Roasting, My Default Cooking Method

In a fit of enthusiasm, I bought broccolini last week ... but I didn't quite know what to do with it when I got home. I decided to pretend it was just a weird version of asparagus and roasted it accordingly.

Easy Roasted Broccolini & Salmon
Serves 2

Ingredients
15± broccolini stems, washed and trimmed
2 4 oz frozen wild-caught sockeye salmon fillets Sockeye, thawed
Olive oil, as needed
Boxed Goodes Allium Salt, as needed (or a similar blend of sea salt, dried onion/shallots/chives)

Directions
Preheat oven to 400F°.

Spread broccolini on large jelly roll pan and toss with olive oil and Allium Salt to taste. Shove to one side of the pan and add the salmon. Drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with a few grinds of Allium Salt.

Roast for approximately 20 minutes or until stems are crisp-tender and tops are slightly browned.

Surprisingly yum for something so simple, but I might toss in lemon juice and zest next time for a little brightness ... When I took the leftovers to work, I garnished them with a generous helping of leftover bruschetta (work parties are the best) and that was simply fantastic.

Roasted Salmon & Asparagus

Since one of my "lifestyle changes" is to eat more wild caught fish of discoverable provenance, I've been buying bags of frozen wild caught Alaskan sockeye salmon fillets -- mainly because it's more convenient and slightly cheaper than fresh. Does frozen wild caught taste as good as fresh wild caught? Not quite, but it's still steps above fresh farmed.

Mind you, frozen or fresh, wild salmon is a lot leaner than the farm-raised stuff and so cooks faster. It seems obvious, but I didn't know and turned my first piece of wild caught salmon into salmon jerky. Ah well, practice makes perfect!

Asparagus and salmon with garlic oil, minced shallot, fresh thyme, salt and pepper. Roasted, uncovered, in a 400F° oven for about 10 minutes.

Fast & Crispy Sunday Chicken

Roasted a beautiful chicken for Sunday dinner using a bastardized version of Barbara Kafka's "Simplest Roast Chicken" recipe from Roasting: A Simple Art (HarperCollins, 1995). Kafka's phenomenal Vegetable Love is one of my favorite cookbooks and Roasting looks to be just as good. She believes in "hot ovens, short roasting times, and rare meat" and that's right up my alley!

Fast & Crispy Roast Chicken
Serves 2 with leftovers

Ingredients
4-pound chicken at room temperature
1 lemon, quartered
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Sea salt, as desired
Freshly ground black pepper, as desired
Bell's salt-free poultry seasoning, as desired
1 large red onion, thickly sliced

Directions
Place rack on second level from bottom of oven. Heat oven to 500°F.

Line a roasting dish (slightly larger than the chicken) with thick slices of red onion.

Remove the fat from the chicken's tail and trim off any large loose flaps of skin or wads of fat.

Stuff the cavity of the chicken with as much of the lemon as will fit and half the butter. Slice the remaining butter into pats and gently slide between the chicken breast meat and skin. Squeeze remaining lemon over chicken. Generously season with salt, pepper, and Bell's.

Place the chicken breast side up in the roasting dish. Roast 50 to 60 minutes, or until the chicken breast reaches 180°F and the thigh 190°F, basting halfway through.

When chicken is done, remove from oven and let sit fifteen minutes. Carve and eat with the red onions.

The meat of the chicken was tender, juicy, and flavorful while the skin was extremely crispy. Exactly how I want a roast chicken to be! Served with green beans and rice, it made for a deliciously easy Sunday dinner.

After dinner, I picked the carcass clean and made a big bowl of chicken salad for supper and a few work day lunches.


Then what remained of carcass went in my French oven and became broth for soup ... So many meals from one four-pound chicken! Why don't I roast a chicken every Sunday? It's not as if it is difficult.

Lambilicious Sunday Dinner

The Husband pointed out it's been a long time since I made any lamb so, to please him, I picked up a nice small semi-boneless leg of lamb at Shoprite (manager's special, woot), roasted it Sunday afternoon, and there was much rejoicing.

Roast lamb is good lamb!

I rubbed the lamb with a paste I threw together in my food processor of dijon mustard, leftover fresh rosemary, cracked black pepper, sea salt, olive oil, and the juice and zest of half a lemon. Aside from the lemon, no actual measurements were used -- I just threw ingredients in until it looked right. I put the roast, fat side up, on a rack in a roasting pan and poured some leftover malbec into the bottom of them pan. Then I roasted the lamb in a 375F° oven for about an hour (or until the meat reached 135°F).

While the lamb was roasting, I washed and trimmed a pound of asparagus, lay them in a baking pan, drizzled them with olive oil and lemon juice, and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

I took the lamb out of the oven, tented it with a little foil, and left it to rest for fifteen minutes. While the lamb rested, I popped the asparagus pan into the oven and roasted them for fifteen minutes.

I served the lamb and asparagus with rice (brown for me, jasmine for The Husband) and gravy. It was good and a three pound semi-boneless leg turned out to be the perfect size for two people -- enough for sunday dinner, with a little bit leftover for a sandwiches).

Semi-Planned Salmon Supper

Monday, I was supposed to make "Baked Lemon Caper Salmon" with baked potatoes and roast asparagus for supper and ... I kinda-sorta did? We did eat salmon and potatoes. There were no capers. There was rosemary. Somehow, asparagus became green beans. It was all very good and home-cooked so I'll count it a win, anyway.

I used the recipe for "Baked Lemon Caper Salmon" from My Daily Dish as the model for my salmon. I had planned on boneless steaks, not fillets, so panicked a bit when I realized Peapod had delivered bone-in steaks (labeled as boneless, but clearly full of jabby things). I have terrible deboning skillz so eventually, after abusing the poor salmon with a pair of tweezers, decided to deal with the bones after the steaks cooked.

Aside from using the wrong cut of salmon, I mostly followed My Daily Dish's recipe as written. I did replace the capers with sprigs of rosemary, because I suddenly wasn't in a capery mood.

Which is also why we ate green beans instead of asparagus. I just looked at the asparagus, rampant and green, and thought "not tonight, you" and stuffed it back in the fridge. Of course, it's now Friday and we still haven't eaten the asparagus ...

To make supper, I cut two large unpeeled baking potatoes into bite-size cubes and tossed them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary. I roasted the potatoes in a jelly roll pan in a 425F° oven for 30 minutes. Then I scooted the potatoes to one side of the pan, added the green beans tossed with olive oil, and slid the salmon pan into the oven next to the jelly roll pan, and let everything roast for 15 minutes.

I didn't stir the green beans while they and the salmon roasted, so they charred a little bit, but I like my roasted vegetables extra crispy around the edges.

Tomato Soup, I Love You

As was bound to happen when you go and plant thirty cherry and small fruit tomato plants, I have too many tomatoes. So many, that I've already given some away at work rather than see them go bad. Being selfish, I don't really want to keep doing that.

What to do? Make soup! I had bookmarked a lovely recipe from FamilyFun.go.com for "Roasted Tomato Soup" last winter when I was positively jonesing for soup every darn day. Obviously, cherry tomatoes weren't in season then but they certainly are now and the recipe is a great way to use up six cups of the precious darlings.

It glows with the glow of a thousand orange tomatoes ...
To healthify this soup, I omitted the butter and reduced the amount of cream by half. I also omitted the grilled cheese croutons and didn't miss them, because this soup is so veryvery delicious on its own. (I can usually take or leave tomato soup, but this stuff is addictive and I want to eat it constantly. Good thing the recipe makes a lot).

I used turkey broth, because I still have quite a lot leftover from last year's big buy, but chicken or vegetable broth would work just as well. I also used less broth than the original recipe called for, because I wanted a very thick soup.

Despite being pureed, this soup retains a lot of texture from the bazillion cherry tomato seeds. If you don't like seeds, I recommend straining the soup through a sieve before adding the cream. (I strained about two thirds of the soup, leaving a little bit of seeds and skin behind for body).

Creamy Roasted Cherry Tomato Soup
Adapted from FamilyFun.go.com

Ingredients
6 cups cherry tomatoes
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
5 springs fresh thyme
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium red onion, chopped
14 oz can Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
14 oz can turkey broth
½ cup heavy cream

Directions
Heat oven to 400°F. Toss cherry tomatoes with 3 sprigs thyme, 2 Tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper, and spread evenly on a large jelly roll pan. Roast until tomatoes have shriveled and some have burst, about 40 minutes. Set aside.



Heat remaining 1 Tbsp olive oil in a large soup pot. Add the garlic, onion and remaining sprigs of thyme and saute until onion is softened. Add the canned tomatoes with their juice, turkey broth, and roasted tomatoes with their juices and bits of thyme. Simmer, covered, for 40 minutes.

Remove from heat. Puree tomato mixture with an immersion blender or what have you. Strain out seeds, if desired. Stir in cream and season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 4 for lunch with leftovers.

Roasted Cabbage, Sweet and Tender

It's spring, when this cook's tummy yearns for salad. And what goes in salad? Red cabbage, among other things. Problem was, I bought an enormous red cabbage -- far more than could go in salad -- and was at a loss as to what to do with it. Mad Googling led me to Martha Stewart's recipe for "Roasted Cabbage Wedges" and, well, I never knew cabbage could be this delicious!

This is such a simple recipe -- slice your cabbage thickly (despite the title, there are no cabbage "wedges" in this recipe), brush with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, roast in a 400°F oven for 40 minutes. The recipe calls for fennel/caraway seeds, but I forgot to add it and can't say I missed it at all.

If your cabbage, like mine, starts to get a bit too crispy around the edges well short of the 40 minute mark, just cover it with a piece of foil and walk away. It will be fine.

The cabbage was just lovely. A little crispy around the edges with a sweet, mellow middle I wouldn't have expected of cabbage. I have to ask, is there a vegetable roasting won't improve?

Return of the Chestnuts

For my second foray into chestnut cookery, I made Schmooed Food's "Golden Chestnut Soup" as it looked to be an easy recipe and I had most of the ingredients on hand.

Ingredients: roasted chestnuts, olive oil, carrots, celery, onion, fresh thyme, bay, salt, pepper, nutmeg, water.

I am so happy I made this soup! It smells heavenly and is simply ohmygoddelicous. I could happily have sat down and ate the entire pot in one sitting.  I almost wished I had more chestnuts so I could make more soup! I gave a container to my vegan coworker and, days later, she is still talking about how good it was and how she might just have to acquire some chestnuts ...

Overall, I'd say Jennifershmoo's roasting instructions worked better than Martha Stewart's -- roasting at a higher temperature really made the chestnuts easier to peel. (I also found that squeezing each nut before peeling helped loosen the husk and pellicle).

Holy Chestnuts, Batman!

For my birthday, The Husband subscribed me to six months of Melissa's Exotic fruit club. November's selection was chestnuts. Two pounds of chestnuts. I have no experience cooking or eating chestnuts. What was I going to do with them? I searched library cookbooks, my cookbooks, and the internets for tips on cooking chestnuts and recipes to use them in. In the end, I settled on Martha Stewart's recipe for "Caramelized Chestnuts and Brussels Sprouts" and Shmooed Food's "Golden Chestnut Soup" (I ♥ Vegan Lunch Box).

Sunday afternoon, I made Stewart's recipe and it was both delicious and, surprisingly, a lot of fun to prepare. Yes, roasting and peeling chestnuts is fiddly business. Yes, stemming, trimming, washing, and halving two pounds of Brussels sprouts can be tedious. But, do you know what Brussels sprouts and roasted chestnuts resemble? Tiny brains! Yes, my dears, I amused myself by pretending I was preparing zombie food. It was so hard not too spear a tiny brain roasted chestnut with a knife and brandish it at The Husband, moaning "braaaains."

In my research, I'd encountered terrible stories about chestnuts explosions -- cooks who either forgot to score their chestnuts or did not score them deep enough so that, when cold air entered the hot oven as the door was opened, hot chestnuts exploded like small, nutty bombs. Therefore, I was extremely careful about scoring mine and sawed deep crosses into them using a serrated bread knife.

Unfortunately, I did not roast them long enough and about half were pretty darn impossible to peel. Properly roasted, the husk and pellicle peel back from the nutmeat and it's easy-peasy to get the nutmeat out. Improperly roasted, the husk doesn't peel back very much, the pellicle sticks to the nutmeat and there's a lot of swearing it the kitchen.

In the end, I did manage to get all but one peeled. Most remained whole (as per Stewart's recipe), but a few were broken into halves or thirds. It made for a less impressive presentation, perhaps, but did not ruin the taste of the dish.

And it was a delicious dish! Tangy -- sweet and a little sour -- with just a little crunch from the chestnuts and no bitterness at all from the firm, yet tender Brussels sprouts.

It would, no doubt, make an excellent Christmas side dish for someone less lazy than I. Truffles Bakery is providing much of this year's Christmas feast as, while I want to feed my family and guests good food, can't be arsed this year to get up at 6 am on Christmas morning to start cooking. Nor do I wish to be rushing around Christmas Eve, prepping a million dishes, when I could be cuddled up under the Christmas tree with The Husband, surreptitiously rattling boxes.

Deliciously Simple: Roasted Butternut Squash

Earlier this week I made "Roasted Butternut Squash With Apple Cider Glaze" from Andrea Chesman's excellent Serving Up the Harvest: Celebrating the Goodness of Fresh Vegetables (Storey, 2007). I love winter squash and am always looking for new ways to prepare my favorite, butternut squash. Chesman's recipe tempted me as it looked simple, used flavors I enjoy, and only called for six ingredients.

I did make a few adjustments to the recipe:

• My squash weighed a scant 2 pounds so I adjusted the oil to 1 tablespoon and only used 1 cup of cider.
• I didn't have any fresh shallots, so used 1 teaspoon of dehydrated minced shallot.
• I had no fresh sage and instead used 1 teaspoon Bell's Seasoning.

Peel the butternut squash.

Cut it in half & scoop out the seeds.

Cut the halves into ½-inch cubes.

Toss cubed squash with oil, salt, and pepper. Spread across large, greased jelly roll pan.
Roast in 350°F oven for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure even roasting.

Meanwhile, bring cider and shallots to boil.
Allow to reduced by ⅔. Remove from heat, stir in Bell's Seasoning.

Remove squash from oven and transfer to a serving bowl.
Pour cider reduction over squash and gently stir until combined.

Chesman says to serve the squash immediately, but I made it ahead and just reheated it as I needed it.

Thanksgiving II

While we spent Thanksgiving with my parents and it was delicious, I missed having a turkey of my own! So, on Sunday, I roasted a 12-pounder and we had Thanksgiving II all on our own with mashed potatoes, leftover mashed rutabaga, parsley carrots, and gravy. It was delicious. As delicious as my mom's? Well ... that's not a fair comparison!

I didn't do anything fancy to the turkey -- no brining, no basting, no butter-injection. I just rubbed the turkey with a little olive oil, sprinkled it generously with Penzeys salt-free "Sunny Spain" blend and popped it into a 325°F oven for about 3½ hours. My little hen came out perfectly moist and tender and full of rich turkey flavor.

Honestly, I could have skipped making the fixings -- we would have been just as happy with two knives and the turkey between us.

We Ate It All Up, Yum

Saturday, after a day of butterfly hunting and feeling old at ConnectiCon (seriously, I saw a girl in what looked like a raspberry-colored micro bikini bottom and I thought "Where are her pants? Did her mother let her leave the house like that?" and knew I was old) we came home for a simple supper of garlicky grilled chicken and oven-roasted corn. Alas, I cannot show you any delicious pictures of supper because we ate it all up, yum, before I thought to take a picture. However, I can show you what remained:

Yes, nothing remained.  As, I told you, we ate it all up. Yum. Oven roasting corn is my favorite (and only) way to do corn now as it's so easy and, I swear, less messy than shucking and steaming in a pot. I don't know why (maybe it's the moisture created by steaming the corn in its husk?) but it's much easier to shuck roasted corn than shuck raw corn. The silks just slide away. Anyway, it's dead easy to roast corn. Just put unshucked corn on a tray, roast in a 350°F oven for 30 minutes, allow to cool enough to handle, butter, salt, pepper, nom.

To finish off our yummy summer supper, we had more Eton(ish) Mess. Of course. Who didn't see that coming? Used strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries this time but it was still (obviously) just as easy and delicious. I suspect we will be eating a lot of Eton(ish) Mess this summer! Certainly, we will be eating it again tomorrow ... just so the leftover berries don't go off, you know. Berries don't keep.

Hmm. I wonder if I could do this with thawed frozen raspberries? Then we could have Eton(ish) Mess in the winter, too. Oh, dear heaven, year round Eton(ish) Mess!

That way lies madness? Delicious madness.

Easy Comfort Food: Sausages & Polenta

Friday, I came home from work craving something comforting and starchy for supper. There were no potatoes in the house, but I found a tube of refrigerated polenta in the back of the crisper drawer and, as I had already thawed a package of sun-dried tomato and basil chicken sausage, roasted sausages and polenta seemed to be the thing:

I roasted the sausages using Jamie Oliver's recipe for "Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage Bake" (Jamie at Home, Hyperion: 2008) but modified it somewhat to suit my ingredients -- I used a mix of grape tomatoes, red bell pepper, and red onion instead of just cherry tomatoes and dried bay as well as fresh oregano, rosemary, and thyme from my garden. Just roasted everything until, as Jamie says, the sausages were "golden and sticky."

To make the polenta, I ran the tube of polenta through my food processor with milk, garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano until it was smooth and then microwaved it for about 3 minutes (stirring halfway through). Seasoned it with a little black pepper and it was good to go.

This was a very easy, satisfying weeknight meal.

Slow Cooker Roast Chicken, FTW

Roasted a chicken in my slow cooker for the first time and it turned out so well!

The method is quite simple -- skin a whole chicken, stuff it with a handful of garlic gloves, rub the bird with Bell's Seasoning or whatever herb rub takes your fancy (thinking Penzeys Northwoods blend might be interesting), stick it breast-side down in the slow cooker, and cook it on low for eight hours or until the chicken is thoroughly cooked.

Cooking the bird breast side down probably sounds a bit weird, but I thought it would help to keep the breast from drying out. I know, you're thinking "It's a slow cooker, woman! Things don't dry out!" Well, I have had a few bad experiences with dry, horrible, chalky chicken and didn't want to risk it. Anyway, at eight hours, my chicken was falling apart and the breast was swimming in a shallow pool of chicken juices -- so no worry about chalky chicken here! Not wanting to waste those juices, I skimmed them and make a quick gravy by whisking them together with a cornstarch slurry and bringing them to boil.

As delicious as this chicken was, I wouldn't use this method if feeding company -- the chicken's breast was a bit flattened and the whole thing was just a bit homely when compared to the beautiful, golden roast chickens that come out of my oven. However, this is an incredibly convenient cooking method and perfectly suited to the work week.

I have a few chicken recipes that essentially require their victims to cook a whole chicken before doing a million fiddly things with the flesh and I think those recipes might actually now be doable. I could roast a chicken in my slow cooker while I slept and then do all the fiddly bits when I was good and ready!

Delicious Vegetable Candy

I love autumn because, for me, it is the beginning of roasting season. Between now and the beginning of spring, my greedy tummy will hunger for roasted things and, while a perfectly roasted meat can be quite splendid, it's roasted vegetables I really crave. Carrots, potatoes, shallots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, celery, squashes, rutabagas, brussels sprouts ... you name it, I crave it roasted.

It should come as no surprise then that, yesterday, I made "Balsamic Chicken with Vegetables" from Andrea Chesman's Recipes From the Root Cellar: 270 Ways to Enjoy Winter Vegetables (Storey Publishing, 2010). Chesman's recipe was very simple, but oh so delicious. The chicken was tender, moist, and a little tangy from the balsamic vinegar while the vegetables ... the vegetables had been transformed into delicious vegetable candy! I was more than happy to eat some of the leftover vegetables all on their own for lunch today and am happy to say refrigeration and microwaving did them no harm. They were still all that was nutty, sweet, and good.

Ingredients: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, rosemary, chicken thighs, rutabaga, parsnips, carrots, shallots, garlic, fresh ground salt & pepper.

Making this recipe, I found that all the vegetables and chicken would not fit on one large jellyroll pan so I roasted about a third of the vegetables in a little pan on their own. Even though the vegetables on that pan were never in contact with the flavorful chicken juices, they were still very delicious and would, I think, have made any vegetarian happy.

Yum, yum, yum!

(Admittedly, while I enjoyed this dish immensely, The Husband spent a lot of time picking out the rutabaga. I had hoped he might like roasted rutabaga since it came out rather sweet and nutty, but its inherent rutabaga-ness could not be disguised).

Beautiful Tomatoes Are For Roasting

Made Jamie Oliver's "Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage Bake" (Jamie at Home, Hyperion: 2008) for Saturday's supper using cherry and small fruit tomatoes, rosemary, and oregano from my garden plus fresh garlic and really nice beef sausages from New Boston Beef. I'd picked up the sausages at the Coventry Regional Farmers Market many months ago and frozen them until I had time to do them proper justice.

Aren't my tomatoes pretty?

This was a really easy recipe to put together and yielded spectacularly delicious results. However, I did have to make a few adjustments:

• As I did not have any fresh thyme or bay, I omitted them and simply used more fresh rosemary and oregano.
• As some of my "small fruit" tomatoes were a bit on the large size, I halved or quartered them so all the tomatoes would roast evenly.
• The beef sausages were very lean, so I only roasted them for 40 minutes. Then I removed the sausages, put the tomato pan on the hob, and reduced the tomatoes down until super thick and nomalicious (about 10 min on high).

Served over rice, this made an excellent Saturday night supper and I look forward to making it again with different combinations of herbs and varieties of sausage.

Sometimes, I Do Like Shoppin'

Today, we left our house for the first time since Christmas Eve. What could motivate us to leave our snug nest, as full of cuddly kitties and Christmas loot as it is? The Coventry Regional Farmers' Market, of course!

I wasn't sure how busy the Market might be, so I drafted a list of what I needed and where I expected to find it ... needn't have bothered as the Market was nice and quiet. I presume a lot of people were either at home, still cabbaged out in post-Christmas recovery mode, or at the mall exchanging their loot. Silly buggers.

We bought:

• 2 baskets of Purity Farm's fingerling potatoes
• 1 sack of Purity Farm's baby kale
• 1 stalk of Brussels sprouts
• 1 bunch of watercress (for cucumber and cress sandwiches)
• 2 packets of New Boston Beef's ground beef
• 1 packet of New Boston Beef's sweet Italian sausage
• 1 hunk of goat cheese with cranberries from the Ladies of Levita Road
• 1 pack of teriyaki jerky from Wook's Beef Jerky (I am addicted to this stuff -- need a new pack every two weeks)
• 1 bag of chocolate chip cookies from Morning Glory Homemade Goods (The Husband's impulse buy)
• 1 jar of Norm's Best Marinated Mushrooms

I was hoping for some Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes) to use in "Roasted Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts and Jerusalem Artichokes," but did not spot any. I guess I'll just have to roast the Brussels Sprouts my usual way, instead.

For Christmas, my mother gave me a copy of The Ultimate Soup Cookbook (Reader's Digest, 2007) -- a most excellent cookbook I have borrowed from the library manymany times. I am going to use some of my tasty Market purchases in "Potato and Kale Soup" and "Corny Tomato Dumpling Soup." Perhaps, I will even bring my mom some soup for New Year's!

(I shouldn't make fun of you post-Christmas shoppers -- I was certainly keen to stop and pick up some bargains at Stonewall Kitchen today, too).

Christmas Dinner With Nobs On

Christmas Dinner, 2009

~ Marinated Beef Tenderloin ~
with Port Wine Sauce

~ Do-Ahead Garlic Mashed Potatoes ~

~ Buttered Parsley Corn ~

~ Savory Slow Cooker Squash and Apple Dish ~

~ Garden Salad ~

~ Pickle Tray ~

~ Floury Rolls ~
with Garlic-Herb Butter

~*~

~ Panettone Bread Pudding ~
Served warm with
Fresh Whipped Cream

Owe most of Christmas Dinner's success to the Betty Crocker Complete Thanksgiving Cookbook (Wiley, 2003) which provided me with most of the dishes listed above. This is an excellent book which I have borrowed from the library time and time again for its tasty recipes and menus. The marinated beef tenderloin was particularly awesome (and will be repeated), but part of that was no doubt due to the quality cut of prime beef I purchased at Whole Foods.

The mashed potatoes, gravy, and butternut squash were all made on Christmas Eve and just refrigerated until needed. I reheated them in the microwave while the meat rested and then just popped them in the still hot oven until everyone was ready to sit down and feast.

Everything was really good and there were far less leftovers than I had anticipated -- my Menu Plan Monday was largely dependent on repurposed beef getting us through the weekend, but that did not happen! After seconds for four people, we managed a few small sandwiches on leftover floury rolls and that was it. Yay for KFC, eh?

Christmas Eve Supper, 2009

Christmas Eve Supper, 2009

~ Roasted Cornish Game Hens ~

~ Baked Potatoes ~
with lashings of Brummel & Brown

~ Tiny peas ~

~*~

Roasting Cornish game hens is dead easy -- just rub them with a little olive oil, sprinkle liberally with salt-free lemon-pepper herb seasoning and roast in a 375°F oven for about 90 minutes. You can throw the potatoes in at the same time and forget about everything until the timer goes off (or you can baste the hens halfway through, if you're feeling fancy).

Cleaning Out The Fridge Makes Good Noms

Didn't feel soup-ish today, but didn't know what to do for supper so I gave our kitchen a once-over and this is what I found:

• Chicken cutlets one day from sell-by
• Cherry tomatoes too mushy for salad, but not mushy enough to bin
• A pound of wrinkly sliced mushrooms
• A mostly empty bag of panko
• A mostly empty jar of Stonewall Kitchen Blue Cheese Herb mustard
• An open bottle of sherry
  
• An open pint of half-and-half leftover from pie making
  

And this is what I made from all that:

Roast Tomatoes
Toss whole cherry tomatoes with olive oil, sliced garlic cloves, and balsamic vinegar. Roast in 400°F oven for about 20 minutes.

Panko Mustard Chicken
Slather four chicken cutlets with blue cheese mustard and dredge in panko. Put on jellyroll pan and bake in 400°F oven for about 20 minutes.

Sherry Mushroom Cream Sauce
Melt nob of butter in saucepan. Cook one pound sliced mushrooms, four minced garlic cloves, and two minced shallots until mushrooms are golden brown. Stir in half a cup of cream or half-and-half, two ounces of dry sherry, two tablespoons minced parsley. Cook, stirring often, until liquids are reduced by about half. Serve on top of chicken.

(I shook the sherry around in the mustard jar to get the last drop of goodness out of it before adding the sherry to the mushrooms).