Every once in a while, Jim and his mom go out to a weeknight dinner alone. I usually spend this time relaxing in the apartment, reading quietly or watching some Food TV. I rarely cook. Sometimes all I’ll eat for dinner on these nights is a few pieces of my favorite cheese or a bowl of cereal. Cooking, for me, is best when done with an audience.

Last night, however, I felt like treating myself. Nothing grand, nothing too substantial, but something that tasted delicious and a just a little bit elegant. Realizing that salads can get the shrift during my dinners, since I mostly resort to my good (but done-before) vinagrette with mixed greens, I opted for a fancy-smanscy (yet still quite easy) creamy bistro dressing.

I’ve never made a salad dressing that involved stove-top cooking before, so I was excited to try this out. Shallots shine in this dressing; the cream masks their pungency to make the perfect subtle onion flavor. Since it’s a creamy dressing, I created a salad of crisp greens, paper-thin cucumber slices, celery that has lost some of it’s crispness in the fridge (oddly enough, that’s how I like my celery in salads) and skinny coins of carrot. The hardest part about making this dressing is allowing for it to cool before coating your salad with it (but it is a must.) If you really can’t wait for it to cool, you could use the dressing as a sauce for warm veggies, or slather it onto a good french baguette.

Creamy Bistro Dressing

makes about 3/4 cup//from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 shallots, minced
• good honey
• 1/4 red wine vinaigrette
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• salt and pepper

Heat oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, add shallots and a drop or two of honey and saute until the shallots are beginning to color. Add in the red wine vinaigrette and let it boil for a few minutes. When the vinaigrette becomes a bit syrupy, whisk in the cream. Bring it just to a boil, whisking, and then lower heat and let it cook for a few more minutes, to thicken. Cool, cover, and chill for about an hour. (I actually chilled it about 30 minutes; since my greens were very cold, the slightly warm dressing helped temper the salad.)

Over the past year or so, I’ve learned that my favorite foods are the so-called “peasant” or “country” varieties: simple risottos, stews, braises, cheap cuts of meat, long-cooked vegetables thrown in a pot. It doesn’t matter where these dishes originate from, if a recipe says it’s a favorite of “the people,” “the farmers,” or “the lower-class,” I’m down.

Not to toot my own horn (yeah, right) but I cook these dishes pretty damn well. I have no idea if my versions are totally “authentic” or sometimes if they even resemble the dishes they are titled after. I do know, though, that they are good.

Arroz con Pollo, what I would call a Spanish Risotto, has to be my favorite food to make for a group of people. I’ve served it at parties, to friends, to myself pretending I had enough stomach to polish off 8 servings. It’s always a hit. People rave. Jim declared it my “signature dish.” I’m getting a big head.

You can find a few recipes for Arroz con Pollo on the internet but a lot of them are conventional recipes—they give you the ingredients and a step-by-step but they lack a certain style. Like, you could follow the recipe and get tasty results but they don’t tell you to let the rice burn a bit on the bottom of the pan and then to scrape it up and into the body of the rice before serving. They don’t mention that you should add in the rest of the beer that’s left in the 40 oz after you’ve drank just enough to start a kitchen-salsa (you could also substitute a regular bottle here.) And, for whatever prudish reason, no one mentioned that you have to taste, continuously, seasoning with pimento in between tastes, until you find the perfect flavor.

These are the little details that make this type of food so delicious. A dash here, a little dancing there, a few kisses blown into the pot. Most recipes don’t tell you how much love is needed. But, I swear, you cannot omit it.

Arroz con Pollo

serves 6-8

Sometimes I’m in the mood for chicken-with-the-skin-and-bones for this dish, sometimes I just want the easily shreddable skinless-boneless. If you are going that route, use chicken thighs. Dark meat is best here (or anywhere else for that matter.)

1 (3-pound) whole chicken, cut into 10 serving pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 tablespoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons spanish smoked pimento
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2-3/4 pound dried hot chorizo sausages, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 large Spanish onion (or two small), chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 poblano peppers, seeded and chopped
2 bay leaves
2 cups long grain white rice
1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes with liquid
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth, warm
1 bottle pale beer (I like Bass here, but you could use any light-tasting beer)
1 cup pimento stuffed green olives (optional)
Pimento, Salt, and Pepper to taste

Rinse the chicken pieces and pat dry. In a small bowl, blend salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, pimento and cayenne. Rub each piece of chicken with the spices and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes for the flavor to develop.

In a heavy, 6 qt casserole with lid, heat 2 tablespoons oil. Fry the chorizo over medium heat until it is crispy and renders its fat. Remove the chorizo with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Place the chicken in the pan, skin side down, and brown on all sides, about 10 minutes Remove from pan and set aside. Saute the onion, garlic, bell pepper, scraping up all the bottom scraps. Cook until the vegetables are soft. Add the rice in and stir until all the pieces are coated in the oil.

Add the tomatoes and broth, season with salt and pepper. Return the chorizo and chicken to the pan. Bring the mixture to a boil and let simmer for 5 minutes. Taste and season with pimento, salt, and pepper or anything else you like. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add in the beer. Stir to scrape up and browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Cover again and cook until the chicken is done and the rice is tender and has absorbed the liquid, about 10-20 minutes. If the rice isn’t done, add a little water or more beer if you like the taste. If you want extra of the browned bits (taste them first), bring up the heat for the last couple minutes of cooking. Let rest about 10 minutes before serving. Taste before serving and season if needed. Scatter the olives on top if you like. Leftovers are the best past; it will get spicier with each day. Serve it to your favorite people—people who you wouldn’t mind big, sloppy kisses from.

I was recently tagged by Dana of Proof of the Pudding AND Jamie of Good Eats ‘n Sweet Treats to write 5 random things about me. I usually don’t participate in these things but I just adore their blogs so much that I couldn’t resist. So, here goes.

1. I hate the sound of chewing. I know, that’s ridiculous for someone who loves food so much, and I don’t understand it myself either. It won’t be all the time. It’s a random hatred, like, if I already have a headache and then Jim and I are eating dinner, I’ve been known to actually get angry with him. For chewing. Good thing he’s a doll and just laughs at my craziness.

2. I am The Worst Person in the World when it comes to keeping up relationships. I love my friends and family dearly and I’m so happy that they will put up with me calling or seeing them about once every 3 months, acting as if I hang with them everyday and making promises to call everyday thereafter. And then never doing it. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m anti-social.

3. I watch America’s Next Top Model. Way too much.

4. Jim wrote a book, Leaving Dirty Jersey, that’s about his time shooting up crystal meth and heroine and doing god-awful things that no girlfriend wants to hear about. It was reviewed in the New York Times. People ask me quite often how I handle knowing all that bad stuff, in exacting detail, about my boyfriend. Truth is, I really don’t care. I was with him during the writing (not the experiencing) of his memoir—we had just begun dating—and while I can’t say some of it wasn’t stomach-turning, it never made me look at him differently. Never would. He’s my Jimmy. People also always ask me what would I do if he started using again. I think the answer is quite simple, actually. I’d hit him on the head with a large metal bat.

5. I use one of these everyday. It works.

Also, I’m happy to say, Judy from No Fear Entertaining awarded me this:   THANK YOU JUDY!!  Judy’s blog is wonderful—she has all the kinds of dishes that I love and I’m also in love with her compost bin! :D Check her out!

I want to pass this award on to some awesome blogs that I read all the time, you guys are great!

Melissa at Alosha’s Kitchen is a new(ish) blogger that I’ve been reading since she started up.  Get there to check her out quick because she has the most decadent, mouthwatering V-Day dinner I’ve ever seen!

Dave at LunaPierCook is always quick to leave hilarious comments on my posts and his blog is similarly a wonderful read.  He’s also quick to help if you have any blogger problems—a real foodblog hero!

Francie at Ramblings of a Frantic Home Cook is absolutely hilarious. Her posts are laugh-out-loud funny and her pictures are as cute as can be, with lots of cartoon fonts pointing out the goodness in her dishes.  I’m also in lover with her header.

Dani from Average Cook is always there to give me great recipes, a lot of them healthy AND delicious.  She’s a fellow New Jersey-ite and, come to think of it, we better meet up for lunch someday! :D

This post may be uninteresting to you, especially since Japanese food in America has been wildly popular for the past few years. It’s a simple recipe for Miso Soup. And I am so excited about it!

I guess I missed the boat on this one—when all of my friend’s were lapping up miso soup in college, when I skimmed over blog posts and recipes of it uninspired, when I chose the gyoza over it in restaurants. I never cared to even try miso soup until one day last spring, when Jim and I were in New York for a play and (more importantly) a fancy dinner. We chose a restaurant, well-received on Zagat, whose name has vanished from my memory. Every item on the menu, save for the miso soup Jim ordered, was either unremarkable or inedible. I finally gave in and tried Jim’s soup out of hungry desperation. It was delicious! I loved the salty, briny flavor of the dashi and went wild for the crunchy green onions. I mostly stayed away from the tofu, thinking that I was allergic to it after I had a reaction to a soy-gingerbread latte a few months prior.

Since then, I’ve learned that I’m not allergic to tofu and also that I just don’t care for it. So, I’ve been hunting for a comprable miso soup in sushi places and gourmet shops since last spring, hoping beyond hope to find one that focuses as much on the other ingredients as it does on the tofu and not having to break the bank for it. I was unlucky to the point of being turned off by miso soup altogether—almost to the point of forgetting about it, until my soup obsession started this winter. I don’t know why I never made miso soup myself before but I should really give myself a kick in the ass. It’s so wonderfully easy—and I can make it to my tastes! Don’t like tofu? Screw the tofu!

So, that’s why I’m so excited about this simple miso soup. I see it as a jumping off point for me—today’s post is the classic miso, tofu and all, but next week I’ll try something different. Eventually I’m sure I’ll come up with my ultimate miso soup. The combination of the sea-laced kombu dashi with salty red miso is the broth-soup jump-off point of my dreams (wow, I really am turning into a soup-nut.) And to top it all off, miso soup is healthy and beneficial to my lazy winter immune system—maybe one of the reasons I’m already feeling better!

Miso Soup

Don’t let the ingredient list scare you off—they were all stocked in my supermarket without my knowing. I asked the clerk, thinking it was hopeless, if he had kombu and bonito flakes and the wonderful man said of course! and then politely gave me a lesson on how to make the best miso soup. Also, the ingredients store easily in the pantry—a plus in my book.

For the dashi:

• 1 strip kombu, scored a bit with the tip of your knife
• 2 quarts water
• 1/2 cup bonito flakes (dried tuna)

For the miso soup:

• Prepared dashi
• 1/3 cup red miso (you can use white or yellow if you think red is too strong)
• 2 cups sliced shitake mushrooms
• 1 bunch green onions, sliced

To make the dashi: Combine kombu strip and water. Bring to a simmer but do not let boil. Simmer for 3-5 minutes. Remove kombu with tongs and discard (or save for another use.) Add bonito flakes and simmer for a few more minutes. Drain through a fine-mesh sieve.

To make soup: Place dashi back on stove, reserving about a cup in a heatproof bowl. Whisk miso into the cup, combining well. Pour combined miso back into the dashi and stir. Add mushrooms and cook for a few minutes. Add green onions, turn off heat and let it sit for another minute. Serve.

 

QUESTION! QUESTION!  Do you have any interesting (or simple) miso soup recipes or tips?? I’d love to hear them!

I have a horrible cold-slash-probably bronchitis that’s ruined my weekend. I was planning on writing a nice long post, really a love-poem, to one of my favorite dishes—Barbecue Beans. Thinking that barbecue beans never get the flattery they deserve, I was going to write a post about how remarkably delicious they are, with their notes of slight sweetness and subtle spicyness, their hint of mustardy bitterness. I was going to tell you how warmly substantial these beans are. I eat them almost every afternoon for lunch and I was going to rave that they never get “old”.

I was going to good-naturedly cajole you into making them, telling you that all the ingredients are probably in your kitchen right now. Everything you need for this recipe can be bought and then forgot about until you have time to make it. There’s no ingredient with a looming expiration date forcing you to make the beans immediately, just in case you get a horrible cold-slash-probably bronchitis and wanted to order in.

I was going to do all that but, in between hacking coughs and nose-blowings, decided against it. I need my rest you know. So, here’s the recipe. It’s wonderful. Jimmy is making me a huge pot of it tonight—to sustain us for the week. And I’m going back to bed.

Barbecue Beans

serves 4-6//adapted from the Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites

After you make this once, you may want to adjust the ingredient amounts. I fiddled around with it and find this version my favorite but you may want it sweeter or spicier. Also, this recipe relies heavily upon the BBQ sauce you use, so pick your favorite.

• 1 teaspoon oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 2-4 cloves garlic, depending on their size, minced
• 1 can (15 oz.) Navy beans, drained
• 1/3 cup BBQ sauce, I use Bone Suckin’ Sauce Thick and Spicy (if you don’t use a spicy BBQ sauce you may want to add more hot sauce)
• 1/4 cup mustard, I like dijon here
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• a few drops of hot sauce, or more to taste

Heat oil in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook 3-4 minutes. Add garlic and cook until tender and onions are translucent. Add beans, BBQ sauce, mustard, and maple syrup. Cover and cook over low heat for 30 minutes. Uncover, add cider vinegar and hot sauce. Taste and adjust seasonings if you want. Serve with white or brown rice.