Dill and Olive Oil Roasted Cauliflower

Do not be fooled by the fact that we discuss "cauliflower" on my Facebook page.  We do.  And when you think of that, or when I think of that it reminds me of a skit, I think from SNL, "The Delicious Dish" where they would discuss, rice and various other boring foods!  If you haven't seen it, this will mean nothing, if you have, you know what I me an.

Anyway, a reader of Chefwannabe mentioned that one night out of desperation she made this recipe.  I believe she used butter instead of olive oil, which I WILL do soon and a packet of Hidden Valley Harvest Dill seasoning mix.  Oh, and I almost forgot, I used a fresh head of cauliflower as well, instead of frozen. 

Ayyyyee carumba!!!  Delicious!  I don't know if I can ever eat cauliflower any other way!  This is easy and so packed with flavor.  I used a small-medium head of cauliflower but I would guess you could easily still get the same flavor punch from 2 heads, or one very large head.

Here is what you will need:

Fresh cauliflower (2 sm-med heads)
2 T. olive oil
1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch Harvest Dill Seasoning

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Divide your cauliflower into bite size pieces.  In a bowl add in cauliflower, olive oil and seasoning packet.  Toss until all cauliflower is coated with seasoning.  Dump until a foil or parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 25-35 minutes depending on if you like your cauliflower to still have crunch, or like it soft!

I won't be upset if you sprinkle a little fresh grated parm on this before serving. 

ENJOY!

Roasted Red Pepper Marinara

Hello beautiful friends!  I am in a good mood, can you tell?  If I tell you why, you won't believe it.  I have just made the most amazing marinara, EVER.  Yes, I said EVER.  Just look at this beautiful goodness!

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This may look like your everyday, run of the mill sauce, but trust me, it isn't!  I was watching a blogger friend who also has a YouTube channel.  Her name is Heather, of "Mishmawshandotherthings", and you can find her at her blog, or here at her youtube channel.  I was inspired by her homemade marinara.  I took her method, and some of her ingredients and added a few things of my own.  This recipe looked fantastic and roasting the veggies before cooking them is fantastic.  What flavor!!!!  I have to thank her for being an inspiration for this recipe.  I hope you go join up with her, she is a good lady, a real mom, with real kids, and she cooks real food.  GOOD food.

I am planning on making a large batch or multiple batches of this sauce to can or freeze.  I am adding no meat, (as Heather did), and can see using this for a soup base, lasagna, for stuffed peppers, cabbage rolls, gravy, I mean the list goes on and on!  Oh it was ROCK over meatloaf!  When you want to add meat, you treat it as you would any other sauce, dare I say "jarred".  Add your browned meat, meatballs, sausages, whatever you want.  This is a versatile baby and I think you will love it!

10-15 tomatoes (cut out the core and cut in half)
4 cloves of garlic (peeled)
1/2 onion (cut into chunks)
1/2 red bell pepper
olive oil
salt
sugar
5-7 leaves of basil (optional)

Preheat your oven to 350.  Prepare all of your ingredients.  When you have them ready to roast, put them on your sheet pan, drizzle with olive oil and salt liberally. 

Roast for 1 hour.  Remove and let cool for 5 minutes.

Put all roasted goodness into your blender.  Blend on high until smooth.  If you do not have a powerful blender you can strain it through a fine mesh strainer, mine left a FEW pieces of skin but I left them.  If I had blended longer they likely would have been completely pulverized!  I added about 5 large basil leaves to mine before I blended as well!

Add back into your saucepan and add sugar to taste.  I added 2 tbsp.  I also added salt and pepper to taste.  Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. 

This is absolutely the most delicious marinara I have ever made or tasted I think.  As you can see I simply added it to some plain spaghetti and just enjoyed the goodness!  Crisp, clean, fresh and homemade goodness.  You may never by jarred sauce again, I know I won't, not even in an emergency!

Your "garden goodness and homemade happiness"Chefwannabe

Roasted....like a chicken with it's head cut off

It is SUNDAY!  

I love Sunday suppers.  Usually involved family, more food than we should be eating, laughter, and time reminiscing around the table.  My husband and I are very big believers in family meals around the table.  Sunday was always family day when my son was little, and we enjoyed big Sunday suppers at home, or at PopPop and MomMom's house, Italian food until we couldn't move and great times.  Do you eat regularly with your family around the table?  Discuss your day, discuss any problems, share experiences?  I sometimes feel we are so busy with work, school, activities, and outside commitments; we forget the importance of the dinner table discussions.  I urge you to eat around the table with your children when you can.  My son can't remember the brand of clothes he had, or the sneakers he had, he remembers fishing with dad, football with dad, cooking with mom and dinner around the table.  I am dead serious, and I love that he remembers how important it was and will pass it on to his own daughter and future children.\

Anyway, we have gotten a little away from it, with our son grown and gone, and living too far away to have our old Sunday dates.  The last couple of weeks I have decided to pick it back up and this week, we had roasted chicken, baked macaroni and cheese, and pavlova for dessert.  We had more, these are just the things I will be blogging.  I will do it in 3 different posts.  I love chicken, I will be honest, I could live on chicken.  Or pretty darn close to living on it.  I inject my chicken using an injector.  If you do not have one, you can let this mixture cool and make sure your chicken is dry so you can rub it all over, on top of the skin and underneath the skin.   So let me share with you how I prepare a gorgeous, tender, juicy roasted chicken! 

You will need:
1 roasting chicken *average size*
1 stick of butter, melted
1 tsp thyme  *ground*
1 tsp onion salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp ground sage
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup water

I am SO afraid of needles, just looking at this picture is making me feel sick! 

Make sure you rinse your chicken.  I don't really feel you must rinse a chicken for any reason other than it feels slimy and gross to me and I have to get the slime off!  Pat it dry with paper towels and proceed.  Mix these ingredients and inject into all parts of chicken, stick injector all the way in a breast and release butter as your pulling the needle out, so it gets everywhere.  Stick and jab it anywhere and everywhere!!

Leave a little bit of butter so you can rub it on the outside of the skin, so it crisps and browns nicely.  I then grind some fresh sea salt on the outside of the chicken, all over.

You can tuck the wing tips back, tie the legs, whatever you want to do.  You can cut the spine out, which I did, and I put in a freezer bag to use for stock.  You can extract much more flavor from uncooked bones than already cooked bones.

Roast at 375 covered for 1 hour.  Remove foil and continue to roast until your meat thermometer reads 165 in the middle close to the bone of the breast and the skin is nice and brown. I take it out, cover it with foil and let it rest 15 minutes.  I slice the breast, and lightly sprinkle a tiny bit more salt over the sliced meat.

Remember as with all meat, the cooking times depend on the size of your chicken.  Please, please, PLEASE check the temp of your chicken.  Raw chicken can do terrible things to people, *unfortunately speaking from experience* and you don't want anyone sick.  Adjust cooking times according to the size of your chicken.

Now my little chickens, (I use this as a term of endearment for one of my best friends children) try your hand at it.  It is easy, leftovers can be used for endless weeknight meals.  Chicken salad, chicken noodle soup, etc.  It will be so nicely flavored from the injecting and seasonings you won't know how you ever lived without injecting and slow roasting!

Your "finger lickin' good chicken" chefwannabe
Chris

The OTHER white meat. Bacon Roasted Pork Loin

Pork loins.




My bacon was leftover and had been cut!!

These in my opinion are one of the last great deals in the food market.  When they go on sale, I get the huge 10-12 lb ones and divide them into 3 portions.  I store them in a Ziploc and they freeze so well!  You can do anything with these babies!!!  Here is what I do with mine, probably TO often, but it is so good, so tender and so juicy, why mess with a good thing right?  I, by the way am obsessed with juicy meat.  If you have read any of my other blogs, you may already know that growing up, my mother was training to be a shoemaker.  She cooked all meat into shoe leather and used gravy as the softening agent.  It never worked well as I recall but it didn't stop her from repeating the same ritual each week with a new victim..err...I mean roast beef.  It is likely where my aversion to any roast beef comes from.  I do make it occasionally but, shoe-making stopped with my mom.  My precious pork loin doesn't deserve to have it all end "that" way!!

The key to keeping any roasted meat juicy is simple, COVER IT!  Use foil and cover tightly to keep all steam and liquid IN.  Instead of evaporating out, it creates steam that falls back into the meat.  This is a simple recipe but it is delicious, and NO you can not achieve the same consistency in a crock pot, do not even ask!!! This meat is tender, juicy and slice-able, not mushy baby food!

You will need:

3lb Pork Loin (or however much will feed your family)

1tbsp salt

1tbsp pepper

6 slices of uncooked bacon

1 cup chicken or beef stock

1/2 cup water

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

3 dashes of hot sauce

Line a baking pan with foil for easier cleanup.  Preheat oven to 375.  Sprinkle meat with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder.  Give your pork loin 3 good dashes of hot sauce on top.  This WILL NOT make your pork spicy AT ALL!!  So just do it!!!! Wrap bacon around the pork loin all the way down so it is complete covered.  Pour stock and water into pan.  Cover tightly with foil and bake approx 1 hour, remove foil and let bake another 30 minutes or until meat thermometer reads 150 degrees and the bacon is crisp. Let it rest 10-15 minutes before slicing.  You can use juices for gravy if you like.  

You can also roast any veggies of your choice with the pork!  Try some new ones, maybe some parsnips, or celery root!!  I challenge you to try a new veggie this week!!!

Your "other white meat rocks" chefwannabe

Chris