quick and easy recipes

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Dinners This Week

All our snow is gone. It melted over the rainy weekend. We are getting more sun, more frequently. And it is MARCH. I am GIDDY with the anticipation of spring. Normally, I love winter. And we ended up making the most out of this winter, spending a LOT of time outside and with friends (all masked of course; it’s sad that I still feel the need to add this assurance, but such is life in these mask-divisive days). So I am definitely sad to see it go. BUT I am delighted that spring is around the corner. (My husband, the killjoy realist, advocates caution around getting too excited for spring; it’s only March, he says, very reasonably; we could still have plenty of winter yet.) (Carla and I drove through a brief blizzard on the way home.) (NOTHING STUCK.) Spring means warm weather! It means meeting friends for walks in the park! It means firing up the outdoor heater and having friends OVER TO OUR BACKYARD! It means increasing spans of sunshine. It means increasing numbers of vaccination. It means we are moving ever closer to whatever “normal” will mean once most people are vaccinated. I AM EXCITED. 

My meal plan for this week doesn’t particularly reflect spring, though. It still reflects a person who requires hearty stews and warm bread. That’s okay. We can hold onto the pleasurable bits of winter a bit longer.

Dinners for the Week of March 1-March 8

  • Mulligatawny Soup and Miracle No-Knead Bread: Because I have mirepoix already portioned out and frozen, this meal is SO SIMPLE. And delicious. The only thing I have to think about is mixing the bread ingredients the night before. Everything else is easy peasy.
  • Slow Cooker BBQ Pork Tenderloin with Baked Potato: I guess my theme for the week is Easy Meals? Doesn’t get much simpler than rough-chopping an onion, dumping it into the slow cooker with a pork tenderloin and some BBQ sauce, and letting it cook down into fall-apart perfection. 
  • Chickpea Bowls: We haven’t had these in awhile and these are the perfect intersection of hearty and spicy. I add a bunch of bell peppers and a chicken breast when I make this for dinner. Maybe I will make a double portion so I can have some for lunches as well.
  • Hungarian Mushroom Soup: This is a recipe my husband recommended; he so rarely puts forth a dinner option that I tend to leap on the rare suggestions with great enthusiasm. This soup sounds kind of stroganoff-esque. It does require fresh parsley, though. I ABHOR parsley, but my husband and I talked it out and I am going to BUY PARSLEY and CHOP IT UP and PUT IT VOLUNTARILY into the soup. We’ll see what happens. 
  • Some sort of salad we can dip into all week: Not a whole lot of veggies happening this week, so I think I will get some lettuce and some easy toppings (cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, scallions) so we can have side salads should the mood strike.

What are you eating this first week of March?

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Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken

I have been meaning to post this for a long time, primarily so I don’t have to go back and forth between the original recipe and my adaptations, trying to figure out what to do.

This is a fairly easy, fairly tasty slow cooker meal. The garlic gets very soft and almost sweet (I love smushing a half-clove onto a bite of chicken), the sauce is luscious and lemony, and the chicken is very tender. 

As written, this produces a good amount of sauce; notes below, sauce-wise. I have (heavily) adapted this recipe from a Martha Stewart recipe to amp up the flavor, but you can find the original here if you like.

Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts 

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and halved

1/2 cup dry white wine + 1/4 cup for deglazing

1/2 cup lemon juice

1/2 cup chicken stock

2 teaspoons of dried thyme

Salt and pepper, to taste

The worst part of this recipe is peeling all the garlic.

1a.    Sauté chopped onion and garlic, in olive oil, in a small pan, on medium high heat, until the onion is translucent and the garlic is beginning to brown. 

1b. Optional step: Brown chicken breasts in sauté pan. This is truly optional; I almost never do it, and the chicken is still flavorful.

2.    Pour onion and garlic (and browned chicken breasts) into your slow cooker; deglaze the sauté pan with 1/4 cup dry white wine, scraping up any browned bits. Pour the wine and browned bits into the slow cooker.

3.    If you didn’t brown your chicken, put that in on top of the onion and garlic.

4.    To the slow cooker, add lemon juice, remaining 1/2 cup wine, and chicken stock, plus the 2 teaspoons of dried thyme, plus salt and pepper to taste.

Wow, this is an unflattering angle. But this is what it looks like after you add everything to the slow cooker.

5.    Cover and cook on high for 3 hours, or low for 5-6 hours.

6. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

7. Remove chicken breasts carefully with tongs, as they fall apart easily. Top with sauce.    

Notes: 

  1. If the sauce is too thin for you, you can mix in a little cornstarch slurry (1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 1 tablespoon water) before serving. 
  2. Because I make this for just me and my husband, I always use two chicken breasts. HOWEVER, this dish makes a LOT of sauce. You could easily double the chicken without needing to double the sauce, it will cook just fine and, yes, you’ll have less sauce for drenching your couscous, but some people are less interested in making dinner purely for the sauce than I am.
  3. The type of white wine you use will affect the flavor; I usually just make this with whatever open bottle of wine I have on hand. Riesling makes it very sweet, but still palatable. I think Chardonnay is the best fit. 
  4. When I feel fancy, I throw in a little lemon zest with the other ingredients. Does it add anything? Hard to say. 
  5. Because this is very saucy, I like to serve it with sauce soppers: couscous is my favorite, but rice or quinoa would work well, too. Steamed broccoli is a good vegetable pairing, in part because you can dip the florets in the sauce and the flavors go well together. Sauce sauce sauce.
It’s not a photogenic meal (although a lot of that can be blamed on the photographer), but it TASTES good.
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Mulligatawny Soup

My mom used to make this soup for Christmas Eve dinner. It seems like it was something she did every single year of my childhood, and a few years beyond that. So even now that I’ve adapted the recipe and eat it throughout the year, the scent and the flavors still carry a frisson of Christmas.

It’s such a good soup. It’s hearty. It’s adaptable. It’s forgiving. The leftovers are great. And it’s EASY.

Mulligatawny 3

The original recipe comes from Joy of Cooking, which, as you can see from the cover, is a much-loved cookbook in our house.

Mulligatawny 1

My husband and I have tweaked it a bit, over the years, to our liking. I have recently discovered that it works well in the crockpot, but it is also very easy to make on the stove.

Mulligatawny 2

Mulligatawny Soup (adapted from Joy of Cooking)

Servings: 6-8, depending on what you consider a serving

Ingredients:

4 stalks of celery, diced

2 large carrots, diced

1 cup diced onion

2 Tbsp unsalted butter

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

3 Tbsp flour

1 1/2 Tbsp curry powder

2-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

8 cups low-sodium chicken stock

2 bay leaves

1/4 to 1 cup uncooked or 1/2 to 2 cups cooked long-grain rice, depending on whether you want a more brothy soup or a more stewy soup

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1 cup milk, warmed

1/2 cup diced green apple (optional)

Mulligatawny 4

Directions:

Crockpot Version

  1. In a small saucepan on medium heat, melt butter and vegetable oil together.
  2. Add onion, celery, and carrot; sauté lightly until onion is translucent and veggies are slightly softened.
  3. Add flour and curry to the veggies; stir and cook until fragrant, about one minute.
  4. Spray insert of slow cooker with cooking spray.
  5. Add cooked veggies, raw chicken breasts, stock, bay leaves, salt, pepper, and thyme; stir.
  6. Add uncooked rice.
  7. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 4 hours. (Check temperature of chicken before eating.)
  8. Before serving, warm the milk and add it to the slow cooker. Add optional diced apples at this point as well.
  9. Remove chicken and shred; return to pot.
  10. Remove bay leaves.
  11. Add salt and pepper to taste.

 

Stovetop Version

Note: Ingredients are the same, except the rice and chicken should already be cooked.

  1. In a large stockpot on medium heat, melt butter and vegetable oil together.
  2. Add onion, celery, and carrot; sauté lightly until onion is translucent and veggies are slightly softened.
  3. Add flour and curry to the veggies; stir and cook until fragrant, about one minute.
  4. Add stock, bay leaves, salt, pepper, and thyme; stir.
  5. Bring to a boil; simmer for 15 minutes.
  6. Add shredded cooked chicken, cooked rice, and optional diced apples.
  7. Simmer for 15 minutes.
  8. Immediately before serving, add warmed milk.
  9. Add salt and pepper to taste.

 

Notes:

  1. This is a very forgiving and adaptable recipe. You can add more or less chicken, more or less rice, more or less milk. Sometimes I have left out the milk altogether.
  2. You can substitute half and half, heavy cream, or coconut milk for the milk.
  3. You can add a squeeze of lemon to the soup before serving, for a little brightness.
  4. It is very simple to cut this recipe in half, but the leftovers freeze well.
  5. I do not think the apples add anything to the recipe, but my husband likes them.

 

Enjoy!

Mulligatawny 5