Archive for January 2010
Dinner for a Sick One
January 30, 2010 | 
Author My daughter called me at the office, concerned that as her mother is feeling very poorly today with a classroom-petri-dish-induced cold, we needed to come up with something yummy for dinner to sooth her condition.
We’re going to make one of Roz’s favorites, an old formulation I believe comes from Karin Knight’s Baby Cookbook from forever ago: Lime-Dill Chicken.
Take chicken breast, slice it very thin (perhaps 1/8-1/4″). Roll in egg, and dip in italian bread crumbs to fry in a little olive oil until browned. The sauce is a combination of butter, lime juice, and dill weed (fresh if you have it).
We’re going to serve it with mashed potatoes (the lime-dill sauce is an excellent topping for the taters, as well, but then we’re huge lime fans around the Denny house) and perhaps a side of some sort of fresh green veg to be named later.
I’ll try to update this post with some pics during the production of dinner.
PS. She felt far too crappy to appreciate an actual meal, so we made her toast and oatmeal and suchlike; hopefully tomorrow night will render her able to enjoy the lime dill chicken. And yes, Becca, it’s made with actual butter, not just the leavings from the chicken pan. Michael needs to get with the program. 
PSS. Sunday update: Megan and I decided to reprise the goat-cheese and sun dried tomato chicken, and potato salad a la Roslyn. The chicken turned out great; the tater salad turned out to be mashed potatoes instead, which was actually a great side for this dish.
Posted in 
Tags: 
What’s the best salt?
Someone was talking in the background on the radio just now, and was talking about how government regulations to disclose the salt content in food was something that wasn’t really necessary — instead, encourage people to use sea salt, as it actually lowers blood pressure.
Lowers blood pressure? Wow, wouldn’t that be nice?
I did a VERY small amount of googling, and found a number of items — but the funnest one was an article in Slate from 2005 that posits the question “Which salt is best?”
Thought I would pass it along. What kind of salt do you prefer, and why? Feel free to add a comment below.
Dutch Apple Babies
Dutch Apple Babies
In my continuing love affair with eggs, I made the perfect Breakfast or Brunch dish for Christmas Morning. The secret is in choosing the right pan, as it will rise to ridiculous heights depending. Check the picture. Someone gave me these cool little individual casserole pans which I had never used. They were perfect, but we did take them out of the pans to serve, as I did not want eaters sctatching the pans. Really really easy!! Beyond easy…and slathered with syrup……and each person gets their very own….
Dutch Apple Baby
1 large apple
4 large eggs
1 c. all purpose flour
1 c. milk
¼ c butter
Cinnamon
Powdered sugar
Lemon wedges
Preheat oven to 450
Wash, peel and core apple, slice fairly thin. (may wait until just before using in recipe to avoid browning of apple slices)
Batter: Whirl eggs and flour in blender until smooth. Add milk and whirl to mix well. (You can use a whisk instead.)
In a 10-12 in frying pan or an 9-14 in oval pan, oven proof, melt the butter. Immediately pour in the batter. (size of pan affects the rising of the batter)
Scatter apple slices over the batter and sprinkle generously with cinnamon.( I added some dried cranberries just for color)
Bake at 450 until Dutch Baby is puffed and top is brown. About 20 min. A knife inserted into the Dutch Baby will come out clean. Serve immediately.
Dust with powdered sugar and serve from pan or slide onto a serving plate. Squeeze lemon juice to taste , cut into wedges if you used just one pan, and with maple syrup or a homemade raspberry syrup.
Fun Quiz
confusing semolina products
I was researching Matt’s great posting on Timpano di Tucci, trying to figure out what pastas I would use if I were to do it, and found this funny little Quiz:
I got 18/24, took it again with my wife (who surprised me at her knowledge of pasta types) and then got 21/24. What’s your score? Try it and post in comments!
A Tail of A Beast (of Burden)
Off again to the local meat cutter (Ward’s Meats and it’s just that: you buy an animal from the farmer, the butcher kills it, and off it goes to a local meat cutter for cutting and packing. Our cutter is Ward). This time the goal of the journey is beef bones, both for us (consommé) and the dogs (chewing and burying). Oh, and for sausage casings (I’ve yet to attempt to make these on my own. It’s a project for the future). However, this discussion will focus on neither of these.
In our lives, we try to get closer to the source of our food. Not only is it better for you and you know all about it, but you can get things that normally you would pay for in the store for free (trading homemade preserves for things you want really does work) I like to make beef broth, consommé and stock, but to do this I need a lot of good beef bones. You can’t get these at the local grocery store, and butcher shops are getting to be few and far between. So, since the butcher and the cutter end up with an awful lot of them (and offal) and they just get sent to the rendering plant anyway, I intercept them at the cutter. Normally, we don’t pay anything for them, and they’ll give you more than you can take. We got some bones, and he also gave us a complete ox tail, sectioned, that a customer didn’t take. Ward just wanted it out of his freezer.
Once home, I got to work on Ox tail soup. I thawed them, opened them up and rinsed them off.
A whole ox tail, cut up
That’s them. So, now that we are at the starting point of this recipe, what shall we do? Let’s start, I say!
Ingredients:
21/2 pounds oxtail, cut and trimmed
½ cup unsifted flour plus 2 Tablespoons
2 Tablespoons beef drippings or vegetable oil
2 medium yellow onions, peeled and minced
6 cups of water and 1 pint bouillon
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons salt1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 bay leaf
½ teaspoon thyme
3 cloves
2 sprigs of parsley
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1/3 cup sherry or port wine
Dredge the oxtails in ½ cup flour:
Dredging the ox tail
Once dredged, brown in drippings. You will need a large, heavy-bottomed stockpot for this:
Browning ox tail
Drain on paper towels after browning. Add onions to oil, turn up heat to medium and sauté till golden, but not burnt. Sprinkle in remaining flour, mix well and brown lightly.
Flour and onion
Slowly add the water and bouillon, stir in tomato paste, salt and pepper;
Adding liquid
Place bay leaf, thyme, cloves and parsley in a bouquet garni and add to pot.
Add bouquet garni
Return the oxtail to the pot, cover, and let simmer for 3 hours until the meat is tender.
Return meat to pot
Remove bouquet garni. Remove meat and separate from the bones, cut to bite size and add back to the pot. Add carrots and celery.
Add carrots and celery
Cover and simmer till carrots are tender, about 15 minutes. Add wine when tender.
I often wondered why this dish exists. There is a high bone to meat ratio, and its the tail. After eating it, I now know why. It has an incredible beefy flavor, and the texture is like tender rib steak. A wonderful soup, it went very well with a cold, rainy winter day in the northwest.