Cookin' with Mama

Hi! Yes. It has been a long time since I've written. That's because every six months or so I kind of take a break from cooking. Not really--I still make dinner every night--but it tends to be much easier, much more boring stuff. But now I'm back and am here to share with you this most excellent Chicken Piccata recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Cook's Illustrated is the best magazine for cooking nerds and I highly recommend it.

I particularly like this recipe because we've recently made the decision not to buy any meat that isn't sustainably and humanely raised. If we continued to eat meat at our former levels, our food budget would increase by about 239043832%, so that means we've had to cut back. It's not bad--it just means we eat meatless two or three times a week, and those days we do eat meat, we eat a lot less. This recipe involves cutting two chicken breasts in half, so it stretches the meat further. The original recipe calls for four breasts and serves four; I've found that using two breasts fed John, Jack and myself with no problem (though we didn't have any leftovers.) Also, I got the breasts from a whole chicken I got at Whole Foods--the entire chicken cost about $8. But it means I got this recipe, plus the legs and thighs (which I'll use for something next week), the wings (which I'm saving in the freezer for when I get enough to have cruelty-free Buffalo wings for dinner) and the carcass, which I'll use to make stock. So it was more expensive, but I'm getting more out of it. Win!

So you need:

2 large lemons

4 skinless, honeless chicken breasts

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

4 T vegetable oil

1 small shallot, minced

1 cup low-sodium chicken broth (why yes I did make my own thank you very much)

2 T small, drained capers

3 T unsalted butter, softened (just take this out of the fridge when you start everything. That will be enough softening.)

2 T minced parsely leaves if you want to follow the recipe, but I left this out because I didn't have any parsely.

Find something for your toddler to do. Might I recommend dusting?

Oh, your toddler doesn't dust? You must not be as good of a parent as I am. Kidding! He just really likes dusting (which he does with water.) He also dusts the couch, the cats and me, but we're working on that.

So you're going to want to take one lemon and halve it pole to pole, then slice half of it up so it's in little semi-circles. Put those aside. Then juice the one-and-a-half lemons you have left until you get 1/4 cup of juice, and put THAT aside. Mince up your shallot and put that aside. Measure out your capers and put them aside (it helps to have a lot of little dishes. It means you can measure stuff out before things get going. You can get them anywhere--I always see them at Goodwill. Anyway)

Get out the pie plate your mom brought over for Thanksgiving and you haven't returned yet and put the flour in it.

Now take your chicken breasts and cut them in half like this:

So you have two really flat chicken breasts, like this:

Do that to all your chicken breasts, and then dip them all in flour, shaking off the excess.

Now heat up your vegetable oil and place some of the chicken in there. Don't crowd the chicken--it won't get nice and brown. Cook it on one side for about 2 1/2 minutes, then flip and cook it for 2 minutes more. As pieces finish, put them in a 200-degree oven to keep warm while you do the rest.

While things are frying, your kid is probably bored with dusting, so on with "Yo Gabba Gabba!"

When you're done with all the chicken and have put it all lin the oven, dump the shallot into the pan and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds.

Then dump in the broth and the lemon slices, increase the heat to high, and scrape the skillet with a wooden spoon to get all the tasty brown goodness the chicken left behind. Then simmer that for about four minutes until the sauce reduces to about 1/3 of a cup. But don't measure it. Just let it go for 4 minutes. Now is when you want to put your steam-in-the-bag bag of peas in the microwave.

After four minutes, dump in the lemon juice and capers and let that go for a minute or two.

Then take it off the heat and stir in the butter, which you've cut into chunks. Swirl that around until the butter has melted.

Then take the peas out of the microwave and you're done!

I sometimes make this with noodles on the side, but I'm watching my weight a bit and who needs the carbs?

Glad to be back!

This is one of our favorite new recipes; it's rare that I find a recipe that John, Jack and I all enjoy on equal levels. I like it because it's tasty AND it is super-easy. John, hilariously, refers to it as "vegetarian black beans," even though it involves both bacon AND chorizo, but he's from Texas and maybe that's considered vegetarian there (his mom once told me that the reason her collard greens are so good is she doesn't use pork--just bacon. Frankly, I don't care if she's using puppy dogs in her cooking, it's so good.)

Anyway. This is adaped from "The Best American Recipes 2003-2004," which calls it "Instant Brazilian Black Beans."First you want to make some rice. I would tell you how, but I have no idea. I cannot cook rice. I use a rice cooker. You probably should get one. They are awesome.

The recipe says to slice two strips of bacon, but two strips is never enough, so chop up as much bacon as you want, which for me is a lot.

Toss that into a soup pot (I like a Dutch oven) and fry until cripy. Meanwhile, get two or three links of chorizo. This is one of the reasons I like this recipe--you can buy a pack of chorizo, which usually has six links in it. You break those up into either twos or threes, and freeze the ones you won't use. It makes it easy to always have the ingredients for this recipe on hand. Anyway, make sure you get fresh chorizo (meaning it's squishy, not hard.)

Slice open the links, take off the casings and then mush it all up, like so:

Now the bacon should be crispy, so throw the chorizo and two minced cloves of garlic into the pot and cook until the chorizo is brown--about three minutes. Then dump in two cans of Goya black bean soup.

Why is that picture sideways? It's artsy. Also, I have no idea how to rotate it. I did it in my computer, but now it's all wonky. Anyway, just lean your head to the side. Be sure to get the black bean SOUP, not just the black beans. I usually find it in the Hispanic section of the grocery store, not with the rest of the soups. Anyway, add both of those, a cup of hot water and a bay leaf.

Bring that to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. And you're done! Serve over rice.

Don't clean off the plate or anything, because it's not like this picture is going on the internet or anything.

This dish is toddler-approved:

Uh, hi. Yeah, I haven't done a cooking blog in awhile, but that's because I haven't cooked in awhile. Trust me, the past few weeks should be called "frozen pizza with Mama" or "bowl of cereal with mama." But I'm back, and it's summer, and it's hot. So when I saw this recipe in this month's Bon Appetit, I had to do it. It tastes like those lettuce wrap things you get at PF Chang's, but with fish. I bet if you sauteed some ground chicken and used it in place of the fish, it would taste EXACTLY like them.

So first realize you're going to have to deal with this:

He's now fully mobile--even taking a few steps at a time--and he wants food. All the time. You see that cup? Yes, it's pink. He's very secure in his masculinity. Anyway, it's a no-spill snack cup that kind of works, if by "no-spill" you mean "reduced-spill." But it holds Veggie Booty and Cheddar Bunnies pretty well, so it's very important to this recipe.

OK, get two carrots, peel them, and then use the peeler to shred them into ribbons, like this:

So easy! Now get a seedless cucumber (also called an English or Kirby cuumber. They usually come in plastic wrap.) Don't peel it, but shred it, too. The recipe wants you to take those shreds and dice into "matchstick-size sticks," but, come on--who has the time? Now get two jalapeno peppers. The red ones will look prettier, but the green are fine. Cut those up.

You can take the seeds out if you are a big wimp.

Now you should hear a big crash. Go check that out.

Take him off the stairs, replace the baby gate, and bring him back into the kitchen.

These are shallots. They look like small onions and they are AWESOME.

They aren't very oniony, but add lots of tastiness to everything. Peel them, then slice up 2 of them and put them in with the cucumber and carrot strips.

In that bowl, add 1 Tablespoon of sugar and 1 Tablespoon of fish sauce. It'll be really cheap and come in a bottle that looks like this:

It will smell like evil, but it's really good. And it stays good forever. Cut up a lime and squeeze that juice into the bowl.

Now you should feel a tugging on your skirt and see this:

Time for more veggie booty!

The recipe calls for 2, 4.5-ounce fillets of smoked trout. Whole Foods only had 8-ounce packages, so that's what I went with. Smoked fish is tasty and, since you don't need a lot of it to add flavor, it's good for a recipe like this, especially if you just happened to have rejoined Weight Watchers this week. So pull the skin off:

Then flake it up and dump that in the bowl. Then go play for 30 minutes. Do something outside. Oh, wait, first wash your lettuce. I think the recipe called for romaine lettuce, but I thought butter lettuce would be better:

OK, wash that, THEN go play for 30 minutes.

Now come back. Dump the fish-veggie-whatever mixture into a colander and drain it. This should be the time when your camera's battery dies. No lie. Get a jar of sweet chili sauce (like the dipping sauce that comes with crab rangoon) and drizzle 1/4 over the mixture. Then use the lettuce leaves as tortillas and go to town! Trust me, it looked really pretty and was REALLY good. I ate it just as a salad for the next day for lunch, and it was also tasty then--and the veggies stayed nice and crispy.

One note: I do a lot of talk about how Jack eats what we eat. And, for the most part, he does. I was planning on feeding him this, but when I tasted it it was spicier than I thought it would be. So, while he did get some of the fish that had marinated in the sauce, he didn't get the full treatment. He got fish and Cheerios and, I think, peas.

He didn't seem to mind.

Risotto is, frankly, the best food ever invented in the history of ever. I first heard about it thanks to the movie Big Night, which is a wonderful movie you really should add to your Netflix queue. Be sure to have lots of food handy when you watch it.

The fun thing about risotto is that it's actually NOT that easy to screw up. You DO have to be patient and it does take awhile--with some active time that's absolutely necessary. So I'll often do risotto when I'm eating on my own, or if after Jack has gone to bed if it's just John and me.

What I really like about risotto is it can be really fancy and involved--I have a carmelized onion and bacon version that better be served in heaven or I'm not going--but it also can be really easy. This is the easy version. I always have the ingredients on hand, so it's a good standby dish.

First, get some chicken stock or broth. Yes, I make my own, because I am a food snob of the highest order. However, I didn't this time (my last batch was frozen in a giant gallon bag in the freezer and I didn't want to deal with it) and you don't have to, either. If you do buy yours, I'm a fan of Swanson's. It's important to get the free-range, organic stuff because it really does taste better. Don't get the stuff in the can because it'll screw everything up and make the risotto taste tinny. You need about five cups, but the carton only holds four, so supplement with water because it's dumb to open a whole new carton for one cup.

Get a small saucepan and bring it to a simmer

Isn't that the ugliest pot you've ever seen? It's my husband's.

Make sure the baby has a non-lethal toy:

The salad spinner bowl. Excellent choice.

Put a tablespoon of oil and a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan. The pot I prefer to use is called a saucier; it's by Le Crueset. I really like it because there are no hard corners where stuff could get stuck--it's all rounded. But you don't need anything that fancy. Any pot will work as long as it's big enough to stir comfortably.

Now grate about 1/3 cup parmesan cheese. No, not the stuff in the green can. Real parmesan. It's important.

Check on the baby.

He's found the cats' water dish. Move the baby. Move the baby again. Move the baby again.

Now measure out one cup of arborio rice. You can't use regular rice; arborio is really starchy. You need that because the starch is actually what makes risotto creamy--all the starch leaks out of the rice to create almost a sauce. You can find arborio everywhere now and it's not expensive.

Look! A low-fat food! Good thing we've got oil and butter and chicken stock and cheese to fix that. Dump the rice into the butter and oil. It should crackle a little bit; if it starts to sizzle, turn down the heat. Stir it constantly for about two minutes, until there are a FEW little toasty spots and most of the grains are translucent, but with a dot of white in the center.

OK, now things are going to get active, so contain the baby.

He won't mind.

Using a ladle, start ladling the broth into the rice about 1/4-1/2 cup at a time. Stir CONSTANTLY. You don't have to stir fast--in fact, don't--but you do have to KEEP DOING IT. Stir and stir until the liquid is almost entirely absorbed, about two minutes. Then add more.

When the pot looks like this, add more. Keep doing that. You'll notice that the rice will start to look creamy after about 15 or 20 minutes (to me, this sounds like a job for either a patient child or one you want to punish.) When it starts looking like this:

And you're noticing that the pot never really goes dry, start tasting. You'll know when it's right. It shouldn't be mushy, but you shouldn't taste any chalkiness, either. It might take more liquid than you have; if it does, supplement with HOT water. When you've got it, add the cheese:

Take it off the heat and then stir that up.

Mmmm, yummy. Perhaps you have done some asparagus while doing this? I thought so.

This recipe makes enough for four side dishes, two normal main dishes, or one carb-obsessed baby and one person who is helpless over risotto.

It's tough to make this a vegetarian dish. You can use vegetable broth, but I feel it doesn't taste as rich. Plus, parmesan isn't a vegetarian cheese--it uses rennet, which is part of a cow's stomach (little bit of trivia for you there.) But you really can throw anything over it--grilled chicken or shrimp, or a vegetable medley--so it's pretty versatile.

Another reason why I tend to make it alone is because standing for 20 minutes with nothing to do but stir something is a pretty nice treat for me these days.

Any leftovers (ha! leftovers!) can be refrigerated, then deep-fried into little balls of heaven. Also, if this is just too much work to contemplate (or if you just want some risotto that's way, way better), may I steer you towards Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va? Besides being the best restaurant in the world, the risotto there will make you cry tears of tasty goodness.