Chef Patti Anastasia
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Serving Southern New Hampshire since 2003
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Chef Patti Anastasia Serving Southern New Hampshire since 2003 |
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Table Talk » Cook Dates ArchivesMarch 31, 2010Cooking with KellyOne of the things I love about my job is that everyday is different. And no matter how much I plan my day, an interesting challenge almost always presents itself. Today was no different. Unless you live under a rock, you know that the Northeast is experiencing serious flooding. Well, that flooding closed my client's daughter's school, so she was home today. Kelly is in third grade and she loves to cook. I rarely see her because she is either in school or at her summer program. But today when she unexpectedly had no school, she helped me cook her family's meals. I took a few minutes to think about how Kelly could help me, then we got down to work. I wanted to find things that she could do on her own or with just a little bit of supervision. Kelly likes to wash vegetables. Great! Kelly washed all the vegetables for me. Kelly likes to peel carrots, so Kelly peeled the carrots. She knows how to do these things, so while she did them, I did other things. Since Kelly likes to peel carrots, I figured she'd like peeling potatoes. Only she has never peeled a potato. So I told her to just do what she did with the carrots. Her family is a swivel-peeler family. I'm a Y-peeler gal. She was having a little trouble with the potatoes, so I offered her my spare Y-peeler to see if that was easier. Kelly is now a Y-peeler convert. And the proud owner of my spare Y-peeler. I also snuck in a little lesson on cleaning up after yourself. Kelly cleaned up all her peelings and washed her cutting board. Look at that concentration! And forgive the blurriness, third graders move very quickly!
The potatoes went into an Indian Curry with Potatoes, Cauliflower and Chickpeas. Kelly helped with stirring that. She loved the smell of the curry and knew that it was curry, but she doesn't eat curry.
Continue reading "Cooking with Kelly" » January 10, 2010Gluten-free Goodness: Sloppy Joes in a Hash Brown CrustMost kids like Sloppy Joes, and Jayne is no exception, except Jayne can't eat gluten or eggs, so the bun part of Sloppy Joes is a challenge for her. Most of the tasty gluten-free buns we've found have eggs. I was on a mission to come up with a way to make Sloppy Joes for Jayne. I had two inspirations for what I came up with: Sloppy Joe Spaghetti Cups from Joe at Culinary in the Country and Hash Brown Quiche from Amy Casey at Dinners for a Year and Beyond. I could have made Joe's spaghetti cup with gluten-free spaghetti, but Jayne loves potatoes and a solution that doesn't use dairy except for butter was more appropriate for her family.
Continue reading "Gluten-free Goodness: Sloppy Joes in a Hash Brown Crust" » January 28, 2009Crunchy cheddar oat biscuits for Maxine and RufusThe house is filled with the aroma of the Crunchy Cheddar Oat Dog Biscuits that I just baked for Maxine and Rufus, the sweet Papillons who rule the roost at the home of tomorrow's client. They are silly and make me laugh, so every so often I thank them for the way that they entertain me with a batch of homemade dog biscuits. Homemade dog biscuits are very easy to make. And my dog friends think they are worth making. The recipe is an adaptation from Culinary in the Country. I made three very minor changes to Joe's recipe. I melted the butter because I didn't want to wait to soften it. I left out the sugar. And I used two Savory Choice broth concentrate sticks instead of the instant chicken bouillon.
Continue reading "Crunchy cheddar oat biscuits for Maxine and Rufus" » January 14, 2009Israeli Couscous with Cauliflower and Pine NutsThe Israeli Couscous with Cauliflower and Pine Nuts that I made for today's client was so delicious that I had to go home and make it for our dinner. Boy was I glad that I just happened to have some cauliflower at home. For my client, I paired this dish with Chicken Saltimbocca. We had it with Pan-Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Pinot Noir-Pomegranate Molasses Reduction. If you haven't tried Israeli couscous, you must. Where I shop, I find it located with the Jewish foods in a 12 ounce bags. It's also called pearl couscous. Today's recipe was a modification of a recipe that a personal chef colleague shared with me. Toast a few tablespoons of pine nuts using your favorite method. I like to toast them in a 350F oven. Then cut up two small heads of cauliflower into bite-sized florets, toss them with a bit of olive oil, season with black pepper and roast the cauliflower at 425F until golden brown, about 20 minutes. You want the cauliflower to brown slightly to add some golden brown color to the dish. While the cauliflower is roasting, chop an onion, and saute it in a bit of butter or olive oil. Then add the couscous (I used 1 1/4 cup couscous), saute the couscous for a few minutes, then add 1 3/4 cups chicken broth and bring the mixture to a boil. Once it is boiling, cover the pan, lower the temperature to a simmer, and cook the couscous for 10 minutes or until the broth is absorbed and the couscous is tender. Take the pot off the heat and let the couscous sit for 5 minutes. Chop up a few scallions and a few tablespoons of parsley and stir that into the couscous. Now stir in the roasted cauliflower. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simple. Delicious. Try it. (Here's a link to the recipe that this was based on.) Continue reading "Israeli Couscous with Cauliflower and Pine Nuts" » October 27, 2008Ghoulish goodiesToday I spent the day preparing food for a Halloween party. The party is tomorrow afternoon at my client's workplace. Here's the menu: Ghoulish Tortilla Chips - flour tortillas cut out in Halloween shapes, sprinkled with salt and chili powder and baked until crispy. In retrospect, I should have just bought tortilla chips and given them a name tag. These took forever to make. What was I thinking?
Pumpkin Rollups - sun-dried tomato wraps, spread with garlic cream cheese, parsley leaf for pumpkin leaf, toothpick for stem
Scary Eyeballs - spice cake centers, dipped in white chocolate, with M&M pupils. There are lots of recipes for these on the internet, many of them use peanut butter centers, but one of the guests at the party is allergic to nuts, so I used a mixture of spice cake and frosting (inspired by Recipe Girl.)
Witches Fingers - butter cookies. Inspired by these ghastly cookies from cuisinetc.
Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes - crustless cheesecakes
Thanks to the folks on the Cooking Light Great Food board for your inspiration and advice! Added 10/30/08: Here's a link to a PDF file that contains recipes for the chips, pumpkin rollups, scary eyeballs, witches fingers, and mini pumpkin cheesecakes.
September 29, 2008How was your day today?My day was going great until I put the sheet of biscuits in the oven. After 5 minutes, I went to check on them and discovered that the oven wasn't on. I had turned it off earlier and forgot to turn it back on. Grr. Remade the biscuits. Thankfully this client is always well-stocked with butter and flour. The biscuits came out great. Wonderful, everything is perfect, I'm ready to package. I'm doing a 5/6 (that's 5 different meals, 6 servings of each meal), each meal gets packaged in two 2-serving packages and two 1-serving packages. I get two of the five meals vacuum sealed and am about to start on the next meal and I hear a big boom, then the power goes out. No big deal, I've had the power go out while I was at a client's before, it will be back within 30 minutes. I can wash dishes and clean up. Must conserve water because once the well holding tank is empty, no more water until we have electricity to run the well pump. I get the dishes done. Yay. OK, so I'll put all the remaining food in the vac bags and have them ready to seal when the power comes back. It will be back any minute now, right? Got everything in bags waiting for the power to come back. It will just take 15 minutes to seal everything. Dishes are washed. All my stuff is back in my car. Still no power. Client had been home earlier in the day, but she went out just before the power failure. Client comes home. Of course her garage door won't open. I go out and tell her that power is off. She is annoyed that I've been held up. We try to start the generator. We get is started, but it won't stay running. Grr. Client calls power company. They say they know about the outage, haven't determined the cause, but they predict power will be back on by 6:30pm. Hmm, doesn't sound too promising. Client tells me to go home and that she'll seal everything when power comes back. (One of my sealers lives at her house.) We go over how it works. Just as I am getting ready to leave, power comes back on. Client is excited to play with the sealer, so we seal everything. She thinks its fun. I finally go home 1 1/2 hours later than I would have if the power hadn't gone out. July 24, 2008I'm a Y-peeler personOn Tuesday, I went to use my trusty Y-peeler to peel some potatoes and it was broken. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it wouldn't peel. My gear gets banged around and I've been treating it harshly for 5 years, so it's no wonder it broke. I rummaged through my client's utensil drawer and found a red Zyliss swivel-peeler. It had nice serrated teeth on the peeling blade. But I'm so used to a Y-peeler, that I had a lot of trouble peeling my potatoes. It took me twice as long to peel the potatoes. I made a mental note to put my broken peeler in my clipboard case so that I would find it when I emptied my case at home and I could grab another one from my stash of them. Yes, I have a stash of them. Of course I forgot to do that and on Wednesday when I needed to peel carrots, I found the broken Y-peeler in my utensil box. I immediately put my broken peeler in my clipboard case. Wednesday's client had a Oxo swivel peeler, which I struggled with to get two pounds of carrots peeled. I decided that there are two types of peelers and I'm a Y-peeler through and through. July 16, 2008Sweet Onion Bread PuddingLast week when I was planning menus, I came across this Onion Bread Pudding from Cooking Light. It came up in a search for southern side dishes. I was looking for something to pair with Creole Cod. I've never had a savory bread pudding and it sounded good, so I decided to add it my client's menu to go with their cod. Of course, I had to tweak it. The first problem was that I needed it to be no more than 3 Weight Watcher POINTS per serving. The original recipe is made in an 8x8 pan, serves 4, and weighs in at 8 POINTS per serving. My first task was to reduce the serving size. One quarter of an 8x8 pan is a huge serving, so cutting cutting the serving size in half was not unreasonable. OK, so that got it to 4 POINTS per serving. I decided to use a whole grain bread rather than french bread and nonfat milk instead of 2% milk. I also wanted to add more onion. Those changes brought it down to 3 PTS per serving. The recipe calls for slicing the onions into 1/4-inch slices and cooking the onion slices, while keeping them intact. The intact onion slices are placed over the bread mixture and topped with cheese. Cooking the onions while trying to keep the slices intact seemed like too much work to me. I decided to slice the onions and caramelize them, then add half of the onions into the bread pudding mixture and spread the other half on top of the bread pudding. For the whole grain bread, I used one of my favorite loaves from the supermarket bakery. I trimmed off the crusts and cubed the bread. I also let it sit for 30 minutes to let the bread absorb the milk and eggs before baking it. It filled the house with a wonderful aroma while it baked. This is a pretty bad picture of it. I just got a new digital camera and I haven't had time to figure out the best settings for food photos.
Continue reading "Sweet Onion Bread Pudding" » June 23, 2008My day as an Iron ChefToday I got a newfound respect for people who cook completely without recipes. My cook date was supposed to be straightforward: a four-meal service for a long-term client. They get nine servings of each meal. Two of the meals were one dish meals, the other two meals consisted of two recipes each. So a total of six recipes to make. Of the six recipes, three were recipes that I had made many times. One was a recipe I had made twice, and two I'd be making for the first time. Should have been simple. But, I left my precious clipboard case that holds my shopping list, recipes, invoice, and labels in the cart when I loaded my groceries into my car. I discovered this after I got to the client's home and had unloaded all of my gear plus the groceries. There was a little bit of chaos at my client's this morning because she forgot I was coming and she was madly cleaning the kitchen when I arrived. When we determined that I didn't have my recipes, my client offered to go to the store to get them as soon as she could because she needed to run some errands after getting her two kids fed and dressed. OK, that should work. I can get started on some stuff in the meantime. I'm cooking five days this week and all the menus were jumbled in my head. The first thing I did was to look over the pile of groceries and review what I was making. The menu for the day was Cowboy Casserole, Black Bean Burgers and Spicy Barbecued Edamame (these are the two recipes that I've never made), Paella Valencia (I've made this one twice, but that was over a month ago), Balsamic Rosemary Pork and Mashed Potatoes with Spinach. The good news is that I have all of the ingredients in front of me so I can piece together what I need to do. I've never been one to follow recipes to a T, but when faced with no recipes in front of me and a lot of different ingredients, I realized how much I rely on my recipes to know which ingredients to use. If you're cooking one or two recipes, it's no big deal, but when you are cooking more than that, not knowing what is supposed to be used for each recipe makes it a challenge. I started with the Cowboy Casserole. This is a ground beef casserole that has onions, green bell peppers, and baked beans. The ground beef mixture is cooked on the stovetop, then poured into casserole pans, topped with cornbread batter and baked. I knew that it has ketchup, dry mustard, and Worcestershire sauce in the ground beef mixture and either molasses and brown sugar (I had both with me, but couldn't remember which one the recipe called for). I got the ground beef mixture cooked up, and decided to use the molasses. Although the amounts of the ingredients didn't match the recipe, it tasted right, so I mixed up some cornbread batter and popped it in the oven. One down. It turns out that the recipe calls for brown sugar. I think I like it better with molasses. I'll change that recipe. While the Cowboy Casserole ground beef mixture was cooking, I peeled the potatoes and started cooking them. Wilted the spinach, chopped it, and set it aside. These potatoes are mashed with sour cream, seasoned with salt and pepper, then the chopped spinach and some grated cheese is stirred in. I haven't made these in a while, but I make mashed potatoes all the time. So this was no big deal. The mashed potatoes came out great. I usually chop the spinach before wilting it. This time I wilted the spinach, then chopped it. It was easier. Made a note to change that recipe. The pork is marinated in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, chopped fresh rosemary, salt, and pepper. Hmm, does the marinade have garlic? Well, everything is better with garlic and this client loves garlic, so I minced a few cloves and added them to the marinade. Turns out that the marinade does not include garlic. Until now, because I'm also going to change that recipe. OK, so now it is time to wander into the less known territory. My client isn't back from her errands with my clipboard case. What to do? I honestly have no idea how to make the black bean burgers and the edamame, so I decide to tackle the paella. I know that it has onions and garlic that need chopping. And that the shrimp is cooked first, then set aside. The chicken thighs are chopped and browned with chopped chorizo. I can get that started while waiting for my client to come home. Just as I finish all of that, my client arrives home with the clipboard. Yahoo, perfect timing. The paella is simmering on the stovetop in no time. Now that I have the recipe, the black bean burgers go together very quickly and get popped in the oven to bake. On to the barbecue sauce for the edamame. Oh, this is where the molasses belong. First you make the barbecue sauce, then simmer the edamame in the sauce. Wow, both of these recipes were easy, as long as you have the recipe in front of you. Today I learned a lot about how I cook and how I really use recipes. I don't use the recipe directions a lot, but I do use the ingredient lists. I don't follow the ingredient list exactly, but I also don't memorize them. Some things I just know how to make, but when faced with a giant pile of groceries, it isn't always easy to figure out how to combine them into the dish you want to make. Rather than being stressful, this day was fun. If my client hadn't been home and hadn't offered to pick up my clipboard, I could have just driven home and printed the recipes. It is about 2 miles from the client's home to my home and about 4 miles from my client's home to the grocery store. Tomorrow my client is about 20 minutes from the grocery store, so I'm considering using the secret agent trick of handcuffing my clipboard case to my wrist. June 12, 2008As eaten by Oprah: Mar-a-Lago BurgerI have no idea what Oprah eats, but one of my clients saw this Mar-a-Lago Turkey Burger recipe featured on an Oprah show and asked me if I could put it on the menu for her next cook date. Well that cook date was today. I've always been a fan of traditional burgers, but have developed a recent fascination with other types of burgers. The Mar-a-Lago burger is made with ground turkey and is seasoned with diced Granny Smith apple, mango chutney, diced celery, scallions, chipotle tabasco sauce, lemon zest and juice, and chopped parsley. The recipe on the Oprah site calls for ground turkey breast, but I used ground turkey. I was making this for the first time for a client and I needed to ensure that the burger would be nice and juicy. Maybe I'll try it at home with ground turkey breast. The burgers were very juicy made with ground turkey. I'm not so sure about making it with ground turkey breast. The diced apple has a lot of moisture and the recipe instructs you to refrigerate the burgers for two hours before cooking. It also uses 4 pounds of ground turkey to make eight 8-ounce burgers. At my store, ground turkey comes in 1 1/4 pound packages, so I used three packages for a total of 3 3/4 pounds of ground turkey. Using 3 3/4 pounds of ground turkey, I made 10 enormous burgers. I mixed and formed the burgers shortly after I arrived at my client's home and set them in the refrigerator to chill. They probably chilled for three hours. I cooked them on the stovetop rather than grilling them on a charcoal or gas grill.
The Oprah site has a recipe for Mar-a-Lago Pear Chutney to serve with them, but I opted to skip that and just use some of the Major Grey's chutney that is mixed in with the burger. Hmm, mango chutney has been making a lot of appearances in my cooking.
This is a tasty burger. The green apple adds moisture and little bit of tartness, the mango chutney adds a little heat and a little sweetness. As Tom would say "it's a keeper." After I made these, I started wondering about using cilantro instead of parsley. Next time! Continue reading "As eaten by Oprah: Mar-a-Lago Burger" » March 19, 2008Hit of the Day: Sweet Orange SalmonOf the dishes that I made today, my favorite was Sweet Orange Salmon. The salmon is rubbed with a mixture of brown sugar, chili powder, orange zest, cumin, paprika, coriander, and black pepper. I let the salmon "marinate" with the rub for 30 minutes before broiling it. The sweet and spicy rub caramelized beautifully under the broiler. I paired the salmon with roasted sesame zucchini and yellow squash.
Continue reading "Hit of the Day: Sweet Orange Salmon" » March 10, 2008A Day in the Life ...Have you ever wondered what my work days are like? Here's a diary of a recent cook date. I start smiling as soon as I opened my car door. In spite of the house being all buttoned up, I can hear Poe, my client's bird, singing up a storm. As soon as he hears the car pull in the driveway, he starts singing. I always talk to him as I bring in my gear and the groceries. He rewards me by singing to me. I can't remember what type of bird Poe is, but this is what he looks like.
After unpacking the groceries, the first thing I do is to use painter's tape to tape the menu and the recipes to the cupboards so that I can see them at the same time. I use Mastercook to plan my cook dates. It's a huge time saver. I store all of my recipes in Mastercook, then I can add recipes to menus and print shopping lists from menus.
Next I wash all the veggies. When I wash the veggies, I give Poe a snack of greens. Today he got cilantro. I'm cooking five entrees without side dishes. This client selects their dishes from my menu. Here's what they selected: Mustard-Thyme Lamb Chops Continue reading "A Day in the Life ... " » January 8, 2008A Kitchen with a ViewOne of the perks of my job is that I get to gaze out of many different kitchen windows while I work. This afternoon I looked up from my work and saw a flock of wild turkeys (all hens) pecking their way around my client's horse paddock. Wild turkeys are a common sight around here, but I always stop to watch them. Today I was rewarded by seeing something that I've never seen before: wild turkeys taking flight! I've seen them hop from the ground to our fence then walk along the fence before disappearing over the other side, I've seen one run around our yard in a frenzy when I've let my cat out without noticing that there is a turkey in the yard. But I've never seen one fly. Until today. There were eight hens in the flock and they took off one by one. Each took an awkward run of a few steps, then gracefully lifted into the air and flew off to roost in the trees. The contrast between the awkward run and the graceful flight was amazing. |
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