Healthy and Fresh

I finally got my act together and planned a menu for the upcoming week. It was a necessary evil, as I just found out we'll be having my in-laws in house for Christmas Eve, as well as Christmas Day, so I had to have a plan! While I was at it, I planned out the rest of the week as well. Be sure to click over to the Current Menu tab to check it out. With all the holiday plans and get-togethers, it's been hard to find time to eat a meal at home. I'm looking forward to a whole week's worth of them!

I really wanted something healthy, and full of fresh ingredients for tonight's dinner, but I had some chicken breasts in the fridge that I needed to use, so I built my meal around that. I opened Tender by Nigel Slater, knowing I'd find exactly what I was looking for, and in fact, I did.

This simple recipe of warm chicken, served over a bed of swiss chard, green beans and tomatoes is as fresh as fresh can be! I didn't open a single jar, or bottle, aside from the olive oil...everything came from the produce department! My first order of business was to get a few pots of water boiling on the stove, and then I set to prepping my ingredients. I purchased rainbow chard, because it's just so pretty, and I separated the leaves from the stems, chopping both in anticipation of cooking. I also trimmed the green beans while the water was beginning to boil.

I finely minced a small shallot, and mixed that with some lemon juice, chopped mint, a pinch of salt and olive oil in a container with a top. I shook it all together until it was emulsified, and set it aside to dress the salad.

As the water in my two pots began to boil, I heated my grill pan and seasoned my chicken breasts. A little salt, a little pepper, and a little chopped rosemary goes a long way! I cooked the chicken quickly, until both sides were golden with wonderful-looking grill marks, but I left it a bit undercooked. Instead, I placed the meat on a plate, and covered it with a bowl to keep the heat in, allowing it to continue cooking as it rested. 

While the chicken rested, I cooked the green beans in one pot, and the chard stems in the other, for about 3 minutes. With 30 seconds left, I added the chard leaves to the pot while I drained the green beans. The beans and the chard (stems and leaves) got tossed in a bowl with the tomatoes, and the dressing I made earlier. At this point, I sliced the chicken breasts into about 4 slices each, and placed them atop the salads, with a bit more dressing. It made for a beautiful plate of healthy, fresh food. Sometimes, it's wonderful to sit down to a summery meal on a cold winter's day, and while I used more wintery vegetables, the resulting dish was bright, light and made me wish for spring!

Now that dinner is done, I can tuck into Chapter 3 of The Professional Chef, and write about that a bit later tonight. 

I also want to remind everyone that there's still time to win a case of Popchips! I've only got one entry so far, and you can't win if you don't enter! Be sure to scroll down to the prior post, entitled Share the Health! and comment in order have a chance at winning! The contest ends on Wednesday night, so be sure to comment ASAP!!

The Holidays are Upon Us!

Of all the email newsletters I subscribe to regarding food, I find it amazing that more than 75% of them are already sending posts about Thanksgiving Day leftovers, when the actual meal hasn't even been shopped for yet! I spent my weekend planning the menu for my own Thanksgiving dinner, without a thought yet to how I will use the leftovers. I'll let the emails do the thinking for me: I've seen suggestions for Turkey Pho (a Vietnamese noodle soup), turkey chili, and the inevitable Gobbler (put all the leftovers on bread and make it into a sandwich). Once Thanksgiving has actually taken place, I'll give the leftovers some thought, but for now, let's focus on the day at hand, shall we?

Not only are people talking about leftovers, but while running errands this weekend, my ears were forced to endure Christmas carols. Christmas carols! On November 20th! It gets earlier every year, and this year is no exception. I saw signs for 1am openings on Black Friday too! All of this is forced upon us so early, when really, we should be enjoying family and friends and being thankful for all that we have to celebrate this year. I'm not going to think about "the holidays," or even Black Friday this week. I'm going to concentrate on enjoying the company of my family, and on hosting Thanksgiving for the first time! I'm looking forward to my menu, because I think it will please all of my guests, and that's a hard feat to master.

from Flickr - by Betty Crocker Recipes

I've made my list, and I'm checking it twice (sorry, darn holiday references!) and plan to do my food shopping tomorrow night after work. I'm hoping its a bit less crowded than Sunday afternoons at the grocery store! Of course, the main idea behind Thanksgiving is eating, right? Well, there will be no shortage of food on my table - as you all know from past events that I've hosted! My goal, though, is to keep it simple, so that I can spend my time with family, not slaving over a hot stove. Thanksgiving is probably one of the most straightforward meals to prepare for, so there's no reason to be stressed!

For hors d'ouvres, I've planned on an antipasto platter of parmesan, and another kind of cheese to be determined when standing in front of the display at the store, as well as some italian meats, and of course, mixed olives. I'm also going to make a crostini with an artichoke, lemon and parmesan spread. I'll also include some staples such as guacamole and hummus, as well...which of course, I'll make from scratch. All of these things will look great on the table, but really don't consume a lot of time, which is exactly what I was looking for!

My parents are going to be bringing the stuffing and the sweet potatoes, so that takes a large burden off of me. Their stuffing is the best, and I could never think of having anything but that stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner! I took some notes from them on the turkey, but I'm going to throw some more aromatics into my version, and put some onions, marjoram, parsley, sage, thyme and rosemary in the cavity of the turkey before cooking it. I'm going to do two vegetable sides: Brussels Sprouts Two-ways, and Sauteed Green Beans. The brussels sprouts will be pan-roasted, and also made into a bright salad with red onion, lemon and Pecorino cheese. My dad loves his roasted brussels sprouts, so I couldn't leave those out, but I really wanted to try this new way as well, so two-ways it is! I chose these recipes because they can be done on the stove, which will save me the hassle of trying to get the veggies done at the last minute, once there's room in the oven after the turkey has been taken out. I've also got a simple cranberry sauce on deck that I'm thinking of making the night before to save some time.

from Flickr - by Cookthinker

You all know I'm not a baker, so my mom placed an order for some bakery-made pies for dessert. I'll get some ice cream, and make sure there's coffee in the house, and we'll be set for dessert. It's not really the most important part of the meal, to me anyway, so I'm totally fine with ending the meal this way! The pies we have each year are delicious, and in addition, this year, my mother-in-law will be bringing some homemade apple pie.

Of course, no Thanksgiving dinner would be complete without some mulled cider in front of the fireplace while the turkey is cooking. We'll sit back, watch the parade, sip mulled cider, and enjoy the day! So, forget about carols, and midnight sales. Forget about leftovers, and decorating the tree. Enjoy your Thanksgiving! Whether you spend it with family or friends, be thankful for good company, and good food!

from Flickr - by BarbaraCZ

(I'll let you know how the shopping trip goes tomorrow evening!)

The Early Bird Special

My husband has his weekly hockey game this evening, which translates to an early dinner in our household. I started to prep around 4pm today, and before 5pm we were sitting down to a lovely meal! The new menu started today, and I chose to begin with the Steamed Sea Bass, Green Beans with a White Wine, Vanilla, Cream and Garlic Sauce from Jamie's Kitchen by Jamie Oliver. Except, instead of sea bass, I chose to purchase cod steaks at the grocery store...they were a bit more affordable, and looked really nice and buttery. This meant altering the cooking times a little bit but that's okay. This recipe doesn't call for a ton of ingredients so my mise en place didn't take very long at all!

So, here we have 2 vanilla beans, some lemon zest, olive oil, a couple of cod steaks, salt and pepper, a clove of garlic, some green beans, white wine (measured by the glass - gotta love Jamie), a little heavy cream and the leaves from a celery heart, for garnish. Not too much to prep at all!

I made a marinade for the cod steaks, using the lemon zest, one of the vanilla beans seeds, and the olive oil. Vanilla beans are an interesting ingredient - I slit open the leathery skin and scraped out the insides, which look like a black blob when grouped together but when mixed with an oil or liquid, the seeds disperse and you can see how small each one really is. They are like little flecks of deliciousness. I rubbed this mixture all over the cod.

Meanwhile, my large pot of salted water was coming to a boil on the stove, and once it got there, I threw the garlic clove into the water for the first three minutes. On another burner, I had the second vanilla bean's insides, plus both pods steeping in some white wine that I left to reduce. We've definitely got some multi-tasking goin' on here!

Look at all the little flecks of deliciousness!

Once the garlic had been in the boiling water for three minutes, I placed my cod steaks in a steamer and placed them on top of the boiling water. The recipe actually calls for throwing the green beans in the water at this time too, but since my cod steaks were definitely thicker than a fillet of sea bass, I added 3 minutes to the cook time. I put 8 minutes on the timer, and when it counted down to 5, that's when I added the green beans!

While the cod steamed and the green beans cooked, I added the cream to my reduced wine and vanilla beans, and allowed it to heat through. I didn't want the cream to come to a full boil and burn, but I allowed it to get pretty hot and begin to reduce. The recipe said to continue reducing until it coated the back of a spoon nicely, and that's just what I did. I also added a touch of vanilla extract to the sauce...the recipe didn't call for it, but I think my vanilla beans might have been a little old and lost a bit of their flavor, because I wasn't getting the scent I wanted ...so I improvised!

When the timer dinged, I pulled the steamer off of my pot, drained the green beans, and transferred the garlic clove to the sauce and mashed it up a bit in there. I poured the sauce into a small food processor just to blend the garlic in and get a touch of foaminess to the cream. I bunched the green beans on the plate and placed the cod steak on top of that. I drizzled on a generous amount of sauce and then garnished the plate with the celery heart leaves.

Isn't that pretty!? It was a very mild, refreshing dish. There wasn't a lot of salt or pepper in it, but yet it had a ton of flavor. The vanilla beans and lemon zest really added a lovely fresh scent which also transferred to the palate! This dish made me think of spring...something I wish would hurry up and get here!