I begin this tale with a miniature story, which shall lead into a caveat.
What To Do With Such A Flock of Fungi?!
Posts Tagged: Entrees
Fettuccine with Shrimp, Peas and Spinach
I'm over winter.
I'm over the snow. Over the heating bill. Over the fact that my car's steering wheel apparently stops moving when it drops below twenty degrees.
I'm even over the stews and soups, and as much as I adore my slow-cooker, I'm ready to retire it in favor of all things springy and light. Mostly, I'm ready for seafood and white wine and fresh vegetables.
Easy Steak & Avocado Fajitas
An addition to my roster of blink-and-they're done dinners: these. We're talking ten minutes. (Well, ten minutes if you don't include a couple of hours of zero-labor marinating…which I suppose you don't have to do, but it makes a huge difference.)
I've been making these minimum once a week lately, mostly to take advantage of these last few weeks of grilling-outdoors weather, but you can totally make them on a stovetop grill, no problem (because they're made with thinly sliced skirt steak, they cook up super-fast). They're great for an easy weeknight dinner, but if you just double (or triple) the ingredients you can just as easily serve dinner to a whole party (which is what I did last night - and the best part is that you really don't need any side dishes with these; just add prosecco and everyone will be happy).
What You Need:
Lemon Pappardelle With Potatoes & Haricots Verts
The summer after my junior year of high school, my friend Thomasin and I spent a couple of months attending art school in Paris (which sounds ridiculously fancy for a couple of teenagers, and kind of was). We lived in dorms that were filled with college students during the regular school year, and while we were technically supervised, we really…weren't. Which meant we did our best to get into as much trouble as possible, and when that turned out to be not very much trouble at all (because we were both a little more "nervous good girls" than "madcap European bon vivants"), we hung around the dorm with our friends, essentially playing grown-up.
Our favorite weekend activity: trucking down to the grocery store on the corner for cooking supplies, and then using the tiny kitchen in our dorm to make what felt, to us, like sophisticated meals...but were actually just the most rudimentary pasta dishes ever. We ate them with chopsticks, sitting in a circle on the floor around the one big cooking pot we shared, because we hadn't thought to bring things like bowls and forks. We would have told you that we didn't just go out and buy bowls and forks because we "couldn't afford them" or because we were "too lazy to go to the store"…but neither of those reasons would have been the truth.
The truth was that we didn't buy them because we didn't want them, because the very best part of those meals was that we ate them crowded around a single pot with friends we thought we'd have forever, laughing until we couldn't breathe.
Easy Breaded Veal Cutlets
Veal almost never occurs to me as something you can actually eat.
When I see veal listed on a restaurant menu, my eyes skip right past it. I've bought it in the grocery store maybe five times in my life.
It even took me a second to remember what kind of meat it is (ssh). It's safe to say the stuff is off my radar.
Something Went Into My Kitchen And Emerged Deep-Fried, And That Is A Miracle
Deep frying freaks. Me. Out.
First of all, I never had any idea how it worked. I pictured enormous bubbling vats filled with million-degree oil-bombs, and if there's one thing I should stay very far away from it's bubbling vats filled with million-degree oil-bombs. I just didn't get it: you put your meat, fish or vegetable in...and then...what? Does it...float? Or do you have to brave the oil-bomb with a set of (heat-conductive) tongs? How do you know when things are hot enough, or when they're cooked through?
How do you not set the kitchen on fire?!
Anyway, shocker: it's easy. And not nearly as terrifying as I pictured.
Fettuccine with Sweet Tomato Sauce and Asparagus
I have a weird thing for Prego. I think it's because my mom used to use it as a base for our pasta dinners when we were growing up (just adding things like mushrooms, onions and meat to jazz it up). I mean, I totally get it: you're supposed to like 100% fresh sauce best, and yes, it's wonderful...but...
I also like Prego. I can't help it. It's sort of like McDonald's hamburgers versus the Black Label burger at Minetta Tavern: they're just totally different categories of food, and equally delicious in their own ways. I think, however, that what makes me like Prego is - rather unfortunately - the same thing that makes it a less-great option than homemade sauce: all that added sugar that's present in pretty much anything that you buy pre-made.
This pasta dish is fresh and light, and has that touch of sweetness that I'm looking for without actually being loaded up with sugar. I've been making this recipe (one of the first I ever wrote about, actually) for years, and have tweaked it to make it as straightforward and simple as possible - it takes about fifteen minutes start to finish, and is a major crowd-pleaser.
Slow-Cooker Orange Chicken
My slow-cooker doesn't see the light of day a whole lot during the summer, partly because the kinds of meals I usually like to use it for (pot roast, ribs, stew) are too heavy for these hot days, but also because we spend a lot of time cooking and eating outdoors. And slow-cookers are an "indoors" kind of thing.
Still, though: when you're pressed for time, there's nothing like letting your kitchen go ahead and cook your dinner for you...and that's what a slow-cooker does.
This recipe is inspired by one I found on Pinterest, and is sort of like a tangy twist on shredded BBQ chicken. I served it over rice (the steam-in-bag kind, because I'm lazy), but it would also be delicious piled onto sandwich rolls for a picnic.
Beer Can Chicken: Ludicrous And Delicious
Lemon-Rosemary Spatchcock Chicken
That is my very own rosemary that I grew.
(Don't be too impressed. My basil has drowned.)
The return of the summer has brought with it the return of local farmer's markets, and because we live right next to the Stone Barns Agricultural Center that also means the return of spatchcock chickens. I've written about how amazing these things are before, but basically what they are is chickens with the backbone and sternum removed; the flattish result means that the parts on the inside (the breasts) cook slightly less and the parts on the outside (the legs) cook slightly more, which is exactly how a chicken cooks in a perfect world. It also cooks faster, which is awesome.
You can spatchcock a chicken yourself, but honestly: it seems like a pain, and isn't something I'd bother with; I just buy a couple whenever I come across a place that sells them and consider myself lucky. (This recipe, incidentally, also works for a regular roast chicken; just adjust the cooking time as noted below.)
