donna's daily dish

new spring things

3/20/2023

Chicken Manchurian
By Zainab Shah
The New York Times, “What to Make Next Week”
March 18, 2023

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 45 Minutes

INGREDIENTS
1 egg
4 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon garlic paste or freshly grated garlic
1 teaspoon black pepper
Fine sea salt
1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into ¾-inch cubes
⅓ cup vegetable oil

easy weeknight meals

2/8/2023

This week it’s all about lighter tasting food, full of flavor but done in a speedy fashion. Occasionally I’ve come across some delicious chef recipes from The Wall Street Journal’s column “Slow Food Fast.” The first two recipes take just 30 minutes to prepare.

meatless Monday

1/11/2023

I love to both cook and eat! My morning breakfast consists of low-fat Greek yogurt, fresh strawberries or blueberries and granola. Sometimes I munch on the granola when I’m hungry; this isn’t good. I store my Christmas cookies in our front storage attic where its dry and cold, thereby keeping them fresh longer. If you want a cookie, you’ll have to work for it. As of this week, I finished the granola. Breakfast will either be cereal or yogurt with fruit. I have reduced my cookie intake to one, or sometimes two cookies per day. I snacking on Honeycrisp apples when I desire something sweet.

risotto simplified

1/9/2023

This past weekend I had a craving for risotto and recently caught an episode of America’s Test Kitchen where Elle Simone Scott demonstrated an easier method for making shrimp risotto; constant stirring wasn’t required.

For the recipe you’ll need 1-pound extra-large shrimp, table salt, vegetable oil, water, whole black peppercorns, bay leaves, unsalted butter, an onion, a fennel bulb, baking soda, minced fresh garlic, Arborio rice, dry white wine, Parmesan cheese, minced fresh chives, lemon zest and lemon juice.

December 27th, 2022

12/27/2022

Sometimes I prepare so many new and exciting recipes, that we never have them twice.

As it’s been so cold the past few days, I would like to suggest a Broccoli and Arugula Soup. This recipe was found in the January 2022 issue of “Charleston Magazine.” The soup was thick and creamy despite there being no cream in the soup. Both my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Some of the best recipes from 2022 came from The New York Times/NYT Cooking. One such recipe is Kay Chun’s Korean Cheeseburgers with Sesame-Cucumber Pickles. These are not your parents’ cheeseburgers. The burgers are flavored with soy sauce, scallions, garlic, pepper and sugar. They’re served with a mayonnaise dressing flavored with the same ingredients as the burgers plus toasted sesame oil. These burgers were incredible. I also made Ali Slagle’s Chicken Parm Burgers that were fabulous. Between the aromatic basil, the intensity of the tomato paste, these burgers were packed with flavor.

what's new and tasty

12/5/2022

After recovering from Thanksgiving, I’m ready to try some new recipes that I can prepare during the upcoming holiday season. Recently on “America’s Test Kitchen, which airs on public broadcasting, they demonstrated a recipe for Easy Pancakes. I’ve been making a Betty Crocker recipe for many years that uses buttermilk and makes light and fluffy pancakes. However, sometimes you don’t have buttermilk on hand and an easy, from scratch recipe, is just as quick as a box mix. For the recipe you’ll need all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, eggs, vegetable oil, milk and vanilla extract. To achieve fluffy pancakes, ATK amped up the amount of baking powder, with minimal amounts of baking soda and liquid. The proportions make for a thick batter that should also have some lumps, no over mixing here, and rests for 10 minutes before preparing.

As I don’t have the patience in the morning to wait 10 minutes for the dry ingredients to absorb the liquid, I opted to make these for my lunch the other day. In order to achieve an even golden pancake, the recipe calls for pouring a tablespoon of vegetable oil on the griddle and wiping the oil around until you have a light film on the pan. The best way to test if your griddle is ready for cooking, is to lightly sprinkle the surface with water. If the water beads up and dissipates, your griddle is ready.

what i ate last week

11/7/2022

I had good intentions of posting what I prepared last week sooner, but time just flew by. The week started off with a sheet pan meal by Colu Henry of The New York Times. Her recipe, Sheet-Pan Chicken with Apple, Fennel and Onion sounded so good. The combination of apples with the fennel was appealing. For the recipe you’ll need fennel seeds, bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, olive oil, kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, an onion, a medium fennel bulb, a tart apple and fresh rosemary.

I substituted bone-in chicken breasts, our preference, and used my oven’s convection setting for cooking. The chicken was done in approximately 30-35 minutes. I used an instant read thermometer at the 30-minute mark to make sure it didn’t overcook.

what's cookin'

10/11/2022

It seems I neglected to blog about a recent supper of Lemon-Dill Chicken Skillet that I prepared last week. I am also going to include two other recipes that came on the heels of this one.
I had some remaining feta cheese from the baked eggs recipe I recently prepared for my friends. I was quite happy to find another recipe utilizing feta cheese. This was found in the May 2022 issue of Southern Living Magazine. The ingredients needed include Yukon gold potatoes, olive oil, bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, freshly ground black pepper, kosher salt, fresh lemon juice, feta cheese and fresh dill fronds. This is a great recipe to keep close at hand as it has a prep time of 25 minutes and completed overall in 40 minutes.

one pan steak salad

8/5/2022

I enjoy preparing recipes that appear in Southern Living Magazine. The recipes are well tested, a diverse offering and turn out well when I prepared. One such recipe that I tore from their magazine appeared in the May 2021 issue, Seared Steak-and-Field Pea Salad. This is a wonderful one pan meal. I was unsure as to what field peas were, but discovered it could be a bean. Field peas include speckled butter beans, crowders, pink-eyed peas, butter beans and lady cream peas. This clarifies what I was seeing in the image from the magazine.

For this recipe you’ll need brown sugar, white balsamic or white wine vinegar, olive oil, flank steak, field peas, kosher salt, fresh corn, orange and red bell peppers, black pepper, fresh chives and flaky sea salt. Although this recipe calls for flank steak, I thought I would try flat iron steak which was on sale last week at my local ShopRite.

is it too hot to cook?

7/23/2022

The inevitable summer dilemma is what to cook when the weather turns unbearable. Whether your house is air conditioned or not, cooking during heat kitchen isn’t very motivating. Let me share with you some recipes that may inspire you and keep your kitchen cool.

Back in May I shared with you a recipe I found at Southern Living Magazine for Sesame Shrimp Stir-Fry. Two Ali Slagle recipes are great one pot meals such as Shrimp Scampi with Orzo or Summer Shrimp Scampi with Tomatoes and Corn. While shrimp requires a short time to cook, so does pork tenderloin. Lidia Bastianich’s recipe for Pork Tenderloin with Balsamic Onions. Moving from on from shrimp and pork, how about Quick Jambalaya from Vallery Lomas of The New York Times.