Lovely Cooking Goodies

This new overstock store opened locally and imagine my delight when I see their pantry aisles full of wonderful stuff that is very hard to find in my rural area. Next trip I'm going to raid their selection of pastas which is great. I kept the food purchases minimal this trip because my main focus was getting kitchen equipment.

The haul includes: Dried shitake and porcini mushrooms, steel cut oatmeal (I love the texture), couscous, panko breadcrumbs, truffle oil, and capers. The capers are different than the other jar I have and I'm hoping will have a difference in flavor, as the ones I have now are a bit on the bitter side for me (which may be explained by the fact they were at walmart and very cheap). I'm really looking forward to using the truffle oil, if anyone has suggestions for recipes please pass them along.

Over the next couple weeks you'll probably see me trying out these ingredients a lot to see what I want to stock up on. This is an overstock store so the selection isn't constant but very affordable, usually well below typical retail. I got a stand mixer for $20 which is half what it retails for, pretty good and I'm hoping it lasts until I've saved up for a KitchenAid.

Here's tonight's dinner: Chicken and porcini mushrooms in marinara sauce over spaghetti and topped with some parmesan cheese. I put some fresh basil from my garden in it too, probably one of the last times this year, the basil has already taken a hit from a light frost.

If you haven't noticed from previous posts I don't do any fancy plating, I'm perfectly happy to just have my pasta in a bowl for simplicity. This is home cooking, you can make it look nice if you want (and I do for special occasions) but for day to day cooking I care a lot more about just making something that tastes great.

Recipe Variations: Cinnamon Rolls

I rarely find a recipe that I don't tweak a little bit so I'm going to start an occasional feature showing how I've changed recipes available online. Today's subject: Paula Deen's Cinnamon Rolls.

Now I rarely make any of Paula's dishes because there's just too much butter and oil but for an occasional dessert recipe that's okay.

My variations:

1: I added a pinch of allspice and ground loves to the cinnamon mixture that goes inside the buns. Just punched up the aroma factor a bit.
2: I used rapid rise yeast to cut the time it took to make. For bread I use regular yeast but for something like this rapid rise is great.
3: Instead of putting the roll slices in a baking pan I put them into a large muffin tin. This made for easy serving.

The results were complete success and 12 rolls barely lasted 24 hours.

Chicken in Creamy Yogurt Sauce

This recipe was one of those where I had things on hand and decided to make them work together to come up with dinner. I'm lactose intolerant but love daisy so I always have yogurt on hand to substitute in dishes. You do need to be a little careful with yogurt because it can curdle if you heat it too fast or too long.

Ingredients:

• 3 boneless chicken breasts cut in half
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup chicken broth (3/4 cup if you don't want to use the wine)
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 2 cloves garlic chopped
  
• onion powder
• paprika
• peppercorns and/or ground pepper
• cayenne pepper
• poultry seasoning (I prefer Bell's)
• kosher salt
  
• olive oil
• cornstarch & water
  

Directions
1: In a large skillet heat a coupel tablespoons of olive oil. Add in chopped garlic and a teaspoon of whole peppercorns (skip if using ground pepper)
2: Season chicken breasts with salt, poultry seasoning, paprika, onion powder, cayenne powder and (if using) ground pepper.
3: Add chicken to the skillet and brown all sides.
4: Add the lemon juice, wine, chicken broth and 2 teaspoons of cornstarch mixed with 1/4 cup of cold water.
5: Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium and cover.  Simmer for 15-20 minutes.
6: Uncover and brign the heat up to reduce the liquid, should get it to about half the original volume.
7: Reduce the heat again and add the yogurt. Once the yogurt is mixed thoroughly in turn the heat off and allow it to sit for a couple minutes to thicken.

Serving Ideas:
I had mine with some buttered english muffins but toasted french bread would also be great or even garlic bread. The sauce makes a nice gravy for mashed potatoes. A crisp salad is a good contrast too.

Variations:
Curry seasoning would be really good if you want something spicier. For a sweeter take on it rosemary and honey would also work well.

Dilly Beans!

I love pickles, they are a serious obsession of mine. So tonight I made some spicy dilly beans. If you aren't familiar with this wonderful food, dilly beans are dill pickled green beans and are fantastic.

I wrote up the recipe for this recipe on my Dilly Beans squidoo lens so go there for how to make them and some information on home canning,

Unlike last year I managed to make them without scalding my hands thanks to a new pair of tongs that work much better for taking the jars out of the hot water bath.

Fresh dill, peppercorns, garlic, and jalepeno peppers, everything needed to make them properly spicy.

10 jars full of delicious dilly beans. I have to wait two weeks to find out how they turned out.

Slow Cooked Roast Beef

This is my first real post of this blog which is a step by step recipe. It's an old fashioned dish: roast beef. This is a great way to cook a cheap cut of meat but it does take all day to cook. Now I'm self-employed and work from home so I can make this recipe all the time, for those of you with 9-5 jobs you'll want to save this for a day off.

This recipe is an amalgam of a traditional roast beef recipe, few tricks I've learned, and my own experimentation.  Don't worry though, it's pretty easy and once it's in the oven you can pretty much forget about it except for checking the meat thermometer once in a while. This is my hunk o'beast: a little over 2 1/2 lbs of beef chuck roast. This is a good method for roast beef to make sandwiches.


I like to start this the night before to let the roast really soak up the seasoning mix I put on it but you can do it just before cooking. I use this same basic rub on a lot of meats, it's wonderful on pork ribs too.

Seasoning Rub Mix:

• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• ground cayenne pepper (I use about 1/4 teaspoon, use more if you like more heat up to 1 teaspoon)

I spread the rub on all side of my roast and put it covered in the fridge overnight, if doing this the day of cooking let it sit on the meat at least 20 minutes.

It's the day of roasting. I don't have a roasting rack but that's okay, I like my method better. Cut up about 1/2 cup each of carrots and onions (celery too if you have any but I don't this time) and lay that down on the bottom of your roasting pan. I learned this trick from the show Good Eats but Alton Brown was using it for making roast chicken not beef.

Before putting the roast in the oven it needs to be seared, this will give the outside a lot of flavor and crust up that seasoning so it does't all fall off in the oven. I heat up about 2 tablespoons of butter (you could use oil but I like the flavor of butter) in a skillet and sear all the sides of the meat. About 2-3 minutes per side.

Now place the roast on top of the vegetables in your roasting pan, insert your meat thermometer into the center of the roast, and cover it. Place it in the oven on your lowest temperature setting (mine is 170 F). Now if you have a handy digital one you might be able to set it to beep for you when it's at 140 F but I only have an old fashioned probe so I'll need to check on it every hour or so. Minimum time to cook a roast this size is about 4 hours.

Okay here's the roast at just over 140 F. I've removed the lid and I'll fast cook it really hot for a short amount of time to brown up the outside some more. I just turned on the broiler and waited about 10 minutes. Then remove the roast from the oven and transfer it to a plate to rest covered with aluminum foil.

It;s very important to let meat, especially large pieces like roasts, rest for a while after cooking. If you immediately cut into the meat lots of the juices will run out and the meat will be dry. With this roast even after resting 20 minutes it leaked a lot of juices but not enough to dry it out.

I removed all the vegetables from the pan, they've done their job and will be going to my Dad's pig. I put the pan on the stove over medium heat, mix a tablespoon of cornstarch with a cup of water and add that to the pan. 

So here is the finished roast, you can see that even after 4 1/2 hours in the oven it is still a little pink and that is exactly what you want to see. You can see my dinner with some delicious corn to go with it and the gravy.