Make yourself a nice late fall dinner — sautéed chicken, creamed spinach, roast potatoes

sautéed chicken breast with shallot, roasted maitake mushrooms

Creamed spinach

Roasted potatoes with garlic cloves and thyme

Prep:

Flour on plate for chicken

Cut chicken in half

De-stem spinach 

Chop up shallot

Roast mushrooms with olive oil

Preheat oven to 450°

Wash and cut up potatoes. Add to baking pan with whole peeled garlic cloves. Drizzle with olive oil, S&P and thyme. Turn potatoes cut side down. Add a splash of water and cover with aluminum foil. Bake for 40 minutes, removing cover 1/2 way through.

To roast mushrooms: cut into 1” pieces and place on baking sheet with olive oil and salt, and roast about 10+ minutes, turning once or twice with spatula. 

Heat heavy cream in small saucepan. Add a split garlic clove; toss around garlic in cream and let sit.

Prepare spinach: Pull off stems and pick through putting a very large amount in a saucepan because it shrinks like crazy. Add a splash of water and salt, cover and cook for less than 5 minutes, stirring once or twice until just wilted. Drain and set aside in colander. When ready to serve, heat cream and stir in spinach, and grate on a touch of nutmeg.

Heat nonstick sauté pan over medium-high heat, add butter and oil. Cut breast in half horizontally to make thinner. Put flour on plate. Put S&P on chicken; when pan is hot, dredge chicken in flour, tap off excess, and place in pan. Leave for 2 minutes, then rotate without flipping. After a couple more minutes, flip and turn down heat if necessary to not burn. You want high heat though to avoid the dreaded rubber banquet chicken breast. Remove and tent loosely with aluminum foil (from taters!). Sauté shallots. Add in mushrooms. Top chicken with mixture, or add chicken to pan, toss around and then serve!

Serve and enjoy!

Black beans and sweet potato tacos

Staying on my bean kick, because of course I am now among the “people of the bean” aka Rancho Gordo bean club member. I cooked some black beans perhaps for the first time — certainly in decades because I shied away thinking they take 4 hours or are impossible to cook. I soaked and cooked them up in less than an hour! And the taste . . . . superb! I have a deluge of root crops from my CSA farm share and the sweet potatoes are excellent, and undeterred from not having all the traditional taco ingredients and accompaniments including no ripe avocado, cilantro, or queso fresco, I decided to have a go of it with mainly the beans and sweet potatoes. I’ll do it again . . . and already have!

Ingredients:

Black beans

Sweet potatoes, roasted

Sautéed onions, garlic, hot peppers if available or use chili flakes

Cumin. Maybe some chili powder

Sour cream

Grape tomatoes, cut up

Hot sauce!

Cook black beans with 1/2 onion

Sauté cut up 1/2 onion in olive oil (or veg oil) with salt. Add minced fresh hot pepper or red pepper flakes and cumin and perhaps some chili powder. When almost done, after 5 minutes, add minced garlic. Set aside until beans are cooked, and then add drained beans, and let cook slowly so everything blends. 

Roast sweet potato: preheat oven to 425°. You can peel and cube your potato or, even easier:

Cut in half lengthwise — after scrubbing — and brush cut sides with olive oil, and sprinkle all with kosher salt. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet, cut side down, and roast for about 1/2 hour or more until tender. Remove and let sit. Okay if it comes to room temp. Scoop out flesh to add to tacos.

Heat tortillas over dry heat 30+ seconds on a side. Layer in:

Black beans

Sweet potatoes

Cut up tomatoes

Sour cream.

Yum! 

To gild the lily: 

Pickled red onions

Cilantro is always welcome, assuming you’re not one of those who thinks it tastes like soap(!)

Avocado

Queso fresco, and omit the sour cream (?)

Salsa 

Or try chipotles in adobo mixed into beans

Another guide

Note: You want good corn tortillas for this or I say just don’t bother. I found some local fresh ones that I heated on my cast iron pan. You can also cover in aluminum foil and heat in the 350° oven for 5-10 minutes. Even better: make your own tortillas! Maseca, Bob’s Red Mill and Gold Mine organic. This recipe will get you started. You only need: masa harina, water and salt! A cast iron pan, a tortilla press, and a plastic storage bag to cut up. I hear you can make do without a press.

To pickle red onions:

Red onion, peeled and sliced thinly

Lime juice from 3-4 limes — or use just one lime and add 1/2 c white vinegar diluted with 1/2 c water

Cider vinegar, 1 T

Kosher salt, 1 t

Ground pepper, 1/2 t.

Mexican oregano, optional

Here’s another way

Simple beans for dinner

Now that I am proudly among the “people of the bean,” that is, a (credit-)card carrying member of the Rancho Gordo bean club, delightedly receiving a shipment of 6 varieties of mostly heirloom beans every 3 months, beans are what’s for dinner when I want a simple meal. 

I selected a small white bean — Alubia Blanca Bean — from my recent shipment. Described as “a small, white heirloom that feels at home in kitchens from Mexico to Spain to New England [and Hudson Valley!]” Being little and no-doubt fresh, these beans cooked up in 40 minutes. 

For a simple meal, I steamed some broccoli, and made a parsley vinaigrette-ish preparation of: garlic, parsley, lemon juice (zest would not be amiss here), S & P, whizzed in mini-chopper, and then added in olive oil. Drizzled over everything warm and it was pretty darn good, thanks to those exquisite beans! Such a rich and delicious universe of beans beyond canned.

Also very good as a cold lunch dish: beans, drained; leftover cooked broccoli, carrot, vinaigrette.

Inspiration: NY Times Cooking

Asian-ish cabbage and chicken salad

In November when fresh green vegetables are not being harvested in the Northeast US, and your CSA share is heavy on root crops, perhaps, like me, you have a couple heads of plain ol’ cabbage in the refrigerator bin. There are options other than roasting, steaming, or summer cole slaw. 

Make this Asian-ish salad with sesame seeds and oil, almonds and perhaps some leftover chicken breast. You can poach some chicken breasts — boneless or bone-in (Boil water and place in chicken; turn off heat and cover; let sit for 15 mins. Voila!)

I just recently discovered rotisserie chicken at my food coop — *is* there a method that produces a more delicious bird?? — and had some breast meat set aside. Carrots are likely to also be on hand to grate in with the cabbage. 

Directions:

1. Prepare and salt cabbage

Cabbage, 1/2, cut through core, then sliced thinly, discarding core

Place in large bowl and add salt and mush around:

Salt with 1/2 T kosher salt, mushing it in well with hands. Let sit in bowl for 15 minutes. Rinse in bowl and drain. No need to be fanatical about drying it.

2. Toast sesame seeds, if using. (Defrost almonds also if, like me, you store them in freezer.)

Carrot, grated

Scallions, sliced thin, mostly green part

Sliced almonds

Sesame seeds, toasted

Or in summer add snow peas, sliced. Celery would not be amiss here, either.

3. Mix up dressing:

2-3 T c grapeseed oil

Sesame oil, 2 T light; splash of toasted sesame oil; more if you are out of sesame seeds

3 T white balsamic vinegar, or rice wine vinegar

Lemon juice, 1 T

Splash of soy sauce

Or use peanut oil, a la Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois Chicken salad:

Peanut oil, 2-3 T

Rice wine vinegar, 4 T

Soy sauce, 1 t

Sesame oil, light with a touch of toasted, especially if there are no sesame seeds on hand

Optional: dry mustard, 2 t

Honey 

Sources:
Ali Stafford Asian Chicken and Cabbage Salad

And Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois Chicken Salad (link is not exactly his recipe, which is in his cookbook Live, Love, Eat! Which is also not exactly what I remember from those most excellent salads served at O’Hare airport many years ago!)

Asian-ish chicken and cabbage

Ingredients:

Boneless chicken breasts, thick part butterflied

Cabbage — savoy or napa preferably; or regular ol’ green

Mushrooms — I like shiitake 

Stock — vegetable or chicken

Blend:

Hot pepper

Garlic

Ginger

Soy sauce

Fish sauce

Turmeric (if fresh)

Brown sugar, a pinch

Whir together and marinate chicken breasts.

Put up rice to cook.

Cut up:

Cabbage, sliced

Onion, 1/4 diced, optional

Shiitake mushrooms, sliced

Directions:

1. Prepare ginger pepper marinade
2. Prepare rice
3. Marinate chicken. Save some marinade for the cabbage.
4. Cut up cabbage, onions and mushrooms.
5. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
6. Cook cabbage: sauté in olive oil: onions, then mushrooms with salt, then cabbage, adding stock; toss and cover. Add marinade and cook.
7. Sauté chicken breasts in hot cast iron pan with olive oil. Sear on both sides, then put atop cabbage and put in oven to cook through for five minutes. 
8. Voilà!

Inspiration