Roasted Vegetables with Braised Pork Ribs

My wonderful mother has taught me so many things in life.  She has taught me how to be creative, how to drink amaretto coffees in the late morning (after turning 21 years old), how to be nice to people, and last but not least, how to roast some mighty fine vegetables.  I was reminded of her influence again yesterday when I made some roasted vegetables with our dinner.  

Last night for dinner we had homemade bread (meaning bread made in the bread machine a.k.a 'throw in the ingredients and leave it alone' bread), braised pork ribs, and roasted vegetables.  I got the Braised pork rib recipe from The Food Network website here:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/braised-country-style-pork-ribs-recipe/index.html I didn't have the celery called for in the recipe so I just left that out.  Actual pork ribs were too expensive at Publix this week so instead of ribs I used two pork chops with the bones still in.  Other than those two slight modifications, I pretty much stuck to the recipe. 

As for the vegetables, I used cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, and yukon potatoes.  I cut them into bite size pieces and then shook a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder on top.  I mixed them all around, hoping to coat as many as possible with the seasoning.  I then dumped them all out on a cookie sheet, tossed them in the oven at 350 degrees and roasted until they were tender, about 35-45 minutes.  

For me, the roasted vegetables were the highlight of the meal but in the end really everything turned out great! The vegetables! The pork! The bread!  I didn't actually eat the pork but I did try the sauce it was in.  It was delicious.  I dipped the bread in the sauce and ate it that way.  I don't count that as eating meat.  Also, I forgot to actually take a picture of the pork after it was completed.  Sorry about that.  I just have the picture of Matt eating the meal instead.  BTW- Matt gave this meal a 4.8 out of 5 chicken wings.  I'll take it. 

Another day, another pepper

First things first.  I need to thank Mary again for letting me take so many peppers from her home this past weekend.  Without her generosity and kindness, I would not have gotten a 5 out of 5 chicken wings on last night's dinner.  Yes, you read correctly! I am proud to say that last night's dinner was reviewed as a 5 out of 5 chicken wings in Matt's book.  I have made it.  I just wanted you (and Mary especially) to know my appreciation before going on with today's recipe.

And now that I have peaked your interest, here is what we ate.  Last night's dinner was pepper jelly pork chops with goat cheese mashed potatoes and broccoli.  As I was trying to brainstorm what I could do with all my peppers, I googled "habanero recipes."  While many ideas came up, I was most intrigued by the idea of making some sort of sauce out of the peppers.  Finally I found a habanero pepper jelly recipe on allrecipes.com and decided to tweek it to create a sauce.  

Although I don't eat meat, I have such a love for pork because I grew up in Ohio.  In Ohio we literally have billboards that state "The Other White Meat" with huge pictures of cooked pork on them.  I have grown up (aka been brainwashed) thinking this was the most superior meat out there. Therefore, anytime I want to make a meat dish, I still naturally gravitate to pork.  When I was considering making a pepper jelly sauce, I thought "How could it not be wonderful on pork, the other more delicious white meat?"

So that is where this recipe journey began!  Below are photos of the process as well as the recipe for the meal.  I hope you enjoy.

          

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Pepper Jelly Pork Chops with Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes

1 lb golden potatoes

1 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1/2 cup chicken broth

4oz log of goat cheese

Pepper jelly pork chops

2 pork chops

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1 medium carrot, grated

3/4 cup of chopped peppers, seeded and minced (I used 2 hot peppers, 1 banana pepper, and 3 habanero)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Begin by cutting up the potatoes into small cubes.  Place potatoes into a big pot of salted water.  Bring pot to a boil, checking the potatoes until they are cooked through and split when poked with a fork. 

In a sauce pan, add the apple cider vinegar and the sugar.  Heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Add the carrots and bring to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, lower the heat to a simmer, stirring frequently during this process.  Simmer mixture for 3-5 minutes.  Add peppers and simmer for another 3 minutes.  Turn off heat and set to the side.  

Pour about a tablespoon of olive oil in a dutch oven and heat over medium high heat.  While the dutch oven is getting hot, sprinkle all sides of the pork chops with salt and pepper.  When the dutch oven is hot, take pork chops and sear all sides, about 5 minutes on each side.  Once all sides are seared, take the pepper jelly mixture and pour over the pork chops that are sitting in the dutch oven.  Add the lid to the dutch oven and place in oven.  Bake for 20 minutes. 

When the potatoes are cooked through, drain out the water and put into a big bowl.  Add butter, chicken broth, and salt.  Mash.  Add more salt and chicken broth if needed.  Cut log of goat cheese into four parts.  Add one part at a time, stirring into the mashed potatoes.  Mix well.

Add a side of steamed broccoli or another green if you desire.  

A very basic chicken (or chickenless) soup

Today at 1:15pm I got a phone call from my sweet husband telling me that he was leaving school early because he was sick.  Between yesterday afternoon and today, he had caught some sort of cold in which he could not stop sneezing.  His co-teacher actually told him to go home because the sneezing was that bad (or annoying-we aren't sure which).

My mother has always taught me that if you have a cold, you need to have plenty of liquids to fight it off.  Therefore, after I got home and settled in, I asked Matt if he would be interested in having chicken noodle soup for dinner.  After discussing the benefits of a broth-filled dinner, he agreed to this dinner plan.

Below is my quick recipe for a very basic chicken noodle soup.  We had almost all the ingredients at our house so the only thing I had to run out and buy was a box of noodles.  However, in case you don't have noodles, rice would have been a perfectly acceptable replacement.  Unfortunately for us, we were out of rice too.  I don't eat chicken so I added the chicken only to Matt's portion of the soup.  This soup was really good for how basic the ingredients are.  Even Matt, who was eating the soup between sneezes and sniffles, agreed that it was mighty fine for such a quick, simple dinner.  Our house smells so warm and seasoned right now from cooking this dinner.  That only adds to the enjoyment of making it!

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Basic Chicken Soup

2 bay leaves
2 chicken breasts or tenderloins
7-8 cups of fat free chicken broth
1 box noodles (we used tri-colored spiral noodles)
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 medium carrots, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Heat a large pot of salted water.  This pot will be for your spiral noodles.  Cook according to the directions on the noodle box.

Place 2 bay leaves and 2 frozen chicken breasts in a pot of salted water over medium heat.  Once chicken is cooked through, take chicken out of water and cut into small bite sized pieces.  Add to the boiling chicken broth and vegetables.

While chicken is cooking, chop the celery and carrots.  Place chopped vegetables in a large pot filled with the chicken broth, Kosher salt, garlic powder, and black pepper.  Bring to a boil and then cook for approximately 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender on a medium heat.

Once your chicken has been added to the broth and the noodles have been cooked according to the directions, take the big pan of chicken broth off the heat.  Add noodles to the broth according to how many noodles you want in the soup.  Some people like their chicken soup with lots of noodles while others like it more brothy.  If you have extra noodles leftover, save them for another meal making adventure later in the week!

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Lamb chops with braised escarole and chickpeas: a "Real Simple" masterpiece

I love food magazines. Real Simple. Food Network. Cooking Light.  You name the magazine, I bet you I will love it.  When I saw the recipe below in the October issue of Real Simple, I knew I wanted to try it.  First reason: it looked so easy! Second reason: what in the world is an escarole?  

After reading over the recipe and looking at the picture, I figured out escarole must be some sort of leafy, greeny thing (which could very easily be discovered when looking at the picture).  I was thinking the flavor might be a mix between lettuce and collard greens.  I also thought I would most likely be able to buy this leafy thing at the DeKalb Farmer's Market.  Both thoughts were right on.  Escarole is slightly bitter like collards and I was able to find it at the farmer's market.  That DeKalb Farmer's Market just doesn't let me down.  

When I was making this recipe, I only cooked one lamb chop and did not have any wine which is one of the called for ingredients.  I used chicken broth instead to add flavor to the escarole.  Even with this small substitution, this recipe was very good.  On the weeknights, I like to cook recipes that are simple.  This recipe is definitely that as well as delicious.  Matt gave it rave reviews and ate the leftover escarole and chickpeas the next day in his lunch.  Because I don't eat meat, I put the escarole on a baked potato and added some parmesan cheese.  Eating it that way was mighty tasty as well! If you get to try this recipe, I hope you enjoy it too.

Below is the original recipe by Real Simple.  It can be found in their magazine or online at this link: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/lamb-chops-braised-escarole-00100000086795/index.html 

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Lamb Chops with Braised Escarole and Chickpeas

(serves 4. Ready in 30 minutes)

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 small head escarole, leaves torn (about 13 cups)

4 cloves garlic, peeling and smashed

1/4 cup dry white wine

Kosher salt and black pepper

1 15.5-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed

8 small rib or loin lamb chops (1 inch think; about 2 3/4 pounds total)

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium heat.  Add the escarole, garlic, wine, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and cook, covered, tossing occasionally, until very tender, 8 to 10 minutes.  Add the chickpeas and cook until warmed through, 1 to 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Season the lamb with the oregano and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper.  In 2 batches, cook the lamb, 2 to 3 minutes per side for medium-rare.  Serve with escarole.  

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Sunday is steak day

On Sunday afternoons/evenings, I love staying at home, sitting around, and eating a big dinner.  The preparation for this meal is so much fun because I have all afternoon to pull the components together.  If I have found a recipe that requires an ingredient to cook for 4-6 hours before serving, Sunday is my day to try it out!  The possibilities are endless on a Sunday.

So this week I wanted to try to make Matt another steak.  Instead of buying a seasoning or marinade, I decided to season the steak with items we already had in our pantry.  About an hour and a half before we were planning to eat dinner, I mixed 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 teaspoon of minced garlic, and 1 teaspoon of crushed red peppers in a bowl.  I then set that aside to let the flavors combine. 

About 45 minutes before I was ready to cook, I took the steak out of the refrigerator in order to get it to room temperature.  I seasoned both sides with Kosher salt and ground black pepper.  About 10 minutes before cooking, I brushed on the olive oil/pepper/garlic mixture to the steak.  Using our cast iron skillet, I turned the gas burner on high, added a little more olive oil,  waited until the skillet was nice and hot, and then seared the steak on both sides.  Matt likes his steaks medium/medium rareish so I attempted to reach that level of cookedness (?) before serving.

We had mashed sweet potatoes, broccoli, and rosemary bread (remember that from two days ago?) along with the steak.  Below is a little bit of the process.  If you decide to experiment with your steaks, please let me know.  I would love to hear about some other steak seasoning/marinating options!

The most magical place in the world

For our honeymoon, Matt and I were blessed to go to the most magical place in the world.  You might be thinking I am going to say Disney World because all those Disney World commercials claim that title. However, those commercials are very, very wrong.  Just so everyone knows, the most magical place in the world is Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee.  If you don't believe me, please leave this blog, spend the next five minutes looking over the website, and then spend another five minutes trying to find someplace better.  It just can't be done.

This oh, so magical place also has an oh, so magical cookbook that we bought while we were there.  Periodically when I (1) feel like being extra nice to Matt or (2) feel like cooking him some meat, I will make a recipe out of this cookbook.  Every recipe I have made turns out phenomenally.  However, please let it be known I am not claiming this because of any of my cooking skills.  All credit goes to the actual recipe.  Somehow the author has created fail-proof recipes that blow your mind in regards to their deliciousness level.

So last night I made "Grilled Chili-Rubbed Rib Roast" from The Blackberry Farm Cookbook.  I had to make some modifications because this recipe serves 8 people and we don't definitely don't need that much meat in our house. We also don't have easy access to a grill, which is the suggested cooking method.  Instead, I used my Dutch oven to sear the meat and then let it cook with the pepper mixture.

Here we go!

First, I took 6 chilies de arbols and 6 serrano peppers, cut them in half, and seeded them.  Then, I put them in a skillet with about 6 cloves of garlic and 1/4 cup of olive oil.  I let these ingredients cook together for 15-20 minutes, until the the peppers and garlic started to brown.

Then I put the pepper mixture in my food processor. I put about 1 teaspoon of cumin and 1 teaspoon of coriander in also.  I pureed this mixture, adding about 1/4 cup olive oil slowly until everything looked evenly pureed.

The recipe recommends that you let your meat sit out for about 45 minutes before cooking.  It also suggests using a rib roast.  If I am being honest here, I normally buy Matt something a little less fancy than a rib roast.  This time around I bought him skirt steak.

Heat a large skillet/Dutch oven with olive oil.  While the olive oil is heating, generously salt and pepper your steak.  Once the skillet gets hot, sear meat on all sides.  Once seared, take the pepper mixture and spread it on all sides of the meat.

Because we are grill-less, I covered the meat/pepper spectacular in the Dutch oven and let it cook for about 25-30 minutes in all the pepper/oil/meat juices at a medium heat.  Periodically I would flip over the meat just to make sure neither of the sides were burning.  After I decided the meat was looking cooked through and juicy (that 25-30 minutes mentioned above), I turned off the heat and let the meat rest in the Dutch oven for about 10-15 minutes before serving.

And that was our dinner!  It was super easy to make and was a hit with my meat-loving husband.  He actually said this dinner was a 5 out of 5 chicken wings!  I cooked more than we needed so later in the week Matt can make a steak quesadilla with the leftovers.  Just as a warning, this recipe is a little on the spicier side.  However, if you know someone who loves spicy foods and steak, this could definitely be a winning dish.