Turmeric-Black Pepper Chicken with Asparagus

 

A search for what to do with some leftover asparagus led me to this recipe from the New York Times Cooking pages. Everything was cooked in my indispensable cast-iron skillet.

After cutting chicken breasts into small pieces and tossing with a mixture of flour, turmeric and salt I cooked them with some oil for three minutes on each side. Chopped asparagus was added and then a mixture of water, honey, and pepper. Lastly some rice vinegar was added.

A relatively quick, easy, delicious, and nutritious weeknight dinner.

Chicken Stew

 After deciding to do "something with chicken" I remembered seeing a recipe online for chicken stew. I don't remember where I saw it, but I figured that if I found any chicken stew recipe it would do. A google search brought me to Food52 "Chicken Stew with Potatoes, Carrots, and Celery". Since I had potatoes, carrots, and celery on hand I figured it was a good choice. However, I discovered that the baby carrots had gone past their prime and had a bit of a slime on them. No worries, I simply added mushrooms instead (since I already had some of those).

I seared two boneless, skinless chicken breasts in my indispensable cast-iron stew pot, and then removed them to cut into small chunks. The chicken was set aside while I prepared the rest of the stew. Diced onion and garlic were cooked along with some herbs. I used sage, thyme, and a pouch of something I found in the spice drawer called "Winter Savory" - no clue what was in it. Next the celery and mushrooms were added to the pot.

Once the vegetables were cooked I added flour and vegetable broth. The recipe called for chicken broth, but I didn't have any. The vegetable broth was left over from the weekend's salmon recipe.

Finally the chicken chunks and potatoes (cut into bite-sized pieces) went in. Everything simmered for 20 minutes until the potatoes were fully cooked.

A warm cozy dish for a cold winter's eve. Made for some dandy leftovers too.

Creamy Tuscan Salmon

A rather delicious-looking photo and recipe showed up recently on my Facebook feed from a sponsored site. When I clicked on it I got a message that the information was for "members only" with an invitation to sign up.

Nope. 

Something I know to be true is that recipes are not copyrighted so I figured there was probably a similar recipe (in fact more that one) available on the interwebs.

Yep.

A simple google search brought me to eatwell101 for their Creamy Tuscan Salmon recipe. The site says that it comes together in 20 minutes or less. I'd say it took about 25 minutes, but still a rather quick meal.

As we almost always do for seafood we started with a visit to Kyler's Catch for some fresh salmon. I followed the directions to pan-cook the fish, and  then remove from the indispensable cast-iron skillet. I  then melted butter and added the diced garlic, and then onions to sauteé. Next went in some vegetable broth and sun-dried tomatoes. The sauce cooked down a bit and then I added heavy cream and baby spinach leaves and cooked until the spinach was wilted, and then added some shredded parmesan cheese. The fish went back into the skillet with the sauce and I let it heat for about a minute more before serving. There was some leftover mashed potatoes in the refrigerator which we heated and served as a side dish. 

So creamy and tasty (and pretty). Three people sat down for the meal and three clean-plate rangers left the table.

Ricotta Pasta Alla Vodka

This recipe turned out to be a combination of a Vodka Penne recipe that I've been using for about 25 years and a favorite from the early days of this blog Spaghetti with Tomato, Bacon, and Onions.

Ricotta Pasta Alla Vodka comes from the New York Times Cooking Pages. It is more time consuming and a bit more complicated than either of the other two recipes, and not good enough to be worth trying again. I will admit to using a bit too much of the red pepper flakes, but even had I not been heavy handed there, it would have still been just an ok dish.

I was able to use some leftover ricotta that I had from making lasagna on New Years Eve, and it didn't require me to buy any additional ingredients, an important part of my recent meal planning since I don't want to go to grocery store while I am recovering from a bout of Covid.

This was a dinner for one while the rest of my family is traveling. I made enough to have leftovers for lunch today.

Smashed Potatoes with Bacon, Greens and Cheese

December 30 was National Bacon Day. Luckily we had some bacon and I found this simple "no recipe" for Smashed Potatoes with Bacon, Greens, and Cheese recipe using some of the other ingredients we had on hand. We used bacon, cheddar /gruyere, kale, and avocados to make this colorful, flavorful, and easy lunch.