Category Archives: Carefree Cook (The)

By Rick Rodgers

Orzo with Parmesan and Peas

Posted on by
3

orzoCurrently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

I don’t have a very large repertoire of side dishes, and I haven’t cooked with orzo before, so I was excited to try this recipe.

If you aren’t familiar with orzo, it is a small, rice-shaped pasta that cooks up quickly and can be flavored in a hundred different ways. This dish was simple, very tasty. You boil the orzo until tender (about 9 minutes), drain it, then toss it with the parmesan, peas and a bit of butter.

Any vegetable could be used here, although you might need to precook it. I ended up adding a bit of the pasta water to keep the dish from getting too dry. This dish would go with just about anything and the leftovers are good reheated.

Barbecued Meat Loaves

Posted on by
1

bbq_meatloafCurrently cooking out of The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

I have mixed feelings about this recipe. It was easy and fast, but I didn’t really like the taste of the meatloaves. The recipe calls for meatloaf mix, which is a mixture of equal parts ground beef, pork and veal. None of the grocery stores around here carried mealoaf mix, so I made my own using just beef and pork. The finished dish was very porky, but not in a good way.

Other than that (which, admittedly, is my own fault, not Rodgers’), I really liked the concept of this recipe. Instead of making one big meatloaf, you make four mini ones, shaped like doughnuts, which puts the cooking time at about 30 minutes. You use barbecue sauce in the mix as well as on top of the meatloaves. This gives the meatloaves a nice flavor and isn’t nearly as sweet as the standard ketchup.

Pork Chops in Creamy Mushroom Sauce

Posted on by
2

chops_mushrooms2Currently Cooking out of The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.

The next cookbook under the microscope is The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers. The book is aimed at people who don’t have a lot of time to cook, but want great tasting food. As he says in his introduction, “The Carefree Cook is about how to get fantastic flavors in your everyday cooking with a minimum of effort.”

chops_mushroomsRodgers’ book covers everything from soups and salads to side dishes and desserts. Most of the recipes have fewer than 5 steps and contain easy-to-find ingredients, a boon to busy cooks.

The first recipe that I tried (and one of the first I ever marked to try) was pork chops in a creamy mushroom sauce. Bryan loves mushrooms and we both love pork. There was no way this recipe was going to fail. The dish came together fast, just as Rodgers promised. First you brown the pork chops, then saute mushrooms and shallots (I used onions). You use sherry and chicken broth to deglaze the pan and then add the pork chops back in to finish cooking. At the end, sour cream and cornstarch are stirred into the mixture to thicken it.

The only tricky ingredient was a porcini powder that was listed as optional. Lucky for me, I came across this stuff during a stopover at Whole Foods in Portland, OR. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I’m assuming it’s dried porcini mushrooms that have been ground to a powder. It thickened the sauce and added a deep, earthy mushroom flavor.

I served the pork chops and sauce over white rice with a side of roasted broccoli. This stuff was good, as in lick-the-plate-clean good. The only bad thing about it? There’s only enough leftovers for one person . . .