Mussels with Spanish Chorizo - $16.80 (4.20/serving)

Felt a little adventurous this week, so branched out and went with a recipe from DadCooksDinner:

Recipe

This is one of those ridiculously simple dinners you can whip up in roughly 20 minutes (prep and cooking) that looks far more impressive once you plate it.  And be sure to get the bread to sop up the sauce. 

Quick side note - C actually requested and ate a few mussels.  I was amazed.

4 servings
Total Cost - 16.80
2.2 lb Mussels - 10.98
Chorizo - 3.16
Onion - .60
Loaf scratch bread - 1.50
Cilantro - .28
Parsley - .28

A shift in content

So here I sit, almost a full year since my last post.  I know, all 7 of you following have imagined the worst.  Truth is, we've been cooking the last year, quite a bit actually.  What used to be sporadic trips to HEB whenever food ran low has now become a weekly, planned, well organized and effective Sunday event. 

The top 1/4 of a sheet of paper is devoted to the list of meals being prepared and the corresponding day.  The rest is a list of ingredients grouped in a way that I go through each as I move across the store in sequential order.  I'm not OCD, I just efficient, dammit.

What has changed, thanks to our now 2 year old daughter, has been time.  I barely have time to get the meal on the table, much less take pictures of every step, before C morphs from cute toddler to raging hulk-smash-feed-me mode. 

I've also begun to track spending a bit more than I used to, which has led me to the following blog-shift.  There are hundreds upon thousands of food blogs out there with better pictures and recipes than mine.  In fact, most of my recipes are rip-offs of other food bloggers (DadCooksDinner is my hero).  So, a majority of my posts are going to focus on the cost of each meal.  I'm a stats person, I like numbers.  This gives me a documented tally of what I've cooked, how much it has cost and how that compares to other meals I've done in the past.

A couple of small rules:
1. I don't count spices.  Most of it I have on-hand and breaking down the cost of 3/4 teaspoon of cumin seems a little too detailed.
2. One of my dirty secrets, I'm not counting garlic either.  I used to mock those that bought the pre-minced stuff.  No longer.  90% of the stuff I cook has garlic, and it now comes out of a squirt bottle.  Shameful, I know.  But the time savings is worth it.
3. For now, I'll include the cost of herbs.  We have flowerbeds, we have several potted herbs.  Those will be migrating to the new beds and will be joined by a myriad of other herbs soon.  However, if I have to buy cilantro at the store for turkey wraps or mussels with chorizo, it's included in the cost.  If I'm making a mojito and the mint we have on hand is sufficient, it doesn't count.  Hopefully, this drives me to get our herb garden going instead of throwing down 2.50 a pop for sprig or 2 of rosemary.

So, there you have it.  This is as much for me as it is for anyone reading this, but I hope you enjoy it and it proves useful in some small way.

Tartine Trial 2 - Chocolate Almond Toffee

I'm clearly skipping Tartine Trial 1, but I promise to come back and post about the Lemon Bars with Shortbread I made a couple weeks ago.  But, this recipe is fresh on my mind and stuck in my teeth, so here we go.

Working my way through the Tartine cook book, this looked like a relatively simple recipe yielding delicious results.  A and I have both been on a pretty severe dessert kick the last....well, year or so.  Cooking at home more often than not, we'd finish dinner, look at each other and try not to be the first to flinch and ask "what's for dessert" (typically, 10 seconds was as long as we went).  Last night, as I was working on stuffed bell peppers (another post coming soon) I quickly realized that we had polished off the remaining "birthday"sherbert the night before.  The Girl Scout cookies were obliterated, the ice cream destroyed, and now, the sherbert.  It was time to take decisive action:

2 c. sliced almonds
1¾ c. granulated white sugar
3 T. water
½ c. unsalted butter
1 t. Blackstrap or other dark molasses
¼ t. sea salt
1 t. vanilla extract
¼ t. baking soda
5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (used Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips)

Heat the oven to 350, spread the almonds on a baking sheet and toast for 7-9 minutes.

Let them cool, then spread half on a parchment lined baking sheet, covering as much of the parchment as possible.

Prepare the toffee.  Combine sugar, butter, water, salt and blackstrap in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.  Stir occasionally until the candy thermometer reads 295F.  This takes anywhere between 7-10 minutes.

Take it off the heat and quickly add the baking powder and vanilla.  Mix both in quickly, then pour the mixture over the almonds.  Work quickly as it will begin to set immediately.  I tried to get a perfect rectangle, but quickly gave that up to the misformed blob, which ended up being perfectly fine.  The shape doesn't matter as you'll be breaking it into chunks soon enough.

Once the toffee is no longer too hot to touch, spread the chopped chocolate over the blob-o-toffee.  It will begin melting, at which point I used a spatula to spread the choco-love around.

Cover with the remaining almonds and allow it to completely cool.  My batch finished around 10, so I let it cool overnight.  If we had available space in the fridge, I likely could have sped this up.  Woke up this morning, hacked it into pieces and......behold.

Rotisserie Pork - Char Siu Edition

First, man created fire. Then, man created a device to spin animal carcass over said fire.  I procured a rotisserie accessory for my grill last week and as soon as it arrived, put it to work on a recipe ripped off from my favorite blog Dad Cooks Dinner. 
http://www.dadcooksdinner.com/2010/02/rotisserie-pork-shoulder-char-siu-style.html

The nomBlog is a big fan of the pork shoulder.  While the pulled pork sandwich recipe proved to be a quick and easy project, this one took a little longer.  The roto (I'm not spelling out rotisserie more than I have to) took some tinkering to get the "universal" brackets to work just right.  Despite being a CharBroil product, like my grill, the parts were anything but.  Nothing a little creativity couldn't fix.  The meat itself marinated for a day (original plans to cook Saturday night ran into a sick wife who needed chicken soup, not a chunk of pork) and then I had to learn the basics of trussing.  I tied a bunch of knots that seemed to work.  Whether or not that can be called trussing, I'll let someone else decide.

The Marinade (or Brinerade as DCD calls it):

• 1 cup soy sauce
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press (or 1 tbsp garlic powder)
• 2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated (or 2 tsp dried ginger)
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar (or dry sherry)
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

The Glaze:

• 2 tbsp reserved brinerade (or 2 tbsp soy sauce)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce

Split the pork, stab the pork, marinate the pork (anywhere from 2 hours to overnight), truss the pork, throw it on the spit.

For my 4 burner grill, I turned on both outers to full blast, placed a drip pan in the middle and let it spin for 30 minutes.  Lowered heat to medium for the remaining 45 minutes.  After 45, I took the glaze and basted it as it turned, letting it cook for another 10 minutes.

Off the grill, rested for 15 minutes, sliced.  Paired it with some stir fry bok choy.  Outstanding results.  I may try and tweak the grill a little bit next time and do the long cook at a slightly higher heat as it was slightly undercooked.  The meat thermometer registered at a nice 175 internally though, so I'll call it a success.

 

Chicken with Cannellini Beans and Tomatoes

What's that?  Two blog posts in one week? Thank Adrienne, who after hoarding piles of Realsimple magazines, dug through her collection and found two recipes that were both....well, real simple and real good.

This week of cooking has made me realize 2 things:

1. Adding fresh herbs is a must for just about any dish made at home. The flavors we got out of basic pork and chicken with nothing but salt, pepper and a few herbs was incredible
2. I need to grow my own herbs.  HEB has everything you need, but at 3 bucks a pop for a bundle of herbs, I'm paying more for that than the meal itself.  My hope was to wait for a new house, but this may be a porch project in the near future.

Ingredients

• 2 15.5-ounce cans cannellini beans, rinsed
• 1 pint grape tomatoes
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 4 sprigs fresh oregano, plus leaves for garnish
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 3 pounds total)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 425° F. In a 9-by-13-inch (or some other large) baking dish, toss the beans and tomatoes with the thyme and oregano sprigs, garlic, red pepper, 1 tablespoon of the oil, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper.
2. Pat the chicken dry and place on top of the bean mixture, skin-side up. Rub with the remaining tablespoon of oil; season with ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper.
3. Roast until the chicken is golden and cooked through, 35 to 45 minutes. Sprinkle with the oregano leaves.

 Recipe can also be found here

Final product (again, no prep shots):

Roasted Pork Chops, Sweet Potatoes and Kale

We finally sold the condo and moved into an apartment out close to Oak Hill while we wait on our dream house to hit the market. I was a little concerned that moving away from a downtown setting where everything you need is a walk or quick drive away would have spoiled us for suburban living.  Turns out, there's just as much, if not more, readily available in our new hood and we've taken full advantage.  Plus, less homeless people dying in our bushes or Rockabilly musicians dying around the corner.  So we have that going for us, which is nice.  New posts coming on Jack Allen's Kitchen and Cyprus Grill and maybe a few others we discover here soon.  However, now that we're settling in, its time to return to the kitchen and try and get those eating expenses down a scosh (Adrienne, sp?)

I made a much needed grocery run yesterday after work.  We tolerated the Oltorf HEB at our old place b/c, frankly, it was right across the street.  We knew it wasn't great, but it was convenient and made for good people watching at any hour of the night.  I tried out our new HEB...the mecca of HEB's on Escarpment.  Holy hell.  This is what a grocery store should be.  Wide aisles, carts with working wheels, extensive selection, great produce,wine tastings...are you f'n kidding me???  Ghetto HEB's, we're done.  I'm home now.

On the menu last night was a meal with actual sides...something I tend to forget to do when I find a main course I really want to try out.  This was ridiculously simple, and relatively quick on turnaround time.  I substituted sweet potatoes for the butternut squash.  Nothing elaborate or worth taking pictures of until the final product, but here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds)—peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 1⁄2-inch pieces
• 1/4 cup fresh sage leaves
• 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 4 bone-in pork chops (each 1 inch thick; about 2 pounds total)
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 large bunch kale, thick ribs removed and leaves roughly chopped (about 14 cups)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400° F. On a large rimmed baking sheet, toss the squash with the sage, 1 tablespoon of the oil, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Roast, tossing once, until tender, 30 to 35 minutes.
2. When the squash has cooked for 20 minutes, heat 1 teaspoon of the remaining oil in a large skillet over high heat. Season the pork with ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Cook until browned, 3 to 5 minutes per side.
3. Transfer the pork to the baking sheet with the squash and roast until the pork is cooked through, 6 to 8 minutes more.
4. Meanwhile, return the skillet to medium heat and add the remaining tablespoon of oil. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the kale, ¼ cup water, and ¼ teaspoon salt. Cook, tossing the kale and scraping up any brown bits on the bottom of the skillet, until the kale is tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Serve with the pork and squash.

A microcosm of my evening. Dinner, cocktail, bumbo, play mat

Pork chop was cooked perfectly, sweet potatoes jived well with the sage, kale was delicious.

Stared while I devoured my meal.  Jealous a little bit perhaps?

Asian Orzo Salad - A return to blogging

So, it's been 9 months since my last post and coincidentally, the reason for my hiatus was largely a result of another life event taking place over 9 months.  Charlotte was born in February and the months leading up to her birth and especially after her birth have been a blur.  There was minimal cooking going on.  Nothing that stands out too much.  However, I knew if I didn't get something up soon, I'd likely lose all 6 followers so I'm diving back in.

A new baby is a miraculous thing.  She'll make you smile, she'll make you love, she'll make you eat just about anything you can get your hands on in the brief 5 minutes you have to eat a meal.  Burgers, pizza, endless lists of takeout food were consumed over the last 5 months.  While Adrienne has a nice breast feeding diet going on (and looks AMAZING), yours truly has ballooned in size.  The task at hand is to cut back on the junk, produce something healthy and produce it quickly....en masse.  The other trick is making something dairy free that'll keep mom and baby happy.

Enter, asian orzo salad.  If you time it right, you're looking at about 30 minutes including prep and cook time.  Simple ingredients, enough to last 3-4 days and nutritious.

    1 (9-ounce) package frozen sugar snap peas

    1 (16-ounce) package orzo, cooked and drained

    1 cup water chestnuts, drained and chopped

    3 cups diced cooked chicken

    3 green onions, chopped

    1 medium red bell pepper, diced

    1/2 cup vegetable oil

    3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

    2 tablespoons soy sauce

    2 teaspoons hoisin sauce

    1 (2-ounce) package slivered almonds, toasted (1/2 cup)

Cook up your rice while you bake your chicken, mix in the veggies, add the almonds and top it off with the sauce.  I cut back on the vegetable oil to about 1/3 cup and upped the hoison to 3 teaspoons.  Serve it right away or put it in the fridge to chill.  Low-fat, easy prep, easy meal.  Just in time to take over baby bouncing duty.

No shots during production, but here's the final product.