Risotto with Peas

This recipe is for a pressure cooker - 13 min to a pretty decent risotto on a cold night when you need some comfort food to go with that roast chicken.

In the cooker, heat 2 TBLS of butter over medium heat. Saute 1 small onion - finely chopped - for 4-5 minutes, until soft. Stir frequently so the onion does not brown. Add the 1 cup of Arborio rice (or other short grained rice) and saute until light brown. Add 1 cup of frozen peas and 2 1/4 cup of chicken broth; stir well. Close the lid and bring to pressure. Lower the heat and cook for 7 to 13 minutes. (some cookers have two positions the times are for Position 1 and 2 respectively)

Release the pressure and open the lid. Stir in an additional 1 TBLS of butter, 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese and 1/8 tsp of black pepper. Let sit until butter and cheese melts then stir thoroughly.

Comfort Food Meal

Oven baked chicken thighs, acorn squash and risotto - a soul warming dinner that can be accomplished in under forty minutes. The risotto is done in a pressure cooker which makes this easy and quick; a perfect solution for a weeknight.

Set the over to 400 degrees, cut the acorn squash in half, spoon out the seeds and place cut side down in 1/4 inch of water. Bake for 35 minutes.

While this is baking you can set up the chicken thighs. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and spray with olive or canola oil. Whisk 1-2 egg(s) with a bit of water, rinse the thighs and soak in the egg wash. For four chicken thighs, use 3/4 cup of bread crumbs, 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese and 1 tablespoon of tarragon. Remove the thighs one at a time and coat with the bread crumb mixture. Place in the oven when the squash has approximately 15 min remaining - turning once.

Heat two tablespoons of butter in a pressure cooker and saute half an onion that has been minced. Cook for approximately five minutes without letting the onion brown. Add one cup of arborio rice and saute until lightly browned. Add 2 1/4 cup of chicken broth and 1 cup of frozen peas. Cover and let the pressure build, cook for 7 min. turn off the heat and let the pressure off. Once the pressure cooker can be opened, add and stir in 1 tablespoon of butter and 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste.

While the risotto is cooking, the squash should be ready. Remove the water, cut each half to again and brush with a glaze; 1 teaspoon of melted butter with 1 tablespoon of cherry sauce (or marmalade). Place under a broiler for five minutes until nicely browned.

Turkey Meatballs and Fried Polenta

Sometimes I buy pre-packaged meatballs but really there is no substitute for freshly made ones. There actually isn't much difference between meatloaf and meatballs except shape, so if you mix well and don't overcook your meatballs will be light and fluffy.

Mix the following ingredients together;

• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup chopped spinach
• 3 large, cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 1 teaspoon of black pepper
• 2 pounds of ground turkey

Dig your hands in to mix all the ingredients well as with the meatloaf, if you mix it well and get enough air into it they will be light and fluffy. Form the mixture into 1 1/2 inch diameter meatballs. (You are free to make them larger or smaller as you prefer or time allows.)


Pour enough oil into a heavy skillet to coat the bottom; heat over medium-low heat. Working in batches, add the meatballs and fry until brown and cooked through, turning frequently. Approximate 10-15 minutes per batch. If serving with pasta sauce, undercook ever so slightly and add the meatballs to a pot with marinara sauce (about 2-4 cups depending on your party size - I sometimes freeze half of them for another night) and turn the heat to simmer.

Typically these are ideal served with rice or pasta. However, since I made polenta last night and pressed the leftovers into a bread pan. I am going to slice the polenta and fry the pieces. So as your meatballs are simmering, grab another skillet and add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Remove the polenta from the bread pan and make about half inch slices. Gently add to the hot oil but have a lid handy as the water in the polenta will cause the oil to spatter. It can be very uncomfortable getting spattered with minute dots of hot oil but also it is very messy.

As a side vegetable, I merely boil some organic peas. Your side really should be whatever you have handy and like.

Cornmeal Crusted Pork and Quinoa

My mother showed me an Asian market on Irving Street between 25th and 26th Avenues - Sunset Super - that has a butcher and seafood counter. I am excited because it is a few blocks down from my favorite produce market - 22nd & Irving - so that means I can now park once (if I happen to drive over) and get more ingredients within walking distance.

They have some very nice looking meat and seafood including sukiyaki cuts of meat. (Sukiyaki is a japanese one pot meal. Since all the ingredients are typically cooked and assembled at the table, the meat is sliced paper thin for quick cooking.) I purchased several items; one of which was a package of sukiyaki pork.

We had some friends over for dinner on last week so I decided to use the pork and serve it with oven-roasted cauliflower and quinoa. I also decided to serve the quick vegetable soup as a starter since I had frozen some of my most recent batch. Since the cauliflower will take almost 40 minutes, I set that up and start pre-heating the oven. Additionally, I drop my frozen soup into a pot with about an inch of water on the bottom and set it on my burner with the lowest BTU at low. This will defrost the soup and allow me to ignore it while I am cooking.

Next, using I decide to dip the pork in egg and coat with a cornmeal mixture. Since the pork is so thin it will be almost the last thing I cook, however I want to coat it now and give it some time to dry so that the crust will be crisper. (Another method is to do a three part process; coat in flour, dip in egg and then coat in breadcrumbs or corn meal. This method is very effective but I always mess myself up by rinsing my meat and putting it right into my egg wash. At the same time, you save a step which isn't bad either.)

For my egg coating, I use the two egg yolks left over from my souffle and one whole egg all whisked together with a bit of water (otherwise I would use two whole eggs and some milk). For the cornmeal coating, I put 1 cup of cornmeal in a pie plate and add approximately a teaspoon each of salt, pepper and thyme as well as 2 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese. I set up a couple of cutting boards to place the coated pork to dry; carefully remove a piece of pork from the egg coating; and lie it on top of the cornmeal coating and gently cover the meat. I flip the pork piece around, pressing into the coating to make sure it is fully covered and set the coated piece onto the waiting cutting board. I continue this process until all the meat it set aside and ready to cook. (If you start to run out of the cornmeal coating, it should be sufficient to simply add a bit more cornmeal - if you gauge it right you shouldn't have to add more seasoning.)

The cauliflower has been cooking and it is time for me to turn it for the final 10 minutes. I start the quinoa; I put 1 cup of quinoa in 2 cups of chicken broth in a medium saucepan. As it begins to boil, I add 1/2 cup of frozen peas, cover the pot and let cook for 10 minutes. When done, the grain appears soft and fluffy; the germ ring will be visible around the outside of the grain.

Finally, I take a bit of butter and lemon-infused olive oil and heat it in a large skillet over medium-high heat. I gently brown each peice of cornmeal coated pork for about 2 minutes per side. I remove the cooked pieces to a warm plate and continue cooking until they are all done. This recipe made a lot of leftovers - even serving to four people we will have enough for dinner another night this week. Just by making different side dishes it will be like a whole new meal...

Mahi Mahi Braised with Green Mole

My favorite use of green mole is as a sauce for fish. I have some mahi mahi defrosted so I decided to braise it with a bit of the mole and serve with rice and green peas. I start some white basmati rice in my rice steamer and - to make it more flavorful - I add a few sprigs of cilantro and use chicken broth rather than plain water (1 cup basmati rice, 2 cups liquid and 3-5 sprigs of cilantro). Alternatively, you could chop the cilantro and stir it in after you cook the rice - this is a bit more work but would give you a "fresh" cilantro flavoring.

While that is cooking, I rinse my fish fillets, pat them dry and set aside. I also set up some frozen, organic peas in a pan of water that I will boil later. I wait until the rice is cooked to start both of the fish and peas because I don't want to overcook the fish. Fish is very delicate and cooks quickly; many times people who don't like fish have eaten either overcooked or not very fresh fish. When you buy fish it should smell fresh and only faintly like fish - if it smells strong or even overpowering then it is starting to turn bad and you shouldn't buy it.

My rice cooker turns itself off when the rice is cooked with a loud pop. It cooks that small amount of rice quickly (10 minutes) but this will be enough for dinner and a few lunches. I set the heat under my saucepan with frozen peas to high - I will turn them off as soon as they boil.

Under a large, skillet I add about two tablespoons of olive oil and a scant tablespoon of butter. I turn the burner on to medium-high heat. When the butter is melted and starts to sizzle, I add my mahi mahi fillets (I have about four-medium sized fillets no more than 1/2 an inch thick) and when a bit of white edging appears on each fillet, I turn them over. I then add about 1/3 of a cup of green mole to the pan and cover. I cook this for no more than 3-5 minutes depending on the size of your fillets. (I don't mind my fish even a bit underdone so in this case I turned the heat off after about two minutes and left it on the burner covered while I set up plates for dinner.)

With the mole already made, the rest of the meal takes no more than 20 minutes. It does payoff to make some items ahead of time and freeze them in batches that are easy to take out and use to enhance small meals. This recipe serves two for dinner and leaves leftovers for two lunches over even another meal if you don't like reheating a fish lunch at work.

Oven-baked Chicken & Ricotta Sauce Pasta

My preferred method of cooking chicken thighs is to oven-bake them. It is one of those methods that is not time consuming and fairly easy to clean up. Typically my biggest challenge is to remember to remove the thighs from the freezer early enough for them to defrost.

Your primary ingredients for this dinner are boneless, chicken thighs (you can use thighs with bones but the cooking time will be longer); breadcrumbs; and grated parmesan cheese. I typically have a stash of unseasoned breadcrumbs because I make them from the scraps of bread I always seem to have lying around. Periodically I purchase breadcrumbs and prefer unseasoned because it allows you flexibility in your recipe.

Turn the oven up to 400 degrees and set up a cookie sheet (with a rim) with a bit of aluminum foil and spray it with olive oil spray. You could do without the aluminum foil but the clean up is more difficult and it ruins your cookie sheet faster. I rinse the thighs and set in a bowl with one or two eggs scrambled with water - enough to coat all the thighs in the bowl. In a pie plate, I put a bit more than a cup of breadcrumbs (for one package of thighs; approximately six pieces); 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese; and seasonings (typically salt, pepper and tarragon but it is really your choice. Oregano, thyme or even sage are all good options). I mix this well so that the thighs will be evenly coated with the breadcrumbs and seasonings.

One at a time, I remove the thighs from the egg mixture, let the liquid drain a bit from the meat, add to the breadcrumb mixture and gently coat each piece. Once the thigh is evenly coated, I arrange it on the prepared cookie sheet. It will take 20 to 30 minutes for the chicken to cook so I have time to figure out what I will make to go with the chicken. Sometimes I just use a package of macaroni and cheese, pesto pasta or oven-baked rice. I am in the mood for something different so I look at my ingredient options.

One of my favorite cookbooks is How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman (he has a blog on NY Times site http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/). I find this book essential for cooking when I have completely lost interest in my own standard meals. I have some ricotta cheese so I look in the index to see if there is a recipe that I can use that calls for this ingredient and will also go with the chicken thighs. Sure enough there is a pasta sauce recipe that calls for ricotta and peas (page 144 How to Cook Everything) - which I also have. The sauce requires a penne, ziti or rigatone paste (tube shape) and I happen to have half a pound of ziti. Since the sauce recipe calls for a pound of pasta, I will just cut it in half.

I start water boiling for the pasta, take a quick peek at the chicken thighs (they haven't even started warming up really) and start gathering my pasta sauce ingredients.

Set aside

• 1/2 cup of frozen peas

In bowl large enough to add the pasta later, combine;

• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• 1/2 tablespoon butter (optional but per the recipe it adds richness to the sauce)
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• Salt and pepper to taste

When the water starts boiling, I add the pasta and check on the chicken thighs. They have started sizzling a bit so I turn them over which means they are more than half-way done. The side originally laying on the tin foil should have gotten a bit brown and crispy. Pasta typically takes about 10 minutes to cook, especially one of these tube shapes. When it is about half done, I thrown in the peas with the pasta so that they can all cook together. (The recipe called to have the peas cooked in salted water. Since I am using frozen peas I would rather not use another pan and know that they will defrost while the pasta is finishing cooking.)

When it appears that the pasta is done (we prefer our pasta al dente so it is up to you), I turn off the heat and take a ladle of the pasta water and add it to the bowl with the ricotta cheese mixture. I whisk the ingredients for a few moments to get them nicely blended; it seems a bit thick so I add just a bit more pasta water (barely quarter of a ladle) and re-blend. When satisfied with the consistency, I drain the pasta and peas and add them to the bowl with the ricotta mixture and toss it all together.

My final touch to the plate is a quick, fresh tomato salad. I cut one medium tomato in chunks and toss with a bit of basil infused olive oil and balsamic vinegar and season with some salt and pepper. Voila! All together it took about an hour but well worth having dinner and leftovers for lunch.