marinades and rubs – The Kitchen Illiterate

Chicken and Chard Burritos

Sometimes on Sundays I peruse cookbooks and I start getting excited. I start making up grocery lists and weekly menu plans, and I have it all figured out. I know that Thursday, I’m going to make Chicken Escabeche with Carrots and Jalapenos, and wild rice. Then things happen. The market doesn’t have any acceptable carrots, though the shelves are overflowing with beautiful leafy greens. Thursday, which seemed like a perfectly lovely day earlier in the week, turns out to be kind of exhausting, and when work is over and I’m standing in the kitchen, I know I don’t have the patience for wild rice. I have to re-think my plans, so that I can get back on the couch for a little restorative bad television. Sometimes when this happens, I turn to pizza, or bread and cheese. But sometimes when this happens, I get lucky, and something wonderful manages to happen in my own kitchen anyway. This was one of those times.
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Spicy Citrus Shrimp and Spinach

I don’t use a lot of citrus in the kitchen, though I have been eating clementines nearly every day this winter. I don’t actually use a lot of fruit in my cooking at all. Fruit is sweet and therefore my savory-loving self has a hard time intuitively understanding how it fits into dinner. But when I saw this recipe for Grilled Shrimp with Citrus-Sambal-Oelek dressing in April’s Food & Wine, I was intrigued. The idea of something bright and spicy is very appealing this time of year, when summer taunts at every turn. What I ended up with was slightly different from the original recipe, based on what I had in the kitchen, but holy moly, it was so good I think I’m going to try introducing citrus to my pots and pans more often.
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Soy-glazed Red Snapper with Spring Vegetables and Roasted Potatoes

It’s finally spring in New England, though we are still about a month away from farmer’s market produce. I’m only four days away from finishing grad school, and miraculously, am actually finished with all my finals—I had to finish early because we had a trip to take: I’m in Los Angeles for my good friend Kim’s wedding! It’s already been a great party, and the wedding itself is this evening, at a ranch in Malibu.

I kind of forgot that eating in Southern California tends to take place in chain restaurants more often than not. We went to the San Fernando Valley’s “restaurant row” last night, which consisted of The Cheesecake Factory, El Torito, Fuddrucker’s, Quizno’s, and P.F. Chang’s. That’s about all there is in walking distance of our hotel. We did get room service for breakfast this morning, which is certainly never the best food, but I love having someone bring a tray of covered plates to my room and being able to eat breakfast on a fluffy, white King-sized bed.
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Miso-glazed Tuna Kebabs

I think my grill pan and I have finally come to an amicable agreement. I keep it clean and dry and rust-free, and oil it liberally before I use it, and it doesn’t send clouds of stinky smoke billowing through my apartment. I am so happy that we’re finally getting along, because I don’t think these tuna kebabs would have been nearly as flavorful if I had had to roast them or sear them or pan fry them. Grilling is definitely the way to go, so if you don’t live in a climate where late-December grilling is an option, I suggest you get yourself a grill pan tout de suite. You won’t regret it.

I used the same marinade here, from epicurious.com, with tofu a few weeks ago. And while it wasn’t bad, it just worked better with tuna. However, with a few tweaks I think it would have been just as good, so I’ll do my best to make some suggestions for those who don’t want to eat tuna.
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Quintessential Summer Dinner: BBQ Chicken, Potato Salad, Corn, and Biscuits

I told you I ate a lot of great food in San Diego. The best part of my trip was being able to enjoy awesome meals with my family and friends. There is something perfect, something I miss everyday living here in Boston, about sitting at a table with people I love, sharing food and conversation. I grew up in a house where family dinners were important: I remember waiting every night for dinner until everyone was home from work and school and practice and whatnot before we sat down to eat, and now that I’m an adult (ahem, ha ha) I realize how great, and perhaps uncommon, it is that my parents brought us up like that. So, thanks ma and pa. You guys are rad.

The last night I was in San Diego, my aunt and uncle and their two kids came for dinner, and we cooked up this way-too-classic summer dinner: barbecue grilled chicken, corn on the cob, German potato salad, and buttery biscuits. The only thing missing, perhaps, was apple pie. But we had vanilla ice cream with strawberries instead, which is pretty perfectly summery itself. And this dinner was truly a group effort. I made the barbecue sauce and biscuits, Mom made the potato salad, my brother’s grilled the chicken and corn, and Dad entertained us all, the goofball.

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Slow Cooked Al Pastor-style Pork

This summer is passing much too quickly for my taste. I can’t believe my birthday has come and gone, and even worse, that it’s taken me over a week to blog about this year’s pork spectacle. I’m not sure when or how I decided that my birthday was an ideal occasion for very large, fatty pieces of pork to be slow cooked in various ways, but that seems to be the new tradition, and I’m already plotting next year’s preparation of the other white meat.

But I am getting ahead of myself. This year I got it into my head that I wanted to make al pastor. I’m not quite sure why. In fact, I had never had al pastor. When I was a kid in San Diego, I was a pretty firm believer that carne asada burritos were the only respectable way to go. And al pastor is meant to be cooked on a vertical rotisserie. It’s not like I have one of those sitting around. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about al pastor for weeks, and it seemed as though I would really have no choice for the birthday feast: al pastor it would have to be.

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Rosemary Risotto with Grilled Chicken and Green Beans

Risotto is pretty high up there on the all-time favorite things list. So much so that I will stand in front of a hot stove for 45 minutes one one of the HOTTEST DAYS EVER just to have it. Yes, my friends, I am clearly crazy. Yesterday was unbearably hot and muggy (what is with these weather patterns?), but even extreme discomfort could not stop me from a lengthy, stove-front cooking project last night. And after that I baked bread! Lunatic. However, it was totally worth it because this was some absolutely delicious risotto.

Everyone seemed to like the risotto so much when I put cumin in the stock, and I got to thinking of all the other numerous ways you could flavor risotto. One of the first things that occurred to me was rosemary. Rosemary can be awfully strong, and using it to flavor the stock, rather than cooking it directly into the risotto, gave the risotto a more subtle flavor. It might just be one of my best ideas yet (well, after the Mexican pizza, anyway).

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Super Spicy Shrimp and Red Onion Pasta

UPDATE: I re-made this dish in 2010, after I learned a few more things about cooking. Don’t forget to check out the much better version.

In my quest to eat more healthier things, I ran an epicurious search for foods not filled with butter. It didn’t come up with a lot, but a recipe for Spiced Shrimp and Red Onion Saute caught my eye. It looked fast, it didn’t require a ton of ingredients (other than spices, which I already have), and it looked relatively light. Plus, I love shrimp. I decided this would be an excellent Tuesday night meal, served over pasta, and with a little spinach thrown in, for greenery and extra vitamin purposes.

Well, it was very fast, and I’m assuming pretty healthy, but it was also so spicy I could hardly eat it. I also think I needed to add more shrimp, more spinach, and less onion, all of which alterations may happen in the future, because overall I think this was a pretty good dinner. Below, the recipe as followed, with my parenthetical alterations.

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Potato Cauliflower Gratin with Roasted Red Pepper Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Some Chicken and Some Cheese

I have been plotting a gratin for weeks now, and finally found the time to put it together. Not that it was particularly time consuming, but it’s been a busy month. Actually, it was much easier than I would have thought and deliciously heart-attack inducing. I basically cobbled together a Cauliflower Gratin recipe from Ina Garten, and a few different Potato Gratin recipes from Epicurious, to put together this Gruyere-filled melty treat. It’s almost entirely Ina Garten’s recipe, but with added fat. Because I’m crazy like that.

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Week of Pork, Part Two

After Saturday’s hearty midwestern pork-and-potatoes dinner, Mr. X made me dinner on Sunday–stuffed pork tenderloin with roasted potatoes and brussel sprouts. Pork overload! It was very tasty, and the very best part was the Butternut Squash soup he’d made that morning–full of ginger and perfectly buttery and creamy. Yum. I don’t really know how he made it, as I was very busy sitting on the couch, probably watching the Food Network or something. If I can convince him to recall how he made it, I’ll put it up here. Thankfully, he did manage to keep all his fingers in the squash cutting process.

Pork dinners two nights in a row, frankly, made me blanch when I remembered that I still had a pound and a half of pork tenderloin in my refrigerator, waiting for my cooking prowess (ha!) to transform it into something…cooked…and edible. What to do, what to do?

I bastardized this recipe from Epicurious, and roasted it up Monday afternoon for a week’s worth of sandwiches. Here is what I did to it:

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