An easy, delicious dinner

Do you ever buy some parsley (or cilantro or basil) for a recipe, use a little bit of it, then not know what to do with the rest of it?  Make a pesto!  I know basil is an obvious one for pesto making, but parsley and cilantro also make delicious pesto.  We especially love making a pizza with cilantro pesto, mozzarella, red onions, roasted red peppers, and sometimes sausage.  A few weeks ago we had a bunch of parsley left over from a meal, so we made a parsley pesto using this recipe.

We roasted some purple asparagus, tossed in olive oil and salt and pepper.

 

Then we mixed it all together with some whole wheat pasta and voila!

Pizza Pizza!

Pizza is one of those foods I could eat every day.  We love making homemade pizza with our pizza stone.  Lately, though, we've been making pizza in our cast iron skillet, Chicago-style.

{assembled and ready to go in the oven}

I used this Cast Iron Pizza recipe, adapting it quite a bit.  First, I use this pizza dough recipe from Bon Appetit.  We brushed some melted butter on the bottom and sides of our pan to give it a nice buttery taste.  For toppings, we browned some spicy Italian sausage (we used one link, removing it from the casing, but I might use 2 in the future for our 12" cast iron).  We also sauteed some sliced mushrooms (6 large cremini) and chopped garlic (2 cloves) in olive oil.  Once the dough was in the pan, we put the toppings in first, then the cheese, then a can of crushed tomatoes (drained of juices).  We cooked the pizza as directed in the Cast Iron Pizza recipe and voila!

What's for lunch?

Spinach salad with white beans, red bell pepper, Nik's homemade pickled green beans, blue cheese, and some of last nights chicken.

Back in the saddle

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a year since my last blog post!  Time sure does fly.  I've decided that it's time to get back in the saddle now that all the wedding craziness is over, with more of a focus on our cooking, baking, and eating adventures.  To kick it off, let's start with last night's dinner!

Working from home allows me to have more of a flexible schedule, so I'm actually able to roast a chicken during the week instead of just on the weekend when we typically have more time for dinner prep.   So last night I made a roast chicken, mushroom and caramelized leek risotto, and sauteed kale.

For the roast chicken, I loosely followed the Williams-Sonoma Brined Roast Chicken recipe.  I brined the chicken using their ratio, but also added a tablespoon of sugar.  For the actually roasting, I seasoned the butter with chopped garlic, salt, and pepper.  We had fresh thyme and parsley, so that's what we used inside the chicken, but I wish I had chopped some up to add to the butter.  We've done that in the past and it makes the skin so delicious.  In addition to the thyme and parsley, we also put onion, celery, and lemon in the cavity of the chicken.  We roasted according the recipe, but I'm not sure we would do that again.  Flipping the chicken that many times caused the skin to rip in a few spots.  Next time we will probably do what we did the last time we roasted a chicken - start with the breast side down and roast ~45 minutes, then flip to breast side up.  This allows the thigh meat to cook properly without the breasts overcooking.

For the mushroom and caramelized leek risotto, I followed this Caramelized Leek Risotto recipe and made a few additions.

I added the mushrooms (5 larger cremini, chopped) when the leeks were almost done caramelizing.  I happened to have a parmesan rind in our fridge, so I added that when I started adding the broth, but that's definitely not necessary.  And you can very easily make this vegetarian by using vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.  Instead of chives at the end, I used parsley, about 1/4 cup, and also added lemon zest from 1/2 a lemon.  I really loved the lemon flavor, especially with the roast chicken, but I think Nik thought it was a little too lemony.  Also, we wanted this risotto to be a little runnier than how I usually make it, so I used 4 cups of broth.  But I think 3 1/2 would have been perfect.

For the kale, this Bobby Flay recipe is pretty much how we cooked our kale this time.  We used one bunch of kale and roughly chopped our garlic instead of slicing it, and we didn't add the vinegar at the end.  We've added vinegar in past and it really does add a nice flavor and balance to the kale.  Sometimes we add crushed red pepper too.

Here's how it all turned out (delicious!):

Fall 2009 - October

I'm sorry it's been a while since my last blog! Life's been a little crazy lately, with a vacation to Puerto Rico (and getting engaged!), a friend's wedding, and having friends and family visit. I'm happy to get back to blogging and hope I can keep up with it a little more!

Last October Nik's sisters and his brother-in-law came down for a weekend visit. We took them to Finlay Market where we picked up an amish chicken and vegetables for dinner that night.

It's always wonderful to have visitors, especially Nik's sisters and their husbands and to be able to cook a wonderful meal with them!