What's for Dinner, Miss Skinner?

Recently, Steve and I attempted a new improv dinner of ours, Mexican pizzas.  They were very simple, easy to make for a crowd, and perfect for a appetizer or entree!  

First, we thawed out a few chicken tenders and marinated them in salt, pepper, garlic, and hot sauce.  Then we pan seared them and shredded the cooked chicken in a bowl.  

While shredding the chicken, we layer out whole wheat tortillas on a baking sheet.  Our pizza “sauce” was refried black beans.  

We topped that with sautéed green peppers and onions, fresh jalapeños, and the shredded chicken.  We put these in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes.  When we took them out, we topped the pizzas with hot white queso, salsa, an sour cream.  Be careful here; you don’t want too much of these toppings to make the pizzas easy to eat.  The tortillas were nice and crispy and the toppings stayed on well enough to eat it like a pizza in slices.  For added spice, consider more jalapeños after the cooking process, a spicy white queso, or a couple dashes of hot sauce.

These are delicious and simple ways to please a crowd and your Mexican cravings.  Also, when you buy the ingredients, they can make tons of pizzas; this is a great way to work up a dinner without an additional trip to the grocery store!  

This weekend, I tried to recreate one of my favorite dishes at Carrboro’s Milltown.  This dish is served for $14 and only by guessing at ingredients and eyeballing measurements, Steve and I made steak frites for only about $7.50 a serving.

The following recipe yields 4 servings.

First, we bought 2 NY strip steaks and patted them dry at room temperature.  Then we seasoned the steaks on both sides with a paste of worcestershire sauce, steak seasoning, pepper, garlic, and sea salt.  We let these sit until ready to cook (30 mins).

For the sauce, we roughly sliced 4 large scallions and caramelized them with melted butter and garlic in a frying pan.  After the scallions were caramelized, we deglazed the pan with Fat Tire, a Belgian ale.

The sauce on top of the steaks needed to be creamy so we used cooking cream and blue cheese crumbles.

Once the sauce was cooking over low heat and thickening, we put the steaks in the pan (Medium-High temp) with butter for approximately 2-3 minutes on each side (for Medium Rare).

Then, we put the steaks in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes.

I was clearly very excited because the kitchen was smelling so good…

We lightly dressed some mixed greens with honey balsamic vinaigrette and put a generous portion on each plate.  We bought some basic seasoned freezer french fries and fried those in vegetable oil.  The fries went on the other side of the plate.  After the steaks rested for 10 minutes, we sliced them and laid them on top of the fries.  Lastly, we poured the scallion sauce over the steaks.  An ideal bite, in my opinion, includes a little bit of everything on the plate. 

Not only did we make this dish like Milltown’s, but we made it for half the price.  Paired with some spicy red wine, this dish is definitely worth doing again.

After a beautiful stroll through Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, Steve and I seasonally decided to make butternut squash soup by using a standard recipe and making it our own.  We used this website http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/butternut-squash-soup-recipe/index.html and doubled it but added our own little flare.  

We started our soup by making a simple broth (not included in the recipe) made of carrots, onions, and celery cooked down with chicken stock.   

We sweated the onions first and then added the other veggies.  After they had been cooked down for about 10-15 minutes, we threw them in the crockpot with the chicken stock.  

Then came the star of the show-9 lbs. of butternut squash!  We diced it up into about 1 inch cubes and added that to the crockpot-o-goodness.  

After the squash was cooked for a while (we let it go for about an hour on high heat), we used the immersion blender to get the soup to a good texture. We seasoned our concoction with salt, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and a sprinkle of dried basil.  When we finished blending, the soup wasn’t quite as thick in texture or as bold in flavor as we would like.  Here’s where the improv came to play.

For a sweet note, we added 2 apples and 1 pear.  First, cook the fruit down in a separate saucepan for 15-20 minutes; then add to crockpot.  Repeat immersion blender process.  The new taste was richer but brighter and the texture was perfect.  Soup-check.  

Steve was the mastermind behind the topping for the soup.  We mixed together a container of sour cream, about 1/3 cup brown sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.  This added a nice creamy and cool touch to the hot soup when served.  We also topped the soup with a cranberry goat cheese.

We served this beautiful LOW-CALORIE soup with a hot spinach salad (see http://hungryheel.tumblr.com/) and had plenty for leftovers.

Yum yum, y’all.  

So, since I have found myself forced into what seems to be ‘adulthood,’ I am attempting to learn how to function as an independent, functional Southern woman.  One of these key responsibilities is learning how to cook.  I have always been fascinated by food; eating it, cooking it,  and trying new tastes and flavors.  I have worked in fine dining restaurants doing front-of-the-house work, but always felt the urge to get in the kitchen and cook.  As a salary-earning, suburb-living ‘woman’ I figure it’s as good of time as any to learn what makes Southern cuisine truly unique.  In this blog, I will explore various recipes, try to recreate family favorites, and discuss my food findings in local restaurants.  

One of the chefs that I idolize the most and for the longest is my Mema, Grace Shelton.  This woman can COOK.  Somehow she manages to whip up the most amazing home-cooked Southern ‘dinners’ (lunch=dinner & dinner=supper) and for the life of me, I cannot seem to come close to preparing these for myself.  I have recently been observing her cooking techniques as she walks me through her step-by-step ‘dinner fixin.’  One of the most delicious and simplest things Mema makes is fried chicken.  I think when people usually think of “Southern Fried Chicken,” they overestimate the amount of ingredients in the dish; this appears to be very easy to make and makes for an excellent start to my culinary adventure.  

To begin, you typically buy one whole chicken and cut er up (or you can buy the chicken already cut into parts).  The next part is tricky.  There is no buttermilk.  There are hardly any spices, so KFC must be wrong.  All you need is water, all-purpose flour, salt, and pepper.  The chicken should be sitting in water since it has just been washed.  Dip the chicken in the batter just enough to coat it (make sure you get it in all the folds).  After you have the chicken battered, you put it in the Fry Daddy.  This contraption is genius.  Get one.  Love one.  You should have about 3/4 of the Fry Daddy filled with cooking oil and very hot.  (Carefully!) drop in the chicken (it will probably take 2 batches).  Leave the chicken frying for about 12-15 minutes, take it out, and rest it on a paper towel.  Simple as that.  I swear, it sounds too easy but Mema always makes it perfectly. 

Eat up, y’all.