This is a simple little side dish that my kids absolutely adore and hey, any vegetable dish that I can get my kids to ask for is most definitely worth sharing, right?  It can be thrown together out of  a few simple ingredients and is ready in minutes, yet adds quite a bit of flavor to any plate.

I generally make this using frozen ingredients I always have close at hand, but there is absolutely no reason that it could not (and indeed should not) be made with fresh ingredients if you have them.  My kids, being of a generation quite content to eat frozen snacks heated from a box in the microwave don’t mind that I use less than perfect ingredients and it’s great in a pinch, but I’d probably opt for fresh if company was coming.

Regardless of the previous temperature of the ingredients, this is a very tasty dish and works very well with chicken, pork or fish.  It plays well with others and has been seen dancing with green beans, peas and broccoli a time or two.  Give it a try, I think you’ll like it!

(Note: I probably would have called it a corn relish on my own, but you try to get a nine and eleven year old to eat something called corn relish!  That’s way too far out of their comfort zone, so I dubbed it by what I tossed in the pan and they seemed happy enough.)

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Popularity: 3% [?]

It sometimes amazes me that in today’s world of high-end restaurants and lofty food shows the simpler cuts of meat are either forgotten or worse, are thought of as something only useful for the most basic of culinary tasks. My issue with this trend is that some of the cuts now shunned by most shoppers have the capability of producing the most wonderful and intense flavors when treated correctly. These ingredients should be commonly used, not relegated to a back shelf in the meat aisle with labeling spelling out their least delectable use.

Take this poor misunderstood specimen:

When I went into the market the other day, I had no intention of braising anything.  It’s still full-blown summertime hot here in Far Northern California with temperatures well in excess of 100 degrees on most days, so having something simmering on the cook top wasn’t the first thing on my mind.  Fortunately for me, my first reaction to the above label was something like;

“For Stock!  Are you kidding me? That’s a perfect braise!”

And with just a little love, it was.

I think too many people get caught up in the idea that braising takes a very long time. In fact, the secret to a great braise is less about the actual cooking time than it is about the love put into the first few steps of the process.  A good sear, the proper accouterments and the ability to simply sit back and let the thing happen are all that is really required to achieve stunning results for very little effort and even less money.

In the case of this dish, a bit of good port, some onions, garlic, vegetable broth, a few herbs and some aggressive seasoning was all that it took to elevate this humble shank cut to new levels of perfection.

Granted, I did use a bottle of port valued at over $30.00, but only because I had it lying about.  An equal amount of a $7.00 port or a $5.00 Marsala would have served just as well in this case. (Even a cheap Burgundy or Zinfandel would have been fine.) A great braise is about methods.  It’s about deep, rich flavors. It’s about taking all the love you can give a dish and letting the meal return the favor.

This recipe won’t let you down.

It may be the dog days of summer, but winter will be here before you know it.  This is most definitely a recipe you should explore and make your own.  Add some tomato paste, a few mushrooms, a bit of whatever else you like.  Toss some potatoes in about 30 minutes before serving.  Top a salad with the beef and make a vinaigrette from the jous.  It really doesn’t matter.  This is worth exploring.  It will satisfy your heart, your mind and hopefully, a good portion of your soul.

It’s that good.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

What do you do when you find yourself with a ton of stale bread?  Normally I would have made dressing, but since I’m trying to be a bit more adventurous while my wife is away, I thought that a savory bread pudding sounded like a good idea.

When I started looking around for recipes, I realized that bread puddings are as varied and free-form as most dressings.  I found asparagus, bacon, sausage, breakfast and a thousand other versions. This is the perfect dish for the seat of your pants cook, which kind of fits with my style, don’t you think?

The one recipe that caught my eye was for a savory bread pudding with caramelized onions.  If there is one ingredient I have no lack of, it’s onions. So the only question was what other ingredients I had handy, and whether or not I wanted to add some type of protein other than eggs.

The end result was surprising if not perfect. This is one recipe I’ll revisit and modify.  It’s simple, convenient and a great way to use up items that I constantly have on hand. In short, it’s the perfect compliment of simplicity and lifestyle.

So with no further ado, I present you with my new pet project…

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Popularity: 5% [?]

Many people feel that the cuisine of the British Aisles is somewhat bland and lacking in character. I disagree completely. Most dishes from this region are recipes born of necessity and frugality. They use waht was available seasonally, they are prepared simply but yet all are heartwarming and filling. It’s a cooking style that I intend to persue further over the course of the next year. Perhaps I’ll help to show some of you what is, and should be, a wonderful cuisine that is perfecly suited to a family meal around the table.

Last night was a celebration of my family’s Irish heritage. This dinner, unlike most on this site was cooked from a cookbook with only slight modifications, as I have not made these dishes often enough to just throw them together as I normally would. I’m just digging in to Irish cuisine, so at least at first I’ll stick pretty tight to the recipes.

For those in the know, I’ve not served the champ in the traditional method. I wanted a one plate meal with a bit of presentation, rather than a seperate dish off to the side. If this offends, I apologize. The meal was fantastic even without the tiny soup plate of champ with it’s well of butter at the center and it added a lot to the lamb, which was fabulous along with a bite of champ and mint peas. these are good flavors and they all play well together.

I’m not really going to cover the lamb here. It was simply cooked with just salt, pepper and olive oil in a rocket-hot cast iron skillet for 5 minutes per side. While wonderful, it’s not really a recipe worth going through all the stages of. (In fact, I just gave it to you. Season, toss in hot pan and cook about 5 minutes per side. Rest. Serve.) The other dishes were really the stars here and I feel that they need the spotlight, so I’m giving it to them.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Frittata…  It sounds so alien, so elegant, so scary and difficult!  But if you think of it as what it really is, you’ll quickly learn to embrace the wonder that is a frittata.  you’ll find yourself eating them far too often.  You may make your family sick of them in a hurry, but you’ll never look back.

While the word Frittata may conjure some air of elegance and difficulty, it’s really just an Italian version of the omelet.  The basic ingredients are eggs, milk and perhaps a little cheese, and while I’ve seen some versions that looked very difficult to produce, for the most part the frittata is far easier to construct than a french omelet will ever be.  If possible, they taste better, too.

The only tool you really need for a perfect frittata is an oven-safe pan or dish that you can get screaming hot with nothing in it but a bit of oil.  The real secret is to start with a hot pan and a hot oven.  The rest of the work is done by the liquid and the eggs.  Basically all you as the cook have to do is stir a few ingredients and then peek at the oven every once-in-a-while.  In about 20 minutes, you’re done. (Note: larger frittata’s have longer cooking times.  That’s where the jiggle-test comes in as described in the recipe.)

The frittata is the perfect vehicle for any leftovers you might have on hand.  it gladly accepts meat, pasta, cheese, sausage, cooked greens of any type, vegetables or just about anything else you feel like tossing at it. One of my personal favorites is simply made with broccoli and some shredded cheddar and occasionally some leftover ham.  The fact that they are good and good for you is a bonus, especially considering the versatility of the dish.

Make them for dinner, make them for brunch, eat them for breakfast, my goodness they’re fun. I would eat them in a train. I would eat them in a plane. I think I’ll make up one in green. Or do you think that would cause a scene? *ahem!* OK, enough with that.

Enjoy the recipe, folks.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Winter weather means soup.  For my family, soup usually means something extremely hearty that sticks to your ribs and will keep you warm through a cold night on the Great Plains. (which, if you’ve never experienced it, can be very cold indeed!) For me the king of all rich and hearty soups is potato soup and this is my take on it.

This soup is hearty and filling.  It’s incredibly thick, sumptuous, rich and warming. It’s slightly thicker than most potato soups and the bacon adds a certain richness to the earthy flavor of the potatoes that I don’t think ham quite accomplishes, though it’s the more traditional addition to this dish.

A warning, though.  If you’re looking for something light, this ain’t it.  There’s enough cream and butter I this recipe to make staunch dieters cower in fear, and your cholesterol levels may never be the same again.  Having said this, I only recommend this dish as an occasional treat.  One to be savored when the weather is chill and the nights are long.  It’s not every day fare, it’s comfort food at the highest level, with the calorie count to match.

This recipe makes enough to serve about eight people, but don’t worry about scaling back if you’re only serving one or two.  It freezes exremely well and can be kept sealed in the chill chest for three to six months in airtight containers. That way it’s just waiting for you the next time the weather gets seriously chilly and you’re in need of a wintertime booster shot of soothing warmth.

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Popularity: 100% [?]

From the lost recipe files:  I found the pics for this hanging out in a folder from JUNE!  Luckily, I still remember how I made the dish.

As Italian chefs the world over will tell you, the key behind a great pasta dish is that no one ingredient ever overloads any of the others, and that the pasta is truly supposed to be the star of the show.  This is one dish that follows those guidelines, even with the strong flavors of bacon and greens tossed into the mix.

The secret with this or any other pasta dish is to make sure that you add just enough sauce to coat the pasta, not drown it. This may go against the American tradition of dumping a full three cups of sauce over the top of a quarter pound of noodles, then topping it with some form of meatball, but believe me, it’s worth the restraint.

Let’s revisit summer, shall we?

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Popularity: 2% [?]

The Holiday Season is here.  That means that in the next day or so this blog is going to be full of baked goodies, cookies, candies and mounds of Holiday-style comfort food goodness.  But what will the food blogger himself be eating through all of this? Probably something a lot like the dish pictured above.

This lunch, like many I find myself eating lately, is the result of having very little time to focus on myself while either getting things ready for one of my blogs, trying to find something in the freelance market that I’m willing to do for what they aren’t willing to pay, or dealing with the thousand little things I have to learn that goes along with my son’s therapy. It’s something I can throw together in just a few minutes, tastes good either hot or room temp and can be snacked on for hours while I’m in the middle of other things.

The ingredients are simple, the result is satisfying, and there’s very little effort involved in making this one.  Consider it my way of sharing a little secret with all of you.  I’m not always eating what you’re seeing.  Sometimes those dishes are made just for my wife.

Besides.  I really love this stuff!

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Vegetarians avert your eyes.  Have your children leave the room, you don’t want them to see this.  For you it won’t be pretty.  However, for those of us who are dedicated omnivores (or in Dr. Biggles case, card carrying carnivores), it’s a dream on a bun, and I had to share it with the world at large.

Please excuse the fact that this really isn’t a recipe.  It’s more of a field assembly guide for the ultimate in meat based sandwiches. There will be no fluff, no cheese, no greens or sprouts.  Only bell peppers (or jalapeños, if you’re so inclined) are worthy of this carnivorous delight.

This sandwich was three days in the making. Was it worth it?  I think so.  Hopefully you will as well, but the only way you’ll ever know is if you try it for yourself.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

I don’t know if there is anything more delectable than the perfect roast chicken. It’s not only comfort food at its very best, but there is something of a bit of mystery about the proper preparation of this simple, elegant dish. Many people find it difficult to transform a piece of poultry into something moist, succulent and flavorful. They either overcook or undercook the bird. The former resulting in something more akin to shoe leather than luscous, the latter resulting in a safety hazard and the need for take-out.

Roasting the perfect bird really only requires a bit of know how and the proper tools. I don’t recommend that a novice cook try to tell when the bird is done by wiggling the leg joint. It takes years of practice to perfect this skill, and even though I have known how to tell if a chicken is done by using that method for over a decade, I still prefer to use a probe thermometer, it takes the guesswork out of it.

A properly cooked chicken should be cooked to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, or 74 degrees Centigrade. I pull my chickens out of the oven at approximately 155 degrees, then cover loosely with a double layer of aluminum foil. The heat already present in the chicken will carry the temperature to the required levels, if not a bit higher. This ensures that the bird is not only properly cooked, but that it will still be moist and delicious. Serve when the temperature begins to drop.

As for basting… I never open the oven door unless there is another dish in the oven with the chicken. Basting will not make for a moister bird. As a matter of fact, constantly opening the oven door will lower the oven’s temperature, thereby resulting in a longer cooking time and a drier chicken, so even if all of your previous experiences say to baste, resist the urge! If you must have the satisfaction of knowing that the chicken has had some liquid moving over the skin, drape some salt pork or bacon over the breast and wings, you’ll not only have your basting done for you but the bacon is a nice accompaniment to the chicken when done.

I find that a great side for roasted chicken is roasted sweet potatoes. These cooked in the same baking dish as the chicken, with the whole lot of the food suspended above the pan on a wire cooling rack. using this method assures that the chicken gets crisp all the way around and that the vegetables aren’t being cooked Con Fit, or in the fat of the chicken. They will however pick up a bit of the flavor since they are suspended over the pan drippings. All the flavor without the fat!

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Popularity: 4% [?]