Chicken meat loaf with apple

These recipes come from a Betty Rosbottom book subtitled "New Renditions of the Recipes We Love," with fresh takes on American classics.

I had worried that the chicken meat loaf might be dry, and thought this duo that paired mushroom gravy with the meat loaf would take care of that potential problem. Turns out that wasn't really an issue.

Thyme-scented chicken meat loaf with mushroom gravy

From “American Favorites” by Betty Rosbottom.

Ingredients (meatloaf only)

2 tablespoons butter, divided

1/3 cup diced carrots

1/3 cup diced leeks (white parts only)

1/3 cup diced celery

1 pound ground turkey or chicken

 ¼ cup bread crumbs

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

1 Granny Smith apple, cored and grated

2 egg whites

Instructions

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large saute pan. Add carrots, leeks and celery and cook over medium heat until softened. Let cool.

Mix cooked vegetables, ground meat, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, apple and egg whites. Divide into two parts, shaping each into a rounded football shape. Place on roasting pan -- either greased or lined with parchment. (At this point you can cover the loaves and refrigerate it for up to a day.) Dot loaves with remaining tablespoon butter cut into bits. Bake in preheated 350-degree oven for 45 minutes until cooked through. Let rest for 5 minutes. Slice into ½-inch slabs and serve.

 

Mushroom gravy

From “American Favorites” by Betty Rosbottom

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter, divided

1½ cups chopped green onions

4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced

4 ounces white mushrooms, sliced

2 tablespoons flour

1 ½ cup chicken broth

2 teaspoons soy sauce

Method

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet. Add green onions and cook over medium heat for a few minutes. Add mushrooms and cook until tender. Season with salt to taste.

Melt remaining 1 tablespoon butter in a saucepan. Whisk in flour and cook, stirring for 2 minutes. Add broth and cook until smooth and thickened. Stir in soy sauce. Add to mushroom mixture. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as desired. 

Rating: The meat loaf was very tasty, with the apple making a nice bright note and adding some moisture to the turkey. I think it worked perfectly well by itself and was better standing alone (and makes for some decent sandwiches with the leftovers. The gravy was tasty, but it overshadowed the more delicate meat loaf flavors. I think it makes a great gravy if you want something to go over brown rice. I'd certainly make the meat loaf again sans gravy.

Chicken with shallots and parsley

 

Why is it peasant-style food makes you feel as if you're eating like a king? This recipe falls into the category of a super simple dish that somehow transcends to a higher level. So easy and tasty.

Mme. Lascourreges’ chicken with shallots

From “French Farm House Cookbook” by Susan Herrmann Loomis. This is a gem of a book I need to turn to more often.

Ingredients

1 cut-up chicken (or about 8 pieces of whatever cut you prefer)

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

4 large shallots, peeled and minced

1 cup parsley leaves

Method

Combine the olive oil, vinegar and shallots in a large baking dish. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper, and add to the pan, turning to coat chicken well. Bake skin-side up in a preheated 425-degree oven for 20 minutes. Turn the chicken over and roast until about done, another 20 minutes or so. Flip the chicken back over for a final 5 minutes to make sure it’s browned.

Chop the parsley and sprinkle it over the chicken. Let chicken rest briefly before serving.

The drippings make a nice pan sauce, so plan a side dish to put them to good use. 

Pancetta and bean risotto

A cookbook with a gimmick of recipes that only require four ingredients sounds like a great idea, and it's not a bad one. But it cheats. Today's recipe is an example. In order to cook the same meal, I need six ingredients because I''m not going to buy "herbed broth" when I've got perfectly wondrous stock of my own on hand, so I added in some herbs. And the recipe in the book is clearly staged with a Parmesan garnish, which of course you'd like, but it's not mentioned because that would wreck the math. But hey, it's still only six ingredients and pretty fast to fix.

Pancetta and bean risotto
Adapted from "The Cook's Encyclopedia of Four Ingredient Cooking" by Joanna Farrow
I paid all of $7.98 for it years ago, but now you can buy it for a penny.

Ingredients
6 ounces pancetta, diced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
6 cups broth
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary or herb of choice
2 cups lima or fava beans
Parmesan shavings (or grated) for garnish

Method

Heat broth to a simmer; keep warm. In a medium saucepan, brown pancetta. Stir in rice and cook, stirring for a few minutes.  Add a ladle of broth and rosemary. Keep stirring and adding more broth when the liquid is nearly absorbed.

Cook lima or fava beans. Add to risotto when all the liquid is absorbed and it's reached the creamy stage. Served top with Parmesan.

Rating: Fine enough weeknight meal. I couldn't find fava beans in the store so I substituted limas, for better or worse. It makes a fairly starchy dish, but it's still tasty with pancetta and risotto creaminess.

 

Oh, and if you haven't seen the latest foodie kerfuffle, check out this report on an investigation in to the facts behind the farm-to-table claims on many menus. Love this quote:

"Many of those local greens misted with unicorn tears are something else entirely."

Caprese quinoa salad

Quinoa, Caprese-style, wasn't anything that had occurred to me, so when I saw the recipe in "The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime" for Quinoa Caprese, I was intrigued. I like a good Caprese salad, and I've been on a quinoa kick, so I figured it had a fighting chance.

Basically, you mix cooked (cooled) red quinoa with a balsamic vinaigrette, a handful of cherry tomatoes (two colors are nice), fresh mozzarella balls and thinly sliced basil. That's really all the recipe you need to know, but if you want things spelled out in step-by-step detail, you can find Ree Drummond's recipe here.

It was reasonably pleasant, although I found I needed more dressing than called for. She suggests adding cooked chicken to make it a main dish, which I could see working.

Drummond's book is primarily suited for busy moms. Most of the recipes aren't ground-breaking, so kids are more likely to eat them. As one might expect from a blogger turned cookbook author, the book is blog turned into book form: Lots and lots of photos of each step, including the requisite one showing dressing being drizzled, and lots of personal lifestyle/family posing. But I still might have to try her recipe for black bean veggie burgers.

Chicken with preserved lemons and green olives

Moroccan chicken with preserved lemons and green olives

Adapted from Gourmet, Dec. 1999

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 medium onions, sliced

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

½ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon pepper

1 preserved lemon, pulp reserved for another use, sliced into strips

½ cup chicken broth

¼ cup white wine

½ cup sliced pitted green olives

Chopped cilantro for garnish

Method

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in  a large skillet over medium high heat. Cook chicken until golden brown on both sides. Transfer to a plate.

In remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, cook onions in skillet over medium heat until softened. Add garlic, turmeric and pepper. Cook for 1 minute. Add lemon peel, broth, wine and olives.

Return chicken to pan and cook covered until cooked through, about 12 minutes. Remove lid and raise heat to quickly reduce the sauce. Serve garnished with cilantro.

Rating: Truly, how did I manage all these years without discovering what preserved lemons can do to a dish? Very bright flavors.

Slow cooker sweet potato lentil curry soup

 

Although it got up to the 60s today(!), I'd made this soup ahead, so soup weather it is. Besides, tomorrow will be, further confusing the deranged delphinium that came up on the south side of the house in March. That can't end well for a summer bloomer.

Slow-cooker sweet potato and lentil soup

From Food Network Kitchen

Ingredients

1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped small

3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped into bite-size pieces

2 leeks, well washed, sliced lengthwise and into ½-inch pieces (white and light green parts only)

¾ cup yellow or red lentils

1 teaspoon curry powder, divided

½ teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon kosher salt

6 cups water

1 tablespoon butter

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Method

Combine sweet potato, carrots, celery, leeks, lentils, ¾ teaspoon curry powder, salt and water in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.

Melt butter in small skillet. Add garlic and ¼ teaspoon curry powder and cook 1 minute. Add curry mixture, lemon juice and cilantro to soup. Smash part of soup with the back of a spoon to thicken it slightly. Salt and pepper to taste.

Rating: Fine. Decent texture and flavor. Not a wower, but a perfectly acceptable weekend at home soup. Hearty enough for a vegetarian main dish.

Chickpea, spinach and roasted vegetable soup

This soup has a nice hint of heat from the cayenne pepper, but mostly it's got that mellow warmth from the roasted vegetables and a tasty turkey broth. Just the thing for an allegedly spring day where there's a windchill. It only looks nice out there. But on the plus side, there's actual natural light in the kitchen for fleeting moments at a time.

Chickpea, spinach and roasted vegetable soup

Loosely inspired by this recipe in the April 2016 Better Homes and Gardens

Ingredients

1 zucchini, sliced in half lengthwise and then in ¼-inch slices

1 carrot, peeled, slice in half lengthwise and the in ¼-inch slices

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

¾ cup cherry or grape tomatoes

2 tablespoon olive oil, divided

1 large garlic clove, minced

1½ cups cooked chickpeas

Cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves

4 cups broth

1 tablespoon lemon juice

5 ounces fresh spinach leaves

Parmesan cheese for garnish

Method

In a roasting pan, toss together zucchini, carrot, onion, tomatoes and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Sprinkle with coarse salt and pepper. Roast at 375 for 30 to 40 minutes until vegetables and tender and browned. Mush about a third of the vegetables with the back of a spoon.

In a large saucepan over medium heat, heat remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. Cook garlic until aromatic. Add chickpeas, a generous pinch of cayenne pepper and the thyme. Cook for a few minutes to toast chickpeas. Add broth, roasted vegetable mixture, juice and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and add spinach in handfuls to wilt. Simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes to allow flavors to blend. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with grated Parmesan cheese.