Freezer Bread and Butter Pickles

This sheet pan Chicken with Mushrooms and Green Beans shows that delicious doesn't have to be complicated!

Crispy chicken thighs, tender green beans and flavorful mushrooms all roast together for an easy weeknight dinner.

This recipe proves that cooking doesn't have to be complicated to be good! Chicken thighs, green beans and mushrooms are roasted for an easy sheet pan dinner.

The chicken thighs are coated with a simple spice rub and allowed to get both crispy and juicy in the oven.

Green beans and mushrooms, simply seasoned are roasted. Once you've tried green beans with mushrooms, you'll never want to go back to plain green beans again. They pair so well, like in this Instant Pot Green Beans and Mushrooms.

If you have one take away from this oh-so-easy tray baked chicken, it's roasting a citrus fruit at the same time. In this case, it's an orange. After everything is roasted you squeeze some of that roasted orange over for a fresh pop of flavor. It's amazing!

Read On →

There are a few things that keep me from being a vegetarian.  One – steak.  Two – bacon.  There’s lots more, but I’m just trying to keep it simple, since it is the end of a holiday weekend here.  But actually now that I look at it, it should read One – bacon, Two-steaks.  Because really bacon is number one.  Numero uno.

And you know what’s even better than just bacon?  If your bacon has the words “house cured” somewhere in it’s title.  This stuff is amazing.  It’s bacon the way it’s supposed to be.

So, when I Heart Cooking Clubs said that this week would be Better with Bacon, they might as well have sent me an engraved invitation.  So, let’s see the rules are, it has to be Bittman and it has to be bacon, okay…if you insist.  What I found was a classic pasta dish, Pasta  all’Amatriciana, which proves with just a few ingredients you can have an amazing dinner (especially if one of those ingredients is bacon).  I found this gem in The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman.

Pasta all’Amatriciana

• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 2 T. extra virgin olive oil
• ½ cup (about ¼ pound) minced pancetta, guanciale, or bacon
• 1 pound linguine or other long pasta
• ½ cup grated pecorino Romano cheese
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 2 cups chopped tomato (canned is fine)
• Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

In a skillet, brown the bacon in the olive oil (if you think you need the oil – I didn’t).  Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon.  In the bacon fat left behind (hmmm…bacon fat), saute the onion over medium heat until softened.  Turn off the heat and let it cool a bit.  Stir in the tomatoes and turn the heat to medium.  Cook the sauce, stirring every so often, while you cook the pasta.  When the pasta is done, drain it and add it to the tomato mixture, toss with the bacon and the cheese.

Serves 4

This will be my entry for I Heart Cooking Clubs!

and

This will be my entry for this week’s Presto Pasta Nights hosted by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours .

And guess what peeps???  Next week I’m hosting Presto Pasta Nights, so start your pasta water boiling and let the party begin!!!

Remember last week when I got all zen like and said something was as numerous as the grains of sand?  Well, you can say the same thing about pizza.  Think about it…thin crust, thick crust, deep dish, hand tossed, heavy toppings, light toppings, veggie, meat lovers..see.  And you know what, I say yes to them all.  Whatever mood you are in there is a pizza for it!

In the summer, I like my pizza light and more often than not, I turn to Pizza Marguerite.  It’s my favorite salad on a thin light crust, what’s not to love?? 

And like my favorite salad, it really doesn’t require a recipe, all it requires is fresh tomatoes, herby basil, fruity olive oil, fresh mozzarella, and salt and pepper. 

Here is how I do it:  Preheat oven to 500 with pizza stone in oven, roll out pizza dough, brush lightly with olive oil, spread some chopped fresh tomatoes and dot with torn chunks of fresh mozzarella, salt and pepper.  Bake for 10 minutes or until crust is golden and bubbly.  Strew fresh basil leaves on top.  Enjoy.

This will be my entry for Two For Tuesdays!

And  for

 Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Cinzia from Cindystar.

It’s summertime and you know what that means!!!!  Yep.  Spatchcocked chicken time.  If you are new to my blog, you may not be aware of my long standing love affair with spatchcocked chicken.  Go up to the little search thing up top and type in spatchcocked chicken and get ready to feel the love.

Every Sunday in the summer, I have one or two of these babies going on my grill.  This, my dear friends, was the first one of the season.  This and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and I know summer has arrived.

You can find instructions at this post:  Grilled Spatchcocked Chicken, which come from How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Foodby Mark Bittman. 

Now, go out and throw one of these on the grill and feel the spatchcocked chicken love.  You know you want some.

We all know the value of brown.  The extra flavor we get when we brown foods.  Meat – gray – yuck, meat – brown – good.  Really it applies to practically everything:  meat, chicken, pineapple, potatoes…all better when they have a crispy brown crust.  But do you want to know my favorite???  Do you? 

Cheese.

Seriously, brown some cheese, and I am swooning.  Brown some salty, dry haloumi, and I will do whatever you want me to do.  I will mop your floors, babysit your kids, give a pill to your cat. 

Today’s fantastic brown cheese excursion comes from Donna Hay Issue #46.  This was so good, I can’t even begin to describe it.  It was like a BLT only in a salad form, and then made hugely better with the browned cheese.  Seriously good.

Roasted Haloumi, Bacon and Tomato Salad

• 9 oz haloumi, sliced
• 4 strips of bacon, diced
• 7 ounces sourdough bread, cubed
• 2 T. olive oil
• 9 oz cherry tomatoes
• 3 oz baby spinach leaves
• dressing
• ½ cup red wine vinegar
• 2 T. olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, crushed

Preheat the oven to 425.  Combine the dressing ingredients in a bowl or jar and whisk or shake to combine.  Set aside.

Place the haloumi, bacon, bread, and olive oil on a baking sheet.  Toss to combine and roast for 5-6 minutes.  Turn the haloumi and add the tomatoes.  Roast for about 6-8 minutes until the bread is golden and the tomatoes are cooked through.  Place in a bowl with the spinach and dressing and toss to combine.

*Notes – Next time I will roast the bacon by itself for about 5 minutes – it didn’t get as crisp as I would like it, then add the bread and cheese.  Also, I didn’t use all of the dressing because I don’t like my bread to get soggy, so I very lightly dressed my salad.

Serves 4 (unless you’re serving me, in which case it’s 2 or 3)

One of the benefits of having a Donna Hay Magazinesubscription is that we are on opposite ends of the season spectrum.   So when I am in the middle of a long, miserable winter, in my mailbox is a magazine filled with sunshine and fresh recipes.  So, I dutifully mark and dream and wait for spring, which is what I did with issue number 47, which arrived in October, but was filled with spring goodness.

Fast forward to now and I am ready to work my way through all the glorious recipes.  Now, I know I pay a lot to get the magazine into my mailbox all the way from Australia.  It comes out to about $16 an issue.  But I find so much in each issue that it’s really more of a cookbook to me than a magazine.   Not to forget the fact that it’s absolutely gorgeous and sometimes after a hard day at work, coming home and seeing that in my mailbox is so wonderful and exactly what I needed. 

The other thing I love about Donna Hay recipes is that for the most part they are simple.  They rely on fresh ingredients and a few herbs to give you light, fresh, pure tastes.  When I come home from school exhausted and check to see what is on my plan for the night, I am always relieved to see a Donna Hay recipe because I know it will be easy, tasty, and beautiful.  This recipe was all of that, and the leftovers for lunch were perfect.  Note…the recipe below serves 2, I doubled it when I made it.

Ginger Beef Patties with Lime Noodle Salad

While lying in bed, very early Saturday morning, I suddenly realized that I had no way of keeping track of my favorite recipes.  (Yeah, unfortunately, this is what is going through my head at 5:50 AM on a Saturday morning.)  So, I decided to come up with a new label….Top Recipe.  That way at the end of the year, I can do a recap of all my favorites  just like you other,  ridiculously organized and twenty steps ahead of me, food bloggers do.  

The reason that this popped into my head was because of this recipe.  Because somewhere, somehow, I needed to remember that this was great.  Beyond expectations great.  Because really, what kind of expectations can one have for parsnips?  I don’t expect much from them and they don’t expect much from me, and we are happy to co-exist in our mediocrity.  But, no more.  I, or rather Donna Hay,  rose to the occasion and the parsnips rose right along with me.   Seriously, people, this was fantastic, and it’s level of fantasticness was raised by it’s level of easiness.  Fantastic + Easy = Top Recipe.   The only thing I would recommend is using more pears and parsnips, because they are so good, you will want more.

I found this gem in issue #45 of Donna Hay Magazine. 

Pork with Caramelized Pear and Parsnip

• 4 x 200g pork chops, trimmed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• sea salt and cracked black pepper
• 2 firm pears, chopped
• 2 parsnips, peeled and chopped
• 1 lemon, halved (I sliced mine)
• 60g butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar

Preheat oven to 200ºC (390ºF). Heat a large non-stick frying pan over high heat. Brush the pork with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook for 1–2 minutes each side or until browned.

Place the pear, parsnip, lemon, butter and sugar in a baking dish and toss until well combined. Top with the pork and roast for 25 minutes or until the pork is cooked through and the parsnip and pear are caramelised. Serves 4

The other day, I was having something light for dinner, a frittata to be exact.  You know how in the books they always say, “just serve with a salad and you have a light lunch or dinner”?  Well, I love that.  It sounds so European to me, even though I have no idea if the Europeans have light lunches and dinners served with salads or not.  Mainly because I rarely stray from Soddy Daisy TN, where light lunches and dinners are definitely not the rule. 

So anyway, I was having a frittata and Cuisine at Home suggested that I serve it with a Spanish Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette.  Since I practically always do what I’m told (unless it’s my husband telling me to do something, that I usually manage to forget).  Now, I don’t know what makes this particularly Spanish.  It seems like an unusual combination doesn’t it?  Green olives, oranges, tomatoes, almonds?????  But it works.  It makes a mighty tasty salad, one that is a little more substantial than your usual salad. 

Spanish Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette

makes 4 servings (8 cups)

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
• 1 tablespoon minced shallot
• ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 8 cups thinly sliced romaine lettuce
• 4 oranges, cut into segments
• 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
• ½ cup slivered almonds, toasted
• ¼ cup halved green olives
• kosher salt and black pepper to taste

Whisk together the oil, vinegar, shallot and Dijon in a small bowl (or do like I do and put in in a jar and shake).

Toss together the salad ingredients and toss with the dressing. 

There are some celebrity chefs that I watch to just watch. That is, I have no desire to actually cook what they are cooking, I just like watching them do it. Maybe pick up a hint or two. And then there are chefs, that as I'm watching, I have to fight myself from jumping up and running into the kitchen to start the recipe NOW. Jamie Oliver is definitely the latter. Everything he makes looks good, and even better than that, it looks doable.

Jamie's recipes never seem to be overdone. They aren't too fussy. So, when I was looking for nice and simple, but a little special dinner for New Years Eve, I turned to Jamie. In Cook With Jamie I found, Pan-fried Sirloin Steak with Simple Chianti Butter Sauce and Olive Oil Mash. It's actually harder to type in that long title (and points to Jamie - he names recipes just like I do), than it is to make this. It was simple, pretty, and good. What more can you ask of your dinner?

Pan-fried Sirloin Steak with Simple Chianti Butter Sauce and Olive Oil Mash
Serves 2


For the Olive oil mash:
14 oz. potatoes, peeled and halved
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Extra Virgin Olive oil
A small handful of freshly grated Parmesan Cheese
A knob of butter


For the Rest:
2 x 7 oz Sirloin Steaks, 1-inch thick, fat scored
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive Oil
2 knobs of butter
2 shallots, peeled and finely diced
A few sprigs of Thyme
1 large wineglass of Chianti/Zinfandel that you've been drinking
A few sprigs of watercress
Good Quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1. Put the potatoes into a large pan of salted water, bring to a boil and simmer until soft and tender. Drain them in a colander and allow them to sit for 4 minutes to steam away any excess moisture. Return the potatoes to the pan and mash them up, stirring in a large glug of olive oil, the Parmesan and butter. Taste, season, and then transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and place over a pot of simmering water to keep warm.


2. Heat a heavy frying pan, large enough to cook both the steaks at once without them touching. Season your steaks and brush them with olive oil. Using a pair of tongs, hold the steaks fatty-edge down in the frying pan to render and color the fat. When the fat is golden, fry the steaks for 8 minutes in total for medium-rare, turning them every minute. Remove from the pan to rest.


3.Turn the heat down and add a knob of butter to the pan. Fry your shallots and thyme for 4 minutes, then add the wine and reduce by half. Pour in the resting juices from the meat, add the 2 remaining knobs of butter and take the pan off the heat. Stir around to emulsify and make a really simple red wine sauce. Taste, season and serve with your steak and lovely olive oil mashed potatoes with a scattering of watercress and a drizzle of good olive oil.