No Soup for You! "Cream" of Broccoli Soup (?) Take 1

With all the broccoli I bough when it was on sale I proceeded to go about making a bunch of broccoli foods. I also tried to make a batch of cream of broccoli soup. I must admit that broccoli soup is not something I have ever had the interest in personally. I love cream of spinach soup and cream of asparagus soup is on my short list of best foods ever...but somehow I have had zero interest in the broccoli version. This is most likely due to the general addition of cheddar to it. I have never been a fan of cheddar.

However i do not cook for myself only. I live with my sister and her husband and both of them enjoy broccoli soup so i decided that I would try my hand at making some. After all how hard can it be? Now, My sister is a Vegan (70% - so no Vegan Powers sadly), so I needed to make a soup that would not rely on chicken broth or dairy.

So here is a record of my first attempt...

You will need:

A Large pot
A Cutting Board

A Sharp Knife

A Blender or an Immersion Blender

A Measuring cup

A Tablespoon Measuring spoon

Ingredients needed (for ~5 servings - Give or Take):

 2 lbs Broccoli stalks, chopped (roughly 4 Cups) Florets reserved for other uses
1 Onion, diced
2 Leeks, halved and sliced
1 C Diced Celery
1-3 Tbsp Oil
2 Tbsp Flour
6 C Vegetarian Broth (I used Better than Bullion and water)
1 dash Salt (to taste)

Directions:

1. Chop the Broccoli, Leeks, Onions, and celery.

Already I was in trouble. I had no leeks on hand (it was kind of spur of the moment when i decided to make soup) and when I went for my celery it was all gross! - Eww!

So what to do? I decided to go ahead with it anyway. How much difference could those 2 ingredients make anyway. I have had ingredients go missing or whatever before, so I fifured in this instance it was no big deal to continue.

2. Place the vegetables and the oil in a soup pot and saute until the onions are translucent. Stirring to prevent burning.  Cook for about 10 minutes.

3. Add the flour to the pot once the vegetables are cooked. Still to coat. Continuing to cook briefly, until the flour begins to color slightly - 5 minutes or so.

4. Add the broth. Add it in batches, stirring between each to prevent the flour from clumping.

As i said, I used Better than Bullion. The jar lists the directions of taking one tsp of Bullion paste and dissolve into one cup of water for every cup of broth you want. Better than bullion is some pretty awesome stuff, but it is kind of hard to measure well. It is very thick (think molasses) so I find the best way to measure it is to either scoop out the spoon after each dip - ie scoop the bullion and then dump it into the bowl (pot etc) and while dumping it out take your (clean) finger and smoosh out the spoon. Or you can try the oily spoon method - where-in you dip the unused measuring spoon in an oil first then measure out the bullion (also works with other sticky thick substances). The Oil Method works pretty well, but adds extra oil to your recipe, which isn't always ok to do.

5. Bring the pot up to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes.

6. Remove the soup from heat and blend it to a smooth consistency.

You can use an immersion blender if you have one, or you can use a standard upright blender or ninja or whatever kind of blending tool you have. An immersion blender is the best kind of tool for this job. I didn't realize my sister had an immersion blender available so i used the regular blender for this.

Why is a stick blender better? Because the biggest problem you face when blending hot liquids is their risk of explosion. No, seriously! Its dangerous because the hot liquid will expand rapidly when agitated and you can get really hurt. So if you are using a standard blender be sure to only fill the vessel part way (like less than half) and blend in batches. If what you are blending is thick DO NOT attempt to pop the "bubble" that forms in the blender when mixing hot foods. It is still safe to blend, just be smart about it.

Using a stick blender will allow you to blend in the pot preventing the issues of rapid expansion and bubbles from being dangerous.

7. Tada! Soup! Eat and enjoy.

So yeah...I totally didn't have soup at the end of this. I had something that appeared to be gravy. I was perhaps a little heavy on the flour, or maybe I didn't put enough water in. Or maybe i walked away from it for too long (I forgot to set a timer) and too much evaporated. For whatever reason my end result was WAY thicker than soup is supposed to be.

With some trepidation I took a taste. Freaking Delicious! Holy Crap! My brother in law had arrived shortly after I finished the product and announced his intentions to make a batch of mashed potatoes and top them with the "Cream" of  Broccoli Non-Soup. So totally awesome. We ate it all.

Moral of the story....

Sometimes you really do need all the ingredients to make the dish.

Don't give up on a dish if it doesn't turn out the way you intended.

Loquat I can do!

Its late winter (early Spring really) here in Florida. I am not thrilled to be living here. (For many many reasons i will not get into right now) But one really nice thing about living here is food I have never had growing right in my back yard - literally.

This is a Loquat tree growing behind the house I live in. And it is in fruit right now. I had never heard of these fruits before but they are amazeballs delicious! Escpeially in salad dressings and chutney. However those are the only things i have made so far and both were amazing so i can fairly guess that the other ideas i have for these beauties will be awesome too!

So what is a Loquat?

Its a tree that was imported from asia as (primarily) an ornamental. The trees are self polinating and super resiliant so they are a very good little plant for the yards in the warmer temperate regions of the US. They are found in California too!

The fruit grows in little bunches and the fruits kind-of ripen at the same time so you can just pluck the whole bunch at once. The fruit doesn't give much of a fight when picking and the cluster will come free fairly easily.

Feel free to eat it raw, as is (after washing of course). No need to peel. However, beware the seeds. Each loquat can have up to 5 seeds though most have only 1 or 2. The edible flesh of the fruit is a fairly thin area around the large seeds.

The fruit is about as large as a strawberry. It ranges in color from a yellowy green to orange/peach to a blushed orange color as they ripen. Its better to pick them in the peach stage as the fruit flies love there things and waiting until they are really ripe means you might get some added protein when you bide into one - if you get my drift. Nasty! So get them while they are still a little under ripe. The skin is thin and has some light peach fuzz on it.

Flavor:
Sweet - like a peach or mango but with a slightly sour/tangy flavor like a grapefruit added.

Preparation...

I simply wash off my loquats and slice them lengthwise. Then I remove the pit. I save these because I found a recipe for making amaretto from them, so I'm totally going to try it!

Some of the webpages I came across while learning about this fruit warned of a strong smell associated with the fruit - something akin to bleach apparently. They warned that you might want to blanch the fruit before you handled it, or wear gloves so as to prevent your hands from smelling funny later. I did not find this to be true of the fruits I have but different cultivars likely have different scents.

Loquat, being a fruit and all, is a healthy thing to eat. It is high in fiber nearly 2 grams in a 1/2 cup. In that same 1/2 cup you get about 1/2 a gram of protein. They are also reasonably high in vitamin A.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loquat
Nutritiondata.com

Vegetable of the Week: Broccoli

It is coming up on the end (hopefully) of winter. As such you might disrepair of finding any good fresh vegetables in the market. Well, fear no more! There are many vegetables that are in season now, including broccoli.

The broccoli that you typically see in the store is actually called Calabrese broccoli, a relatively modern cultivar of the Cruciferae/Brassica family of vegetables. Other Cruciferae/Brassica vegetables include the much maligned Kale and Cabbage as well as brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I found some debate as to its exact origin...but most of the articles I read (see references below) agree that the broccoli we are familiar with today was created in what we now call Italy, though it was quite some time ago (perhaps as early as the first century CE). This is still relatively recent in comparison to its original parent vegetable which was eaten over 5000 years ago.

Broccoli gets a bad rap - broccoli farts, anyone? This smell is due to the naturally occurring sulfur compounds in the vegetable. They are worse if you over cook the broccoli or wait too long to eat it (either letting it grow too long in the garden before picking or letting it sit too long after buying before cooking). But those very same sulfurs may be really important to your health! Its a load of complex chemistry...but the end result is that compounds in broccoli (and other Cruciferae/Brassica vegetables) break down into antioxidants known to protect against cancer.

Ever hear of "magic smoke"? I'm not talking about what is now legal in colorado. I'm talking about the joke that is shared between antique vehicle enthusiasts and computer repair people."magic smoke" is what you smell or see right as a component in the machine fails (typically ozone). The joke is that if you let the magic smoke out of the machine it no longer works - as though the smoke was what was powering the item. The same holds true for broccoli - but in this case the magic smoke is the sulfur smell. If you smell the sulfur, you let out the magic and the broccoli is not a nutritionally valuable to you anymore. So don't overcook it!

There is no reason why you can't just eat it raw. It is great this way. There is some discussion as to whether the nutrients in broccoli (or any food for that matter) are more bioavailable if they are lightly cooked. 

I prefer to lightly blanch my broccoli so that it turns bright green. I often don't even place the broccoli into the boiling water. For instance I will take a full sized pasta pot and boil up some lightly salted water...get it to a nice rolling boil. Then I place the raw broccoli into a colander and simply pour the boiling water over the broccoli. 

In addition to the sulfur in broccoli...why should you eat it? Nutritionally it is a powerhouse (superfood is such an annoying term). It (like most vegetables) is low in calories  - only about 30 in a 3 oz serving. In those 3 oz though you get more than 100% of your daily recommended intake of Vitamin C (64.9mg) and over 100% of your Vitamin K (141 mcg), you get about a third of your Vitamin A for a day (1548 IU) and a reasonable amount of Fiber (3.3g) plus lots of other important stuff.

Another reason you should eat it...right now -  its cheap. Its not normally the most expensive of vegetables but now its even cheaper. It is getting to the end of the broccoli season here in the United States. Soon we will have to import it from areas in the southern hemisphere. So take advantage of the discounts and get some broccoli now.

Buying broccoli

If buying it fresh you should look for tight closed and uniformly dark green - almost purple- flower top. The stalk should be firm and pale. Any leaves should be very dark green and not wilted. The cut end should not appear slimy or brown.  Most people prefer the tops of the broccoli to the stalks. It is perfectly acceptable to buy only the tops if you can. 

Frozen broccoli is acceptable for most dishes (not salads of course) and as frozen vegetables are picked at their peak in the season and blanched and frozen right away, the nutritional difference is negligible (though you should still try to cook it as briefly as you can).

Resources.

The world Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients, Christine Ingram, 2004

The Wellness Encyclopedia of Food and Nutrition (UC Berkley), Sheldon Margen M.D., 1992

http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch44.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broccoli

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22303412

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/antioxidants/

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/research_says_boiling/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioavailability

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products

Frittata: First Draft

Cooking is a lot like writing/reading a novel. The ingredients are like the characters and the steps are the story lines. When you don’t have a recipe you are writing your own stories. When you have a recipe to follow you are reading someone else’s finished product.

I think one of the reasons that people don’t cook something new is perhaps they think that the recipes that they have used sprouted fully formed from some master chef’s imagination. Well, somehow I doubt that that is the case. It takes many drafts before the recipe is ready to be published.

I didn’t want to put any recipes on this blog for people to read that I myself had not put through a stringent drafting process, and had several very tasty and consistent final drafts. However I realize that this is the wrong way to think about this. I would be habitualizing the same problem that I am railing against if I did that.

Since I’ve decided that you all deserve to see the whole processes I will walk through the steps I took last night to make a frittata. The end resulting dinner was fine tasting but not nothing special and the visual appearance was less wonderful than I was hoping for.

So without further ado…Spring Vegetable Frittata – Take One:

Frittata is kind of like a quiche, kind of like an omelet, and kind of like a German pancake. It is also one of the easier foods to make...in my opinion. It is certainly easier than all of the afore mentioned food items that it is similar to.

One of the great things about frittatas is that you don’t really need to plan them into your week. As long as you have eggs you have everything you need to make a frittata…guaranteed. This is true because you can put basically anything into a frittata. Some good combinations are: Bacon pieces-green onions-Swiss cheese, Pees-cooked chicken-cheddar, spaghetti noodles-cooked hamburger-peppers-mozzarella, Feta-Black Olives-Capers-Diced cooked potatoes. Just open your fridge and look to see what you have available. Any starch veggie and cooked meat will work fine. All cheeses are good, though some are better than others.

For this frittata I decided to use some angel hair noodles, Asparagus spears, diced ham, chopped onion, artichoke hearts, mozzarella, feta cheese, garlic, oil, and some spices. And of course, eggs.

I turned my oven on to 250 degrees because I figured that eggs are pretty easy to cook and didn’t need to have a high temp.

I did not have any leftover noodles in my fridge, so I made some to start off. While I was waiting for the noodle water to boil in my large pasta pot, I chopped up an Onion and then sautéed it in a small frying pan/sauté pan with some Garlic in Olive Oil.

Then I added the Noodles to the boiling water and cooked them until they were fully cooked. And then I drained them fully and added some Olive Oil to the drained noodles to keep them from caking together.

Then I cracked 6 Eggs and scrambled them in a bowl. To the eggs I added some leftover Artichoke Hearts, some leftover Diced Ham, some fresh Asparagus Spears snapped into 2 inch pieces, and the sautéed onion/garlic mixture. I also added some spices and herbs to the egg mixture: Marjoram, Paprika, Salt, Pepper, Oregano.

Note: You don’t need a knife to prepare asparagus for the dinner pot. If you hold the asparagus in both hands near the cut –off end you can break off the woody end and the remaining spear should be fairly tender. For this meal I just snapped the remaining stalks into bite sized pieces using the same technique all the way up the spears.

The oven is ready and now so are all of the ingredients. I took out my cast iron skillet and placed the noodles in the bottom of it to act as a kind of base. Then I poured the egg mix over the noodles and finally I added the Cheeses to the top. At this point I realized that there was not enough egg as the whole thing looked fairly dry so I quickly scrambled 2 more Eggs and poured those on top and placed the whole thing in the oven.

After 25 minutes I checked the frittata and it really wasn’t cooking to I turned up the oven to 350. After an additional 20 minutes the frittata still wasn’t done so I put the oven put to 400. Then it cooked. It was done about 10 minutes later.

The result was stuck in the pan, when it should be easily plated as you turn the pan upside down with a plate on the top like a lid. It did eventually come out with only a little that stuck into my skillet – this may have only been because my skillet is not well seasoned.

Joe and I ate the frittata. It was good but as I said earlier not great and required some condiments. Joe added hot sauce and I used mayo – my favorite condiment.

I will work on this until I think it is just how I would serve it to the people on the Food Network's: Nest Food network Star.

The frittata servings have:

P.S. Food journal for yesterday: Breakfast-Banana and Red Bull. Lunch-Chicken Pot Pie from Pinkus and Pepsi. After work Snack- BLT from the Library. Dinner-1 Serving for Frittata and Red Bull.

Exercise: Nope-missed my workout time and had to get to the grocery store. I promise to go today.

Kitchen Techniques: Ingredients: Onions

Onions are one of my favorite ingredients. I use them in nearly everything. I enjoy them both raw and cooked.

Recipe Note: When I say onion, I am generally referring to the common yellow storage onion. There are many other onions in the world that are available at your well supplied grocery store like Green onions – scallions, Sweet onions, Leeks, Shallots, Ramps, Red Onions, White Onions, and Pearl Onions. I use these in recipes but I will always specify which variety when I am not using standard yellow storage onions.

Why use them? They provide a flavor punch with very few calories. In about ½ a cup of chopped onion (3.5 ounces) you only have 38 calories. They also provide 10% of the Vitamin C and Folacin you need.

Shopping for Onions: Onions should be heavy for their size. This means if you have two onions that are about the same size the one that feels heavier is the better onion. The difference in weight is due to water content. The outer skins should be papery. You can select your onions individually or you can just go ahead and buy the orange mesh bag of them (that's what I do). The mesh bag offers a fast way to get a bunch of onions.

Availability of Onions (Seasonality): Onions are available year round but are most common March to September when they are fresh to most markets. Onions store well given the right conditions so stocking up on them when you have a good price at market is not a bad idea.

Storage of Onions: Onions can last several months in ideal conditions and can go bad in a couple of weeks in crappy conditions. What, pray tell, are ideal and crappy conditions you may ask? Onions want a cool dry place with lots of circulating air. If it is too humid you will get sprouting onions or rotting onions. The mesh bag is ok for storage if you are going to eat up the onions in about a month (I go through a mesh bag every other week if I'm cooking 2 times a week), or if you hang the bag so it is exposed to a lot of air. If you are going to hold on to your onions for longer you might want to try to store them in pantyhose hung from the ceiling. (To store them in pantyhose place them - one at a time - into a clean pair of hose and tie a not between each so that they have their own little nylon sack.) As you need them you can cut off the onion(s) you need and leave the rest hanging. (This is a great use of nylons with runs. You can also use this with thigh-highs too.) Do Not store them in the fridge!! Storing them in the fridge causes them to rot – The exception to this is an onion that has been cut but not used entirely. If you have a half-used onion you can store it for about a week in the fridge before it will go bad.

Preparing Onions: Onions can present somewhat of a problem for cooks in that they are round and not easily chopped into regular pieces. Be sure you have a sharp knife. A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one as they tend to slip off what you are cutting and cut you instead. Also onions can make people cry so the faster you can get them cut the better off you are likely to be. Here is the technique I use to more easily deal with onions:

Cut off the stem end first, leaving the root end intact. Discard the stem end into the scrap bowl.

Then you peel off the papery outer layers and the first thin inner layer and discard into the scrap bowl. Then you turn the onion onto the cut stem end and slice off one side of the onion the thickness of the chop you are looking for.

Then turn the onion onto the freshly cut side and again slice off an un-cut edge at the same thickness.

Now make parallel cuts across the width of the onion making sure not to slice through the root end.

Now turn the onion over onto the second of the side cuts and make cuts parallel to it making certain not to slice through the root end.

Now you cut across the length of the onion getting the exact size pieces you want. Discard the root end into the scrap bowl. Chop the two remaining side pieces and move all the cut onion into a prep bowl.

Hints and Tips for Onions: Onions can make your hands smell funny after you've been handling them – try rinsing your hands with lemon juice to rid yourself of the smelly fingers (also works for garlic-fingers). Onions can make you cry – lots of old wives tales for solving this (and just like cures for hiccups) some work for some people others don't. Try a few until you find one that works for you (Light a candle next to your cutting board, hold matches in your mouth – heads out- to block the smell, put bread under your tongue, etc) Raw yellow onions are bitter – after cutting them, soak them in ice water. Change the water several times over the course of up to 2 hours before serving they will be oniony with out being bitter. Onion Breath? - Chew fennel seeds, Parsley leaves, gargle vinegar, or drink some coffee.

History: Onions have a long and distinguished career as a domesticated food-stuff. There is evidence from the Bible and other sources both literary and archaeological that the onion has been cultivated since about 3000 BCE. It is believed that onions were part of the diet of the slaves who built the pyramids.

Myths and Legends: It is said in early cultures that onions were linked to the afterlife or eternal life because of the concentric circles you see when you slice an onion across its middle. Onions are also believed to have medicinal qualities. I don't know if I believe that they can cure any diseases but I eat them and enjoy a decent level of health. (Then again my sister won't touch them and she is as healthy, and perhaps more healthy than I am)

Food Journal-

Breakfast – 2 doughnuts – Red Bull

Lunch – Lasagna (my own) and a bowl of wild mushroom and rice soup (also my own) – Mellow Yellow

Dinner – Spicy shrimp over rice noodles (my own) – Mellow yellow

Exercise? - Sort of, I walked home instead of hitting the gym.

Notes from the Kitchen: Missing Ingredient

Honeymoon Suite-The Missing Ingredient

Every recipe, no matter how often you’ve made it or how simple, can present a learning experience. Or a reminder of previous learning experiences.

I’ve been making Hamburger Soup a couple times a year for a decade. Nearly every ingredient is something I keep on hand. So when I went to the store spontaneously last Monday to get some stuff to cook I thought: “I’ll make Hamburger soup! I have nearly everything I need for that at home. I only need to get burger.”

Now, as I said yesterday I was being lazy and I haven’t cooked a damn thing all week. So last night at 10:30 PM I finally got up enough gumption to get out there and cook. I decided that it would take too long to make lasagna (at least 2 hours) and definitely too much time to make beef stew (4 hours) so again my mind settled on Hamburger Soup. It is simple and fast -at less than an hour to make with all the food prep thrown in.

I chopped up my onion and threw in some minced garlic with some oil and sautéed until translucent. Added the ground beef and cooked until nearly all the pink was gone. Then I added the frozen peas. I was on a roll. Everything was going smoothly.

I was also testing out the second hand camera I had been given and it was working well despite the warnings I had been given about its finicky nature.

I went to the cupboard to retrieve the next ingredient and found to my dismay that I didn’t have any cream soup. None. How could this be? Of course, the answer is easy. I scrimp when I go to the store and some staples – even cheap ones – just don’t get bought when they are used up. I also frequently go to the grocery store on the bus. You just don’t want to buy anything extra when you have to haul them on the bus when you are done shopping.

So…Pop Quiz! What do you do when you are missing an ingredient needed to finish a meal? There are lots of answers.

1.) Substitute. What could I substitute for cream soup? Gravy would work and I could easily make some. Just be sure you know what to substitute with or you can end up with lumpy purple fondue like Mary did once ("Gruyère and gorgonzola both start with the same letter of the alphabet I bet I can substitute one for the other").

2.) Go and get the missing ingredient either from the store or ask the neighbors. I frequently do this one. Hell…I even borrowed the downstairs neighbor’s oven once.

3.) Stop cooking. You can nearly always stop cooking. I can’t actually think of an example when you can’t stop cooking because of the food. Obviously…if you need to have dinner on the table in the next 20 minutes or you will be horribly murdered- not cooking would not be recommended. I would recommend option 1 in that instance.

In my experience last night at quarter to 11:00 I decided that I should just stop. I put a lid on the whole business and tossed it in the fridge.

So...What was the learning experience that this little cooking drama presented? Always check all your ingredients before you start cooking, and preferable before you go to the store.

And how goes the diet?

Today’s food – Poor.

I had a sausage patty and some very mushy hash browns from the Student Union for breakfast.

Lunch was leftover Chinese from Asian Kitchen – and as usual they gave way more food than even 2 meals worth but I ate it all in 2 meals.

Dinner? I have not had any - it’s 2:30 in the afternoon. I expect I’ll be having a bowl of Hamburger soup after I stop at the store on the way home and get the missing cream soup.

Exercise? I expect to get at least 30 minutes at the Nat.

Parmesan-Panko Baked Chicken, Lemon Risotto, and Balsamic Sautéed Tomatoes with Spinach

A few words on cooking with Rebee….

I seldom ever measure. I prefer eyeballing things and then tasting them after they have had time to do a little cooking, and then adjusting as needed. What this means for you… I will be giving a rough estimate of how much of a certain ingredient I used, so that you can (if you wanted to) make basically the same dish. Please taste as you cook. Your idea of a good amount of garlic and mine may differ drastically. (My sister won’t touch onions and I use them in nearly everything – for example) Alter any of this to your own flavor preferences.

Also…I have provided nutritional information for this menu (and hope to do so for all recipes I provide). This information is only a guideline. 1.) It is taken from information that may be incomplete. 2.) It is based on the supposed normal 2000 calorie diet. (Like anyone is on a 2000 calorie diet!) 3.) Math was never my strong suit. 4.) A lot of estimating goes into this as I nearly never measure anything. You are welcome to double check my numbers yourself if you would like. I use: The Wellness Encyclopedia of Food and Nutrition from UC Berkeley.

Finally…I am NOT a professional cook. My methods are very basic. I hope that anyone will be able to follow my directions.

One of the meals that I bought the ingredients for on Monday was:

Parmesan-Panko Baked Chicken, Lemon Risotto, and Balsamic Sautéed Tomatoes with Spinach. – Serves 6

To make this meal you will need…

A Stovetop and an oven

A frying Pan, and a lid for it

A large pot, and a lid for it

A baking sheet

Some bowls

A cutting board

A decently sharp knife

Some spoons

Ingredients:

1 lb Chicken (boneless, skinless, breast meat, uncooked)

½ C Miracle Whip (or your preferred Mayonnaise)

¾ C Parmesan Cheese (The real stuff, not the green shaker!)

1 C Panko (Japanese-style Bread Crumbs)

1 C Rice (Any style will do)

4 Onions (Mary - you can, of course, leave these out)

6 tsp Minced Garlic (I buy pre-minced stuff to save time)

4 to 6 C Chicken Broth (Try to remember to get low sodium and low fat-I always forget)

2Tbsp Lemon Juice (Juice from one lemon can be used or the Reallemon stuff)

3 or so ounces Pine Nuts

1 C Frozen Peas (never use the canned stuff)

6 to 12 ounces of fresh Spinach

1.5 pt Grape, Pear, or Cherry Tomatoes (experiment with local heirlooms when in season)

2Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar (I don’t have the real stuff either just use what you can afford, my balsamic cost about $10.00 for a 15oz bottle)

Some seasoning mix or your favorite spices (I used a Tuscan mix this time, next time I might use a French mix)

Some Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Some Spray oil (or something to keep the chicken from sticking to the baking sheet)

Directions:

Right… Find a surface and clean it off. If your kitchen is as small as mine there is no harm in using your office desk or a folding card table in the living room as a kitchen surface. Just be sure it is fairly clean.

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. If your oven is decent, it will be ready in about 15 minutes. If you feel like it… set a timer now. It is unlikely you will be ready to put the chicken in the oven 15 minutes from now, but on the off chance…go ahead.

Now…Back to that surface. You will need your decently sharp knife and your cutting board. If you only have one knife and one board, or you hate doing dishes as much as I do…you will need to cut up your veggies first to prevent the chance of salmonella contamination.

I like to use an empty bowl for scraps when I’m going to chop a bunch of veggies so I can keep my area as clean as possible.

Chop up your onions 2 at a time (2 are for the spinach dish and 2 are for the risotto). You can go ahead and place these in their respective pans (The frying pan and the large pot). If you are not using pre-minced garlic mince your garlic now and again split it equally between the frying pan and the large pot. Also slice each tomato in half. Set these (the tomatoes) aside in a bowl for later.

If your spinach is older you will need to cut off the stems. This is a serious pain in the ass, so if you can avoid it, do so by buying baby spinach. Also if you are buying your spinach from a farmers market (Highly recommended) you will need to wash these leaves very well, as they can be very gritty.

Now all the veggies are chopped. You can now use the same board and knife to cut up meat (if you don’t have a designated board and knife for meat – an unnecessary precaution if you know how to wash up). Cut each breast in half (assuming you chicken breasts are as ridiculously large as the ones I bought were) You want the chicken to be about the size of your palm, or a deck of standard playing cards (not Tarot cards, which can be much larger). If you happen to have a kitchen scale…you are looking for chicken pieces to be about 3 ounces give or take.

Right…Now take the large pot and add some olive oil to it and put the burner on to a medium setting. You are going to cook up the diced onions and minced garlic. This olive oil cooked garlic and onion mixture is very common in Italian cooking (as well as my own). They have a word for it in Italian but I don’t speak Italian so I can’t tell you what it is. Let the onion and garlic cook for a bit on its own…there is plenty of stuff to do.

Take out a bowl. Go to your fridge and take out the mayo and the shredded Parmesan cheese. Also take out the spices you want on the chicken. In the bowl, combine the ½ a cup of mayo with ½ a cup of cheese and however much seasoning you want (remember a little goes a long way with dried spices, so don’t over do it).

The onion and garlic cooking in the pot should be getting near to transparent at this point. If so, take the cup of rice and add it to the pot. Stir it and let it cook briefly in the oil. Then add some (maybe 2 cups) of broth and the lemon juice to the pot and stir. Lower the burner to a low setting but not all the way down. Do not add a lid to this pot.

Prepare the baking sheet (clear some surface to put it on and spray down the surface with cooking spray, or cover it with a silpat, or use some Crisco or whatever you want to keep the chicken from burning on to the surface).

Stir the rice pot. If the broth level is dropping add some more broth (1 cup or so)

Take a chicken breast half and cover the top with a thin (1/8” to ¼”) layer of the mayo mixture. Place the chicken on the sheet and repeat with the remaining chicken. When the chicken is all coated take out the panko and sprinkle the chicken until fairly well topped.

Place the chicken into the oven. Set a timer (if you don’t have one get one they are infinitely useful) for 20 minutes.

Stir the rice and add broth if it needs it. The rice should start looking more like a rice pudding very creamy. This is because the rice is exuding its starch into the broth.

Now you can turn on the large frying pan on to a medium setting on your burner. The garlic and onion should be in there. Add some oil to the pan and stir. Again you want the onion to be slightly transparent.

Keep an eye on the rice. Stir it occasionally and add broth every few minutes. Taste the rice to see if it is done cooking at this point. The rice should not be hard in the center but it also should not be too soft. When the rice is ready, add the remaining Parmesan cheese, the pine nuts, and the peas. Stir until the cheese is melted. If you want you can add some herbs and spices at this point, fresh parsley is fantastic in this. Turn the burner to the lowest setting. Then add a lit to the pot to keep everything warm.

When the onions and garlic are ready in the frying pan add the vinegar and stir. Put the burner on low and add the tomatoes, stirring occasionally. When the tomatoes are well coated add the spinach in batches. Stir the spinach until it wilts and shrinks slightly and then add the next batch to the pan. If the pan is filling too much you can take some of the spinach that has wilted out and add more fresh in. You may need to turn up the heat to do this. After all the spinach has wilted, return all of the spinach to the pan and put a lid on it to keep warm.

About now your timer will go off letting you know that the chick is probably done. Take the pan out and check the chicken for doneness. You can use a thermometer (170 degrees Fahrenheit) or you can cut open a breast and check that it is not pink. The thermometer way is better as it prevents you from overcooking, and therefore making you chicken dry. However the cutting method is cheaper, after all you do own a knife -I saw you use it earlier in this recipe.

If the chicken is not done put it in the oven again for another 5 minutes or so. If it is done serve up dinner!

This recipe makes 6 servings. These keep well as leftovers. And they will freeze decently too for a couple of months. There will be extra rice as this risotto makes more like 8 servings so don’t over load on the rice or the nutrition listed below will be off.

Each serving will contain roughly:

(To be added later as I’ve mislaid my notes-bugger!)