Monday, February 21, 2005

Delicious crockpot recipe - Finally!

My crockpot and I have a tempestuous relationship. It has such potential to be a great kitchen tool. The idea of dumping stuff in in the morning and having a yummy meal at night is so tempting. The problem is that it is so hard to find any good crockpot recipes.

I have several crockpot cookbooks but they each have their own problems. The first is Slow Cookers for Dummies. It does a good job of explaining how slow cookers work but there aren't that many recipes in it. I think I've only gotten one or two recipes out of it that I like. Its big things are these Master recipes that you make up and then use in several different recipes. To me, that's just too close to using leftovers in a dish. I HATE leftovers. Zeb has them for lunch but I just can't stand them.

The second is Williams-Sonoma Gourmet Slow Cooker. We've had great success with this cookbook. The problem though is that this is not a dump-and-go slow cooker cookbook. Each recipe calls for sauteeing or grinding or mixing before you can turn the crockpot on. Sort of defeats the purpose. I don't often have 45 minutes in the morning to prepare a crockpot recipe before heading out which means Zeb often does these. Another annoyance with this cookbook is it will call for the crockpot to be on high for a period and then reduced to low. Unless you've got a fancy programmable crockpot, this also throws a wrench into to concept of turn it on in the morning and forget about it until the evening. But the best tasting crockpot meals have come from this cookbook so it's a give and take.

The third cookbook is Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook:Feasting With Your Slow Cooker. It's a compilation of recipes sent in by home cooks. Most of the recipes are from the Midwest - not a region known for its cuisine. This one has the most recipes but most of them are terrible. Canned everything (usually cream of mushroom soup) and too much salt (from the packets of Lipton's onion soup mix). There are some diamonds in the rough including a fantastic Moroccan chicken dish but the majority of the ones Zeb and I tried were horrendous. I'm talking about having trouble choking it down sort of bad. The upside is that all of the recipes are dump-and-go.

The Sacramento Bee Food Section recently did several stories about the re-emergence of crockpots and included several recipes. Last night we tried one - Stuffed Flank Steak with Currant Wine Sauce. It was quite good. The steak was fall apart tender and the stuffing and sauce were delicious. Not to mention that it was a hit presentation wise what with the spiral stuffing. I served it with a side of orzo and the sauce on top of the orzo was quite a hit. As for prep - I spent about 20 minutes getting everything together so it wasn't as much of a pain as the Williams-Sonoma recipes. I think I'm going to have to get this cookbook.

A friendly reminder to back up your documents

Friday night, I settled in for a bit of television watching while I compiled the week's menus and grocery list. My laptop, which got me through law school and the Bar, made some funny clicking sounds and then said that it didn't have a hard drive. Now, when I was in law school, I backed up all of my documents pretty regularly. However, since graduating and starting work, I haven't done that. It didn't really occur to me that I had anything important saved just on my laptop...until my laptop said it didn't have a hard drive. That's when I realized that the ONLY copies of my menu spreadsheet and grocery list document were on my laptop. I nearly had a panic attack. I have probably spent close to 30 hours compiling all of that stuff. To give you an idea, I had menus planned out for almost a year's worth of dinners and my shopping list, which lists every ingredient of every menu, was 91 pages long. I've been doing this for a good 8 months. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was planned. I didn't know how I was going to put together a grocery list. All that hard work just lost...

Thankfully, the computer gods smiled on me and I was finally about to get my laptop running again. Everything is now backed up on several computers. And I made it to the grocery store.

Monday, February 07, 2005

So much food...

Our Super Bowl party went very well. I was worried we weren't going to have enough food but people outdid themselves. I was running out of places to put everything! I made three different kinds of chili. The chorizo and ground beef with beans was the biggest hit. We didn't seem to have any vegetarians this year so my vegetarian chili was a waste. Too bad because it looked pretty good.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

My first dinner party

Last night, I got to throw my first dinner party. Now, I've had tons of people over before but never have I provided seats for them all to sit on. It was Dan's birthday and his wife Renee wanted to throw him a party. Zeb and I offered to host since their apartment is a bit on the small side. Renee and I set up two long card tables together and then decorated them in a fishing theme. There were candles everywhere and I got to use all of my new wine glasses. We had Grilled Tilapia with Mango Salsa and Curry Couscous (Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Meals 2, pg. 221). The incredible thing about this recipe is that it is so colorful and delicious but there's very little fat. I think I used only a couple tablespoons of olive oil total and I tripled the recipes. Definitely different from what we're having tomorrow on Super Bowl Sunday. Renee and I made the salsa the night before and managed to have everything ready when people showed up. Now that's a first for me. Usually, when I invite people over for dinner at 7, we're not eating until 9 at the earliest. And we made food for 10! It was a great party. For dessert, Renee and I made Dan's favorite, strawberry shortcake. The strawberries were huge but they weren't that sweet so we sliced them up thin and marinated them in sugar and a bit of lemon juice overnight. We used the Bisquick recipe for the biscuits and then topped them with vanilla ice cream, strawberries and fresh whipped cream sweetened with sugar and vanilla. And with Dan and Renee's help, Zeb and I got the house back into shape in no time.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Mild but good

Tonight I made Chicken Breasts in Pumpkin Sauce. I'm a huge fan of pumpkin. I make a fabulous pumpkin dip that is a hit at parties and some really good pumpkin muffins. I haven't made the muffins in a few years though because one holiday season, I made muffins as gifts. Dozens and dozens of muffins...muffins everywhere. Zeb and I got to the point where the sight of them just made us gag. We're coming out of our pumpkin muffin aversion though. I considered making them this past Christmas but never got around to it. By next Christmas, I should be in a place where I actually look forward to them. Again they're great muffins...in moderation.

Anyway, tonight's dinner...very few ingredients...no chopping. In a way it's great to have a dish that doesn't require chopping because that means fewer dishes to clean up, but I don't have to do the dishes when I cook and I LOVE my knives. Zeb got me a killer set of knives for my birthday (okay, maybe "killer" is a bad choice of words). These knives are amazing - everything chops so perfectly. Zeb has several scars from them but I have yet to get anything more than a chipped nail (knock on wood). I used to dread mincing herbs because our old set, while functional, merely mascerated the leaves without actually getting through. I would even bring out the food processor just to get a fine mince. Now it's so fantastic! Mincing and fine dicing are a snap! I'll even mince garlic rather than put it through the press just to get to use my knives. Oh they're so fabulous.

But again, I didn't have to use them tonight...sigh. Nope, just chicken sauteed in garlic, olive oil and butter. The recipe said to pull the chicken out of the pan once it was done and then pour in 1/2 cup of whipping cream and get all the browned bits up. Well, I think there was a step missing, like remove pan from heat. The cream was bubbling like mad and I think got burned. I went ahead and added the pumpkin, white pepper, salt and nutmeg but it just tasted awful. I ended up tossing out the sauce and starting over. Didn't have any of the browned chicken and garlic bits but it also didn't taste like crap. I didn't think I was going to like the sauce, even remade, because it was so mild in flavor. I tend to go after very bold flavors and there is nothing bold about this dish. However, the sauteed chicken topped with the mild pumpkin sauce and almonds (which were supposed to be toasted but I was tired and a bit lazy) turned out to be quite good. Not New Year's in Vegas-more like your grandmother putting a warm fuzzy blanket she made herself on you after you've dozed off, a gentle ahhh flavor. Although the pumpkin was a main ingredient, it wasn't as strong a note as I was expecting. I will definitely try this recipe again - with my added directions for the sauce.

The one thing dinner was missing though was a side. I'm terrible about putting sides with a main dish. Usually, we just throw the main dish on top of couscous or rice but this dish didn't feel like it would mesh with either. The sauce wasn't the kind the runs down for the couscous or rice to sop up; it stayed with the chicken. I guess I could have done some sort of vegetable but I never think of that until I'm staring at the plate thinking: Gee there's a lot of empty space. Oh well, I'm working on it.