We always have a special dinner around December 30 to celebrate my sister-in-law’s birthday, and for a number of years I made my special double-the-meat double-the-cheese lasagna with cheesecake for dessert. Then I moved over to prime rib. This year, due to my being so impressed with the beef tenderloin served at our church’s Christmas dinner, I switched to that. I have to say that I’ll almost certainly never go back to prime rib. The tenderloin is cheaper (around $11.99/pound at
Main Meat Dishes
Easy, Elegant, Unusual Salmon
I was making all the food for a women’s tea on Saturday, and we were having the company for Sunday dinner that we should have had the week before, only we were snowed in, so I needed something simple. Fortunately, that was what I had already planned anyway. No multi-step recipes, no fancy dessert. I wanted to make something we’d had before, a salmon dish with some kind of sauce made with cider and cream. But when I went online to look for it I couldn’t find anything that sounded right. At some point I re-stumbled upon the recipe which turned out to be in Molly Wizenberg’s
Simplified Baked Garlic Chicken
I tried out this recipe when we had a bad snowstorm and I had to make do with what I had on hand, including some boneless chicken thighs. I will say again: stop buying boneless chicken breasts and buy these instead. They are so much better and cost so much less. They are every bit as good as white meat and they don’t dry out. If you think your family won’t eat them, just serve them up and don’t say anything. I can (almost) guarantee that no one will know the difference except to say, ‘Hey Mom/Honey, these are really great!”
The Great Empanada Endeavor
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.
A Great Alternative to Pasta Casserole
For many years my family enjoyed something called “Chiquita’s Chicken,” a recipe we’d gotten from a magazine article by the redoubtable Peg Bracken, author of the I Hate To Cook Book. The article had a little booklet of recipes included which we apparently didn’t keep, although we did write down the one by Chiquita.. I remember that there was something called “Hao Nao Brown Kao” made with ground beef and vaguely Hawaiian or Chinese or some such, and another item called “Gloria’s Good Goulash.” I found HNBK on cooks.com but the other two are lost to posterity. (At least under their original names. Chiquita, whoever she may have been, apparently cribbed her recipe from an almost-identical one for “King Ranch Chicken,” which is very well known.) Since Chiquita’s Chicken relies heavily on canned soup, I looked for something a little more upscale to replace it and found the following. The cream of mushroom soup has been replaced by sour cream and cream cheese, so I guess that’s progress. The cream of chicken soup stayed. The original recipe called for the chicken and cream cheese to be rolled up in individual corn tortillas, something I refuse to do. Any time you’re asked for something that fiddly, just do layers instead. (There are quite a few other fiddly things I do, such as the individual mini-tart shells, but at least there’s some point to them.) So here’s my recipe, adapted from Taste of Home magazine.
An Easier Version of Julia Child’s Beef Burgundy
I hope to add a better picture the next time I make this. It’s a great family dinner, but it also works very well for company, especially if you want to have a make-ahead meal. I made this for an after-church Sunday lunch and it was great.
Two Great, Unusual Chili Recipes
Who doesn’t love chili? I assume that you have a standard ground-beef-with-kidney-beans recipe that you rely on for a quick weeknight supper. The following two work well for some kind of special occasion when you want a casual vibe. Both are truly great.