geek + red sox + cooking = peter ryan

A few weeks ago I was making a sandwich lunch and instead of your typical chips side decided to make a quick pasta primavera. Lately I’ve been chopping veggies for snacks so I had plenty of vegetables handy. My sister Kristen got wind of it and requested it for our 3rd of July party. Primavera can be as complicated or as easy as you wish. Mine is easy and has an emphasis on quick as well.

Ingredients

• Two to Three Carrots
• Head of Broccoli
• Half bag of frozen peas
• Half pint of grape tomatoes
• 8oz Farfalle
• Olive oil and Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper

Preparation

The bulk of the work is chopping.

• Dice the carrots.
• Cut off the florets from the broccoli head into bite size pieces. I discarded the stalks.
• Halve the grape tomatoes

Steam the broccoli and peas. We will be sautéing them later so its not necessary to cook them completely. I probably steamed them for 3-4 minutes each.

Salt and boil water in a pot sufficient for cooking the pasta. Cook according to the package directions.

While the water is boiling heat a saucepan to medium heat and add a couple tablespoons of olive oil or vegetable oil over medium heat. When the oil has heated add the carrots and lightly sauté for a minute or two. Next add the tomatoes (raw) and the partially cooked broccoli and peas. Toss lightly and let the vegetables sauté cook for about 5 minutes. Adjust the heat as necessary - you do not want the vegetables to burn and you should hear a light sizzle with the oil in the pan. Also during the adding of the vegetables season with salt and pepper as desired.

When the vegetables have cooked lower the heat to low until the pasta is ready. Hopefully the two will occur at the same time. Drain the pasta.

Combine the pasta and the vegetable saute with alternate scoops from your colander and saute pan into the pasta pot. Stir the pot after each scoop and add extra virgin olive oil and seasonings with every other scoop to taste. When all the ingredients have been combined lightly toss and let sit in the pot for a few minutes. This will let the primavera cool and also allow proper coating of the oil and seasoning with the pasta and vegetables.

Serve immediately warm or wait and serve chilled as an alternative to a heavy mayo pasta salad.

The above should serve 2-4 as a side. The ingredients would easily scale up and proportions of vegetables to pasta (and indeed adding any other veggies like zucchini, mushrooms, etc) would be easy and great depending on what you feel like.

I have had this recipe immediately and later and preferred it fresh so if you can serve it as closely as possible to when it is cooked!

I was getting ready to watch the Patriots / Colts game yesterday. I was planning on watching the game at home and felt like some chicken wings. If I had been out at a bar I would have had no issues ordering some from the friendly wait staff. In years past if I was home and felt like wings I would order 10 or so medium wings from Yakzies. I was always a fan of that place unfortunately the original location (near me) went out of business and I was out of options at home.

Anyway I was in the grocery story (Whole Foods as it were) earlier that day picking up a few things for dinner when I felt inspired to do it myself. At the Whole Foods counter they already had drumettes (already split and tipped) for sale. I thought to myself “how hard could it be” and after deciding to go BBQ at home (as I didn’t feel like experimenting with hot sauces) I ordered 8 wings and went home for the game.

I made the wings before the game started - it was a 3:15 start so it would be a late lunch anyway and I didn’t want to get hung up in the kitchen during the game. Truthfully I think I paused the beginning of the game as I was wrapping up and probably started watching the game 5-10 minutes after kickoff. It was a bit confusing as the local Chicago CBS clipped the first two minutes of the game and came in on the Colts with the ball with 13:57 left in the first quarter. Annoying.

Anyway the wings I made were fantastic. They were easy to make and I would definitely do it again!

Ingredients

• Chicken wings. If you get whole wings split them and cut the tips of the wings off.
• Vegetable oil (enough to fill whatever pan you are going to use 3-4 inches deep).
• Flour
• BBQ Sauce. I used about 3-4 tbsp to mix the wings with.

Recipe

In a medium saucepan pour vegetable oil until 3-4 inches of depth. You want enough to submerge the wings but you also want to avoid using too much as it is just wasteful. Heat to 360 to 400 degrees.

While heating the oil spread flour in a baking sheet and coat each wing lightly.

Once the oil is ready drop in the wings, I did 4 wings at a time but you could scale to whatever makes sense for your saucepan. I wanted to avoid using a lot of oil as I was limited in my quantity at home. I also didn’t want a spatterfest in case things got out of hand. I did 4 minutes for each batch of wings.

When the wings have turned a slight golden brown remove and drain on paper towels.

In a mixing bowl (I used a medium sized stainless steel bowl) place 4 tbsp (or whatever you feel like) of BBQ sauce. Drop the wings in as a group and mix them with the sauce. Each wing should be covered lightly.

Serve immediately!

All in all this was one of the easiest things I have done. Next time I would look to improve with the following:

• Have a better thermometer. All I had was a meat thermometer which didn’t do the best job as it couldn’t read temps above 400 degrees and I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it in the saucepan. Have a thermometer meant for measuring the temperature of hot oil would have made it easier to control the temperature of the oil.
• Get more creative with the batter and sauce. I just coated the wings in flour - which worked really well as a base for the BBQ sauce I added in the mixing bowl. However I could have gotten a lot more creative both with the batter around the fried chicken as well as the sauce I coated the chicken with. This was a “out of the blue” recipe and I was very pleased with the results but even still I could see a few small easy things I could do that would makethis recipe even better.

On top of that the game couldn’t have been more enjoyable. A great close contest with the Patriots coming from behind and outlasting the beleaguered Colts in the 4th quarter!

This past Tuesday I took my first cooking class. The class was at The Wooden Spoon, a purveyor of cooking supplies and classes. I have been interested in taking cooking classes for awhile now - mostly to learn new things as well as improve on things I already thought I knew! I attended the class with Beth - she was a bit nervous about taking the class but we both had an awesome time and the results were fantastic.

The class was titled Healthy Weeknights with the following four items which I will talk about.

Pan Seared Chicken Breast with Garlic Cascade Sauce

It was nice to get education on pan searing - it is a technique I have been using for some time with some success. I learned the following useful things:

• Pound the chicken so it is the same width. By doing this the cooking times for all the chicken breasts will be the same and it makes results more predictable.
• Lightly coating the chicken with flour contributes to a better browning finish.
• Lay the chicken skin side first and then finish on the flesh side when searing
• When searing use vegetable oil instead of extra virgin olive oil. At medium high the olive oil cannot withstand the high temperature.
• When searing the chicken will “stick’ to the pan while cooking. Avoid moving the chicken as it will disrupt the browning. The chicken will release from the pan when it is ready to be flipped / complete.
• Heat the pan before adding the oil. If using butter then add before heating the pan otherwise the butter will burn.

Vegetable Tian

The vegetable tian was tasty. However the Wooden Spoon is a bit of a copycat. This recipe they presented was a direct copy of an episode from the Barefoot Contessa which I found on the food network! The concept of a tian (it’s a dish, mainly of vegetables, created in layers and baked to a glorious, crusty goodness) was new to me but I found it to be absolutely delicious. I could see a lot of varieties from its basic principles. It’s very easy thing to make and as it takes over an hour in the oven it gives plenty of time for preparing the main dish.

Arugula Salad with Shallot Vinaigrette

The salad was delicious (particularly the croutons which while I did not make as other students made them seemed easy enough to prepare). One of the things I was uncertain about was the specific goat cheese used to cover them. I really like some of the soft goat cheese varieties I have in restaurants and also in this class but I am never able to find it when I head to the cheese shop in my local markets.

Shallots

Beth and I had never cooked before with shallots. I found them easy enough to work with. I found the gas they release to be even more irritating to my eyes than a white onion. The Wooden Spoon (which sold everything we worked with of course) suggested onion goggles which might be a good idea since I do tend to cook with a lot of onions.

We also used shallots with the pan seared chicken although we were not involved in that portion of the class.

Poached Pear with Winter Fruit Compote

The poached pear dessert was great. Beth and I were responsible for peeling and coring the pears which we did with a peeler and a melon baller. After that I observed our instructor whip some cream (which is something I would like to learn how!). The pears were poached for awhile (20-30 minutes) in a pot of cheap red wine, water, and a few other things in the recipe. While that was taking place the fresh fruit compote was constructed although I was busy working on other dishes at the time and did not see much of what took place.

I was reading a blog post on recipe development and thought I’d present my own.

My recipe development is a fairly straightforward process and kind of follows the Iron Chef mentality. It’s not so much as a race against a 60 minute clock but I rarely cook for more than an hour. I like everything from when I begin to am eating to be 30-45 minutes.

For half a year now I have been working a bit off of recipes I have picked up from various spots (magazines, internet, cookbooks, etc) and using those as inspiration onto my own creation. Sometimes I cook a recipe following all of the directions but that is rare - I am much more apt to do my own thing.

Another habit picked up from Iron Chef is a theme. It is sometimes an ingredient but sometimes a cooking technique. Lately I’ve been working with saute style recipes due to their speed and excellent taste and so I might focus on a cooking technique along with an ingredient (such as my mango lemon chicken recipe).

I have been trying a lot of new things so I will read a few recipes until I find some that I like and then create my own recipe script that I bring into the kitchen. I am usually combining a few recipes so it doesn’t make sense to print anything. Instead I blueprint what I want to do.

Following that I head into the kitchen and follow my recipe - making adjustments as necessary.

The last recipe I tried was different in that I didn’t go into it with a plan but instead wrote what i was doing while I did it. I didn’t really like this - I was trying to capture all of the steps I made while also cooking a meal and I was time crunched.

My end results can be excellent (an example was a red snapper recipe i created before I began blogging) and also not so much. I think that is the most important part of recipe development - take risks on something original and enjoy the rewards and not be disappointed by the tribulations along the way.

Embarking on my sauteed chicken fruit exploration that I mentioned at the conclusion of my last post I decided to take my chances with Mango and Lemon.

I did a google search for mango lemon chicken and came up well..with nothing. So the idea I had while in the local supermarket could be a disaster but I figure I’ll steamroll ahead.

The ingredients I am starting out with are:
Ingredients

• 1 whole boneless chicken breast
• 1 mango
• 4 lemons (2 sliced into quarter inch slices, the other halved for squeezing).
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• salt
• pepper
• 2 cups prepared rice

Preparation
I peeled the mango using a great large peeler I got in Chinatown I got a few years back, and sliced the mango into bite sized slices, discarding the core.

I sliced the tops off two lemons and sliced them into quarter inch thick slices with the peel still attached.

Next I chopped about half of medium sized white onion and started to think about what I was actually going to do. I had some green beans I had just purchased but didn’t really feel preparing another side and I didn’t feel like cooking the green beans with the mango and lemon so I decided to leave them out and thought about having rice on the side. At that point I said “well I could fry this together if I chop the chicken”.

So you can see where I am going now. I prepared two cups of rice (1 cup of water, 1 cup of rice) and chopped the chicken into pieces.

I placed a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil heating the oil under medium to high heat until it ’shimmered’ which is a term I read for “when the oil is hot enough to saute with” but I really don’t know if what I think a shimmer is, is in fact a shimmer.

I added the onions and once they started to show the slightest color I added the 8 lemon slices and chopped chicken and let them cook for two minutes.

After the two minutes I rotated the chicken, pushed down on the lemon slices to release some juice, and added the mango.

I left the mango sit on top of the chicken for a minute and a half before I tossed the entire contents of the pan and mixed everything together.

Next I took another two lemons and sliced them in half in preparation of drizzling fresh lemon juice onto the final mixture.

After a minute of letting the mixture cook I removed the sliced lemons from the pan and discarded them and added the 2 cups of prepared rice. I stirred everything together and then added soy sauce, salt, pepper, and squeezed 2 lemons worth of juice onto the mixture.

After I stirred everything together I deemed my creation complete.

Tasting

I gave my creation a taste and was a bit disappointed. Overall I used too much lemon - the citrus flavor was somewhat overpowering. The chicken I cooked was a bit overdone and so was a bit stringy. The mango was nice but overall I need a lot more than 1 mango for a 2 person serving. There just was too much chicken in proportion to the mangeo. It wasn’t a total disaster - I went back for seconds - but I felt like I could have done a better job.

I’ll continue to explore mango / lemon combinations but next time I will certainly think a bit more about the proportions.

For the second time this year I adapted this recipe for sauteed strawberry chicken. Beth had made her mom’s raspberry chicken recipe a couple times for me and it was delicious. As a fan of strawberries I said to myself “why not try something similar with strawberries” and after some searching around decided to give it a go. The rasberry chicken differed from the recipe I used as it involved baking and used a raspberry jam.

In the middle of summer I used fresh strawberries as opposed to the frozen. I hulled them but otherwise left them intact. The first time I tried this recipe I did use the pears but this go I didn’t get any at the market.

I wasn’t quite sure why the recipe asked for “2 lg. whole chicken breasts, cooked, deboned”. I used raw boneless chicken breasts which I split and cooked similarly to how I cooked the chicken in my sauteed italian chicken recipe.

The technique of using sauteed chicken plus mixing in a sauce in the same pan is an easy quick way to cook. The options for a sauce are limited by the imagination. I really enjoy using fresh fruit in these dishes and would like to try more.

In November once clementine season hits I’ll try something with that.

The last time I visited with my sister I was drawn into her Everyday Food tv guide size magazine. It is a Martha Stewart (yes I know) magazine that focuses on easy to cook meals. Since I rarely like to spend more than 30-45 minutes cooking a meal its 10 issues a year seemed an easy way to broaden my cooking repertoire without adding a lot of time. So I decided to subscribe (and yes through a serious gaff by either me or their lousy online subscription portal managed to subscribe to Living as well). So I was bothered to see an issue of Living on Friday in my mailbox but was excited about the prospects of Everyday Food which was hiding underneath it.

So Sunday was my first foray into the Everyday Food world and for dinner I attempted a few things.

Apple, Grape, and Celery Salad
For a salad I decided to make an Apple, Grape, and Celery Salad. This was very easy. The ingredients for this were:

• 1 cup red grapes, halved.
• 1 granny smith apple, cored, halved, and thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp oil (I avoided vinegar because beth does not like it)
• 2 stalks of celery, thinly sliced on the diagonal
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• salt and pepper

I tossed these together. The salad was very quick and easy to make and was delicious. The bulk of the recipe came from the magazine but I swapped almonds for walnuts since I had decided to use walnuts in the main course and didn’t feel like buying two types of nuts.

Lemon Asparagus
There was a recipe for Lemony Broccolini which sounded tasty and easy to do. On my trip to Whole Foods there was no broccolini so I decided to go for a Lemony Asparagus. It was a snap to make:

• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 bunch of asparagus
• 2 garlic gloves sliced thin
• 2 tbsp oil (approx. i just drizzled it into my pan)
• Salt and Pepper
• 1/4 cup water

I heated the oil over medium heat and then added the garlic and asparagus. After 2 minutes I added the water and covered for 6-8 minutes. This was too much time - the asparagus was very tender at this point. In the future I would probably try 3-4 minutes of cooking once I add the water. Anyway after 6-8 minutes (which again should have been less) I added the lemon juice and salt and pepper. I tossed these together in the skillet and transferred directly to the serving plates.

Chicken Breasts Stuffed With Herbed Couscous
Finally for the main course I used a variation of the chicken breasts stuffed with herbed couscous recipe from everday food. I followed its directions exactly except for the following substitutions :

• 1/2 cup basil leaves instead of mint. I have been growing my own basil and used that instead.
• Walnuts instead of pinenuts. Beth prefers walnuts and I figured they would work. I did finely chop them so they wouldn’t standout in the stuffing.

I didn’t have any real problems making these. It was a bit difficult stuffing the chicken breasts but I chalk that up to me never doing that before as opposed to anything particularly hard about it. By far the last one I did (I made 4) was the easiest and most well done. One thing I noticed was it was difficult to keep the outside clean of the couscous stuffing but it really added to the dish all together because I was not able to have a stuffed filling on the entire breast so having trace amounts on the outside ensured distribution of the flavor.

The couscous as a stuffing was delicious and also was healthier than a traditional bread stuffing.

Beth really enjoyed the food (she cleaned her plate very quickly) and it is something I will definitely make again. It also was an easy technique (by altering the stuffing) to vary the flavor which I will keep in mind when I am making something up.

I felt like some Carbonara last night and set about making it for the first time. I’ve had quite a few varieties of the dish (from the no cream versions in Italy to the more Americanized cream and green pea versions I see in the US) and liked them all. Lately I’ve also had a motivation to shell my own peas so leaning towards a green pea version I opted for the Americanized version.

After looking at a few recipes I ended up using this Food and Wine Spaghetti Carbonara With Green Peas Recipe. I was specifically looking for one that used a heavy cream and Parmesan along with green peas. This one seemed fairly easy.

Beth was slightly concerned about the raw eggs but I think she thought the egg cooking against the freshly cooked pasta cool.

I went to whole foods for my ingredients.

Once home I ran into what was my biggest issue - peas. I was all for shelling peas. There was good tennis on TV last night (federer was playing benneteau in an easy win and baghdatis was in the other court against chela) and I was waiting for Beth to get back from a meeting so I had the time. Green peas were not available so I got snap peas. I read some pea shelling instructions and went right into it. I needed 3/4 cup of peas for my recipe and after spending about an hour shelling I had gone through my two containers of peas and had about 1/4 cup. It could have been a pretty big let down but I saw it coming after I saw how slow I was filling my measuring cup. The peas were generally really small. I am not sure if it was the type of peas (snap as opposed to green), if these were just particularly lame peas, or if all pea shelling is this tedious.

I used an uncured smokehouse bacon instead of pancetta. It worked well for the recipe and plus Beth really doesn’t go for any cured meats so I was taking that into account as well.

Everything was really easy to do (except for the peas). I used the 1/4 cup of peas instead of adding more green peas that would have been from a bag in the freezer. The result was much more creamier and cheesier than the photo from the recipe. I really mixed the sauce thoroughly together in the pot.

Overall I would call this a success and certainly make it again. I need to figure out shelling peas - I think I probably just need to buy green peas as opposed to substituting snow or snap and I’ll find them larger. Or just go with frozen peas which is a) easier and b) available and pretty much just as good.

Last night I used a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks - a 30 minute cookbook for during the week. It is a very simple recipe but the results are fantastic.

ingredients

• Boneless skinless chickent breasts
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce
• 1/4 cup wine (I used a 2004 Kalinda Riesling which I bought a case of last year. It is fairly dry for a riesling otherwise I probably would have used a chardonnay)
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

recipe

1. Heat olive oil and butter on a skillet over high heat until shimmering
2. Reduce heat to medium high and add the chicken breasts. Leave undisturbed for 3-4 minutes
3. Flip the chicken breasts and leave undisturbed another 3-4 minutes.
4. Remove the chicken breasts and put to a side plade. Reduce the heat to medium on the skillet
5. Add the minced garlic and let cook for 15 seconds or so
6. Add the wine and let burn down, not for very long (maybe 30 seconds)
7. Add the spaghetti sauce, parsley, oregano, and salt and pepper. Stir together and let the sauce simmer 1-2 minutes
8. Return the chicken to the skillet and coat well on each side with the sauce. Remove to serving plates and drizzle the remaining sauce over the chicken.
9. Serve immediately.

We served this with a hodge podge of sides (corn on the cob and rice pilaf) mostly because of what we felt like. But the results of this (which is 25 minutes including prep) make it something I will return to again. Very tasty!

Beth and I took a road trip to Cambridge, Wisconsin last Saturday and Sunday. We have a great time but what was awesome was some fresh strawberry lemonade I made. I used a emeril lagasse recipe I found.

It was very easy to do…from squeezing the lemons to hulling and pureeing the strawberries to mixing everything together I spent about 30-40 minutes on everything. It might take Emeril 5 minutes to make but I was a bit slower with everything.

I added the sparkling water immediately before serving and shook the pitcher very well. I didn’t properly garnish the glasses with mint and a strawberry but it was a road trip so I think Emeril would have understood. Definitely something I will make again!