The Unsophisticated Noodle

After looking through all of the pictures I took of this dish, I've decided that there is some implicit characteristic in the macaroni noodle that makes it seem...unsophisticated. Maybe it's the years of associating the noodle with the yellow powdery 'cheese,' or the kindergarten craft projects where the dried noodle takes center stage, but I quite honestly considered giving you another soup or dessert recipe and skipping one of the few dinners I've had a chance to cook lately. Obviously, I changed my mind.

As Daniel mentioned earlier, we're trying (he with more success than I...) to stick to what's in the pantry and only purchase fresh vegetables. So, after staring aimlessly I decide that the ingredients I need to use include leftover macaroni noodles (another long story), and some chicken leg pieces. I quickly decided to roast the chicken, because to be honest, that's my new favorite way to enjoy chicken because of flavor and moist dinner it creates with minimal work from me. And then there were the noodles...what to do with the noodles...


You can find a simple roast chicken recipe here. As you can guess, I left the leg piece whole and didn't make the sauce or vegetable part and it worked well.
To try to keep it simple, all I did was saute an onion, garlic, and a few green, red, and yellow peppers and then raided the canned section of our pantry for tomato products for tomato paste and diced tomatoes, and added a cup or so of red wine to give the sauce a slightly more earthy flavor to compliment the basil I covered the chicken in. Once the tomato sauce mixture was assembled, I added in the leftover noodles to basically warm them up in the sauce while the chicken finished.


Peppery Tomato Sauce with Macaroni Noodles
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 Green Bell Pepper
1/4 Red Bell Pepper
1/4 Yellow Bell Pepper
1/2 Small Onion
1 Garlic Clove
1 Small Can Tomato Paste
1 Can Stewed Tomatoes
1/2 Cup Dry Red Wine
1/2 Cup Water
1 Tsp Basil
1 Tsp Thyme
Salt & Pepper to Taste
2 Cups Cooked Macaroni Noodles


1. Slice peppers and onion thinly; mince garlic. Saute vegetables in saucepan with olive oil until tender over medium high heat.
2. Add can of tomato paste, stir about one minute. Add stewed tomatoes, red wine, and spices. Add water as needed to thin to appropriate consistency. Once sauce is slightly thin, add cooked macaroni noodles. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally until noodles heated through and ready to serve. 

Suffice to say, not my most blog-worthy looking dinner ever, but it was still quite tasty, and was a success at not going to the store to pick up something else. We'll see how the rest of my dinner's go sticking with this 'no going to the store' thing...


Enjoy!

Chicken and Memories to Welcome Fall

The crisp morning air and first frost behind us makes me smile a little and mourn a little. The fresh harvest vegetables will vanish for a season, yet comfort food will again reign complicity in its stead. The refreshing white wines are exchanged for bold new faces from some of my favorite regions such as Chilcauga, Rioja, Loire, and Jumilla.

This change of seasons puts me in the mood for some familiar faces as well as some newcomers to my repertoire. I have cooked and eaten more chicken than I can remember due to my mother's instilled love of the bird. My grandmother and great grandmother stuck to red meats and pork more, probably because my great grandfather was a dairy farmer and relied greatly on bovine sustenance for nourishment. He would be awfully proud to know that bacon, whole milk, and buttermilk have become forces in the cooking scene today. During the Great Depression, he raised pigs to sell for five cents a pound if I remember correctly. When he sold one of his pigs that weighed in at two hundred pounds, he would take in an incredible ten dollars. When I think of him, his stories just start pouring into my mind.

So, to get back to dinner and the micro-thanksgiving we had, I substituted a Cornish game hen for a turkey, included one starch/vegetable of roasted turnips and sweet potatoes, and one side. Having never worked with wheat berries, I took an ill-advised risk in only soaking them for only seven hours. Sometimes, being over eager gets the best of me. The taste of the warm wheat berry salad was excellent...aside from the slightly chewy texture. The fresh root vegetables still had dirt clinging to their skins as if to display a cloak straight from the ground. For the first time cooking a Cornish game hen, which is not much different than a small chicken, it is on my list to do again very soon. Moist, succulent meat that had just enough skin to crisp over with a jacket of olive oil and crushed sage. Fall is upon us and embracing it with open arms or a roasted game hen and root vegetables will not be regretted.

 

Sage Roasted Game Hen and Root Vegetables

1 (1-1/2 #) Cornish Game Hen

2 medium to large white turnips peeled and cut in 1/4 inch cubes

3 smallish sweet potatoes or yams peeled and cut in 1/4 inch cubes

1 medium Spanish Onion diced

5 T. crushed Albanian Sage divided

5 fresh sage leaves julienned

4 garlic cloves crushed

1/4 C. apple cider vinegar

1/2 of a lemon

olive oil

salt and black pepper

The night before the bird is going to be cooked place it in a large bowl of water  until just submerged then add vinegar and five tablespoons salt. Cover and chill in refrigerator until one hour prior to cooking. When hen has been removed from brine bath pat dry and coat with olive oil, a generous portion of salt and black pepper, and two tablespoons of crushed sage. Insert fresh sage and garlic into the hens cavity and tress the legs.

Steam turnips and sweet potatoes for about 8 minutes before adding to bottom of roasting pan. Coat generously with olive oil, salt and black pepper, and remaining crushed sage. Squeeze juice from the halved lemon over vegetables.

Set roasting rack in pan and place hen on rack and roast for approximately one hour and ten minutes or until chicken registers 165 degrees.

Warm Wheat Berry Salad

1 1/2 C. wheat berries

5 C. water

3 T. balsamic vinegar

1/3 C. halved grape tomatoes

1/4 C. toasted pecans coarsely diced

Soak 1 1/2 C Wheat berries overnight and rinse again before cooking. Bring water to a boil in pot and add wheat berries. Check occasionally to ensure water has not evaporated. Cook 1 hour or until berries begin to split open.  Remove from pan and toss wheat berries with pecans, tomatoes and vinegar.

Pigs, Goats, Chickens, and Rutabagas

Next door to where I work is a little Mexican grocery called La Michoacana Mexican Market. When the door swings open the marimbas are churning, the salsa music is blaring, and my mind can picture a couple doing the cha-cha. At the back of the store they have a selection of meats, mainly pork that they butcher themselves. I know this because one night a man was wheeling a whole pig through the front door on a hand-truck. Just a few minutes after they finished unloading, a nice Mexican man, that I learned was from Chicago, explained that the pig was used mainly for carnitas. A few stores down from La Michoacan we see the Halal meats store unloading goats rather frequently, but those are other stories altogether. Well, the Mexican store has some pertinence.

Yesterday while we were in the doldrums at work, I wandered through the aisles of sauces and canned goods with some looking like Mexican generics that Wal-Mart would frown upon and others that had very little English whatsoever. I had it in my mind to make a roasted adobo chicken (that’s where the Mexican store comes in) and since it was late when I got home from work the nice individuals south of the border helped me out with the prep work in the form of Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. 

To accompany chicken I picked up a stunning specimen of a rutabaga at the farmers market the weekend before. You will have to forgive me for forgetting the variety but suffice it to say that it differed from the coarse bowling-ball shaped rutabagas seen sometimes in the grocery store both in shape and taste. I remember from childhood the odor of rutabagas cooking in the oven while at my great-grandmother’s and frankly I was a bit leery. They smelled and looked awkward then and I was praying they didn’t taste awkward now. They happened to be an excellent accompaniment; and did I mention that I used bacon grease with the roast chicken.

Adobo Roasted Chicken with Rutabagas

2 bone-in chicken breasts

3 oz. chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

3/4 C. onion finely diced
4 T. bacon grease
4 T. cumin

3 T. Dijon Mustard

Juice from half a lemon

1 # rutabaga peeled and cut into ¼ inch dice

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix rutabagas, some peppers, onion, bacon grease, 2 T. cumin, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and 1 T. mustard, and arrange on the bottom of baking dish leaving room for chicken. Set chicken in baking dish and grind salt and pepper atop and add the remaining amount of mustard, peppers, and cumin. Bake for twenty five minutes uncovered then an additional twenty five covered. Allow to cool for about eight minutes before serving. Pan juices can be thickened for a sauce.