Your New Best Friend-the Crock Pot

Crock pots have a “retro” feel to them, so all you young hipsters out there, go get one!  Someone from an older generation of you family probably had one; it was no doubt tan/brown with orange or green flowers.   Well we are here to say crock pots deserve a comeback! They are the un-sung hero of the kitchen.  They do the work of a sauté pan, the oven and microwave all in one; they cut your electric bill in the winter and keep the heat generated from the oven down in the summer.  Okay so you might not meet up with it for coffee or go out to the movies with it, or share some juicy gossip but it will provide you warmth and comfort and fulfillment in the form of hearty, tasty, practical meals. 

On a busy Saturday morning, we pulled out our trusty crock pot and put in the ingredients to make this tasty dish.  Stew is often bland and well, brown.  But this dish was, flavorful, vibrant and comforting.

What you will need:

•  One new best friend, your crock pot
• A package of steak tips (marinade too)

 We recommend the Burgundy Wine steak tips from The Meat House, check them out either via the web or at a location nearest you!  http://www.themeathouse.com/Home.aspx

• A  handful of baby carrots
• A quarter of a white or yellow onion, thinly sliced
• Mushrooms, button will do the trick but try some other, more daring varieties to enhance the depth of flavor
• A cup of red wine, whatever varietal you have on hand will be splendid.  If you don’t have wine, add a cup of beef broth
• A pinch of salt and pepper 

We did not add the traditional potatoes or peas to this dish because both are starchy and these days we’re working hard on working out and getting fit.  But, go ahead and add these goodies if you’re feeling it. 

Turn the crock pot onto “high” if you’re sticking around the house and “low” if the day is filled with errands.  This is another beautiful thing about this best friend, you can ignore it and it won’t feel slighted. In fact it thrives on being left alone and doing its thing! 

Some tasty side dish options to enhance the dish and soak up the divine broth made while this is simmering away:   Egg Noodles, Mashed Potatoes, Corn Bread, Rye Bread

We will be posting several crock pot creations to try! Stay tuned and chew on....

A casserole to warm the soul

We made this last night and it was delicious and incredibly easy. 

Ooey, gooey and warm
Served with BACON WRAPPED ASPARAGUS- a perfect pairing for this dish

The inspiration for this meal was the weather. It was cold, rainy and windy out.  Who wants to eat a salad when Mother Nature is dishing out that combination? With this kind a weather a person wants something comforting, oooey, gooey and warm.  Make this for dinner and it'll warm your soul!

What you need

•  A package of pasta
•  A medium sized can or half a jar of tomato sauce
•  Cheese- half container of ricotta and half package of shredded mozzarella
•  A package of chicken sausage, any flavor, except maybe sweet apple 
•  Rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes (4-5). 
•  A red pepper
• A casserole or baking dish

What to do

• Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees (see Helpful Hint 1)
• Cook the pasta (see Helpful Hints 2 & 4)
• While pasta is cooking, cut the sausage and red pepper into 1 inch pieces
• Rehydrate sun-dried tomatoes, microwavable bowl/1 minute.  Allow to cool and dice
• Open can or jar of sauce
• If using ricotta cheese, add about a cup of mozzarella to the ricotta. Mix, add some Italian seasoning, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes.  Ricotta is very salty so no need for salt.
• Prepare your casserole dish (see Helpful Hint 3)
• Before draining your pasta, reserve half a cup of pasta water (see Helpful Hint 5)

Assembly

• Once you have drained pasta, put it back in the pot, off the burner
• Add all the remaining ingredients to the pasta
• Mix ingredients, careful not to overmix and break pasta (see Helpful Hint 6) 
• Transfer to the casserole dish
• Bake uncovered for 15-20 minutes until bubbly
• Turn off oven but keep dish in the oven 
• If desired, top with a handful of mozzerella
• Get out dishes, utensils, glasses by the time you do this the cheese will have melted
• Sit down to enjoy this casserole that warms the soul and if the oven door is open, you'll be cozy too!

Chew on....

Helpful Hints to Make this Dish Even Easier

1.  If using the oven, always turn it on first to pre-heat.  Why wait until everything is assembled to turn on the oven? It's okay for the oven to be on and nothing inside it yet.  Hey and in the fall/winter it gives a little extra heat! Once the dinner is ready, keep the oven door open for the heat.
2. When making a casserole, cut the cooking time of the pasta in half. If you cook the pasta for the full time and then put it in the oven, you will have very soggy pasta! Using only half the cooking time creates perfect pasta tenderness. If you are using ravioli or tortellini, cut the time even more.  Let them sit in the boiling water for only a minute or two.
3. To prevent sticking while baking and for easy plating, grease the casserole dish lightly with either a little butter or olive oil.
4. When boiling pasta water make sure the water is salty like the sea. Even if you don't really use salt, use it for your pasta water!  Avoid putting olive oil in your pasta water, this does not help the process and ends up coating the pasta, preventing the sauce from sticking to it.
5. Just in case, always save half a cup of the pasta water once you have boiled your pasta.  If the assembled ingredients look a little dry and you are out of sauce, this water will do the trick. Don't need it?  Don't use it.
6. Use the pasta pot to assemble your ingredients. The pot is deep enough to prevent ingredients from jumping overboard plus the depth allows you to really get in there and throughly mix.

Wait, you haven't tried chicken sausage yet?       

Perhaps this will change your mind:

They are all natural and healthy for you.

They are incredibly tasty and come in a lot of flavor varieties.

They are pre-cooked making them very handy for a last minute meal.

Most markets in the area carry two brands, one happens to be local to the Capital Region, Belinskis.

They aren't cheap but they do go on sale for 2 for $5.00 or something like that. When you see this, buy some!! You'll be glad you did.

Side door and deli drawer antipasto salad

The side door and the deli drawer of our refrigerator could be referred to as the land of the misfit toys. Both door and drawer are pretty well stocked with half opened bottles of delectable garnishes and additions, purchased for a specific use, and then they sit and wait, hoping to be opened again to jazz up one dish or another.

This post isn't incredibly groundbreaking and probably won't win any contests but this dish does allow you to be creative and good consumer.  After all, we are lucky we get to buy bottles of roasted red peppers that costs $4.25-why not use it all? Let those tasty treats that patiently wait, shine once more.

A healthy dinner or hearty side dish

We had on hand:

 1. A tiny portion of Roasted Red Peppers

 2. A handful of Marinated Artichoke Hearts,  Mushrooms, Carrots, Cauliflower and Hot Peppers

 3.  A smattering of Spicy Olives (green olives with a hot pepper stuffed inside-outstanding!)

 4. A nub of Salami

 5. A chunk of Parmesan Cheese

 6. A hodge podge of lettuce

Dice ingredients 1-4, chop the salad, assemble, put on some dressing and top with the nub of  Parmesan cheese (grated).

A super easy, sure to pleasy dressing

Whisk together olive oil, vinegar, a little lemon juice- if you have it, a pinch of salt, pepper, oregano, basil and an even smaller pinch of sugar. 

Pour it on and devour your oh so tasty side door and deli drawer antipasto salad.

Don't have a hodge podge of lettuce?

Well how about a half eaten baguette or loaf of Italian bread?

Turn on your oven broiler to low

Slice bread in half (the long way)

Toast the bread between 3-5 minutes, until golden brown

Remove from oven and rub toasted sides of bread with a clove of garlic to impart flavor

Cut the bread into a few hearty chunks

Top with your antipasto mixture that is now a creative take on bruschetta

Chew on....

An alternative to ordering out on a Friday night!

It's the end of a long week, you are tired, you are hungry and you want dinner. What to do?  It's tempting to pull out the "take out menus" and start shuffling through them. 

We were in this very spot this past Friday.  But we closed the drawer that holds the take out menus and opened up the cabinets instead.

Here is a pretty easy meal for dinner.  It doesn't take a lot of time and it is mighty tasty, even a day or two afterwards!

The final product

As you can see, it doesn't look perfect but it tasted fantastic

Here's how to get there:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:Use what is listed or what you have on hand. Experiment! 

• 2 packages of crescent rolls
• A package of ground meat, we used turkey.
• 2 cups of shredded cheese, we had Swiss on hand.
• 1 cup of sauteed onions, celery.
• 1 cup of dried cranberries. Since they were in the cabinet we also used some dried prunes and walnuts about half a cup each.
• 1 cup of mayo. Start with half a cup and see how well the mixture comes together in the bowl. 

   

This is the way

We sauté:

While tempting to crank the heat, keep it somewhere in the middle of the dial.
Also,  we like to saute using one small tab of butter and about a teaspoon of olive oil, increasing depending on the amount being sauteed.  The combination is good for both the oil and butter. The oil prevents the butter from burning too quickly and the butter holds off the sometimes bitter taste olive oil can get.
      
Next:
1. Brown the meat in a saute pan (Just using veggies? Dice 'em up and throw those babies in until they are tender)
2. Remove and place in a large bowl to cool
3. In same pan, add the onions and celery.  Add some butter and olive oil to sauté, lower heat
4. Remove from heat and add to bowl with meat or veggies
5. Add to bowl the remaining ingredients (except mayo and crescent rolls)
6. To this, add half cup of mayo.  If all ingredients are coated and holding together, stop here.  Add the remaining half cup if it looks necessary.
7. Set aside and let the flavors meld.

Now, pull everything together:

If you have a pizza stone, use that.  If not, use a large cookie sheet, coat with a light spraying of PAM.

8. Open one package of crescent rolls and start to unroll them.
    The roll should look like a triangle, which is what happens when you unroll them from their happy crescent shape.
9. Start placing one package of unrolled crescents in a circle, around the sheet or stone.
    To do this place the wide part of the triangle in the center of the stone or pan and the tips of the triangle should hang off slightly .
10. Open up the second package of rolls
11. With this package, start lining up the wide end of the triangle with the wide end of triangles from package one so they meet.
When you do this, there will be a lot of dough overlapping and hanging out in the center of the sheet or stone. This is because the tips of the triangles from the second package of rolls will be in the middle -this is okay.
12. Gently press down on where the wide end of the triangles meet so they bond.
13. Get bowl of tasty ingredients and a tablespoon. Start spooning this on the dough (where the wide end of the triangles meet).  The spooned mixture should be about an inch high; mostly likely there will be leftover mixture to use for another tasty dish.
14. Once there is a inch high layer of mixture in place, starting with any outside triangle tip, bring it in toward the center, crossing over to the wide end.
15. Next bring the coordinating inside triangle tip to the outside, criss crossing the dough.
16. Repeat these steps until all of the tips have been criss crossed.
17. It might be necessary to tuck in the dough here and there but that is fine.  No matter how "messy" this might look at this stage, it will look tasty and delightful when you take it out of the oven.
18.  Put in the oven, middle rack. Bake for 20 minutes.
19. About 10 minutes in, if you feel up to it, melt a little butter and brush on top of baking dough.

Another reason we like this dish:
The baking time is a perfect opportunity to put on your comfy clothes, pour that first (or second) cold beverage, set the tunes and get out the plates and utensils.
All ovens vary but you know this dish is ready when the dough is golden brown and it smells so good you can't even stand it!
Once you take it out of the oven, let it rest for 5 minutes.
Next, get out your pizza cutter or knife and start serving up this delicious alternative to Friday night take out!  Chew on....