Chicken

Slow Cooked Chicken with Cannellini Beans, Fennel and Tomato

March 7, 2013
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Slow cooker, crock pot, Dutch oven; call it what you will, but all of these vessels utilize the same cooking process; one that is low and slow and yields the ultimate in slow cooking satisfaction; a house filled with tantalizing smells, and a warm, hearty meal which is easy to cook and serve. We may be into Spring weather now, but there are still plenty of chilly days that have me yearning for something simmering. Unfamiliar with slow cooking? Below is a bit of a primer along with a recipe to get you started.

Is there a difference between a crock pot and slow cooker?
The answer is yes and no.
Both have independent electric heating elements and lids to keep the heat in, but “crock pots” heat from all sides and some “slow cookers” heat from the bottom only, often via a separate heating plate. Today, the term “Crock-Pot…

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Moroccan Chicken With Eggplant Tomato Jam

July 16, 2012
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Morocco has become a bit of an obsession lately. Maybe it’s cooking from Paula Wolfert’s book, The Food of Morocco, or maybe my trip to Turkey just whet my appetite for that part of the world, but now I’m planning a trip to Morocco in the fall.

Paula Wolfort’s book  is fantastic and I even had the good fortune to hear her speak in person and have her sign my book a few months ago. Most of the recipes in the book are fairly straightforward, and while I wouldn’t say “simple” they aren’t that complicated. Wolfort strives for authenticity in her ingredients and recipes and while I’m all for that, sometimes “authentic” can get in its own way.

What do I mean by that? At times striving for authenticity can prevent people from even cooking at all. If it’s presented in a way which seems too complicated, or if …

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Chicken Soup with Wild Rice and Greens

April 11, 2012
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Recipe for Middle Aged Weight Creep

1 cup sit all day

2 lbs eat whatever is put in front of your face

1 dash too much work

1 generous spoonful of no exercise

1 pinch of laziness

Serves: two ever-widening hips.


I’ve got to do something about this. In the past I’ve tried cleanse diets, and they work, like any diet will, until you stop doing it and slide back into old habits.

This time, the goal is to simply eat healthier, limiting fats and simple carbs, and try to get my body moving more. Sounds easy, right? Maybe for you, but for me the “moving” part is harder than the “eating” part. So I’ll start with the food and hope the exercise follows.

I made this soup because it’s healthy and filling and doesn’t feel like “diet food.” If you are anything like me, “diet” is a four …

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How To Make Meatballs

March 7, 2012
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I was never a Girl Scout, but I am always prepared.

Make that almost always prepared. 

Every year we throw a New Year’s Day brunch party. Over the years it has grown to about 40 people, complete with pounds and pounds of bacon, kick ass Bloody Marys, Hoppin’ John, crepes, pizzas and more. Two years ago, the party which started before noon, lasted well into the evening. We literally ran out of food (gasp!) with a dozen people still in the house. They didn’t go home until we ran out of booze. Alas, I was unprepared.

This year I vowed to be ready. What would be better to whip up in a flash but homemade spaghetti and meatballs?
A couple of days before New Year’s my mother shared with me her recipe and together we made 80 meatballs and a vat of sauce. The plan was to heat …

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Sherry Braised Chicken Thighs with Meyer Lemons and Green Olives

April 12, 2011
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One of the questions people frequently ask me is ”do you cook every night?” The short answer is “no” but what I really want to say is ”define cook.” We certainly don’t eat out every night and even when I don’t cook a full meal, there’s almost always something to forage from the refrigerator rather than eat fast food. Sometimes dinner is a mixture of home cooked and store bought. And speaking of fast food, while I haven’t eaten anything from a large chain fast food place in over 2 years, we often go to our local Vietnamese, Thai and Mexican places which dish up a pretty darn fast bun cha, tom kha gai, or burrito mojado. That’s my idea of fast food now.

When I do cook dinner at home, it’s often something quick because, like many people, I work a full time job with a long commute. The last thing I want …

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Home Made Chicken Stock

April 1, 2011
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A couple of weeks ago I posted about how to brine and roast a chicken where I wrote how I always assumed that everyone realized that roasting a chicken was easy and how that assumption made an “ass out of u and me.” My second assumption was that people also knew how easy it was to make chicken stock and did not need me to provide that information. Again, I was disabused of this notion.

So, here we are with my easy-peasy recipe for home made chicken stock. You don’t need much more than a big soup pot, the leftover bones from that roasted chicken, and some vegetable odds and ends. There are a couple of options here as to how you make the stock.

Option #1 is the recipe below where the chicken bones are roasted first with onions. This results in a nice rich stock with a dark brown color which is …

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