All Day Meat Ragu

Heavenly meat sauce.

ALL DAY MEAT SAUCE

Every carnivore ought to have a phenomenally impressive meat sauce at the ready.  This is one of those "recipes" you don't need a recipe for. It's a formula, and can be adjusted several ways--and exact proportions are unimportant. And it is perfect and delicious every single time. You cannot mess this up.

This ragu is a hearty, richly-flavored and intense tomato meat sauce, perfect for the snowy winter weather we're having in Denver now. Incredibly rich, complex and satisfying, it is an impressive and welcoming dish for a dinner party, or you can keep it in the fridge and eat it gradually over the course of a mid-winter week. It reheats excellently and gets better over time.
It is just incredibly delicious. And, though it takes at least several hours to complete, most of that is braising time--it's really an easy recipe.
And this can be varied in a number of ways. I've made it with half of a bone-in leg of lamb, with a skinless pork butt, with short ribs, or with a beef chuck roast (the cheapest way! and always phenomenal tasting). Below is the beef chuck version, which is fabulous--but all of these are excellent. Depends what you have on hand and are in the mood for.
This recipe makes a full pot of sauce in my 6 quart dutch oven--this is enough for more than a dozen hearty eaters.

Ingredients (in order of use) 
1 beef chuck roast (3 ish pounds)
salt
pepper
flour
olive oil
6 or so strips of bacon (I like a smokey, thick-cut kind)
3 white onions, diced small
1 bottle of red wine
5 16 oz cans of tomatoes (I usually use 3 cans of crushed and two of diced)
sugar
2 or 3 raw beef soup bones OR a raw pork hock (these are usually quite cheaply available in the meat section of any grocery store)
2 heads of garlic, minced

Linguine with beef ragu, topped with herby ricotta. 

Directions
I like to start this the day before I want to eat it--but you could also start it in the morning and plan to have it for dinner. The flavor deepens as it sits.
First, take out your large, lidded pot and pour in a few glugs of olive oil. Unwrap your chuck roast and pat dry with paper towels. Generously season the roast with salt and pepper, then dust it with flour (2 or 3 tablespoons should suffice). Turn the heat on under the pot--when the oil shimmers, brown the roast on all sides--a few minutes per side should be fine. Remove the browned roast and place it on a plate.
Dice up your bacon and add it to the pot. Let it cook for a couple of minutes, until a good amount of the fat has rendered but isn't entirely crisp. Then, add the onions. Cook for 10 minutes or so, stirring every so often. These should get translucent and take on a little color, but not caramelize much.
Add the bottle of wine. Dump in the whole thing, unless you happen NOT to be pregnant, in which case you can pour yourself a glass to enjoy while you finish cooking, then dump in the rest of the bottle. In my chunky sober case, the whole bottle went in. Sadness. Only a few more months.
As the wine boils, scrape the bottom of the pot. Allow the wine to boil and reduce for a few minutes. Add your canned tomatoes. Sprinkle a tablespoon or so of sugar on top--this eliminates the tinny metallic taste from the canned tomatoes.Make sure there remains a few inches of space at the top of the pot--you need room for your roast and the soup bones. Mix the tomatoes and wine together and bring to a boil.
Add the beef roast and the soup bones. Submerge them in the sauce. (The bones--or pork hock--add collagen to the sauce as they cook--this results in a silky richness and a depth of flavor the sauce would otherwise lack. If you are using meat that includes bone--shortribs or a leg of lamb--it's not necessary to add bones to the braise).
Turn your oven on to 300 degrees. Cover the pot and place it in the oven. Then, walk away for four hours.
After four hours have elapsed, turn off the heat, and remove the pot and leave it covered. Allow the sauce to cool completely (I just turn the oven off, and leave the sauce pot in there overnight). When the sauce is cool, skim any grease you can off the top and throw is out. Remove the soup bones and toss them (or give them to your dogs). Remove the roast and shred the meat, using forks or your fingers. Add it back to the pot, mix well. Taste for salt--you may want to add a few teaspoons more. Viola! The sauce will be deep red, meaty, and utterly delicious.
Serve over a pasta with some traction--I like rigatoni, or spirals, or linguine.
To make herby ricotta--chop up a bunch of parsley and a bunch of basil--mix with whole milk ricotta. Place a dollop on each plate of pasta and sauce.

I cannot recommend this enough. It's absolutely delicious. 

Enjoy!

Adult Mac and Cheese

This mac-and-cheese contains gruyere, gouda, fotina, cheddar, and parmesan. Enjoy with champagne, a nice green salad, and gratitude for one's lack of children. 

I've been thinking obsessively about mac and cheese ever since I had the best version known to man at Caseus in New Haven. Their version lists the component cheeses:

I have never had raclette or comte in my life. And what on earth is Der Sharfer Maxx??? Sounds like a bad-ass biker cheese.

I set about trying to recreate this insanely mind-blowing food experience, but with the cheese offerings of my local Alberston's:

Ingredients!

I ended up using fontina, gouda, gruyere, and my all-time favorite, extra-sharp aged white cheddar from Cracker Barrel. 

This was the first time I've made mac and cheese at home. Why? Well, a small part of the reason is that my husband is lactose intolerant: the price of a dairy-heavy dinner is being hot-boxed all night by noxious, unrelenting ass. 

But really, the main reason I haven't even though to make mad and cheese is that it's a food associated with the worst eaters in humanity: American children. You think mac and cheese, you think a picky four year old who only eats mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, fries and apple sauce. You think dinosaur-shaped pastas drowning in neon hell sludge. You think of children's menus.  (why the fuck are children's menus even a thing? Can a child in a restaurant not simply eat a smaller amount of gnocchi or risotto or lamb chops? Why do we send children the message that hot dogs and grilled cheese are specifically their food? Why lead them down a fake-cheese and chicken-finger paved road to impacted bowels, obesity, culinary philistinism and a lifetime of microwaving Swanson's freezer bags of failure?) 

Nightmare. 

The culturally accepted food of American children is foul, beige, processed, bland bullshit, and as a rule I want nothing to do with it. 

My house, kitchen and life away from work are adult-only spheres: rare meat, dark green salads, anchovy vinaigrette, noodles with chiles and fish sauce, gorgonzola, strong homebrew, Scotch, large travel expenditures, 11 am weekend wake-ups, homemade hot pickles, The Wire, casual nudity, and multi-day cooking projects. 

I'm sure if we ever actually produce a small human, it will automatically pop out enjoying stouts, short ribs and braised cabbage and I won't have to change my habits at all. 

Anyway--the mac and cheese at Caseus changed my whole mac-and-cheese paradigm. As I shared a bottle of wine and dug in I realized: mac and cheese is legit amazing, in certain forms. And! Perhaps mac and cheese can be a suitable adult foodstuff! My mind was blown. 

Let's spend the whole afternoon eating mac and cheese and drinking champagne on the deck! 

Consuela loves this sort of thing. 

My version didn't really compare to Caseus. But it was still super bomb. I served it for the monthly meeting of my cookbook club. Only three members of the club could attend this meeting, including Consuela.

Ingredients
1 pound of large pasta shells

1 quart of whole milk 

4 tablespoons of butter

3 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons dry mustard powder

1 head of garlic, minced

1.5 ish cups shredded gruyere (just shred the whole block) 

1.5 ish cups shredded gouda 

1.5 ish cups shredded fontina 

2 cups shredded extra-sharp white cheddar 

2 cups panko bread crumbs 

1 cup shredded parmesan 

So much cheese. 

What to do

Boil some salted water for the pasta. Cook the pasta for 2-3 minutes less than the cooking time on the bag / box calls for, as you will also be baking it, and you don't want it to get mushy. 

Grease a casserole. Preheat the oven to 350. 

Melt the butter in the bottom of a large pot. When it's completely melted, add the flour and stir constantly, allowing the flour to become caramel brown, about 3-4 minutes. You made a nice roux! Add the mustard powder, about a tablespoon of the minced garlic, and a big pinch of black pepper. Stir for another 30 seconds to fry your spices, then add the quart of milk. 

Whisk the milk mixture until it steams up, just on the edge of boiling. Then, add all the shredded cheese and whisk like crazy. Keep the pot on the heat, whisking, until the sauce is smooth and hot, just on the edge of boiling.

cheese sauce!

Add the cooked pasta. Mix the pasta into the sauce, then pour into the greased casserole. It's ok if it looks a bit soupy at this point--as you bake it, a lot of the liquid will be soaked up by the pasta, and some sauciness will only enhance the luxury of the final product. 

Add the bread crumbs to a dry saute pan. Add the remaining garlic and the parmesan. Toss over a flame until golden and crunchy, then scatter evenly over the top of the casserole full of pasta and cheese sauce. 

Bake at 350 for about half an hour--until cheese is bubbling and the top is golden. 

Serve with a side salad. 

This was delicious. But I feel I could improve it even more--maybe using smoked gouda and adding some chevre to the sauce? Maybe toasting the bread crumbs in truffle oil? The possibilities are endless. 

 Enjoy! 

Vietnamese Noodle Salad

Sweet, tangy, spicy, funky, salty, delicious.  

Walking the dogs the other night, I happened across my new favorite book store--the Book Mall on South Broadway. The owner gave Tato and Swaysway dog treats and had an encyclopedic knowledge of everything written, ever. So many used book stores are full of faded Joyce Carrol Oates and The ButterBusters Cookbook and other worthless crap. But the Book Mall is totally different--on every shelf, there is something you've been meaning to read.

And the cookbook section was phenomenal. There were half a dozen I really wanted, but I settled on The Gourmet cookbook: 

This cookbook contains the top 1000 or so recipes from the whole history of Gourmet magazine. The recipes come with the back stories about the context of American cooking in which they first appeared. It's super entertaining to read page by page, like a novel, and there are so many things I am dying to make. 

After reading it once through the first time, the recipe that stuck in my mind was the Lemongrass Beef and Noodle Salad. 

This recipe originally appeared in Gourmet in 1995, when people first started using formerly obscure Asian ingredients in mainstream cooking. 

This was the first time I've used Vietnamese fish sauce--I've used Thai fish sauce for years, but not Vietnamese. And it is DELICIOUS. The nuac cham dressing TO DIE FOR.

My new magic ingredient. 

I mean, you could sprinkle chopped basil and cilantro and mint and crushed peanuts on anything and it would be fabulous. But this salad is just wonderful. 
They didn't have beef at the Asian market, so I used pork. But would probably have been better with beef, so I included the original recipe. 
The lemongrass marinade is also fantastic. It would be perfect on any grilled meat--beef or chicken or pork or fish. 

This recipe would be great without meat, too. 

I served this for Bachelor Night, where it was an unmitigated hit. 

I also made some stir-fried shitakes with eggplant to go with it. 

This is delicious. Make it immediately!
Enjoy!

Grilled Lemongrass Beef and Noodle SaladGourmet | June 1995

Serves 4 as an entrée

ingredients

For marinade

• 2 stalks fresh lemongrass, outer leaves discarded and root end trimmed
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce (preferably nuoc mam)
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 4 teaspoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

• a 1- to-1 1/4 pound skirt steak or flank steak
• 1/2 pound dried rice-stick noodles (rice vermicelli)
• 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves (preferably Thai basil), washed well and spun dry
• 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, washed well and spun dry
• 1/2 cup fresh coriander leaves, washed well and spun dry
• about 1 cup Nuoc Cham (Vietnamese lime sauce) (see below)
• a 1-pound seedless (European) cucumber, halved lengthwise and cut diagonally into 1/4-inch-thick slices
• 2 to 4 small thin fresh red or green Asian chilies (1 to 2 inches long) or serrano chilies, seeded and sliced very thin (wear rubber gloves)

• Garnish: Thai basil, mint, or coriander sprigs

preparation

Make marinade:

Thinly slice lower 6 inches of lemongrass stalks, discarding remainder of stalks. In a food processor or blender finely grind together sliced lemongrass and garlic. Add remaining marinade ingredients and blend well.

In a large resealable plastic bag combine marinade and steak and seal bag, pressing out excess air. Marinate steak, chilled, turning bag once or twice, at least 4 hours or overnight.

In a large bowl soak noodles in hot water to cover 15 minutes, or until softened and pliable.

Prepare grill (or preheat broiler). Bring a kettle of salted water to a boil for noodles.

Discard marinade and grill steak on an oiled rack set 5 to 6 inches over glowing coals 3 to 5 minutes on each side for medium-rare. (Alternatively, steak may be broiled on rack of a broiler pan about 3 inches from heat about same amount of time.) Transfer steak to a cutting board and let stand 5 minutes.

While steak is cooking, drain noodles in a colander and cook in boiling water 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until just tender. In a colander drain noodles and rinse under cold water to stop cooking. Drain noodles well.

In a large bowl toss noodles with herbs and half of nuoc cham. Divide cucumber among 4 bowls or plates and top with noodles. Sprinkle each serving with 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons rice powder. Thinly slice steak on the diagonal and divide among noodles, mounding it. Sprinkle chilies over each serving and garnish with herb sprigs. Serve remaining nuoc cham on the side.

Nuac Cham Dressing

This recipe is used to prepared Grilled Lemongrass Beef and Noodle Salad.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

ingredients

• 6 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 3 tablespoons Asian fish sauce (preferably nuoc mam)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 garlic clove, forced through a garlic press
• 2 small thin fresh red or green Asian chilies (1 to 2 inches long) or serrano chilies, seeded and chopped fine (wear rubber gloves)

preparation

In a small bowl stir together all ingredients until sugar is dissolved.

Meatballs from Heaven

Could anything be better than spaghetti and meatballs? 

It's fall in the 11th grade, so the book is East of Eden. One of my all-time favorite reading experiences, ever. And to teach East of Eden--especially to a class of 70% first generation students who love to read--that is really living, in my opinion. I've taught it for years and years--I know by heart the lines, the  characters, the pages with good metaphors or allusions or irony. And yet, every time I teach East of Eden, I find it as joyful and exciting and rich as the very first year. The complexity, the depth, the humanity.  It's electrifying and comforting at the same time.

And that's how my meatball recipe is, too. Years and years after perfecting the recipe, I am still sort of amazed by how fabulous these meatballs are. They're complex and deep and rich and delicious. I've never had a better meatball, and every day I cook them is a great day. 

Sauce Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil 

5 ripe tomatoes 

2 cups red wine 

7 fat cloves garlic 

2 red onions 

1 large can (22oz) tomato puree 

1 large can diced tomatoes 

1 tablespoon sea salt

3 tablespoons sugar 

dash of black pepper

dash of cayenne pepper 

How to Make the Sauce

In a large saucepan, saute the onion in the olive oil. Meanwhile, put the ripe tomatoes and the garlic cloves in a food processor and blitz them together into a smooth puree. 

When the onions are carmelized and brown, add the wine. Reduce for 15 minutes. 

Add the fresh puree of tomatoes and garlic, and the canned tomato puree and the diced tomatoes. Mix together. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down to a simmer. Add the sugar, salt, and pepper. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for anywhere from an hour to all day.

Meatball Ingredients 

2 lbs ground beef

1 lb ground pork 

4 strips hickory smoked bacon, minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

4 tablespoons Italian parsley, chopped 

1 tablespoon dried red pepper flakes

2 teaspoons toasted fennel seeds 

1/2 cup plain bread crumbs 

2 eggs 

1 tablespoon salt 

How to Make Meatballs 

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. 

To mince bacon, either pulse it in the food processor or chop it finely with a knife. 

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Work the mixture with your (clean) hands, making sure all elements are evenly mixed. 

Roll into balls about golf-ball sized or a bit larger. Place onto a cookie sheet. 

Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. 

When the meatballs are done, place them into the sauce and submerge. Simmer the meatballs in the sauce for 20 or so minutes. 

Serve over spaghetti! Garnish with Parmesan or mozzarella (or both!) and fresh torn basil and / or parsley. 

The morning after I made these, I woke up and made us meatball subs for lunch.

Enjoy! 

Short Rib Ragu

A rich, sticky pot of meat and tomato goodness.

After two weeks of our Belize fish-and-beer diet, I was really craving something meaty and hearty. After all, fish meat is practically a vegetable.

 

This is really the sort of dish that evokes snowy evenings, wool socks, dark stouts, and exhausted ski legs. But I wanted it in July, when the oven shouldn't even have been turned on. Well, whatever--the stomach wants what it wants!

Any ragu takes hours to make. And short rib ragu takes an especially long time, as it involves braising meat on the bone, then taking it off the bone and adding it back into the sauce. 

But--it's still summer, so I had the whole day free. And putzing around in the kitchen braising meat is obviously the best possible way to spend an afternoon.

And this sauce is WORTH the time. It is totally, totally fabulous. Short ribs have a distinct flavor--between an aged steak and a pot roast--a meaty, melt-in-your-mouth fattiness. The tomatoes, cooked for hours, are jammy and dense; the garlic and wine have a mellow sweetness; the onions and bacon are barely detectable in the background. Absolutely delicious. I like to serve it over a big-textured pasta--like rigatoni or campanelle--with a dab of ricotta and some fresh basil. 

Oh hell yes.

This is tied with lamb ragu as my all-time favorite pasta sauce. It takes time, but it's special enough to serve for a holiday or occasion. 

Short Rib Ragu 

Ingredients 

About 8 beef short ribs (2 grocery store packages). Make sure to get the ones on the bone. 

2 large yellow onions, diced

6 strips of bacon, chopped

half a bottle of red wine

1 bulb of garlic 

About 12 fresh tomatoes (I used a combination of roma and hothouse tomatoes)

1 can of diced tomatoes

a cup of flour

olive oil 

salt and pepper 

dash of sugar

What to do 

The first step is to brown the short ribs. A good brown crust on meat is essential to a good braise. First, sprinkle the shortribs with salt and pepper. Heat up a few glugs of oil in the bottom of the pot you'll use for the sauce. 

Dredge the short ribs in flour, then brown on all sides in the oil. You will need to work in batches. Remove the browned short ribs to a plate and set aside. 

Short ribs browning. 

Short ribs post-browning. 

After browning, leave the oil in the bottom of the pan. Dice the onions and chop the bacon--add them to the oil and cook until the onions are starting to brown, about 20 minutes. 

Your kitchen smells amazing at this point.

When the onions are soft, translucent, and a light caramel color, pour in half of a bottle of red wine. Pour yourself a glass with the remaining wine to enhance your cooking experience.

Allow the wine to boil and reduce by about half--this should take about 8 minutes. Stir occasionally, making sure to scrape up the cooked bits of bacon, onion and short rib that may be sticking to the bottom of the pot. 

Wine  reducing with onions and bacon.

While the wine is reducing, peel all the cloves of a bulb of garlic. Place them in a blender or food processor. Add the fresh tomatoes in with them and blitz everything up into a smooth puree. 

Before.

After.

After the wine is reduced, add the tomato garlic puree to the pot. Stir to combine everything and bring to a boil. Allow to boil and reduce on medium heat for 20 minutes. 

Add the can of tomato puree, a dash of salt and pepper, and about a tablespoon of sugar. Bring back to a boil and allow to boil on medium for about 10 more minutes. 

At this point, add the short ribs back into the sauce. Submerge each one. Cover the pot and place into the oven at 300 degrees. 

Leave in the oven for 3 hours and 30 minutes. (Or longer--but at LEAST 3:30). 

During this time, clean your kitchen up, enjoy the smell, and try to resist the urge to peek in the pot too often. 

After the time has passed, take the pot out of the oven and allow to cool slightly for 10 minutes. 

There will be a layer of fat sitting on top of the sauce--skim off most of it and throw it away. 

Remove the short ribs from the sauce with tongs. They will be extremely tender. Place on a plate or cutting board and allow to cool until you can handle them with your hands. 

Short ribs after braising.

When the ribs are cooled, take the meat off the bone and chop or shred it. Add the meat back into the sauce and throw the bones away. 

And---you're done!!! 

Worth the wait!

Boil up some pasta and drown it in this fabulous ragu. Tear up some fresh basil and sprinkle it on, and top it with a blob of whole-milk ricotta. 

I cannot over-emphasize how fabulous this sauce is. Make it the next time you really want to impress. 

Enjoy!

Pasta Salad with Walnut Pesto

This was another dish I made for my school's end-of-year party, which happened in my backyard. I made pesto pasta salad, chicken piccata, bean salad, and roasted root vegetables with basalmic and goat cheese dressing.
If you are confused about the lack of pork or beef in this menu, it's because my coworkers are all a bunch of health freaks. Half of them don't eat red meat, a couple are rule-following Jews (unlike the bacon-loving Frank interpretation of Judiasm), and some are even vegetarians or nondrinkers! These people love fresh air, exercise, local vegetables, and waking up without regrets. I can only imagine they all secretly have really sinister vices--crack? Parkour? Abuse of baby goats? All I know is anyone who teaches HS has to cut loose somehow, and if it's not scotch and steak, what is it?

Anyway, pesto!
I like making mine with toasted walnuts in place of traditional pine nuts--I think they have a more distinctively nutty flavor.

Pesto Recipe

1.5 cups toasted walnuts
1 cup parmesan cheese
4 cups (packed) basil leaves
1.5 cups olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chili flakes
4 cloves of garlic 
juice of 1 lemon

What to do:
Blend!

Ingredients

So to make this pasta salad, I combined the pesto with campanelle, fresh cherry tomatoes, and roasted red peppers.

It was delicious, and so was everything else.

Party food!

These people work too hard.

It was a delightful night and now: It's summer! I don't have to take the highway out to the boonies until August 12th! Looking forward to watching a lot of tv, cooking a lot of great food, getting married to world's sexiest man, and reading Game of Thrones on a beach in Belize.
YAY!

Chicken Piccata With Fresh Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Spaghetti

Chicken Piccata, fresh tomato spaghetti, roasted carrots.
Our camera is still broken, so iphone pictures will have to do for now. 

I spent the long weekend visiting friends in NYC for my bachelorette party. This is a particular group of friends--everyone I lived with while studying abroad in London my junior year. All English majors--hard-drinking, foul-mouthed lushes. Even ten years later.
We had a great time, but one particular night felt especially lovely. I was staying with my friend Jessie on E57th, but she's gone out for a date with some dude who was exactly her type (Jewish, single, funny, hairy). So I'd grabbed dinner with my friends Katie and Brian (who met while we were studying abroad) at Patsy's, a place near their building I'd been to, and loved, before. We ordered a family platter of a rich, garlic-studded, tomato-dark, cheesy, spinach-y, penne dish, then went for a walk along the East river.
The food was so good; the company so warm, the city so New York.
Then I left Katie and Brian and went to wait for Jess after her date. I got her a carton of Tasti-D-Lite in anticipation of post-date ice-cream eating and talking, but an hour after settling on her couch with a glass of good wine (she's a pastry chef and her tiny apartment has more wine bottles than square feet) she called me and was like "I'm starving! Let's get food, asap!"
Apparently it was a great date, but they didn't eat! I met her in the lobby of her building and she declared she was craving pasta. We walked a few blocks at one am to an Italian restaurant--there was a piano, the bar was crowded with singing drunks,  the kitchens was open late. Jess ordered bolognese and we shared while she giggled and gave me all the details. Maybe it was my third glass of wine that night, but everything seemed just gorgeous--the french bread and olive oil, the bolognese, the rainy NY night out the window.
It was a lovely weekend, and reminded me how lucky I am to have friends who've known me forever. It also reminded me how great regular Italian food is. There are very few regular Italian restaurants in Denver--only fancy ones. Mores the pity.
So I returned to Denver just wanting to make pasta and classic Italian food. So, tonight: chicken piccata! I made a fresh tomato and roasted red pepper spaghetti to go with, as well as some roasted carrots.
It was lovely: tangy, salty, sweet, garlicky, rich. I used pounded chicken thighs for the piccata and they tasted fantastic.

Ingredients 

Roast carrots and piccata sauce

Chicken Piccata 

This recipe makes a lot of sauce--because I think that's the best part. Other piccata recipes have about half this much garlic, capers, wine, lemon. 

Ingredients: 

4 chicken thigh fillets, pounded flat (How to pound flat: put cutlet in a freezer bag and smash with a frying pan until flat and even) 

Salt

Black pepper 

Smoked paprika 

1/4 cup flour 

Olive oil 

3/4 cup white wine 

Juice of 3 lemons 

3 TB capers, chopped 

6 cloves of garlic, chopped 

What to do: 

After you've pounded the chicken thighs flat, sprinkle them on eat side with salt, pepper, and paprika. Then, dredge each cutlet in flour on both sides. Set aside. 

Chop the capers and garlic. Aim for nearly minced. 

Juice the lemons and get the wine ready (I put these in the same cup). 

Get some oil hot in a frying pan (enough to cover the bottom). When shimmering, add the cutlets, two at a time, giving each enough room so that they don't touch. Cook on each side until golden brown (3-4 min per side, depending on the heat of the oil). Repeat with the remaining cutlets. 

Put the cooked cutlets in a dish to rest while you make the sauce. 

Toss the chopped garlic and capers into the remaining hot oil you cooked the chicken in. Cook for about a minute, then add the wine and lemon juice. Cook for about 3 minutes at a high heat--you want it to boil for a bit to meld the flavors and take the alcohol out of the wine. As you cook, scrape the bottom of the pan to get any leftover burned bits into the sauce. 

Pour over the chicken! Serve with pasta! 

Fresh tomato spaghetti

Ingredients 
1 package of spaghetti 
1 carton of grape or cherry tomatoes, chopped 
2 roasted red bell peppers, chopped (I roasted my own but canned works too) 
Salt, pepper, olive oil 

What to do: 
Cook the spaghetti. Just before it's done, add the chopped tomatoes and bell peppers and cook for another minute. Season with salt and pepper and give a light drizzle of olive oil. Serve with parmesan if you want.
Done! 


Roasted Carrots 

Put carrots into a pan. Lightly drizzle with olive oil and mix around, so each carrot is lightly coated. Roast at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes--the outside should be slightly blistered looking. 
Serve with a drizzle of balsamic, or with nothing. Roasting carrots makes them sweet and creamy and delicious.