Quick comfort: Meat and potatoes (and kale)

Nutrient-rich kale and turkey sausage give Braised Kale with Potatoes and Sausage a lighter, healthier touch while keeping it totally in the comfort food category. Recipe below.

Looking back over recent posts, I noticed a distinct lack of meat-and-potatoes, stick-to-your-ribs food. In fact, the entire month of March had somehow been, if not meat-free, then certainly meat light. So a return of seasonably chilly, windy weather had me thinking meat-and-potatoes comfort food. Happily, a big bunch of kale in the fridge gave me an idea for taking it in a healthy direction too.

Kale is a nutritional powerhouse. The winter vegetable is excellent source of cancer-fighting antioxidant vitamins A, C and K. Kale is also rich in lutein and zeaxanthin compounds, both good for eye health, and a good source of minerals. It’s high in fiber too and can help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. Continue reading “Quick comfort: Meat and potatoes (and kale)” →

Simply inspired: Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Lemons and Capers

Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Lemons and Capers makes a flavorful, beautiful one-pot meal when paired with a salad. Recipe below.

Recipe ideas can come from just about anywhere. This one began with a comment by Laura over at What I Like on last week’s Meyer Lemon Pizza with Goat Cheese and Bacon recipe. She said, in part, “I love roasted lemons.” I’d never thought of roasting lemons before, but suddenly synapses were firing, and I was picturing roasting little red potatoes with lemons and rosemary. Then I remembered the whole chicken lurking uncooked in the fridge, and things just kind of snowballed.

I love this kind of cooking. As much as I also love poring over cookbooks, magazines and the daily bombardment of Internet food for inspiration, there’s something exciting about starting with the simplest idea (roasted lemons, in this case) and turning it into a meal. Continue reading “Simply inspired: Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Lemons and Capers” →

Small kitchens, big solutions

Chicken and Rice in a Pot, a quick one-pot dish adapted from the Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook. Recipe below.

Update: See Other Notes below for a timely food blog find.

In at least one previous post, I’ve mentioned New Yorkers’ collective penchant for ordering delivery instead of cooking, and my Brooklyn buddy Ronnie has backed me up on this. One huge reason is the tiny kitchens in most New York apartments. Real estate is expensive in New York. Really expensive. And usually, kitchen space is the first thing sacrificed on the altar of square footage.

For New Yorkers determined to cook at home—or for space-challenged cooks anywhere—there are solutions. Smaller sized appliances, for instance, that pack all the features of their bigger brethren, just in a smaller footprint. Forget hot plates and dorm fridges—these are high-end appliances made by the likes of Jenn-Air and Viking. It’s possible to drop a grand or two [or more] on an undercounter fridge, as an example. But for creative cooks, solutions to small kitchens come in all sizes, shapes and price ranges.

Which brings me to Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen’s Smallest Coolest Kitchen Contest. Last year, parent site Apartment Therapy held its first annual Smallest Coolest Apartment contest and showcased some wonderful apartments whose residents packed maximum living and versatility into minimal square footage. This year, they’ve rolled it out across all their sites: The Apartment, The Kitchen, Home Tech [home office or audio visual] and The Nursery. Site co-founder Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and his wife Sara Kate live with their baby, born in November 2006, in a 265-square foot apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, so they know whereof they speak.

When you live in an apartment, smart use of space is an ongoing challenge, no matter how big or small your place is. So checking out last year’s entries and their solutions that ranged from brilliant to creative to sometimes a little bizarre became a daily obsession. Besides, let’s be honest—seeing other people’s apartments is just plain voyeuristic fun. Now that there’s a kitchen-focused category, I may need a 12-step program once it’s over.

There’s still time to enter, by the way. The deadline is April 16. So if you’ve got a small kitchen, apartment, nursery or home office you’d like to show off, go to the site for details.

If anyone is qualified to give advice on organizing and working in a small kitchen, it’s Justin Spring. For more than a dozen years now, he has cooked in a kitchen that is just 45 square feet. And he grew up cooking weekends, vacations and summers on the 36-foot family sailboat, where the kitchen consisted of a camp stove, ice chest and bucket. Spring has written an appropriately diminutive book on small kitchens with a ridiculously oversized title: The Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook: Everything You Need to Know About Setting Up and Cooking in the Most Ridiculously Small Kitchen in the World—Your Own.

Unlike most kitchen books whose ideas are guaranteed to make your wallet bleed, Itty Bitty is refreshingly all about editing and purging, making pots and utensils do double duty and making space work efficiently. Besides lots of solid advice on equipping, organizing, cleaning, cooking in and entertaining from a small kitchen, you’ll find plenty of encouragement and inspiration, all in a friendly, fun, quick read.

You’ll also find recipes. A hundred of them, to be exact, all of which can be accomplished with no more than two burners and a toaster oven, if necessary. And while you won’t find haute cuisine, you’ll find some decent, doable eats. The recipes all feature what Spring calls “the combined imperatives of (1) being breathtakingly simple and (2) being interesting enough to merit the trouble of cooking.” The quick one-pot dish above is my adaptation of one from Spring’s teeny kitchen. The recipe follows. Continue reading “Small kitchens, big solutions” →

A Tale of Two Chilis, Part 2

Marion’s robust chili uses red wine and soy sauce, along with more traditional ingredients, for a big, satisfying flavor. Recipe below.

I am nothing if not a procrastinator. Back in January, when I posted A Tale of Two Chilis, Part 1, I promised to follow up with Marion’s excellent chili recipe as Part 2. So here we are with spring right around the corner and I’m finally getting to it.

I also have a nice white bean chili dish made with chicken that I’d intended to get to as a hearty cold weather dish. But after two different chilis, my Tuscan beans from last week and Patricia’s delicious Brazilian rice and beans, I think I’ll take a little break from writing about beans.

That said, we don’t think of chili as a strictly cold weather meal at our house. Except for when the weather turns blazing hot—usually all of August here in Chicago—we’re happy to make it and eat it pretty much year ’round. Try Marion’s robust chili recipe below and I think you’ll be right there with us. I’ll turn the kitchen over to her now. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Chilis, Part 2” →

A Tale of Two Chilis, Part I

My Three-bean Chili is a hearty, spicy, satisfying bowl of red you can have on the dinner table in 45 minutes or less. Recipe below.

You know, I was going to start this post about two chili recipes with a semi-apologetic note about some of the less than traditional ingredients in them. Then I got an email newsletter from Better Homes and Gardens’ site, bhg.com, with 20 chili recipes that used everything from chocolate bars to portabella mushrooms, cream cheese, wild rice, pineapple chunks and sprigs of fresh thyme! So maybe non-traditional is the new traditional.

Besides, who gets to say what’s traditional? In Cincinnati, traditional means adding cinnamon. In Texas, adding beans to chili is akin to a hanging offense. So who’s right? Not Cincinnati or Texas, as far as I’m concerned—but that’s just my opinion, nothing more. In the end, maybe all you can say of what’s traditional is that chili is a comfort food with robust flavors and spices [although not necessarily fire] and a bigger personality than, say, most soups or stews.

I said I was going to talk about two chili recipes. Marion and I each have our own separate but equal recipes, and we like them both—a lot. Whose chili gets made any given time depends on who has the time to cook at the moment and which flavor we’re craving. Both recipes include beans [adios, my Texas readers]. Both also use red wine, and one uses soy sauce. But these aren’t precious, dainty chilis. The less than traditional ingredients disappear into these robust dishes, leaving behind only a satisfying depth.

The more astute among you probably noticed that part of this post’s title was Part I. So today, I’ll give you one recipe, mine. You’ll have to wait for Marion’s delicious chili in a future post. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Chilis, Part I” →