Braised Chicken with Apples and Sage
I wanted a perfect braised chicken recipe for a chilly fall afternoon, so I turned to epicurious.com. The recipe I made seemed quite familiar, but I haven’t mentioned it on this site, so here it is.
I had to simmer it longer than 20 minutes — it was not cooked through yet at that point.Otherwise, I followed the recipe pretty closely. I normally use boneless/skinless, but I went with bone-in skin on thighs and it made it quite tender and moist. Altogether, an easy and taste meal but nothing spectacular.
Get the recipe from epicurious.com >>>
Apple Strudel Muffins
I’ve made this twice in the past two weeks, so I thought I”d better mention it for future reference! Since my son had a field trip at an Apple Orchard, we came away with a lot of apples! What a better use for them but some of these yummy “desert” muffins. I love cinnamon sugar and the apple chunks inside are just a wonderful surprise in every bite.
Lentil Sausage Soup
I liked Ina Garten’s Lentil Sausage Soup, and my husband loved it. I want to make sure I make it again, for his sake! The sausage was my favorite part of it.
I pretty much followed the recipe but I used brown lentils instead of the “French green” lentils, which I couldn’t find. I also used a bit less chicken stock, but I didn’t measure so I’m not sure how much I used.
Penne Ponza
Most delicious pasta ever. It’s perfect because it’s not a heavy creamy sauce, but the tomatoes and breadcrumbs mixture is absolutely delicious. My husband added red pepper flakes to his serving; he said it didn’t have quite enough flavor. But I loved it so much just as it was.
Popovers
My son and I made the popovers recipe from Pretend Soup. I’ve never made popovers and I must say these were absolutely delicious! Especially considering how easy they were to make, this is something we’ll do again.
My son loved every part: watching the butter melt in the microwave, spreading the butter into the muffin tin with a pastry brush, cracking the eggs, stirring the milk and flour into the eggs, putting the batter in the muffin tin, watching the batter get big in the oven, and, of course, eating three popovers with butter, maple syrup, and grape jelly.
And he’s only 23 months old. Cooking with my son is turning out to be so much fun, because he is obviously enjoying it so much.
I can’t, of course, post the recipe from the book for copyright reasons, even if it does have only four ingredients. But go check out Molly‘s slightly-more-complicated-but-certainly-delicious popover recipe. It also looks good.
Churros
I’d eaten these and loved them, but I’d never made them before. The dough worked out fine, and our only problem turned out to be the pastry piping bags: ours were so cheap they fell apart as we tried to squeeze the dough into the hot oil. Putting the dough in without the pastry bags created somewhat uglier churros, but they tasted just as good!
Arroz con Crema
This is a delicious rice casserole option. What else is there to say? I liked it. It was easy and tasty. I’ll definitely make it again.
Chimichurri-Rub Kabobs
Oh yum! These were so good. I put the kabobs together and my husband did the grilling. He mentioned he intended to make a dressing with the same spices and herbs that were in the chimichurri rub, but we didn’t get to them. Nevermind: these kabobs were delicious just as they were.
I admit that I didn’t eat any of the poblanos. Even my husband admitted they were hotter than he thought they’d be. I also am not a huge fan of mushrooms. But I think a variety of other vegetables would work on these kabobs: zucchini, bell peppers, etc. I used Roma tomatoes and cut them in to quarters. I don’t put amounts by the vegetable ingredients below because it really depends on how much you want to use. I think I used about 10 ounces of onions, but I wish I had more. I also used four pobalno chiles and that was too many. I had at least a pound of tomatoes, but I wanted more because I loved the grilled tomatoes. I didn’t have enough mushrooms; I think I had just one carton.
I used about 1/2 regular paprika and 1/2 smoked paprika; I wish I’d had smoked paprika for all of it, but we were out. I also used a sirloin tip steak, rather than the ribeye, simply for cost purposes.
We prepared these kabobs for dinner guests, so of course, we were hurrying around at the last minute getting dinner on the table. When do other food bloggers take a picture of their food? I’ve considered it every time I’ve made something new, but I just don’t know when to find time to do it. These kabobs seriously came off the grill and onto the table for consuming.
I wish there were leftovers.
Cheddar Shortcakes
What does one eat with Cream of Tomato soup? Cheddar shortcakes.
I love a simple quick bread recipe, and this particular recipes makes large, tasty biscuits that dips well in a simple, thin soup.