Potatoes

Asparagus-Potato Salad

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So many memorable old phrases I enjoy using, fine writer that I am. One is, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Another might be, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Which must, of course, be followed by, “Opposites attract.” Following those for no reason at all is, “Great minds think alike.” Which is what I say when I make a dish off the top of my head and begin to write the recipe before realizing I cooked the same (or nearly the same) thing 10 (5 or 15) years ago. Thank goodness “Love is Lovelier the Second Time Around,” (a favorite wedding song of mine) and I absolutely don’t mind “reinventing the wheel.” Roll your eyes now or forever hold your peace. Ok, I’m done. But I really did make almost this very same salad in 2014, though its current appearance is quite distinct from the first and today’s recipe title is “Asparagus-Potato Salad” rather than, “Roasted Potato-Asparagus Salad with Mushrooms and Sweet Onions.” Same difference. Just about.

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Sheet Pan Rosemary Pork Tenderloin with Lemon-Parmesan Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes

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It might seem as if food bloggers cook all day long every day, but it’s not exactly so. While I cook more than most people (otherwise I’d have to clean house or organize my closet or something), there are days I need a good meal but am not much in the mood for standing around watching anything bubble on the stove. Like you, I lazily cast around for something requiring little to no work that gets tossed into the oven or slow cooker so I can read a sleazy novel or play the piano–my other favorite guilty pleasures. Someone like you might watch a football game or perhaps create a crossword puzzle, an engaging but oh-so-difficult task. Try it sometime. So glad my teaching junior high English days are long over.

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Garlicky Two-Potato and Green Bean Salad with Tarragon Vinaigrette

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Those of us raised by southern mothers might have grown up with Green Beans and Potatoes on the table come hot, dripping summertime evenings. Add a plate of heavy sliced tomatoes (well-salted, thank you) and a pan of cornbread with lots of butter, please, and that was dinner. Who needed meat? For the past few years, warm weather brings on the need to re-create that dish with my own twists and turns. Those often include tossing in whatever other vegetables I have on hand, turning it all into a salad, and whipping up a frisky vinaigrette I doubt my mom would ever have added. She might have thrown in a piece of chopped bacon or a tablespoon or two of bacon grease into the pot for flavor, though, now that I think about it. Oh, and that bacon grease never saw the inside of a refrigerator either. (We all lived.)

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Basil Green Bean Salad with New Potatoes (…and other green bean favorites)

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{Printable recipe for Basil Green Bean Salad with New Potatoes)

I really love, love what I have thought of as my best green bean dish, which is Lemon Green Beans. There’s little to it and I make this A LOT. It’s probably my most used “recipe” because people memorize it at my dinner table: “Cooked green beans stirred up with lots of salt, pepper, and grated lemon rind with a little crushed red pepper and olive oil.”  Great summer snack, too. I just leave a bowl on the counter. Keeps me from raiding the chips. Sometimes.  ALL ABOUT COOKING GREEN BEANS HERE.

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Sheet Pan Dinner: Spicy Lemon-Tarragon Chicken and Potatoes with Asparagus and Some Ideas About Keeping the Meals Coming

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It’s one of the biggest challenges and conundrums of my cooking, blogging, writing, and teaching life.  Folks are so very interested in food, love to chat about it, are crazy about eating, and seem to know lots about ingredients and technique (Food Network and “Top Chef”, I guess).  But somehow they often have an awesome amount of trouble getting into the kitchen and actually cooking. There are myriad reasons and I needn’t name them.

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Colorado Two-Potato Stew with Roasted Chiles and Cheese

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In late summer in Colorado and New Mexico, there are chile roasters on busy street corners and if you haven’t the time or inclination to buy and roast your own chiles, this is the place you stop for our homegrown goodness. The aromas wafting around the intersections will call you even if you haven’t seen a roaster in years. Can’t eat them all right away–just warmed and layered with cheese, eaten with tortillas or tortilla chips?  Then it’s time to gently tuck the chiles into small or large containers and freeze them for winter cooking.

Come cold weather, I like to pile up a big slow cooker full of sliced fresh salted and peppered pork loin, chopped onions and garlic, sliced or canned tomatoes, and the thawed or still frozen roasted chiles.  At the end of  a snowy day, we hit a fresh tortilla place on the way home and walk into the house full of blasting hot southwest aromas hitting us in the face. Tortillas go in the oven and a big bowl of pork and chiles is ladled out for each person.  Time to sit down to summer complete with a cold beer.  Meanwhile, we watch the wind whip down out of the mountains, screaming cold, cold, cold. Yes, it’s rather heavenly-sounding, isn’t it? Continue reading →

One Pan-Pork Chops with Potatoes, Onions, Squash, and Apples

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A dear friend of mine named Joyce once wrote a card — one of many she’s sent over the years — and mentioned she was still making my pork chop with potatoes and apples supper.  I vaguely remembered that meal, but it was one of those quick meals I never bothered to write down.  These days I keep a cooking journal and so have records of meals or at least titles and approximate amounts.   (Well, I’m supposed to anyway.  Since the kitchen remodel I’m still finding things.  Do you know where the lids are for my small Pyrex dishes?  Or my good silver??)

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Late Friday afternoon found me cooking up two big pots of Pumpkin-Chicken Chili *-– one for us to share with neighbors and one for me to have in the DACOR kitchen at Shouse Appliance on Saturday.  I needed to make a vat of pinto beans laced with bacon, so those were bubbling away on another burner.  Enter Dave sniffing around for dinner.IMG_6813

(Apple-Cheddar Salad recipe here.)

Since I didn’t want him to overdose on chili, I got out my big sauté pan — it’s about 5 quarts — and threw in a few quickly sliced potatoes, onions, and apples.  On the counter was a yellow (summer) squash that had seen better days.  I sliced it and threw that in, too.  After those goodies were about half-way tender, I shoved them to the side of the pan and added some oiled and seasoned pork chops.  Lid on and dinner was done by the time I set the table and Dave opened a bottle of Pinot Noir.

*If you ate this chili in the Dacor kitchen, it differs from the recipe in three ways: I used beer instead of wine and added cooked Italian sausage as well as the bacon in the beans.

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Above: I had the pups all “dressed” for Halloween and a big bowl of candy. We had two trick-or-treaters. The name Rosie seems to be sticking, despite my love for “Mara,” and all the other wonderful suggestions we’ve received.  I think it’s because I like to sing this old song to her.  This  morning I found her asleep on my feet while I was checking email.  She’s doing wonderfully well, though we’re still working hard on house training. Puppies.

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 Happy Fall cooking…

Below:  Rosie practicing “Come” with Dave in the front yard.

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ONE-PAN PORK CHOPS WITH POTATOES, ONIONS, SQUASH, AND APPLES

SERVES 2    —   Easily doubled

There is enough of the potato mixture to serve another day with eggs or you might be able to stretch it to serve four if you can fit four chops in your pan and serve a green vegetable or salad as a side.  The wine or water makes just a little sauce to keep it all moist.

To a large, deep skillet or sauté pan heated over medium-high flame, add 2 tablespoons olive or canola oil along with 3 sliced potatoes, 1 large sliced onion, 1 sliced yellow (summer) squash, and 1 cored and sliced apple.  Season generously with seasoned or kosher salt, pepper, and a good pinch of crushed red pepper.  Cook, stirring occasionally, for ten minutes or so until all are at least half-way tender. Push the potato mixture to the sides of the pan to make room for the chops.

Add 2 thick bone-in pork chops you’ve brushed with oil and seasoned well with salt, pepper, and a good pinch of dried thyme.  Cook until the chops are well- browned on one side and turn over to brown the other side.  Stir the vegetables and apples, pour in 1/4 cup white wine*, then cover and reduce heat until everything is tender.  Use an instant-read thermometer to check the chops for doneness. It should read 140 degrees.  Let dinner rest in pan five minutes, then taste and adjust seasonings. Serve hot garnished with the grated zest of one lemon.

*Can sub water or chicken broth for wine. For a more smoothly silky sauce, dab in a tablespoon of butter as well.

{printable recipe}

Need an oven version that serves 4?  Here’s something similar you might adapt: SPRUCE EATS  PORK CHOP AND POTATO SHEET PAN MEAL

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Sing a new song; cook some pork chops,

Alyce

Ina Fridays — Main Dishes — Blue Cheese Burgers with Garlic Grilled Potatoes and Alyce’s Instant Pickles

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 INA FRIDAYS –First Friday of every month. Come cook some Ina with us this weekend.  Scroll down to join the group. ♥♥♥         Upcoming:  Desserts:  July 4.     Check out Ina Fridays on Pinterest.

As a cook and a lover of my friends and family, one of my frequent questions to pose is:

What’s your favorite meal?

People will often need a moment because we have so very many things we love.  I myself can unequivocally answer,

Pizza!

This even though I often live on eggs, don’t particularly want to live without asparagus, and am rarely more pleased than when there’s beef stew for dinner.  I like great individual artisan pizza, take-out or delivery pizza, homemade pizza (my son makes the best), and probably only draw the line at frozen pizza — though I’ll eat Lou Malnati’s anytime, good Chicago girl that I am. I love pizza so much that I’m not picky. (Ok, I don’t do Chucky Cheese.)  But I’m amazed how many times Americans will answer, “Hamburgers”  when it comes to their favorite food. They include fries more than half the time, I’d wager. (Click HERE for a list of Top 50 American Foods.)  And while they love a great or famous burger from a bar, I think they’re even happier with a summertime grilled-at-home version or even a drive-in dive sandwich. (If I jump in the car, I can be at Cy’s in two minutes with a green line down at the corner.)  Continue reading →

Mashed Potato Eggs — Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner

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IMG_5386You perhaps look in the fridge on a regular basis and wonder how to use a certain leftover.  I mean, we try hard to be conservative with the food we buy or make  —  waste not, want not.  Some things are easy–pizza, for instance.  I like it just heated up, but I also like to take the toppings off a piece that has seen better days and use them with pasta or in an omelet.  Ham’s another.  Grind it for ham salad, make a sandwich, bean soup, or a chef salad.   But mashed potatoes sometimes get me.  I mean, I make gorgeous potato cakes, totally crispy in their hot butter.  But there weren’t enough for potato cakes for all of us.   If I had only thought of it, I could have thrown them in my potato soup last night.  But I didn’t. Think, that is.  There were just enough mashed potatoes for me.  (Actually it was colcannon — potatoes mashed with kale or cabbage-that I made with salmon the other day.) And I wanted them for breakfast. Why not?  You could be perfectly happy with these for lunch or dinner, too; after all, what are leftovers for?

Think of your eggs, desperate for you to try something new with them, next time you bring a scoop of mashed potatoes home from a too-big restaurant dinner:

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mashed potato eggs — breakfast, lunch, or dinner  serves 2

You’ll make one serving at a time.  Keep one warm in the oven while you make the other.

  • 2 teaspoons salted butter
  • 4 tablespoons milk
  • 2 cups mashed potatoes or colcannon
  • 4 eggs
  • Kosher salt, fresh-ground pepper
  • Salsa or chopped parsley or scallions  for garnish, optional

Heat 1 teaspoon butter in an 8-inch non-stick skillet over medium heat.  Add 2 tablespoons milk and let warm.  Press 1 cup mashed potatoes into the pan and heat until hot and beginning to crisp underneath.

Push potatoes to the edges of the pan, leaving about a 4-inch diameter space at the center.  Crack two eggs, side by side, into the space and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Cover, lower heat a little, and cook until the eggs are done to your liking –about two minutes for runny, sunny side up.  Lift the whites a time or two to let the uncooked portions fall back into the pan.

Slide a large rubber spatula under the potatoes and eggs to loosen and slide the breakfast onto a plate.  Garnish with salsa or chopped parsley or scallions.  Serve hot.

Repeat for second serving.

Cook’s Notes:  If you like scrambled eggs, just beat your eggs together in a small bowl before pouring into the center of the pan. 

Just for fun, I thought I’d share a photo of my Irish Soda Bread from last night.  Instead of baking it in a heavy glass round dish, I baked it free-form and was much happier with the results.  It was scrumptious.  We invited our neighbor, Mary Pat, over for a serve-yourself potato soup and bread supper eaten in front of the tv so we could watch John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man” for a family-style Saint Patrick’s Day celebration.  We didn’t eat all of the bread, but almost.

IMG_5378KITCHEN CHANGES:

This may be the last time I look at my kitchen in exactly the same way.  Dave and I have finally decided to commit to a kitchen re-do, though we’re not sure what it will mean for us.  Our first choice is to move our kitchen entirely to the sunroom so that we have a room that is twice as big and has windows!  If that proves unfeasible, we’ll revert to updating  the footprint we currently have, albeit with a few changes.  What we have is a one-butt galley kitchen that also serves as the hallway to the deck and the garage — read that how everyone gets in and out, including all of the dogs.  You see what I’m talking about.

The designer arrives today and will take more pictures (she has some), look at my likes and dislikes notes on houzz.com, measure the two rooms, and give us a couple of design choices and price points.  I would love for this to be done in time for our 40th anniversary, which is 14 July.  What do you think?  It could happen!  As I write and wait for her, the wind whips between 50 and 60 miles per hour.  On my phone are dust storm warnings for today :  DO NOT TRAVEL!  it says.  We’ve also had bouts of swirling dervish snow squalls.  To the north are white-out conditions on the interstate.  Yesterday afternoon, I drank my tea out on the front porch in the 70 degree F sun.

IMG_5341Miss Gab and Tucker with Blue, one of our two grand dogs staying with us just now.  Though Blue often looks hangdog, she is loving, caring, sweet, and quite a watch dog.

Sing a new song,

Alyce