Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Chicken Breasts Roasted on Tomatoes and Fennel

January 10, 2014 by Mary 14 Comments

Having to cook extremely low fat for my youngest son has forced me to get super creative on how to make tasty dishes that won’t stick to the pan. This dish I made recently, turned out so delicious that I will make it again and again, even if he can start eating regular amounts of fat. It’s Chicken Breasts Roasted on Tomatoes and Fennel. It’s very low fat and really yummy and so fresh tasting! If you count on the bright flavors of your ingredients, roast at a high temperature to bring out their best, you won’t need a lot of oil or butter.

In contrast to this dinner, I want to tell you about a conversation I had with another fellow shopper in Fairway last weekend. We were both at the cheese counter and she was ahead of me being waited on. They didn’t have exactly what she asked for, so she said to the cheesemonger, “Okay just pick out 3 cheeses for me for my cheese course. I’m having a dinner party and doing a whole French thing.”

Naturally my ears perked up and I said, “Sounds nice! What are you making?”

She excitedly recited her whole menu. She said she was starting with a Garlic Cream Soup, then the main course would be a Dijon Mustard Tarragon Chicken with a Cream Sauce, mashed potatoes with Gruyere cheese, the braised leek recipe from Julia Child (tons of butter) and then the cheese course. I don’t know all of the cheeses she got but the last one that was handed over to her was a half of a wheel of triple cream brie.

I was good. I didn’t go into lecture mode. I nodded my head and said, “Wow”.

She said, “ Yeah, it’s hardy. It’s cold outside.”

Hardy?? I say it’s hearty and that it’s so bad for your heart!

When I told my husband the story while driving home, he asked if she was serving Lipitor for dessert. Or perhaps it was a dinner that included her 87 year-old aunt with a heart problem who she could do without?

I mean really, first off, to me, this dinner sounds so unappealing. Way too rich. Not to mention, colorless. Although a special-dinner-party-cheese overload never hurt anyone on occasion, if this is an habitual way of cooking and eating, that’s a health problem. I can’t fault this woman for cooking a homemade meal, and with love, it sounded like, for her friends, but I wanted to say to her, it could still be an amazing meal without cheese, cream or butter in every course. It really can.

This recipe here uses just a little peanut oil and a little olive oil, which are both low in saturated fat and high in a “good” fat, monounsaturated, which helps to lower cholesterol. With the Dijon mustard and moisture from the vegetables, you’ll be surprised at just how delicious it tastes without a drop of cream in sight!

So eat healthy. Feel great and be happy. Make this tasty dish with LOVE and you won’t miss a bite of butter or cream.

CHICKEN BREASTS ROASTED ON TOMATOES AND FENNEL – serves 5

5 boneless skinless chicken breasts, trimmed of all fat
Peanut oil
1 rounded tbs. Dijon mustard
1 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. thyme leaves
2 tsp. chopped sage leaves
Salt to taste
Fresh cracked pepper to taste
1 large plum tomato – sliced into 5 slices
1/2 of a large fennel bulb, sliced into 5 slices
Chopped parsley for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Lightly slick a rimmed baking sheet with a little peanut oil. Whisk the olive oil and mustard together and stir in the fresh herbs.

On the baking sheet, lay out one tomato slice and one fennel slice together in five pairs to form a base for each chicken breast.

Salt and pepper each breast to taste and brush the herbed mustard mixture on both sides and place on top of the pairs of tomatoes and fennel. Roast on the top shelf in the oven for 15 – 17 minutes until just cooked through.

Garnish with chopped parsley. I didn’t do this but it would have been prettier if I did.

Enjoy good clean cooking!

Carrot Ginger Soup – Perfect to Start New Year’s Eve Dinner

December 31, 2013 by Mary 26 Comments

Having to cook “clean” – low fat – for my son has forced me to get creative and explore new territory I might not otherwise have tried, and this Carrot Ginger Soup is one of those dishes.

I made this to start our Christmas dinner and it was so good that I’m making it again today to start our New Year’s Eve dinner tonight. I think it will be perfect. Our kids have all gone back to Manhattan and we are having dear friends and my brother and his wife for an intimate dinner party here in the country.

My brother is bringing caviar and champagne (I’m so excited!) as well as the red wine for dinner. (He is our expert wine pairer for this blog and has even started his own blog, www.wineandfoodpairings.net, so check it out when you have a chance.) Margaret is bringing an appetizer and I want to do a lovely but simple dinner that will allow me to be out of the kitchen and in front of the fire, partying!

So we will start with this clean tasting and delicious soup. I plan to garnishing it with a little chopped cilantro and a few toasted pepita seeds. The original recipe is from the Hay Day Country Market Cookbook and I have made it many times in the past. Prior to this trauma with our son, I would have made this with chicken broth, using 4 tbs. of butter and garnished it with crème fraiche. See how low fat it became with 2 tbs. of butter, 1 tbs. of olive oil, vegetable broth and no crème fraiche? And, no loss of flavor to boot, I think we all should be eating this way! So much better for you.

I also only used 1 ounce of fresh ginger as we wanted it mellow on the spice for Zach. If you want it spicier, use 2 ounces. We are going to splurge on the main course with spice grilled rib steaks, BUT I’m pairing them with steamed snow pea pods with shiitake mushrooms and only the mushrooms will have a bit of butter, and potatoes Anna with only a tablespoon of butter, because I make it in a skillet on the stove top. Christmas cookies for dessert, along with some fresh blackberries and mango sorbet for my gluten-free sister-in-law, will finish off this year.

What do you plan to make?

Happy New Year to you all – wishing you great health, peace, wealth and LOVE!!

GINGER CARROT SOUP – serves 6

1 Tbs. olive oil
2 Tbs. unsalted butter
1 – 2 oz. piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 lbs. of fresh carrots, scrubbed and chopped into 1” pieces
1 cup of dry white wine
5 cups of vegetable stock – homemade or low sodium boxed
½ tsp. salt or to taste
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
Chopped fresh cilantro leaves for garnish
Toasted and salted pepita seeds for garnish

Warm the olive oil and melt the butter in it. Add the minced ginger and sauté on low heat for about 3 minutes until fragrant. Do not brown. Add the carrots and stir for 1 – 2 minutes. Add the wine and turn heat to medium high. Let the wine come to a simmer, after 1 or 2 minutes add the vegetable stock. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer, partially covered and cook until the carrots are very soft, about 30 – 45 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool for at least 10 minutes, longer is even better.

Puree the soup with an immersion blender. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot, garnished with chopped cilantro and a few toasted and salted pepita seeds, if desired.

Sauteed Zucchini with Onions and Radishes, topped with Feta and Oil-cured Moroccan Olives

December 15, 2013 by Mary Frances 26 Comments

More and more people are asking me for vegetable recipes. For myself, I am forever on the quest to find new and interesting combinations. With the holidays coming and all the rich food that is starting to show up at parties, I thought a new and unusual vegetable dish could do everybody a little good. I had this beautiful bunch of multicolored radishes, some zucchini and a sweet Spanish onion. So I put together this dish, Sauteed Zucchini with Onions and Radishes, topped with Feta and Oil-cured Moroccan Olives.

Radishes are usually eaten cold and crisp, by themselves, with a touch of salt or used as dipping instrument. But ever since Mark Bittman published an article several years ago on grilling radishes in the summer, I have been eating them grilled or sautéed. I love them cooked! Now when you grill them, the smokey taste addition is wonderful, but they lose their color and do not look so pretty. They sort of look like anemic radishes. But, when you sauté them, they somehow hold their color better. Or at least these radishes did.

These multi-colored radishes in my fridge needed to be used, along with the zucchini. My mother used to make a dish of sautéed onions and zucchini topped with grated parmesan and sharp cheddar cheese. My husband still asks for that dish every so often, so I know the combo of onions, zucchini and cheese is good. But I had some feta that needed to be used and then these oil-cured Moroccan olives were hanging around too and the dish needed a punctuation of color. So there you have it. That’s how I created this dish – really using my skillet as a palette as I do when I paint.

I think you will LOVE this!

SAUTEED ZUCCHINI WITH ONIONS AND RADISHES, TOPPED WITH FETA AND OIL-CURED MOROCCAN OLIVES – serves 4 – 5

3 medium zucchini – washed and thickly sliced in 1/4” slices
1 sweet Spanish onion – peeled and trimmed and sliced into 1/4” slices
6 multi-colored or red radishes – washed, trimmed and quartered
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. unsalted butter
Salt
Pepper
1/4 – 1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup of pitted oil-cured Moroccan olives

Warm the oil in a large skillet on medium heat, add the butter to melt. Add the sliced onions, cover and stir often, cooking for 10 – 15 minutes. Add the zucchini and radishes and toss until crisp tender. Lower heat to low. Season very lightly with salt and pepper. (remember the feta and olives are salty) Sprinkle the feta cheese and olives on top. Cover for 3 – 5 minutes to warm the cheese and olives. Serve right away using a large pancake turner to pick up a section and keep it pretty. Enjoy!

An Amazing Birthday!

December 4, 2013 by Mary 24 Comments

There are birthdays and then there are BIRTHDAYS!!

This was a BIRTHDAY!! and not even a milestone year.

First of all, all four of them (my two sons and their girlfriends) planned, shopped and made the complete dinner, fire in the fireplace, and Polish style entertainment, plus an awesome gift this past Saturday.

I got a KITCHENAID!!!!

A beautiful blue one that looks so pretty sitting on my counter upstate.

Remember when I was trying to win one? Well I have a confession to make. I have a white one but we keep it in the NYC apartment and then when I want to bake upstate, we haul it up and then haul it back. So I wanted to win one to be able to have it in both places. I know it’s a bit spoiled but hey, I do like to use it. So now, no more of that. I have a big beautiful blue one sitting on the counter there. Yipee!!

The way they gave it to me was so great. I had come in from working in my studio while all of them were in the kitchen cooking and they said, “ Mom, your birthday present is here in the kitchen, you just have to find it.” At first, I walked right near it but with all of the commotion going on, I didn’t notice because they put it in the place where my white one was all through the holiday. Then when I saw the beautiful blue machine, I literally screamed! What nice, thoughtful kids!! I am so, so lucky.

And here’s what they made for dinner.

Roasted eggplant salsa, Asian style, served with Parmesan pita chips and my martini!

Pernil – Puerto Rican style pork shoulder, slow roasted in the oven and finished on the grill.

Jasmine rice with saffron, black eyed peas, (from dried), onions and green peppers along with sauteed Swiss chard and kale in olive oil with garlic and white wine.

Shortbread cookies with Polish chocolate hazelnut chunks on top.

EVERYTHING was sooooo delicious!!!

After appetizers and cocktails we had their entertainment portion of the evening. We celebrated the Feast of St. Andrew – Andrzejki – as it is called in Polish. Always celebrated on November 29 or the 30^th, depending on what region in Poland you are from as it is either celebrated on the day or the eve. You melt wax and pour it through a hollow key handle into a bowl of cold water. The wax solidifies while you douse some more water on it. You then take the wax shape that forms and look at its shadow and interpret it. It is a prediction for the upcoming year. Mine was my face, Steve’s face in glasses and Australia. Steve’s was emu – an animal native to Australia.

Maureen!!! – here we come!!!

These kids did so much work to make an awesome birthday celebration for me. Besides planning the menu, shopping and cooking, they went to ten places to find the keys with holes in the handle and finally found them in an antique store in Millerton.

Here are all of our wax shapes.

It is great to be loved!

Your Thanksgiving Celebration

November 30, 2013 by Mary 16 Comments

I hope your Thanksgiving celebration was filled with LOVE and a smashing success! We all have so much to be thankful for. Please tell me what was your favorite part or dish.

We were lucky enough to have both of our boys home and got to have both girlfriends with us too. It is so about being together, cooking together and even cleaning up together. I come from a very large family – six kids – and when my parents were still alive and we all came home (to St. Louis) with our spouses or mates, it was absolute mayhem – all in a good way. Everyone was doing something from building a fire, to arguing about the music being played, to making a new cocktail for everyone, to complaining that someone doesn’t do any work but just supervises, to figuring out where to put all the food and wine, and I remember my mother just shaking her head and trying to continue to move through everyone to do her cooking. Although we have only two boys, we created the same thing! At one point on Thursday, I looked at my husband, right before dinner and I was like, OMG, we created a mini version of my family all over again. It’s a good thing but it really made me laugh – it can even happen with just two kids!

My turkey was too big – 19.5 lbs. I had asked our farmer for a 16 – 17 lb. bird but somehow he had something larger in mind and just those 2 – 3 extra pounds made a difference. I have no doubt we will eat all the leftovers but when it’s that big, the legs are really tough on these free range birds. The thigh dark meat was delicious but the legs, not so much. It looked gorgeous! And some of the outer white meat was a wee bit dry in order to cook the whole thing through. So I think the 17 lb. mark is the max. If you need more, buy two smaller birds.

For those of you who purchased my e-cookbook and made some or all of the recipes, I hope you found it helpful. Please send me any comments to make it even better for next year.

My birthday was Tuesday and my younger son and his girlfriend were at our house upstate, greeting us when we arrived with appetizers and dinner prepared. I told you I was lucky and had a lot to be thankful for! For appetizers, we had local gouda cheese cubes with olives, radishes and cherry tomatoes. Dinner was braised chicken legs, with tomatoes, onions, garlic and olives served with a crusty baguette to mop up all of the delicious sauce, and some roasted zucchini. They were so sweet and you have no idea how special it was to arrive to a warm glowing, terrific smelling house with dinner all ready! And it was really yummy!

Tonight, all four of them are cooking up my “real birthday feast. “ They won’t tell me what they’re doing and I was told to vacate the premises. They have plied me with some hot rum apple punch and I am out in my art studio staying out of the way. They say it will be a complete meal with appetizers, dinner, dessert and even entertainment! Stay tuned and I will let you know what happens.

I hope you all continue your celebrations and have a great rest of the weekend!

Chicory salad with walnuts and parmesan

October 11, 2013 by Mary Frances 32 Comments

Chicory. I grew up with the smell of baked root chicory brewing with coffee that my father got from his Southern business colleagues. It’s a New Orleans favorite and he traveled there often. My mother and father just loved it and I remember that very distinctive smell. I think it made Mom and Dad feel special and exotic. No one in our St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves had ever heard of it in those days. So just recently, on this past Father’s day, my son made a warm wilted green salad of chicory to go with his Beef Wellington he made for my husband. It was a riff on a recipe from Tyler Florence. Tyler wants you to use Swiss chard, radicchio or escarole. I liked my son’s choice of chicory much better. I loved that salad so much that I have tinkered with it and made this chicory salad with walnuts and parmesan mine.

Chicory is a bitter green but with the dressing of warm honey and balsamic vinegar, it combats the sharpness and just makes the whole thing interesting and a bit addictive. Then adding the chopped toasted walnuts along with a bite here and there with a sliver of Parmigiano Reggiano, and well, I think you have a little bit of heaven in your mouth.

At our upstate farmer’s market last week, they had the biggest, most beautiful head of chicory. I was smitten and grabbed it up and starting excitedly telling the farmer about my recipe and what I was going to do with it. Suddenly, I noticed that everyone around was listening and taking notes. The farmer was so happy to hear my recipe as he said that most folks just don’t know what to do with chicory. Poor misunderstood thing, it needs some new positioning as a favorite wilted salad green, as it is mine. Try this and you’ll fall in LOVE too!

WILTED CHICORY SALAD WITH WALNUTS AND PARMESAN – serves 3 – 4

1/8 cup honey
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup of toasted walnuts, coarsely chopped
1 medium or ½ large head of chicory, washed, spun dry and cut into 1½” pieces
1 shallot, very thinly sliced
½ tbs. grainy mustard
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Parmesan cheese shavings, for garnish

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place walnuts in a baking dish and toast for 7 – 8 minutes. When you can just begin to smell them, remove from the oven and let cool on a cutting board. Coarsely chop and set aside.

Cook honey and balsamic together over medium-high heat in a small saute pan, about 5 minutes, stirring constantly with a whisk. Do not let it boil. Pile chopped chicory and sliced shallots in a large salad bowl. Whisk the grainy mustard into the balsamic-honey dressing, then whisk in the extra-virgin olive oil. Season the dressing with salt and pepper to taste and pour over greens and shallots. Toss. Toss in toasted chopped walnuts, and garnish with shavings of Parmesan and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Now because these greens are so sturdy, the leftovers even held up for the next day. Of course they weren’t as good as when first made but they were still respectable. I do have one sister-in-law who loves a day old salad, all wilted and wet. I guess it’s an acquired taste?