by Sam Tackeff | Nov 2, 2014 | chicken, Pantry Staples
It snowed today. The first snow of the season, but I’m not ready for winter. I always get a touch of the SAD – winter is long and cold in New England, and despite growing up here, it never really gets any easier. I spent the day trying to convince myself of the joy that snow brings – thinking back to boarding school days, where it was always wonderful to be on campus when the first snow arrived. Suddenly, a common occurrence was a brand new marvel: you’d see the snow through the eyes of students who had grown up in warm climates, delighted in those large white flakes for the very first time.
This day, however, was colored with my own melancholia, as I had a last lunch (soup and grilled cheese in front of a fire) with my friend Alexann, before driving her to the airport to fly away to Denver. I came home, made myself a cup of tea, and wrapped myself in a blanket. This never gets easy.
By evening, the sky was clear, and we were treated to a beautiful sunset.
For dinner, I knew that I wanted to make something with my defrosting chicken from my Walden Local Meat share. I had two large boneless, skinless breasts, which isn’t what I usually cook with – I’m a bone and skin gal – so I wanted a dish where they’d stay moist, and something a little bit rib-sticking for this cold fall day.
With the Patriots game in the background, I looked through my Eat Your Books bookshelf, to find which of my cookbooks have recipes for chicken breasts and pumpkin. I found myself flipping through a Donna Hay – and liked the look of her ‘baked chicken and pumpkin risotto’, but wanted to make it with pumpkin puree rather than the chunks of pumpkin she calls for, so I adapted the recipe to my own liking. It’s probably sacrilege to call this a risotto, but the dish calls for arborio rice, so I can justify it to myself. Italian purists, please look away, or consider the alternate title: “Pumpkin Rice with Allspice Chicken”.
Baked Pumpkin Risotto with Chicken
This recipe served two (very generous) portions. For four, I might double it, and you’d have leftover lunch for one, the next day. If you’d like a little bit soupier rice, I’d add a touch more chicken stock at the beginning.
1 cup arborio rice
1 15 oz. can organic pumpkin puree
2 oz. butter, melted
1 cup chicken stock
salt and pepper
pinch of nutmeg, pinch of allspice
olive oil
2 chicken breasts, preferably organic and free range (about 1/2 lb. each)
salt and pepper
a tablespoon allspice
1/2 cup grated parmesan
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
In a bowl, stir together arborio rice, pumpkin, melted butter, and chicken stock. Add a good pinch of salt, a few twists from a black pepper grinder, a pinch of nutmeg, and another pinch of allspice. Stir, transfer to a shallow baking dish, cover with foil, and bake at 400 for 35 – 45 minutes until rice has cooked through. (This batch, for whatever reason, took me almost an hour.)
While rice is baking, heat up a frying pan with a little olive oil on medium. Season chicken with salt, pepper, and a generous coating of allspice, and cook in pan, about 4-6 minutes on each side, until cooked through – it might take an extra minute or two on each side if your chicken is thick. Take off the heat, let rest for a few minutes, while you chop your parsley and grate your cheese. Then chop, the chicken, making sure to reserve the juices.
Once rice is done, put in a large bowl, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the chicken and it’s juices, parsley, and parmesan, making sure to stir well, until creamy. Serve warm.
by Sam Tackeff | Mar 23, 2014 | chicken, Meal Planning
Before I get to my meal plan, I have to share with you the best dinner that I made last week – the one that hit the spot in every which way. It ended up feeling a little bit Mediterranean, and a little bit Scandinavian, light and fresh and springy.
Balsamic chicken and potatoes with cucumber, avocado and dill salad. For this one I preheated the oven to 450 Fahrenheit, grabbed some chicken thighs, and seasoned them with salt, and a generous sprinkle of Italian seasoning (from the bulk Frontier spices). I made a dressing that was one part balsamic vinegar, and two parts olive oil – about 1/3 of a cup for about a pound and a half of chicken thighs – and coated the chicken in the dressing in a bowl. I set that aside while steaming some halved new potatoes in the microwave for 10 minutes, then layered my 12 inch skillet with the potatoes and chicken, gave everything a good mix with my hands, and then nestled the chicken thighs on top of the potatoes, baking for about 15 minutes, flipping the chicken, and cooking 15 minutes more. Once the chicken was cooked, I took it out of the oven, and let the potatoes cook for another 15 minutes until golden and a little puffy. Once they were done, I made a very quick salad – just a chopped cucumber, avocado, handful of fresh dill, olive oil, and a little salt. It was one of the first meals that I’ve eaten in my kitchen while sunlight was still in the sky! Welcome spring!
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For the past few days I’ve been in Washington D.C. on a little vacation, although tragically I came down with a pretty awful stomach virus (or food poisoning, can’t be sure), and haven’t been very interested in any food. But, I knew that I’d be feeling better soon, so I decided to outsource my meal planning to the lovely Jess of Cook Smarts, and try out the service! (Yep, that’s an affiliate link – I get a small cut if you buy a plan yourself, but I purchased the plan with my own hard earned moolah!) Cook Smarts has a four day meal plan that is released each week (and access to the archives if you subscribe – plans are currently $6-8 a *month* depending on if you buy monthly or yearly), and after looking through the sample meals, I decided to bite and try things out. The meals are all quite adaptable, with substitutions for paleo, gluten-free, and vegetarian, and I’ve made my own little tweaks with vegetables that we prefer at home.
Week of Sunday, March 23rd
Sunday: Eggs, a tiny bit of cheese, and scoop of raw sauerkraut. I’m still trying to get back to a happy tummy, so I’ve been chowing down on sauerkraut, and other gut-building foods for the past day. I do well with full fat dairy, so I added a little bit of special cheese to make myself feel better.
Monday: Cook Smarts Meal #1. fish sandwich with kale chips. For me this will be fish salad with greens, and with a homemade tartar sauce.
Tuesday: Cook Smarts Meal #2. classic tacos with iceberg lettuce and avocado salad. Another slight modification as taco salad, and I’m guessing that we’ll both be enjoying this one! I’m not sure if I’m going to do iceberg or romaine.
Wednesday: Cook Smarts Meal #3. skillet chicken with chard and salsa over roasted potatoes. Chicken and potatoes never let me down, and I always gravitate towards these simply homey recipes in cookbooks when I see them. Sometimes it’s the meals with the least ingredients that can really shine. (I’ll report back.)
Thursday: Cook Smarts Meal #4 breakfast burritos with spinach and tomato salad. This will be a breakfast omelet for me – but I like that it uses some of the leftover potatoes from the previous night’s meal to put together something quickly! Economy and leftovers are key in my kitchen!
What’s on your table this week?
–– Sam
by Sam Tackeff | Jan 22, 2014 | chicken
Tonight I made myself a really great dinner. It was a relief actually. The past few weeks I’ve been a little out of my element. We’ve had houseguests, and gone out to eat more times than prudent in January. I’ve missed one of my weekly cook-ups, and neglected my meal planning. It’s also been really cold in my kitchen. That’s sort of how it goes around here – sometimes I’m floundering around at the last minute putting something together, and other times things just click.
The salad above is the result of some last minute cravings at Trader Joe’s. I’ve been eating cleanly for all of January, which means I deny myself the pleasure of samples at Trader Joe’s – other than the coffee of course. On the plus side, this means that I don’t go home with mushroom mochi potstickers instead of a balanced meal.
So this salad. It’s one of my versions of a dinner salad with general Asian flavors. I do a riff on this on a regular basis – sometimes its Indian carrot salad with lamb, sometimes it takes on a more Vietnamese twist, maybe chicken with a cucumber salad and Nước chấm. This salad is made for versatility: meat, chopped veg, fresh herbs, and a punchy dressing. At TJ’s, I picked up broccoli slaw, a cucumber, mint and basil. In the case I found myself a pack of boneless skinless chicken thighs. I do love skin, but they don’t sell bone-in with skin chicken thighs at our outpost, and while I’d make a whole chicken, I really only like dark meat – it just tastes better. When I got home, I dried off the chicken (fully drying the skin allows for tasty Maillard reaction – browning! science! – to happen), and seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Into the oiled cast iron, for six minutes on the first side. While the chicken cooked, I made my dressing: a few tablespoons of almond butter, the juice of a lime, a dash of vinegar, about a half tablespoon of Red Boat fish sauce, and some olive oil. I flipped the chicken, cooked for about four more minutes, and then let it rest off the heat while I prepped all of my salad ingredients. I chopped half of an English cucumber and added it to the bowl, then a few cups of broccoli slaw per person, and chopped mint and basil. I tossed with the dressing, tidied up, and then chopped up my chicken and added it to the bowl.
It was devoured while I watched some trashy tv. My 600-lb. life, followed by the first five minutes of Sex sent me to the ER. I had to turn it off. I wish I was making this stuff up.
by Sam Tackeff | Nov 25, 2013 | Challenge, chicken, Pantry Staples, Pasta
For someone who loves food and cooking so much, some nights it’s awfully hard to make a decision and get food on the table. This evening threatened to be trashy takeout night– we didn’t get home until 8:30, and it took all of my willpower not to order in. I usually reserve Sunday afternoons for batch cooking, but yesterday I was out and about, and didn’t have time to cook. I did however pick up a package of organic free range chicken thighs at Trader Joe’s, which was my starting point for tonights meal.
First I added a spoonful of coconut oil to my All Clad and heated up the pan on medium high heat, seasoned my chicken thighs (about a pound and a half) with Maldon salt and black pepper, and seared them on one side for about five minutes without touching them. Once nicely browned, I flipped them over and started rummaging through my cupboards for something to cook with them. I had some garlic, just a few cloves, which I sliced and added to the pan. Then I decided on shredded brussels sprouts, a few large handfuls, which I added after the chicken was cooked through (about 12 minutes). I tossed the chicken and sprouts, and added a pinch of urfa biber (Turkish hot pepper), and covered the lid to let the sprouts steam. At this point, I took the picture, thinking that we’d eat, until I spotted a lone portion of soba noodles, one of those single portions, maybe 2 or 3 ounces, which I decided to quickly boil and add to the pan. To finish the dish, I grated on a massive amount of parmesan cheese, which just makes everything in life better, and tossed everything together.
by Sam Tackeff | Oct 8, 2013 | chicken, Meat
When I attempt to produce any sort of creative work, there’s often a lot of “what I should have produced” that holds me back from sharing the actual thing that I did produce. No clear picture of a dish? Well, then scrap the entire post. And then I have to remind myself that Nigel Slater writes these great little essays about food for the Observer, and rarely do I ever need to see a picture…to get the picture. No, I’m not comparing myself to Nigel here. Just giving myself a little pep talk. So here’s dinner, from a few days back.
Trader Joe’s has these boneless skinless organic free range chicken thighs, and they are my kitchen salvation, despite their only flaw – a lack of delicious chicken skin. While not the whole chickens from the farm that I’d get in San Francisco (sigh…), these chicken thighs are my favorite quick chicken option – because they have taste, they cook quickly, and they are forgiving if you forget them on the heat a little too long. Also, admittedly I do not love having to cut off the head and feet of my chickens before eating them, sorry. Also, while I very much enjoy roasting whole chickens, I do not enjoy eating whole chickens, mostly because I think that white meat is a waste of time. It’s all about the thighs, guys. All about the thighs. Because everyone seems to need another recipe for chicken in the rotation, here’s what I did this week.
This is more of a method that I use, and I’m not sure that it’s the best method, but it’s quick and easy. Basically, it’s taking a fat of some sort, browning the chicken on one side for a few minutes, then popping the lid on the pan to steam it a little bit. Then you flip them in the fat, cook a little more, add some vegetables, cover the lid, steam those, take the lid off, cook a few minutes more and by the end you get sort of crispy chicken that’s caramelized, and soft vegetables. I do this most often with pancetta, chicken and greens. But you don’t have pancetta, you could use bacon, or even salami. And you could choose whatever vegetable you’d like, providing it doesn’t take too long to cook. (Or you could pre-steam it.)
In my large All-Clad skillet, I tossed in 4 ounces of cubed Citerrio pancetta (the small container they sell at Trader Joe’s), and turned the heat to medium to cook it slowly and let the fat start rendering out, about 5 minutes. Then, I seasoned my raw chicken thighs (about 1.5 lbs.) with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (yep, the powder…), pushed the pancetta cubes to one side and put the chicken in the melted fat in the center of the skillet. I then added a few springs of fresh thyme, turned the heat to medium high, and covered the lid for five minutes. The bottom of the chicken seared to golden while the top part steamed, and then I flipped the chicken, making sure to let the oil from the pancetta coat the surface of the pan before laying the chicken down. I cooked another five minutes, added an entire 12 ounces of shredded brussels sprouts, and covered the lid again, until the sprouts were tender, about four minutes – I tossed everything together, and that was dinner. (If you eat cheese, you can add a little of that in at the end too – a bit of brie, or gorgonzola, or if you are on a Trader Joe’s binge, a few laughing cow garlic herb wedges – they have those too.)
by Sam Tackeff | Sep 19, 2013 | Challenge, chicken, Fitness, Restaurants
Before I even bother mentioning any part of my day, isn’t this a glorious sunset? You can’t quite see it, but the moon was huge on the horizon tonight. As I took the long way back from work there were dozens of people stopped taking photos on the Harborwalk. Folks had iPhones, iPads, you name it directly in front of their faces to get a shot of this thing. Yes, yes, I know, why can’t we just stop and enjoy things with our eyes? But who will know that we saw it?!
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I hope you don’t mind that this blog has turned into a serial novel. Now where were we here? Oh yes, we left off last night as I was about to watch Broadchurch. And then I posted my little essay on the interwebs, and promptly passed out. Turns out that two hours at the gym has a soporific effect.
Today was a sad day at work, as a coworker who I’m particularly fond of left to move onto new things. We had a big team lunch across the Charlestown bridge at the new Papagayo location, ate massive amounts of guacamole, and witnessed said departing coworker’s first ever tequila shot. (I’m not actually sure how that one is possible, but there is video documentation) I ordered the shrimp and avocado salad with mango and jicama, and a little side of black beans. It was good, but I think I’d like to recreate it at home with slightly riper mango!
It pushed me right into nap time territory, but I think that could have been because I had been walking all morning long, rather than the food. I racked up 16,000 steps today, which I managed to track with my Fitbit, Jawbone, and several RunKeeper logged activities. Can’t have too many measurements! Here’s what the Jawbone app looks like – that’s my main page on the left. The purple bar is sleep time, and the red-orange is steps. You can zoom in on your daily step total (on the right), and see the breakdown of your activity time. Neat!
After walking over to the car, I met Devon and some coworkers at Atlantic Beer Garden, where I turned down burgers, fries, and a half a quesadilla, alas. When I got home tonight, despite my activity level, I was actually not very hungry. (Might have been the extra guacamole which tided me over?) Here’s dinner: a bowl of spinach and cherry tomatoes, and a leftover spicy chicken leg from Capitol Grille. There may… or may not be a small bit of ice cream in my future.
And before I go, here’s one last photo – the seal that caught me checking him out in the mirror at the aquarium tonight. I try to pass by the window on a regular basis, because, come on, these guys are too cute. (I decided to hold back from posting the screen shot of my mom as I FaceTime’d her seeing the seal, but, man is it great knowing that I have that shot on my phone.)
Because we’re going full circle here, I’m headed to attempt Broadchurch again. Goodnight all!
