Trader Joes Recipe Series –2 Pollo Asada & Hatch Green Chilies with Jalapeño Cream Cheese

OK this one is totally cheating, but it was so good. I bought pre-marinated thinly sliced chicken breasts at Trader Joes.  I know, it’s ballsy to write about using food out of a bag, but seriously it was awesome…

First I heated up the grill. I got the chicken out. I got out some hatch green chilis and some corn tortillas.  I put the tortillas into a foil pouch and sprinkled them with water Then I had moment of inspiration.  I remembered that I had some jalapeno cream cheese. And so I thought I would stuff the chilies with the cream cheese.

omg. These were so easy and so good.

Grill the chicken and the peppers. 5 Minutes on each side for the chicken, it cooks fast. When the peppers are blacked, take them in, place them in a zip lock for a few minutes. Then peel, make a slit, pull out the seeds, stuff them with jalapeño cream cheese top with cheddar cheese and return them to the grill for about 2 minutes so the filling can get hot and cheese on top melts. Warm the tortillas in the foil pouch on the grill, about 5 minutes.

Best picture of the night, in my opinion…

Serving was easy, slice chicken, serve in warm tortillas. This made great left overs.

The pollo asada at Trader Joes is $5.50 a pound and the chilies were, I have no idea .50 or something.  We bought more to make this again the week. It took ten minutes to get dinner on the table, perfect for a weeknight.

Trader Joes Recipe Series 1 – Stuffed Artichokes

I have waited a long time for Trader Joes to come to Houston.  It is basically a whole foods type market at Wal-Mart prices.  Well Houston is getting three, and the first one opened up over in the Woodlands and I have been twice.

I came home with TONS of veggies and no meal plan. I pretty much bought stuff that looked great and then came home and was like, uhhh. what now?

So what follows are a series of new recipes using my lovely Trader Joes stash. (Are groceries really a “stash”, maybe not, anyways..)

Stuffed Artichokes:

Prep the artichokes, cut off the tops, the bottoms and the pointy things. Don’t be put out, it took me like 5 minutes to do four. It’s no biggie.

Heat 2 inches of water in a pan and insert a steam tray. Place the artichokes in, stem side up and add lemon slices. In my picture they are stem side down, it was prettier! But in real life it’s easier to check doneness if the stem side is up. So I flipped them.

Put the lid on the pan and steam 20 minutes. Meanwhile stir together 1 C Panko bread crumbs, 1/3 C parmesan and some salt, pepper and Italian seasoning, and parsley - mix them up.  And preheat the oven to 375.

Once they are cool enough to handle, open up the leaves and pull out the chokes (the hairy ball part) and then stuff the crumbs down between the leaves. Drizzle mightily with olive oil.

Bake until toasty about 15 minutes. 

OK, this isn’t the best picture, but these were heavenly.

I served these as dinner along with the bagged spinach salad kit from Trader Joes that has spinach (duh), cranberries, blue cheese, candied pecans and raspberry vinaigrette.  I added some crumbled bacon to the salads and served warmed naan bread on the side. 

Caveats: My kids did not eat this and even with the simple bagged salad, these were beyond what would be reasonable for me to do on a weeknight, but for a weekend summer supper it was perfect.

Upside: The meal was cheap..we ate 1/4 of the salad in the bag, so about $1.50 and then $3 for artichokes, so… yeah. super cheap and healthy and fancy – my kind of meal.

My Break Up With Pioneer Woman

I was on Pioneer Woman trying to figure what I could make for dinner. I saw a recipe for Pasta Primavera but I didn’t have the ingredients. Like this special olive oil and sea salt butter, in fact it was a paid post that she put up to sell this special butter (nothing wrong with that, just saying)

Hah. I thought. I don’t need any special butter to cook this. I don’t need cream and half and half, I know how to make a great light creamy sauce that uses evaporated milk and olive oil. HAH.

I thought what if I take apart the recipe and think about the actual ideas and techniques?

It occurred to me how often I will just follow the steps in a recipe and yes, that produces good food but it doesn’t produce real learning.  It doesn’t turn me into the kind of cook that can just open the refrigerator and cook, on my own, without paying homage to the latest online who-ever. I’m ready for independence, baby.

Lesson One: Get everything out and chop everything ahead of time.

I used what veggies I had: carrots, mushrooms, bell peppers, squash, zucchini.

Lesson Two: Create variations in texture and adjust accordingly.

I noticed she put the carrots in first to cook on their own, then pulled them out and sautéed the rest of the veggies. So the carrots were crunchy and the others were softened but not mush.  This made the end dish nice because you had differences in texture.

Lesson Three: Season as you go.

She had the magic butter, I didn’t.  So with each step I added a little butter, a little olive oil and a little salt. And I tasted it to be sure it wasn’t getting too salty (because there is broth later) but on pasta you need the non-pasta part to have some saltiness or it gets bland when put it all together.  I noticed she didn’t add pepper until the end after the cream was in, I don’t know why but I followed suit.

Lesson Three: Building a sauce: Aromatics, Liquids, Reduce…Cream.

If you go through and pay attention the Pioneer Woman site does teach how to put together a lot of different sauces but they pretty much follow this basic pattern.

Add aromatics to the fats. I used onion and garlic.

Add liquids and deglaze the pan. I used broth and wine.

Reduce to half.

Lesson Four: Balancing the flavor profile

In putting together a dish, even one that is simple like this there needs to be sweet, salty, and acid, there  needs to be variations in texture.  Notice how she covers each element : veggies & wine = sweet, meat and broth = salty, wine & basil = acidic.

If the overall profile elements are all met, the dish will probably turn out great, even without the exact ingredients.

I didn’t have basil. (My basil seedlings are still tiny) I thought about what to use, I wanted it to be green, lemony and something that could be chiffoned. I had Brussels sprouts, light, crunchy, lemony – perfect substitute.

I didn’t have ham, but I knew the point wasn’t “ham”, it was Salty Meat. I subbed pepperonis cut into small pieces, bacon would have been good too.

Lesson 5: Learning From Mistakes

My only misstep (Wail! and it was all going so well!!!)  is that in the last 1 minute of making it, my sauce “broke”.   Ugg. I like to cried.  I’m going to out and research *why* my sauce broke.  I think you need the heavy fats from cream or half and half because they will hold up to the heat.   I also think that I am still learning how to use my cast iron skillet, which gets hotter and hotter as you go.  Maybe it was too hot when I added the milky cheesy elements.  I have used evaporated milk before with no problems so I suspect it was the 2% milk which got too hot.  It tasted incredible though and once it was dumped over pasta you couldn’t tell at all.

This was overall one of the most satisfying half hours I have spent in the kitchen and the pasta dish was so good, I will definitely make this one again.  This doesn’t mean I won’t still be cruising Pioneer Woman or Machismo, for ideas, but I do feel like I’m sort of ready to break free from following each recipe like it’s the law.

Take lies and what is false far from me. Do not let me be poor or rich. Feed me with the food that I need. Proverbs 30:8

Rosemary Bread

• 1 C water
• 3 T olive oil (plus more for shaping the dough)
• 1 1/2 t sugar
• 1 1/2 t salt
• 1 1/2 t Italian seasoning
• 1/4 t black pepper
• 1 T chopped fresh rosemary (or 1 t dried)
• 2 1/2 C bread flour
• 1 1/2 t active dry yeast

Bread Maker/mixer/food processor: Put into machine in the order shown above, mix on dough setting.  I don’t bake it in the bread maker though because I prefer it in a round loaf.

Non-bread maker: mix yeast and slightly warm water and sugar, let sit about ten minutes, it sort of gets foamy, then add other ingredients & knead for ten minutes.

This dough is easiest to shape if my hands are rubbed in olive oil. So I pour oil into the bottom of a bowl, then use my hands to oil the sides, then with oily hands I shape the dough into a nice smooth ball and put it in the bowl, cover with a tea towel and rise 1 hour.

Punch. Knead, re-shape turning in the bowl to recoat with oil (upper surface should be slightly oily). place on flat baking tray, cover and let rise 1 hour. Pre-heat oven this entire hour so that it’s really stable and hot. I usually set the tray on top of the stove while the oven is warming.

Sprinkle with parmesan and sea salt and black pepper. Bake 20 minutes at 375 and then 10 minutes at 425 – it will sound hollow when you knock it. Cool on wire rack before slicing (if you can wait that long…)

Notes: Keep the salt away from the yeast, including re-using the measuring spoon. I recommend King Arthur Brand Bread flour, it makes a noticeable difference for pizza, buns and breads like this versus all purpose flour. If it’s a really humid day then add a T of flour at a time until it firms up a bit.  This recipe doesn’t “double” right, it’s better to just make it twice in a row if you want two loaves while you have everything out.

Pesto

Today I stayed home and rested and made pesto and rosemary bread.

One neat thing about making pesto is that it takes about the same amount of time to make as it does to boil water and cook pasta. Hey, I take what wonder I can get in life.

Use as good of parmesan as you can. I buy these big blocks of Italian 2 year aged from Sam’s.  When I use pesto I am usually skipping meat, so to spend money on good cheese works out budget wise or at least that’s what I tell myself.

You have to grate it first. Trust me, the chopper blade – even on a good processor, cannot handle aged parmesan – it is hard as can be and will nick your blade (ask me how I know this).  So grate it first with the grater blade, even though you will also turn around and switch blades and chop it.

Then turn the processor on and add 2-3 cloves of garlic.

Here’s the part where it gets interesting.

Instead of just adding several cups of basil, I add blanched asparagus. About half a bunch. (To blanch: wash it, chop it and microwave in water for 5 minutes, drain, use the other half for couscous or whatever the next day)

And I add a handful of basil and a handful of spinach too. And then walnuts. (You can use pine nuts – but they are expensive. I’ve been thinking about trying with pecans)

Taste it. It will need salt, you will be tempted to add more cheese, while parmesan is nice and salty, don’t waste your fancy cheese to make it saltier – just add some salt and some pepper. When it tastes right, then run the machine and pour in some olive oil.  I keep my pesto pretty concentrated and then just add more olive oil when I’m using it, or some of the pasta cooking water if I’m feeling like cutting down on fat.  I see recipes with like cups and cups of olive oil – I probably use 1/4 cup or so.  So this is very very rich and thick.

I’m not giving exact ratios here – because  I sort of eye ball it and I’m not convinced it matters that much. If I had to I would say 1/2 C parmesan, 1/2 cup walnuts, 2 C veggies + Basil and 1/4 C olive oil. Something like that.

Things to do with pesto:

• mix 1/4 C over 1/2 lb of pasta.
• Use it as a layer in lasagna.
• Use it instead of sauce on pizza.
• Tell you kids it is dip and let them eat it with chips.
• Freeze it into little blocks and give it to your friend  Kimberly when she has a baby as an easy meal.
• Put it on rosemary bread