What I Made for Dinner: January 19, 2010

Broiled ham steaks with honey mustard, biscuits, sauteed broccoli.

"I hate this dinner!" I complained to my mom as I stood there trying to figure out what to do with the stupid ham steaks Chuck had brought home from Costco. "I don't know what to do with them! I don't know how to make them taste un-processed!"

(Note: This is a First-World complaint. I am, generally speaking, happy and grateful to have ham steaks or any other kind of nutritious food readily available for my family's use and enjoyment. Within that universe, though: Damn.)

My mom doesn't whine, but she doesn't really like ham, either, so she started looking through my cookbooks. And in my old classic Family Circle Cookbook, she found an answer. A decidedly retro recipe, calling for a glaze of honey mustard, a coating of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese, and a quick broil. She said, "Do this. I'll get some canned pineapple."

"I don't want any gross canned pineapple! I hate this dinner!" I moaned as I peeled the ham steaks out of their slimy vacuum pack and brushed on gloppy mustard and scattered breadcrumbs all over the kitchen. "What a mess!" It didn't help that in the middle of trying to make the biscuits, I was doing laundry from an unfortunate toddler-related incident this afternoon and talking Josh down off the ledge after he messed up his math homework in magic marker. (Alex, it must be said, was a cheerful delight, hollering "Back in the U.S.S.R." while he built Legos.)

"I hate this dinner! Never buy ham again! It's not even going to be ready on time!" I snarled at Chuck when he came home from work. "Don't worry about it," he soothed. "It smells pretty good."

You know something? It was really, really good. The children ate almost the whole can of pineapple rings and even ate the broccoli. Everyone had seconds on the ham, proving that mid-'80s recipes from Family Circle are unequaled in human history, and confirming that my mother knows more than I ever will about feeding a family. I stand corrected and chastened. With a new appreciation of ham steak.

What I Made for Dinner: December 16 & 17, 2009

Roast pork shoulder.

The past two days have been dedicated to my end-of-semester push to finish grading my students' papers, "equalize" their grades (meaning I make sure I wasn't grading differently three weeks ago than I was at the end), and figure their course grades. It's pretty all-consuming for me.

We needed some quick, low-effort dinners. So on Wednesday morning before I left for work, I seared a pork roast, rubbed it with a paste of olive oil, brown mustard, garlic, and herbs, and put it in a 250 oven to braise in beer and diced canned tomatoes. Eight hours later, when I got home, we had six pounds of falling-apart delectable meat. We made soft tacos with it on Wednesday, and then last night I served it with garlic bread and a mixed green salad.

We would welcome suggestions for what to do with the rest of it, because boy that's a lot of shredded pork.

Anyhow, I am finished with my work for the semester, so now I can get into my cookbooks and magazines for more inspiration!

What I Made for Dinner: September 27-29, 2009

A totally inappropriate Erev Yom Kippur dinner. A much more acceptable break fast. And tacos!

Sunday night began Yom Kippur, and a traditional dinner preceding the fast would have been, like, chicken soup, a brisket or a roast chicken, vegetables, challah. That's not what I made. I made: Pasta alla carbonara. Yes, it had bacon. And cheese. Whatever. It was good, if not entirely (or remotely) in the spirit of the holiday.

I think I redeemed myself Monday, at least food-wise if not spiritually. To break the fast, I actually managed to pull together a sort-of traditional meal: Pasta salad with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes (made on Sunday afternoon), bagels and lox, a cheese tray, a banana cake with chocolate glaze (also made on Sunday). My parents joined us so I wouldn't feel stupid serving such a spread to my non-Jewish husband and three little kids, who don't fast for reasons of religious appropriateness and age, respectively.

So tonight, tacos! The fall holidays wear me out. These used the chicken left over from grilling on Saturday, and my kids adore tacos. Nothing could be easier. A good thing, too, since after the busy weekend and the holiday I think we are all about to get sick. (Lots of sniffles at dinner tonight, and my back hurts portentously. Ew.)

Maybe I should have made the soup. Is someone trying to prove a point?

What I Made for Dinner: June 28, 2009

Pork burgers, sauteed potatoes, pickled green beans, served with fruit and coleslaw.

Today we went to a birthday party for my niece and nephew. It was hot and Josh and Alex played outside the whole time. My sister arranged for one of her friends to dress up as Darth Maul and have light saber duels for two hours. Eli, however, rejected this plan: "Don't you want to see Darth Maul?" "NO! I HATE HIM!" So we alternated supervising light sabers outside and chasing the baby all over the house to make sure he didn't open all the presents.

So yeah, we're worn out. We actually would have gotten takeout but we'd already defrosted the meat and needed to use it.

These pork burgers were easy to make and tasty. The potatoes require very little effort and are a crowd pleaser (because they are, essentially, homemade thick-cut potato chips). Slice a lot of red potatoes--maybe a pound?--about 1/4 in. thick. Melt two tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat; add potatoes and leave them there until brown, turning once or twice. When they're done, sprinkle with salt and pepper and a little fresh thyme, if you have some (which I do! Herb garden is still alive!). Eat copious amounts, walk dog and do push-ups to assuage guilt.

What I Made for Dinner: June 8, 2009

Pork cutlets, roasted red potatoes and artichoke hearts.

Chuck has been bugging me to make pork chops, but I don't really like them. Not sure why: I think it's because they're thick and so they dry out by the time they're cooked through, or else you have to stuff them, which is a pain.

But I recently saw an article suggesting cutlets, and I was intrigued! I hadn't made them before so I turned to Joy of Cooking. It is absolutely the best for just getting a handle on how to cook something new. When I had a look, it suggested some lovely-sounding butter sauces to go with. I made sauce Polonaise, which sounds very fancy but is not. (It's just brown butter with lemon juice, parsley, and breadcrumbs.)

Pork cutlets go into the rotation! Much easier, tastier, and tenderer than chops, plus they cook in literally two minutes. And look out: I have reviewed Joy of Cooking's "About Butter Sauces" section, and I'm not afraid to use it.

What I Made for Dinner: April 24, 2009

Ravioli with bacon-scallion sauce.

Again with the bacon! What kind of nice Jewish girl am I? The kind that eats a lot of pork.

This turned out to be a very tasty sauce for chicken-mozzarella ravioli from Costco. Diced bacon, cooked in a skillet until crisp; bacon set aside. In two tbsp of the bacon fat, sauteed minced scallions. Added shredded baby spinach and cooked just until wilted; off the heat, added halved grape tomatoes, then tossed in the cooked ravioli and the bacon.

It took all of fifteen minutes (mostly for the bacon to get crispy enough) and had kind of a BLT vibe.

What I Made for Lunch: April 10, 2009

Is it wrong to put ham salad on Matzah? What if the ham salad has kosher dill pickles in it?

What I Made for Dinner: March 27, 2009

Pulled pork sandwiches.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. When that happens, I'll occasionally watch Food Network. (Really occasionally--it's usually so lame it doesn't even pass three a.m. muster.) One time, I watched an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay where these women in Texas or Alabama or something made pulled pork crepes. They achieved deliciousness with the pork by slow-roasting it for many hours, and it looked just fantastic. But of course, Throwdown with Bobby Flay includes neither demonstrations nor recipes. Lame!

Nevertheless, I woke up the next morning with pork on my mind. I tried it with a boneless shoulder roast, first searing the meat and then roasting at 250 for ten hours. It was pretty good, but a little dry. Subsequent tries with slight variations have been good, but never the level of delectableness, if that's a word, I expected based on my hazy insomniac memory of the Food Network show.

Then yesterday, I tried again. Eight a.m. found me getting a pork tenderloin ready in the roasting pan, olive oil and spice rub on, beer in the pan--oops, forgot to sear the meat. Oh well, I had to go to work, into the oven it went. And then last night at dinner time: Success!!! It was moist and flavorful, and held together well enough to make a sandwich. The kids like theirs with pickles and barbecue sauce. I put on avocado and mayo.

What I Made for Dinner: March 20, 2009

Pork and pepper chili with homemade bread.

Basketball and chili. Basketball all day. I can barely complete a sentence at this point.

During the KU game, I made bread. I like to have something to do when the game is on, and I've been meaning for a while to improve my breadmaking skills. Or to develop any breadmaking skills.

I used a Jamie Oliver cookbook. I like Oliver's recipes because he's really loosey-goosey on the measurements. Even with the bread recipes, he reminds you to use your best judgment on texture and moisture. (That would be great if I had any judgment about bread dough.) Anyway, I used to love his cooking show, and he seemed to enjoy making bread most of all, so I thought I'd turn to him first.

The bread was okay. It rose, at least. It had a nice flavor and the crust was, well, crusty. The texture was kind of dense, whereas I prefer chewy. I'll call it a good first attempt, but there is definitely plenty of room for improvement. I need some tips.

What I Almost Made for Dinner: February 14, 2009

Eight-hour pork roast, roasted brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes.

Valentine's Day is lame; I think we can all agree on that.

Unfortunately, Valentine's Day is also Chuck's birthday, every single year. So we always have to do something nice on the 14th of February. And by we, I mean me.

So I had planned to make a gorgeous dinner tonight. Pork tenderloin roasted for eight hours until it is fall-apart delectable. Mashed potatoes with a hint of buttermilk. A really lovely pinot noir.

The tenderloin went in the oven by 10 a.m., as planned. Then at 4:30 in the afternoon, I had to take Eli to the urgent care clinic. And at 6:00, after he had thrown up on me and scared the nurse with his fever, after he had turned bright red and blotchy, after he had cried for an hour nonstop, but before we had even a hint that there might be a doctor in our near future, Chuck had to finish dinner for Josh and Alex.

Imagine the selfish nerve of those two, demanding a timely meal on their father's birthday?!

Anyway, Chuck acquitted himself beautifully. The brussels sprouts were perfect, the mashed potatoes were better than I would have done. So foodwise, the evening actually came out very nicely. And that pinot was delicious.

What I Made for Dinner: February 10, 2009

Arroz con pollo, green salad with asparagus and goat cheese.

The semester I lived in Spain, all I ever wanted to eat was arroz con pollo. Which was too bad for me, because no one ever made it. Instead, everyone served ham. With a side of ham. And ham sauce.

Toward the end of my time in Madrid, some friends and I discovered La Latina, a little hole-in-the-wall dive of a restaurant off the Plaza Mayor that had arroz con pollo on special on Sundays, so I was finally able to get my fix. I never got the restaurant's recipe, but it's pretty simple to figure out. I did, however, get a waiter to give me the recipe for La Latina's awesome (and extremely lowbrow) sangria. It involves muscatel and Sprite.

We didn't have sangria at my house tonight, although I am positive a little sangria would improve my parenting.

What I Made for Dinner: February 3, 2009

Breakfast for Dinner. Eggs in a Nest, bacon, hashbrowns, black bean salad, fruit.

I really wish I didn't like bacon so much.

The black bean salad was supposed to be a garbanzo bean salad, until I was making it and discovered I was missing a key ingredient. It was inspired by this awesome buffet salad they used to serve in the dorms at BU. Every Sunday morning they served brunch, and you would stumble in bleary-eyed and hungover, and get an omelet made to order and a bagel and this salad, which made you feel virtuous. Plus something about the oil-and-vinegar dressing is curative; maybe it has to do with pH balance or some such.

So anyway: garbanzo beans, ideally; diced red and green bell peppers; diced green onions; diced tomatoes; feta cheese; olive oil and red wine vinegar.