instant pot risotto

What’s for supper? Vol. 396: Season of mists and mellow soupfulness

Happy Friday! I was looking through my camera roll for this week’s food pics, and came across this image:

and smiled quietly to myself. Then I thought if I shared it, I really need to hunt up the source, so I searched for it on Facebook, which helpfully supplied this as the only hit:

I guess Facebook never heard of snitches get stitches.

Alternate joke:
. . .nah, never mind, I was gonna do a thing about misusing substances while shouting “I refute it thus!” and then breaking your foot, but in fact college was just too long ago.

(But actually the source is this funny lady on Instagram.)

Speaking of substance, I have lost six pounds in the last two weeks, by more or less adhering to the eating plan I outlined here. I’ve been up and down enough times to know that things could go south (or north, I guess) at any point, either because I sabotage myself or something outside my control happens; but dammit, I did lose six pounds. Usually I can lose four pounds and it doesn’t mean anything, but six pounds is enough to get my attention.

My secret weapon is neither GLP-1 nor cocaine, but gum. Because my big problem, when I’m trying to lose weight, is not really that I get hungry; it’s that my mouth gets lonely. So I give it some gum, and it works. This is humiliating for me because I’ve spent my entire adult life being absolutely horrible to people for chewing gum in my presence. Oh well. I’m just trying not to be an absolute cow about it, and if anyone wants me to apologize, I will.

Okay, that’s enough of that! Here is how we made our mouths less lonely this week:

SATURDAY
Salmon tacos or mac and cheese

I had already defrosted some salmon filets the previous day, but we had…something else, I don’t even remember.It was not a week worth remembering, as I recall. But I’m trying really hard to waste less food, so I patted the filets dry and sprinkled them with .. . I think salt and cayenne pepper? I don’t remember. Then I heated up a pan super hot with a layer of olive oil, and put them salmon on, skin down. I let it cook for probably four minutes and then flipped it over and cooked it for just another minute or so. Then I squeezed a lime over it. Turned out really nice! Not dry.

I only made four pieces because the kids that were home are not fish lovers.

I made a bowl of guacamole and shredded up some cabbage, which I set out like this and nobody said a thing about it

This is top tier food humor, but my talent is wasted.

So we just had really simple little tacos with the salmon, cabbage, and guac, with more lime

Nice.

SUNDAY
Cinnamon garlic chicken, roast squash and Brussels sprouts, hobbit bread; Rosemary olive oil cake with homemade ice cream

Sunday was Clara’s birthday, and she did the baking at her apartment and then brought it over here to finish. So I made the garlic cinnamon chicken I make at Passover

Jump to Recipe

and a big tray of roast butternut squash and Brussels sprouts. I drizzled them with olive oil and hot honey and sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and broiled them. Dinner ended up quite a bit later than expected, so I ended up scraping them into a pan and keeping them warm under tinfoil, but this wasn’t a bad thing! Just a bit more medey’d than usual.

Clara brought a giant, pneumatic loaf of bread to bake, which turned out lovely, very tender

and she baked the olive oil rosemary cake from Parsley and Icing. She put rosewater in the frosting instead of vanilla, and she decorated it with phlox blossoms.

NOTE: Perennial phlox is edible, but annual phlox is not!!!! Decorate accordingly, depending on whose birthday it is and whether you would like them to have more.

But it was such a lovely cake, and a great texture.

I was very pleased with myself because, a few months ago, I found a KitchenAid stand mixer on FB Marketplace for an amazing price. I believe it’s from the 90’s and works great, and it’s GREEN.

Well-received, as you can see, and obviously she will put it to good use! My own KitchenAid was a wedding present in 1997, and it was refurbished then, and it’s still going strong. A few years ago it needed oiling, and Damien put a new cord on it this year, but other than that, it’s been working away with zero problems. If you are thinking of getting a KitchenAid, I highly recommend a used one.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to figure out when the decline that everyone is sad about actually happened, and it’s really hard to say. Some people are saying the newer models have a sacrificial gear that’s designed to break, to spare the engine, and it’s actually a cheap fix; but others are saying the whole design got nickeled and dimed and is just not the workhoree it once was. So, that was a paragraph without any actual information in it, sorry. Anyway, at very least, a used one will be way cheaper. My eyes really bugged out when I saw the price tag for a new machine!

Anyway, after dinner and presents, we had such a nice, happy evening, just sitting around yakking. Damien and I kind of sat back and let the kids talk, and it really warmed my heart to listen to them just enjoying each other’s company, talking about movies and candy and whatever. I sure like my kids.

Oh, I forgot about the ice cream! I made both kinds in the morning, which is a bit of a gamble because some ice creams don’t firm up enough in a few hours. They were on the soft side, but still scoopable.

I did one with almond, and I just did the Ben and Jerry’s sweet cream base (2 eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 cups of heavy cream, one cup of milk) and I added a big hit of almond extract; then after it churned for half an hour, I mixed in a bunch of toasted almonds.

For the other one, I followed this recipe for cardamom ice cream with warm ginger drizzle. Sounds complicated, but it was really easy. The ice cream is just milk, sugar, cream, and ground cardamom. Then for the drizzle, you heat up a little syrup of white sugar, brown sugar, and water, and then you add the ginger and boil it for a while. I don’t have a microplaner, so I used the small holes on my cheese grater, and ended up with little nubbins of ginger which were actually really nice.

Both kinds of ice cream turned out great. I wished the ginger drizzle had been thicker, but the taste was fabulous.

I really enjoyed the cardamom ginger one. I might make it again and boil down the ginger syrup until it’s really thick, and swirl it into the ice cream before freezing it.

MONDAY
Aldi pizza

My car has gone crackerdog again, and Damien can fix it but the parts are taking forevvver to come, so we’ve been doing a lot of duck-fox-basket of corn maneuvers every day, with the extra added spice of one kid doing a ton of dental appointments before he loses his insurance, and another kid doing a wisdom tooth consult (where we learned that she has one lone third tooth deep down in her gums! Not a baby tooth or an adult tooth or even a mesiodens, but just a little bonus guy. I like to think that, in tooth society, this is the equivalent of a holy fool, which doesn’t have any obvious specific value, but you gotta think it’s there for a reason, so you just make sure you know where it is). Anyway, we had Aldi pizza.

Also on Monday, I was seized by a sudden urge to clean and reconfigure the refrigerator. I basically switched the vegetables, which were in the bottom drawers, and the condiments, which in theory were in the door but in practice were scattered all over the place, many of them lying on their sides with loose tops, which is the main reason I suddenly got mad and cleaned the fridge.

So here’s the new sich:

You can see that we have replaced the bottom door shelf with a PVC rod and some screws, but the middle door shelf also recently broke and I haven’t fixed it yet. The bottom drawers have been replaced with plastic tubs, and the bottom shelf has been replaced with a wire closet shelf. I’m proud of my ingenuity but furious at the people who design refrigerators.

I also moved the eggs to a low-clearance shelf, so people won’t be able to put heavy things on top of them; and I put the packaged meat and the cheese on separate shelves, so people will stop mixing them up (which leads to nobody being able to find anything, and more food waste).

It’s weird having the veggies on the door, but I am the main person who needs to be able to find and grab them, so it’s a weirdness I can deal with. The things that the rest of the family uses more often are easily accessible. I really think I’ve done it this time! I’ve designed a system so perfect, no one will need to be good. This might actually work, because it’s just a refrigerator.

Anyway, we got to the oral surgeon.

TUESDAY
Pork chops with peach butter, mashed ginger acorn squash, risotto

I got pork chops because they were irresistibly cheap, but I really hate cooking pork chops. It’s a mental block. I’m so afraid they’re going to dry out, and I’m gonna serve the fibrous grey mittens that haunted my childhood, I always end up messing them up even if I have a great recipe. Pork ribs are fine; it’s just the chops I have issues with, even if they’re cut thick.

But Damien took a kid to the appointment that’s like an hour away and I recorded a podcast with A Simple House, which was fun! So I got moving and made a pot of Instant Pot risotto, which everybody likes.

Jump to Recipe

It’s not the same as stovetop risotto, of course, which is magnificent but so much work. But it’s still really good!

And I fetched an acorn squash from the garden, cut it in half, scooped out the seeds, drizzled it with olive oil and sprinkled it with salt, and roasted it. Then I scooped out the flesh and mashed it, and then I added the leftover ginger syrup, and a little cardamom.

I am a golden god and it was the best mashed squash I’ve ever had. The chops, I sprinkled with salt and pepper and lightly roasted them and served them with peach butter.

A very lovely autumnal meal altogether, very mellow fruitfulness. Not a stringy mitten in sight.

WEDNESDAY
Peach-stuffed waffles

Wednesday Damien had promised to take the kids to a concert in Boston, and Elijah was at work, and that meant that the only people home for dinner were me, Irene, Benny, and Corrie. Waffle time!

I broke out the old Mary Gubser cookbook and made a double batch of waffle batter.

The kids requested chocolate chip waffles, which is fine with me; but I myself wanted peach. We had a small jar of peach pie filling I never used, so I buttered the waffle iron, put on a thinnish layer of batter, and then spooned some peach filling on that,

and then a little more batter.

Dang, they were good.

I was very pleased with myself, and just sat there making more and more waffles until I suddenly remembered I had an article due in the morning. I told the kids they could watch three episodes of something, and went off to write, and then reemerged at 10 PM to discover that they had turned the TV off after three episodes, but I hadn’t said anything about going to bed, so they did not do that. I may have shouted, “WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID?” and they may have shouted “YES.” (You can do this every once in a while, for a treat, especially if you’re all full of waffles. I also tell them they’re smart, just to keep them on their toes.)

THURSDAY
Chicken orzo soup, rolls

Thursday I finally faced the oyakodon recipe I have been planning to make for weeks. But the truth is, I had a giant turkey breast in the fridge, which I got because it was 99 cents a pound, and which I had defrosted because I don’t remember why. Oyakodon really needs dark meat, but the breast was already thawed, and I honestly couldn’t remember if people even like it, and I didn’t have dashi, and so on.

BUT, it was a foggy, drizzly day in September, so I made regular old cheater’s soup. I just chunked that whole breast in the Instant Pot with a lot of water, carrots, onion, celery, a little parsley, and some salt and pepper, and pressed the “soup” button. When it was done, I tasted it and hastily added a few tablespoons of chicken bouillon powder. I pulled out the turkey breast and shredded it and put it dumped it back in, added a small box of orzo, and simmered that for a while, and heated up some frozen rolls from Walmart, and man. It was a perfect cozy little meal for a rainy day.

I love orzo in soup. It’s so elegant and comforting at the same time.

Also, Cub Scouts got cancelled because of the rain, to my vast relief. I really loved signing up for Cub Scouts. This whole “going to meetings” nonsense has to stop, though.

FRIDAY
Regular Spaghetti

Regular! Regular! Regular spaghetti, pasta from a box and sauce from a jar. We love it.

A quick update on the comments situation: I didn’t fix it, but I made it slightly better, so you’re far less likely to get follow-up emails from Russians trying to explain arcane things about ferrous metals, or someone crowing, “your piece is highly educative and wonderful. More power to your elbow!” (If all spam were like this I’d let it go, but most of it is boring and gross.) Anyway, that’s where that stands, and I apologize if your inbox has been haunted because of my site!

And that’s-a my story. Middle Aged mom out.

Cinnamon garlic roast chicken

This is the chicken we usually serve at passover, but of course you can make it any time of year. Faintly sweet and nicely cozy, it's popular with kids and tastes good cold.

Ingredients

4-5 lb whole chicken
2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cinnamon
5 cloves garlic, smashed

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 500.
Mix the spices together and rub them all over the outside of the chicken.
Stuff the cavity with the garlic.
Put the chicken breast side down on a rack and roast for 15 minutes.
Reduce heat to 450 and roast for another 15 minutes.
Turn chicken breast side up, baste with pan drippings, reduce heat to 425, and continue cooking for another thirty minutes or until temperature reads 180.
Let chicken stand 20 minutes before carving. Also can be refrigerated and carved later, to be eaten cold.

Almost as good as stovetop risotto, and ten billion times easier. Makes about eight cups.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground sage
3 Tbsp olive oil
4 cups rice, raw
6 cups chicken stock
2 cups dry white wine
1/2 cup butter
pepper
1.5 cups grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

Turn IP on sautee, add oil, and sautee the onion, garlic, salt, and sage until onions are soft.
Add rice and butter and cook for five minutes or more, stirring constantly, until rice is mostly opaque and butter is melted.
Press "cancel," add the broth and wine, and stir.
Close the top, close valve, set to high pressure for 9 minutes.
Release the pressure and carefully stir in the parmesan cheese and pepper. Add salt if necessary.

What’s for supper? Vol. 324: O tempora, o meatballs

What a weird week! Anyone else having a weird week? Just a weird ol’ week. But I just opened the curtains and there was a bluebird sitting on roof of the shed. First one I’ve seen this year. Bluebirds are neat. They’re a little bit boisterous, but very graceful, and they are happy to hang around in gangs at the feeder, without chasing other birds away. Very decorative birds, always a welcome visitor.

Here’s a slow mo video I took last year:

Anyway, here’s what we had while boistrously hanging around our feeder:

SATURDAY
Chicago style hot dogs, chips

These were not quite 100% authentic, which would require poppy seed buns, some kind of bright green relish, and sport peppers, but we did have tomatoes, pickled peppers, relish, mustard, pickle spears, chopped onion, and celery salt.

Really delicious. I got the idea for this from that meme that says the existence of a Chicago style hot dog implies the existence of an MLA style hot dog, which is a silly joke, but on the other hand, mmm, hot dogs.

SUNDAY
Steak, pork dumplings, cheesecake, strawberry ice cream

Sunday was my favorite husband’s birthday, so we had some of his favorite foods. He cooked steaks for everyone, pan fried in butter with garlic

(sorry, I know it’s Friday, sorry!)

and I used the pork dumpling filling I had stashed in the freezer from New Year’s Eve which is this recipe. I had seen one of those amazing videos where someone’s twinkling fingers forms dumplings into all kinds of beguiling shapes with a few simple pinches and folds, and woop! You have a dahlia and a lotus and a pinwheel. So even though I had dumpling wrappers that were fairly stiff and paper-like, and the video showed dumpling dough that was soft and pliable, I thought, “I CAN DO THAT.”

Friends, I could not.

But I gave it the old college try, and I did get some raw pork on my phone. And then I went back to using my dumpling press, which works great. So everyone had steamed dumplings while waiting for their steaks. In fact, I had leftover filling after I used up all the wrappers, so I added some panko bread crumbs and made little meatballs

so some people had little birthday meatballs.

I also made a bunch of strawberry ice cream

following the Ben and Jerry recipe, which always turns out light and sweet and lovely

Jump to Recipe

and I made a gigantic cheesecake. I have been sworn to secrecy about the particulars of this recipe, but LOOK AT MY CHEESECAKE

I think this is the first time I’ve achieved no cracks. I put all the ingredients out to come to room temperature the night before; I mixed it very lightly, so as to introduce as little air as possible, and scraped down the bowl often; and I baked it in a water bath, and then turned off the oven and let it sit in the cooling oven for a few hours before I took it out and started to chill it.

It was luscious.

I wish I had started 24 hours sooner, so I could have chilled it over night after baking it, but it was rich and smooth and lovely, and about a mile high.

MONDAY
One-pan garlic chicken thighs and roast veg

I used to make these one-pan chicken thigh meals a lot, and got kind of burnt out on them, so I backed off for a while. I guess it’s been long enough, because this was very popular.

Jump to Recipe

You can add whatever vegetables you want. My advice is to think about how long they need to cook, and try to cut them to the appropriate thickness, so they end up done at the same time.

I used about three pounds of potatoes with the skin on and few zucchinis and half a large butternut squash in wedges. In this variation, you season the vegetables, then lay the chicken on top and brush them (well, really smear them, as it’s pretty thick) with a garlicky brown sugar sauce, and then just chunk it in the oven.

Quite tasty. The sugar runs down into the pan and caramelizes the bottom of the potatoes, giving them a nice little crunch, and the chicken is juicy and the vegetables are tender.

TUESDAY
Meatball subs, fries

I wish I could remember what I did to these meatballs, because they were much better than my usual meatballs. Humph. I have become aware that I tend to underseason things, so possibly I just took a heavier hand with everything I sprinkled.

I briefly considered pan frying them, but then I remembered the shortness of life and just threw them on a broiler pan and baked them in a hot oven like I usually do, then transferred them to a crock pot with plenty of jarred sauce.

Good enough for the likes of us. O tempora, o meatballs.

WEDNESDAY
Chili verde, chips and pico de gallo, cornbread, pineapple, vanilla and peach-mango ice cream

On Wednesday, our friend Fr. Matt from Louisiana came for supper! My chili verde recipe

Jump to Recipe

is reasonably spicy, and calls for specific peppers. Well, the supermarket didn’t have those specific peppers. It just had bags of mixed peppers called “hot pepper combo” or something, and the label was one of those “may contain one or more of the following.” This is what I got:

I liked the looks of that, so I roasted them. I also tweaked my recipe a bit and roasted the onions and garlic along with them, rather than putting them onions and garlic into the food processor raw

then I puréed it all up with some cilantro, browned up a good amount of fatty, salted and peppered pork chunks in oil, and —

here is the point where I was already several hours behind schedule, because the school called to say that Benny had bruised her eyeball, and what should they do??? I had no idea, so I spent the new few hours calling various doctors and trying to get an appointment with the right person, and sending a kid to the store with a list of stuff I forgot to buy, and making other kids clean up the hideous house because we are really still in shock from Christmas and the house was looking PRETTY ROUGH, and by the time I got back to my chili, it was laaate. So I threw it in the Instant Pot, because it could tenderize the meat faster.

Unless, of course, the Instant Pot float valve is mysteriously missing. Which it was. So I put everything back in the regular non-instant pot, hoped it would cook fast enough, whizzed through making some corn bread (I just used the recipe on the package, which is fine)

and some pico de gallo

Jump to Recipe

and rescued the kitchen from complete squalor, and then one kid went to pick up some of the kids, and I called the school to tell them to tell Benny to wait for me to pick her up, and we went to the eye doctor and her eye is fine, thank God, just a little creepy; and when I got home, the chili was, if I may say so, perfect. The pork shredded readily with a wooden spoon

and when Fr. Matt got here, we had a lovely meal.

I made two kinds of ice cream: Plain vanilla, which is just two eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 cups milk, one cup heavy cream, and a dash of vanilla; and then I wanted to make mango, which I made for our anniversary baked alaska, but I couldn’t find mango pulp anywhere. (Here’s the recipe anyway, in case you can.)

Jump to Recipe

In theory, you can use your big brain and make mango pulp by pureeing mango, but I was being smart (even bigger brain time), and I knew that was a bridge too far. Just altogether too much work, and I definitely didn’t have time for that. So instead (tiny brain time) I went to the other store and bought some canned peaches, and pureed those, and also bought some fresh mangos and cut them up and macerated them in sugar with (possible big brain?) a little ground cloves.

The ice cream was . . . fine. I think peach and mango would have been fine, and peach and mango and cloves might possibly have worked, but peach, mango, cloves, and onion . . . now that really is a bridge too far. Yep, everyone was too polite to mention it, but I had cut the mangos up on the wooden cutting board and they had picked up an undeniable onion flavor (very tiny brain). Oh well! That’s why I made vanilla (big brain, with vanilla ice cream on top).

THURSDAY
Old Bay drumsticks, risotto, leftover cornbread

On Thursday I collapsed like a bunch of broccoli. I did something I almost never do: I got the kids to school (which took two trips, because one kid promised twice that she was awake, but then when it was time to go, she was just stumbling out of bed, so I had to come back for her) and then just went back to bed and conked out for another three hours. And then when I did get up, I was so dang dopey. Really the only thing I accomplished all day was to make risotto.

BUT WHAT RISOTTO. I was planning a butternut squash instant pot risotto, because I still had half the squash in the fridge left over from the chicken thigh meal; but oops, the instant pot pin was still missing. So I was tragically forced to spend a good amount of time slowly stirring ladles of chicken broth into the creamy rice and dreamily stirring it around, smelling the fragrant, buttery clouds of steam, and occasionally tasting it to make sure it was still, uh, I don’t know, I was just eating it.

Toward the end I threw in a giant mound of freshly-grated parmesan cheese and a big fistful of chopped parsley. You know what, no one complained that it didn’t have butternut squash in it.

The drumsticks were fine. I just roasted them in melted butter with plenty of Old Bay seasoning, and I set out the leftover corn bread.

We had to run off and get to an art show that the two high school girls had pieces in. Arty kids! We met the art teacher and warned her about the kid who’s coming next year. The general principle is that, if you’ve met one Fisher kid, you’ve met one Fisher kid, but this is especially true with Irene.

FRIDAY
Seafood lo mein

And finally Friday. Man.

I haven’t made lo mein for a while. It’s easy, and Damien and Lena and I and maybe one other person really like it, but no one else does.

Jump to Recipe

When I made the chili verde, I got some cup o’ noodle for the kids who wouldn’t want it, so I expect they’ll be returning to that well for this meal. I don’t insist that people eat what I make. They’re welcome to fix themselves something else, as long as they’re not rude about it and don’t make a huge mess. I aim to make foods that most of the family will enjoy for about five days a week, and then one or two meals can be things that people with more cultivated palates will enjoy. I have found that this no-pressure constant exposure to different foods is as good a way as any to introduce kids to a variety of foods, and pretty often, they start venturing into new territory of their own volition, just out of curiosity. But if they don’t (and some kids don’t), that’s okay, too. Because it’s just food. There are plenty of other things to fight about! I do care about food, a lot, but I care more about not making anyone miserable over food.

Guys, I’m trying so hard to bring this back around to bluebirds, but it’s just not working, so I’ll just say goodbye.

Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients

For the strawberries

1 pint fresh strawberries
1-1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

For the ice cream base

2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy or whipping cream
1 cup milk

Instructions

Hull and slice the strawberries. Mix them with the sugar and lemon juice, cover, and refrigerate for an hour.

Make the ice cream base:

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs for two minutes until fluffy.
Add in the sugar gradually and whisk another minute.
Pour in the milk and cream and continue whisking to blend.

Put it together:

Mash the strawberries well, or puree them in a food processor. Stir into the ice cream base.
Add to your ice cream maker and follow the directions. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes, then transfer the ice cream to a container, cover it, and put it in the freezer.)

One pan honey garlic chicken thighs with fall veg

Adapted from Damn Delicious

Ingredients

18 chicken thighs
2 lbs broccoli in spears
4-5 lbs potatoes in wedges, skin on if you like
1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed

sauce:

1/3+ cup honey
1/3+ cup brown sugar
3 tbsp dijon or yellow mustard
9 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp dried basil
salt and pepper
6 tbsp olive oil
olive oil for drizzing

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400. Prepare the sauce.
In a large, greased sheet pan, spread the potatoes and squash. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Lay the chicken thighs on top of the potatoes and squash. Brush the sauce over the chicken skins.
Roast the chicken for thirty minutes or more until they are almost cooked.
Add the broccoli, arranging it on top of the potatoes and in between the chicken. Return the pan to the oven and let it finish cooking another 10 -20 minutes so you don't die. The skins should be golden and the broccoli should be a little charred.

Mango ice cream

Ingredients

30 oz (about 3 cups) mango pulp
2 cups heavy or whipping cream
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 mango, chopped into bits

Instructions

In a bowl, whisk the milk, sugar, and salt until blended.
Add in the mango pulp and cream and stir with a spoon until blended.
Cover and refrigerate two hours.
Stir and transfer to ice cream maker. Follow instructions to make ice cream. (I use a Cuisinart ICE-20P1 and churn it for 30 minutes.)
After ice cream is churned, stir in fresh mango bits, then transfer to a freezer-safe container, cover, and freeze for several hours.

Spicy Chili Verde

You can decrease the heat by seeding the peppers, using fewer habañeros, or substituting some milder pepper. It does get less spicy as it cooks, so don't be alarmed if you make the salsa and it's overwhelming!

Ingredients

5 lbs pork shoulder
salt and pepper
oil for cooking
2 cups chicken broth or beer (optional)

For the salsa verde:

4 Anaheim peppers
2 habañero peppers
4 jalapeño peppers
4 medium onions
12 tomatillos
1 head garlic, cloves peeled
1 bunch cilantro

For serving:

lime wedges
sour cream
additional cilantro for topping

Instructions

Preheat the broiler.
Pull the husks and stems off the tomatillos and rinse them. Cut the ends off all the peppers. Grease a large pan and put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions on it. Broil five minutes, turn, and broil five minutes more, until they are slightly charred.
When they are cool enough to handle, you can at this point remove the seeds from the peppers to decrease the spiciness, if you want.
Put the tomatillos, peppers, and onions in a food processor or blender with the garlic and cilantro. Purée.
In a heavy pot, heat some oil. Salt and pepper the pork chunks and brown them in the oil. You will need to do it in batches so the pork has enough room and browns, rather than simmering.
When all the meat is browned, return it all to the pot and add the puréed ingredients.
Simmer at a low heat for at least three hours until the meat is tender. If you want thinner chili verde, stir in the chicken broth or beer. If you don't want the pork in large chunks, press the meat with the back of a spoon to make it collapse into shreds.
Spoon the chili verde into bowls, squeeze some lime juice over the top, and top with sour cream and fresh cilantro.

Pico De Gallo

quick and easy fresh dip or topping for tacos, etc.

Ingredients

2 large tomatoes, diced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced OR 1/2 serrano pepper
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1/8 cup lime juice
dash kosher salt

Instructions

Mix ingredients together and serve with your favorite Mexican food

Suppli (or Arancini)

Breaded, deep fried balls of risotto with a center of melted mozzarella.
Make the risotto first and leave time to refrigerate the suppli before deep frying.

Ingredients

12 cups chicken stock
8 + 8 Tbs butter
1 cup finely chopped onions
4 cups raw rice
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup grated parmesan cheese

To make suppli out of the risotto:

risotto
1 beaten egg FOR EACH CUP OF RISOTTO
bread crumbs or panko bread crumbs
plenty of oil for frying
mozzarella in one-inch cubes (I use about a pound of cheese per 24 suppli)

Instructions

Makes enough risotto for 24+ suppli the size of goose eggs.

Set chicken stock to simmer in a pot.

In a large pan, melt 8 Tbs. of the butter, and cook onions slowly until soft but not brown.

Stir in raw rice and cook 7-8 minutes or more, stirring, until the grains glisten and are opaque.

Pour in the wine and boil until wine is absorbed.

Add 4 cups of simmering stock and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally until the liquid is almost absorbed.

Add 4 more cups of stock and cook until absorbed.

If the rice is not tender by this point, keep adding cups of stock until it is tender. You really want the rice to expand and become creamy.

When rice is done, gently stir in the other 8 Tbs of butter and the grated cheese with a fork.
This risotto is wonderful to eat on its own, but if you want to make suppli out of it, read on!
TO MAKE THE SUPPLI:

Beat the eggs and gently mix them into the risotto.

Scoop up about 1/4 cup risotto mixture. Press a cube of mozzarella. Top with another 1/4 cup scoop of risotto. Roll and form an egg shape with your hands.

Roll and coat each risotto ball in bread crumbs and lay in pan to refrigerate.

Chill for at least an hour to make the balls hold together when you fry them.

Put enough oil in pan to submerge the suppli. Heat slowly until it's bubbling nicely, but not so hot that it's smoking. It's the right temperature when little bubbles form on a wooden spoon submerged in the oil.

Preheat the oven if you are making a large batch, and put a paper-lined pan in the oven.

Carefully lower suppli into the oil. Don't crowd them! Just do a few at a time. Let them fry for a few minutes and gently dislodge them from the bottom. Turn once if necessary. They should be golden brown all over.

Carefully remove the suppli from the oil with a slotted spoon and eat immediately, or keep them warm in the oven.

basic lo mein

Ingredients

for the sauce

1 cup soy sauce
5 tsp sesame oil
5 tsp sugar

for the rest

32 oz uncooked noodles
sesame oil for cooking
add-ins (vegetables sliced thin or chopped small, shrimp, chicken, etc.)
2/3 cup rice vinegar (or mirin, which will make it sweeter)

Instructions

Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside.
Boil the noodles until slightly underdone. Drain and set aside.
Heat up a pan, add some sesame oil for cooking, and quickly cook your vegetables or whatever add-ins you have chosen.
Add the mirin to the pan and deglaze it.
Add the cooked noodles in, and stir to combine. Add the sauce and stir to combine.

What’s for supper? Vol. 317: Little Bear food

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Happy Friday! Another week of nippy weather, and I’m really settling into cozy fall cooking. I’m doing some planning for Thanksgiving, by which I mean I bought a second potato masher at the thrift store. I have always been a wiggly line potato masher kind of gal, but now I’m branching out into the grid-on-a-circle style, and I have high hopes. Because I just don’t make very good mashed potatoes, and it’s probably the masher’s fault.

However, I am happy to announce that I used up the last of the apples! Very satisfactory. Read on.

SATURDAY

I’m skeptical Saturday even happened. I have no idea what we ate.

SUNDAY
Pizza

You may recall how, last time I made pizza, I committed the high crime of not making any just-cheese pizza. Well, this time I did! And the kids made exactly as big a fuss about it as if I hadn’t (“Well SHEESH, Mama, the only reason we’re ASKING is because LAST time . . . “). But I did make a cheese pizza. I really did. I also made one pepperoni and one olive, fresh garlic, and anchovy.

Man, I need to do something about that grout. Good pizza, though.

MONDAY
Pork ribs, applesauce, mashed acorn squash, risotto

APPLE ARMAGEDDON. There were dozens and dozens of soft, spotty, dinged-up apples hanging around the dining room in bags and boxes and government-owned mail cartons driving me mad, so on Monday I gathered them up, hacked them into quarters, threw them in my biggest pot, added a little water (too much, like I do every year), and let them simmer loosely covered for a few hours.

I left everything intact, peels, cores, everything, and when they were soft enough to collapse under the weight of a wooden spoon, I ran them through my wonderful food mill, very similar to this one (affiliate link):

The food mill is one of the few once-a-year kitchen gadgets I allow to take up space in my tiny kitchen, because nothing else does exactly what a food mill does (i.e. not only smooshes the food, but separates out the undesirable parts). I was a little dismayed to dismayed to discover that someone had put it away last year after using it to make applesauce but not necessarily super duper washing it out, bleh. It has a pot with handle and bowl clips, a crank and blade, and a screw with a sweeping arm for underneath, and [deep shuddery breath] you really do need to take it apart to clean it properly.

But a little scrubbing did the trick, and I was soon cranking out sweet, beauteous applesauce.

I didn’t take a picture of the refuse because it’s just not pretty, but I’m always impressed at how efficient the food mill is. If you keep cranking, it really gets every last possible scrap of edible material, and just leaves the barest minimum of waste behind. Then you crank it backwards a few turns and it scrapes the leavings up into a little heap for you to whack out into the trash. Very satisfying activity altogether.

After several batches, I was left with a heavy, steaming bowl of fragrant, rosy applesauce, and it smelled so nice, I was tempted to just leave it at that. But I did pitch in a bunch of cinnamon, a generous drizzle of honey, and a lump of butter, and mix it up.

I covered it and left it alone, and it was so dense, it stayed warm until dinnertime. I felt like a fairy tale mother. Everyone was very pleased.

I served it with pork ribs, just roasted quickly on a rack in a very hot oven with salt and pepper, and some rich, cheesy Instant Pot risotto, and some mashed acorn squash

What an excellent meal. Here is the recipe for Instant Pot risotto, which isn’t quite quite as creamy and luxurious as stovetop risotto, but it’s pretty darn close, and it’s easy enough to throw together on a weeknight, with onions, sage, white wine, and chicken broth.

Jump to Recipe

You can add in any number of things, including squash if you’re not already serving squash.

But I was, and I was trying a new method. Normally I roast it in the oven and then mash it. This time, I cooked it in the Instant Pot, and I learned a tip to sprinkle it with kosher salt and baking soda first, allegedly to help caramelize it, before mashing it with your add-ins. Here’s the full recipe:

Jump to Recipe

and whoa, it was excellent.

I have no idea if the process really made that much of a difference or if i just got hold of some really tasty squash, but it was amazingly flavorful. Yay! Damien really liked it, so I’ll definitely do it this way from now on.

TUESDAY
Ima’s Everything Soup and overnight bread

On Monday night, I started some bread dough using an exceedingly vague recipe someone, I’m sorry I can’t remember who, put on Facebook. To wit:

Ingredients

3 cups All Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups warm water

In a large bowl combine flour, active dry yeast and salt. Mix together. Add water, and stir until blended; dough will be sticky. Give it ten good folds. Cover bowl with a tea towel. Let dough rest overnight for 10 to 12 hours at room temp.

In the morning, your dough will have grown x2- then give it a few folds (I basically scraped the dough off the sides of the bowl towards the middle), empty it out onto a piece of parchment paper and let it rest for 30 minutes. If dough is sticky and hard to work with, add a bit of flour so it doesn’t stick to your hands. Score your bread with a knife. (I made an “x” on the top.)

While dough is resting, preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Put a covered 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (Dutch oven, enamel, ceramic) in oven as it heats for about 30 minutes.

Carefully remove pot from oven. IT’S VERY HOT. Pick up parchment paper with dough and slide directly into pot (ie dough sitting on the parchment). Cover with lid and bake 35-40 minutes at 425 Degrees F. LID WILL BE HOT – remove lid and bake another 10-15 minutes, until loaf is golden brown.

You can eat it warm with butter or wait until it cools.

Okay, that seemed simple enough! I tripled the recipe and left it in a big bowl to rise overnight. I ended up using more flour than it called for because it was not just “sticky,” it was like batter, and really couldn’t be called dough.

The next day, it had risen nicely and was more dough-like, but I did add yet more flour to be able to handle it. I poured it out in two batches onto parchment paper and let it rest 30 minutes as directed.

I don’t seem to have any dutch ovens (the contents of my kitchen are always vaguely mysterious to me), so I heated up a glass casserole dish and a large iron frying pan, and baked it in two batches in that. You’re supposed to bake it with the lid on, then uncover it and finish baking. Since my containers didn’t have lids, I used tin foil, which stuck to the dough, so when I pulled it off, it peeled some of the bread crust off with it. I could have avoided this by spraying it with cooking spray, or covering it with a bowl or something else with more clearance.

But overall, it came out of the oven looking like bread!

Quite dense and rather chewy, but real bread, a really good return for the miniscule amount of labor and very basic ingredients I put into it.

So that was nice. It was pretty good with a little soft butter and a sprinkle of salt, and it hit the spot along with the hearty soup I made.

This seems to be a version of Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread that everybody got all worked up about a while ago. He gives more precise directions and his technique requires more time, but does seem to produce a nicer loaf. So now you know everything I do.

The soup is an adaptation of my mother’s minestrone soup, which she used to call “everything soup.” Minstrone soup usually has vegetables, greens, beans, tomato, and some kind of pasta or rice. My mother’s version doesn’t have tomato and it does have meat. She used ground beef; I used mild sausage. She used celery; I swapped in zucchini instead. She specified frozen spinach, and I used fresh. I skipped the wine and used fresh parmesan. But otherwise, this is basically her recipe, which is basically minestrone. Or not! It has onions, garlic, carrots, zucchini, chick peas, sausage, spinach, beef broth (and wine) and is topped with a little parmesan.

I cooked it a little too long and it got a little blurry, but it was tremendously nourishing and cozy. This is Little Bear food.

Together with the world’s most basic bread, it was a very fine little meal for a chilly day.

And here is where I have to express my admiration for people who cook but don’t enjoy the process. I salute you! I like to eat; goodness knows, I like to eat. But I like to cook almost as much, if not more. The sight and sounds and sensations, the smells and textures and patterns of food being processed are a constant delight to me, even when I’m in a hurry. Peeling and cutting and chopping and grating, rinsing and stirring, steaming and simmering and tossing. Every onion is different inside! Every head of lettuce has its own music when it’s torn. The colors, the colors. It is all absolutely my jam.

What a treat to peer down through the top of a shiny box grater and watch the little torrents of parmesan billowing through the holes as I shred, and then sensing that the grater is stuffed full and needs to be knocked empty against the scarred wooden board, until it spills out its little bounty of delicate curls into the sun.

And then I also like to eat! Lucky me.

WEDNESDAY
Shawarma

Honest to goodness, I thought it was Thursday, and I was so annoyed at myself for putting off this meal all week, so I was painted into a Thursday corner and had to make a slightly laborious dinner twice in a row, first the soup and bread, then the shawarma. I had been up all night with a cold and fever, struggling with the delusion that I had hidden a terrible, purple secret on top of a mountain and so needed to get my socks off. Then I got up and I was like, OH NO, AND NOW I HAVE TO MAKE SHAWARMA, I HAVE NO CHOICE BECAUSE IT’S THURSDAY. In retrospect, I may still have been a little sick. Luckily, shawarma is actually easy enough that you can make it when you’re a little loopy.

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs were on sale, and that is the best kind of chicken to use for shawarma, so I didn’t have to do much processing, just trim the fat off a bit. The marinade is easy, and the rest is just really chopping and opening jars and cans. And crushing plenty of garlic.

Jump to Recipe

So I set several pounds of chicken to marinate in the morning, and made up a big bowl of yogurt sauce

Jump to Recipe

Corrie was home too, so she juiced lemons for me, and also cut up the cucumbers. So we had pita, cucumbers, tomatoes, black and kalamata olives, feta cheese, yogurt sauce, and hummus. I marinated just the chicken and then spread red onions over the top of the chicken before I cooked it. And that was it! Great meal. Everyone loves it. A little bit of work on the front end, but it’s all easy, with no exotic ingredients, and it’s just so tasty.

Sometimes I make homemade pita or stuffed grape leaves or fried eggplant with this meal, but this is the basic form and it’s great as is.

THURSDAY
Taco Thursday

Thursday turned out to be Thursday, for whatever reason, and so we had tacos. I don’t make the rules. (Well, I do, but I don’t have to explain myself.)

FRIDAY
Spaghetti pangrattato

Something new for us. Pasta with lemon, parsley, seasoned breadcrumbs, capers, and bits of fried egg!! from Smitten Kitchen. I think this is one of those delicious, delicious poverty dishes the Italians are so good at. I’m guessing most of the kids will just want plain pasta, but you never know.

Or maybe we’ll just have spaghetti! The kids have the day off for Veteran’s Day and maybe I’ll do the weekend shopping on Friday and have the actual weekend off for once, to do something fun. Although so far all I have managed to do is sleep for twelve hours, which I haven’t done in years, and I think that means I am still sick.

Oh, I just remembered what we had on Saturday. Corn dogs! Corn dogs and hot pretzels. With a side of mustard.

Instant Pot Mashed Acorn Squash

Ingredients

1 acorn quashes
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Instructions

Cut the acorn squashes in half. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt on the cut surfaces.
Put 1/2 a cup of water in the Instant Pot, fit the rack in it, and stack the squash on top. Close the lid, close the valve, and cook on high pressure for 24 minutes. Do quick release.
When squash is cool enough to handle, scoop it out into a bowl, mash it, and add the rest of the ingredients.

Ima's Everything Soup

heavily adapted from a sort-of-minestrone soup my mother used to make

Ingredients

1+ lbs loose mild sausage (my mother used ground beef)
olive oil if necessary
1 medium onion, diced
4-5 cloves garlic, crushed
1-1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp ground pepper
2 large carrots, diced
1 zucchini, diced with the skin on
6-12 cups beef broth
4 cups fresh spinach (frozen is also fine)
1/4 cup red wine (optional)
1 cup small pasta like pastina, raw
1 can chickpeas, drained
salt to taste
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

In a pot, cook the sausage, crumbling, until it's cooked through. Add olive oil if necessary to keep from burning. (If using an Instant Pot, use the sauté function for the first two steps.)
Add in garlic, onion, oregano, and pepper. Cook another several minutes until the onion is soft.
Add in the carrots and zucchini, and pour in the broth (and wine if using), and stir. If cooking on stovetop, cover loosely and let simmer for twenty minutes. (If using an Instant Pot, add all the ingredients except the cheese, close the lid, close the valve, and press "soup.")
Add in the spinach and chickpeas and continue simmering another ten minutes. Add in the pasta ten minutes before serving and cook until soft. If the soup is too thick and too much broth has been absorbed, add another 4-5 cups of broth. Top with parmesan.