Crock Pot Red Beans, Andouille, and Rice or My Chaotic Life.

     Welcome back and thank you for checking out my blog. Today's dinner is Crock Pot Red Beans, Andouille, and Rice.



      Normally my week is anything but normal, it's full of chaos and last minute changes. Most of the time I have no discernible schedule or routine and my family and friends have no idea what I do. And then there's Thursday. For me Thursday is my one day each week when I have a sense of normalcy and a regular schedule. Over the last four months I have been using Thursday to train and develop a new audio/video crew. My day is broken into two sections, 12pm-5pm I prep and maintain the equipment and run training sessions with the crew and 7pm-10pm when I do live training where I sit back and supervise the crew as they run a live show. The problem I had at first was that I was having a hard time fitting cooking dinner and wife time into an hour and a half. I quickly worked out that the solution was to use my free time in the morning to set up and cook dinner in the crock pot. If you've read to this point you've probably deduced that Thursdays at my house is crock pot day.
     I feel that I need to make a clarification at this point, I am using the term "crock pot" because that is what I grew up with, another acceptable and interchangeable term is "slow cooker". I don't care to debate semantics, use which ever term you are most comfortable with and enjoy the food you make.

     Cooking in a crock pot is very easy and is handy for dinners or potlucks. 
Crock pots come in a variety of sizes and can be as simple as one-dial heating control or completely programmable The common features that all crock pots have are an outer heating element with heating control and handles, an inner removable ceramic "crock", and a glass lid. I have two crock pots, one that is large with time-programmable controls and one that is medium sized with every bell and whistle available. The large one was a wedding gift from my sister-in-law, Carol, and is great for making large amounts of food to serve several people but it's not very transportable and due to it's size smaller dinners (3-4 People) only fill the bottom 1-2 inches and end up overcooked. The Medium sized crock pot is big enough to serve 6-8 people, has easy grip handles and a locking lid, and can be programmed for time, temperature, time & temperature, or probe temperature. I'm not saying that you need the latest, greatest crock pot on the market, I am saying get your crock pot out and let's make something delicious.
     Today's dinner is Red Beans, Andouille, and Rice. If you are confused by the word Andouille (pronounced- an-du-ee) it is a spicy Cajun sausage that can be found in the meat department with the other sausages and hotdogs. I recommend that you try the Andouille, if you find that it's too spicy for you ask your butcher to recommend a less spicy chicken-based sausage. Another thing to concider is what rice should you use. Due to the amount of time required for crock pot cooking most recipes call for "converted" rice, many rices will become very mushy and almost disolve. I've found through trial & error that regardless of the type of rice (white, brown, long grain) the best brand to deliver reliable results is Uncle Ben's.
Also, rice has to reach a high enough temperature before it will cook, if you find that after eight hours your rice is still hard, increase the temperature.
     With all of that under our hats, let's look at today's recipe.


                        Red Beans, Andouille, and Rice


Prep time     20 min.     Cook time    240min.     Serves     8

Ingredients

1 clove garlic, minced

1 medium red onion, chopped

1 rib celery, chopped

1 medium green pepper, chopped

15 oz. canned kidney beans, dark-variety, rinsed and drained

14 1/2 oz. canned diced tomatoes, undrained

9 oz. andouille, cut into bite-sized pieces

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp black pepper

6 cups fat-free chicken broth

1 cup uncooked white rice, converted-variety recommended


Instructions

     Place garlic, onion, celery, bell pepper, beans, tomatoes with its juice and sausage in a 5-quart crock pot. Add thyme and pepper; stir well.

     Pour in broth and rice; stir again. Cover crock pot and set on high power; cook for 4 hours.

     Season to taste with salt and pepper. To turn up the heat, add 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper with the thyme.


     This recipe yields about 1 1/2 cups per serving.


     This is a very easy to make dinner that will fill your house with wonderful smells, if you haven't used a crock pot this is a great place to start. As always if you try this recipe, leave a comment and let me know how it turned out.

     Next week- Beef Crostini or Codename Get Together.

Chicken Parmesan or Life in a World Without Restaurants.

     Welcome back and thank you for checking out my blog. Today's dinner is Chicken Parmesan.     

     If you've read my previous posts you will know that this all began with my wife and I starting a diet. One of the big problems that we had to face was "how are we going to handle going to restaurants?"

     The problem with being on a diet at a restaurant is that we have to figure out the nutritional values of each item that we are interested in, narrow those down to the ones that will fit our diets, and then decide which one we would like best. This is a long, tedious process that takes all of the enjoyment out of going out to dinner.

     Another thing that we had to face is the high frequency that we go out to dinner and our attachment to some of our favorite restaurants. One of our favorites is Villa Nova in Worthington, this is a small family run restaurant that makes the best Italian food around. We have been eating here regularly for almost twenty years. One of my favorite things about Villa Nova is the simplicity of their food, everything is made with just a few basic ingredients but the food here is so good that every bite will have you thinking it's the best thing you've ever ate. I am convinced that the spice rack in their kitchen has a lone jar simply labeled "goodness".

If you ever get a chance to eat there, do it.

     Where all of this left us was torn between the hassle of dealing with a diet and wanting to eat our favorite foods. The solution was to find recipes that fit our diets and also replicate our favorite foods as closely as possible. One of my favorite entrees at Villa Nova is Chicken Parmesan, this dish typifies the simple deliciousness that I described earlier. After doing some online searches I was able to find a diet recipe that closely reproduces the chicken parmesan at Villa Nova.

     One difference between the chicken parmesan at Villa Nova and this recipe is that Villa Nova's sauce is thinner (without chunks) and has no visible herbs and spices, this recipe calls for diced (chunky) tomatoes and an assortment of herbs and spices. The other difference is that I am serving this recipe over whole wheat pasta instead of the traditional Semolina pasta.

     This recipe calls for diced tomatoes with Italian herbs, this can be found in the canned tomato and tomato sauce section of you local store, it's worth taking the time to look for it. Also, this recipe calls for Italian seasoning which can be found in the spice section, Lastly, this recipe calls for Italian seasoned bread crumbs, you can substitute plain bread crumbs.

     Let's look at today's recipe.

                                                  Chicken Parmesan

Prep Time   10 min.     Cook Time   75 min.     Serves   4

Ingredients

29 oz. canned diced tomatoes, with Italian herbs (2 Cans)

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 Tbs. sugar

1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar

1 pound uncooked boneless skinless chicken breasts, four 4-oz. pieces

1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs, Italian

4 tsp olive oil, divided

1 spray, cooking spray

1 oz. shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese, fresh

Instructions

     Combine first 5 ingredients in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 35 minutes. Stir in sugar and vinegar; simmer 5 minutes.

     Preheat oven to 350f.

     Place each chicken breast half between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap; pound to 1/2-inch thickness using a meat mallet or rolling pin. Dredge chicken in breadcrumbs.

     Heat 2 tsp oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add 2 chicken breast halves to skillet; cook 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until browned. Repeat procedure with remaining oil and chicken breast halves.

     Arrange chicken in an 11 x 7 -inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Pour tomato mixture evenly over chicken and sprinkle with cheeses. Cover and bake at 350f  for 35 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes.

     Serve with your favorite pasta.

     This recipe yields 1 chicken breast half, 3/4 cup tomato mixture, and 1 oz. cheese mixture per serving.

     This is a classic Italian dinner that everyone should enjoy. If you try this recipe, check back here, leave a comment and let me know how it worked out for you.

     Next week - Crock Pot Red Bean, Andouille, and Rice Soup or My Hectic Life.

Chicken Milanese with Arugula Salad or Musicians and The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion.

     Welcome back and thank you for checking out my blog. After last week's post I received a request from Jenny (the names have been changed to protect the guilty) that I should include nutritional information and serving sizes. Although these recipes are considered "diet" I don't always have the nutritional values but I will post them when I can. Also, since these are diet recipes the serving sizes may not be what you are used to and if you are not dieting please don't feel that you have to adhere to them. Lastly, if the recipe says that it serves 4 that means that it makes 4 "diet" servings and if you would like more it would be a good idea to double the recipe.

     As I discussed in last week's post one of the inspirations for starting this experiment was the movie "Julie & Julia" which gave me the initial idea to post pictures of food on Facebook. The motivation to do this came to me through Facebook itself. Let me explain. In my professional life I work with musicians, some are well-known and have fame and success, some are not well-known and they struggle everyday to find work and draw an audience. The well-known musicians have public relations teams and promoters to get the word out for them, the unknown have to get the word out any way they can. I call this "the art of shameless self-promotion". It's through this self promotion that most musicians turn to social media to reach as many people as possible as cheaply as possible. Most musicians will post one or two announcements a few weeks before a show but a small group of musicians in their tenuous musician way will post ten to twenty announcements every day which results in my Facebook news feed being overloaded with fifty posts each day by three bands that I probably won't go see. With all of that white noise to sift through I started to wonder what harm it would be for me to post an occasional picture of the new recipes I was making. With that in mind I decided to go a head and post some pictures and see what happens. After posting a few pictures I started to receive a few positive comments and requests for the recipes and I started to think about developing the next step in this project. To make a long story short I cleaned out my Facebook, I cleaned out my kitchen and pantry, and I started this blog. If you've stayed with me so far I hope that you find this entertaining and maybe even insightful. Let's move on to today's dinner.

                    Chicken Milanese with Arugula Salad. 

     Today I am discussing Chicken Milanese with Arugula Salad, this is actually two recipes that compliment each other well and I will address them separately. Chicken Milanese is a tenderized chicken breast with what I can best describe as a breading, the difference is that instead of bread crumbs the breading is made from Romano Cheese and Parsley. I opted to buy romano cheese that has already been grated. The things that I noticed while making this recipe are - the breading process can be messy and it's important to be attentive while cooking so you don't burn the breading. The steps for making the chicken are very easy and you should have no difficulty. The Arugula Salad requires two special ingredients, Arugula and Fennel Bulbs. Arugula is a leafy type of lettuce native to the Mediterranean region. The problem I had was that although I went to an upscale store that has an extensive fruit and vegetable section, I couldn't find any Arugula.
After looking for about twenty minutes and forcing myself to overcome my male nature I asked an employee where I could find it. He pointed out that it is stocked in the ready-to-eat, bagged salad section.

With that behind me I was off to the much easier to find Fennel Bulbs. In our last recipe I wrote about Fennel Seeds, Fennel Bulbs are the other end of the plant.

Fennel Bulbs

 Fennel is also native to the Mediterranean region, the bulb is similar to a large onion with thick layers but with a sweet, mild licorice flavor. With all of my ingredients purchased I was ready to go home and cook.
So let's go over the recipes.

                                    Chicken Milanese

Prep Time   20 min.     Cook Time   14 min.     Serves   4

Ingredients

1 pound uncooked boneless skinless chicken breast(s), four 4 oz. pieces

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 Tbs. all-purpose flour

1 large egg

3 large egg whites

1/4 cup parsley, fresh, minced

1/2 oz. romano cheese, grated (about 1/4 cup)

1/3 cup dried plain bread crumbs

4 sprays cooking spray, divided

1 Tbs. butter, divided

2 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

Instructions

Place chicken between two sheets of wax paper; pound until 1/3 inch thick. Rub salt and pepper into both sides of chicken. 

Place flour in a shallow bowl. Place bread crumbs in a second shallow bowl. In a third shallow bowl, whisk together egg, egg whites, parsley and cheese.

Dip a piece of chicken into flour, turn to coat and shake off excess. Next, dip chicken into egg mixture; turn to coat. Lastly, dip chicken into bread crumbs, shaking off any excess ingredients. Set aside and repeat with remaining chicken.

Coat a large skillet with cooking spray; place over medium-high heat. Melt half of butter in skillet; add two pieces of chicken. Cook chicken until coating is golden, flipping once, about 7 minutes; remove to a paper towel and cover loosely to keep warm. Off heat, recoat skillet with cooking spray; place over medium-high heat. Melt remaining butter in skillet; cook remaining pieces of chicken.

Sprinkle chicken with lemon juice and serve topped with salad.

                                                           Arugula Salad

Prep Time   10 min.     Cook Time   0 min.     Serves   4

Ingredients

1 1/2 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

1 Tbs. olive oil

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

2 bunches arugula

1/2 medium uncooked fennel bulb(s), very thinly Sliced (about 1 cup)

1 cup uncooked red onion, thinly sliced

1 cup grape tomatoes, quartered

Instructions

In a small bowl, whisk together first four ingredients; set aside

In a large bowl, combine arugula, fennel, onion, and tomatoes.

Toss salad with dressing

These recipes yield 1 piece of chicken and 2 cups of loosely packed salad per serving.


     These are wonderful recipes that I had never tried before and I am happy with the way they came out.
I hope you enjoy these recipes and if you make them please leave a comment and let me know how they worked out for you.

     Next week - Chicken Parmesan or Life in a World without Restaurants.

  

Roast Pork Dinner or What in the World Have I Started.

   Thank you for showing an interest in the recipe that I made last night. I have received a lot of positive feedback and a few requests for the recipes that I have been posting pictures of on Facebook so I think it's time to take the next step in this little experiment and see what happens.

     This all started out as a New Year's resolution for my wife (Ellen) and I to lose weight and get in shape. I have never dieted but Ellen had done one of the popular weight lose programs in the past so she suggested we do it together. My big concern since I do most of the cooking and I eat way too much fast-food at work was "what are we going to eat to help us be successful at our diets?". The answer came through my laziness, since I'm not the kind of person that has the patience and discipline to write down everything I eat I decided to enroll in an online program. A side benefit of this was that I was lead to thousands of recipes.
     The next step came to me while watching the movie "Julie and Julia", I didn't want to write a daily blog about everything I was trying to make but I thought maybe I could take some pictures, put them on Facebook, and see what happens. Well, here I sit two months later with no real idea where this is going and an interest to find out where the journey will lead. If you are interested, you are welcome to join me.
But first:
     When I started this I had not thought out a plan or the implications and ramifications of what I was doing and to this day I still haven't. So as I move forward I think that it would be best if I don't use any names or references to anything that might be trademarked or protected by law. Also, I have no training in the areas of cooking or photography. My cooking consists of me following recipes and challenging myself to make dishes that I have never cooked before. The recipes tend to have an easy to moderate difficulty level and all require a certain amount of trial and error. As far as my photography goes I am simply putting the food on a plate and taking a few pictures of it and picking the one I like best. I have no delusions that my cooking or photos will ever win any awards but I do hope that they are at least at a level that allows me to show you what I am making and possibly entertain you for a few minutes.
     So, let's get started. Today's dinner, Roast Pork with Potatoes & Vegetables, is one that I've made a couple of times and really enjoy. This dinner is very easy to make and doesn't require anything special beyond Fennel Seeds but it does take some time(1 hour in the oven) to make. A side benefit of the long cooking time is that this dinner will fill your house with amazing smells. The thing that makes this different from a standard pork roast is the Fennel Seed and Olive Oil rub, the only way that I can describe it is "Wow", the Fennel Seeds add a flavor that simply has to be tried. The roast itself came out very moist and tender. The first time I made this dinner I wasn't fully satisfied with the vegetables which I will address in a minute but I was pleasantly surprised by the potatoes. About a year ago I heard someone say that perfectly roasted potatoes should have a creamy texture but I couldn't understand what that meant. When I tried the potatoes I had an a'ha moment as I discovered that creaminess that I hadn't understood.
     The two trial & error lessons that I learned were first that I shouldn't have roasted this in a glass baking dish as it caused the vegetables to become mushy and almost dissolve. The way I fixed this is by using a metal roasting pan the second time. The second problem I encountered was that since this is a two pound roast meant to serve 8 plus an equivalent amount of potatoes and vegetables it requires a large roasting pan. With that in mind I decided not to buy a new large pan but instead I opted to put the roast in one medium pan and the veggies in another medium pan. This worked out to be as no-cost solution.
     With all of that out of the way, let's get down to business.

      Roast Pork Dinner with Potatoes & Vegetables

Prep time  20min   Cook time  60 min   Serves  8

Ingredients

2 Sprays cooking spray

2 Tbsp olive oil, divided

2 Tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp fennel seeds

1 1/2 tsp dried oregano

1 1/2 tsp salt, divided

2 pound uncooked lean pork loin, use 1 whole 2 lb boneless roast

2 medium green peppers, cut into 8 wedges each

1 large red onion, peeled and cut into 12 wedges

24 baby potatoes, red variety, cut in half if large

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400F. Line a large roasting pan with heavy duty aluminum foil (for easy clean-up, if desired) and coat with cooking spray.

In a small bowl, combine 1 Tbsp oil, garlic, fennel seeds, oregano, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper. Rub mixture all over pork; place pork in prepared pan.

Add vegetables and potatoes to pan; drizzle them with remaining Tbsp oil. Sprinkle them with remaining 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper, toss to coat.

Roast, uncovered, tossing vegetables and potatoes halfway through cooking, until meat thermometer inserted in center of pork registers 160F and vegetables are tender, about 1 hour.

Transfer pork to a cutting board and let stand for 10 minutes before slicing. Slice pork and arrange on a serving platter; spoon any juices from cutting board over pork.

Put vegetables and potatoes in a serving bowl or place on platter with pork. Serve.


     In closing, this is one of my favorite dinners that I have made in the last two months and it consistently
amazes me with it's flavor and textures. As I finish typing this I'm already looking forward to the next time I make it. If you make this recipe please leave a comment and let me know how it worked out for you.


     Next week - Chicken Milanese with Arugula Salad or Musicians and The Art of Shameless Self Promotion.