Recipe Roundup: Smitten Kitchen

As I said in a recent post compiling various recently attempted recipes from the site Closet Cooking, I’ve tried a lot of recipes in the past several months and done very little posting, so it’s time to go through the images, write down my spotty memories and get these things out there into the internet where they will hopefully jog my memory later on and encourage other people to give them a try. This batch of three all come from the cooking site I’ve been following the longest: Smitten Kitchen!

Chicken Tacos

I’m always interested in checking out a new recipe for tacos and this certainly fit the bill. I don’t think I’d ever made chicken ones before and the flavor on these were pretty solid if memory serves. I especially like the way you cook the chicken which is fairly hands-off and super easy. Combine all ingredients in a pan and boil for a half hour. This gives you plenty of time to chop up the rest of your taco fixins. I don’t quite remember why I didn’t make the salsa fresca that’s also mentioned in the post. Instead I whipped up a crema (sour cream combined with avocado, salt, oil, onion and some green Tabasco). One of these days I’d like to give this one a shot with bone-in chicken because I understand there’s more flavor there.

Baked Pasta With Broccoli Rabe & Sausage

 

Apparently I only snapped a few pictures when I tried out this recipe. I remember this being a pretty easy thing to put together and the results being a kind of sausage-y, rabe-y mac and cheese and there’s nothing wrong with that. Actually, seeing this recipe again makes me want to give it another try in the next few weeks.

Pasta With White Beans

While I only snapped two pictures of the previous meal, I can’t seem to find a single image from either of the two times I made Pasta with White Beans (I skipped the rosemary oil because my wife is not a fan of that particular herb). Another easy meal to put together thanks to all the food processing, I really enjoyed the flavors combined for this recipe, but will note that all those beans can lead to some evenings punctuated by the most musical of fruits.

Cooking A-1 Beef & Broccoli

For years and years I just didn’t care about cooking. It wasn’t something that was even remotely interesting to me and then at some point in college, I did. I don’t remember how or why, but it just happened. At that point I did some looking around and discovered a recipe I simply titled Beef and Broccoli when I typed it out all those years ago. I can’t remember where it came from, but it’s pretty simple and I did tweak it a bit, so I’ll post the whole thing here.

2/3 cup A-1 steak sauce
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
2 cloves of garlic
1 pound London Broil
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Head of broccoli
One bell pepper (I used red)
Small package of mushrooms
Cooked rice

First off, get your rice going. After that, cube your steak and marinate in the soy and A-1 sauce for an hour. During that time, chop up the garlic, pepper and mushrooms and steam the broccoli until tender. After the hour marinade time, cook the beef in olive oil for five minutes on medium-high heat. When that’s done, remove to a plate and cook the vegetables, bringing everything to a boil. Reduce heat to low, reincorporate the beef and stir in cooked rice.

The original recipe I have written down is pretty close to this, but I replaced the original 16 ounce bag of frozen vegetables (broccoli, peppers, mushrooms and bamboo shoots) with fresh aside from the shoots, which I would definitely throw back in when making this again.

I made this a few weeks back at this point (sorry for the lack of posts lately, this have been all over the place lately) and while I still enjoyed it, it doesn’t quite blow my mind like it did the firs time around. Back then, I was all over the mix of A-1 and soy sauce — two of my favorite condiments at that time — but it’s a bit strong and overpowering now. I could probably dig deep into this recipe and figure out a way to temper it (maybe cut down on the A-1), but now that I make so many legit wok-based dishes, I’m not sure if I’ll come back to it.

Revisiting Smitten Kitchen’s Pea Pesto

A few weeks back, my wife convinced me to go with her and our daughter to a nearby farm so we could pick strawberries — one of our daughter’s favorite foods — and anything else we might come across. It was luckily not too hot when we got there, but I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of doing my own picking. I don’t mind paying a little bit more to buy local goods that have been picked by other folks. In fact, after actually going out and doing this, I’m even more okay with it. Anyway, the other thing my wife decided to get from the farm was a big basket of sugar snap peas. For some reason, I can never find them fresh at our grocery store which has a pretty solid and impressive selection most of the time. So, she wanted a pea-centric recipe and I searched by blog went with Smitten Kitchen’s Pea Pesto, a recipe that’s super easy and super tasty, two of the biggest things I look for when making food.

My wife was adamant that the fresh peas would taste far better than the frozen ones I usually wind up using. I joked with her, saying I forgot to use the fresh and went with the frozen instead and that I couldn’t tell the difference between fresh and frozen, but that was just for giggles. In fact, the fresh peas made for such a big difference that I fully support her going out and picking more…just leave me and the kid at home.

Cooking Nigella Lawson’s South Indian Vegetable Curry

I think it’s good to drop in a vegetarian meal about once a week or so. I have noticed, though, that those dishes tend not to go as fast as some of the other leftovers. I’m not sure what it is, but those kinds of meals — or at least the ones I’ve made — tend to be pretty good on the first day but don’t look so appealing after that. That was the case with Nigella Lawson’s South Indian Vegetable Curry (also seen on page 154 of Nigella Kitchen).

The idea behind this dish, which I didn’t really realize until after I bought all the ingredients and then decided to read the intro, is to use up a bunch of vegetables that you might have in your fridge that are getting close to heading south. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but I bought everything new and tossed it into the pot which might have made for more of the dish than we needed.

Anyway, the meal came out well enough. I must admit, I’m not overly familiar with curry. My wife bought some light and dark curry powder when she was over in Sri Lanka, so I know we’ve got some of the good stuff, but I’m a little nervous when it comes to messing around with that particular spice both because I don’t know it very well and partly because I don’t want to waste it. Like I said, it was good the first time around, but that yellow and green bowl of mush didn’t look super appealing sitting in the fridge. I probably didn’t give it enough of a shot, but I don’t know if I’ll be returning to this one…unless I have a bunch of veggies I need to cook before they go bad.

Cooking Smitten Kitchen’s Spaghetti With Broccoli Cream Pesto

Spaghetti With Broccoli Cream Pesto Ingredients

Steaming Broccoli Over Pasta Water

Onions Cooking In Olive Oil

Broccoli Added

Blended Sauce Added To Pasta

Spaghetti With Broccoli Cream Pesto Plated

I didn’t take a lot of pictures of my process for making Smitten Kitchen’s Spaghetti With Broccoli Cream Pesto because it’s not a particularly photo-worthy post (plus, there’s no way I can take better one that SK’s Deb Perelman). You’re boiling water, steaming broccoli, cooking pasta, cutting up broccoli, shredding cheese, chopping garlic, throwing stuff in the food processor, cooking onions and eating.

I’ve made plenty of pesto recipes before and love the variety you can come across even without the traditional ingredients of pesto and pine nuts. In this case the cooked broccoli and onions take the place of those fancier greens. The real genius of this recipe is how you basically use one pot and the food processor to make the whole thing. I got a pot of water boiling and put the steam basket in the top of it. Once it was ready, I added the cleaned and trimmed broccoli. Once that was done and set aside, I threw the pasta in.

While that cooked I took care of some of the other prep stuff. I cut up the onion and shredded the parm. When it was done and drained, I then cooked first the onion and then the broccoli in the pot. When that was done, everything but the pasta went into the food processor and we had diner after a few whirs.

I can’t really say that I’d kick my other pesto recipes to the curb for this one, but I do appreciate that it’s so simple to put together. If you’ve got an extra box of pasta and some broccoli you’re good to go. In a pinch you could use milk instead of cream, You could also cook up some chicken and add that in for added protein if you wanted. Super easy.

Cooking Smitten Kitchen’s Buttermilk Roast Chicken With Steamed Broccoli

Buttermilk Chicken Brine Pre-Mixed

Buttermilk Brine All Mixed Up

Adding The Brine To The Chicken

Chicken Ready For Roasting

Buttermilk Chicken, Roasted

Buttermilk Roast Chicken With Steamed Broccoli

I’m a big fan of the cooking blog Smitten Kitchen. She’s from nearby New York, so we have pretty much the same seasons meaning that when tomatoes are fresh for her, they’re fresh for me too. I also just dig her recipes and have cooked a number of them both for the blog and just for food. Recently she’s been doing a lot of baking stuff, which I don’t really care about, but I am excited to check out her cookbook when it comes out. I’m also a huge fan of her blog’s name, clever is clever and clever is good.

I went back a bunch of pages a few weeks ago and finally came across this recipe for Buttermilk Roast Chicken. All you really do for this recipe is mix the brine ingredients together, put the chicken in there and then cook in the stove. I think I should have used the broiler from the beginning, but just used the stove which wound up taking longer. I let it sit for a few hours and then we ate.

I’m not sure how much I enjoyed this recipe. I might have goofed something up along the way, but the flavor was a little weak and the texture a little…off? Not quite rubbery, not quite chewy, just off. However, the baby really seemed to like it, so it can’t be all that bad.

Bonus Food Pic: Ribs & Meat At Billy Joe’s

I know I post a lot of Bonus Food Pics from Billy Joe’s Ribworks in Newburgh, New York, but that’s because the food is just so dang good! When my inlaws visited for Mother’s Day weekend, I was able to convince everyone to head down to the waterfront for some nice barbecue. And by “convince” I mean that I floated the idea out there and everyone was game. I was a hungry boy that day so I decided on the Ribs and Meat, opting for ribs (can’t remember which kind) and pulled pork with a baked potato and broccoli and cheese as a side (you know, to be healthy). I’ve had the pork and ribs before and they were great — I know it’s a little barbaric, but I do like digging my hands into my food on occasion — but the sides were a new venture for me. My father in law said he liked the broccoli and cheese, so I figured I’d give that a shot and I went with the baked and smoked potato instead of mashed to mix things up a bit. As you’d expect, everything was delicious. After devouring the ribs and most of the pork, I smashed the potato myself, mixed in the butter and sour cream and then swirled everything left on the plate together. I highly recommend this unless you’re one of those people who don’t like your food to touch in which case I’m sure the previous sentence made your stomach churn just a little bit.

Cooking Broccoli Pesto & Fusilli

Broccoli Pesto & Fusilli Ingredients

Broccoli Steaming, Pasta Water Boiling

Parmesan, Garlic, Lemon & Salt In Food Processor

Spinach & Olives Ready For Mixing

Broccoli Goes In The Food Processor

Broccoli Pesto Processed

Pasta Mixed With Spinach & Olives

Broccoli Pesto Added To Pasta, Spinach & Olives

Broccoli Pesto & Fusilli Plated

Last week I asked my wife what she wanted for dinner that week. She got out her binder filled with printed and handwritten recipes and pulled out one for Broccoli Pesto & Fusilli which she printed off back in 2008 from 101 Cookbooks. It sounded simple and tasty, plus I always love trying pesto-based dishes. You can click the link to follow the recipe as it’s written, I changed a few things as I went. First off, I nixed the walnuts because they’re not baby friendly right now. I also decided to steam my broccoli instead of blanching like the recipe suggests.

So, I started off by getting a pot of water on the fire for the pasta and then set up my steamer tray in my other pot for the broccoli florets. While the heat worked on those, I got the rest of the pesto ingredients ready by introducing Parmesan, garlic, lemon juice and salt to the food processor. While that appliance waited for the broccoli to finish up–which took about 10 or 12 minutes–I chopped up the suggested handfuls of spinach and also combined that with the drained can of sliced black olives I picked up from the story. The recipe says to add those last, but I figured tossing it all together would be fine.

Once the broccoli was done steaming, I transferred them to the processor and zoomed the pesto together, dripping olive oil in from the top. Once the pasta was done cooking, I drained it and dumped it wholesale into the bowl with the spinach and olives for mixing. After those elements got to know each other, I then poured the pesto in and dinner was ready to be served.

I really liked how this recipe turned out. If I had had some basil lying around, I probably would have thrown some in when making the pesto. The only blunder I made was cooking the whole box of pasta instead of the recommended 8 ounces. The coverage was pretty good the way I made it, but I think the whole thing would have balanced better with less pasta (or more sauce, I guess). All in all, you get the elements of pesto with the addition of broccoli, so this one’s a winner in my book. You could also grill up some chicken, chop it up and add that if you wanted more protein.