From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
I was on the run all week, so I didn’t even have time to make you hot cocoa, which was my original plan for the recipe exchange. Instead, I went looking through the archives and found my LA diary and thought, perfect for this dreary day.
This time last year I was planning my March trip to Los Angeles, dreaming of driving up the coast and getting ready to cook up a storm.
Since I’ve been wishing all month that I was making the trip again, I thought the least I could do was repeat the recipes from a night of cooking I did while I was out there. Nothing new here, but favorite, easy recipes – all at the request of my hosts. The menu for that evening was:
Chicken Piccata (recipe below)
Buttered Potato Pie (recipe here)
Tossed Salad with Cranberry Gorgonzola Dressing
Chocolate Walnut Flourless Cookies (one of my most requested desserts, recipe here)
Dinner was basically a cooking lesson in an awesome, if underused kitchen. It fun helping others find their innner chef. What’s going on in your kitchen this weekend? Besides California Dreamin’, what are you planning to help get through the mid-winter blues?
Tonight’s featured recipe:
Chicken Piccata with Herb Noodles:
Chicken Piccata
1 cup Italian breadcrumbs
1 tsp basil, crushed
1 tbsp lemon zest
1/8 tsp pepper
1 tsp crushed garlic
½ tbsp olive oil
4 boneless chicken breasts, pounded flat
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon, sliced into very thin slices*
½ cup water
2 tbsp fresh snipped parsley
3 tbsp lemon juice
bowl, skilletCombine breadcrumbs, basil, zest, and pepper in bowl. Mix ½ tbsp oil and garlic together. Coat both sides of chicken with oil/garlic and dredge in breadcrumbs. Over medium-high heat 1 tbsp ea. of butter and oil in skillet, add chicken and cook 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove chicken – keep warm – add lemon slices to pan, sauté 30 seconds, add water, parsley and juice, boil for 1 minute, spoon over chicken.
*Scrub well before slicing.
Herb Noodles12 oz egg noodles
2 tbsp butter
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
½ tsp basil, crushed
½ tsp oregano, crushed
½ tsp rosemary, finely crushed
¼ tsp crushed garlic
Sesame seeds, opt
saucepan, serving dishCook noodles according to package directions. Drain well. Melt butter in saucepan, add spices, mixing well. Toss with noodles. For an extra touch you can add 1 tbsp of sesame seeds.
That’s it for this week. I’ll try and get a Bixby update up tomorrow. He’s 7 months old and weighs 101 lbs now, as you can imagine any spare time I have is devoted to training and entertaining him. See you next week – TaMara
Mike J
Is the potato pie what humans call a galette?
Corner Stone
I’ve been looking for a good au gratin.
Elizabelle
Yum. Thank you.
Corner Stone
Hey, James Comey everyone. Obama’s pick to head the FBI:
Pogonip
Yummy.
May ask what you all put in your deviled eggs? I use Plochman’s mustard, never French’s–the Lord gave us Plichman’s for sandwiches and deviled eggs, French’s for hot dogs–Miracle Whip, and celery salt. At Xmas they are topped with parsley and paprika, alternating. I’m looking for Halloween and Easter toppings.
Corner Stone
@Pogonip:
Oh my Goodness. Plochman’s is the most amazing bright yellow mustard.
Yes! Yes, I agree!
NotMax
@Pogonip
Off the top o’ the ol’ noggin, Easter is easy. Grass green chives (or finely minced parsley). Halloween is a bit trickier, but finely chopping one yolk and using red food coloring to make the bits orange to use as a topping would work. Might even mix some black sesame seeds with the orange-y yolk bits.
re: mustard – Recently came upon and purchased a jar of Grey Poupon Rouge, which has rather an interesting taste. So far have only used it as one half of a basting sauce for pork roast.
NotMax
Corrected for my putting in faulty linkage.
@Pogonip
Off the top o’ the ol’ noggin, Easter is easy. Grass green chives (or finely minced parsley). Halloween is a bit trickier, but finely chopping one yolk and using red food coloring to make the bits orange to use as a topping would work. Might even mix some black sesame seeds with the orange-y yolk bits.
re: mustard – Recently came upon and purchased a jar of Grey Poupon Rouge, which has rather an interesting taste. So far have only used it as one half of a basting sauce for pork roast.
Mike in NC
@Corner Stone: Mustards? We like Lowensenf Extra and Coleman’s best.
Debbie
@Pogonip:
Grated carrot,maybe? We used to use salmon caviar for an orange garnish, but I don’t what that costs these days. Also, Woeber makes a roasted chipotle mayo that’s pretty tasty (and orange).
Yatsuno
@Mike J: Galette is more like a free form pie. That potato dish looks more like a Swiss dish called rösti.
And…I can’t type tonight.
jl
@Yatsuno: Except scalloped, not grated as with rosti. But equally excellent in their own ways. I think the potato pie is meant in the way pizza pie or moon pie is meant: something more or less flat in one way and round in another way that you can, and want to, eat. Should be more of them in this world.
srv
What’s for dinner? The Helicopter Nazis reply:
Pogonip
Internet song vendors are great. You can get stuff you never hear anymore, even on NPR. I have “Washington Square” by the very obscure Village Stompers. It’s on a compilation called ” The Hits of Pop and Doowop, Vol 6.”. (I’d classify the song as Dixieland jazz, myself, though if my pinched nerve continues to heal it may yet be used for belly dance. If it’s got a beat and we like it, sooner or later we’ll attempt to jingle to it.)
This may be true of all dancers. I took a line dance class once where we danced to “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.”. I hope Loudon Wainwright would have been proud of us.
Pogonip
@Corner Stone: Viva Mr. Corney!
FY Autocorrect wanted to call him Mr. Cornet. Autocorrect is, I fear, a jihad sympathizer.
Violet
@Pogonip: If you want to get fancy you could cut black olives to create a witch’s hat and slice carrots to get thin circles and put eyes and a mouth for a mini jack-o-lantern and ut those on tpp of the deviled eggs. If you’re not up to being that fancy, alternate shredded carrot and black olive slices.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet:
Where does one find the time? Plus, deviled eggs contain either mayo or Miracle Whip; I submit that there are better uses for eggs.
JGabriel
TaMara:
Too bad. That hot cocoa would have come in handy tonight, at least in the Northeast. It’s brutally cold in NYC tonight, and given that the ocean usually acts as a (slight) moderating influence on the cold here, I imagine it must be nigh intolerable further inland.
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel: It is actually quite warm in Madison, WI, right now. After 11:00 pm and over 20 degrees? Warm.
PurpleGirl
@JGabriel: The wind has died down a bit but it was bad a while ago. My windows usually block outside sounds but I could hear the wind tonight. And it is cold.
Tommy
I mentioned a few times here I got this amazing discount via Lifehhacker to order one week of Blue Apron. Blue Apron is a service that sends you the ingredients for three gourmet meals and you do the cooking. I fancy myself something of a foodie and a somewhat above average cook, and I am blown away by their product. I’ve not ordered it every week (you choose what weeks you want), because it is kind of pricey at $79 for three two person meals.* But wow it is an amazing service.
I so loved Blue Apron I went out and did a little research and found there is another service, called Plated. Got a discount code and ordered a week of their service just the other day. Can’t wait to see what they got going on.
Via Blue Apron this is what I had for dinner tonight: Thai Shrimp Soup with Coconut, Lemongrass & Red Curry. I beg you to click through and look at how they present the (you also get a 8.5×11 paper version of this with your order) recipe. As a dude that does web sites for a living I am jealous I am not this good. The page is both informative and kind of beautiful.
Now back to look through all the comments and copy and paste some recipes I can pass off to my family and dates as my own :)!
*Well that is cool. Went to pull a URL or two for this post and just saw that they have made some changes. They now have a family plan for four they didn’t have before and the price for the stuff I have ordered went from $79.95 to $59.94. That is getting into the ballpark of something I’d order each and every week.