Another Dinner Riff

Now that Christmas is over and we have eaten enough leftovers I was a bit concerned tonight about what we should make for dinner. After all you can only have leftovers so many days and, ugh! Well you understand.

Looking through our fridge and pantry I discovered some uncooked chicken tenders in the freezer, so I thought a little bit on it and came up with this variation on Spanish Rice (yes we keep a lot of these spices around):

Ingredients

1 lb of chicken tender, cut into 1 inch cubes and seasoned with salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1/2 green pepper, chopped fine
]/2 red pepper, chopped fine
1/2 small yellow onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
3 or 4 sprigs chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup uncooked white rice
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup medium hot salsa
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Heat 1 tbsp of the oil over medium heat in a large pan and add the rice, cooking until it begins to brown. Remove from the pan and set aside on a plate covered with a paper towel to drain. Add the cut chicken and cook until no longer pink, but do not over cook. Set this on the plate with the draining rice.

Add the remaining oil to the pan and saute the vegetables until the onions are clear, then add back the rice and chicken to the pan. Season this mixture with the salsa, chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper. Pour in the chicken stock, turn down the heat, cover and reduce until the stock is nearly absorbed. At the end toss in the cilantro.

The prep time is about 20 minutes and cooking will take 30 minutes. We served it with a crusty bread. I imagine it would work great with cold beer. We had none, so we settled for a glass of red wine.

Riffing On Dinner Tonight!

This afternoon I surveyed my freezer thinking about tonight’s dinner and found a single round steak, usually an unappealing, tough but lean inexpensive cut of beef. I also found one large Russet potato. How to pump this up and make this stretch into a meal for three adults?

I’ve done pepper steak many times before but wasn’t always thrilled by how it turned out; usually tough and bland tasting. I needed to do something different with this or it was going to be another Subway night. Now that’s not a bad thing but I like to cook and love challenges, so it was on!

First, while the steak thawed in the sink I peeled the potato, and dropped that into some boiling water. Next, while the potato softened, I assembled my ingredients:

A cored and roughly chopped green pepper and red pepper, or whatever you have on hand in the crisper

1 yellow onion, chopped about the same size as the peppers

1 cup chopped parsley (use dried if you have none on hand fresh)

3 tbsps. olive oil, divided

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 cup beef broth (bouillon is fine)

1 cup red wine

1/2 cup bourbon

1 tbsp flour

salt and pepper

dry spices, including Montreal Steak Seasoning, rosemary, thyme and tarragon

DIRECTIONS

Remove the potato from the boiling water and set aside. While this is cooling preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Slice the meat against the grain on the bias thinly. Place the sliced beef in a large bowl and season with the Worcestershire sauce, Montreal Steak Seasoning, salt, pepper and dried tarragon leaves. Dust with flour and mix thoroughly, setting aside to marinate a few minutes.

Saute the vegetables in a tbsp of oil over medium heat in a large pan until the onions are clear. In this stage I like to add another layer of seasoning by sprinkling a pinch of salt and pepper on the vegetables while they cook. Remove the cooked vegetables. Add the remaining oil and drop in the sliced beef, browning on all sides. Return the sauteed vegetables to the pan and pour in the broth, wine and bourbon. Reduce heat and cover, allowing to simmer about 30 minutes. The last five minutes of simmering mix in the chopped fresh parsley.

While the beef is simmering cut the cooled potato into medium squares and put in a gallon plastic storage bag. Pour in a tablespoon of the oil, salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme. Shake to mix and spread out onto a baking sheet covered in foil. I spray the foil with oil to make sure the potato will not stick. Place the sheet in the preheated oven and roast until the potatoes are golden brown, about 30 minutes. You may want to turn the potatoes over about half way through to ensure browning on both sides.

This dish goes well with a green vegetable or a salad and a glass of Merlot. It was awesome tonight, tender and flavorful, perfectly balanced by the creamy roasted potatoes!

World War II Books

When I was a kid middle school and high school I was fascinated by WWII books, especially first hand accounts of soldiers and journalists who survived the war and later wrote books describing their experiences.

Some of the best included Robert Leckie's Helmet For My Pillow and Audie Murphy's To Hell and Back. These were great books that I read and re-read in my youth. Over the last few years I have purchased them again (the original books that I bought were lost long ago) and discovered again why I loved them - they were gripping stories well told and rich with memorable characters.

One of the most best loved of all these novels that captivated me as a youth was Richard Tregaskis' Guadalcanal Diary, a first person telling of America's first offensive in the Pacific war against the Japanese. I remembered even 45 years later passages of Tregaskis' vivid description of this brutal fight which lasted from August 7, 1942 to February 1943. Whole passages were burned in my mind of his description of the aftermath of the Battle of Tenaru, the horrific night bombardments by the Japanese Navy, still sailing proudly and not yet defeated by American naval and air power.

This was a combined arms battle in which the US did not have full control of the seas. In fact, until the US Navy learned the night fighting techniques the Japanese had mastered, we were badly mauled in one engagement after another at sea; many allied warships were sunk in Iron Bottom Bay, the name that was given to the waters around Guadalcanal by US sailors and marines. It was also at night that the Japanese ran it's Tokyo Express, a pipeline of men and material reinforcing its troops on this miserable island. For a time, the US Navy even had to abandon the men of the 1st Marine Division on the island, for fear of being caught unloading supplies by marauding Japanese warships.

It was this uncertainty that Tregaskis' book so effectively depicted. Yes the marines were angry with the Navy for abandoning them in the early stages of the invasion, but that turned out to only be temporary. The fact was that America was not ready to go over to the offensive in the summer of 1942. We still did not have the forces, material or support ships needed to sustain offensive action in the Pacific at that time. Tregaskis' book made the reader feel the insecurities of these times so well, and that's what riveted me to the story.

I have looked high and low for this book because I wanted to read it again. It's been out of print but I found it on Amazon Books. It's a fast read, but reading it brought back more than old war stories; I saw a 13 year old kid in thick black glasses, buried in this book and marveling at the world of struggle and triumph that it conjured up.

Christmas Memories

What's your fondest memories of the season? My memories are all great ones, but my most treasured have to be growing on Maxwell Street in Chicago. Now of course I have written about my family's experiences in that fabled Chicago neighborhood before, so I don't want to rehash old ground here. But basically it's good to remember that my mom and dad were poor working musicians, just barely making a living and providing for their young family.

We did without most of the year; old clothes, simple meals, cold, drafty apartments (lots of colds and flu), no extras and no luxuries, such as medical care. My parents definitely qualified for government programs, food stamps and the like, but they were too proud to accept handouts - and never did.

What they did do was scrimp and save all year long, to make sure that my sister and I always always had a good Christmas, and that the family had bountiful (for us) food on the table during the holiday season. I don't know where they found the money, but we always had roast turkey, ham and plenty of sides at Thanksgiving and Christmas; there was always a tree (remember those old aluminum trees?) and plenty of presents.

Santa always came and left us new toys and dolls which my sister and I cherished, and played with the rest of the year. In one case at least, we have preserved our oldest gifts. I wrote about our stuffed dolls Bun Bun and Tisa last year. They have been through wars, but they still survive, even after 50 years!


But it's not about the gifts and toys, which we all shared gratefully, that still warms my heart. It's about the love and companionship shared by our small, insular family against the ravages of weather and the environment of the neighborhood in which we had live because of our low income status. Inside our homes we had books, music, conversation and family meals together almost every night. During the holidays these meals were feasts. Outside, in the dreadful winters of Chicago, there was cold, snow and slush, sub-zero temps, and mayhem in the streets every night. Even in the 1960's, when I grew up, there were drugs, prostitution, murder and maiming going on every day. But not in our home!

It wasn't idyllic by any means. But as a young child I never really knew what was going on outside our doors until I was in my teens. It was only then that I began to appreciate what my parents had done to protect us from the harm that was surely present in those neighborhoods. We had not been totally protected though; I did witness a man die violently from a stabbing through his neck on a shoe shine stand over a few pennies one summer. I still dream about it today.

In 1969, when I was thirteen, our grandfather passed and left us a little money. My parents and my dad's sister pooled their inheritance and purchased a two-flat fixer-upper in Pilsen, a couple miles north of of Maxwell street. It was a marginally better neighborhood and the home was much better, even in it's run down state, than the rat and roach infested apartment that we had moved from. My parents got right to work fixing up the place, making it a real home. My mom lived there till she died in 1981, and my dad and my aunt stayed on in their flats into the 90's when she died and my dad could no longer keep the place up by himself.

But every holiday we had there together was just as great; and as teens we were able capture so many of those memories on our color cameras! I feel so blessed to have had such experiences such as these. Kids always seem to want to get away from parents as soon as possible; while that was true for me, there was always something welcoming going home from school. It was simply called home.

So what tradition do I still keep to remember the old times at Christmas? Well it starts with the ornaments. Our tree has lots of old ornaments, given to me by students over the years, made by my son, or carrying inscriptions remembering our parents. Putting up that tree is a time to recall all those warm feelings and memories, and to remember our roots.

And I still do one thing eve today that I did as a kid - before the presents are put down; I get under the tree and look up at all the bright lights and tinsel. I have my wife eagerly doing the same thing now - a new, old tradition still alive today!

Buttered Egg Noodles

So many times, when we prepare a meat dish we find ourselves at a loss for a good side dish - and we turned to those over-salted boxed messes that, while quick to prepare, are not all that great tasting. The long list of chemicals added to that white packet inside - AKA Mystery Envelope - makes a bad situation worse!

From time to time I have eschewed such gastronomic platitudes for something better. We have tried making our own buttered egg noodles, with limited success, until we came upon this gem from a contributor to the FoodTV website, David Ball. It's tweeked here a bit to make it a little less fat-laden (the original recipe called for a stick of butter, plus a finishing pat. I kept the finishing pat in).

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups of water
8 oz. dried egg noodles
2 chicken bouillon cubes (I use a tsp of Better Than Bouillon)
1/4 stick of unsalted butter plus 1 pat)
1 tbsp of dried parsley or 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
dash of salt and fresh cracked pepper

Directions

Bring the water, bouillon, salt, pepper and butter to boil over medium heat. Add the egg noodles and stir. Allow the liquid to reduce but do not dry out. Remove from heat and melt the pat of butter in the noodles. Stir in the parsley and serve immediately with your beef, pork or poultry entree and a fresh salad.

Holiday Turkey Stuffing

This is a decadent but delicious stuffing that we have used many times, including last week's Thanksgiving meal. It can be roasted inside the bird, or as we do, baked in a large side pan to be served with the turkey. The recipe that I describe here is for the side pan. The portions that I give will stuff of a 14-18 pound turkey. This recipe is adapted from television chef Vince Scalese.

Ingredients

2 boxes Stove Top Chicken Herb Stuffing
1 box Pepperidge Farm Herb Stuffing

1 10 oz. package chopped frozen spinach, unthawed
3 cans low sodium chicken broth, low sodium
1 lb. hot Italian sausage
1 cube butter
1-1/2 cups Parmesan cheese
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
6 green onions
2 yellow onions
1 cup cooked brown rice
1 cup cooked wild rice

Directions

Chop all vegetables fine and mix in with the stuffing and Parmesan cheese. Press the water out of the spinach and saute in a medium sauce pan with the butter. Add the broth and heat through. While spinach mixture is heating remove the casing from the sausage and brown in a large skillet. To save on the fat you may drain this, but the original recipe called for the sausage and drippings to be used! That's your call. We strain off the excess oil.

Pour the broth and spinach mixture into the stuffing mix, then add the cooked sausage. Mix all of this thoroughly. If you prefer to stuff and bake your bird at this point the mixture will be wet and easy to spoon in. We butter a separate large Pyrex baking tray and pour our stuffing into tray, spreading it out evenly. We bake it uncovered in the oven at 350 degrees on a rack over the turkey that has been roasting at least an hour and a half prior. It will take only an hour for the stuffing to bake. If your turkey still requires more roasting time you can pull out the tray and cover it with foil until the turkey is done.

Serve on the side with cranberry sauce and a drizzle of that great turkey gravy you've made from the turkey drippings!