Tag: easy

Taco Salad

Leave a comment

Taco salad is easy to mock. Is it a salad? Isn’t it just a giant fried flour tortilla bowl full of calories? When Budweiser can sell beer by exploiting taco salad’s paradoxical nature in a very funny commercial, you know it probably isn’t that good for you.

But why can’t it be? Why not swap out the edible bowl for a just a few high-quality tortilla chips, and use really good, super lean grass-fed beef. Why not replace the iceberg lettuce (John Waters always calls iceberg lettuce the polyester of greens) with bright, crunchy, vitamin-packed Romaine? Why not throw in some organic cherry tomatoes? Just a sprinkling of good shredded cheese, the hormone-free stuff?

And forget the heavy Ranch dressing or giant scoop of sour cream. If your core ingredients are good, just a spritz of lime juice should do the trick.

Ingredients:

1 pound of very lean ground beef

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 white onion, chopped

2-3 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon of paprika

1/4 teaspoon of chili powder

Salt and pepper

1 head of Romaine lettuce, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch ribbons

1 cup of shredded cheese

1 pint of cherry tomatoes, diced

Tortilla chips

Lime wedges

How to prepare:

1. Heat the oil in a large heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic. Sauté them together until the onion is slightly softened, approximately 2-3 minutes. Add the beef and the spices. Cook until the meat is no longer pink. Adjust the seasoning. Turn off the heat and begin assembling the salad.

2. Make a bed of about a cup of lettuce in the bottoms of 4 good-sized individual salad bowls. Drain the beef if there seems to be a lot of oil or liquid in the bottom of the pan. Top each bed of lettuce with a scoop of ground beef, followed with the cheese, and then the diced tomatoes. Squeeze a lime wedge or two over the top. Serve with chips on the side.

Chicken Florentine

Leave a comment


Last night, I had some chicken breast in the fridge that I had to do something with, along with some baby spinach and a nice wedge of Parmesan. As I was thinking, this image of sliced, pan-fried chicken smothered in cream sauce on a bed of fettucini suddenly came floating up to the surface of my mind.

Before I knew it, I had recreated a night at the Olive Garden.

How did this happen? It was as if I had taken a trip on the High School Nostalgia Express. Maybe I was subconsciously channeling those commercials that have been airing on television lately for the Olive Garden cooking school in Tuscany. The one where they presumably teach students how to make American Chain-Restaurant food in middle of the rolling Tuscan hills.

Because Chicken Florentine is really American. As American as apple pie. You’ll never find it in Italy. It is interesting to note though that, historically speaking, the origins of “Florentine” preparation trace their roots back to Florence-born Catherine de’Medici and her legendary merry band of French cooks. What made a dish “Florentine” was not the spinach, but the white sauce that her French cooks made: the besciamella, or béchamel.

It’s anyone’s guess how spinach got involved in all of this.

But just because Chicken Florentine might find its roots more in Hoboken than Florence, that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. In fact, on a cold spring night, it’s pretty darn good.

God bless the USA!

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1/4 cup of flour

Salt and pepper

4 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of butter

1/2 cup of white wine

2 packed cups of baby spinach

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups of heavy cream

1 cup of freshly grated Parmesan

A healthy pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 pound of dried fettucini

How to prepare:

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

2. In the meanwhile, pat the chicken breast dry with paper towels. Sprinkle each breast liberally with salt and pepper on all sides. Dredge them in the flour, and shake off any excess. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat until it is shimmering. Add the chicken breasts to the pan in a single layer. Pan-fry them until they are golden-brown on both sides and cooked through, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer them to a plate while you prepare the rest of the dish.

3. Your water should be boiling by now. Add the fettucini and boil them until they are al dente. Drain the pasta and set aside if it is done before all the other elements.

4. While the fettucini is boiling, melt the 2 tablespoons of butter in the same skillet over medium heat. Add the white wine to the pan, stirring to scrape up and dissolve any of the browned bits on the bottom of the skillet. Add the spinach and the garlic. When the spinach has wilted slightly, add the cream, Parmesan, and nutmeg. Stir to combine. Simmer the mixture, stirring often, until the sauce has begun to thicken. Adjust the seasoning carefully (the cheese should add a fair amount of saltiness).

5. Cut each chicken breast into half-inch slices. Mound a quarter of the fettucini in a warm pasta bowl. Top the fettucini with a sliced chicken breast and spoon a quarter of the sauce on top. For a little brightness, you could serve the bowls with a nice, fat lemon wedge to squeeze.

Spicy Miso Dip

4 Comments


I recently made dinner for Laura at her apartment. Saddled with overwhelming piles of work, she seemed on the verge of exhaustion and in much need of some TLC. As I like playing personal chef, I was more than happy to oblige.

I didn’t have much for lunch that day and was scrounging around in her fridge for something to nibble on while cooking. She directed me to some miso dip that she had made earlier, and a nice little mound of snow peas. Maybe she hadn’t thought that I would eat all of her snow peas and inhale the dip like air . . . but I did.

Sorry, Laura.

This recipe is a riff on her riff on a recipe posted by blogger extraordinaire, Heidi Swanson. Heidi’s website (she has a cookbook too), 101 Cookbooks, is a treasure trove of delicious, healthy recipes that taste great and make you feel good. As the weather gets oh-so-slowly warmer, eating more fruits and vegetables sounds like a welcome and wholesome idea.

Ingredients:

3 ounces of white miso paste

3 ounces of red miso paste

1/4 cup of sake

1/2 cup of mirin

4 tablespoons of agave syrup

Red chili pepper flakes to taste

How to prepare:

1. Combine the miso pastes, the sake, the mirin, and the agave in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil over. Once the mixture has started to boil, reduce the heat and simmer it for about 20 minutes, whisking occasionally. You want the dip to thicken a bit.

2. Once it has thickened, add the chili pepper flakes. Remove the dip from the heat and let cool. The dip will keep in the refrigerator for between 1-2 weeks. Serve with fresh vegetables, blanched asparagus, anything really!

Strawberries Dipped in Chocolate Caramel Sauce

Leave a comment


Chocolate-covered strawberries get a bad rap. It’s perhaps not so surprising: the majority of ones in this country are sold in February, when strawberries are completely out-of-season.

Now I have nothing against partaking in enrobed fruit for Valentine’s Day, but strawberries bought in the middle of winter are usually shipped from South America, freakishly oversized, and stunningly tasteless despite their glossy red exteriors.

The chocolate sarcophagus they come in isn’t always very appetizing either.

But it is finally springtime — officially the start of strawberry season. Now is the time to see that chocolate-covered strawberries done right can be a sinfully sloppy mess.

How can you tell if a strawberry is ripe?

Smell it. Does it smell like a strawberry? No? Put it down. Walk away. Yes? Is it a full-on, luscious, musky strawberry-smell? Buy. Now. Buy buckets of them.

This sauce is fantastic. So easy and so versatile. Dredge fruit in it, or even better, drizzle warm gobs of it over vanilla-bean gelato. Or just eat it out of the pot. It’s fabulous.

Ingredients:

1 pint of ripe strawberries, washed and gently patted dry

1/4 cup of sugar

1/2 cup of heavy cream

2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate (no more than 70% cacao), broken into smaller pieces

1/8 teaspoon of sea salt

How to prepare:

1. Cook the sugar in a small dry saucepan over moderately high heat, undisturbed, until it begins to melt, about 2 minutes. Continue to cook, tipping the pan from one side to the other, until the sugar has melted into a deep golden caramel, about 1 to 2 minutes. To help visualize this, here is a handy profanity-free video with Gordon Ramsay.

2. Remove the caramel from the heat and carefully pour in the cream. The cream will steam and bubble vigorously. Once the bubbles begin to subside, return pan to moderately low heat and cook, stirring or whisking constantly, until the caramel has dissolved. If the caramel does not seem to dissolve completely, add 1 to 2 teaspoons of water at a time, stirring, until it has dissolved.

3. Turn off the heat and continue to stir or whisk the caramel to cool it down a little bit. Add the chocolate and the salt. Stir or whisk the chocolate into the caramel. The sauce should be thick and glossy when you are finished.

4. Dip the strawberries in the sauce and arrange them on a plate. Serve them to someone you want to make happy.

Caldo Verde

2 Comments


It is officially spring in New York, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. It feels schizophrenic actually as beautiful sunny days alternate with dark gray ones filled with freezing rain and hail.

Yeesh.

This has led to a kind of odd assortment of things to eat at home as I vacillate between going out with friends for dinner (it’s so nice out!) and wanting to stay at home and burrow under the covers until the chill finally goes away.

While perusing the contents of my fridge and freezer yesterday to see what I could whip up for dinner from its random contents, I was super happy to find a pair of CSA chorizo hiding behind some frozen loaves of bread to go along with a nice bunch of kale in the crisper.

I love the combination of kale and chorizo. There is something about the clean bitterness of the leaves that marries so beautifully with the spiciness and bite of the sausage. The flavors always make me think of sunnier places like Spain and Portugal. Places where I can eat standing upright in a bar, tossing cheap paper napkins on sawdust-covered floors willy-nilly.

This soup is good for this strange weather we have been having. It’s warming and comforting, but full of bright, big, assertive flavors. It gets even thicker and spicier overnight.

Ingredients:

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon of olive oil

3 yukon gold potatoes (about 1 pound), halved and cut crosswise into 1/8-inch thick slices

4 cups of chicken stock

1/2 pound of chorizo, cut into half-inch pieces

1 big bunch of lacinato or Tuscan kale, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch ribbons

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. Heat the tablespoon of oil over medium heat in a large, heavy-bottomed casserole. Sauté the chorizo in the hot oil until it is browned, about 5 minutes. Transfer the chorizo to paper towels to drain.

2. Pour off any excess oil in the pot, leaving about 2 teaspoons. Sauté the onion in the same pot over medium heat until the onion begins to become golden. Add the potato slices to the onions and toss them together. Continue to cook both for about 4 minutes more. Add the chicken stock and bring everything up to a simmer. Continue to cook the soup until the potatoes are very tender.

3. Using a potato masher, coarsely crush about half of the potatoes in the pot. Add the chorizo back to the pot and continue to simmer the soup for about 5 more minutes. Add the kale and continue to cook the soup for about 10 minutes more. Adjust the seasoning now, keeping in mind that the chorizo will probably add a fair bit of saltiness to the soup.

4. Let the soup stand about 10 minutes before serving. It will get even thicker and spicier overnight.

Pan-Roasted Shitake Mushroom-Topped Bruschetta

Leave a comment


When guests come over for dinner, I usually like to give them something to nibble on while I am finishing up in the kitchen. Bruschetta is my preferred MO. First of all, bruschetta is always more impressive than a big bowl of olives — even very, very nice olives. Second of all, you can set up basically everything ahead of time, and assemble the toasts right before your guests breeze through the door.

Bruschetta is technically defined as any kind of grilled bread — brushed with olive oil and rubbed with garlic — with some kind of topping. In the flip-floppy way that we do things here, bruschetta has come to refer to the topping rather than the bread.

Ingredients:

One demi-baguette or small ciabatta loaf, cut into 1/2-inch slices

About one pound of shitake mushrooms, sliced

About 2 tablespoons of olive oil, plus one tablespoon

2 cloves of garlic, finely minced, plus one clove of garlic, smashed

2 tablespoons of fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped

The juice of one small lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. In a large cast-iron pan, heat two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat until the oil just begins to smoke. Add the mushrooms. Toss the mushrooms in the hot oil and spread them out evenly over the bottom of the pan. Cook them, stirring occasionally, for about 8 minutes. As the mushrooms cook, they will release a fair amount of water. Don’t worry, the water will evaporate as the mushrooms start to become golden.

2. When the mushrooms begin to brown, add the finely minced garlic to the pan. You want to make sure the garlic is evenly distributed throughout the mushrooms, but you don’t want it to burn. Cook the garlic and mushrooms together for about a minute.

3. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to a separate mixing bowl. Add the parsley and the lemon juice. Stir everything together to combine. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

4. Brush the bread slices with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and toast them until they are golden brown. Rub the slices with the smashed garlic clove before topping each one with a heaping spoonful of the mushroom mixture. Arrange the bruschetta on a plate and serve.

Cavatappi with Pepperoni and Green Bell Pepper

4 Comments


Hello Middle-America, how are ya’?

This recipe from Food and Wine was a good way to use up a pile of leftover pepperoni in the fridge. It was fast, it was easy, and it tasted almost exactly like a Supreme Pizza Hut pan pizza without the cheese. Whoo hoo!

Ingredients:

8 ounces of cavatappi

4 ounces of pepperoni, sliced in half

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

16 ounces of canned diced tomatoes

Salt and pepper

How to prepare:

1. Prepare the pasta according to directions. Make sure to reserve some of the pasta cooking water before draining the cavatappi.

2. While the pasta is boiling, heat the pepperoni slices in a large skillet over medium heat until they just begin to brown. Remove the slices from the skillet and transfer them to a paper towel-covered plate to drain. Wipe out the excess fat from the skillet with another paper towel.

3. In the same skillet, heat the tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onions and the green pepper. Sauté the vegetables until the onions are translucent and the peppers are beginning to soften. Add the minced garlic to the skillet and cook for about 30 seconds longer. Now add the diced tomatoes to the vegetables. Stir to combine everything before covering the pan with a lid. Lower the heat and simmer the sauce for about 10 minutes, adding some of the pasta water if the sauce looks like it needs it.

4. After the sauce has thickened, adjust the seasoning to your taste. Toss the pasta and the pepperoni with the sauce. Serve.

Cottage Pie (also known as Shepherd’s Pie with Beef)

1 Comment


I like mashed potatoes on top of just about anything.

This dish is one of those great things that you can play around with, improvising with whatever you have around the house. Parsnips? Sure, throw them in. How about a turnip? Sounds good. Lamb? Change “cottage” to “shepherd” and you’re good to go. Beef? Beef is better than okay! Tomato paste? Some fresh chopped tomato. I say add whatever makes you feel warm and happy.

Just imagine whatever you would like to eat in your cottage if you had one (you might).

Ingredients:

3 medium Russet potatoes, cut into large dice

1 heaping tablespoon of kosher salt

2 tablespoons of butter

1/2 to 1 cup of milk

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 large carrots or 3 medium carrots, diced

2-3 cloves of garlic, finely minced

1 pound of grass-fed, lean ground beef

1 1/2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons of fresh rosemary, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of flour

1 cup of veal or beef stock (you could also use milk or chicken stock)

1/2 cup of frozen green peas

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°.

2. Put the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover them with water. Add the salt. Bring the water to a boil and cook the potatoes until they are tender. You will know that they are ready when you can crush a potato piece easily against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon. Drain the potatoes. In the same pan, mash the potatoes with the butter. Add the milk a 1/4 cup at a time until you get the right consistency. You don’t want the potatoes to be dry, but you don’t want them soupy either. Aim for a texture that is loose enough to spoon on top of your beef filling, but not so loose that the potatoes add a lot of excess water to your pie.

3. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onions and carrots. You want to cook the onions until they are translucent and are just beginning to brown. At that point, add the minced garlic to the carrots and onion. Cook the garlic for about a minute until it is fragrant but not burning. Add the ground beef to the pan. Breaking up bigger chunks of ground beef with your wooden spoon, cook the beef until there is no longer any visible pink. Sprinkle the beef with the Worcestershire sauce and the rosemary. Cook everything for another minute or two. Sprinkle the beef with flour. Stir again and cook for a few more minutes to brown the flour. Add the stock to the pan and stir to combine everything. The sauce should begin to thicken. When the sauce has gotten to the point that you think it is ready (the mixture should be held together by a nice, thick sauce) , distribute the peas over the top of the beef and continue to cook everything together for about another minute before turning off the heat.

4. Spread the meat mixture over the bottom of a casserole dish. Spoon the mashed potatoes on top of the meat. You can even use a fork to rough up the surface if you like. Bake the casserole uncovered in the oven for 25 minutes. The potatoes will have just started to brown. Wait at least 15 minutes before serving.

NY Strip Steak, ATK-Style

1 Comment


How do you cook a nice, thick steak in a pan? You sear it, right? On high heat to get that nice browned crust. Then you move it to a hot, hot oven to finish. “Sear and blast,” goes the standard mantra.

But what if you did the reverse? In pursuit of the perfectly cooked, medium-rare steak without that darned grayish band of overcooked protein ringing the outer edge of the meat, those pesky perfectionists at Cook’s Illustrated did precisely that: they started the steaks in a reasonably cool oven, and then moved them to a hot pan to sear.

The result? Very. Evenly. Cooked. Steak.

Of course, under the weight of all their test kitchen trials, you might be persuaded that this is the right way, nay the only way to cook your meat.

But it’s not.

It is fun to try it, though.

Ingredients:

2 New York strip steaks, at least 1-inch thick

Kosher salt

1 teaspoon olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon

Freshly ground black pepper

2 nice pats of butter

Special equipment:

1 half-size heavy-duty sheet pan

1 wire rack to fit the half-size, heavy-duty sheet pan

1 leave-in meat thermometer

How to prepare:

1. In order for this method to work, your steaks should be about room temperature before cooking. Be sure to take your steaks out of the fridge, or from wherever you are storing them, ahead of time.

2. Preheat the oven to 275°.

3. Using paper towels, thoroughly pat your room-temperature steaks dry. Season both sides liberally with kosher salt and rub the olive oil all over them.

4. Position the steaks on the wire rack that you have set in the sheet pan. Insert the meat thermometer probe into the center of one of the steaks. You will want the tip of the probe to be parallel to the steak, so the probe should go in the side of the steak instead of sticking straight up. Make sure not to position the probe tip too close to the wire rack or to the top of the steak. Set the timer to go off at 100°.

5. When the timer goes off, remove the steaks from the oven. Remove the probe. Heat the remaining olive oil over medium-high heat until the pan is nice and hot, and oil is not quite smoking. Sear the steaks on both sides. You should remove them from the pan when they reach an internal temperature of 125° for rare, or 130° for medium rare. While the steaks are resting, the internal temperature should continue to rise about 5 degrees.

If you feel like this is a bit fussy (those America’s Test Kitchen folks are really fussy!), you can just sear your steaks for about a minute or two per side and call it a night.

6. Place a nice pat of butter and a good grind of black pepper on each steak before serving. Serve and smile.

Tomato and Parsley Bruschetta

1 Comment


I love this. I usually only ever make it when we have guests, but today I decided to spoil myself. It is so easy and so tasty. It will be even better once it’s summer and tomatoes are in season.

Ingredients:

1 pint of grape tomatoes

2 tablespoons of fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped

1 small clove of garlic, finely minced

Olive oil

Maldon salt

1 baguette or ciabatta loaf

How to prepare:

1. Preheat the oven to 450°.

2. Cut each grape tomato into eights. You can also dice up about a pound of any tomato that you want — just be sure to seed the tomatoes before dicing them.

3. Combine the tomatoes, parsley, and garlic in a bowl. Drizzle with very good extra- virgin olive oil. Shower with a generous sprinkle of Maldon salt. Toss everything together and let the mixture sit for about 5 minutes.

4. In the meanwhile, cut the bread into 1/2 inch-thick slices. Brush one side with olive oil. Toast the bread in the oven until the slices are golden brown. Remove the bread from the oven and let the slices cool.

5. Once the bread has cooled off, mound the tomato mixture on top of each slice. Serve.