Creating Menus

I used to be quite obsessed with copying and adapting recipes, organizing them and amassing a collection. But I have to admit that I have lost interest in that aspect of cooking, which may help explain why this blog has been so lamentably neglected as of late. It has become clear to me that I really no longer need to expend my labor in copying or collecting recipes. The age of the “just in time” recipe is here. Via my relatively small cookbook collection, I have access to over 20,000 recipes (according to my library on Eat Your Blogs), and once I go online, that number expands exponentially into infinitude. If I want a recipe for something, anything, chances are I can find it within seconds. There does not seem to be much point in writing down recipes anymore.

Lately, I have become much more interested in combining recipes into menus — menus that are both interesting to eat and easy to execute. Rather than recipes, it is menus that I have been playing around with, collecting and organizing. Neither my cookbooks nor the online world seem to provide more than the most basic guidance on how to create a successful menu. Yet most recipes don’t alone make a full meal. Each meal requires a new menu.

I am starting to come up with some rules for what makes a good menu. The first rule is that the menu must encompass no more than four separate dishes. Four seems to be the greatest number of dishes I can make without frustration in one cooking session. Three dishes is an ideal menu, in one of these combinations: a starter, an entree and a side; a starter, an entree and a dessert; or an entree, a side and a dessert. For a lighter meal, I can definitely get away with a menu of only two different items.

Another rule is balance. Of course, different kinds of foods, tastes and textures should balance one another. But to save the sanity of the cook, it is also necessary to balance complexity of dishes. If I am making one elaborate dish, the rest of the menu should be composed of relatively simple recipes. A simple entree, such as roast chicken, calls for a more elaborate side, though, in order to keep the meal from becoming boring.

I will try to post some of my more successful menus here, with links to the recipes, of course.

A Standard Weekly Menu

Planning a menu for the week helps me keep my shopping and cooking on track, and also helps me meet my goal to have a home-cooked, healthy meal most nights. By planning ahead, I can also ensure that I’ve got prepared ingredients and leftovers to make cooking easier as the week gets more hectic. I’ve experimented a lot with different menus and dishes, and at least for weeknight cooking, I keep coming back to the same roster of dishes. They cook easily using ingredients I can easily find, but they can be changed up each week for variety.

Here is my basic menu for a week’s worth of cooking, developed with these principles in mind. I do try to remain flexible to take advantage of special occasions, requests from family members or the availability of a seasonal ingredient.

Sunday: baked casserole or hearty soup served with a big salad. Because my Sundays are usually open, this is a good day to do a lot of prep work and make things easier for weeknight cooking. A family dinner calls for hearty comfort food that results in leftovers for lunch or dinner. Macaroni and cheese, baked ziti, chili, ratatouille, potato soup–there are endless possibilities. If I get started early enough, I can even break out the slow cooker. To accompany it, I make a salad using seasonal ingredients, including a salad dressing of the week that I can repurpose for lunches. This gives me the opportunity to prep all the vegetables from my weekly shopping trip.

Monday: sauteed or roasted boneless chicken breasts, potatoes and vegetable. This is a hearty meal that is also quick to prepare. I can vary it with different quick sauces or by adding some cheese or prosciutto, and there are about a million ways to make potatoes. For the vegetable, I stick to what’s in season and look for simple preparation methods. All leftovers can be repurposed for other dishes as the week goes on.

Tuesday: pasta with tomato sauce or broccoli, or stir-fried noodles. All of these pasta dishes are quick to prepare and kid-friendly. This meal can easily be made vegetarian, or adapted depending on what is in the fridge and pantry.

Wednesday: tacos or wraps. This is the perfect night to use up any leftover vegetables or cooked meat, but if no leftovers are available, I can quickly whip up beans or ground meat for a taco filling. Leftover salad and sauces can often be repurposed as toppings.

Thursday: frittata. By this point in the week, the cupboard is getting a little bare, but we always have eggs. Any bits of meat or vegetables remaining can be quickly cooked for the frittata filling, while shredded cheese from the tacos goes on top. Leftovers make a good breakfast or lunch for the weekend. If we don’t feel like frittata, scrambled eggs and bacon or baked eggs are a great substitute.

Friday and Saturday: pizza, sandwiches, grill or special requests. If we don’t go out to dinner, the weekend is a good time to make something fun that everyone enjoys.

Sunday breakfast: I usually try to make a hearty breakfast on Sundays of bacon and eggs, bagels or some other baked treat.

Shopping list: Keeping the pantry stocked is the key to cooking at home. If you open the fridge and see nothing tasty there, you’ll be tempted to order out. Here’s a standard list of ingredients to keep on hand to make an entire week’s worth of meals:

• Produce: fresh fruit for snacking and breakfast; salad greens and vegetables; seasonal vegetable; broccoli; potatoes or sweet potatoes; onions; garlic
• Meat: boneless chicken breasts; bacon, ground meat and sausage for the freezer; other meat that you like for stir-fries or grilling
• Eggs: I buy cartons of 18 to make sure I always have enough eggs on hand for a quick meal
  
• Dairy: yogurt for snacking and breakfast; one or two kinds of cheese; butter
• Bread: small, soft flour tortillas; breakfast breads; sandwich rolls and pizza dough for the freezer
• Pantry: various dried pastas; canned beans and tomatoes; tomato puree; chicken stock; olive oil and vinegar; salsas, sauces and condiments that you enjoy (or make your own); nuts and dried fruit

A Mexican Fiesta

I’m sorry that this update has been so long in coming. I was busy with a project all last week, plus I got a touch of something over the weekend that kept me from blogging and cooking. So I’m taking this past weekend off and playing catch-up. This challenge is actually from one week ago.

The challenge was to make a Mexican meal, but not to fall back on the usual suspects. That means no tacos, burritos, enchiladas, fajitas — basically, nothing wrapped in a tortilla. I immediately decided that I wanted to make several small plates, like a tasting menu. Appetizers are often my favorite dishes in Mexican cooking, anyway, and that would give me a chance to try three or four new dishes.

For help, I turned to Rick Bayless, specifically his cookbooks Authentic Mexican and Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen. You may know Rick Bayless from his stint on Top Chef Masters or from his restaurants in Chicago (which I have yet to visit, although my husband has been several times). I love his cookbooks because they make authentic Mexican cooking accessible to the home cook. He gives lots of helpful advice about ingredients, timing, and varying the recipes, and they usually turn out delicious. I won’t be reprinting any of his recipes here, so I urge you to check out his books for yourself.

Here is the resulting menu:

Jicama sticks with lime and mint.

If you’ve never had jicama before, it’s a very refreshing starter. It’s crisp and cool like a cucumber, but the taste is closer to a very mild radish. Look for jicama in the grocery store; it’s a gigantic, waxy thing that looks like an oversized turnip, but it’s easy to peel and cut up into sticks. Marinate the sticks in a little lime juice and lemon juice, chopped mint leaves and salt. We were crunching on these all week long. This was my toddler’s favorite dish of the night.

Tuna seviche.

Seviche is seafood that is “cooked” by marinating it for several hours in lime juice. I’ve never made seviche at home before, mostly because I was afraid of dealing with the uncooked fish. But we like tuna pretty rare anyway, so that seemed like a good fish to use for my first attempt. This was a very refreshing salad, especially because it’s combined with a fresh, vibrant tomato and avocado salsa. A little chopped serrano chile provides a hint of heat.  My husband and I both enjoyed this one.

Melted queso with chorizo, roasted poblanos and tomatoes, served with corn chips for dipping.

This was my favorite dish of the night. I could probably have eaten it until I burst. I used chihuahua cheese, which has a wonderful mild but cheesy flavor. I melted the cubes of cheese in a metal pie plate to try to retain the heat. To the melted cheese I added roasted poblano pepper, crumbled chorizo, scallions and diced tomato. We just scooped it all up with corn chips. I think this mixture would work very well as a topping for nachos. We had about half left over, and it reheated nicely the next night in the same pie plate.

Baked poblano peppers stuffed with chorizo and potatoes, topped with a tomato-chipotle sauce.

This was an intense, flavorful dish. Sharing one pepper was plenty for my husband and me. I had to modify the original recipe, which called for dried ancho peppers instead of fresh poblanos, so this is closer to a chile relleno. I stuffed it with a mixture of pan-fried chorizo and potatoes and sauced it with a spicy tomato-chipotle sauce. That’s parmesan sprinkled on top. It was hot, but not overwhelmingly so. This was my husband’s favorite dish due to the mouth-popping flavor combination.

And I made a delicious red wine sangria to accompany. I mixed cheap red wine with lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, and seltzer water over ice, and popped in a sprig of mint leaves. The result was way too drinkable!

My husband said that this was my most successful challenge yet, mainly because I stretched myself and made dishes that I wouldn’t normally cook at home. And because everything came out so deliciously. We stretched our stomachs too, as we ate way more than we should. This would make an awesome menu for a Mexican-themed party, especially held outside on the deck on a warm night.

I’m hoping to tackle the next challenge later this week. The challenge is to make a kid’s favorite dinner at home: chicken nuggets and fries. Since I don’t deep-fry, this will require some creativity. Look for the results next week.

An End-of-Summer Menu + Refrigerator Pickles

I could tell that summer is winding down even if I didn’t know the date. The humidity and record temperatures have thankfully eased off. The garden is looking bedraggled and is only spitting out the odd zucchini at this point. Winter squash and root vegetables are becoming prevalent at the farmers market.

Last night, I thought I’d celebrate the last days of summer with an end-of-summer tribute meal. I tried to pull as many of the ingredients as possible from the remnants of my garden, focusing on herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers. Here’s the menu:

• Refrigerator pickles (see below)
• Bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and basil
• Eggplant broiled and marinated in a mixture of parsley, capers, balsamic vinegar and olive oil
• Chicken marinated in a mixture of red wine, mustard, rosemary, basil and olive oil, and pan-roasted

It was an excellent meal — almost like a picnic at the dinner table. Everything was good, but the refrigerator pickles, a recipe from Sara Foster’s Fresh Every Day, were particularly easy and tasty, so I wanted to share the recipe with you (with my few minor adaptations).

Refrigerator Pickles

• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 4 to 5 small cucumbers, sliced into ⅛-inch-thick rounds — You could use pickling cucumbers, but I used the regular kind, and they worked fine.
• 2 scallions, sliced thinly

Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, black pepper, cloves, bay leaves, red pepper flakes and dill seed and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Layer the cucumbers and scallions in a quart jar or 2 pint jars. Press them tightly into the jar. Pour the liquid mixture over to cover. Place the lid on the jar, shake it well and refrigerate at least 4 hours. These pickles will keep in the refrigerator for at least 1 month.

Related Articles

• Cucumbers from the Garden (simplycooking.wordpress.com)

A Birthday Brunch

Just a menu today:

• Frittata with leeks and taleggio cheese
• Pan-fried potatoes with bacon and onion
• Bagels with cream cheese and smoked salmon
• Wonderful, wonderful cupcakes

Happy birthday to my son Sean, who is turning 2 tomorrow but celebrating today!

Another Chicken Dinner

No recipes today–I’m lazy. And busy. Here was dinner last night:

• Pan-roasted chicken with a quick pan sauce
• Oven fries
• Sugar snap peas with a vinaigrette and crumbled asiago cheese

Super Bowl Menu

The Super Bowl is a good excuse to eat bar food at home. Here is what I am planning on making today:

• 2 kinds of dip: guacamole and sun-dried tomato hummus
• chips and crudites for the dips
• buffalo chicken strips with blue cheese dip — The recipe is from Fresh Every Day by Sara Foster and is perfect for Super Bowl watching.
• potato skins — Contributed by my father-in-law.
• blondies — Kind of like what would happen if chocolate chip cookies married brownies and had tasty, tasty babies.

Now I just need to find out who’s playing, and I’ll be set.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ten Dips and Salsas for Super Bowl Sunday (friendseat.com)
• Have a “Super Bowl” Filled with Tasty, Healthy Fare On Game Day [Top Secret Guac Recipe Included] (fooducate.com)
• Some Super Bowl Winners Are Already Known (dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com)

Roasted Asian-style Chicken with Vegetables

Last night, I made one of our rare Asian-themed meals. I don’t often cook Asian, because I don’t usually have the necessary ingredients on hand, but this simple menu didn’t require many unusual ingredients. Also, it helped me clean out the refrigerator by using up the last of the tahini.

For the entree, I roasted chicken according to this method, but I added some mushroom caps and asparagus, cut into 2-inch lengths, to the roasting pan. I also added whole garlic cloves and shaved ginger. Unfortunately, the chicken took a longer time to cook than I thought, so I had to remove the vegetables halfway through or they would have turned to coal. But roasted vegetables taste good whether they’re piping hot or just warm, so all was not lost. When the chicken was finally done, I poured a mixture of soy sauce and lime juice over it on top of the stove. It didn’t take long for the liquid to reduce to a thick glaze in the hot pan. The whole dish was really simple and delicious.

On the side, I served Sesame Noodles vegetarian-style (which was where I used the tahini). I was able to make them ahead of time since they taste just as good at room temperature. My husband really liked the noodles, and I think they made a hearty accompaniment to the chicken and vegetables.

Sunday Dinner (on a Saturday)

I do take requests from the other members of the household. Last night, the request was for a simple Sunday-style dinner: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and I added a green salad. Homey, satisfying, easy to make. These are the kinds of dishes that, after a while, you don’t need recipes for. But just in case you do, here they are:

• Roasted chicken breasts
• Mashed potatoes
• Simple green salad

Here’s a tip from French bistros: Drizzle in a small spoonful of the chicken juices when tossing the salad. Yum.

If you have any leftover mashed potatoes, make Potato Croquettes for brunch the next morning (as I did this morning). Too delicious with a runny fried egg.

Planning the Thanksgiving Menu: One Week Out

It may not have sunk in yet, but it is only one week until Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday. I like that it revolves around family and food, rather than the orgy of gift-giving that Christmas has become. And because it is a harvest celebration, Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to search out local, sustainable, seasonal foods for the meal. It also gives me an opportunity to stretch myself and try out new dishes.

For me, Thanksgiving is all about the sides. I can’t even remember the last time I had turkey on Thanksgiving. I didn’t eat it for many years, and then when I went back to eating meat, it was always too much trouble to cook a turkey, so we made chicken or salmon instead. Usually, cooking the meat is not my department. I guess that is a man’s job (ha ha).

But Thanksgiving provides the opportunity to make the sides the star of the meal. For everyday cooking, I tend to neglect sides by opting for easier one-pot dinners or just adding a simple salad or some roasted veggies to the plate. On Thanksgiving, each side can shine with those extra-special touches I wouldn’t normally take the time to do.

This year, I am cooking mainly out of Sara Foster’s Fresh Every Day, supplemented by a couple of recipes found in recent New York Times dining sections. With its emphasis on seasonal ingredients and tons of interesting recipes for side dishes, Fresh Every Day is tailor-made for Thanksgiving cooking. This is the second Thanksgiving I’ve turned to it for inspiration for almost the entire meal.

I participate in two Thanksgiving dinners, one on Thursday and one on Saturday. Since I have to travel to both and cook in a strange kitchen, I try to plan well and get as much as I can done ahead of time. I’ll start on Sunday with grocery shopping, planning what I’ll do all week, drawing up packing lists and making what I can, such as dishes that can be frozen or ingredient prep. Then I’ll try to do something each day until T-day, so my holiday can be as relaxing and stress-free as possible.

Here is the way my menu is shaping up:

Appetizers

• Caramelized Onion Dip
• Spinach-Walnut Pesto (from the November issue of Bon Appetit)

Soup:

• Wild Mushroom Soup

Sides:

• Rosemary Caramelized Parsnips
• Green vegetable — undecided, probably green beans
• Orange-Maple Roast Sweet Potatoes and Stir-Fried Sweet Potatoes with Sage Butter (I’m doing 2 sweet potato dishes this year, one for each dinner; the second is a ridiculously easy recipe from Mark Bittman)
• Cranberry-Walnut Relish (from the New York Times dining section)
• Skillet Cornbread

Desserts:

• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars (I got this recipe off the Internet; it looks good and satisfies the cheesecake requirement, a family tradition — even though I personally don’t like cheesecake much)
• Lemon Icebox Pie

I would love to hear about everyone’s Thanksgiving plans and menus!