I grew up in a savory snack household. Give me salami, olives and pickles over any kind of sweet treat. Ever since Costco started carrying those petit cucumbers my dad has set out to master the homemade pickle. He tried garlic and lemon and various herbs, but today when he arrived at our house for a barbecue he proudly presented his tastiest variety – the simple dill pickle.
Here’s his recipe.
Continue reading Simple Dill Pickles | A Free Recipe
Now that I work full time I’m always on the lookout for quick and easy meals. Sometimes I rely on tradition and make this simple chicken dish inspired by my favorite Italian cook, Marcella Hazan.
Every member of my family has her own copy of this fabulous cookbook. Her recipes are not overly complicated. They are realistic and wholesome.
Several years ago my mother adapted her veal scallopini with asparagus recipe to include chicken instead of veal. It has become one of my family’s favorite chicken dishes. And it’s just perfect for hectic weeknights.
Continue reading Weeknight chicken scallopini with asparagus
Our son, Jack, turns 4 this week. Since his second birthday we’ve let him choose his party theme. At 2 it was Pingu (please, have a look at this adorable Swedish claymation penguin show), last year it was the Lorax and when I asked him this year what he wanted, he chose the Grinch.
During the holidays we took Jack to a local restaurant to see the outrageous film based on the Dr. Seuss character. It was his first big screen experience so it must have left an impression on him.
Continue reading Grinch-themed birthday party
I recently got a full-time job. This means I come home at 5:15 and if my husband and I want some non-kid, sane time I have 45 minutes to get dinner on the table before we start our son’s bedtime routine.
This is not a lot of prep time, I’ve discovered. It takes all my strength to make something nutritious and non-mac & cheesy.
I am realizing that I need to strategize. I can’t expect to chop veggies, thaw chicken, marinate steak, or do all the other simple, yet time-consuming preparatory steps required to make tasty food.
Here’s the first of hopefully many recipes where you can come home from work, make the food, and then spend some quality time with your family, such as watching “Bob’s Burgers” (that’s what we are currently doing).
Serves 4-6
To make delicious fried rice you really need to start with cold, cooked rice. That’s hard to do when you want to cook a meal in 30 minutes. But if you make the rice the night before while you’re binge-watching “The Voice,” and stick it in the fridge, you’re good to go the next day.
Ingredients:
Directions:
Slice the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. Combine the butter and garlic in a bowl. Set aside. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Lightly coat the pan with vegetable oil.
Pour the eggs in the pan and let set for a minute before stirring vigorously. Set eggs aside. Wipe pan clean and add a little more oil. Toss in the chicken and sauté till cooked through. Set aside.
Add the chicken stock, veggies and onion to the pan. Sauté until veggies are cooked through. Add the sesame oil and 1 tablespoon of the garlic butter. Start crumbling the rice into the pan with your hands, about a cup at a time. Add a little more butter between handfuls. Add the green onions.
When butter and rice are incorporated in the pan, stir in the eggs and chicken. Add the soy sauce and cook until rice gets a little crispy if you like. Add pepper to taste.
Store the leftovers for lunch or cook up some ham or Spam and have breakfast fried rice.
There’s no other time that I feel as though I’ve failed at life as when I hard boil eggs. It seems like a simple endeavor: boil eggs, cool them, peel them. But usually my eggs are impossible to peel.
When I asked my friends on social media why I can’t seem to successfully peel an egg, I got all sorts of egg-cellent suggestions from running them under water as I peeled them, to shaking them vigorously in a jar of water (totally didn’t work). The most frequent response I got was I was using too-fresh eggs.
I dutifully tried every suggestion but got no closer to a peelable egg. Finally, I heard a new one: steam the eggs.
I tried it. It worked. Here’s how to make the perfect hard-cooked egg. *note: after trying this method three times, the only successful batch was when I steamed 4 eggs. When I tried to steam 12 they didn’t get cooked through enough — but they were incredibly easy to peel!
What you’ll need:
Some eggs
A pot
A steamer basket
Directions:
Fill your pot with about an inch of water and bring it to a boil. Place your eggs in a steamer basket and lower them into the pot. Cover, turn the heat to medium and steam for 13 minutes.
A couple of minutes before the eggs are done, fill a bowl with ice and cold water. Transfer the eggs to the bowl and let them cool for 15 minutes.
They peeled perfectly!
Yay for life hacks.
Looking for a good egg salad recipe? Try my chicken salad but substitute eggs!
Today is a soup day. It’s rainy, grey and I just want to stay inside. Plus, after recently having major surgery, I’m on a limited diet of soft foods. When I noticed I had a couple of sweet potatoes in my pantry I decided to use them to make a blended, flavorful soup.
I’m not much of a soup chef. I have my minestrone, but that takes a lot of chopping. When a friend brought me some butternut squash soup last week she said all she did was roast everything and put it in a blender with some stock. Easy peasy.
This soup is sweet, savory and slightly creamy. Perfect for a day like today.
Serves 5
Ingredients:
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Peel the carrots. Place the carrots and the whole sweet potatoes on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for one hour. Remove the carrots and place the whole, peeled garlic cloves in the pan. Roast another 15 minutes or until garlic is golden brown.
Meanwhile, heat the oil and butter in a pan and sauté the onions until translucent, about 7 minutes. Roughly tear up the sage and place in the pan. Sauté for another 2 minutes. Turn off heat and set aside.
After the sweet potatoes have cooled slightly it should be easy to remove the skins. Chop them into rough pieces and place in a blender with the carrots, garlic, onions and sage. Add 2 cups of stock and blend for a few minutes, scraping down the sides if necessary.
Put contents in a soup pot and add remaining cup of stock. Bring to a boil, turn down heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
A few minutes before serving stir in the cream cheese until melted and well combined. Serve with a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan.
Our family just came back from a two-week vacation in Nayarit, Mexico. One of the perks of the place we stay in is a housekeeper who cooks for us. Moña used to run a restaurant out of her home and she’s the best Mexican chef I know. I yearn for her chiles rellenos and chilaquiles.
One of her specialties is battered, fried cauliflower. I’m not a cauliflower enthusiast, but when it’s prepared like chiles rellenos, I’m sold.
Florets are coated in a delicate egg batter, pan fried and tossed in a simple tomato sauce. The florets turn out perfectly tender, almost like al dente pasta.
The difficulty with my trying to make Moña’s recipes back home is our lack of delicious produce. Our fresh tomatoes are usually terrible and our onions aren’t nearly as sweet.
Here is my attempt at one of Moña’s signature side dishes. It’s accompanying pulled pork enchiladas and mexican rice. Look for the rice recipe below.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
Directions:
Place the flour, chicken stock, sugar, chile powder and tomatoes in a blender. Blend until smooth. Set aside.
Separate the eggs and whip the whites until stiff. Fold in the yolks.
Pour oil in a small sauté pan. There should be about a half-inch of oil in the pan. Heat over high heat. When hot, dip florets in the egg batter till covered and drop them in the pan. You’ll need to do several batches but they brown pretty quickly. Spoon oil over the florets as they brown on the first side, then turn them all over and brown on the other side.
Drain the florets and place on a paper towel-lined platter. Set aside.
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large skillet and sauté the onion and garlic until soft. Add the blended tomato mixture and oregano. Stir until thickened. If too thick, add more chicken stock. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Add the cauliflower florets and simmer for 5-10 minutes.
Serve on a platter and sprinkle with cojita or monterey jack cheese.
Serves 4
Ingredients:
Directions:
Heat the butter in a large sauté pan. Toss in the rice and cook, stirring for a few minutes until the rice is lightly toasted. Pour in 1 cup of stock and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for five minutes.
Add another cup of stock, the carrots, onion and garlic. Cover and cook for 15 minutes.
Check the rice every now and then to see if it needs more liquid. Add more stock if necessary.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
In Alaska we are pretty seafood-centric. Although we have more than 47,000 miles of shoreline my husband doesn’t like seafood so I rarely cook with it.
I have access to Alaska halibut and salmon, but sometimes I just want a good old-fashioned can of tuna. Recently I was in Mexico and a friend served up a dip made with smoked mackerel. I don’t have any smoked fish lying around my freezer so I tried my own tuna dip. With a tiny amount of liquid smoke and just a few other ingredients I came up with a smoky, delicious tuna salad that’s perfect for a mid-afternoon snack — and it’s healthy too!
I love tuna packed in oil, but that can run pretty expensive at our local fancy grocery store. The big grocery store carries the next best thing for about $2.50 a can.
You can use any can of tuna you’d like.
Ingredients:
Drain the tuna and place in a small mixing bowl. Combine all the other ingredients. Serve with corn chips or crackers.
It was the evening before Thanksgiving and I was describing the holiday to my son while driving home from preschool. Jack asked if there would be corn at our dinner.
Our family isn’t a corn family. Occasionally when Costco is selling an eight-pack in the summertime my folks will boil it and serve it on the cob. Creamed corn is definitely not a typical dish on our table.
I looked at several recipes online for creamed corn and most called for either canned corn (gross), or fresh corn. Many recipes listed cream cheese, which I didn’t have. I wasn’t about to brave the grocery store on Thanksgiving eve so I took to my freezer and invented my own creamed corn recipe. I think it’s a hybrid of creamed corn and corn casserole. It’s a little thicker than creamed corn because of the egg, but not as custardy as casserole.
Also, my son had fun helping me make it. I put crackers in a ziploc bag and let him stomp to his heart’s content.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Fry up the bacon in a medium sauté pan over medium-high heat. Set aside to munch on later and reserve the bacon grease. Add 2 tablespoons of butter and sauté the onions until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add flour and stir frequently for about two minutes. Turn heat down to medium. Add cream and stir until thickened. Add milk if mixture is too thick. You want it the consistency of cream sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.
In a large mixing bowl combine the corn, béchamel sauce and egg until the corn is well coated. Place in a casserole dish.
Wipe the sauté pan clean with a paper towel and melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Add the Ritz cracker crumbs and stir frequently for one minute.
Sprinkle casserole with the cracker crumbs and bake uncovered for 40 minutes or until top is lightly browned.
Soon after becoming friends with Kasandra in college I discovered we had one big difference: she celebrated holidays.
Kasandra is from Connecticut where they have four seasons, a long history, darkness in the summer and tolerable cold in the winter. These reasons are why East Coasters celebrate holidays differently from Alaskans.
“I love that the East Coast celebrates every holiday to the fullest,” Kasandra said. “It makes me look forward to the seasons.”
I visited Kasandra and her husband, Gary, in their hometown seven years ago in May. As she was giving us a driving tour of a road used to deliver mail during the Revolution, I was seeing house after house ridiculously adorned with flags and patriotic banners. I asked, “What the hell is going on here?” and she said “It’s Memorial Day weekend.”
Feel free to contradict me, but Alaskans just don’t celebrate this way. Sure, I’ll carve a pumpkin in October and string up some lights at Christmas, but there isn’t a single house on my block right now with Halloween decorations outside.
So today I wanted to show off a little of what Kasandra has going on in her neck of the woods to hopefully inspire Alaskans this Halloween.
Kasandra maintains that frugal collegiate spirit but includes East Coast charm and sophistication. All of her crafts are easy, quick and affordable. Here are three that she shared with me.
Paint a pumpkin. Stick craft store jewels all over it. No glue necessary if the paint is still wet.
Melt some white chocolate. Dip Milano cookies halfway into chocolate. Drizzle chocolate over the cookie to make it look like a mummy. Stick on sugar eyes.
Peel some apples and slice them into wedges. Spread peanut butter on one wedge. Add some yogurt-covered raisins to look like teeth. Top with another apple.
So, get out there, Alaskans, and show some last-minute Halloween spirit!
Alaska Knit Nat 