Recipe Review from 11/10/08

Ahhh, a lull between the busy weekends! The weather has been fairly overcast, a bit windy and definitely on the cool side which has kept our outside activities a bit curtailed. Tonight I heard lows of 10*! Yikes! But this is a great excuse to make some chili’s, bake a chicken dinner and make a big pan of lasagna - which is exactly what we did.


Vegetarian Chili (Ckng Lght Sept 08, pg 88) 4.5
I really liked this chili. It was super simple to bring together, it doesn’t matter what beans I used and it tasted fantastic. The consistency was perfect, chunky tomatoes, lots of beans, and nice and saucy. Assembly consisted of sauteing onion, green pepper and red pepper. To this the seasonings were added and briefly toasted. Then I added the broth, tomatoes and beans. The beans I used were jacobs cattle (from the garden), black beans, and garbanzo beans. I loved the creaminess of all three. Since my Jacobs cattle needed to be cooked, I simmered this for an hour - recipe called for only 30 minutes, which is fine if using canned beans. I served this with some sweet corn muffins (Ckng Lght, Jan 2007, I think), and a bit of sour cream and cheese for toppings.



Chicken Baked over Mushroom Dressing (Eating Well, Dec 2008, pg 61) 4.0
I had Veteran’s Day off and thought this would be a splendid opportunity to make a nice dinner for my Veteran, and the idea of cooking the chicken and the stuffing at the same time intrigued me. A 4 - 4 1/2lb baking chicken is seasoned. I followed the recipe and used salt and dried thyme, but really, any herbal seasoning would work. This is placed breast down in a 9x13 baking pan and roasted for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, onions, a variety of mushrooms, and red pepper are sauteed with some salt, sage and oregano. This mixture is added to whole wheat bread cubes and everything is doused with chicken broth.

The chicken is pulled out and the nasty fat removed from the bottom of the pan. Then the stuffing is spread evenly in the bottom and the chicken added back in, to bake right side up. This actually worked pretty well. I did have to add extra broth as it baked, as my little chicken didn’t have enough juices to keep everything nice and moist. I liked how I could bake everything in one pan. I would make this again in the future with one adjustment - I would halve the stuffing. A 9x13 pan makes way too much. And some gravy would have been nice.



Parmesan and Root Vegetable Lasagna (Ckng Lght, Nov 18, pg 116) 4.0
Gripe #1: Where’s the roots?!? Recipe called for two veggies - sweet potatoes and butternut squash. Only one of those is a root vegetable so we added parsnips. Yum.

Gripe #2: Huge amount of prep with a fairly substantial baking time. 45 minutes to roast veggies. 30 minutes to bake with cover on. 20 minutes with cover off. Many thanks to the Husband for starting this one! Seriously - he prepped the veggies before I got home which was an immense help, and it still took another hour to finish prep and bake.

Order of assembly:
Cube and bake root vegetables with a cup of chopped onion. 45 minutes.

Bring 4 cups of milk to simmer with nutmeg, cloves, bay leaf and onion. Let stand 15minutes.

Grate 5 oz of Parmesan (note to self, buy pre-grated next time or have Husband grate). 10 minutes

Strain onion and bay leaf from milk; return to heat and add flour to thicken. Remove from heat and add cheese. 15 minutes.

Put no-boil noodles in the bottom of 9x13 pan (what’s this with only 3 noodles!? Use 5 at least.) Layer veggies, mozzarella cheese and white sauce. Repeat. Needed more mozzarella.

Baked covered at 400* for 30 minutes. Baked uncovered for 5.

Eat.

Despite all the putziness, this was really good. I served warm sourdough bread as the side and it was almost an ideal meal. A spinach salad would been a perfect addition. I would make this again using my modifications and buying pre-grated Parmesan.