Christmas Feast!

Will and I are chillin' in Florida, mostly chasing after his very cute nephew Soren:

We made a rib roast from a Publix recipe in the paper:


4 carrots (rinsed)
2 medium onions (rinsed)
1 (24-oz) bag baby potatoes (rinsed)
8 celery ribs (rinsed)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 standing rib roast (4-5 lb)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 sprigs fresh rosemary (rinsed)
3/4 cup horseradish sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Steps
Preheat oven to 475°F. Peel carrots, remove ends and skin from onion; cut both into 1-inch pieces. Cut potatoes and celery into 1-inch pieces. Combine all vegetables and olive oil in large bowl, stirring until evenly coated; transfer to medium-size roasting pan. Season roast on all sides with salt. Place roast on rack arranged over vegetables (wash hands). Place roast in oven and immediately reduce heat to 325°F. Bake 1 hour.
Meanwhile, remove rosemary leaves from stems and chop leaves very finely; combine in small bowl with horseradish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and pepper; set aside.
Remove roast from oven. Coat roast with horseradish mixture. Bake 1 1/2 to 2 more hours or until internal temperature reaches 145°F (medium-rare) up to 170°F (well-done). Use a meat thermometer to accurately ensure doneness. Transfer roast to cutting board; transfer vegetables to serving dish. Let roast stand 10–15 minutes before slicing; slice and serve.

Then we made some spinach (here) and some sweet potato casserole (here).  It was a feast!

The Chronicles of Riddick: Onion Chopper

Whatever.  It works.

Pot Roast, Artichokes

Busted out the old crock-pot and made a pot roast with "Italian seasoning," which apparently means garlic and tomatoes.  Bill and Albert joined us for a Strongbadia reunion of sorts...

Unlike other crock-pot recipes we've tried, this one didn't give detailed instructions about the order of ingredients.  Unfortunately, the potatoes ended up a little undercooked as a result, though the meat was cooked well and very tasty.  Lauren's lovely steamed artichokes saved the meal and earned us the thumbs-up.

Turkey patties, cranberry sauce, green salad

Secret is instant mashed potato flakes coating the outside of the patties before you cook them:

Surprise pasta dinner (cousin Sam edition)

Sam and I were going to have some late-night pho or ramen after seeing Star Trek last night, but when we popped home to see if Lauren wanted to join, it turned out she'd been cooking enough pasta for all of us and invited us to have some.  Delicious pasta with sausage, mushrooms, zuchinni, and some sherry.

Lauren made the recipe up with what was on hand, which always amazes me.  She acknowledges her debt to Uncle Chuck, for showing just how important sherry is in a pasta sauce.

Drunken Spaghetti and Broccoli+Leek Soup

A turn toward the adventurous for us, as we made a "drunken spaghetti" recipe which required cooking spaghetti in two bottles(!) of red wine.  Also in the mix were some grated beets, Swiss chard, and a few other goodies.  Accompanied by some simple, tasty, broccoli and leek soup:

Breaking in the new crock pot with a pot roast

At long last, I picked up a slow cooker (AKA crock pot) at Target.  No clue why I waited so long!  This thing has changed my life.  Figured a pot roast would be a good dish to inaugurate it with.

Here's The Device, in all its majesty.  A slow cooker.  Cooking.  Slowly:

And the finished product.  Note the unprecedented FOREGROUND thumbs-up:

Coq au Vin

Lauren decided it was time to take our cooking up a notch, so we tried the coq au vin recipe from The Joy of Cooking.  Definitely our most ambitious attempt to date, but I'm happy to say that the time and effort we put in really paid off!  Lauren and I were both raving about the dish after dinner, and enjoying leftovers for a few days afterward:

Visiting and Cooking with Anna and Nathan

Lauren and I had a lovely time visiting Anna and Nathan in Santa Barbara over the weekend.  In a whirlwind tour of their favorite haunts, we:

• Had some amazing Mexican food on Friday evening.
• Visited the wonderful Santa Barbara farmers' market on Saturday morning to buy food for the evening.
• Took plenty of walks with Ziska, including one along the beach (that dog is one happy and LARGE beast).
• Watched two Underworld movies.  I'm not at all ashamed. 
• Read, talked, laughed, and generally caught up on life.

Here's a picture of our dinner on Saturday evening:

It was a real group effort, with Lauren braising some artichokes, Nathan providing hors d'oeuvres, wine, and olive oil, and me sauteeing some chicken with sun-dried tomatoes.

Three-bean soup and prosciutto pasta

The soup is a Lauren original, declared by Albert to be the best soup he's ever had.  The pasta is typical Rachel Ray fare.  Salad by the visiting BOB:

"Lazy Chicken" and steamed kale

For dinner last night, Lauren picked a favorite Rachel Ray recipe, the "lazy chicken."  We also steamed some kale with bacon (thanks to The Joy of Cooking for that one).

Tasty.  Nothing much to say, except that I dream of someday being able to make one of "Rachel Ray's 30-Minute Meals" in under 30 minutes.  Our record at this point is somewhere around 60...

Uncle Chuck's sauce recipe

By popular request, here's the recipe for Uncle Chuck's spaghetti sauce:

Ingredients:

• 2.5 lbs ground chuck
• Ragu spaghetti sauce, 1 lg (48 oz) and 1 medium (27.7 oz) jar.
• 2 large onions
• cooking sherry
• 12-oz Hunts tomato paste
• sugar
• 1 box chopped fresh mushrooms

Brown beef and drain in colander.  Dice the onions.  Brown the onions in butter and 1/2 cup sherry in a large pot.  At the end of browning, add mushrooms.  Add the tomato paste, 8-12 tbsp sugar, 1/3 bottle of sherry and the Ragu.  (Use some of the sherry to rinse out the Ragu jars).  Add the meat.

Cook over LOW heat (be sure it does not burn) for several hours.

Serve over thin vermicelli.

Uncle Chuck's spaghetti sauce

When I was growing up, Uncle Chuck's spaghetti sauce was a go-to dish in Mom's kitchen.  We never got tired of it, and we didn't really understand why anyone ever put any other kind of sauce on their pasta, not when Uncle Chuck's was an option.

So, brimming with childhood memories after the trip to Georgia, and feeling ambitious after our recent culinary successes, I decided to try making the sauce myself.  I couldn't help hyping it up to Lauren, Bill, and Albert.  But after all these years ... could the sauce really hold up?

Could it?

The answer is a resounding YES.

An unprecedented quad thumbs-up for Uncle Chuck's spaghetti sauce.  It turns out that sherry and beef are like the cheat codes for sauce cooking, and this sauce is largely comprised of sherry and beef.

The oddest thing about the experience was that this sauce tasted like my birthday.  I don't just mean that the sauce was as delicious as birthdays are wonderful.  I mean that Mom made this sauce whenever she was hoping to pamper us kids (birthdays, exams, etc.).  I was surprised at how strong the association was; it hit me with the first bite.

So: Great sauce.  Great memories attached.  And easy to cook, too!  I'm glad I had a chance to introduce a new batch of friends to it.

A Pie and a Soup (Key Lime Pie and Three Bean and Pasta Soup)

Thanks to Ellen and John, we had key limes from the Will and Anna tree, brought to Georgia and then back to California:

And to the left you can see the adorable cookbook that Ellen made for Will when he left for college.  From these key limes I made a pie:

Which looks just delicious here, but BEWARE!  I did not know that key lime juice freezes well, so I tried to use all of the key limes in the pie ... which made for a very, very tangy pie.  Part of the fun was watching people's faces about five seconds after taking that first bite.  Whew!

Also for dinner, Three Bean and Pasta soup, a recipe taken from the back of a can of Anne's Organic Soup at Whole Foods (actually the canned soup is terrible, but it gave me ideas of what to include:

Recipe:

Cook some pasta -- not the whole bag; it expands.  Drain and rinse.

Chop and saute in olive oil:
1 small onion
Some celery
Slices of spicy sausage
Garlic
Carrot

Boil for a while in chicken broth.  Then add thinly sliced potatoes.  Boil some more.  Then add cans of three beans (cannellini beans, kidney beans, pinto beans), can of crushed tomatoes, chopped kale leaves.  Heat.  Right before serving, add the pasta and heat.

Woot!  Delicious!

Martha Stewart's Summer Corn Chowder

The beautiful thing about this Martha Stewart corn chowder is that everything in it is fresh:

Fresh potatoes, fresh corn off of the cob (could not find fresh yellow corn, so I used white corn), fresh celery, poblano chili, fresh thyme from my garden.  Will suggested that we add a dash of Tabasco sauce, and that made it PERFECT.

Grandbetty's Seven-Vegetable Salad recipe

A big hit with Lauren, and pretty easy to make from the sound of things:

Drain and mix:

• 1 can LeSeurs baby English peas.
• 2 cans cut green beans (after cutting them a bit more).
• 1 oz. white niblit corn (canned).
• 1 small jar pimento.
• 3 or 4 good pieces of celery (chopped)
• 2 packages of scallions (chopped, without the white part).
• 1 yellow pepper (chopped).

Create marinade of:

• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper

Warm the marinade just until sugar dissolves (don't boil).  Mix marinade with veggies.  Leave in fridge at least overnight.  Drain, then serve.  Keeps for about a week.

Mustard+grape chicken, couscous, sweet potatoes, green salad

Last night's meal.  I'm convinced that I can cook anything.  Well, anything that's in a Rachel Ray cookbook.

Note that Lauren made me retake this picture, since the first one was missing the all-important thumbs-up.

Pesto pasta and carrots

On Monday, we made pesto with fresh basil from Lauren's herb garden, combined that with some sundried tomatoes, leftover chicken, and corkscrew pasta. Add Lauren's grandmother's ginger carrot recipe, and you're done.

Lauren gives two enthusiastic thumbs up, but she's not a terribly harsh critic when it comes to our cooking...

Cooking updates from Lauren, Will, and Rachel Ray

A few quick iphone snaps of dinners we've cooked recently. First, meatloaf with double the recommended green pepper serving (oops), along with some chard+vinegar and corkscrew pasta:

Then, some pumpkin and sausage pasta, just in time for Halloween, along with a fresh green salad and some chocolate milk:

Last but not least, some balsamic vinegar-marinated chicken, asparagus soup, and mushroom+truffle ravioli, from just two days ago. Do note the thumbs-up: