variation on quick dinner

One of my favorite quick dinners is to make pasta with beans and vegetables.

I will steam broccoli or peas or some other vegetable, and boil 4 oz of pasta. I will mix the vegetables with beans and a little olive oil and toss them cooked pasta with them. Tonight I did a little variation throwing goat cheese in at the last minute. Very tasty.

goat cheese variation

new pirogi recipe

One of my Christmas gifts is Micheal Symon’s Michael Symon’s Live to Cook (which I do) and he includes his grandfather’s pirogi recipe.I took the leftover short ribs from Christmas Eve and used them as filling for the pirogi.

The pirogi dough is similar to my grandmother’s recipe except that it also include butter. I thought the butter made it a little harder to work with but it was delicious.  I think I might need to do a side by side comparison of the doughs to see which one I like better.

pirogi

I like to pan fry them with a little butter. I served them with a little horseradish cream (horseradish and creme fraiche).

I really enjoyed this and am looking forward to making other recipes from the book.

food rules

Michael Pollan talks about food rules from his new book in the NY Times. I’ve enjoyed his other books especially The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

cooking and bad tv

For anyone else who likes food and VH1 reality tv, check out Food & Wine’s blog.

delicious dinner

One of my Christmas gifts was Martha Stewart’s new book, Martha Stewart’s Dinner at Home. I was paging through it last week and picked out chicken in tarragon cream sauce, lentils with baby spinach, and roasted endive.

butter chives and tarragon

I combined butter, tarragon, and chives and rubbed it on the chicken breast. The chicken went into the oven while I cut the endive in half length wise. I drizzled the halves with olive oil and they went into the oven.

endive

I cooked the lentils with a little water, chopped celery and minced garlic.

The chicken came out of the oven and I poured the juices and fat from the chicken off. I added cream and chicken stock to the pan and put it back in the oven. I pulled the endive out of the oven, drizzled white balsamic vinegar, and put them back in the oven for a few more minutes.

delicious dinner

Everything came out of the oven. It was delicious and I enjoyed having vegetables that I don’t usually eat.