Category Archives: Best Simple Recipes (The)

From America’s Test Kitchen

Mediterranean Tuna Melts and other recipes

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Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve made a number of recipes out of this book. I’ve been too lazy to hold up dinner to take pictures, so I’ve been reluctant to talk about those dishes. Instead, I thought I’d do a wrap-up post, starting with the one dish I did manage to take a picture of:

Mediterranean Tuna Melts!
Normally, I don’t like tuna. All that fishy taste and fishy-smelling breath and gloopy mayo. But I liked these sandwiches. Water-packed tuna is mixed with mayo, lemon juice, red onion and artichoke hearts and piled onto toasted bread. The tuna mixture is topped with tomatoes and slices of provolone cheese and then broiled until the cheese is bubbly and melty. Melty cheese makes everything taste better.

Polenta with Mushroom Sauce
Polenta is not a fixture in our kitchen. I tried it, once, and found it to be bland in the extreme. But in this dish, browned and served with a creamy mushroom sauce, well, the polenta was still pretty bland. Fortunately, the mushroom sauce was full of flavor thanks to sherry, onions, rosemary and garlic. The recipe takes tubes of prepared polenta, slices them into rounds and cooks the rounds in a skillet until a brown crust forms. I liked the textural difference between the crusty outside of the polenta and the creamy insides. This isn’t my favorite dish by far, but it was warm and filling.

Sausage and Tortellini Soup with Spinach
This broth-based pasta soup was Bryan’s pick for Sunday supper several weeks ago, and he did a great job with this recipe. It was a nice change of pace for me to come home to find supper on the table. The soup starts out by browning sausage (we used hot Italian sausage), onions and garlic. Chicken broth and fresh cheese tortellinis are added to the pot and simmered until the pasta is tender. Right before serving, baby spinach is stirred in and cooked just until wilted. This, along with some homemade bread, made a nice, light supper.

Skillet Chicken Tetrazzini
This was another of Bryan’s Sunday suppers. Using a store-bought rotisserie chicken, Bryan had this casserole-type dish on the table in less than an hour (and most of that time was spent chopping mushrooms and onions and shredding chicken meat). The dish starts off by cooking onions and mushrooms in butter until browned. Egg noodles are then cooked in the same skillet in a mixture of chicken broth and half-and-half until tender. Finally, the chicken, lemon juice, frozen peas and a bit of thyme are added to the skillet, and the whole dish simmers until the chicken and peas are warmed through. Unlike traditional tetrazzinis that use a cheese sauce, this casserole was right, but light. And it was done on the stovetop with one dish. We happily ate leftovers for several days.

Lemon Chicken and Rice Soup

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“This is the best cookbook you’ve ever bought.”

That’s what Bryan said as he ladled this soup into bowls. Not only did he pick this recipe for supper, he made it! A book full of good food, and it’s teaching my guy to cook. This is the best cookbook ever.

At first I was apprehensive. Chicken soup is never been one of my favorites, but I was pleasantly surprised. The soup was thick and creamy, but not overwhelmingly lemony. It kept well and made really good leftovers. Both Bryan and I noticed, however, that the lemon flavor seemed to decrease over time.

The soup starts out by cooking two chicken breasts until browned. Those are set aside and an onion is softened in the pan. Chicken stock, carrots, rice, thyme and the chicken breasts are added to the pot and simmered until the chicken is cooked through. The chicken breasts are set aside again, while the soup continues to simmer until the rice and carrots are tender. Once the vegetables are done, the chicken is cut into chunks and stirred back into the soup. To get the lemon flavor, egg yolks and fresh lemon juice are whisked together and then whisked into the soup.

Garlic-Rosemary Pork Chops

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Another simple, basic recipe that gets dinner on the table in less than 30 minutes.

Pork chops are cooked in a skillet until browned and juicy, then set aside. In the now empty pan, garlic, a rosemary sprig and chicken broth are used to build simple pan sauce, finished with a bit of butter and vinegar. We ate these pork chops over brown rice to soak up the flavorful pan sauce.

There’s nothing spectacular here, just a simple, delicious pork chop. On a busy weeknight, that’s usually enough.

Italian Pasta and Bean Soup

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I may have said this about other recipes from this book, but I think this dish is my favorite. Really and truly.

At least for now.

Anyway, pasta, beans, pancetta, tomatoes and carrots. What’s not to like? As the days get shorter and the nights cooler, this is the kind of food I want to eat. And coming from this book you know it will be good and take less than 30 minutes to make.

The base of the soup is pancetta and onions, cooked until softened and browned. A bit of garlic is added, then canned, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, Parmesan cheese and a sprig of rosemary. Once the liquids have come to a boil, a can of cannellini beans and pasta (any small pasta will do – I used macaroni salad pasta) is stirred in. The soup simmers until the pasta is done, about 10 minutes or so.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe. First, I added another can of beans. After I stirred in the first can, it looked pretty skimpy, bean-wise. Fortunately, I just happened to have another can of small white beans in my cupboard. I also added a couple of chopped carrots for color and sweetness. I would keep both of these changes.

The soup was hearty and filling, but not dense, if that makes any sense. I loved adding the rosemary sprig at the beginning. Because you fish it out before serving, you get a hint of rosemary, but you don’t have  the woody pieces to deal with. Because the soup is only cooked until the pasta is al-dente, the carrots stayed firm and the beans didn’t dissolve into mush. Leftovers were even better, as the flavors kept developing. The pasta started to get a little mushy, but it was still very, very good.

Easy Chicken Cacciatore

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My picture doesn’t do this dish justice. We very happily ate this for several meals in a row, and it is a dish I will be coming back to again and again.

Cacciatore is a classic Italian hunter-style stew made with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and, usually, wine, cooked long and slow. True to this book’s style this is a 30-minute recipe that delivers a hearty meal. It may not be traditional cacciatore, but I, for one, don’t care. If it tastes good and is easy to make, I’m happy.

The dish starts out by browning boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Once the meat is browned, it is transfered to a plate, and onions, red bell pepper and mushrooms are added to the pan and cooked until slightly browned. Garlic, tomatoes and wine are stirred in, then the chicken breasts are added back to the pan, and the whole thing simmers until the chicken is cooked through.

The chicken breasts were very moist and flavorful. The sauce was slightly sweet and had a lot of texture from the red peppers and chunks of mushrooms. My only quibble is that the sauce was quite dry. Next time I’d add more wine or chicken stock. I served this over rice one day and quinoa another. It seemed to pair particularly well with the quinoa, the robust flavors of the stew melding nicely with the grassiness of the quinoa.

Hearty Potato Leek Soup with Kielbasa

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Fall has hit North Idaho, bringing with it falling pine needles, an end to my sad little tomato plants and a craving for warm soups and home-made bread. Who am I to resist?

This soup is easy, easy easy. You start off by browning some kielbasa sausage. That gets set aside while a couple of pounds of cleaned, chopped leeks are added to the pan, along with butter and red potatoes. Once the vegetables have started to soften, a little bit of flour is stirred in, followed by chicken stock. As the soup cooks, the flour starts to thicken it. Once everything is tender, part of the soup is pureed to give it more thickness and body. To finish it off, the browned sausage is stirred back in and heated through.

When I told Bryan we would be having potato leek soup for dinner, he said he didn’t like leeks — this coming from a guy who eats raw onions with gusto. After a couple of spoonfuls, though, he decided that leeks weren’t too bad, and in fact, he did like them.

This soup is comforting and filling. I wasn’t a big fan of the sausage and would either cut down the amount or replace it with something else, maybe some bacon or cubed pork loin.

Grilled Honey-Mustard Chicken

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I’ve never been a honey-mustard sort of person, preferring ranch to all else. While this recipe isn’t going to persuade me to change camps, it is pretty darn good.

But what else would you expect from this book?

This is nothing more than grilled chicken topped with a sauce made with Dijon mustard, honey and cayenne pepper. The remaining sauce is mixed with sour cream and used as a dip. The recipe also calls for fresh tarragon, but I didn’t have it and didn’t miss it.

Did I mention that the recipe is dead simple, too?

We used this all week on other meats, such as pork chops, and it was just as good. Another winner.

Quick Indian Turkey Curry with Potatoes

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I’m getting tired of coming up with adjectives to describe how good the recipes from this book are. For this one, a tasty curry of chicken (because I couldn’t find turkey cutlets) and potatoes, fill in your own description.

This recipe was ____________ .

Just about anything good you come up with will fit.

You start out by browning chunks of poultry in a large skillet. Once browned, the chicken is set aside while the curry sauce is brought together in the same skillet. An onion is softened first, then a jalapeno, garlic, ginger and curry powder are added. Cubed potatoes and water are stirred into the onion mixture and the whole thing simmers until the potatoes are tender. Finally, the cooked poultry is added back to the pot to warm. To tone down the curry flavor and thicken the sauce a bit, yogurt is stirred in at the end. I followed the recipe recommendation and served the curry over rice.

Besides substituting chicken for the turkey, I made some other slight adjustments. Neither Bryan nor I like fresh ginger very much, so instead of using a tablespoon of the stuff, I only used about a teaspoon. This gave the curry a very, very mild ginger flavor, more of a background note then a punch to the face. I also used half of a jalapeno instead of the whole called for. I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy heat.

While this wasn’t Bryan’s favorite dish out of the book, I really loved it. It was so easy (one skillet!) but really delivered on flavor. You could easily make this vegetarian by leaving out the meat. The dish, served over rice, would still be quite filling. Maybe it was a good thing that Bryan was so-so about the curry; I’ve been happily eating leftovers for lunch all week.

Skillet Goulash

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Meet home run #84,612 from this book.

This one-pot dish features tender strips of steak and egg noodles in a flavorful sauce of onions, paprika, bell pepper, tomato paste, beef stock and sour cream. The sauce is mildly spicy from the paprika with a creamy tang from the sour cream. I had this on the table in less than 30 minutes after turning on the stove. And the leftovers were just as good as the first night’s meal. How can you beat that?

The dish starts of by browning a couple of strip steaks. Once they’ve gotten a nice crust on them, you set the steaks aside while you build the sauce in the same pan. An onion and a red bell pepper are sauteed until softened. Paprika and tomato paste are added and cooked briefly. Finally, beef stock and egg noodles are stirred into the pan and simmered until the noodles are tender. Just before serving, the steaks are thinly sliced and added to the pan, along with the sour cream.

Skillet Chicken Tikka Masala

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Here’s another fast, easy recipe from “the best cookbook I’ve ever bought” that delivers on flavor without a huge amount of work. It doesn’t look all that appetizing, but it is good.

You start out by browning chunks of chicken breast. Next, you cook an onion until soft, then stir in garam masala (an Indian spice mix), garlic, ginger and diced tomatoes. To finish the dish, a bit of cream is stirred into the skillet, along with the chicken, and the whole thing simmers for about 5 minutes.

Tasted by itself, this dish was almost too gingery, but it calmed down when eaten with rice. The chicken was very moist and flavorful, and leftovers were just as good.