Brussels sprouts with bacon, bourbon and honey mustard

Among the many things I'm thankful for today, not being on a long car trip on iffy roads is high up there. We were scheduled spend the day with family, and while it would have been nice to see them, the very colorful weather map showing blue, pink, green and yellow all clustered along our path gave us pause. Watching the snowfall from inside the house was a much better plan.

That of course meant Plan B in the kitchen, since obviously I didn't have a turkey thawing just in case and no grocery stores are open in Minnesota on food holidays. But a nice roast chicken was a lovely substitute, and I had some cranberries on hand to make my favorite chutney. Because it was just the two of us to please, I opted to try a new recipe for Brussels sprouts. This was one of a slew of recipes compiled into an over-the-top all Bourbon-laced Thanksgiving menu (thanks for sharing, Rebekah), and it seemed just the antidote needed.

Brussels sprouts with bacon, bourbon and mustard

From gardenandgun.com

Ingredients

1 pound Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved lengthwise

4 slices slab bacon, but into small chunks

¼ cup bourbon

1 tablespoon honey mustard

Method

Cook bacon in a skillet until crispy. Remove from pan. In rendered fat, brown Brussels sprouts. Add a small amount of water, cover and cook until sprouts are nearly as tender as you want. Mix bourbon and honey. Add to pan. Toss to combine and cook uncovered until sprouts are tender and sauce has formed. Season with salt and pepper.

Rating: Really? With bacon AND bourbon? How can it not be tasty? I barely waited long enough to take the photo before we gobbled them up.

Root vegetable soups

It's turned colder, and it's time to deploy root vegetables. To use up the rutabagas and sweet potatoes I bought from the market, I turn to this duo of soups, one called autumn soup and one called winter soup. In whatever order you eat them, they're tasty.
 

Autumn soup with crispy bacon

Via Epicurious.com, from “Cooking 1-2-3” by Rozanne Gold

Ingredients

1½ pounds sweet potatoes or yams

1 large rutabaga, about 1½ pounds

6 slices bacon, divided

5 cups water or more

1 teaspoon salt

12 black peppercorns

Method

Chop three bacon slices. Heat in large saucepan over medium heat until it’s released its fat, but hasn’t started to crisp up. Add sweet potatoes and rutabagas. Toss to coat. Add water, salt and pepper. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Whir in food processor or with stick blender until smooth.

Cook remaining slices of bacon. Serve as garnish. Makes 6 hearty servings.

Winter vegetable soup

From Epicurious.com

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

1 Granny Smith or other tart apple, peeled, cored and chopped

1 cup peeled and chopped rutabaga (or you could use turnips, but I don't know why you would)

1 cup peeled, seeded and chopped butternut squash

1 cup peeled and chopped carrot

1 cup peeled and chopped sweet potato or yam

5 cups broth

¼ cup maple syrup

Cayenne pepper

Method

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium low heat. Cook onion until translucent. Add apple and remaining vegetables. Season with salt and cook about 5 minutes. Add stock, bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer, covered, until vegetables, a good half hour or more. Add syrup and cayenne pepper to taste. Puree in food processor or with stick blender until very smooth.

Rating: Both of these are tasty, filling soups. The only clear-cut winner is the diner. The winter soup has more complexity of flavor, perhaps, and of the two, I'd be more likely to serve that one to guests simply because of it's richer color and smoother consistency. But the autumn soup, with its smoky bacon notes and thick heartiness, is a top rib-sticking choice on a cold day.

Chicken with lemon shallot cream sauce

Chicken with shallots

Adapted from “How Easy Is That?” by Ina Garten. Can you tell how much I love this cookbook?

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ cup white wine

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

¼ cup finely chopped shallots

3 tablespoons cream

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

4 tablespoons butter

Method

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large, oven-safe skillet or roasting pan, heat oil over medium high heat. Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Place in pan and sear well on both sides. Transfer pan to the oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

Remove chicken from pan and set aside, covered with foil. Place pan back on stove top over medium high heat. Add wine, lemon juice and shallots, scrapping in pan juices. Cook until only a few tablespoons remain. Add the cream, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and swirl in butter until melted. Serve chicken topped with sauce.

Rating: I've made lots of recipes along these lines, but then again, there's a reason for that. Hard to go wrong with that ingredient list, and this recipe does just fine, with a nice lemon tang. Chicken breasts can be easy to dry out, but this stayed juicy despite my opting (incomprehensibly for me) to swap in skinless breasts for the skin-on variety originally called for.

Chicken broccoli salad with mustard-wine dressing

I’m blessed with a superabundance of cooked chicken in the house as a byproduct of all that broth making I keep evangelizing about. So I’ll never pass up another potential new recipe for using some of the excess.

If you aren’t afflicted with this oversupply, the meat off a rotisserie chicken would work. Otherwise, the original recipe called for roasting 2 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (rubbed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper) for 35 to 40 minutes at 350 and then deboning them.

Mustard chicken salad

Adapted from “How Easy Is That?” by Ina Garten

Ingredients

4 cups cooked chicken

2 cups broccoli florets, steamed

¾ cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon white wine (or tarragon vinegar)

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1½ tablespoons grainy mustard

1 tablespoon minced fresh tarragon leaves

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

Method

Put chicken and broccoli in a bowl. Mix mayonnaise, wine, mustards and tarragon. Toss dressing with chicken mixture. Fold in tomatoes. Chill at least an hour to let flavors blend.

Rating: This one definitely works. Slightly tempted to try adding lemon zest next time, but definitely a perfectly fine, fast way to get a weekend lunch on the table.

Food oddity of the day: News broke that Oreo cookie fans are now able to customize packages of Oreos online. I was intrigued by this until I visited the site (www.shop.oreo.com if you can't look away) and discovered that it's just the packaging you can personalize, which while OK-ish, isn't quite what I'd envisioned. That naturally led me on a quest to compare Oreo-type recipes online, and inevitably led me to this site where you can order your own customized cookie stamps (http://mycookiestamp.com), which strikes me as a stellar idea. But what to have it say? So many options....

Butternut squash with cannellini beans, rosemary and Swiss chard

The chard in this recipe gets treated like kale chips rather than as a green you mix in. All sorts of goodness going on with this one. And it let me use up most of the remaining chard that’s (still!) growing in the garden (in November! In Minnesota!).

White beans and butternut squash with crispy chard

Adapted from “Smitten With Squash” by Amanda Kay Paa, whose book I'm clearly smitten with lately. Fourteen squash on the orchard rack will have that effect.

Ingredients

1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 teaspoon salt, divided

2 cups cooked cannellini beans

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves removed and chopped

6-7 large Swiss chard leaves, chopped

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss squash with 2 tablespoons olive oil, ½ teaspoon salt and a generous grind of black pepper on a rimmed baking sheet. Toss chard leaves with 1 tablespoon olive oil, ¼ teaspoon salt and a pinch of pepper on another baking sheet. Put both pans in the oven. Roast chard until crisp, about 10 minutes. Roast squash for another 20 minutes.

In a large pan, combine beans, rosemary and squash. Mix together 3 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, honey, ¼ teaspoon salt and some pepper. Toss with bean mixture in pot. Serve topped with crispy chard leaves.

Rating: Very tasty. Perhaps not quite Company Rated due to its looks, but very tasty home comfort food. 

Note: I used beans I cooked myself, which I'm sure made things tastier. I use the slow cooker method described on kitchn.com, only I find they need no more than four hours or they're mushy.

Slow cooker squash soup

I wasn't in the market for another squash soup recipe, but this one flashed past on my Pinterest feed, and since it had the magic words "slow cooker," I stopped for a second look and then pinned it for later consumption in my "Make that slow cooker do something" board. The timing works out so that if you do all the chopping the day before, you can assemble it in the slow cooker first thing in the morning and then it's ready at lunch time. Magic.

Slow cooker butternut squash soup

Source: GimmeSomeOven.com

Ingredients

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded and chopped small

1 white onion, chopped small

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 Granny Smith or tart cooking apple, peeled, cored and chopped small

2 sprigs fresh sage, plus more for optional garnish

2 cups vegetable broth

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Pinch of nutmeg

½ cup coconut milk

Method

Combine everything except for coconut milk and sage garnish in a slow cooker. Cook for 6 to 8 hours on low or 3 to 4 on high. Stir in coconut milk. Remove sage sprigs. Whirr with a stick blender until smooth, or transfer to a food processor or blender. Adjust seasonings as desired. Serve topped with additional sage and a sprinkling of cayenne if desired.

Rating: I’ve got a lot of squash soup recipes, many of which I adore, so the bar is pretty high to admit a new recipe into the ranks of the keepers. But this one made the cut, partly because, hello, it comes out of a slow cooker like it was magic, and because it’s very creamy and tasty. Nice balance of a bit of heat to go with the sweet.

Philly chicken sandwiches

My fall weekends tend to start the same way: making broth. Either I let it simmer in the crockpot all day Friday or set it to start overnight Friday and deal with it Saturday morning. All those fall veggies cry out to be used up in soups, and the sooner I turn them into soups stowed in the freezer, the sooner some sense of sanity can return to my refrigerator space. (Of course this sets up a collision course in the freezer section of my home, where Christmas cookies will war with kale soups, but that's another food dilemma for another day. Remember, I schedule my panics.)

So before soup comes broth. But then, if I'm making chicken broth, I have the side benefit/obligation of cooked chicken to use. Overall this is a good thing, but I'm starting to notice packages of cooked chicken eating into the freezer space I need for soups, so random acts of chicken recipes ensue.

This one barely counts as a recipe. It's ludicrously easy, but ridiculously tasty, so I thought I'd share:

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1/2 small red onion, sliced
1 cup sliced peppers, a mix of red and yellow is pretty and tasty, but any bell peppers will do
3 cups cooked chicken (a rotisserie chicken would be a fine source, too)
3 tablespoons sliced pickled jalapenos
3 slices provolone
Mayo
3 Kaiser rolls or sub rolls of your choice

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large skillet, heat olive oil. Add garlic and cook about a minute until it's starting to sizzle and has flavored the oil. Add red onion and cook for a few minutes, then add red peppers and cook until they're almost softened but still have just a bit of bite to them. Stir in chicken and cook until heated through.

Slice open rolls and spread with mayonnaise, if desired. Place on baking sheet. Divide mixture evenly among rolls. Top with jalapenos and then provolone slices. Replace roll tops. Bake at 350 for 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Source: Somehow the idea of a chicken version of a Philly sandwich occurred to me, so I went wandering around the Internet looking at a bunch of recipes, taking the parts I liked from various versions, since lots of people had thought of this before me. I'd say the final product owes the most to the variation on SimplyScratch.com.

Oh, and that pickle? That's from Hazelwood Creek Farm. If you ever run across them at the Midtown Farmers Market, treat yourself.