Improvised Minestrone

I had one chicken back and one chicken leg in the freezer, plus a fortunate assortment of aromatics, so I decided to make a freestyle minestrone.

I have my mom's recipe in a previous post, but I only had a select array of ingredients. Here's what I used:

1 chicken back, 1 chicken leg, both cut in largish pieces
1 yellow onion, large dice
2 carrots, large dice
2 ribs celery, large dice

1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 can (15 oz) kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (28 oz) tomatoes
about 1 cup chicken stock

squeeze of lemon
1 large clove garlic, minced fine
1 handful of parsley, minced

I defrosted the chicken in the microwave, cut it up with my poultry shears, and seasoned with salt and pepper. In the bottom of my pressure cooker, I browned the chicken pieces in olive oil. When they were done, I removed them to a plate and poured off a little of the oil before browning the onions, etc.

I sweated the onions, carrots, and celery for a few minutes, then deglazed with the wine. Now, I added everything back in (chicken, kidney beans, tomatoes, barley). I added all the tomato juice, and then topped off with the stock, making sure to only add liquid to the point I'd want the final product to come out to - the pressure cooker would cook everything in much less time, losing much less liquid. I put on the top, brought up to pressure, and then simmered for about 18 minutes.

I released the pressure and let the soup cool a bit before serving. Right before ladling it out, I added a squeeze of lemon, the parsley, and the garlic. Note I added the garlic raw at the end, rather than with the onions. I wanted it to be spicy and hot, to help add freshness/brightness to the final dish. First time I'd tried that. Worked great.

Pignola Herb Chicken

My Thai peanut chicken recipe is so good, I've been thinking of other ways to get pulverized nut-meats onto the outside of grilled chicken. Pine nuts (pignolas) are an obvious choice. I decided one day to do a rosemary brine and basically a pine nut pesto coating for the grill. It came out super good. I have toyed now with excluding the rosemary brine and just doing a parsley/garlic/pignola pesto coating and that was almost equally as good. Next time I think I'll be trying a more intense rosemary application, like maybe blanching it and including it directly in the pesto. In any event, here's the basic formula:

Season chicken pieces in prep for grilling. This could mean an herb brine, or at minimum, salt and sit.

Put 1/2 to 1 cup pine nuts into the food processor, along with a handful of parsley or other herb and about four cloves garlic. Add salt and process, adding olive oill until the correct consistency is achieved. There should still be a few almost whole pignolas hucking around in there.

A half hour or fifteen minutes or so before grilling, toss chicken pieces with a liberal amount of pesto to coat. Let sit and then grill normally. Using a nutty oily coating makes it even more critical that one grills at the right temperature, that is, not too high. You want to avoid flare-ups and burning the nut coating. Not tasty. Do it right and you'll have speckles of black dominated mainly by golden brown nutty pasty goodness. Hit it with some lemon juice just before devouring for an extra-bright crazy experience.

Lasagna Notes

The first lasagna that I felt was wholly presentable. Nard status: rocked.

A couple days in advance, I made some vegi red sauce - using my normal method with zucchini, squash and eggplant. There was enough left over that I thought, "I can make a lasagna with this and the leftover eggplant when Mom visits." Good thinking.

I started by sautéing eggplant slices about a quarter inch thick in olive oil. Damn, those things suck it right up! I salted them in the process. If I salted beforehand, dried, and then sautéd, I'd probaby get better results with less oil absorbtion. Interestingly, about 3/4 through the frying process, they gave up a lot of the oil they had previously absorbed...

Next, I sautéd half a red onion in the same pan, continuing to build the fond. After they had browned nicely, I added about 3/4 cup of red wine to deglaze. To this I added about half of a small can of tomato paste to thicken. After the paste was well-integrated, and I judged that most of the alcohol had evaporated, I added the leftover suace, increasing its volume. One this all had heated through, I proceeded to build the lasagna.

A thin layer of sauce
A layer of...
no-boil noodles
dressed-up ricotta
eggplant
noodles
sauce
noodles
sauce
eggplant
noodles
sauce
ricotta dollops
(i think)

Baked for 30-40 minutes, covered. Then 10-20 minutes uncovered to brown top. Oven at 375ºF. Could have baked less covered and browned more.

Too thin. Could have gone up to double the layers if I had the raw materials.

Ideas to Attempt

• Indian fried chicken
• Matzoh balls using other unleavened cracker bread
• Melonade
• Kidney bean or sweet pea hummus
• to be continued...
  

Sour Cream Chocolate Custard

A variation on the more basic chocolate custard described below.

1 cup Sour Cream

2 cups Milk

4 Eggs, plus 2 Yolks

8 oz Dark Chocolate (quality chips are fine)

0.33 cup Sugar

salt

vanilla

Preheat oven to 325ºF.

Melt chocolate in double-boiler, adding part of the milk and all of the sugar once melted. Integrate fully with wire whisk until smooth and fully re-warmed. Now add the rest of the dairy and vanilla, integrating similarly.

In another bowl, beat eggs with several pinches of salt. Once chocolate mixture is cool enough, add eggs and mix well.

Weigh total mass of custard and divide into ramekins (approx. 4 oz servings). Using water from double-boiler, and also new boiling water from kettle, create water bath and put ramekins in. Place in oven for about 50 minutes. Cool custards in fridge before serving. Cover with paper towel to retain moisture.

Bread Pudding

2 cups good stale bread cut into approx. 1/2" cubes (I used a walnut wheat levain)

4/3 cups half and half

1/2 cup w. sugar

3 Tb butter (melted)

1 egg and two egg yolks

1/2 cup dried fruit of choice, diced (I used turkish apricots)

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

hefty pinch salt

Cut the bread up a couple days ahead of time. If it is not quite stale yet, it will be easier (and safer) to cut. Then, leave the bread chunks out in a colander so they will dry out substantially.

Break the eggs into a bowl and beat with hefty pinch salt. Add all other ingredients except half and half and butter. Melt butter in microwave and heat half and half to slightly warm. Mix HnH into egg mixture then add butter. Mix well. Put dried bread chunks into this and toss well. Allow an hour or two for the bread to absorb as much fluid as possible.

Pour batter into 8"x6" tin baking dish. Arrange bread and apricots evenly and top off with any remaining liquid. Place baking dish in water bath and bake for approx. 50 mins at 350ºF.

Salt and Pepper Chicken Stir-fry

4 chicken thighs, boned and skinned
half an onion
2 green onions
3 to 4 cloves garlic
4 to 5 baby bok choy
1.5 cups broccoli cut up small

salt
pepper
soy sauce
rice vinegar

Cut up chicken into bite-size pieces. Salt and pepper generously. Sauté (in batches) in hot sesame oil. In a separate pan, sauté chopped onions. Once browned, add garlic and sauté a couple minutes more. Add chopped bok choy and sprinkle with 1-2 Tb. soy sauce. Microwave broccoli briefly, then brown in chicken oil and fond. Optionally, deglaze with rice vinegar. Serve over brown rice.

Cashew Butter Cookies

0.5 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
0.5 tsp Salt

1 cup Cashew Butter
0.5 cup Butter
0.5 cup W. Sugar
0.5 cup B. Sugar
1 Egg
0.5 tsp Vanilla

Sift dry ingredients together. Cream butter and white sugar. Mix in brown sugar, cashew butter, egg, and vanilla. Drop 1/8 cup dollops onto parchment covered baking sheet - cook at 375ºF for 12 to 20 minutes.

Black Sesame Seeds

Black sesame seeds, you make me look GOOD!