For dinner tonight, I made a wonderful chicken dish.  After spending a great week with our friends in San Francisco, we’re still in low-cal mode.  This dish, from Cooking Light, is quite flavorful while not breaking the calorie budget.  I’ve placed an image of the dish below as well as included the recipe.  The only recommendation that I would have is to reduce the sauce a bit so that it is a more thick, velvety sauce than a broth.  Flavors were great, I think they would be that much better concentrated.

Technorati Tags: Basmati Rice, Chicken, Mission Figs

Tonight is our first night back from vacation.  In an effort to not eat out and use as much of what we had at home as possible, I found a few burger patties that I had placed in the freezer a few weeks ago. I also had a few hamburger buns in the freezer.  I pulled them out and started to get creative.  In the morning, I stepped outside to check on our garden.  A few casualties…The pole beans were chomped down along with the head lettuce and the tops of a couple of pepper plants.  It definitely was a deer this time as it left perfect hoof prints in the beds!

Not quite a bounty…but I was able to pull out about 20 pea pods, parsley, lettuce, and a ton of basil and chives.  The chives got chopped and dropped into the freezer with my other chives.  What could I make with a burger and pea pods, parsley, basil, and lettuce.  So I get to thinking….I LOVE pesto.  Why not a pesto burger?  Pesto made with pine nuts, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese might not work out too well on the burger.  With the amount of fat in the burger, I was thinking something more creamy.  I decided to make a basil burger and used mayonnaise as the vehicle.  Though a fatty second to olive oil and cheese, the mayonnaise brings an acidic creaminess that absorbs and conducts the basil perfectly.  I mixed the mayonnaise with a chiffonade of basil, salt, pepper, and garlic.

After grilling the burger, I spread some of the basil mayonnaise on the bun.  We had the burger along side a salad of bitter greens, tarragon, champagne vinegar, and olive oil.  The burger was absolutely wonderful.  The only thing missing from the salad was a dice of shallot.

Technorati Tags: Basil, Burger, Pesto

Vegetable stock

Ingredients:  Onion, carrot, celery, garlic, leeks, cabbage, olive oil, salt, water

Procedure:  Cut onions, carrot, and celery into uniform pieces.  Sweat onions in olive oil until softened and add carrots and celery.  Continue to cook until all are well caramelized.  (The deeper the caramelization, the deeper the stock color will be.)  Add sliced leeks (after rinsing out thoroughly….they’re full of sand!)  and cabbage (shredded) and continue to cook until both are broken down and caramelized too.  Add water and bring to a boil for at least 10 minutes up to an hour. 

I used one onion, 8 carrots, half a stalk of celery, two leeks, and half a head of napa cabbage.  Adding 3 quarts of water, I came back with about 2.5 quarts of rich brown stock. 

Note:  I add salt only to help bring out the liquid in the vegetables.  If the vegetables are starting to brown/fry versus caramelize, adding a sprinkle of salt will help to draw out the additional moisture you need.  Don’t salt the vegetable broth at this point.  It will become salty, especially if you’re reducing it in another recipe.  I only salt stock when I’m at the final stages of cooking with the stock.

The Professional Chef, Culinary Institute of America (Available at amazon.com)

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child (Available at amazon.com)

Technorati Tags: Vegetable Stock

Planning in advance,  I wanted to have a seafood dish this week that was quick to make on a Thursday night.  This one definitely was.  The polenta was quite easy to make.  I didn’t select a quick cooking polenta at the store though.  I bought Bob’s Red Mill coarse grind corn meal.  I like my polenta to have some nice texture.  I boiled milk, added the corn meal in a nice thin stream with a whisk (succesful at having zero lumps!)  I added some garlic to the polenta as well.  I wanted a bit more flavor than the parmesan and polenta would provide. 

Tilapia was much smaller than normal.  Each piece was about 4 ounces this time around.  I bought four at the seafood counter.  Lately, they’ve been twice as big.  I would have split larger ones into two plates.  The 4 ounce filets were a perfect size.  Be sure to leave your fish out for a few minutes before you cook.  I like to cook fairly slow so that seafood doesn’t dry out.  You have to be a bit more careful when you’re grilling. 

Click on the recipe below to link to the official version online.

Technorati Tags: Polenta, Tilapia