Chicken Parm (Not By) the Book

I find it so satisfying when I can cook a good meal without needing to consult a recipe. You know what I mean – grabbing some food from the fridge and the pantry and just whipping something up. Granted, I’m generally limited to pasta and a jar sauce sans recipe, but still.

The other night I decided to make chicken parm. I have plenty of recipes for chicken parm. Who doesn’t? I don’t know if I was tapping into some excess ambition, or if I was just inspired by laziness, but for whatever reason, I chose to forego the recipes and do it on my own. (Okay, so it was probably laziness. Sometimes the effort involved in opening up a cookbook is just so daunting!)

Laziness may have been my first motivation, but ambition quickly took over. I got my second wind. Even though the meal plan was pretty straightforward (chicken parm with a side of pasta, and a garden salad), and I could probably very easily phone it in, I wasn’t going to half ass it. No, I was going in whole ass on this one.

First I started with the sauce. While there was a jar of shelf stable marinara in the cupboard, I made my own by sautéing some minced garlic with Italian seasoning in olive oil before adding a 28 ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes and a teaspoon of kosher salt. I let it simmer for a half hour and then crushed the tomatoes with a potato masher before letting it simmer for another thirty minutes. The result was a chunky, rustic and flavorful homemade sauce. I like using the whole tomatoes instead of the crushed ones because – in my humble opinion – they give the sauce a much fresher flavor.

Then I made the pasta. And I don’t mean opened the box. I mean made the pasta. B gave me a pasta extruder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer for Christmas, and I had picked up some semolina flour at Whole Foods earlier in the week. And you know what that means? Fresh rigatoni was on the menu!

And for the chicken… Sticking to the “from scratch” theme here, it would have been fitting to have that freshly killed bird that B and his friend Gregg, well, um, handled a while back, but I had to settle for grocery store chicken. Hey, at least it was organic. I seasoned a pound of cutlets with salt and pepper, dredged in flour, then egg and breaded with some Italian seasoned breadcrumbs. I thought about using panko, but sometimes you just need the old fashioned choice.

I browned the chicken on both sides in some garlic infused olive oil, and then added 3/4 of the sauce to the skillet. I topped the chicken with some shredded parmesan, a little bit of mozzarella (because there was just a little bit in the refrigerator) and then added some more parm. I let the chicken simmer and the cheese melt while the rigatoni was boiling away.

Once the pasta was done, I tossed it in the remaining sauce and plated the meal. I wish I had remembered to take a picture. It was a beautiful dish. And even better, it was a delicious one.

Somewhere along the way I threw together a simple garden salad, but I’m not going to brag about the successful combination of lettuce, onion and tomato.

Okay, so I have to admit that the pasta wasn’t the world’s best. A box of Barilla would have been better. It was a little thick, and some of the pieces stuck together as I removed them from the extruder. I separated them at first, but it quickly became too difficult to keep up with the machine so I gave up and settled on some double-wide pieces. But you know what? It was good enough and the reward of making it from scratch made all the difference in the world.

(And the leftovers tasted just as good the next day!)

The reward for all this ambition? A recipe free version of a favorite dish that was better than any documented instructions I’ve ever tried before. As B said, this one’s going into the rotation.

The Au Poivre Incident

With every January comes the desire to eat healthier – less calories, less fat, more wholesome goodness. For me, the motivation is the few pounds I brought back from Paris last May, followed by the “oh my God I got cancer so I’m going to eat like crap because I feel so damned bad for myself” weight, and culminating with the extra ounces Santa brought me for Christmas. (And don’t ask me how I’m the only person in the world who gained weight with cancer.)

Nothing crazy, but the jeans are feeling a little tighter and now is as good a time as any to do something about it. What else are new year’s resolutions for anyway?

So I pulled out my copy of Rocco DiSpirito’s “Now Eat This” cookbook, where Rocco makes comfort food more diet friendly. Seriously, 150 recipes re-made to be less than 350 calories per serving. This book is great, I don’t know why I don’t use it more often.

I started last Friday when I made chicken cacciatore for dinner. It was delicious – B devoured it. Then I made the Jamaican jerk chicken. Also great, although my chicken took a little too long to cook so my vegetables were cold and overcooked by the time the chicken was ready. Okay, so it was great tasting if not perfectly prepared.

And then I decided to make steak au poivre. Let’s just say that things have been going a little too well for me in the kitchen, and I was due for a disaster. Oh, boy was I due.

I did everything exactly right. I swear it. But things didn’t go so well… Let’s just say the kitchen got a little smoky when I started cooking the steaks. Okay, no problem. I’ll just turn on the exhaust fan. (Still trying to figure out where it exhausts to, but that’s another story.)

So the steaks are fine, fortunately I was aiming for medium rare for B and rare for me so I didn’t have to keep them in the skillet for too long. They had a nice char, and the smoke would clear eventually. Right?

But then it came time to make the sauce. Step one: add two tablespoons of brandy to the hot skillet with one teaspoon of freshly ground pepper, and let it reduce.

Reduce or evaporate? Or shall I say, burn off? Pretty much the second the brandy hit the pan it was gone. Not knowing what else to do, I quickly added the evaporated skim milk and corn starch and started whisking away.

The sauce started to boil very quickly, and apparently I have not done the best job cleaning this skillet because the liquid did one hell of a job deglazing the pan. Let’s just say char is a nice flavor on a piece of steak, but not so nice as the dominant flavor of a cream sauce.

And that’s not all. Once the sauce loosened up all that burnt on crap from prior uses, it started to burn, replacing the old burnt on crap with new burnt on crap. And it smoked.

And really smoked, it did.

While I was trying to tame the sauce in the kitchen, B was opening all the doors and windows and setting up a fan to suck the smoke out of the condo and out the sliding glass door. January is not the time for dining al fresco, at least not in Boston when it is 10 degrees outside.

All was not lost though. The steak was actually cooked quite well (with a nice char, ha ha ha) and tasted delicious. And even though I begged him not to, B still insisted on using the sauce – poured it all over his steak, as a matter of fact. (Mental note, don’t bother buying filet mignon if your husband is going to smother it with burnt cream sauce.)

So... does anyone have any advice on how to clean a cast iron skillet coated with burnt on cream sauce? Scratch that, anyone have any advice on how to cook with a cast iron skillet without burning the house down?

Beef Stew!

I’ve never hated beef stew, but I’ve never loved it either. It’s something my parents always made while I was growing up, and I tend to give it a shot each winter. My parents have always stuck with a traditional recipe, while I am prone to experimenting a little bit. And when I say experiment, I mean things like trying to flavor it with Guinness or dark chocolate.

I could tell you a story about the time my grandmother added Spaghettios and cut up hot dogs to beef stew (and not at different times, these both went into the same pot). But I love my grandmother, and I don’t want to sully her memory. But since we’re on the subject, let me just assure you that I am neither making this up nor exaggerating. Ask my brother. He didn’t believe me at first either. Then he ate it!

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve gone out to lunch a few times and ordered beef stew twice. Both times it was served with mashed potatoes in the bowl. This intrigued me. Since two very different restaurants did this, I gather it’s not a new or uncommon idea. But I had never seen it before. And I love mashed potatoes (and roasted potatoes, and French fried potatoes, and baked potatoes…).

So this past Sunday – a cold, raw one in New England – it was time for another run at beef stew. Even though I have a pretty good recipe for Guinness Beef Stew, I opted for a variation on the America’s Test Kitchen recipe. I will say that I chose this recipe because it called for red wine and I thought B would like it better, but truth be told, I didn’t have any Guinness and didn’t feel like buying any.

The recipe is below. I’ve indicated what I changed from the Test Kitchen’s recipe. And make sure you check out the money shot of the stew itself...

Beef Stew – serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

• 1 3lb. boneless beef chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2” cubes
• Salt and pepper
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 medium onions, minced
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flower
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 2 cups low sodium chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 1/2 pounds red potatoes (about 5 medium), scrubbed and cut into 1 1/2” chunks
• 4 carrots, peeled and sliced thin
• 1 cup frozen peas

Wannabe Foodie Notes and Substitutions

1. I chose to buy 1 1/2 lbs of pre-cut stew beef from the service meat counter at the grocery store. I got certified Angus, and was about a pound short of what the recipe calls for (the 3 lb roast should yield 2 1/2 lbs of cut up meat), but I didn’t feel like the finished stew was low on meat.
2. I used Kendall Jackson Pinot Noir for the red wine.
3. Instead of chicken broth, I used beef stock. Apparently, finding genuine beef stock or broth is pretty hard to do. My grocery store only carried beef flavored stock and broth. I opted for an organic offering. Interestingly enough, the first ingredient was “organic beef flavored stock.” Your guess is as good as mine as to what I actually ate. But at least it was organic. I just didn’t want to use chicken broth in beef stew. It felt too wrong.
4. I used dried thyme. I will always say that fresh herbs are better, but there are fewer things I hate to do more than get those tiny little leaves of thyme off the stems.
5. Since I was serving the stew around a mound of mashed potatoes, I almost entirely eliminated the potatoes from the recipe. That is until I told my father I was going to do this and he nearly had a heart attack. So I used two medium russet potatoes instead of the red ones, cut into 1 1/2” chunks.
6. I added an 8 or 12 ounce package of white button mushrooms, cut into quarters. Just because I love mushrooms.
7. I also chose to chop some fresh parsley to use as a garnish.

Method

1. Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 300 degrees. Dry the beef with paper towels, then season with salt and pepper. Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a large dutch oven over medium-high heat until just smoking. Brown half of the meat, about 10 minutes, then transfer to a plate. Return the pot to medium-high heat and repeat with one more tablespoon of the oil and the remaining beef.
2. Add the remaining tablespoon oil to the empty pot and return to medium heat until shimmering. Add the onions and cook until softened, about five minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and garlic, and cook for 30 seconds. Add the flour and cook for one minute. Slowly stir in the wine, scraping up any browned bits. Stir in the broth, thyme, bay leaves, and browned beef along with any accumulated juices. Bring to a simmer, cover and transfer the pot to the oven. Cook for one hour.
3. Stir in the potatoes and carrots (and mushrooms if you choose to use them). Cover and continue to cook in the oven until the beef is tender, about one hour.
4. Remove the pot from the oven and discard the bay leaves. Stir in the peas and let stand off the heat for five minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste before serving.

Wannabe Foodie Notes

1. During the last half hour or so, prepare the mashed potatoes using whatever recipe you prefer (I boiled four medium potatoes with a tablespoon of kosher salt for 20 minutes, then whipped them with some skim milk and butter using a hand mixer).
2. My stew finished cooking before the potatoes. So I lowered the oven temperature to 200 degrees, and left the stew in there to stay warm. If you need to do this, DO NOT add the peas until five minutes before you serve the stew. They were perfect before I had to put the stew back in the oven. Then they lost some of their vibrant green color (which looked spectacular in the dish) and took on a slight grayish hue. And the stew was still plenty hot when it hit the table.
3. To serve, I scooped a generous portion of mashed potatoes in the center of a soup or pasta bowl. Then I ladled the stew around the potatoes and sprinkled with the chopped parsley.

If I may brag a little, the stew was delicious. The mashed potatoes were the perfect companion and added some really nice texture to the plate. As I mentioned above, the plate didn’t feel like there wasn’t enough beef and it was still a very thick, rich stew. And it keeps well – B brought a container of leftovers to work the next day.

And now, the money shot:

(My plating skills are to be desired, but still... Aren't you hungry??)

An Italian Holiday Meal

The holidays flew by in a blur, and it’s taken me until right now to realize that I actually cooked something you might want to read about.

Traditionally, I am responsible for preparing two staples of the Ryan family Christmas feast – torta di pittata and chicken soup (see December ’09 archive if you’re interested). Nothing exciting to report there, but I will share a valuable lesson that I learned – never do for yourself what your KitchenAid stand mixer can do for you. It doesn’t matter how I learned this, just know that it will apply to pretty much any scenario where a KitchenAid stand mixer can do the job.

Chicken soup and torta di pittata aside, this year a new tradition was born. Now that I’m married, I have a whole new family to torture with my cooking!

B and I went to his brother’s house on the day after Christmas to celebrate the holiday with his family. And as B has been known to do, he volunteered us to cook the meal. After hours of research, I found a recipe that would allow us to do as much of the prep at home as possible, be relatively easy and convenient to finish at his brother’s house, would travel well, and would please both kids and adults. Our solution? Braciole (which is rolled stuffed beef, for anyone who is as clueless as I was).

I have never had braciole, but whenever I hear of it I am reminded of that episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Debra makes it and everyone loves it, even though she is historically a terrible cook. This inspired me with confidence – if Debra can make it well, and people are actually impressed, then I will have the same fate.

I found the recipe in my copy of The North End Italian Cookbook (by Marguerite DiMino Buonopane).

Beef Braciole in Tomato Sauce (serves 4)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds flank, skirt or top of the round steak (we used flank)
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 28-oz can peeled and crushed tomatoes
• Pinch each of dried basil, red pepper flakes, and mint
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method

1. Lay the meat out flat on a smooth working surface. Flatten it to 1/2” thickness, pounding it lightly with the dull edge of a meat cleaver, or use a meat mallet. Keep the meat in one piece.
2. Cover the steak with the garlic, parsley, cheese, salt and pepper.
3. Roll up the steak, jellyroll fashion, and tie it with cotton string or secure it with several toothpicks.
4. Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet and brown the meat thoroughly on all sides. This should take 10 minutes.
5. Add the tomatoes and seasonings to the browned braciole. Cover the skillet. Simmer the meat for about 1 hour or until it is tender. Do not overcook, or it will fall apart.
6. When the meat is ready, place it on a large serving platter, cut the string (or remove the toothpicks), slice, and serve with the sauce poured over it. This may be accompanied by cooked pasta.

The worst part of this recipe? Rolling and tying the meat. It wasn’t impossible, but it would have been nice if it was a little easier. It was definitely a two person job – B rolled and held it, while I tied it in 2” intervals. I’m sure a seasoned chef could have handled this part, but that steak was not going to stay rolled up on its own.

The best part of this recipe? The sauce. I was a little concerned that it would be bland – I’m used to adding a lot of flavor when I make tomato sauce, and didn’t have enough experience to know that the meat would impart some serious flavor (not to mention the cheese filling – unbelievable!). Seriously. It was a phenomenal sauce.  We served it with bowtie pasta, and it was probably the best pasta sauce I've ever eaten (I am unbelievably partial to tomato based sauces, I should note).

Braciole is a dish that even the wannabe foodie can’t screw up. But you will be happy to learn I loved the sauce so much, that I tempted to make a “deconstructed braciole” a couple of days later. I braised a small piece of flank steak (not big enough to roll or feed more than one person) in some crushed tomatoes and added the cheese, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper directly to the pot. Yeah, not quite the same thing.