Cooking In General

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Well I was going to make chicken soup for supper and serve the boiled chicken thighs on the side but now I think I might make revmaf's chicken-in-foil bake.

BTW - I know most of the ovens around here have temperature dials that show both C and F temps.

 

Home made soup is legendary. At least when my mum makes it. Love it! My mum always makes a turkey soup with the leftover Turkey from Christmas. Can't beat it .

 

I make a lot of different soups. In my husbands culture they eat soup with the supper meal almost every night. His favorite is "sopa de pasta" which is made with pasta lightly browned in oil and then cooked with tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and garlic blended in a blender with water and chicken broth added.

I sometime make it with carrots and celery added to the blend for more flavour and when it is almost cooked I add a can of red kidney beans and a little chili powder.

 

What's a cilandro?

 

Cilantro is a green herb. It is the leaf of the plant that produces coriander seed.

 

The coriander seed doesn't come from the coriander plant? Wow, you learn something every day. So the coriander seed comes from a different plant than the coriander leaves? What a crazy world. We have some coriander plants in our herb garden.

 

Actually coriander and cilantro are the same plant HB. Both names are commonly known for it.

 

I hate fresh coriander leafs. They smell and taste soapy. Yuck. Coriander seed is something else. I like it.

Chev, try Ragusa's Sage Noodles (tm)

First, cook some arbitrary noodles. Doesn't matter which. My personal preference are smaller noodles.

Then make the sauce: Take a largish onion, some butter. Peel and chop the onion finely, melt the butter and add the onion. Heat and stir until the onions get slightly brown, then add something meaty - usually I take cooked bacon, but normal bacon or shrimps do perfectly fine as well (you can improvise; everything works as long as it doesn't conflict with or would be drowned by the sage) - and then add some hot water to prevent it from burning. Lacking something meaty you can as well take a stock cube (there's no shame in that).

Add dried or fresh sage leafs. Be generous. Salt. Let boil on low heat for 10 minutes, and then add some sour cream, roughly a large spoon (you're from Poland, you know what I mean ). Whisk until the cream is solved.

Serve noodles with sauce. Enjoy. Takes 15-20 minutes, max.

 

Check out my edit of the chicken-in-foil recipe - I found it needed longer to cook than I thought.

 

One of my favorite foods is Greek, that being said I love to make Spanikopita or spinach pie as some call it. This is a recipe even my Mom has asked me for:
Ingredients:

Olive oil 3 Teaspoons
Green onion chopped 1 bunch
Spinach 2 packages, thawed drained and patted dry and then chopped
Dill chopped ½ bunch
Parsley chopped ½ bunch
Feta cheese, big tub drained and chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Eggs beaten 1-2
Filo 12-14 sheets
Melted butter as needed

Heat oil over medium heat in skillet or sauté pan, add green onions for 2 minutes, add spinach, dill and parsley in batches. Once cooked move to strainer and allow to cool somewhat.

In mixing bowl mix spinach mixture feta, salt, pepper, stir in eggs.
Preheat oven to 350. grease 9x9 baking dish or deep dish pie tin. Lay a layer of filo over the dish and brush with butter, add 5-6 more buttering each. Add filling and repeat with filo. Bake 45-75 minutes or until top is golden brown throughout.

The trick to this recipe is to butter the filo pastry well each side before laying over the last layer. I recommend lots of feta, easy on the spinach and serve with Tzatziki. I also like to add a clove or two of garlic to add a bit of flavour during the saute of the dill, spinach and parsley.

 

I love Spanikopita. My recipe if fairly similar but I like to roll the filling into the layers of filo pastry and then cut it into circles when it is cooked. Makes a nice snack for guests.

 

Made this yesterday from a recipe in the local paper, something of a gamble since I don't much like olives, and it was really good. Here's the hitch - it's a recipe for a small (1 1/2 quart) slow cooker. Here's what I think would convert it: double it and do it in a regular size slow cooker, or keep it the same size and put it in a covered casserole dish in a 350-375 F oven for about an hour to an hour and a half. Anyway, it was good enough I recommend trying it.

Slow Cooker Chicken Breasts with Lemon Cream Sauce

2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, trimmed of all fat
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 cup plain store-bought Alfredo sauce
6-8 whole black olives
Zest of 1 lemon (that means, the grated or peeled and chopped outer peel of a lemon - try to avoid getting much of the white fiber under the yellow peel)

Spray inside of slow cooker crock with nonstick cooking spray and place chicken in bottom of crock. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. In small bowl, combine Alfredo sauce, olives and lemon. Stir to combine and pour over chicken. Cover and cook on high 2 1/2- 3 hours, until chicken is tender and cooked through. The chicken will make its own juice and thin the sauce. Serve alone or over pasta or rice. Yields 2 servings.

 

Nice recipe, BUT .... cooking spray??!

I'm schocked! I'm awed! How can one possibly use something like that on food??! Why not formaldehyde?

I know, when it comes to food I'm a reactionary.

 

Well, what I use, actually, is olive oil or corn oil (depending on the dish) in one of those self-pumping sprayers you can get at kitchen stores. But it's true the recipe called for non-stick spray, by which it probably meant Pam, which is indeed full of odd stuff. (Is that the one that has silicone in it?)

EDIT: for this one I used the corn oil but now that I think about it the olive oil would probably have been a little better, because it had OLIVES in it. Well. My mind is sometimes elsewhere.

EDIT AGAIN: If you've never used these little gizmos they are great for putting a thin film of plain oil on a pan. Their main drawback is that they are hard to clean. Another problem is that if you don't use them for a while the oil can start tasting a little "off" though I suppose that is true of oil in a regular bottle, too.

[ January 18, 2007, 21:28: Message edited by: revmaf ]

 

revmav,
I want to express that your description exceeded my worst concerns:

And you eat that?

I use 'cleared' butter*. Usually in a heavy black cast steel pan with emael inside. Very old fashioned

* You separate the butter fat from the whey by melting the butter on medium heat. Let it boil up once, and put off the hotplate, and let it rest and cool. The whey will separate at the bottom. Then pour out the butter fat carefully, avoiding to mix it with the whey again.
Takes 15 min to make it. It has that buttery taste, stays fresh in the fridge and is very well suited for frying. Best: It almost certainly never went through a refinery

 

I know I will probably be stoned in this haute cuisine thread...but does anyone have advice as to the best spaghetti sauce in a jar? I have exams and I'm not exactly a seasoned cook, so...no time for home-made stuff. I love the thin spaghetti threads...capelini (sp?) IIRC.

Besides, it's a giant leap from pot noodles.

 

Try Paul Newman's sauces. I don't know if or how they taste. But I like the labels

The Wall Street Journal is a neocon rag, but I like these drawn portaits instead of photograps. Same style. Something very American I presume (mental note: go check). Having to actually read it sours my mood instantly, so I went over to just feast my eyes on it

So, to return to topic, if the sauce sucks, well, you'll still have a splendid package

Or try Ragusa's Sage Noodles (previous page).

 

Butter from a cow is has far less trans fat content than the mutant laboratory hydrogenated fat that is found in so much processed food, so is not really a major cause of concern.

And don't try and make out that I'm some sort of loan crusader on this. Limits on trans fat use have been made by many national and local authorities, including New York City.