Pistachio Cedar Planked Salmon, and Salmon Leek Chowder

Here are two easy and salmon recipes I made yesterday and today, all from one four-pound $20 whole salmon. If you can learn to fillet and debone your own fish, you can save so much money on seafood dishes. So here is Pistachio Crusted Cedar-Plank Salmon, and Salmon Leek Chowder.

Chicken-Bacon-Dijon-Pot-Pie

Anyone remember David Cross singing "Chicken-pot, chicken-pot, chicken-pot-piiiiiie" on "Just Shoot Me" ...? It's kind of an obscure reference, but it makes me laugh every time I think of it.

Now then, some disclaimers.

1. I'm a pretty decent cook, but I'm a mess when it comes to pie crust. This one actually turned out quite okay taste and texture wise, but it was hard to roll out and kept splitting apart. Nine out of ten times, I get a store-bought rolled pie crust for my quiches and pies, because well, it's $4 toward me not having a meltdown in the kitchen. Trader Joe's has a good one that I like which is not full of weird synthetic ingredients. However, I was not at TJ's yesterday so instead I opted to make my own crust, and I used the recipe in this book Good Kitchen Magic which I think should make a good crust in theory. My trouble is that I don't usually get the dough to bind together with the first 2 tablespoons of water as they say. Sometimes even the 3rd tablespoon of water doesn't do the trick so maybe I'm using too much flour. Who knows. Either way, I won't chide you for using a store-bought crust, because I do it all the time myself.


2. This is NOT a quick meal. It can be made significantly faster with a few shortcuts, which I'll put in parentheses next to directions or ingredients. Of course, as with any of my recipes, alterations are often necessary.

3. Even though I know my way around a DSLR, it is January in the Pacific Northwest, and rather gray, and I have no window light in my kitchen, and it was dark outside anyway, so I have done my best to get some good photos with my tripod and bounced light.

4. Because of the multiple steps and ingredients, read this all the way through before starting the recipe so you see the way I split up my directions and ingredients.

5. This recipe can make two 6-inch pies, (I made my pies in cast-iron skillets) or one larger 9-inch pie either in a skillet or in a glass pie dish, so you'll divide up your dough and filling accordingly. 

Thus, I present you with Chicken-Bacon-Pot-Pie.

Rotisserie Chicken, Mashed Potatoes and Cardamom Roasted Cauliflower

 

I'm excited to announce my first ever give-away contest! For this meal-blog I'm plugging Olympia Local Foods and in exchange, they are offering a give-away of a hot, juicy rotisserie chicken and a $10 gift card at Olympia Local Foods.   More rules and details about this give-away can be found at the bottom of this page, below the recipe.

Olympia Local Foods is a business which I support, nearly weekly.  They are family owned by local farmers, who work in conjunction with other local farmers to offer area residents a convenient way to shop for locally grown and produced food items, with weekly in-store pickup.  You can even pay a nominal fee to have them deliver to your house. One of their signature items is freshly rotisserie-prepared, kosher, organic, pastured chicken by the owners of O.L.F. who also run Tachira Farms.

So for this recipe, I picked up a hot, savory bird, and also an organic head of cauliflower,  some red potatoes, and went home to come up with a recipe for an autumnal comfort food with a bit of a  sophisticated twist. 

Ratatouille

RATATOUILLE

Onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, potatoes... and some fresh herbs= one delicious and hearty soup. 

Time for The Off The Cuff Chef to butcher a traditional French recipe.   Ratatouille (ra-ta-TOO-ee) is a vegetable stew, although mine always ends up more like a soup, so that is what I'm showing you how to make below here.  For more information about more authentic versions, please consult this link.  Please don't report me to Julia Child's estate.  I know my recipe is not quite up to par, but it's a darn good version, in my humblest of opinions.  And isn't that basically what always happens? Alternate ingredients come into the picture, substitutions are made, etc.  So here's something similar to a traditional ratatouille, that I make every so often.  I regret that I did not have a nice crusty loaf of bread to go with this, but alas, you can't always have everything.

Potato & Leek Au Gratin

A really good "gratin" is such European comfort food... it's kind of like Mac and Cheese, to me, but fancier so you could serve it up with a nice cut of meat, and there it would make for a really festive meal.  But it's also so easy to do. 

I put together this little casserole a few days ago, but didn't have time to write up the description.  So without further ado, here it is, in all its beautiful simplicity! 

Potato Mushroom Pizza

The first place I ever had a potato pizza was at the famed Vic's Pizza in Olympia while I was in college. I just don’t go out much these days, being the frugal housewife that I am, so I finally got around to making my own potato pizza.  And seriously… don’t knock it till you try it.  It’s SO good.
Mine, of course, has its own tweaks and variations, and I worked with the ingredients I had on hand—this week, my theme seems to be food with mushrooms.   You’ll see two other mushroom-inclusive recipes in the next 2 installments as well.

Pot Roast with Mashed yam-potatoes, and gravy

I am by no means any authority on the preparation of a roast.  In fact, this roast was the very first one I have ever made.  You see, my mother is the one who makes roasts, and so if she makes one, we just go over there and eat.  Thus, I’ve never made one.  Until today. Considering my lack of experience, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

 

 

INGREDIENTS:
1 roast cut of beef.  (I happened to have “eye of round”.)
2-3 carrots, peeled and cut into halves
1/2 onion cut into wedges and separated
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp fresh thyme
2 tbsp fresh sage
2 bay leaves
4 beef bouillon cubes
2 cups of boiling water
2 tsp fresh ground pepper

First, sear the meat on all sides, on medium-high heat in a cast-iron skillet with about 2 tbsp butter until browned.  Put this browned meat in a Dutch oven, or oven proof deep dish. I made beef bouillon with the cubes, and 2 cups boiling water, and added all the herbs and seasonings.  Pour this over the meat, and put in the carrots, and onions and garlic.  Finish cooking the roast in the oven for about 4-5 hours with a very low heat option (maybe around 200-250).  Check the meat with a thermometer every so often.  Since eye-of-round can be tough, I just kept it simmering in the broth well beyond the 160 degree internal temperature.  

Cut the strings off, and slice the meat across the grain, into the thinnest possible slices.

 

Mashed Yam-Potatoes:
8-10 potatoes (red or Yukon gold)
1 large yam
1 cup milk
1/4 stick of butter
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp seasoning salt

Boil the potatoes and yams in their peels until fork tender.  Drain water off, and then peel them (I stuck a fork in each potato using my left hand, and used a knife to peel them with my other hand.) Mash them up with butter, milk and seasonings.  You can also use a hand held mixer to really fluff them up.  The yams add vitamins, fiber and a soft, sweet flavor to the mashed potatoes, as well as a little color.

Now ordinarily I’d put a little more effort into a gravy, but since I was in a hurry last night, I just used the recipe on the back of the corn-starch container… I strained the broth from my pot roast through a sieve, and mixed that with corn-starch and simmered it up.  But for some reason it didn’t get very thick, so it was almost more like an Au Jus.  Nevertheless, it was still really good drizzled over the meat and potatoes.

 

Technorati Tags: pot roast,eye of round,beef,main dishes,potatoes,yams,carrots,gravy

Potato and Carrot Frittata

The subheading on this blog says recipes are more of a recommendation, and since I’m not a trained chef, and often learn by experimenting, I have to share this funny little anecdote which eventually led to the development of my potato and carrot frittata. A few years ago, when I was a newlywed, I tried making hash browns, even though I had never made them before. (It is rather funny since it’s one of the most simple things in the universe, and I had at that point already been cooking for over a decade, and making delicious dinners and whatnot. Breakfast foods were just a new endeavor for me, after years of being single, and eating cereal or bagels in the morning. ) Back to the story: What I ended up with was a gray, gluey mess. As I deduced from my grave error, when you grate potatoes, you should always rinse them in a colander to get the extra starch off. At that point, most people would have gone to Denny’s for hash browns, but I wanted to figure out how to fix that. So the next time I rinsed them, drained them, and then I heated up some olive oil, and threw my spuds in the big cast iron skillet. Within a few minutes, they started to brown up nicely. On ONE side. But I still had poor luck in flipping them over.

So the next time, I made one more tweak, which was to pour scrambled egg mixture over the top of the browned potatoes, and cook that through. I tried flipping that as well. Not so easy. Then I finally started researching frittatas online, and discovered that it’s quite okay to ‘finish’ them in an oven to get the top solid.

The moral of the story is that learning is part of cooking, and if hadn’t made those mistakes, I wouldn’t have come up with this, which is easily one of my favorite breakfast foods.

INGREDIENTS (enough for 2 people who eat a large breakfast, or 4 diminutive breakfast eaters.)

6 eggs, and 1/3 cup milk whisked together in a bowl

3-4 medium sized red potatoes, peel still on
1 carrot
5 fresh basil leaves or 1 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
2-3 tbsp olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

Peel and grate the carrot, and then grate potatoes either by hand, or with a food processor with a grating attachment if you have one. (This speeds up the process greatly when you’re really starving for breakfast, not to mention saves you from having bits of your knuckles in the frittata!) Rinse grated potatoes thoroughly in a mesh sieve or colander until the water runs clear. Let drain until the potatoes are fairly dry. Meanwhile, preheat a large skillet on medium high (cast-iron would be preferable, but any skillet with an oven-proof handle will do.)

Mix the carrot & potato gratings together before adding them to the hot oil. Spread them out in the skillet so they’re evenly thick.

Lower the heat to medium, and periodically check that the potatoes and carrots are not burning or sticking. Adjust heat as necessary. When things seem to have heated & cooked through fairly well, and the bottom starts to brown (check with a spatula along the edges) pour egg mixture over the top, making sure to coat everything. Lower heat a little more, and let the egg mixture set up. Sometimes this is sufficient and the top of the egg mixture will set up just fine, but if the bottom cooks faster than the top, preheat your oven to 375 and put the whole skillet in the oven for a few minutes until the top is firm.

Sprinkle with minced herbs, salt and pepper, and serve up with a side of breakfast meat like bacon or sausage. Sometimes I also put cheese on top, like cheddar, or feta, which is also quite good.

Swedish Style Potato Salad

So, it's summer time, and everyone loves a big ol' bowl of potato salad. It keeps for days in the fridge, and is a nice, cool side dish on a hot day.

My take on potato salad is sort of inspired by a traditional Swedish-style potato salad.

And... it's way-hay-hay less fattening.

INGREDIENTS:

15 or so medium sized red potatoes
1 cup Plain yogurt (Greek would be good, since it's so thick & creamy)
1-2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
(1-2 tbsp Mayo – optional)
4-5 green onions
2-3 stalks celery
(2 tbsp chives – optional)
(1/3 cup crumbled bacon – optional)
seasoning salt of your preference (one that’s a little paprika-y is always good)
pepper

DIRECTIONS:

First off, make sure you start early. This is not a last minute type thing, unless you already have left over cold boiled potatoes in the fridge. Boil the potatoes until fork tender, drain immediately, and fill pot with cold water to stop cooking. Dump out cold water within 5 minutes to prevent taters from getting water-logged (which I inadvertently did last week. Boo.)

Chill potatoes for several hours or overnight in the fridge. It makes them way easier to dice. Believe me-- I tried it once with slightly warm potatoes, and it was a mushy mess.

Now then... Assuming your potatoes are boiled, and chilled, just take those cold, little potatoes, and dice them up with a nice big knife.

Then slice up approximately 2-3 stalks of crispy celery (trim the nasty ends off, first, and wash really well.)
Chop up about 4-5 green onions, and put all of the above in a large bowl.

(Optional-- for an extra kick, scissor-cut fresh chives into small pieces, and/or add crumbled bacon for a little sumpin’ sumpin’. )

The dressing is as such:

Approximately 2/3 to 1 cup plain yogurt
(It can be made entirely with yogurt, or else I often will stir in two tbsp of real mayonnaise just to help bind the yogurt and keep it from being too watery. Use a little more yogurt if not using the optional mayo.)
1-2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
1 tsp Seasoning salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper

Stir together and chill.