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

No garlic?

February 28, 2012 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

For some time now my husband has had this persistent cough, that mainly occurs after he eats a meal. Finally, he went to the doctor and he suggested going on this acid-free diet. There are details to the diet but we must be very strict for 2 weeks and the main things are: no garlic, onions, tomatoes, or spicy or regular peppers and of course no fruit, except for bananas, pears and some apples.

Well telling me no garlic, onions, tomatoes or peppers is like well, I don’t know what!! I’d say the only dish I cook without garlic would be duck breasts with a fruit sauce!!!

So we started this diet on Monday and I’ve been reacquainting myself with Herbs de Provence. I used it to roast a chicken last night and on some tilapia fillets tonight. Tomorrow I’m making striped bass fillets and if any of you have any suggestions, please pour it on. He also should have limited olive oil and butter, only skinless chicken or fish, no meat or fried foods.

Help!

We must know what we’re eating!

February 27, 2012 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

This is from an email I just received from the Center for Food Safety.

Congress to FDA: LABEL GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOOD
Have YOUR Senators and Representative Joined the Letter?

In the U.S., we pride ourselves on having choices and making informed decisions. Under current FDA regulations, we don’t have that choice when it comes to GE ingredients in the foods we purchase and feed our families. This led the Center for Food Safety to submit a legal petition to the FDA demanding that the agency require the labeling of GE foods. In response, Senator Barbara Boxer (CA) and Representative Peter DeFazio (OR) have authored a bicameral Congressional letter in support of our legal petition and will be urging their fellow Members on Capitol Hill to sign onto their letter.

Unsuspecting consumers by the tens of millions are being allowed to purchase and consume unlabeled genetically engineered foods, despite the fact that FDA undertakes no testing of its own, instead relying only on a voluntary consultation with industry and confidential industry data to assure safety. Internal FDA documents discovered in prior CFS litigation actually indicated the foods could pose serious risks, but those views were overruled.

Genetically engineered foods are required to be labeled in nearly 50 countries around the world including the United Kingdom, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, China, New Zealand and many others. A recent poll released by ABC News found that 93 percent of the American public wants the federal government to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. As ABC News stated, “Such near-unanimity in public opinion is rare.” Yet the United States is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t require labeling of GE food!

Please write and call your U.S. Senators and Representative and urge them to join the Boxer-DeFazio letter in support of labeling!

A different chicken dish!

January 27, 2012 by Mary Frances 4 Comments

Sesame braised chicken with shiitake mushrooms and daikon on a white plate.

Sesame Braised Chicken with Shiitake, Daikon & Ginger

This is a great Sunday dish, as it does take some time. It’s a Melissa Clark recipe from The New York Times that I have altered, again. Not much, but I just can’t help myself. But I really do like Melissa’s recipes! She and I must be on the same wavelength. That’s the thing. There are millions of recipes out there. I pick the ones that I think I’m going to love, (based on the ingredients, time to prepare, ease of preparation, will it be fun to make?) If you make things you love, you will serve them with love – because love really is the secret ingredient!

Now I did make a mistake in making this – had to do with not reading the recipe all the way through carefully. I threw in the scallion tops into the pot to roast with the chicken so you don’t see raw scallion rings in my photo. No matter, the dish was great – and different!! We all love chicken but we’re always looking for something different, right? Melissa talks about the daikon radish getting silky and she’s right. You’ll want to crawl right into this dish. Perfect for a winter night.

I also used the stems of the mushrooms but I don’t think I’d use them again as they were a bit woody. Maybe save them to chop fine and use in a risotto later.

I served this with Jasmine steamed rice and some sautéed okra. It was yummy!

SESAME BRAISED CHICKEN IN A POT WITH SHIITAKE, DAIKON AND GINGER – adapted from Melissa Clark and The New York Times
– serves 4

3 bunches scallions (about 3/4 pound)
3 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 pound Daikon radish, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
1/2 – 3/4 cup shiitake mushroom caps
8 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
2 inches ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 whole chicken (3 1/2 pounds)
2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup dry sherry
1 tablespoon soy sauce
4 whole star anise pods
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Trim the roots off the scallions. Separate the dark green tops from the bottoms.

In a 5- or 6-quart Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons peanut oil and 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil over medium-high heat. Add the scallion bottoms, daikon, mushrooms and garlic cloves. Cook, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 7 minutes. Add the ginger and cook 1 minute more. Use a slotted spoon to transfer vegetables to a platter.

Pat chicken dry; season inside and out with salt and pepper. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon peanut oil and 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil to the Dutch oven. Brown chicken, turning, until the skin is well browned about 3 – 4 minutes on each of the 4 sides. Turn chicken breast-side up. Scatter the vegetables around the chicken. In a small bowl, whisk together the stock, sherry and soy sauce. Pour over the chicken. Drop in the star anise pods. Tightly cover the pot and transfer to the oven. Cook until the chicken is no longer pink, 40 to 60 minutes.

Remove to a cutting board. Skim fat from the surface of the cooking liquid. Chop the scallion tops and stir in, with the vinegar. Carve chicken and serve, topped with vegetables and pot juices.

A disaster!

January 11, 2012 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

So I came home last night, all pumped to make this Classic Chicken Teriyaki recipe I had read about in the January issue of Food and Wine magazine.

I have all the ingredients but the sauce seems a little too sweet to me, but then again, what do I know about classic Japanese cooking – nada! However, 1/3 cup of sugar, mirin and sake all at once, with chicken broth and soy sauce sounds like a lot of sugar. So you’re supposed to boil this mixture for 20 minutes and reduce it down to 1/2 cup. Well, at about the 12 minute mark, I had turned away from stirring and was at the sink for a moment and suddenly it started smelling bad – like burnt sugar. I whip around, try to stir this mixture and it is suddenly a hard, dark black mass of concrete!! I take it to the sink, knowing it’s ruined and run water into the pot – it is awful and disgusting and suddenly the room starts to fill up with a thick smoke and smell terribly and I’m convinced that not only have I ruined our dinner but I’ve also completely ruined and charred my All-Clad pot. Booooo. What a disaster!!

And now it’s late and we have no dinner. Fortunately, that was just the sauce but I have to think quick and get moving. So I decide to make a one dish meal, combining the sliced garlic, bok choy, boneless, skinless chicken thighs (which I cut into strips), and red pepper rings all together. I season it with Tamari sauce, 1/2 of a jalapeno pepper sliced thin, and then I add in 3 heaping tablespoons of shallots confit from France that my friend, Mary Beth, brought over one night. I wanted to achieve a salty, hot, sweet combination, and quick! So I was grabbing at what seemed good and was handy.

The dish was amazing! Probably much better than any Chicken Teriyaki could have ever been. Unfortunately this Shallot Confit has a lot of wonderful ingredients like black current cream and wine and olive oil and a touch of lemon juice so I can’t really tell you how to duplicate this recipe unless you have this handmade stuff. But the picture looks pretty, doesn’t it?

Regarding the teriyaki sauce, I guess the heat was too high and it should have been simmering rather than boiling but still, that’s a little sensitive, don’t you think? My dear husband did manage to get the pot clean, but boy, he scraped out this thick black stuff that was thick and shiny on the outside. It actually looked like car paint. Maybe I invented a new process to make plastic?!?

Chicken teriyaki disaster on a white plate.

Served plate of “chicken teriyaki disaster”

A very special day.

November 27, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

Yesterday was my birthday and as has become a tradition from my husband and sons, I am to stay out of the kitchen the whole day and only do what I want. Pretty special! So I slept late, went for long bike ride, chatted with an old friend (actually my second employee who never forgets my birthday after all these years) from San Francisco and then some of us went to the movies to see J. Edgar.

Zach and his Polish girlfriend, Agata, made breakfast and lunch, while my husband and my eldest son made dinner. Breakfast and lunch were surprises to me while the dinner menu was my request. All were amazing!!

Homemade Polish bread on a wooden cutting board.

Polish homemade bread

We have a bread recipe in our family from my grandmother that I usually make on each holiday. Since we were all spending Thanksgiving at my brother, Steve’s house in CT, Agata volunteered to make the bread. Yipee!! This is a yeast number with 2 risings and takes about 6 hours. So it was a treat to have someone else offer to make it! The most interesting thing is that her family has a really similar recipe to ours and she made a few modifications to match ours exactly, as she had tasted my bread last Christmas. Nowhere else have we ever run into this! Most people think of babka or some form of that when you say Polish bread but this is a slightly cakey, eggy version and she said we do it a little sweeter than her family.

Polish vegetable and cheese salad in a blue and white bowl.

Polish vegetable/cheese salad

She did a beautiful job!! See the photo – light, airy and just the right texture. So for breakfast she made us all a breakfast her grandmother used to make for her! Egg salad (with Tom and Ethel’s delicious farm fresh eggs) and another dish that is a mixture of fresh peeled cucumbers, Farmer’s cheese, creme fraiche, tomatoes, garlic and chives. For each bite, we put a spoonful of either one on a piece of toasted homemade bread, and it was yummy! Creamy, light, refreshing and different! All things I LOVE!

Creamy egg salad

Right after breakfast, Agata got to work on lunch. From scratch, she made nearly 70 pierogis! They were delicious. They were stuffed with a mixture of sautéed onion, mashed potatoes and Farmers cheese and then topped with a light sauce of onions and bacon. Served with a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc and we were all happy campers!! Just delicious!

A pierogi lunch!

So for dinner, our oldest son made me a terrific Rob Roy straight up. It is one of my favorite cocktails, right up there with a Tanqueray 10 straight up martini. A Rob Roy is essentially a slightly sweet Manhattan made with either Scotch or better yet, choose a single malt, like Oban. Add a lemon twist and I am set!

This drink, besides being delicious, always brings back fond memories of the first time I had it. It was at the Windows on the World restaurant at a special event for World Trade Club Members. This was the storied restaurant on top of the World Trade Center. We were doing marketing work for the private club, dealing with the legendary Joe Baum, and they were holding this single malt scotch tasting for club members and we were invited. It was like an accelerated wine tasting. You can get pretty loopy pretty fast and our host was from Scotland, enjoying every moment and Jules, our client, insisted I try this Rob Roy. It was a match for me! You should try it.

Zach, Agata and I played Bananagrams in front of the fire while dinner was being prepared. Because it was my birthday, they let me get away with “luvv” (I kept on getting those darn v’s) and “eazy”. It’s good to be the birthday girl!

I still didn’t win!

But I digress – on to dinner. We started with fresh shrimp sautéed in hot pepper, parsley, garlic, and olive oil, served with warm crusty French bread for dipping in and scooping up every last drop of the delicious olive oil, served with a ’97 San Marco from Tuscany – a beautiful Tuscan red.

Dinner was Chicken Scarpariello served with sides of spaghetti squash with a fresh tomato garlic sauce and oven roasted Brussels sprouts tossed with blue cheese. It was fantastic!! Wine was a Portuguese 2007 red from this wine store we recently found on the Upper East side. Check out Park East Wines and Spirits on York Avenue at 87^th St. Tom Anderer is the Manager and very helpful. He is a certified sommelier.

Dessert was a lovely cheese plate complete with Medjool dates, Golden Delicious apple wedges and toasted walnuts.

Quite a feast! All so wonderful!

Tonight we’re having homemade tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches – a break from the richness of the past 3 days. I hope your holiday weekend was also filled with wonderful family times and scrumptious food!

Best turkey & giblet gravy ever!

November 21, 2011 by Mary Frances 3 Comments

For buttery, melt-in-your mouth white meat and even no need for gravy, follow these instructions. This is the best turkey and giblet gravy recipe, I think, you will ever find. It is a combination of recipes, from Julia Child, Sheila Lukins and my own ideas. I first put this together in 2005 and fortunately, wrote it all down. But first, you must have a great quality, fresh bird – never frozen and never from a big producer. Now some local farm bred turkeys I have found are not so great. Sometimes their dark meat is tough (they walk a lot!) and the breasts are small. My butcher, Bob, from Espisitos Pork Store in Manhattan, gets his from a farm in PA. And then upstate, Mike and Cindy of Thunderhill Farms, produce an excellent bird. Mike is really proud of his turkeys and he sells out every year.

Now I know, there’s a lot of butter here and usually I don’t make recipes that have this much, but fear not. You will not be eating most of it as you degrease the pan juices and only use 4 tbs. to make a lot of gravy.

BEST ROAST TURKEY & GIBLET GRAVY EVER!
One 14.5 – 17 lb. fresh turkey
Sea salt – fine grind
Pepper – fine grind, preferably TexJoy brand
Paprika – sweet
Cornbread sausage stuffing with apples and pecans
2 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, divided into 3 uses ( 20 Tbs.), 1 1/2 sticks should be thoroughly softened at room temperature
2 stalks celery, washed and cut into 3” long pieces
2 fat carrots, peeled and cut in half lengthwise and into 3” long pieces
3 small onions, cut in half or 3/4″ thick slices
4 tbs. canola oil
Cheesecloth – enough to be 3 layers thick and cover the entire breast area
Giblets and neck
1/3 cup tawny port
1 – 2 cups or more of homemade or low sodium chicken broth
4 tbs. flour
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 tbs. chopped parsley

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Place the flat sides down of the carrots, celery and onions and arrange in a rectangle to create a vegetable rack in your roasting pan for the turkey to sit on.

Thoroughly wash and dry your turkey, inside and out. Sprinkle salt, pepper and paprika inside both cavities. Fill each with the cooled stuffing and seal closed with skin and metal skewers. Do not stuff too tight as the stuffing will expand while cooking.

Remove the wing tips from the bird and reserve. Skewer the remaining wings to the body with small metal skewers.

Take 1 1/2 sticks of the softened butter and smear all over your bird. Then sprinkle salt, pepper and paprika all over. Place the bird on the vegetable rack in your roasting pan. Tie the legs together with kitchen twine.

Melt 4 tbs. butter in a small saucepan and add 4 tbs. canola oil. Place your cheesecloth in this mixture to soak up all the liquid and arrange the soaked cheesecloth on top of the whole breast area. Save any leftover liquid.

Place in your oven to roast at 325 degrees.

Baste every 30 minutes, without fail, to keep your breast meat juicy and moist. Baste under and over the cheesecloth and use any remaining butter and oil left from soaking the cheesecloth originally. When basting, take the pan out of the oven, close the oven door and baste quickly on top of the stove so your heat stays constant in the oven.

Meanwhile, take your giblets, neck and wing tips and place in a small saucepan and cover with cold fresh water. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for one hour.

Remove all giblets and neck from the liquid. Remove meat from neck and chop all finely and reserve for your gravy. Discard this liquid.

Roast the turkey until the thickest part of the thigh registers 180 degrees and the thickest part of your breast registers 160 degrees.

During the last 30 – 40 minutes of roasting your turkey, remove the cheesecloth and discard and brush on the 1/3 cup tawny port.

A stuffed 17 lb. bird took 4 hours and 45 minutes. A stuffed 14.5 lb. bird took 3 hrs and 54 minutes. Your oven may vary, but figure on 15 – 16 minutes per pound.

Let the bird rest for one hour and let all those juices re-circulate back into the meat. Serve your soup or first course.

Meanwhile, back to the gravy. Smash the vegetables from the roasting pan through a strainer into a bowl. Degrease the pan juices and add enough broth to make 2 cups.

Melt 4 tbs. butter in a saucepan. Add 4 tbs. flour and whisk together on medium heat, letting it brown slightly for 2-3 minutes. (You are making a roux here!) Whisking constantly, slowly pour in the 2 cups of reserved juices and broth. Whisk until smooth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, add the smashed vegetables, 1 tsp. thyme, salt and pepper to taste (gravy may need more salt than you think – taste it), 1 tbs. chopped parsley and reserved chopped giblets and neck meat. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Add more chicken broth if you think it’s too thick or you know you have a lot of gravy lovers and need to stretch it.

Enjoy!!