Fridgg: What's For Dinner?

Chicken with Curry Dill Sauce

Pouring the sauce over the chicken

Do you remember when you were little, and your parents would eat peas and tofu and cabbage and tomatoes and all sorts of other disgusting things? You would look at them with your nose scrunched up and wonder, “How can you possibly like that stuff? It’s so gross, it doesn’t taste good at all!” And they would smile and tell you that liking icky vegetables is the sort of things that happens when you grow up and your tastes change. So you always wished your tastes would just change already, so dinnertime wouldn’t always be such a battle between you and those horrible vegetables your parents would make you finish before you got to have anything else.

(…or maybe that was just me. I always was an exceedingly picky child.)

Well… it seems my tastes are finally changing.

Fresh out of the oven

Case in point: a few years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to inform you that I absolutely, positively hated dill. Yuck. Gross. How could anyone possibly like it?

Now, well, I’m kind of addicted. The scent makes me want to bury my face in a dill plant and inhale. It’s amazing.

(Sound familiar? Yeah… it’s been happening more often in the last couple of years.)

So pretty!

I think this chicken is one of the best possible applications for dill. It’s spicy, creamy, hearty, and of course dilly (yes, I looked it up, and realize that doesn’t mean what I intended it to mean, however both meanings apply beautifully here. Go look it up… you’ll see what I mean.), and altogether awesome. I discovered this recipe when my dear mother gifted me with a bunch of dill (this was back when I still thought I hated dill – she had used a third of the bunch in a recipe, and didn’t have any way to use it up, so of course she gives it to me) and I did a half-frantic AllRecipes search trying to figure out how on earth I was supposed to use all that dill.

That was the turning point. Now I love dill, and make this chicken again and again and again… Love, love, love.

Om nom

Chicken with Curry Dill Sauce, adapted from AllRecipes

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp salt
• a dash of pepper
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 tsp fresh dill weed, chopped
• 1/4 tsp curry powder
• 6 chicken breast halves
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil

Cooking Directions

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour, salt and pepper; stir until smooth. Gradually add milk and bring to a boil. Boil and stir for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat. Add the mayonnaise, dill and curry; stir until smooth. Set aside.
2. In a skillet over medium heat, brown chicken in oil. Place in a greased 9×13″ baking dish. Pour sauce over chicken. Bake, uncovered, at 350°F for 50-60 minutes or until meat juices run clear.

tickled by pickles

My current sandwich obsession: honey-roasted turkey and pickles on toasted Hawaiian bread (with a little bit of mayonnaise and dijon mustard, of course).

However, I do have a confession to make… up until about a month ago, I was convinced I hated pickles. I’d pick them off of sandwiches and burgers (and transfer them to my mom’s plate if she was around – she loves pickles).

But then I split the most amazing burger with my dad at Betty Burgers in Santa Cruz, CA… and had such a long day (the family drove up from LA that morning, for my sister’s graduation, then went out for dinner with my sister and her girlfriend afterwards) that I was too darn tired to bother picking them off my half.

And wow. Pickles are actually good! (No, I’m not pregnant. Promise.) It seems I’m getting older, more mature… or at least, my tastes have gotten more mature, even if I’m not. ~_^

Memorial Day BBQ

I have a list – a very, very long list – of recipes that I’ve bookmarked to try someday. (Nearly all from food blogs, of course.) So any time I want to make something new – whether it be a baked good, or a side dish, or, as I did this past weekend, a menu for a barbecue, I turn to this list. (Actually, to be honest, I have two lists – one for sweets, one for savory foods – which makes searching for something to make a little easier.) Here’s what I came up with this time:

Forming Umami Burger patties

Umami Burger Sliders on Hawaiian Rolls, with Bacon Jam and New York Cheddar Cheese.

Burger condiments

Ooooh, mommy indeed. Trust me. You want to make this.

Hijacking my dad’s BBQ for burger grilling

I made Crunchy Coleslaw to go on top of the burgers… but it never made it there. Instead, it ended up a side. And that was perfectly fine. (I replaced the malt vinegar with rice vinegar to give it a more Asian flare. Next time I’d add in daikon – I couldn’t find any this time around.)

Burgers, burgers, burgers

Of course, I had to make the Baked Sweet Onion Dip that I’ve had a couple of times before, at dinner parties thrown by Todd and Diane, served with toasted bread sices. (I refuse to make this for just myself and Son… it’s so addictive, I know I’d eat it all. Believe me… any leftovers were gone in a flash. This stuff is dangerously good.)

Sweet Onion Dip

Another side I’ve had bookmarked for a while: this Spring Asparagus Pancetta Hash from Smitten Kitchen. I had nearly everything in my fridge already (save the pancetta), so it was an obvious choice. Loved it.

Spring Asparagus Pancetta Hash

And for dessert? I could have baked something, and would have, except… I had a huge hankering for root beer floats. It had been way too long since I had one. So I had my dad buy root beer and vanilla ice cream (since I bought most everything else)… the perfect ending to a fantastic meal.

Root beer float

Too much food? Well… you could say that. Personally, I’d say it’s exactly right… just enough to feed four people, with plenty of leftovers! (We love leftovers.)

Overall, it was a perfect meal. Or, in my case, the perfect fuel so I could get to work figuring out what (if anything) is mine in the disaster zone that my sister left in the room we shared growing up… (gah… send help, please!)

Pumpkin Parfait

Pumpkin Parfaits

Every year, I make Dorie Greenspan’s Thanksgiving Twofer Pie for my family’s Thankgiving celebration.

Every year, I have leftover pumpkin filling and pecan topping.

And every year, I don’t know how to use it up. I’ve tried making extra little pies, but those never got eaten since I make two full pies and we always have leftovers.

So this year, I decided to do something a little different.

I poured the extra pumpkin filling into a baking dish, and baked it along with the pies. Then I scooped it out, and layered it with fresh whipped cream to make some beautiful (and delicious) parfaits. They were gone right away!

I no longer have to worry about what to do with that extra pie filling… and you’ll see in a day what I did to use up the pecan topping. ^_^

Pumpkin pie filling adapted from Baking from My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Whipped cream adapted from AllRecipes.com.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of pumpkin puree
• 1 1/3 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tsp walnut liqueur (or rum)
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 tsp walnut liqueur (or vanilla extract)
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar

Cooking Directions

1. Mix the pumpkin puree, 1 1/3 cups of heavy cream, brown sugar, eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. Pour into an 8×8″ baking dish.
2. Bake at 300°F for 1 hour, or until no longer jiggly.
3. Whip the 2 cups of cream until almost at stiff peaks. Add the liqueur and sugar, and mix until just blended in.
4. Starting with the pumpkin, layer the pumpkin and whipped cream in a tall glass until full. Top with a little dollop of whipped cream, and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
5. Enjoy!

Arctic Char Chowder

Arctic Char Chowder

When you order fish from I Love Blue Sea, you essentially have to order an entire fish. It makes sense – the fish has to be extremely fresh so that it will be sashimi-grade, and they can’t just have half-fishes sitting around waiting for the next order. That would be wasteful.

So after making a few different dishes for Sushi Day, I had a good bit of fish left over. Obviously I wasn’t going to throw it away… I spent good money on that arctic char! No… I had to find a good way to use it up.

When I need to use up an ingredient, I look to my kitchen to see what other leftover ingredients I have sitting around that also need to be used, and see if there’s a way I could put them together.

An onion.

Some garlic.

Heavy cream.

A sweet potato.

Hm…

SOUP!!!

So I turned to my bookmarked recipes, to see if I had any links for salmon chowders (since arctic char is in the same family as salmon, but it’s pretty rare that you’re going to find an arctic char recipe on most food blogs).

None. Dang.

However, I did have a recipe for garlic soup that I’d been wanting to make, which would use the onion, garlic, and heavy cream.

Garlic soup probably would go pretty well with some sweet potato and arctic char… right?

So I looked to AllRecipes.com for a salmon chowder recipe (for years AllRecipes.com has been my go-to site when I need a recipe for anything… at least, after I’ve looked through my list of bookmarked blog posts), and sort of fudged the two recipes together to come up with something that I hoped would work.

Let me just say, my apartment smelled like heaven while this was cooking.

Trust me… if you only ever make one thing from any of my sites, this is the one you want to make. On a cold, stormy, wintery day when the scent of it cooking will fill your home and make everything seem warm and comfy. And then cuddle up next to a fire with a bowl of soup and your loved ones, and… okay, I’m getting carried away. And overly romantic. Anyways.

You want to make this. Heck, I want to make another batch of this… right now. I think I’m going to have to order another couple of pounds of arctic char now…

… with a yummy garlic soup base.

I adapted this recipe for garlic soup for the base of my chowder (because we LOVE garlic in this household), and then took inspiration from this salmon chowder recipe to figure out how to add the fish and potatoes into the soup.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp rendered pork fat
• 1 onion, diced
• 12 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1 fillet arctic char (about 1/3 lb), skinned, boned, and chopped
• 1 tsp dill, chopped

Cooking Directions

1. Melt the fat in a hot pan.
2. Add the onion and garlic, cook until caramelized.
3. Add the white wine, simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.
4. Add the stock and sweet potato. Bring to a boil, then simmer for half an hour.
5. Add the heavy cream, arctic char, and dill. Cook just a couple of minutes longer, until warmed through and the arctic char has turned a opaque light pink.
6. Enjoy with crusty bread or white rice.