Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

You should have seen Bryan’s face light up when I told him we were having chicken fingers for supper. I’m pretty sure this guy has eaten more chicken strips/fingers than anybody alive. Then his eyes narrowed and he started asking questions.

Bryan: Are they deep-fried?

Me: No, baked.

Bryan: Are they breaded?

Me: No, but there are bread crumbs involved.

Bryan: Are they even chicken?

Me: Well, no. They are ground turkey, but it is all poultry.

Then he walked away, shaking his head and muttering some not-so-very-nice things under his breath.

In the headnotes to this recipe, Clark talks about wanting to make chicken fingers for her daughter that were spicy, nutritious and something that adults would like. So she modeled them after lamb kibbe, a turkish dish that mixes ground lamb with aromatic spices such as cinnamon, cumin and allspice. You take a pound or so of ground chicken (or turkey, if your supermarket doesn’t carry ground chicken), mix in the afore mentioned spices plus green onions, garlic, cilantro, bread crumbs, pepper and a pinch of cayenne and then form the mixture into “fingers.” Those fingers get brushed with olive oil and baked in the oven until cooked through.

The turkey fingers were … interesting. Neither Bryan nor I really liked the spices with the meat, and the texture of the fingers was quite dense and a bit tough. I’m pretty sure I overmixed the turkey mixture and that’s what made the fingers dense and tough. As to the flavor? Well, I prefer my cinnamon be kept with the sweet things. I liked the idea of the recipe, though, and could see making these with different spices and herbs.

Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

When I started reading through this book, looking for recipes to make, I skipped this dish three or four times. It looked like too much work. I couldn’t imagine the flavors. It just didn’t sound that good. Then Bryan happened to see the recipe; he thought it sounded good.

Maybe I should listen to him more often, because this dish rocked. Seriously, this is one of the best chicken dishes I’ve ever made. And it wasn’t that much work.

You begin by using a food processor to make a paste of salted, roasted cashews, cilantro, olive oil, garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, lime juice and a jalapeno. Half of the paste gets rubbed over chicken thighs/drumsticks which are then broiled or grilled, and the rest of the paste is served at the table as extra sauce.

I used chicken breasts that I cut into pieces and threaded on metal skewers. I opted for the broiler over the grill, and I let the chicken marinate in the paste for about two hours before I broiled them. At first, I was worried that the paste was too sweet and too spicy (even though I only used half of a seeded jalapeno). But under the broiler, some sort of alchemy took place. Married with the chicken, the sweetness turned into a faint caramel bitterness, the toastiness of the cashews took center stage, and the spiciness of the jalapeno almost disappeared. Unfortunately, the paste that I saved to serve as a sauce (I thinned it down with a little water) was still too sweet. Next time I’ll add extra lime juice or cut the sugar a bit.

I can’t wait until summer when I can try this out on the grill. I suspect the smokiness of the grill will take this dish over the top.

I’ve had a devil of a time trying to pick my next cookbook. You’d think, with more than 200 cookbooks, that that would be easy. Nope. I’ve been trying to cut down on my processed sugar intake, so I wanted to steer clear of baking cookbooks (at least for a little while). And none of my savory cookbooks looked very appealing. Lately, all I’ve wanted to eat are salads full of cabbage, lettuce and other assorted veggies. Also, I wanted to cook out of one of my newer cookbooks. I kept coming back to this book, but I just couldn’t find more than a handful of recipes that sounded good. I decided to go for it anyway. I’ll probably tagteam this book with another of Melissa Clark’s new cookbooks, Cook This Now.

One of the first things that struck me about In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite was how readable it was. Every recipe comes with a story. Not just headnotes, but a story that tells you how the recipe came about. That’s not surprising, considering Clark writes a regular column for the New York Times dining section, in addition to appearing in just about every food magazine ever published. She’s got an easy way of writing that makes you feel like she’s your best friend. She makes writing look effortless.

Anyway, onto the first dish. This book has exactly one recipe for chicken breasts, and Clark even admits that she originally envisioned using a whole chicken, preferring the dark meat to the white meat, but her editor requested chicken breasts. I don’t know how this would work with a whole chicken, but I can tell you that it works just fine with chicken breasts. Better than fine, actually. This was so good that Bryan even admitted to kind of liking the sweet potatoes.

The dish is pretty simple and perfect for a weeknight. You take a couple of sweet potatoes (okay, yams), cut them into chunks and start roasting them in the oven. Meanwhile, you make a paste of honey, chipotle chilies in adobe sauce, cumin, cinnamon, salt, garlic and vinegar. The paste gets rubbed all over chicken breasts, then the meat gets place on top of the sweet potato chunks and roasted until the chicken is done, about 20 more minutes.

My only gripe is that the paste was very spicy. The recipe calls for 4 chipotle chilies, minced. I hate the seeds (they never soften, and I find their hard texture annoying), so I took all the seeds out, and it was still too spicy. I would cut the chilies in half if you don’t like spice. Other than that, I really liked this dish. The sweet potatoes get soft but not mushy and soak up a lot of the chicken juice. The chicken stays moist, and the paste gives it a lot of flavor. I was a little unsure about the combination of cinnamon and cumin, but here it really works. I love the idea of roasting the chicken breasts over veggies, and I’d like to try it with cauliflower.

As for a picture? Well, I came down with a cold the day I made this, and I was too tired and sneezy to get out the camera. Sorry.

Currently cooking out of Slow Cooker Revolution by America’s Test Kitchen

Is it possible to have too much shredded pork? Can one ever get tired of burritos, shredded pork sandwiches and more burritos? I’m not sure, but we came darn close to finding out with this dish. We’ve been eating shredded pork every day since I made this, about a week ago. Mostly we use it as a filling for burritos or between hamburger buns, but in a desperate search for variety, we’ve also eaten the pork by itself or over rice. Don’t get me wrong; this is good stuff, but even the best stuff gets old after a while.

So, take that as a warning. This makes a TON of shredded pork. Good, if you are trying to feed a football team. Bad, if it is just two of you.

The dish starts out by microwaving onions, chili powder, garlic, chipotles, coriander and cumin in a bit of oil until the onions are soft. The aromatics are transferred to the slow cooker, and tomato sauce and some sugar are stirred in. Boneless pork butt is added to the slow cooker (Note: I couldn’t find boneless pork butt, so I ended up using pork ribs that the meat counter lady said were basically the same cut) and coated with the tomato sauce mixture. Everything is left to cook until the pork is falling-apart tender, about 10 hours on low or 6 hours on high. At the end, the pork is removed from the slow cooker and shredded and some of the liquid is used to moisten the pork.

This is a good, basic use for boneless pork butt. It isn’t too spicy (you could make it spicier by adding more chipotles at the beginning), and the meat is tender and flavorful. Besides burritos and sandwiches, you could use this in enchiladas, tostadas or a Mexican-type lasagna.

This was my first taste of chili mac. I pretty much knew I’d like it because I like chili, and I like pasta. I wasn’t disappointed. However, after a week of eating leftovers, I was pretty sick of it. There’s your warning. This recipe makes A LOT of chili mac. Enough that you probably won’t want to look, or even smell, chili mac for a few months.

This is one of the few recipes in this book that wants you to precook the meat, hamburger in this case, before putting it into the slow cooker. Because the pasta cooks so quickly (quickly, in slow cooker time, is about 2 hours), the meat runs the risk of not being completely done.

So your first step is to mix the  hamburger with a panade (milk-soaked bread). The panade keeps the meat tender and adds a bit of flavor. Since you’ll be browning the meat, the authors have you brown the onions, bell pepper and spices first, then the meat gets added to the skillet. Finally, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce and brown sugar are stirred into the skillet and then everything is transferred to the slow cooker. Macaroni, cheese and water are stirred in, then everything cooks until the pasta is tender.

This was really good (for the first 5 days). It is spicy without being too spicy and very filling. My only complaint is that the pasta goes from tender to mushy really quickly. Needless to say, the pasta in the leftovers was completely mushy. It still tasted good, just mushy. Next time, I’ll probably leave the pasta out and use this more as a pasta sauce, cooking the pasta for each meal. It would also be good with baked potatoes or as a sloppy joe filling.

At first there were just rumors that Cooks Illustrated was putting out a slow cooker cookbook. I looked at their website, searched Amazon. Nothing. Then one day, while reading my latest copy of Cooks Illustrated Magazine, I saw it on the wrapper. It did exist! Then came a few weeks of debating whether or not I really needed another cookbook. I actually held out for a while (okay, my local bookstore didn’t have the book in stock, and I didn’t want to order it). Then it showed up at Costco, and I bought it.

Starting a slow cooker cookbook right before summer may seem a little odd, but I tend to use my slow cooker all year long. I like making a big batch of something so that we have leftovers for lunches, and the slow cooker doesn’t heat up the house like the stove or oven would.

I have high hopes for this cookbook. The recipes are a little more involved than you’d usually find with a slow cooker recipe. Most of the time, you don’t just dump, stir and cover. Sometimes the recipes have you brown the onions or microwave the aromatics in some oil. The guys at Cooks Illustrated claim this helps develop a deep flavor in the dishes and is worth the extra work. We’ll see.

I picked this first recipe because of the mushrooms. I might have mentioned it before, but Bryan LOVES, LOVES, LOVES mushrooms. I think he was having a bad day, and I wanted him to feel better. Yes, I am the perfect wife.

The recipe starts out by browning the mushrooms, onions, thyme and paprika in a skillet. Once the veggies are softened and browned, a bit of flour is stirred in, followed by chicken broth and sherry to make a gravy. Once the mixture is thickened, it is transfered to the slow cooker, and beef blade steaks are nestled into the liquid. Everything cooks until the meat is falling-apart tender. Mine took about 6 hours. I started my slow cooker on high, then once everything was bubbling and hot, I turned it down to low.

We served the meat and gravy over rice for the first meal, then over pasta for the next two meals. The meat is so tender, that it fell apart the first time I tried to pick it up. It made a wonderful pasta sauce. I can’t find a fault with this recipe.

Note: No picture. It looked brown, like lumpy gravy.

I have to be honest; I’m finding this cookbook to be pretty uninspiring. I’m a little ashamed to admit that, given how determined I was to make some fundamental changes to my diet. It’s beginning to be a struggle to find a recipe that I want to try. I’ve made several recipes that, for various reasons, haven’t made it to the blog, so I thought I’d do a quick wrap-up.

Braised Cabbage and Sauerkraut with Sausages—I don’t like sauerkraut. Bryan does, and in the headnotes to this recipe, Bittman says that even people who don’t like sauerkraut will like this dish. What the heck, I decided to give it a try.

I still don’t like sauerkraut, and I didn’t like this dish very much. Smoked sausage, fresh cabbage, sauerkraut and onions are quickly braised in either stock or, if you are feeling adventurous, beer. The fresh cabbage mellows the sauerkraut, somewhat, and both go well with the sausage. I think my biggest mistake was to use a turkey kielbasa. If I made this dish again, I’d go for a real smoked sausage to give the braise some depth. I also added mustard seeds because I found the dish bland. We ended up picking out the sausage and throwing the rest away.

Loaded Cornpone—I’m still confused about this dish. I was expecting cornbread in a pancake form. What I got were heavy disks of wet cornmeal. Looking back over the recipe, I don’t know why I thought this was more like cornbread since there is no flour and no leavening in the recipe.

You start by softening cornmeal in boiling water. After sitting for about 10 minutes, you loosen the cornmeal with a bit of buttermilk, some olive oil and corn kernels (I used thawed, frozen corn). Then you pour the batter, pancake-style, onto a hot griddle or skillet, cooking each side for about 5 minutes.

These were so bland that I resorted to dipping the one I ate in maple syrup. The outside of the cornpone (I’m not sure it that is the right work to describe these, but I hesitate to call them pancakes since the only thing they had in common with pancakes was their shape), was kind of hard, a little crunchy, and the inside was pretty much wet cornmeal. Very disappointing.

According to Bittman, “Joe’s Special” is a ground beef and spinach hash commonly found in San Francisco restaurants that have the word “Joe” in their name. Bittman’s twist is to focus more on the veggies than on the beef.

The dish starts out by browning ground beef, onions, minced garlic and mushrooms (big chunks of mushrooms, in my case). Once browned, everything is transferred to a bowl and a big bunch of spinach is wilted in the pan. To finish the dish, the beef and mushroom mixture is added back to the pan, and an egg and some parmesan cheese is stirred into the mixture and cooked just until set. We ate the hash over some leftover brown rice.

Never having had the original “Joe’s Special,” I can’t compare the two, but I found this dish to be filling and hearty. I wish I would have browned the mushrooms a little more, and maybe added some soy sauce or hot sauce. It was just a bit bland.

While not a total flop, this dish didn’t turn out anything like it was supposed to. It was kind of boring, greasy and mushy. The dish was so monotonously grayish green, I didn’t even bother to get a picture of it.

Stuck-pot style refers to a method of cooking rice so that the rice on the bottom forms a brown, crunchy crust. When you invert the rice onto a plate, the crust becomes the top of the dish. I was excited to give this dish a try, and I thought the textural differences in the rice would be interesting.

The dish starts off by parboiling brown rice and browning chicken drumsticks in olive oil (I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs). Thinly sliced cabbage and minced garlic is added to the oil in the pot and sauteed until the cabbage is softened. The next step involves layering the rice, meat and vegetables in the pot, starting and ending with the rice. The dish cooks for 45 minutes or until the rice is tender.

So what went wrong? I think my biggest mistake was using too large of a pot, which meant I had to use more oil to make sure the rice didn’t burn which meant I ended up with greasy rice. I also should have added more liquid to the pot in the beginning to get the rice more tender. I’m not sure what went wrong with the cabbage; it came out of the pot very mushy. If I try this dish again, I’ll try cooking the cabbage less in the beginning.

This recipe packs a punch, both from the radicchio and the balsamic vinegar. It comes together very quickly and has a bunch of different textures. However, I didn’t love this dish. I thought the radicchio was too bitter, and I just didn’t like the balsamic vinegar in there.

Once again, I didn’t get pictures. It was very brown.

The dish starts out by searing a steak (I used flank steak). You want the steak to be very rare, so the juices add flavor to the sauce. Once the steak is done, it gets set aside to rest. The radicchio, an onion and some garlic gets sliced and added to the pan and cooked until they are soft. The steak is sliced, and the meat and all the juices are added to the pan, along with the vinegar, cooked spaghetti and enough pasta water to form a sauce.

I’m not sure what I could change about this dish to make it more appealing to me. Maybe use cabbage instead of the radicchio and leave out the vinegar?