Sloppy Joe’s Zestier, Healthier Cousin

Holy cow – it’s been 6 months since my last post! Well, the demands of parenting may have diverted my attentions from writing, but I certainly have been thinking more and more about streamlining my approach to cooking. I still want to eat well, I just don’t actually have the will or energy to spend time in the kitchen like I used to.

I find my self reaching back to classics from my own childhood – baked chicken, pasta bolognese (though we just knew it as spaghetti and meatballs). Those were the days before 30 Minute Meals, microwaves and the availability of every kind of frozen prepared meal (besides the occasional Stouffer’s Macaroni and Cheese, done in the oven of course!)

This weekend I had a pound of ground chicken to use so I pulled out my Mom’s Sloppy Joe recipe, thinking I’d just do an easy swap on the meat and call it good. Well, one thing lead to another, and a slight shopping mishap resulted in a new twist all together!

1 lb ground chicken (though you could use beef, turkey, bison, etc.)
1 large onion, diced
1 can Chicken Gumbo soup – use a low fat, low sodium version if you can find it
1 can (15 ounces) red enchilada sauce
1/4 cup chili sauce
2 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp brown sugar

Brown the onion and the ground meat until thoroughly cooked. Add remaining ingredients, simmer until sauce is thickened. Serve on hamburger buns or crusty dinner rolls. The taste is even better (and the sauce thicker) if you chill it and reheat it the next day.

Whole Foods’ Answer to the Economic Downturn

I’ve been following Whole Foods on twitter (@wholefoods) and I was interested to see them link to their blog site last week on the topic of making budget friendly choices at their stores. The link was to a video they use to train store staff, and it was mostly one long ad for their house brand, 365. But I found one of their angles to be interesting: because all the food they sell is natural and/or organic, even their processed food has fewer preservatives. Fewer preservatives mean that you get more food, less filler, and therefore it’s a better value.

Does that math work? Even when the organic brands often cost significantly more? Does that balance out the filler to food ratio? I just can’t figure out how to write the math problem that figures that out. In any case, its one of the more interesting “do more with less” arguments in the economic downturn.

Buddha Dog, Toronto

We’re in Toronto this weekend and last night ventured down to Roncesvalles Ave (the Polish neighborhood – I felt so at home!). We ate at a little spot called Buddah Dog, where they specialize in hot dogs. Yes, you heard me. And these are not some sloppy dogs boiled in questionable water, oh no sir-ee. They are small, smoked little doggies, similar to the smokies at the butcher shop we used to go to in St Paul, and all their cheeses and sauces are made in Ontario. In fact, their decor features a giant chalk drawing of Ontario with the locations of the farms and towns where their ingredients are sourced.

I had the dog of the day…maple cheddar and green tomato chutney…and one with cheddar cheese an sweet onion relish. And for our veggie friends, they make the cutest little grilled cheeses, shaped like hearts, and served with a red pepper jelly. Amazing. Mr. Buddha, won’t you consider coming to Minneapolis?

Whole Foods Answers the Call

In the universe’s usual way, my question of “what’s for dinner” got a boost from Whole Foods, via Twitter. I started on Twitter a few weeks ago (@jgswanson) and found Whole Foods (@wholefoods) and their blog, The Whole Story, has a feature called “Share your Best Meal of the Week.” Good inspiration there, y’all! (Though I’d still like to hear from one of the nine people I know reads this. What are you eating??)

Looking for Inspiration

Maybe it’s the head cold, maybe it’s the sleep deprivation. Maybe it’s the fact that I feel stuck in the not-quite-winter-not-quite-spring season, but OY, I am in a rut with dinner.

We still seem to run out of steam at the end of the day, and I hate giving up a minute of the play time I have with Max when I get home. So I keep defaulting to the same 2-3 dishes every week, plus stuff I pull out of the freezer. So – I call upon the blogosphere to deliver inspiration. What’s your favorite go-to dinner, when you are looking for a real meal with flavor and color, but are not long on time or energy?

1,001 Things to do with a Roasted Chicken

I’ve been trying to think about which foodie joke to lead off with in this post, about the multitudes of things to do with a chicken. Our most basic of meats can, at times, feel like an old shoe – comfy, but hardly what you want to be wearing when you crave a more sophisticated experience. This has been our meal planning conundrum of recent months. Since Max was born, I have had rare bursts of energy where I want to get into the kitchen and start dreaming up new recipes, or trying ideas from my beloved issues of Bon Appetit and Cooking Light magazines. Instead, I find myself with precisely 30 minutes of Max’s nap time in which to pull together dinner, and so I resist any recipe with more than 7 ingredients.

The exceptions to this come when I have leftovers from a roast chicken. The good weeks are ones where I have time on a Sunday to do one myself – a recent 2 for 1 deal on organic chickens at Lund’s filled my freezer, and I’ve been pulling one out every two to three weeks to make one for dinner. The leftovers are a boon to my week’s meal plans, so much so that the weeks where it’s not possible to do one myself I cheat and pull one off the rotisserie shelf at the grocery store, pull the meat off when I get home, and use it in meals all week. At about $7-10 a pop, it’s worth the time/money trade-off for sure.

What do I do with this magic meat? Brent and I have been loving Chinese chicken salads done at home, with a few “splurge” fixings to really make it special. We have done BBQ Chicken Pizza with Betty Crocker instant pizza dough for a little California Pizza Kitchen experience at home. Seasoned and reheated with some BBQ sauce, and we have pulled chicken sandwiches on crusty take-and-bake ciabatta rolls I have stashed in my freezer. I’ve written here about my “mexican hotdish,” and recently found a great variation on the concept through Cooking Light, using white beans and salsa verde that was particularly good.

The best part is that I can now have a “chicken meal” on my weekly plan that (a) does not fill me with dread and (b) let’s me dream a little and feel like I am back in my pre-Max days in the kitchen. Don’t be intimidated by roasting a chicken – it is about the easiest thing in the world and though it takes a few hours to cook, the prep time is so minimal that its almost not worth worrying about. I’ll give you my “recipe” (ha!) for roasting chickens below, as well as the items needed for the Chinese chicken salad and BBQ pizza.

Roasted Chicken
Take a whole chicken and pull out any scary items in the cavity and toss. Rinse the chicken and pat dry. If you have a meat rack that fits in your roasting pan you can use it, but I’ve roasted chickens in everything from glass casserole dishes to large dutch ovens, and they all work. The benefit to a meat rack is that it gets the meat up out of the drippings which helps with the fat content of the end result.

Place the meat breast side up and tuck the wings under the bird. You can rub the bird with fancy herb butters (stick some between the skin and the meat of the breast if you want to) and you can put herbs, lemon, garlic, bacon, or just about anything you want in the inner cavity to give it flavor. But some of the best chickens to come out of my oven have been rubbed with some olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and cracked pepper.

Once seasoned and stuffed, use a little butcher’s twine to tie the ends of the legs together. If you don’t have any twine, use unwaxed, unflavored dental floss. Weird? yes. But it does the trick. Pop it into the oven at 425 for 90 minutes for a 3.5 lb bird. You know its done when you poke the breast and the juices come out clear. Let it rest 15-20 minutes with foil over it before carving it. I am a real hack when I carve a bird, but I am getting better. Don’t worry too much – you’re going to shred the meat for most of these recipes so just dig in.

Chinese Chicken Salad
We use romaine lettuce as the base of the salad, but we add shredded cabbage sold as “coleslaw mix” to give it added body and crunch. Toppings include a big carrot sliced into coins, some sugar snap peas (sold ready to eat in the produce section) roughly chopped, a can of mandarin oranges, drained, and some chopped green onions. Toss with some toasted sesame dressing (we like Lund’s and Lighthouse brands) and top with shredded chicken – either cold or warmed slightly. Sliced almonds give a good crunch, but we’ve also had wonton strips when we can find them, sold with the “salad toppings” in the produce section.

BBQ Chicken Pizza
Though I’ve written here about making my own bread and pizza dough, I don’t always have the time and energy for it. We love the Betty Crocker pizza dough mix (sold with the pizza sauce in the tomato aisle) because it comes together quickly and is pretty easy to handle. But a roll of refrigerator pizza dough works too – whatever you feel up to! Prepare crust as directed, and top with BBQ sauce, shredded chicken, red onion rings, and some fontina cheese slices roughly torn. Bake as directed.

Casseroles and Baby Love

So I have been entirely absent from this blog for nearly 3 months, and I have a very good excuse – in October, Brent and I had a baby boy, Max. Being the proud mama I am, I’ll use this space to show off a recent photo…

Max Loves Minneapolis

Obviously, Max’s arrival marks a change in our lives that impacts everything, including how we eat and what we cook. We’ve been out a few times for meals in restaurants with Max, but they feel like surgical strikes – can we order, eat and pay before he wakes up in his car seat and starts to fuss? I also find myself considering my order in terms of what I can eat if he does wake up and I need to hold or feed him. What can be eaten with one hand becomes more important than what I feel like eating. That all being said, we’ve enjoyed every opportunity to get Max out in the world, despite the cold weather.

As our restaurant dining has decreased, so too has my desire and ability to cook dinner every night, although it is slowly returning. We have been fortunate that we have not had to resort to pizza and Chinese delivery every night; my mother spent a few weekends this fall cooking casseroles and freezing dinner-for-2 sized portions for us. And several friends and family member came bearing meals when visiting over the last few weeks. Through this generosity, I have found several new favorite recipes, two of which I’ll share here.

In September, my mom and I looked through the The Big Book of Potluck by Maryana Vollstedt, and flagged about a dozen recipes that looked like they would prep easily and freeze well. The recipe that follows is actually one that she came over and made for us one night the first week we were home, but we ended up freezing some of the leftovers and they have proven to be great lunches for us over the last few weeks. My mom modified the recipe a bit after making it first for her and my dad. Her changes include more sauce and sauteing the asparagus first. Her modified recipe is here:

Chicken, Asparagus and Mushroom Casserole
Serving Size: 6

Ingredients:
1.25 lbs asparagus, ends snapped off, cut into 1″ pieces
4 tbsp olive oil
2.25 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into large chunks
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp butter
5 tbsp all purpose flour
2 c chicken broth
1.5 c milk
4 tbsp white wine
1/2 c grated Swiss cheese
1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 c Parmesan cheese
1/2 c sliced almonds

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Using 1 tbsp. oil, saute asparagus to crisp tender in medium skillet, and place in a 9×13 baking dish lightly coated with cooking spray or oil.

Add 2 tbsp. olive oil to skillet and saute chicken until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Place on top of asparagus in the dish. To the skillet, add 2 tbsp. olive oil and saute mushrooms until tender, about 5 minutes. Put mushrooms on top of chicken in dish.

Melt 2 tbsp. butter in the skillet, add flour and stir until bubbly. Add broth and milk and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Add wine, swiss cheese, salt and pepper to taste and stir until cheese is melted and flavors are blended, about 5 minutes.

Pour the hot sauce over all ingredients in the dish and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and almonds. Bake, covered, until bubbly and heated through, about 20 minutes. Uncover and bake about 10 minutes longer to toast almonds.

Can be served with brown rice or good bread to soak up all the creamy sauce.
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The next recipe is from my friend Kris, who brought us 2 containers of her Tortilla Soup, one to eat right away and one to freeze. Being a huge fan of tortilla soup, I was excited to find out that Kris has the perfect recipe, and she even has figured out the shortcuts to make this super easy, super healthy soup a snap to put together. She skips the fried tortillas, and I agree with the choice – I’d rather put the calories into better toppings, like cheese and sour cream, and use some crumbled corn chips at the bottom of the bowl to put the “tortilla” in this soup.

Tortilla Soup

Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 large garlic clove, smashed
1 tbsp paprika
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
48 ounces chicken broth
1 bag frozen corn
28 ounces crushed tomatoes in puree
1 tsp coriander seeds
2 bay leaf
2.5 tsp salt
1/4 c cilantro
1 whole roasted chicken, or 1 3/4 lb cooked cubed chicken
avocado
grated cheese
tortilla chips

Directions:
Saute onion and garlic in oil, adding spices, for 5 minutes, stirring. Add broth, tomatoes, bay leaves, salt, and cilantro. Bring to simmer, cook for 30 minutes. Remove bay leaves.

In a blender, puree the soup in batches, and pour back in the pot. Add corn and chicken. Bring the soup back to a simmer and cook for 4-5 minutes.

Serve with avocado, grated cheese, and (optional) crushed tortilla chips in bottom of bowl.

A Last Ditch Effort at the Restaurant Scene

Brent and I have been eating out a lot these last few weeks, as we prepare for Baby Swanson’s arrival. This is as much a product of my dwindling desire to spend time on my feet in the kitchen as it is our desire to be out and a part of the world before we go into a certain hibernation when our little guy arrives. We’ve been trying to connect with friends – and each other – through meals at those places we’ve been meaning to try for a long time, and we have had some great meals as a result.

A few weeks back, I introduced Brent to traditional Vietnamese soups at Jasmine 26 on Nicollet Avenue. Jasmine 26 is the more “upscale” sister of Jasmine Cafe, and has a sweeping menu of traditional Vietnamese dishes. Mi Wonton is my standard bearer, and it did not disappoint. Jasmine uses an amazing broth as the base for all the soups – clear, light, and flavorful – and it did make a difference in the overall quality of the soup. Brent enjoyed a Salmon Rice Noodle Soup (Bun Ca), with a lovely piece of poached salmon swimming on top of noodles and veggies and the same lovely broth.

While I am not sure that either dish was $10 better than the stuff you can get so cheaply at the hole-in-the-wall joints on University Avenue, it was a pleasure (for Brent) to be able to have an actual cocktail with dinner, since Jasmine has a full bar available. It also helps to have a little more at atmosphere than those places – Jasmine 26 feels like a place you can linger, rather than stop in for a quick bowl of something before hustling off to your chemistry class at the U.

Last weekend we splurged for a big night out at Heidi’s in South Minneapolis with our friends Brian and Cynthia. We managed to squeak in a reservation with little advanced notice based on a cancellation – and thank goodness because the place is packed to the rafters. On its surface, the space has not changed all that much from its days as Pane Vino Dolce, but the vibe is much warmer than I ever experienced there. PVD always felt a little austere, lacking the warmth I associate with a great meal with friends and family. Heidi’s has warmed that up somehow, without changing much more than the paint on the walls…and of course, the menu.

Heidi’s is the latest iteration of Stuart Woodman’s culinary efforts, with the motto of “familiar foods made extraordinary.” Being the marketing snob I am, I usually pay little attention to that sort of statement but in this case it was absolutely true. There was nothing brought to the table that night that was all that unusual, but the way that each dish came together was still surprising and had us going back to them menu to dissect each nuanced flavor.

As starters, we had the roasted beets on goat cheese, with a coriander vinaigrette. Extraordinary. The goat cheese was light and whipped, the beets sliced razor thin, and the vinaigrette was complex and simple all at once. I swear there was a hint of orange reduction in it – leading to my desire to lick the plate, but we’ll never know. That’s because Brent’s starter consumed my attention once I tasted it. He ordered the smoked sea scallops on a garlic palette with a whole grain mustard vinaigrette. The scallops were divine, the vinaigrette a briny, sweet, mustardy concoction with the tiniest mustard seeds I’ve ever encountered. But the garlic palette. Evidently, this little “plate” of garlic that served up everything else in the dish consists of garlic that has been cooked three times, assembled into a form that can be lightly fried, and then placed on the plate to melt and meld with the scallops. The center of this garlic goodness was so soft and creamy, I can’t imagine how they held it together long enough to fry it. Who cares, I am just glad they figured it out.

Then on to dinner. Brent and Brian both had the pork chop served over orange mashed potatoes. Yes, I said orange mashed potatoes. This dish was both meaty and delicate, with a generous thick cut chop served over a delicate puree of potatoes scented with an orange reduction and a cranberry relish. Again, the basic ingredients are nothing extraordinary, but the way in which the ingredients came together were truly surprising and delightful. My dish, the sea bass served over parsley puree, roasted parsnips and a mussel foam was delivered looking like something out of a Greek myth, with the sea bass floating above the green and white sea foam. But after tucking in, the foam dissipated to a light creamy broth that bore the freshness of the parsley and the nuttiness of the parsnips in a way that honestly surprised me with every single bite.

Ahh… I am getting worked up just thinking about it. So as we get very, very close to the arrival of our new baby, we are taking full advantage of the kindness of family and friends who have been stocking our fridge and freezer with home cooked wonders. We’ll return to our city’s many wonderful restaurants eventually, since my mother already wants to know when she gets to babysit. But for now, we’ll just bask in the warm memory of our last few child-less dinners out.

Crock Pot Roast

I made a roast in the crock pot this weekend, and Brent is happily cleaning up the leftovers as I write this. Actually, “cleaning” is precisely the wrong verb, but I do like to see my man tucking into a plate of my home cooked efforts. I am pretty proud of it, since I mostly made it up as I went along. But it’s a keeper….

Beef Roast – any cheap cut. Weight depends on size of crockpot and how many are eating.
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 c flour, seasoned with ground pepper
4 cloves garlic, rough chopped
1 yellow onion, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
6 carrots, peeled and chopped into large chunks
2 celery stalks, chopped into large chunks
1/2 bottle cheap red wine
Water and/or broth

In a heavy bottom pot, heat oil over medium high heat. Dredge the roast in the flour to coat. Brown the meat on both sides, a total of 10-12 minutes. Remove the meat from the pan (put it in the crock pot), and add the garlic and onions to the remaining fat in the pan (if there is none, add a little more olive oil.) Cook until they start to turn translucent and become fragrant, and add the carrots and the celery. Toss to coat.

Add the remaining flour from dredging the meat to the pan – sprinkle it over the veggies and stir. Cook briefly, and then add the red wine. Stir and cook to boiling, about 5 minutes. The mixture will thicken slightly. Remove from heat.

Pour the wine and veggies over the meat. Depending on the size of the crock pot, you may need to add some water (you could also use beef or chicken broth) to make sure that the meat is totally covered by liquid and veggies.

Cook on low setting for 8 hours. Remove meat from pan and shred with a fork. Serve with the carrots and some of the onions (if desired.) Great with a baked potato and the rest of the bottle of red wine!

Canning Demystified

Summer in a Jar

My friend Jess came over today and taught me how to can tomatoes. So much fun! It was a pretty big mess and hot work (thank goodness for central air conditioning!) but so very satisfying. Brent and I have been enjoying the chorus of “pings” from the vacuum seals going off all afternoon. It was actually much easier than I thought it would be, and now I have grand plans for pickles next year, and maybe some blueberry jam if I can persuade my mother-in-law to share some of her beautiful wild blueberry harvest. All I need now is a house with a bigger pantry…..