Easy Weeknight Dinner: Pan Roasted Chicken & Mushrooms in a Creamy Dijon Sauce

I love cooking, for me it's relaxing and enjoyable. I know not everyone feels this way. Some find it tedious, boring or even stressful. And even I'll admit, there's some nights that I find comfort in easy recipes...ones that I can slap together with minimal prep and headache. On nights like these,  I especially love "one skillet" recipes. The more unfussy they are, the more I tend to embrace them. Like this recipe for Pan Roasted Chicken and Mushrooms in a Creamy Dijon Pan Sauce. It's simple but elegant, one of those versatile dishes that's perfect for a weeknight dinner or for when you have company over. Also, it makes your kitchen smell delicious. When I made this Friday night, both Mr.S and Kidlet #1 kept wandering in and out of the kitchen murmuring about how amazing the simmering sauce smelled.


Chicken and Mushrooms in a Creamy Dijon Pan Sauce

Ingredients

3-4 chicken breasts (or 5 skinless, boneless chicken thighs)
1/4 cup AP flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
12 oz. sliced crimini mushrooms
1 medium red onion, diced
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary
1.5 teaspoon dried tarragon (or 1 tablespoon chopped, fresh)
2.5 tablespoons good quality, whole grain Dijon mustard
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup half and half
2 tablespoons butter
slices chives (optional)

Instructions

1. In a shallow baking dish mix together: flour, sea salt and black pepper. Dredge the chicken through the mixture, coating both sides. Set chicken aside.

2. In a large cast iron skillet, heat up your oil. Once it's hot, add your chicken breast. Cook each side for 4 minutes over high heat so that it gets well browned and crispy. (Make sure you don't crowd the chicken.) You may want to use your splatter guard as the oil with be crackin' and hissin'.

3. Place the cooked chicken on a plate and set aside.

4. In the same skillet (keep the pan juices in there), add the onions, mushrooms, garlic, rosemary and tarragon. Reduce heat to medium-high and cook for about three minutes. Deglaze the pan with wine and add in mustard. Scrape the browned bits from the bottom of the pan so that it mixes in with the wine-mushroom mixture. Add your stock, half and half and butter. Reduce heat by half and stir frequently. Allow the sauce to reduce. After a few minutes, add the chicken back to the skillet and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes in the thickened sauce, basting occasionally.

5. Remove from heat and serve chicken with the extra sauce spooned over each piece.

6. Garnish with chives (optional)

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Rustic Shrimp and White Beans with Heirloom Tomato Sauce

Can you feel it? Can you taste it? Can you smell it? (Ok, maybe not smell it, right now all I can smell is the dog tooting up a storm because I made the mistake of sneaking him a few bites of chicken last night after dinner.) Anyhow...Fall is almost here! Despite the fact that Target started trotting out Halloween decorations the minute 4th of July ended, it didn't really feel like autumn was approaching to me until this week. Just within the last few days there's been a distinct change in the feeling of the seasons.

The calendar says September 22nd is the official first day of fall but already I can feel the nights are getting crisper, soups are starting to show up on restaurant menus and cardigans are starting to be taken out of the closets by all the hipsters in Midtown. I'm excited, I love fall! It's the best season (and no, it's not because Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes are being sold-- truth be told, I don't even like them.) I just love how autumn feels. It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears- all the other seasons are too hot, too cold, too wet...fall is just perfect. It could be because I was born in the fall and an autumn baby thus biased...but c'mon who doesn't love: hot apple cider, rainbow colored leaves, The Great Pumpkin and roaring fireplaces? I can't wait! In the meantime, I'm bridging the gap between seasons with recipes like this rustic shrimp and white bean dish that I adapted from a recipe I dug up from ol' Michael Chiarello (you know that really pompous Napa chef that was on Top Chef Masters awhile back. I was seriously hoping someone would have enough of his BS and stick a BBQ fork in his testicles at some point during that season). Anyhow, I made some tweaks to the recipe to suit my palate and the dish went over very well at the dinner table (aka no kidlets whining). The heirloom tomatoes bring about a nice taste of summer freshness to the dish but the heartiness of the beans and shrimp give the plate a stick-to-your-ribs quality that make it a good choice for the fall as well.

 

Rustic Shrimp and White Beans with Heirloom Tomato Sauce
(based on Michael Chiarello's Tuscan Shrimp and White Beans recipe)

Ingredients

2 cups canned cannellini white beans
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb. med shrimp, peeled and deveined
4-5 cloves garlic, sliced
2 dried chiles de árbol (crushed)
1 cup peeled, seeded and diced fresh heirloom tomatoes
4 oz. Mexican chorizo (or Soyrizo)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup whole fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon lemon juice
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons Italian flat-leaf parsley-chopped

Instructions

1. Drain the cannellini beans and reserve the liquid.

2. Place the beans in a large skillet with 2-3 tablespoons of the bean liquid. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and bring to a simmer. Set aside. Keep warm while you prepare the rest of your dish.

3. In a separate skillet, heat 1/4 cup olive oil over high heat. Add shrimp. Season with salt, cook for 1 minute. Remove shrimp with tongs, set aside in a bowl. Add garlic to empty skillet. Sauté until fragrant, add chiles de árbol  and chorizo (or Soyrizo), cook for 2-3 minutes. Add tomatoes and basil. Stir. Add lemon juice and tomato paste. Season with salt and pepper. 

4. Cook for about 3-4 minutes. Add in shrimp and cannellini beans. Mix well. Cook for another minute to reheat shrimp.

5. Spoon onto plate. Sprinkle with parsley.

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Shady Lady Tomato Sauce

"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." - Lewis Grizzard

Shady Lady tomatoes...they're like the sexy, busty sirens of the farmers' market. With their deep lipstick red color and voluptuous shape, how can you resist them? You can eat them sliced on a plate with some buffalo mozzarella with a good balsamic drizzle or stacked with a thick cut of smoky applewood bacon and some creamy avocado on a fresh, hearty slice of sourdough. There's so many delicious ways to enjoy this heavenly fruit. One of my favorite ways to consume Shady Lady tomatoes is to oven-roast them and then make them into a sauce. The sauce is rich in flavor and smooth like butta', much too good to plop on a bowl of ordinary pasta. I like to use it to dress up appetizers like crostini or mini meatballs. With this batch, I used it to sauce some eggplant parmesan bites I made for some patio dining. We grew some wonderful Japanese eggplants in our garden this summer at Mr. S.'s which I sliced up into rounds. I dipped the round in egg yolk, then tossed them in a mixture of Parmesan cheese and dried breadcrumbs and fried them in some olive oil until they were nice and crisp. (I then placed them on some paper to absorb the excess oil.) Next, I spooned a tablespoon of my Shady Lady tomato sauce on the round and sprinkled some Parmesan on top and served the eggplant bite hot. They were a hit! Next year we'll have to grow more eggplants.

Our Japanese eggplants in the garden when they were about 1/4 of the way grown- don't they look like X-mas ornaments?

Shady Lady Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

5-6 big Shady Lady Tomatoes ( peeled*, cored, seeded, halved)

5-6 garlic cloves, minced

2 small yellow onions, sliced

3 tablespoons olive oil

glug of dry, red wine

2 teaspoons sugar (optional)

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 bay leaf

handful of fresh basil, chopped

1 tablespoon good-quality balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper


Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Place tomato, garlic and onion in a glass baking dish. Spread out in a single layer, don't crowd. You want them to roast, not steam. Drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 20-30 minutes until they start to caramelize (slightly browned and shriveled).

3. Place roasted tomatoes, garlic, onions in a food processor and give it a few good pulses. Place in a medium-size pot over medium heat. Add wine, sugar, sea salt, bay leaf, and fresh basil. Add a splash of good quality balsamic vinegar. Allow to simmer for 20-25 minutes. Remove bay leaf.

4. Taste. Season with fresh ground pepper. Adjust seasonings if needed.

Marcella Hazan writes in The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: "No other preparation is more successful in delivering the prodigious satisfactions of Italian cooking than a competently executed sauce with tomatoes."

 

* The easiest way to peel a tomato is to :

1) Slice a shallow "X" on the bottom of the tomato. Then submerge the tomato in boiling water for 20-30 seconds. Remove and plunge in an ice bath for 30-45 seconds. Remove from the ice bath. The skin should peel off.

OR

2) Freeze the tomato. Remove the tomato from the freezer and let it thaw. Once thawed the skin should slip right off the tomato.

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Pan-Seared Scallops & Morels in Beurre Blanc

It's that wonderful time of the year...the day most parents count down to (like a kid counts down to Christmas) - THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. Although Mr.S.'s kidlets are great, by the end of summer both our nerves are pretty frayed. This year the kidlets will be attending different schools so they each had a different start date. Kidlet #1's first day of high school was last Monday and Kidlet #2 starts back up this Tuesday at his elementary school. The consensus after the first week from Kidlet #1 was that high school was "pretty cool," especially since he's already made new friends and due to a scheduling glitch he ended up with TWO lunch periods on the first day.

Anyhow, Mr.S. and I thought we'd celebrate this "holiday" by cooking up a tasty treat for ourselves. A celebration of surviving a summer of teen and preteen hormones, sibling rivalry and incessant "I'm bored's" and "He's looking at me's". I picked up some fresh, plump (or as I like to call them- fat ass) scallops at my favorite seafood store, Sunh Fish, along with some morels at the Co-op. I figured these ingredients paired with a simple beurre blanc (a velvety white butter sauce) would make a mind-blowing meal. And guess what? I was right! [I also made a side of sautéed balsamic carrots and beets greens so that we got our veggies in. ☺] The recipe didn't take too long to make, especially since I did my Back-to-School happy dance while whistling to The Final Countdown as I prepared the meal.

By the way, just a heads up-- beurre blanc is not for the faint of heart, it involves a INSANE amount of butter. Don't say I didn't warn you....

Pan-Seared Scallops and Morels in Beurre Blanc

Ingredients

1 dozen fresh, large scallops  (season on both sides with salt and pepper)
6 morels, cleaned of all grit and sliced in half length-wise
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4  cup champagne vinegar (or white wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon heavy cream
2  tablespoon finely minced shallots
Kosher salt and ground white pepper, to taste
2 sticks cold, unsalted butter (cut into tablespoon-size pieces)
1 tablespoon of clarified butter
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
6 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
4-5 finger limes (optional)

Instructions

1. In a medium saucepan, bring the wine, champagne vinegar and shallots to a boil.

2. Cook for about 10-12 minutes, until the mixture is reduced to a thick sauce-like consistency.

3. Reduce heat to low and add in the cream. Stir.

4. Add 1 tablespoon of COLD butter at a time. Whisk each piece in thoroughly, making sure it incorporates into the sauce. Keep whisking constantly throughout the whole butter adding process. The sauce should be rich and creamy looking when you're done.

5. Season with salt and pepper.

6.  On a large plate, arrange your tomato halves.

7. In a large cast-iron pan, heat up the clarified butter and vegetable oil over high heat. (You want it smokin' hot.)

8. Place the scallops in the pan. Don't crowd them. Then don't touch them for about 2 minutes. Let them cook undisturbed, you want to get that nice golden-brown crust. At two minutes, flip them over and cook them for another minute or two depending on the thickness of the scallops. (Be sure that you don't overcook them, overcooked scallops taste rubbery and gross.)

9. Remove scallops from heat and place on plate.

10. In the same pan, you just removed the scallops, give your morels a quick sauté. Add another pat of butter if you wish.

11. Place the sautéed morels on the plate. Scoop the beurre blanc over the scallops, morels and tomatoes. Garnish the scallops with finger lime caviar if you wish. Enjoy!

* Note: Beurre blanc does not keep well, so you want to make it right before you use it.

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Painting the Town Red: Cranberry - Jalapeño Salsa

(shown au naturale & "tweaked")

Looking for something sweet, sour and spicy that you can make in a flash for a party? Then you definitely need to try this crazy-delicious cranberry-jalapeño salsa by allrecipes. I made some for Thanksgiving this year, with a few tweaks (namely mixing it up with a block of Philadelphia cream cheese) and served it up with some sesame water crackers...and voila!  A party in your mouth!  What's nice about this salsa is that you can use the leftovers for a multitude of other dishes. I gave some to a friend to taste test and she came up with the brillant idea of  pairing it with some grilled sausage. Mmmm!

Cranberry-Jalapeno Salsa (adapted from a recipe by allrecipes)

Ingredients

makes roughly 2 cups of salsa

1 (12 ounce) bag cranberries, fresh or frozen

1 bunch cilantro, chopped

1 bunch green onions, cut into 3 inch lengths

1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced

2 limes, juiced

3/4 cup white sugar

1 pinch salt

1 block of Philadephia cream cheese (optional)

Instructions

- Combine cranberries, cilantro, green onions, jalapeno pepper, lime juice, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a medium blade. 

- Chop to medium consistency. 

- Refrigerate if not using immediately. Serve at room temperature.

* TIP: For an alternate serving suggestion, original recipe says to just pour 1 cup of salsa over a block of cream cheese and serve it that way but I found mixing the salsa and the cream cheese up in a food processor made a better tasting product.

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Itadakimasu! (Let's Eat!) : Japanese Curry

I'm still on a Japanese comfort food kick at my house and nothing hits the spot on a chilly day like a plateful of fresh karē raisu (カレーライス). Japanese curry rice is sweeter than thai curry and thicker than Indian curry. It's also a dish that entices both adult and childrens' tastebuds. Chocked full of protein and veggies, it's one of the healthier, quick fail-safe dinner dishes you can make too.


Karē Raisu   (Japanese Curry Rice)

Ingredients:

2 large carrots, peeled & sliced into half-rounds
1 large potato, peeled & cubed
1 large yellow onion, diced
2 T cooking oil
2 lbs chicken breast, cut into bite-sized chunks
6 cups of water
1 (8.4 oz.) package of medium-hot S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix (It's the best brand)

Instructions:

1. Cut the chicken breast into bite-sized chunks.

2. Dice carrots, potato and onion.

3. In a large skillet, heat cooking oil. Then sauté meat and onion in oil until lightly browned, about 3-5 minutes. Add carrots and potato.  Discard excess oil.

4. Add 6 cups of water and bring to a strong boil. Reduce heat, partially cover and simmer until meat (and potato) is tender, about 20 minutes.

5. Break Golden Curry Sauce Mix (roux) into small cubes and add to pot stirring until it is completed dissolved.

6. Simmer for another 5 minutes or so stirring constantly.

7. Serve over freshly cooked white rice. If you want to serve it in the traditional Japanese fashion, top it with a small portion of fukujinzuke for a contrast in taste and color.

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If Life Gives You Lemons...Make Lemon Rice!

Kids, God love 'em, have got to be the pickiest little eaters on the planet. Being around Mr. S.'s kidlets a good portion of the time these days, I'm learning that the less fussier the food the better the chance they'll eat it. Kidlet #2 loves chicken breasts, so one harried weeknight we went with a simple meal of grilled chicken, veggies (choice of peas or corn) and rice. Sounds healthy but boring, right? Well, we dressed it up just a wee bit so that our adult palates wouldn't cop a snooze from the blandness. So how can you jazz up a blah meal when you're exhausted on a Wednesday night? Simple...for the chicken we punched a few holes in the breasts and did a quick 10 minute soak in Soy Vay's Veri Veri Teriyaki then threw it on the grill. If you haven't tried this stuff, try it NOW! It's delicious and available at most local grocers. (I would like to add that the SV's marinade is even better if you leave it overnight; but hey, if you're in a time crunch then you've gotta do what you've gotta do and this stuff takes to the meat pretty quickly.)

For the rice, I decided to give the Food Wife's Yellow Lemon Rice a go. I hadn't worked with turmeric before and was pleasantly surprised by it's abundance of health benefits, when I Googled it. The rice came out a beautiful electric yellow color that popped on the plate. I thought it had a nice subtle taste but seemed to be lacking some.... je ne sais quoi. If I made it again, I think I'd add some diced onion or some scallions...maybe even throw in some pine-nuts. It's a good dish...it just needs some flair.

Foodie Wife's Yellow Lemon Rice (adapted from a Feast For The Eyes)

1 c long grain white
2 c chicken stock
1/2 t turmeric 
1 T fresh lemon juice
1 t fresh lemon zest
fresh minced parsley, chopped

(I tripled the recipe so we would have enough)

1. Rinse the rice in cold water several times, until it runs clear.

2. Place the rice in a pot and add in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 20-25 minutes, covered. Remove from heat. (You can also do this in a rice cooker instead.)

3. Fluff with a fork.

4. Add lemon zest, lemon juice and sprinkle with parsley.

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Baby Back Ribs with Peach Bourbon Sauce

 

One of the benefits of having friends that love food is that the majority of them are incredible cooks. One of my favorite kitchen dabblers is Undercover Caterer (if you haven't checked out her blog, you should!). Last summer, she brought a plate of her Peach-Bourbon ribs to a get together and the sauce was so mind-blowingly delicious that the whole lot of us were licking our fingers after downing each rib. Unfortunately, it was the tail end of peach season when I got to sink my teeth into those tasty eats and I had to wait patiently for the season to roll back around again. Anyhow, first chance I got this summer, I scurried down to the farmers' market and got me some juicy peaches. I was a bit worried about how this recipe would turn out as I've never cooked ribs before but they came out fall-off-the-bone-tender and the sauce was just as fantabulous as I remembered.

Undercover Caterer's Baby Back Ribs with Peach-Bourbon Sauce

For the ribs:

- Heat oven to 250 degrees.
- Mix 3/4 cup of dry rub with equal amounts of brown sugar.
- Pat your ribs dry, apply rub to all sides of the rack, wrap them tightly in foil and place them on a rack above a baking sheet.
- Roast for 2.5-3 hours, testing for doneness. They should be tender and pull away easily.

For the sauce:

2 T butter
1/2 red onion, about 3/4 cup minced
6 white or yellow peaches- peeled and coarsely chopped
2 T apple cider vinegar
1/3-1/2 cup of dark brown sugar, depending on the sweetness of the fruit
1/3 cup chicken stock (I used veggie stock since that was what I had on hand)
1/2 cup ketchup
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 t Dijon
1 T Sriracha Sambal sauce (the chili-garlic kind with the green screw top lid, not the rooster sauce)
2 T fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup of bourbon

- Melt butter in saucepan and saute onions until soft.
- Add chopped peaches, bring to a simmer and cook about 4-5 minutes.
- Add in the rest of the ingredients except for the lemon juice and simmer another 20 minutes, until it thickens.
- Add lemon juice to taste.
- Using a stick blender, blend until mixture is smooth.
- When the ribs are done, you can glaze them then finish them off on the grill for a smoky flavor.

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Presto Pesto!

This summer I took the initiative to plant a few herbs and vegetables. My dill died almost immediately: however, my basil and parsley took off like a wildfire. So, between my harvest of homegrown basil and the basil I bought while I was at the farmer’s market this week, I had enough to whip up a few batches of pesto. I figured it’d be nice to have some on hand for when I make homemade pizzas or when I’m feeling lazy and am craving some pesto pasta mixed with fresh summertime veggies.



Baby Basils

Presto Pesto
Yields about 3 cups

Ingredients

6 cups fresh basil leaves, packed tight

1/2 cup Parmesan-Reggiano, grated

2/3 cup walnuts, chopped

5-6 garlic cloves, minced or smashed

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

5-6 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

sea salt & fresh ground pepper, to taste


Instructions

- Combine basil leaves, walnuts and garlic in food processor and pulse until finely minced.

- With the machine running slowly add the oil through the feed tube and process until the mixture is smooth.

- If you plan to freeze your pesto, skip adding the cheese until you're ready to use it. Otherwise, add the grated cheese and process very briefly.

- Add the lemon juice. Give it a few good pulses.

- Season with sea salt & pepper. Process.

- Transfer to jars or airtight containers.

- Refrigerate.

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Buon appetito! : Bolognese Sauce

There'll always be days that you're too tired, too sick or just too lazy to cook. So when you do have days when you feel the urge to bust out your apron; you should take advantage of the mood and whip up a big batch of something so that you can freeze a bunch of it...or if you're like me, feed all of your friends. I mean really, who doesn't love a homecooked soup, sauce or casserole?

One of my favorite sauces to make and share is bolognese sauce. It's simple to make and quite healthy. When I first started making it, I used Ms.Big Head's (aka Giada De Laurentiis) recipe from Everyday Italian as a template. Over time I tweaked this and that and found a version that worked for me. 

You can find the original recipe here:  Giada's Simple Bolognese. My version complete with tweaks is listed below.

Bolognese Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup olive oil
2  (28 oz.) cans of crushed tomatoes (I like to use Muir Glen's Organic Fire Roasted Crushed Tomatoes)
2 medium onions, diced
5-6 garlic cloves, minced
2 lbs. ground beef
½ cup flat leaf Italian parsley, chopped
¼  cup basil leaves, chopped
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
Tapatio sauce
Red pepper flakes
½  cup red wine

Instructions

* In a large skillet heat the olive oil.  Add the onion and garlic and saute over medium heat until the onions become very soft, about 8 minutes.

* Raise heat to high and add the ground beef. Saute for another 10 minutes, until all the pink is gone.

* Add the tomatoes, parsley and basil. Stir.

* Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Add red wine and a couple splashes of Tapatio.

* Allow the sauce to simmer on medium low heat until it thickens, about 30 minutes.

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