Author: leora76

137 recipes to choose from, and you may wonder how it was possible to pick my favorite 10.  Honestly, it wasn’t really that hard!  Automatically, anything containing peppers or tofu should be relegated to the bottom of the pile, but you may be surprised at which recipes stood out among the rest.  The results of the Pioneer Woman Dinnertime project are in.  I have tried.  I have tested.  And boy, have I eaten some spectacular food!

The following deliciousness is in no particular order, because whenever I think about any one of these, my mouth starts watering and I want to make it again.  I feel the need to point out that NONE of these selections is a dessert.  Believe me, I gave equal opportunity for each chapter to have a winning entry, and even though dessert is practically my favorite meal, none of the sweets could dislodge these yummy dinners.

1. Santa Fe Scramble:  HOW did this make the list??  This Breakfast for Dinner meal features none other than the dreaded pepper.  As usual I minimized their role, but the green chiles, avocados and sweet corn kernels mixed with scrambled eggs was a winner all around at our dinner table.  Both my kids and I had seconds and polished off the entire pan.  For people who like spicy, I’m sure this would be great with hot sauce, but the flavors in this dish stand alone pretty well.  Came together in a matter of minutes too!

2. Pasta with Vodka Sauce:  You had me at vodka, Ree…  No really, you did!  Something about putting that ingredient into the tomato sauce added so much complexity to the flavor, it made vodka sauce my new favorite pasta topping.  Move over Bolognese, there’s a new sauce in town!  Honorable mention does have to go to the other recipe featured in this picture, “The Bread”.  It’s just French bread with an absolute ton of butter and garlic, but really, what more do you need with a big bowl of campanelle pasta in a boozy sauce?

 3. Orange Chicken:  Winner, winner, chicken dinner!  It’s not just a saying.  Quite a few chicken meals made my Top 10, but this one was the most complicated.  That’s not to say “difficult”, but there were a ton of ingredients in this dish, and my kitchen was a mess.  Nevertheless, I’d always wanted to know how to recreate one of my favorite Chinese take-out dishes, and now I can!  The chicken was crispy, sweet, and juicy, and it was absolutely worth the hour’s worth of dishes I had to do afterwards.  P.S. Sesame chicken is exactly the same thing as this… with seeds sprinkled on it.

4. Risotto:  So I took some liberties here; Ree’s recipe didn’t call for shrimp, but frankly no dish is diminished by adding seafood!  Except maybe sundaes.  In fact I can’t remember if her version even included mushrooms, but her basic recipe could be used to build any flavor combination you like.  My kids and I had to tag-team stirring continuously so no one’s arm fell off, but despite what a pain in the butt it is to make homemade risotto, I can’t tell you how worth it the effort is.  It’s filling, tasty comfort food at its finest.  Especially with the shrimp!

5. Pumpkin Wonton Ravioli:  This one was a sleeper hit; I thought it sounded weird.  I’d never had pumpkin in anything savory before, just pies.  Using wonton wrappers as “pasta” was a new one too.  But this… this is a keeper!  Very labor intensive, as the filling, sealing and cooking process has to move pretty quickly so nothing dries out, and the end result can cool off fast too.  The kids and I set up an assembly line to move it along and we had to eat in shifts, but for a once in a while treat, the taste can’t be beat!  (I really didn’t rhyme that on purpose…)

6. Zuppa Toscana:  Let’s call it what it is, shall we?  I don’t think Olive Garden is going to sue me.  I can say hands down that Ree’s version of this soup leaves OG’s in the dust.  Ok, maybe NOW they’ll sue me!  For reals though, I made this recipe in her typical “feed an army” quantity, and it didn’t last the week.  Italian sausage.  Kale.  Potatoes.  A humble soup that is one of the most amazing flavor explosions I’ve ever eaten.  I’ve made other versions of this classic, and while they were all right, this one is by far the best!

7. Chicken Pot Pie:  An oldie but a goodie, and again a recipe I’ve made many times from different sources.  There is a top crust for this (which I swapped for puff pastry) but it’s hard to get a good photo when there’s a lid on it!  I love comfort food, partly why I’m a fan of Ree’s cooking to begin with, and this pie delivers.  It’s full of veggies, lots of chicken, and her sauce is thick and creamy when it cooks up.  You could also make this in individual aluminum pans and freeze leftovers.  Assuming there are any.  Odds are good this meal will disappear quickly!

8. Coconut Curry Shrimp:  I almost burned my lips off trying to sample the shrimp and sauce right out of the pan.  The scent was totally intoxicating!  Curry is one of those divisive flavors, people love it or hate it, and I LOVE it.  It wasn’t spicy at all, but it had all the Thai flavors (curry, lime, coconut) that made the rice and shrimp a family favorite.  The best part is the whole thing came together in the time it took to cook the rice.  I’m a fan of the rice cooker, which left me free to make the protein concurrently.  Trust me, you’ll want to do the same and get it on your plate ASAP!

9. Red Pepper Pasta:  Say what??  Something with the word “pepper” right in the title made it to the Top 10?!  Well yes, yes it did, if only because it made me into the biggest believer of miracles ever.  I loved it.  My kids ate it.  We all had seconds.  And then they stole the leftovers before I came home the next day.  I don’t know what alchemy was employed to turn our least favorite vegetable into the main component of a pasta sauce and make us LOVE it, but it happened.  I’m actually afraid to make it again because I don’t know if lightning can strike twice.  But it did once, and that is a wonder.

10: Chicken with Mustard Cream Sauce:  This is it.  The best of the bunch.  I’ve made this at least three times, including for New Year’s Eve dinner.  The mashed potatoes I served it over were no slouch either.  I’ve made it with different mustards each time, and the flavor is amazing no matter how I alter it.  It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s cheap.  I really can’t say enough about how great this tastes!  I probably should have thrown a vegetable on the plate in an attempt to make it a more balanced meal, but frankly this was plenty of yum on its own.  Let’s not complicate things that don’t need it!

Thanks for the memories Ree, it was great cooking with you this year!

It is my distinct pleasure to announce that after nearly a year, roughly 30 pounds of butter, more bell peppers than I care to think about, and some truly outstanding meals… the Dinnertime cookbook is now FINISHED!!  This achievement comes a full four years ahead of schedule based on how long it took me to plow through Alton Brown’s Good Eats: The Early Years, probably because I didn’t have to construct any of my own appliances from sheet metal, hot plates and tin cans.  It’s amazing how much using a regular old oven and stovetop speeds this process along!  Thanks for that, Ree.

So here it is…  The one that brought it all home.  The 137th recipe from my current muse and culinary mentor, Ree Drummond.  It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I don’t even like stir-fry.  (Side note: I’m a little late to the Fiesta Ware party, which has been around for 82 years, but after seeing a feature on these brightly colored, multi-hued dishes in Ree’s magazine last month, I now have to plate all her recipes on my shiny new tableware!  I almost feel like I should go back and make everything again just to display it on my new colored dishes.  Almost…)  As Asian recipes go, I found this one super simple and pretty tasty, despite consisting entirely of (ugh) vegetables.

I cheated as usual and skimped on the peppers, but the ingredients were very straightforward and I had everything I needed on-hand without having to buy anything weird.  Except baby corn, because seriously, who has that in their pantries at all times?  Or any time, really.  I also made a substitution for serving this over rice noodles by just making a package of Top Ramen including the seasoning pack, then drained all the broth out.  Oh, and I picked up Chinese at lunch time from a local place so I could have someone else do all the labor on sesame chicken and crab wontons!  Work smarter, not harder.  True to my promise to always try at least one bite of every recipe regardless of my preconceived notions, I did sample a couple pieces of the finished product.  My issue with stir-fry is that I don’t care for crunchy yet cooked vegetables.  Give ’em to me raw or give ’em to me cooked, but none of this halfway in-between business…  This recipe did not disappoint, and the veggies were just the right balance of al dente vs. mush.  Sweet success!

We’ve been through a lot this year, Ree and me.  She taught me to laugh and to love.  She taught me to cry…  Ok, maybe it wasn’t THAT deep, but I have studied her, followed her blog, ordered her magazine, recorded her shows, purchased her products, and recently read her autobiographical book, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels: A Love Story, about how she met and fell in love with her husband.  Twice.  I SWEAR I’M NOT A STALKER!!  I was just committed to my project…  That being said, I really did learn so much through this process, and I found her to be a patient and forgiving teacher.  I never felt pressured to get everything “just right”, and knew that if I made slight changes to her ideas that it was probably going to be just fine.  She gave me plenty of heavy cream, cheese and sugar to work with, and only imposed tofu on me ONCE in 381 pages.  If that doesn’t make us besties, I don’t know what does!

To reward myself for completing this challenge, I’m going to make a pilgrimage to Pawhuska, OK to tour The Lodge, where PW films her television show and visit The Boarding House and The Mercantile, Ree Drummond’s hotel and 25,000 square foot store/bakery/restaurant.  I’m going to go nuts in there, trust that!  I’m even going to bring along my food-stained copy of Dinnertime on the off chance that Ree herself makes an appearance at one of her haunts and wants to slap an autograph on it.  I mean after all, what are best friends for??

What possessed me to leave nothing but vegetarian dishes until the very end of the Ree Drummond Dinnertime project??  This is the second-to-last recipe left for me to cook, and it’s less than inspiring.  Rookie move…  This wasn’t my first rodeo, why leave my least favorite stuff for the final recipes of the book?!  Lesson learned, next time I am going to hold a couple really good recipes hostage, so that I can’t wait to finish the book instead of crawling toward the finish line!

I am a confirmed carnivore; that has been well-established in these blogs!  However, as much as I think everything is better with meat, I can admit when a vegetarian dish comes along that is still pretty darn good.  Recipe #136: Black Bean Burgers, is one such meal.  This recipe managed to make its way to the end of the book mostly by accident; had I been paying attention, I would have realized that I could have used some of my Black Bean Soup mixture from way back at Recipe #110 as the base for this, instead of starting from scratch when it was time to make burgers.  Basically I was pouting because I missed the opportunity to use a shortcut, and I reacted by avoiding it until the last minute!  Super mature…

So about these Black Bean Burgers!  In the immortal words of the little old Wendy’s lady, “Where’s the beef??”  These are missing the, uh, burger part.  I was concerned about the lack of meat, but as far as looks go, they sort of fit the bill.  The patty was made with black beans (obviously), egg, some seasonings, bread crumbs, and GRATED onion.  The grating is super important, because it basically liquifies the onion, leaving no chunky bits.  I used a Pampered Chef Microplane grater, but any fine mesh grater will achieve the desired result.  When all these ingredients are smooshed together, it kind of looks like you have been playing with… well, never mind.  Let’s just say it’s not attractive!  But it does hold together like a beef burger, if you can balance the wet and dry ingredients.  I halved the recipe, but still kept the full quantity of bread crumbs to make it dry enough (then again, I had to use panko instead of regular seasoned crumbs, so that may have had something to do with it!)

The patties eventually came together and cooked up in butter and olive oil on the stovetop for a surprisingly long time, 5 minutes per side.  I wouldn’t have thought a meatless meal would take so much time over the fire!  I melted some Pepper Jack cheese on top, as I was out of the Swiss cheese the recipe called for, and topped it with mayo, tomato and lettuce, just like a REAL burger.  Not bad!  My daughter ate it straight, just the bean patty with ketchup on a toasted Kaiser roll.  She liked it enough to make the leftovers again the following day, so that’s a win.  I’m all about the textures, and for me it was just a little bit off, having no juiciness and a mushier texture than any beef burger I’ve had.  I am including McDonald’s, so that’s saying something!  Will I make it again?  Probably not.  Did I finish my meal with some enjoyment, despite a complete lack of cow?  Mostly.  So you know what, Ree fans?  Let’s say this one was a success!  Just serve it with a side of pulled pork…

Marshmallow crème.  Nutella.  Fresh fruit.  Nuts.  Powdered sugar.  BUTTER!  How could this combination go wrong??  These are all things I love!  Things I could eat straight out of the container for the most part.  So why then was I so reticent to make recipe #135: Dessert Panini?  Of all things in a cookbook for me to leave until the end out of sheer disinterest, I’m shocked that one was a dessert.  Well, unless it was bread pudding, because, YUCK.  I think it comes down to the fact that I dislike…no…I LOATHE hot sandwiches, almost across the board.  Grilled cheese is about the only hot sammie that makes the cut.  Rarely have I walked into a restaurant, then immediately turned around and walked right back out, but that happened the first time I tried to go into, uh, “Schwiznos”…  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a deli specializing in hot sandwiches, and I just can’t take it.  Cold cuts should, by definition, be served COLD!  But I digress…  The Dessert Panini!  Here’s how this went down.

Before I get too deep into this, I have to confess something really dumb.  I have bought the ingredients to make this recipe several times.  Like many, MANY times!  And after each shopping trip I looked at the page in the cookbook and either let the fruit go bad without making anything, ate the ingredients separately, or used them in a completely different recipe.  Or, what happened on more than one occasion, my kid ate all the Nutella without me noticing!  The depth of my apathy for this dessert knew no bounds.  But what a waste of money!  And good strawberries.  As you can see, it nearly happened again, as my bananas were getting freckles and the loaf of bread was half gone.  But I was determined!  I saw the light at the end of the tunnel on this project!  I just had to bite the bullet and check this off my list, not serve what I was sure would be a disaster at a dinner party.

I’m making this sound terrible, but look at it!  It really looked pretty darn delicious.  As I added hazelnut spread to one piece of bread and marshmallow crème to another, the idea of a chocolatey fluffernutter sandwich started to grow on me.  I then layered on sliced strawberries and used a little creative license, adding sliced banana as well.  Why not?  If it was going to be a train wreck, what could a little banana hurt?  It might just as well have been a stroke of genius.  The recipe DID call for sliced almonds… but I didn’t have any sliced almonds, and I wasn’t going to spend additional energy trying to slice them.  Chopped almonds it is!  I was feeling quite the rebel.

The moment of truth was upon me: adding the heat and potentially ruining the whole thing!  I slathered both sides of the sandwich in butter, and put it down in a grill pan with a panini press on top.  Wait, what if you don’t have a panini maker or press at home??  In a pinch, a small frying pan on top weighed down with canned food to “press” the sandwich into the grill will work.  Or if you just don’t care about grill marks, you could try making it in a flat skillet like a grilled cheese.  As long as the marshmallow “glue” melts enough, it shouldn’t come apart when you flip it.  In theory.

A little powdered sugar and more almonds to top it all off, and dessert is served.  Or, if you’ve been to IHOP recently, you’ll recognize this as something more likely to be on the breakfast menu.  So here it is… a hot mess, quite literally!  I was still not looking forward to eating this, now that it had been exposed to heat.  But lord help me, was I ever wrong about this recipe!!  YOU NEED THIS IN YOUR LIFE!  Do you hear me world?  I was wrong!  Delicious does not begin to cover it.  And yep, my banana was genius.  I’m gonna let Ree steal that idea…  It’s the least I can do!

My daughter is a rock star.  She’s a brilliant, straight-A student.  A gold medal gymnast, first year in competition.  She’s adorable.  “So what’s your point, Mom, besides bragging about your kid??”  My point is, that for all her great talents, cooking was not really one of them.  Say what?!  How did she manage to avoid it even if she tried??  Well, my son was always the one more interested in the kitchen, and Bella expressed very little motivation to make her own food.  Over the past few months however, when I wake up on the weekends she is the one in the kitchen sneakily making chocolate chip pancakes or scrambling eggs.   Because of her newfound culinary curiosity, I have let her take the lead on several Ree dishes lately; here are a couple in which I barely did any of the work!

Note: These are out of order, because that Tofu Wrap inspired me – in a bad way! – to write about it instead.  I just had to get it out of my system!

Bella loves Chinese food, fried rice in particular, so she was excited to give Recipe #132, Pork Chops with Pineapple Fried Rice, a go.  Given the 612 ingredients that are typically in fried rice, it was great having a partner in the kitchen; I chopped and prepped stuff, she threw everything in the pan and made sure it didn’t catch fire.  Teamwork!

Before I get too far into the story of this dish, I have to tell you that this was the final recipe in the chapter, “New Favorites”.  New.  Favorites.  You know what else was in this chapter?  You guessed it, Tofu Lettuce Wraps.  Whose favorite is THAT?!?  A better title could have been, “The Reasons Ladd Might Divorce Ree”…  Of course that would never happen, but I guarantee their marriage endures because she eats these weird things when he’s out of town!  Sigh…  Back to these pineapple-y pork chops: the key step to bringing out the flavor was grilling the pineapple in butter until it got really juicy and caramelized.  Bella had to be especially brave here, because I can assure you that grilled pineapple spits as viciously as bacon!  I thought the combination of fruit and meat seemed pretty weird to be honest, but somehow it still worked.  I’m trying to think of other times this is true; prosciutto and melon is a good example.  That stuff is delicious with a balsamic reduction!  Orange and chicken; actually, I don’t like orange chicken, but I realize the majority of other humans do!  Bananas and steak?  Ok, maybe not.  (But if someone out there makes a ribeye/bananas foster combo, I’d be morbidly curious to see that!)  Onions reduced in soy sauce, vinegar, and sriracha made a flavorful topping for the pork, but I must need to use 2-inch thick chops to avoid that nemesis of pork…dehydration.  If only the fried rice step didn’t take so long, perhaps the pork chops wouldn’t have “rested” until they fell asleep.  In the end I don’t know that we would make this again, but Bella learned how to seriously multitask in the kitchen, and get everything on the plate at once without burning anything.  Slightly dry pork is a small price to pay for my daughter to learn this cooking principle early!

Another life lesson she learned courtesy of kitchen experience?  Boiling sugar will take your skin off!  Before you freak out, I don’t mean she learned “the hard way”, but without a doubt, she got the message.  Her second dish was #134, Quick Caramel Sauce, which is so simple it barely counts as a recipe.  Butter, brown sugar, heavy cream, salt and vanilla.  That’s all that is in caramel, and you might think anything with so few ingredients HAS to be child’s play.  Au contraire!  The concept is easy enough, but the execution can go badly wrong.  Anyone who has ever made candy can attest to this fact.  Cook it too low, nothing is ever going to happen; the sugar will remain stubbornly granular.  Take your attention away for a split second at the wrong time, and it will go from “pleasantly caramelized” to scorched earth in that moment!  This particular recipe did not require the use of a candy thermometer, but that may not be a good thing.  The steps for bringing the sauce together are A) dump all the stuff in a pot, B) stir to combine over heat until the temperature reaches roughly that of the 7th circle of Hell.  This is NOT a task you can do while scrolling through YouTube cat videos on your phone and idly whisking.  When things started heating up (literally), I took over and let Bella observe.  I wanted her to see the progression from “oh look, the butter is melting” to “OMG it’s ALIVE!!” in under three minutes.  For those of you who have only ever purchased caramel in a jar or a squeeze bottle, I’m talking about the boiling point of sugar and cream, which is approximately 235 degrees (also known as the soft ball stage).  By comparison, water boils at 212 degrees, and when you take it off the heat, the boiling stops almost immediately.  You know what happens when you take boiling caramel off the fire?  This:

Basically it holds on to its heat and roils and bubbles until it’s good and ready to calm down.  When Bella looked into the pan sitting on a cold burner and saw that it was still actively trying to climb out under its own power, she gained a whole new level of respect for kitchen safety.  I daresay an After School Special would not have been as effective!  Little Miss Bella Boo has helped me narrow this project down to the final three with the completion of these recipes.  Spending time together, learning new skills, and trying new flavor combinations were all great things that came out of the experience, but we both know there is one thing that tops all of that:

 

 

The things I do to honor a commitment…  But I said I’d make every recipe in the book, even when THIS is what I have to cook.  Look closely at this substance, and I defy you to argue that it appears edible, much less tasty.  It looks more like the damp cardboard container that something edible came in!  To be fair, it could be argued that it resembles a block of cream cheese, but it is not.  It.  Is.  Not.

I’ve eaten tofu on several occasions.  Sometimes I have even enjoyed it.  This, my friends, was not one of those times.  There are two main schools of tofu thought: silken and extra firm.  Silken is exactly that; it has a smooth consistency and no real flavor of its own, so I’ve created a pretty good (high protein!) chocolate “cream” pie and made passable smoothies with it.  It’s harmless enough.  Extra firm tofu is supposed to be the “meatier” version of this soybean curd delicacy, but I’m sorry, there is no saving it from itself.  Square chunks in egg drop or won ton soup?  Manageable, but not exactly the highlight of the bowl.  Seasoned and deep fried tofu slices?  Even THAT wasn’t enough to make me want to eat the full portion.  This application though, was by far the least appealing for me.  That is not to say it actually tasted bad.  The phrase, “you eat with your eyes first” is 100% accurate.  There’s only so much lipstick you can put on a pig, and no amount of camouflage could make this appetizing.  Unfortunately, you also eat with your mouth, and I don’t mean just the taste buds.  The flavor here wasn’t the issue; the texture on the other hand, left something to be desired!  Let me walk you through how Recipe #133: Tofu Lettuce Wraps went…

Step 1: Drain the water out of the package of tofu.  Eww.  I tried drying it off with a paper towel too, in order to aid in getting some color on it while cooked, but that didn’t really help.

Step 2: Heat olive oil in a skillet and “sear” the tofu.  You know what doesn’t take a sear?  You guessed it: tofu.  But I didn’t go down without a fight!  I decided to forego the olive oil and head straight for the big guns.  I used bacon grease.  No one ever accused me of being a vegan!  I thought it might help to throw some flavor at this block of Styrofoam, but no such luck.

Step 3: Break up the tofu blob so it crumbles into what looks like overcooked, poorly scrambled eggs.  Appetizing, no?

Step 4:  Ruin a perfectly good bag of frozen corn by adding it to this mess, and season with some chili powder. 

Step 5:  Drown it in soy sauce, hoping to impart color and flavor to the still stubbornly pale tofu chunks.

Step 6:  That’s it.  Wait, what??  No more culinary tricks?  No more tasty ingredients?!  Heck, I’d even take cayenne at this point!

Alas, this is all the cooking sorcery that goes into Tofu Lettuce Wraps.  I did mention LETTUCE wraps, right?  Because it was.  Wrapped in lettuce I mean.  Nothing like taking an uninspired filling and encasing it in something that also has essentially no flavor identity of its own.  I tried to add another coat of lipstick to this pig, even threw in some false eyelashes and blush, but I still didn’t love it.  I topped it with my favorite taco add-ins, sour cream and avocado slices, but the texture was just squishy on squishy on squishy.  The Romaine lettuce leaf was the only thing with a crunch factor, but it was just plain unpleasant to eat.  Redeeming qualities?  The flavor wasn’t half bad.  The chili powder and soy sauce combo actually made it possible for me to carry on eating it.  There was something about the taste that made me want to take another bite, even while 90% of my brain was screaming “Order a pizza!”  It was also practically a zero-calorie, high protein meal.  If you’re on a diet, this is for you!  Personally, I’d like to take the whole idea, swap the tofu for chicken, and give it another whirl.  I could even keep the lettuce idea, as long as I got some MEAT!  Alas, they can’t all be winners…  The silver lining here is that this was the recipe I most dreaded, and it is now in my rearview!  Final 5, here I come!

P.S.  Lest you think this went over well with other members of the family and I was just being picky, rest assured tofu received a unilateral thumbs-down.  Following a meltdown, dinner was only finished employing copious amounts of ranch dressing and the “clothespin on the nose” technique!

When my daughter moves into her first apartment or goes off to college, I will never have to worry about her starving to death.  Neither is she likely to be forced to live on cold leftover pizza or discount ramen noodles.  My girl can COOK!  At 10 years old she may not be quite up to the standards of the kids you see on Food Network junior chef competitions, nor does she have her own mini-cupcake empire…yet.  However, she has the serenity to accept and create great food, the courage to cook quality food instead of crap, and the wisdom to know the difference!

But it wasn’t always this way…  Cooking is my passion, and I always hoped my children would follow in my footsteps.  I had fantasies of one day cooking side by side with them in the kitchen, producing gourmet dishes, and having in-depth chats about flavor profiles, international cuisine, and umami.  (Ok, no one has long talks about umami!)  In reality, I spent the last several years waging all-out battles at nearly every meal, culminating in the 2016 Mac and Cheese Standoff.  After one complaint too many, I told my kids if they weren’t going to eat what I served, they were getting mac and cheese for every meal.  And they did.  For six weeks, all that showed up on the dinner table was neon-yellow pasta and hotdogs.  I continued cooking and baking delicious dinners and desserts for myself.  And what did the kids eat while I enjoyed steaks, seafood, poultry and pork dishes?  That’s right; hot dog mystery meat.  Some say cruel and unusual, I say it taught a valuable lesson.  When they finally caved and BEGGED me to start cooking for them again, they ate anything I put on the table with gusto, and with compliments!

Fast forward two years, and I am “living the dream”, as they say!  My son is quite accomplished in the kitchen, and my daughter is now my sous chef-in-training.

 

Which brings me to where I am today, cooking recipe #131: Burrito Bowls, with my little girl.  This was a fun one to bring her in on, because there are a ton of components to this dish!  Onions, zucchini, squash, bell peppers (AGAIN!), jalapenos, two kinds of meat, lots of seasonings and all kinds of “optional” ingredients kept us plenty busy.  Trust me, we weren’t missing the tortillas we got to skip by just layering everything in a bowl!  She was able to work on her multitasking skills, as she juggled cooking chicken along with dicing veggies and making citrus rice.  My biggest challenges were directing traffic in the kitchen and trying not to micromanage!  That’s hard for this mama…  She was a little champ though, braving her way through the pain of popping oil while sautéing meat and the uncertainty of using new kitchen tools.

A great aspect of this meal is that we got to use up a lot of “this and that” from the fridge, including a leftover steak instead of cooking a whole new one, some extra ears of corn that were already boiled and just needed to come off the cob to be thrown in the mix, and that last half an onion that seems to always be at the back of the produce drawer.  The BEST part of it was that I could make it with my kid and she got to enjoy tasting what she had created.  Ree’s recipes are all about feeding friends and family, and feeding my little family has definitely been a challenge over the years.  Thanks to her good old homestyle recipes, I feel like I am making memories and teaching important life skills.  And that’s something you just can’t get out of the Kraft mac and cheese box!

After a summer spent eating my way through Estonia, I admit that while I was well-fed, I missed MY kitchen!  I missed the selection of fresh produce available to me in Colorado, versus the limited, unripened options at the 59th latitude (by comparison, my hometown of Alaska is at the 64th latitude, and trust me, we didn’t grow much there either!)  I missed my pots and pans, my spice cabinet, and mostly my REE!

When I returned home, I was greeted by my sister (hereby referred to as “L”) and her kiddos for a three-week visit.  You know what a whole bunch of kids in the house means?  Cooking at home, no restaurants!  It also meant that for once I didn’t have to reduce the yield of the recipes, since we were feeding an army.

One recipe I avoided until the end was another pepper-heavy meal, #129: Cajun Chicken Pasta.  This was the last of the “Pasta Pronto” chapter, and the second-to-last chicken recipe.  Hallelujah!  Luckily for me, L and her girls LOVE peppers.  (Did I mention we are half-sisters?  That must explain it…)

Also luckily for me, L loves to cook too and we knocked out a giant pot of this tasty supposed-to-be-fettucine-but-we-only-had-spaghetti meal, served in super high-class, paper bowls!  Houses full of kids also means using disposable dishes.  Easiest recipe ever: just sautéing onions, peppers, and garlic along with cubed chicken (I think we used thighs instead of breasts, because I refused to go shopping!) then seasoning it all with Cajun spices.  What are Cajun spices, you ask?  Apparently they include paprika, thyme, onion powder, cayenne, cumin, ground mustard, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  You could make your own, but… why?  I used a Wildtree Organic mixture rather than hand-curating my own spice blend.  Maybe down the road I’ll get into all that, but today is not that day!

The only thing left to turn this into dinner was making a sauce by adding cream and white wine to the juices and chicken broth, then thickening it with a bit of corn starch.  The dish was finished with diced tomatoes and chopped parsley for a little color and freshness.  If you ever think to yourself, “hmm, should I add some fresh herbs to this meal?” the answer is YES!  It makes a big difference, and you’re just not going to get the same flavors with dried herbs.  Go ahead, invest that $0.62 in a bunch of cilantro, parsley or chives and see what I mean!

Post-family visit, I rolled straight into Book Club night, where I was tasked with bringing salad.  Conveniently I had one dish left to complete in the “Salad for Dinner” chapter, and at long, long last, the FINAL chicken recipe!!  Seriously people, I did 26 chicken variations, some of them several times.  Don’t get me wrong, I love chicken, but I think I was starting to cluck.  I saved this for last for a couple reasons: 1) I was tired of chicken, 2) sesame seed and sesame flavor is at best a “meh” for me, and 3) the sound of the Asian dressing did not ring my bell.  I am here to confess I was WRONG on every count.  Maybe I was a little over the chicken element, but once I blended up the dressing made from olive and sesame oils, soy sauce, rice vinegar, fresh garlic and ginger, brown sugar and red pepper flakes, I couldn’t wait to toss sautéed chicken in it.  This. Smelled.  Amazing.  My mouth was watering as soon as I opened the blender! 

A word of warning though… making it a day ahead of time presented me with a unique problem!  I poured some of the dressing over the cooked chicken to “marinate” for a day, but the rest of it I stuck in the fridge overnight.  Ree told me I could do this!  What she didn’t mention was that this emulsified (oil and vinegar combined into a creamy texture) dressing would separate out into its parts again, and it would take on the appearance of butter!  I tried the obvious, just blending it again, but it did not come back together.  In fact it seemed to thicken when whipped, and looked like a broken cream sauce.  Picture reheating your Olive Garden fettucine alfredo in the microwave… It’s never the same again!  I didn’t have time to wait for it to warm up, to see if it would blend if the fat was closer to room temperature, so I decided to hit it with just a bit more vinegar, soy sauce and brown sugar, and voila!  It kept the balance of flavors AND it turned back into usable dressing!

What else makes this salad special?  It’s just so pretty!  I am fairly sure Ree used both colors of sesame seeds in this dish just for looks, as they taste very nearly same.  Black sesame seeds just have the hulls still intact while the white ones have hulls removed.  Some people say there is a nuttier, slightly more bitter flavor to the black seeds, but I think they are imagining things.  The bright colors of purple onion, fresh cherry tomatoes and mandarin orange wedges made the salad aesthetically pleasing on the plate, so this was a hit to take to a potluck event.  Minimal effort, and I didn’t have to have to dump my salad out of a bag at the party!  Winner, winner, last-of-the-chicken dinners!

Beautiful Estonia.  What do you think of when you hear the name of that country?  Have you ever heard of it?  Do you have any idea where it is?  Does it bring to mind the line from “Encino Man” when Sean Astin explains away the frozen caveman he thawed out in his garage as an exchange student named Stoney from Estonia?  (Am I the only one who has seen that movie??)

I had the opportunity this summer to spend several weeks in Tallinn, Estonia for my Air Force job.  I was thrilled for the adventure, but the first thought that went through my head was, ‘wait; what do they eat in Estonia??’  Enter the trusty Google search, where I was rewarded with this little gem: “Estonians were peasants during serfdom, so traditional foods were born out of throwing things together because there was simply nothing else to eat.”  Hmm…  The trip was suddenly sounding less appealing.  Things took a real nosedive with the next sentence, “When asking an Estonian what foods to try, the answer is usually sauerkraut, jellied meat, and blood sausage.”  Okay, cancel my reservation please!!

Alas, the Air Force is not in the habit of cancelling missions based on the epicurean preferences of its members, so I was committed to making the best of whatever beefy Jell-O or fermented cabbage this Eastern European country could throw at me.  (Yes, I Googled the location too; Estonia is just a 2-hour ferry ride across the Baltic Sea from Finland, and about 80 miles south of Mother Russia – they became an independent country only 28 years ago.)  Being a “baby nation” probably explains why I actually had a hard time finding a true Estonian culinary identity.  What I did find, thankfully, was some darn tasty chow at impossibly low prices!  A plain t-shirt might cost 50 euro, but a filet mignon dinner with a bottle of decent wine would only set you back about 35 euro.  So come with me to this deliciously underrated country and let’s take a look at Estonian cuisine.  You’ll want to bring your stretchy sweatpants!

Let’s just start with where you need to set your expectations… This is where you grab a Big Mac.  A McFlurry.  And in an Estonian McDonald’s, you can also pick up a tasty, freshly baked, flaky croissant, on par with a Parisian boulangerie.  I think we’re doing it wrong…

Next, how about we check out their definition of “mall food court” meals?  This ain’t your average Panda Express or Taco Loco fare…  In a country with more restaurants within walking distance than I could have sampled in a year, I found myself heading to the mall cafés multiple times for the closest thing to “home cooking” that I found.

Many menus were in Russian, but when I found one in English, I stumbled across the most delicious comfort food.  This pasta dish was similar to beef stroganoff, with onions, garlic, truffle cream sauce and shaved parmesan over tender beef strips.  I had to take a picture just to make sure I remember what was in it so I can recreate it at home!  Best part?  It was 8 euros.  I couldn’t get a foot-long sandwich at Subway for that price in the States!

 

So those were the “fast food” options… now for the actual restaurants!  My first Russian meal was at a place called Troika, in the middle of the Old Town square.  After the cold-smoked beaver appetizer – you read that right – I wanted something familiar.  Beef stew on a bed of mashed potatoes?  I was all over that.  Not sure why the raw vegetables and cranberries were included, but hey, maybe it was supposed to be a side salad??  Estonia is not exactly a hotbed of fresh produce, so you don’t want to skip any veggies you get your hands on.  And by the way, beaver is pretty salty and takes forever to chew!  In case you were wondering.

Rabbit.  The other, other white meat.  I just never knew!  If you have never tried it, you are missing out on one of the best kept secrets of the protein world.  Every time I see a rabbit hopping through the neighborhood now, I don’t think ‘oh, how cute’, I think ‘oh, you’re delicious!’  Even though it’s considered white meat, I was reminded more of the flavorful chicken thigh.  I got my first taste of heaven at a bistro called Frenchy in Telliskivi, Estonia, where rabbit was roasted to perfection under a creamy stone ground mustard sauce.  They topped it with eggplant, asparagus and shaved, glazed carrots.  And now I can die a happy woman!

 

But wait, there’s more!  So much, much more.  I haven’t even told you about the drinks.  Now I’m not really one for the bar scene, but even I couldn’t resist Sigmund Freud’s.  It.  Was.  Incredible.  Maybe I just haven’t been to enough craft bars, but this place had the most creative, yummiest cocktails I’ve ever tasted, complete with clever names that made me giggle and garnishes that doubled as snacks.  I drank the first three pages of the menu.  In order.  Because you couldn’t go wrong with any of them!  “Breakfast at Guantanamo Bay” was a personal favorite; any drink that includes freshly made bananas foster is a winner in my book!  Here’s a few of their greatest hits:

But then there was the seafood!  Scallops.  Shrimp.  Salmon.  Lobster.  Caviar.  Ceviche.  Whether it was a nautical-themed restaurant or my hotel lobby eatery, the fish selection was unmatched.  I can taste these shrimp tacos just looking at the picture…

So, what is “Estonian food” at the end of the day?  I spent five weeks eating my way through the place and I’m still not sure.  It seemed to be a conglomeration of Russian, German, French, and just plain GOOD food.  One of my Top 3 meals of the whole trip did come from a restaurant aptly named… “Estonian Restaurant”.  I figured if I was going to get authentic grub anywhere, that was the place!  If no one had told me the origin of the food, I would have guessed Germany.  Crispy pig shank, mustard so hot it made my eyeballs scream, roasted potatoes, and a big ol’ pile of that sauerkraut that Google told me I had to try.  You know what?  Google was right!

 

 

I am from Alaska, not Philadelphia.  And most certainly not from Pawhuska.  In fact I’d never even heard of Pawhuska, OK before getting to “know” Ree Drummond.  Basically I am from about as far away from the origins of a Philly Cheesesteak as it’s possible to be and still be an American, and not much closer to understanding this version from Oklahoma.  Until about my mid-30s, I had never even tasted this iconic sandwich.  Therefore, I clearly have limited frame of reference for whether or not this is a good variation.  I’ll let you be the judge!

Right off the bat, this was a dish I had to plan for, because it employed ingredients I never buy.  Like ever.  I’m not a huge fan of deli meat (except salami), so having roast beef in the fridge is an unusual state of affairs.  Then there were those daggone peppers again; I’m to the point in the book where I am really putting my foot down in regards to peppers!  A couple of those baby orange and red peppers sliced paper-thin replaced the thick-cut slices normally sautéed with onions so I could get the idea of what it should taste like without having to chew them…  Lastly, I had to pick up more of that queso I avoid like the plague.  Ok, here is another place where I can say I have tried it, didn’t like it, not gonna do it again: Velveeta!  The directions called for “Queso Blanco” Velveeta this time (they tried to class it up!), but I wasn’t falling for it.  Still basically plastic, just this time with some spices and chunks of yet MORE peppers.  Instead I decided to try a Estes Park, CO store, the Colorado Cherry Company, to find a higher quality substitute.  Cleary, this place does more than just cherries; they make a wide variety of sauces, jams, jellies, and preserves, and at least I have no doubt everything in there is made from actual food!  This queso would have been good by itself for dipping chips or veggies, but all I needed to do was heat it up and pour it over the meat as a sauce.  The meat…  Now THAT was tasty!  Roast beef is nothing special in my opinion, but for some reason, heating it up and getting some “brown” on it really improved it.  After the veggies sautéed in butter I tossed the thin slices into the pan and within less than a minute their flavor was amped up by a factor of ten.  Hoagie rolls buttered and toasted on a griddle were the final touch.

The resulting sandwich is not quite a Philly cheesesteak, which features actual steak and provolone (I had to look it up!), but it is a much cheaper and quicker cook with these shortcuts.  But no matter what it costs, I highly recommend making the investment in some “real” cheese sauce!  That’s it… There goes my Velveeta endorsement.