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

Spicy Brined Chicken and Pork

May 14, 2014 by Mary 24 Comments

The wonderful bottle of brine from Sweetwater Spice Company, included in the MARY’s secret ingredients spring box, makes for a super easy way to tenderize and flavor meats. You would have either received the Tres Chilies Fajita Bath or the Pineapple Habanero Jerk BBQ Bath Brine. Both of these flavors are great to make spicy brined chicken and pork or even seafood. If you didn’t order a spring box, you can click on their ad on the right rail here and go directly to their website and order some bottles.

We have received amazing positive and enthusiastic comments and reviews on the box. Such excitement! You can see those reviews here:

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http://www.hangingoffthewire.com/2014/05/marys-secret-ingredients-box-may-2014.html
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http://shouldibuythisbox.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/marys-secret-ingredient-spring-2014/
http://2littlerosebuds.com/2014/05/06/marys-secret-ingredients-msi-culinary-box-review-discount-code/
http://www.ramblingsofasuburbanmom.com/2014/05/spring-2014-marys-secret-ingredients-review/
http://modernmommyfiles.com/2014/05/marys-secret-ingredients-box-may-2104/

Best of all, sales of boxes help to feed hungry children worldwide as 10% of our annual profits will be donated to Feed The Children. Because of these great reviews, the summer box is selling fast, as well as the other seasons too, so if you want to get in on the fun, place your order now. Use the promo code 4LOVE when checking out for $4.00 off for a total cost of $21.95.

Using the Austin, Texas, Sweetwater Spice Company brines, I created this wonderful dinner salad by marinating skinless, boneless chicken breasts in the Pineapple Habanero Jerk Brine and then grilling them. The beauty of this product is that the brining time (30 minutes) is quick and the results produce really juicy flavorful meat. This is not a sweet dish, don’t let the pineapple in the name fool you. It is spicy with just a hint of pineapple on the back end. Here’s the recipe, super easy – use any leftover vegetables you have or grill some fresh.

PINEAPPLE HABANERO JERK GRILLED CHICKEN ON A SALAD – serves 4

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, washed, dried and trimmed of all fat
Sweetwater Spice Company Pineapple Habanero Jerk BBQ Bath Brine – follow instructions on the bottle to dilute the brine and marinate for 30 minutes or more. Do not strain the spices and add on unless you like things super firey hot!
Boston lettuce, washed and air dried
Radicchio leaves, washed and air dried
2 vine ripened tomatoes, cored and washed
16 asparagus spears, washed and trimmed of woody stem parts
1/2 lb. okra, washed and tops trimmed
2 tbs. olive oil
Vidalia or other sweet onion, very thinly sliced
Croutons – homemade preferably
Sherry vinaigrette salad dressing

Marinate chicken in the brine for 30 minutes or more – up to 2 hours.

Wash and dry the lettuce and radicchio. Toss asparagus and okra in olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cut the tomatoes into wedges. Make the salad dressing. Remove the chicken from the brine and pat dry. Discard brine. Grill the chicken until just done. Let rest for 5 -10 minutes before slicing on an angle. While the chicken is resting, grill the vegetables until nicely done.

Arrange the lettuce and radicchio on the plates. Place the grilled vegetables, tomatoes and the sliced onions on the sides, leaving the center area clear for the chicken. Slice the chicken breasts and place in the middle. Scatter croutons on top. Drizzle dressing overall to taste. Serve with LOVE.

Enjoy!

Just look at how juicy that chicken is!

I also used the Tres Chilies Fajita Bath to brine big thick pork chops and they turned out divine! I brined them for 3 hours and grilled them – really wonderful!

Vegetarian Delight

February 11, 2014 by Mary 11 Comments

Vegetarian delight finished dish - baby spinach, beans and roasted vegetables topped toasted pine nuts and goat cheese.

Once on week I make a meatless meal, much to the disconcertion of my husband. He hates them. He knows, intellectually, it’s a good idea but the complaints beforehand, egads, it drives me crazy!! But I soldier on, try to ignore him and cook up something, with LOVE. You probably know by now that I love salads, but salads are not very inviting with all this cold weather we’re having here on the East Coast. And raw foods are very good for you. So I made up this Vegetarian Delight with warm beans and roasted veggies, including the tomatoes, on a base of raw baby spinach leaves.

By golly, he loved it! He kept on talking about it – even the next morning! BINGO, I know something is really good if he’s still talking about the next morning AND it’s meatless too! This is packed full of nutrients, delicious with the contrasts of the cool baby spinach leaves and the warm roasted vegetables, even on a frigid winter night. The roasted shallots and crushed garlic cloves were a brilliant addition providing bursts of flavor, complementing the sweet parsnips while the warm, slightly roasted tomatoes provided the right acidity. The Midnight Moon goat cheese is a wonderful splurge, but not really necessary if you are a true vegetarian. We loved this dinner and it’s going to be repeated often in our household.

Truly, I just made this with the vegetables I had on hand. You can try your own combination but I will say that this blend was really yummy. I hope you’ll try it and it makes your recipe regulars too.

VEGETARIAN DELIGHT serves 2

2 large handfuls of baby spinach leaves – about 4 – 5 oz., washed and spun dry
1 – 15 oz. can cannellini beans, drained, rinsed and drained again
1 Italian eggplant, cut in 3/4” slices, roasted
1 parsnip, peeled and cut into julienned strips
1 zucchini, cut into 1/4” slices
2 shallots, peeled and quartered
1/2 of a poblano pepper, cut into 1/4” strips
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tomato from the vine, cut into 6 or 8 wedges
3 grape tomatoes, cut in half
Sherry vinaigrette
Midnight Moon hard goat cheese, cut into small strips
Toasted pine nuts

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Slick a cookie sheet or flat roasting pan with peanut oil. Arrange eggplant slices on the sheet, salt with fine sea salt and fresh ground pepper.

On another rimmed baking sheet, toss parsnips, zucchini, shallots, poblano pepper and garlic with 2 tbs. olive oil, salt and pepper.

Roast the eggplant on the bottom rack of your oven for 20 – 25 minutes, until nicely browned on the bottom while you roast the other vegetables on the top rack at the same time. Roast the top mixed vegetables for 20 minutes, then add the tomatoes and toss and roast for 5 – 10 minutes longer, until all the vegetables are fork tender. Toast the pine nuts in a separate pan for 5 – 10 minutes until lightly browned.

Meanwhile, make your dressing, prepare the cheese and warm the beans in the microwave for a minute on high.

Assemble your salads. Place the spinach leaves on the plate, top with the warm beans (you may not use all of them – save them for tomorrow’s lunch), remove the eggplant slices with a metal spatula so you don’t loose the lovely browned bottom.

Place 4 eggplant slices on each salad, browned side up. Toss the other vegetables and place a nice amount on top. (You probably won’t use all of these either). Drizzle dressing over all and top with cheese and pine nuts. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Vegetarian Delight, just before drizzling dressing and topping with toasted pine nuts.

Vegetarian Delight, just before drizzling the dressing and topping with toasted pine nuts

Hearts of Palm on a Salad

November 2, 2013 by Mary 10 Comments

Hearts of palm. What the heck are they? I’ve always liked them. My father used to like them and served them on special occasions. I’m sure my parents thought they were exotic. They are canned – I don’t use very many canned items but this one has piqued my interest again. I have never seen them fresh but maybe they’re only sold fresh in more tropical areas. Remove them from the can, drain, and rinse. Only buy the full spears and slice. I think they add interest to a simple green salad and make it really different.

So I looked them up and found out that they are a vegetable harvested from the soft core of a palm tree! They are very low in cholesterol, a good source of protein, riboflavin and potassium, and a very good source of dietary fiber, vitamin C, folate, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, copper and manganese. Who knew? They’re even good for you!

Now this is the sad part. Many wild species of palm serve as sources for hearts of palm, including coconut palms, Acai palms, and sabal palms. Unfortunately, the harvesting process kills these trees, because they only have one stem, and extracting the inner core essentially destroys the plant. In response to this issue, several palms have been domesticated and bred specifically for production of this vegetable. These trees have multiple stems, allowing farmers to harvest the hearts while allowing the rest of the tree to live. Thank goodness!

But most importantly, this simple salad is really refreshing and delicious. I also used the roasted almonds I talked about a few posts back. I hope you LOVE it as much as my husband and I did!

HEARTS OF PALM ON A RED LEAF LETTUCE SALAD – serves 2 as a first course

1/3 of a head of red leaf lettuce, washed and spun dry
2/3 of a can of hearts of palm, drained, rinsed, patted dry and sliced
2 small tomatoes, cut in wedges
12 roasted and salted whole almonds, cut in half
Sherry vinaigrette

Arrange torn lettuce leaves on a salad plate. Place sliced hearts of palm in the middle. Arrange tomato wedges around the hearts of palm. Sprinkle chopped almonds on top. Drizzle on salad dressing. Serve immediately.

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?

Spinach salad with dates & almonds

August 27, 2013 by Mary Frances 14 Comments

This is the most fantastic and unusual salad! If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I LOVE salads. I eat one every day for lunch and would love a salad for dinner too, IF I could only convince my husband the same. This spinach salad with dates & almonds was written up in the dining section of The Times a couple of weeks ago. It is adapted from Jerusalem: A Cookbook that was a big hit when it came out. The onions and dates, macerated in red wine vinegar, the toasted pita bread and almonds with the sumac, hot chiles, spinach and lemon juice all combine to make a really different dish that is just delightful. A little spicy, a little lemony, a little sweet from the dates and savory with salt, it’s a hit!

It was late when we got home last night so I convinced Steve to forgo a starch – meaning no baked potato with our broiled rib steak. “Let’s just have the steak and this salad and some sliced heirloom tomatoes.” Well that was more than enough and frankly, just perfect! I didn’t realize that there’s enough toasted pita bread in the salad to count for a light starch. Really, this was wonderful. And he had the leftovers for lunch today and said the salad was even still good. It held up! I didn’t use baby spinach. I used the fresh leaf spinach that is usually bundled together, stems down. Trim all the stems off and cut the leaves in thirds. This is probably why it held up the second day, better than baby spinach, with this heartier leaf. Whatever you use, I urge you to try this salad. You will LOVE it – and raw spinach is so darn good for you!

SPINACH SALAD WITH DATES & ALMONDS – adapted from Julia Moskin
– serves 4

1 tbs. red wine vinegar
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced
4.25 ounces Medjool dates, pitted and quartered lengthwise
Salt
2 tbs. unsalted butter
2 tbs. olive oil, divided
2 small whole wheat pitas (about 3 1/2 ounces), roughly torn into 1 1/2” pieces
1/2 cup whole unsalted almonds coarsely chopped
2 tsp. sumac
1/2 tsp. chile flakes
6 oz. baby spinach leaves or leaf spinach, stems removed and leaves cut in thirds
2 tbs. freshly squeezed lemon juice

Put vinegar, onion and dates in a small bowl. Add a pinch of salt and mix well with your hands. Leave to marinate for 20 minutes, then drain any residual vinegar and discard.

Meanwhile, heat butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat. Add pita and cook for 4 to 6 minutes, stirring all the time, until pita is golden. Add almonds and continue cooking until pita is crunchy and browned and almonds are toasted and fragrant, about 2 minutes more. Remove from heat and mix in sumac, chile flakes and 1/4 tsp. salt. Set aside to cool.

When ready to serve, toss spinach leaves with pita mix in a large mixing bowl. Add dates and red onion, remaining 1 tbs. olive oil, and the lemon juice. Taste for seasoning and serve immediately.

Caesar salad

August 18, 2013 by Mary Frances 16 Comments

I LOVE a good Caesar salad. The very best one I ever had was at Zuni Café in San Francisco. Judy Rodgers, the owner and chef there is also from my hometown of St. Louis. Her recipe from the Zuni Café cookbook is terrific, but a bit time consuming. She wants you to only use salt-packed anchovies, which are better. They are cleaner tasting, but, you have to rinse them quite a bit to get all the salt off and then fillet the little suckers. Because my husband absolutely adores Caesar salad and asks me to make it often, I have been working on a quicker version for the dressing. I believe that I am now satisfied with this one and I’m ready to share with you!

But once again, it is always about the ingredients. You must use high quality extra virgin olive oil, only Parmigiano-Reggiano for cheese, super fresh lemons, farm fresh eggs (I only use eggs from our farmers, Ethel and Tom), and as Judy Rodgers says, taste it on your lettuce, and hopefully your organic romaine is sweet. Homemade croutons are a must in my book. (What else are you gonna do with all that old bread in the fridge?) Make a double amount of croutons and store them at room temperature in an airtight plastic container. They will still taste fresh for a week, so you can make another salad the following week. Your washed lettuce must be cold and dry and do not tear the leaves. Leave them whole as you can see in the photo. This is because when you tear them, they just release their water, watering down your very tasty dressing and you really don’t want that. And it’s best use your hands to toss the leaves with the dressing in order to properly coat them.

CAESAR SALAD – serves 4 – 6

3/4 cup homemade croutons (see directions below) from 4 – 5 oz. of bread
2 – 3 large cloves of minced garlic (remove inner green germ as the sprouts can add an unpleasant bitterness)
4 – 5 anchovy fillets packed in oil, blot and pat dry on paper towels, and finely chop and mash
Pinch of coarse salt
2 tbs. or more of freshly-squeezed lemon juice (I usually add about 3 tbs – taste to your liking)
3 drops Worcestershire sauce
1 large cold egg
6 tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) freshly-grated Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano-Reggiano), plus more for serving
2 to 3 heads romaine lettuce, hearts and tender leaves only
Freshly cracked black pepper

Make the croutons:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Dice day-old bread (Italian, French or even whole wheat) into 3/4-inch cubes.

Toss with about 2 tbs. of olive oil. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper and spread out on a rimmed baking sheet.

Bake approximately 10 to 15 minutes or until just golden brown. Halfway through the baking time, give the pan a shake to make sure the croutons toast evenly. Remove from oven and completely cool croutons. Store in an airtight container.

Make the Caesar salad dressing:

In a bowl, whisk together the garlic, anchovies, and salt until blended.

Whisk in the lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce.

Whisk in the raw egg until the mixture is thick, approximately 1 minute.

Slowly drizzle in the olive oil with one hand while vigorously whisking the mixture with the other.

When the dressing is well combined, whisk in 1/4 cup of the grated Parmesan cheese. Grind fresh pepper to taste. Taste your dressing on a small piece of romaine. It may need more salt, lemon juice or cheese, but remember you will grate more cheese on top before serving. I usually add more lemon juice.

Use whole leaves of romaine hearts that have been washed, dried and chilled. Blot dry with a paper towel again before dressing. Place them in a wide bowl. Fold and toss with dressing, (using your hands is best) making sure each leaf is properly coated. Add the croutons and toss again.

Arrange the leave in a single direction on the plate, scrape the last drizzle of dressing on to the salads, distribute the croutons evenly and grate more Parmesan on top. Pass the black pepper. Enjoy!!

Now recently, when we’re upstate and have the outdoor grill, I have been splitting a whole head of romaine lengthwise and grilling it before drizzling on the dressing. Warm and cool, crunchy and different, even sweeter, it’s delicious!! Try it! Just brush both sides with a little olive oil before putting them on the grill. Grill the romaine 2 – 3 minutes per side at about 400 degrees on a gas grill.

When done, place on a plate, cut side up and drizzle on dressing. Top with fresh grated cheese and croutons. Amazing!