Main Meat Dishes Archives - Respect Food Roles

An Encouragement to Make the Homemade Version, If You Can Do So

March 10, 2021March 8, 2021 by Debi Simons

The picture (taken by my husband, so it’s much better than the ones I take, even though he was dealing with the lighting in our kitchen) is of a Costco frozen Italian meatball and one of the homemade ones I made using my own version of Alison Roman’s “Good-bye Meatballs” from her new “Home Cooking” video series. (Be sure to subscribe; she’s doing a new one every Tuesday. They’re short and funny. I love her because she’s so completely opinionated. Not that I could be described that way or anything!)

A Totally Thrown-Together-but-Great Chicken Casserole

February 22, 2021February 1, 2021 by Debi Simons

So . . . we’ve all been cooking solely for our families and pods, right? Last Friday night, though, Jim and I actually attended a dinner party. Woo-hoo! It was over at our church in what’s called the “Fireside Room,” which actually has a fireplace, and included just us and two other couples. The other four had all had COVID, so we felt pretty safe. I had volunteered to bring the main dish. It’s an easy choice to make something Italian and pasta-ish, and always good, but I wanted something a little different. I’ll give you the very basic item I came up with and then some ideas to jazz it up/change it up. One of the women asked for the recipe, which was flattering. When she, and you, see what I did you’ll probably laugh, but my idea worked really well. There are still some leftovers in the fridge as I type this Monday morning, and I’m looking forward to having some for lunch.

Kung Pao Pork and a Revision or Two

January 28, 2021 by Debi Simons

Just a quick note: I made the kung pao chicken recipe with pork last night, using the recipe as I’d written it in the previous post. We’d all liked the chicken version immensely, but I’d kind of thrown it together and wasn’t totally sure of the exact proportions. So I made the sauce with equal parts sherry, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and chicken stock, and while it was very good it was a little heavy on the vinegar. So I’ve now reduced the vinegar a little in the recipe and added a description of the easiest way to mix up the sauce. Be sure to give it a try! I think I’ll make a beef version one of these days, with the only change being swapping beef stock for chicken. Be sure to let me know if you make this and how you liked it.

A Guh-reat but Really Easy Recipe For Kung Pao Chicken

January 30, 2021January 25, 2021 by Debi Simons

Image by Fernando Sadao Shiraishi from Pixabay

I’ve had a standard stir-fry recipe for many years that can fit either chicken or beef depending on the stock/broth used and other variations. I don’t think lemon juice goes with beef, for instance, so I substitute sherry. It’s served me well, but recently I’ve become interested in developing a good homemade version of kung pao chicken. When we lived in Falls Church, VA, we ate a number of times at the Peking Gourmet Inn, a restaurant less than a mile from us that was a favorite of many celebrities, including the George W. Bushes. The walls are lined with many framed and signed photos. Gideon especially loved their kung pao chicken, saying that it wasn’t like any other version he’d ever tried. I loved their egg rolls, and sometimes for lunch I’d call in a takeout order (with extra garlic sauce), swing by and pick it up, and consume the two scrumptious, golden, packed-with-filling rolls in about five nanoseconds. Heaven! (Well, nearly.) In homage to that memory I made some egg rolls not too long ago that weren’t bad, although I didn’t deep fry them. Too messy! Then I decided to make a run at the kung pao. While the end result wasn’t really much like the PGI version, I have to say that the results were pretty gratifying. You know you have a hit on your hands when people keep taking seconds . . . and thirds. There was a tiny portion left. (Which I ate for lunch today, and it was just as good as freshly made!)

Some Year-End Thoughts

December 31, 2020 by Debi Simons

Have you just recently started getting posts from this blog? The pause was caused mainly by an accidental change in our mailing-list service. It was also at least somewhat caused by the fact that I hadn’t been writing many posts recently, as I’ve been concentrating on my music blog. For 2021, though, I’m going to set the goal of writing a post a week here. Remember, this isn’t a food blog as such, or a cooking blog. It’s a site that concentrates on the part that food should play in our lives. (“Roles,” remember.) Ideally, all the food that you eat should fulfill at least one of these two roles:

Easter Dinner Post-Mortem

April 22, 2019April 22, 2019 by Debi Simons

I hope all of you had a blessed Easter Sunday, with time to reflect on the day’s spiritual significance and a chance to connect with friends and family. We had a great gathering at around 5:30, and there was one super-duper hit and some kind of misses. I’m writing this in the hope that you’ll try out the hit and be warned about the others. I was especially disappointed with the cake, as I don’t make desserts very often and had been looking forward to this one for weeks.

Easter Dinner for Fifteen

April 19, 2019April 18, 2019 by Debi Simons

Sunday is Easter, and we’re having about 15 people over for an early dinner around 5:00. I asked if I could do the meat, potatoes and dessert. And rolls, of course—that goes without saying. Yes, I’m making dessert, a very special carrot cake with a custard-based cream-cheese frosting from the great Stella Parks over at Serious Eats. Remember, sweets are treats. They are for special occasions, and I’m dying to make her cake for our company dinner. (Stella’s recipe for whole-wheat bread was kind of a disaster and I don’t know why, but I’m

The Great Empanada Endeavor

February 4, 2019 by Debi Simons

pan of great empanada I first made this recipe from America’s Test Kitchen for a huge open house we had. My son and I had made up dozens of these the day before, and then all we had to do was to bake them as needed. I made somewhat of a miscalculation during the party, thinking that we didn’t need that last panful, and then people scarfed up all the ones I’d baked and it was really too late to put in the rest, as they have to bake about 30 minutes. So be sure to make plenty. I’m saying that this recipe will make a dozen empanadas, but that yield will depend on how many optional ingredients you include. If you’re adding all of the add-ins you’ll want to make extra dough.This looks like a complicated recipe with lots of ingredients, and that’s what it is. But you can make the filling and the dough ahead of time or make them completely ahead of time. And they’re so, so good!

Syrups and Concentrates You Can Use In Your Cooking–and a Great Salmon Recipe

April 12, 2019February 2, 2019 by Debi Simons

cider sauce These aren’t sugar-free, to be clear. Not at all. But they pack a flavor punch, thus making a little go a long way.

First off, the item in the picture: cider syrup. Don’t buy this stuff, for heaven’s sake! It’s ridiculously expensive, costing anywhere from around $12 to $24 for a pint. Honestly! You can make your own instead, paying $4.99 for a gallon of cider that will yield that same amount. Just be sure that during cider season you buy a couple of

What I Ate for Lunch Today–And a Great New Recipe

January 10, 2019January 8, 2019 by Debi Simons

I have a subscription to the New York Times mainly because of Melissa Clark, a cookbook author and food writer who is absolutely the most charming, delightful, quirky, quirkily delightful, delightfully quirky . . . well, you get the picture. I periodically go onto her website to check out any new stuff. (It occurred to me while I was writing this post that I could subscribe to her updates, which I just did. However, the stuff she writes specifically for the Times goes over to their website, so not all of her stuff is available directly through her.) I asked for her recent cookbook The New Essentials of French Cooking for Christmas from my son, and he is now tasked with picking out a recipe from the book for me to make before he heads back to college. (I say “recent” because Clark is such a prolific producer of cookbooks and so if I said “new” or “newest” I would probably be incorrect by now.)