I've been feeding my kids Chicken Rice Soup for as long as they've been eating food. It is an easy double win for me: quick to make out of leftovers and they will always have a bowl. But this time I changed it up and used farro instead of rice.
This is a Senegalese dish that Marcus Samuelson likes to get in South Harlem. I was pretty excited to find a one pot meal recipe that calls for cabbage, and to see peanuts referred to as ground-nuts, since I've long wondered what ground-nut oil is. It often shows up in British cookbooks.
Most of Marcus Samuelson's recipes are not particularly fast and easy, but this one is! I made it with leftover chicken from a day or two ago and beans cooked in the crockpot yesterday.
This is just what I've been looking for, a one-pot, whole grain wonder that uses up the produce from our CSA! There is only one problem: I don't have the right pot. But then what could be better than an excuse to buy new kitchenware? For the time being I made it in the closest thing I have to a 12" cast iron skillet.
I love a roasted chicken. My entire family will eat it without complaint, there are always leftovers and a crockpot of stock can be made from the bones. Lately I've been investigating how other people roast their chicken, and in this case Marcus Samuelson's adaptation of his Grandmother's traditional recipe was the perfect thing, to celebrate my own children's Grandmother.
Marcus Samuelsson says the herbs in this meal remind him of working in Switzerland, which is a beautiful image. My version of this meal reminds me of California, because it's not very often that I find as many locally produced items in one big bowl as in this one.
"Matzo ball soup is chasing a memory," my husband said, as he turned up his nose while we ate it for dinner. But I've got no memory of my own for it. I didn't eat it as a child or as an adult, and worked hard to tell the story of unleavened bread and the escape from Egypt to my children tonight.
We broke out the deep fryer for this one, a yet unused Mother's Day present from 2014. For many years I've both longed for and feared a deep fryer of my own. But we seem to have adequately tempered temptation by following the advice of a friend: we only fry outside and store it out of sight in the garage.
Spatchcocking, or cutting out the backbone and laying flat, helps a bird roast more quickly and gives something to jump-start a crock-pot of stock with. The name is bad and so is the picture, but this is the fastest and most delicious way to get chicken dinner on the table.
Just like most other kids out there, mine love chicken nuggets. Tenders, dinosaurs, strips, whatever you want to call them. But I don't like feeding my family processed food that is full of unnatural ingredients, excess salt and added sugar. So I don't. I make them myself instead.
Fast, delicious, healthy! My new favorite salad that uses up leftover chicken and cabbage, two things that tend to languish in our fridge. I ate this for two lunches and one dinner (just me, the kids had something else) while doing the 2014 Hunger Challenge, but I'll eat it any day!
I've used Lisa Fain's Homesick Texan recipe for steak fajitas, so thought I'd try the one she has for chicken in preparation for our Memorial Day camping trip. It's great that she disapproves of the idea of chicken fajitas, in part because the name doesn't make sense (kind of like fava hummus) and also because boneless, skinless chicken breast dries out easily and lacks flavor: I agree.