The picture is of a Costco frozen Italian meatball and one of the homemade ones I made using my own version of Alison Roman’s “Good-bye Meatballs” from her new “Home Cooking” video series. The one on the right is the Costco one. (Be sure to subscribe; she’s doing a new one every Tuesday. They’re short and funny. I love her because she’s so completely opinionated. Not that I could be described that way or anything! Note that I don’t always agree with her opinions. She adds way too much salt and pepper, I think, and she’s way too fond of dill, just to name a couple of my quibbles. But such is life.)
Main Meat Dishes
A Guh-reat but Really Easy Recipe For Kung Pao Chicken
I’ve had a standard stir-fry recipe for many years that can fit either chicken or beef depending on the stock/broth used and other variations. I don’t think lemon juice goes with beef, for instance, so I substitute sherry. It’s served me well, but recently I’ve become interested in developing a good homemade version of kung pao chicken. When we lived in Falls Church, VA, we ate a number of times at the Peking Gourmet Inn, a restaurant less than a mile from us that was a favorite of many celebrities, including the George W. Bushes. The walls are lined with many framed and signed photos. Gideon especially loved their kung pao chicken, saying that it wasn’t like any other version he’d ever tried. I loved their egg rolls, and sometimes for lunch I’d call in a takeout order (with extra garlic sauce), swing by and pick it up, and consume the two scrumptious, golden, packed-with-filling rolls in about five nanoseconds. Heaven! (Well, nearly.) In homage to that memory I made some egg rolls not too long ago that weren’t bad, although I didn’t deep fry them. Too messy! Then I decided to make a run at the kung pao. While the end result wasn’t really much like the PGI version, I have to say that the results were pretty gratifying. You know you have a hit on your hands when people keep taking seconds . . . and thirds. There was a tiny portion left. (Which I ate for lunch today, and it was just as good as freshly made!)
Easter Dinner Post-Mortem
I hope all of you had a blessed Easter Sunday, with time to reflect on the day’s spiritual significance and a chance to connect with friends and family. We had a great gathering at around 5:30, and there was one super-duper hit and some kind of misses. I’m writing this in the hope that you’ll try out the hit and be warned about the others. I was especially disappointed with the cake, as I don’t make desserts very often and had been looking forward to this one for weeks.
Easter Dinner for Fifteen
Sunday is Easter, and we’re having about 15 people over for an early dinner around 5:00. I asked if I could do the meat, potatoes and dessert. And rolls, of course—that goes without saying. Yes, I’m making dessert, a very special carrot cake with a custard-based cream-cheese frosting from the great Stella Parks over at Serious Eats. Remember, sweets are treats. They are for special occasions, and I’m dying to make her cake for our company dinner. (Stella’s recipe for whole-wheat bread was kind of a disaster and I don’t know why, but I’m
The Great Empanada Endeavor
I first made this recipe from America’s Test Kitchen for a huge open house we had. My son and I had made up dozens of these the day before, and then all we had to do was to bake them as needed. I made somewhat of a miscalculation during the party, thinking that we didn’t need that last panful, and then people scarfed up all the ones I’d baked and it was really too late to put in the rest, as they have to bake about 30 minutes. So be sure to make plenty. I’m saying that this recipe will make a dozen empanadas, but that yield will depend on how many optional ingredients you include. If you’re adding all of the add-ins you’ll want to make extra dough.This looks like a complicated recipe with lots of ingredients, and that’s what it is. But you can make the filling and the dough ahead of time or make them completely ahead of time. And they’re so, so good!
Syrups and Concentrates You Can Use In Your Cooking–and a Great Salmon Recipe
These aren’t sugar-free, to be clear. Not at all. But they pack a flavor punch, thus making a little go a long way.
First off, the item in the picture: cider syrup. Don’t buy this stuff, for heaven’s sake! It’s ridiculously expensive, costing anywhere from around $12 to $24 for a pint. Honestly! You can make your own instead, paying $4.99 for a gallon of cider that will yield that same amount. Just be sure that during cider season you buy a couple of
A Festive Dinner to Keep in Your Back Pocket
We always have a special dinner around December 30 to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday, and for a number of years I made my special double-the-meat double-the-cheese lasagna with cheesecake for dessert. Then I moved over to prime rib. This year, due to my being so impressed with the beef tenderloin served at our church’s Christmas dinner, I switched to that. I have to say that I’ll almost certainly never go back to prime rib. The tenderloin is cheaper (around $11.99/pound at Costco), cooks faster, and has wonderful flavor and tenderness.
Simplified Baked Garlic Chicken
I tried out this recipe when we had a bad snowstorm and I had to make do with what I had on hand, including some boneless chicken thighs. I will say again: stop buying boneless chicken breasts and buy these instead. They are so much better and cost so much less. They are every bit as good as white meat and they don’t dry out. If you think your family won’t eat them, just serve them up and don’t say anything. I can (almost) guarantee that no one will know the difference except to say, ‘Hey Mom/Honey, these are really great!”
The Great Empanada Endeavor
I first made this recipe from America’s Test Kitchen for a huge open house we had. My son and I had made up dozens of these the day before, and then all we had to do was to bake them as needed. I made somewhat of a miscalculation during the party, thinking that we didn’t need that last panful, and then people scarfed up all the ones I’d baked and it was really too late to put in the rest, as they have to bake about 30 minutes. So be sure to make plenty. I’m saying that this recipe will make a dozen empanadas, but that yield will depend on how many optional ingredients you include. If you’re adding all of the add-ins you’ll want to make extra dough.
A Great Alternative to Pasta Casserole
For many years my family enjoyed something called “Chiquita’s Chicken,” a recipe we’d gotten from a magazine article by the redoubtable Peg Bracken, author of the I Hate To Cook Book. The article had a little booklet of recipes included which we apparently didn’t keep, although we did write down the one by Chiquita.. I remember that there was something called “Hao Nao Brown Kao” made with ground beef and vaguely Hawaiian or Chinese or some such, and another item called “Gloria’s Good Goulash.” I found HNBK on cooks.com but the other two are lost to posterity. (At least under their original names. Chiquita, whoever she may have been, apparently cribbed her recipe from an almost-identical one for “King Ranch Chicken,” which is very well known.) Since Chiquita’s Chicken relies heavily on canned soup, I looked for something a little more upscale to replace it and found the following. The cream of mushroom soup has been replaced by sour cream and cream cheese, so I guess that’s progress. The cream of chicken soup stayed. The original recipe called for the chicken and cream cheese to be rolled up in individual corn tortillas, something I refuse to do. Any time you’re asked for something that fiddly, just do layers instead. (There are quite a few other fiddly things I do, such as the individual mini-tart shells, but at least there’s some point to them.) So here’s my recipe, adapted from Taste of Home magazine.