal food products. I think that’s a crying shame, and I’m on a mission to prove it. (Though I won’t ask them to stop making Malt, I do like me a beer now and again. O.K. A little too often, but that’s a different issue altogether.)

I originally put this recipe together as a side dish for some turkey thighs we had on hand, but there was just so much of this that Mrs. seat of her Pants and I ate this by itself, and it was wonderful as a main dish as well.

*Please note, the recipe as shown is made with Chicken Stock, though substituting Mushroom Stock, Vegetable Stock or water will convert this omnivorous version into a vegetarian version in seconds.

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Popularity: 1% [?]