Main Dish Recipes
Boy Scout Beef Chili
The first weekend of December, MM participates with his Boy Scout troop in the annual lighting of memorial luminaria at Antietam Battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland. It is an extremely moving event. If any of you live in the area I urge you to check it out. It is always held the first weekend of December.
Poached Salmon with Salsa Verde
Poaching is a simple but underutilized, moist heat cooking technique. I love salmon and chicken breasts cooked this way. Poached foods are cooked in a court-bouillon, a briefly boiled, lightly flavored liquid. In this recipe I use white wine, but you could substitute the wine with another acid such as vinegar or lemon juice.
How to Roast a Chicken
Most of you are probably planning to roast a turkey for Thanksgiving, but here’s an option for a smaller gathering: roast chicken. The technique for making a roast chicken and a roast turkey is the same. I love roast chicken, and it’s incredibly easy to do. It makes a great family dinner or weekend entertaining dish….
No-Cook Tomato Sauce for Pasta
Here we are, deep into tomato season. It is HOT here in the Washington, DC area; temperatures in the 90s are predicted for later today with high humidity. It’s not a day to spend a lot of time inside cooking, and it’s too hot to even fire up the grill. So here’s a fresh, simple,…
Bean Thread Noodles with Veal, Tomatoes, and Mint
Above is a picture of a recent lunch that was very simple to make because I had bean thread noodles on hand. I find bean thread noodles to be a very handy pantry item. Bean thread noodles are made from mung bean starch: the same mung beans that are sold as common sprouts. The noodles…
Roast Turkey
It’s that time of year again, and the big question is: how does one roast a turkey? Well, I’ve tried numerous methods, and this is the one I’ve settled on. It’s from the now defunct Gourmet magazine. In the original article, I believe they said that they had tested over 25 ways to roast a turkey…
Sliced Turkey with Paprika Tomato Sauce
We didn’t host Thanksgiving dinner this year, so I didn’t have any turkey leftovers the following day. With only one day of turkey feasting under my belt, I found I was wanting more, so I cooked a turkey breast this past weekend to fulfill my craving. The first night we enjoyed a very straightforward dinner…
The Last of the Summer Harvest
We had our first hard frost last night. Just as the sun was setting I snuck out to the backyard to salvage any last frost-fragile offerings from my garden. I found several sweet peppers: some ripe and red, a couple in transition from green to red, and a few others still green. There were a number…
Favorite Grilled Flank Steak
It’s a beautiful fall here in the DC area, and I’m trying to eek out every evening of outdoor time. We had some friends over the other evening and I pulled out one of my easiest and all time favorite recipes for grilled flank steak. Everyone needs a few quick, “greatest hits” recipes. This is one of those….
Creamed Chicken Sandwiches: A Taste of My Hometown
When I was a kid, every summer over the Fourth of July, the Jubilee, a carnival, came to my hometown of Bryan in Northwest Ohio. It set up around the courthouse square in the middle of town. This was big-time fun! Streets were closed down and the town was overtaken by four blocks of excitement:…
In the Beginning, the Egg
I love eggs. I grew up in a small town in northern Ohio. Summers were spent at a lake surrounded by farms in northern Indiana. The farms of my childhood were all small and family-owned. There was usually a coop where the chickens spent the night. But in the daytime the chickens had the run of…