Penzey's Butter Chicken Recipe

Fab recipe that tastes good and doesn't break the bank.  I am always looking for tasty chicken casserole recipes and this one is excellent.  Serve with basmati rice and a salad of your choice.


Penzey's Butter Chicken

We Eat First With Our Eyes

Last night's Tuna Salad with Fresh, not canned, tuna.  Such a difference.  Notice what pow! the tomatoes and bits of orange pepper provide. The dark olives and the greener bits of lettuce add even more pizzaz. The "midcentury modern" tablecloth is used regularly. 
Yowza! 

We Eat First With Our Eyes

Tuna Salad Supreme

I love seafood, when fresh and properly prepared.  Even in Boston, excellent seafood is sometimes hard to come by.  We usually head to Legal Seafood.  I've been eating a lot of scallops, and suddenly I feel like tuna.  Apparently tuna (sorry, Charlie) has become so pricey you can't even find it on a menu.  My new copy of Saveur arrives with hundreds of sandwich recipes, including one for homemade tuna salad.  Yum! 


I buy 12 oz. of tuna at $20 per pound, thinking that if I saw it on a menu it would set me back at least $26 a pop times 2 with wine and salads and maybe another side, and well, yanno, suddenly we are looking a more than a hundred bucks and the $17.00 worth of tuna seems like a huge bargain.   The recipes call for steaming, which I do, and then add chopped red onion, parsley, mayo, capers, lemon juice and salt and pepper.   Let chill.  Folks, I just took a bite and it's delicious. 


We got some good multigrain bread in case we decide to eat it in sandwiches.  I also have olives, little tomatoes, white asparagus, cucumber and orange pepper to serve on the plates, so we're going to eat our veggies, along, of course, with the lettuce.  This looks like a winner. 


Here is the recipe.  See for yourself. Homemade Tuna Salad from Scratch  


Tomorrow we're having something in the curry family called "Butter Chicken."  With a name like that, it just has to be good. 


If I can remember to, I'll photograph the plated dinner tonight to show you how colorful and delicious the tuna looks. 

So Colorful and Tempting- Just add good bread

Good and Simple Chocolate Cookies

Made these last week.  Gave some to the neighbors and froze the rest.  I am sorry to say that we kept defrosting a few at a time and eating them.  I had some chocolate leftover from Christmas baking.  This is a recipe that would lend itself well to half-butter, half-shortening.  I would use those bars of Crisco that are shaped like quarter pounds of butter.  Half and half will yield a nice crisp cookie.  If you're not into crisp, use all butter. 


You can leave the dough in the fridge for a few days and bake the cookies as needed.  These are really good.    I don't know why they're called chocolate "macaroons," but that's their name.  Do not expect a standard macaroon.  I think the recipe is an old one from The New York Times.  I daresay that I'm an old fogey, because the older recipes are the best.  


Chocolate Macaroons


1/2 cup shortening
4 squares (ounces) unsweetened chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour 
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt


Confectioners' sugar. 

1.  Melt shortening and chocolate in top of double boiler. 
2.  Stir in the sugar.  Transfer to a bowl and beat until the sugar is no longer grainy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time.  Note:  This is a good workout for your arm.
3.  Fold in the flour sifted with the baking powder and salt.  Chill the dough at least three hours.
4.   Preheat oven to 375 degrees Farenheit. 

5.  Shape teaspoons of dough into balls.  Roll balls in the confectioners' sugar.  Place on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake 10 minutes.  The cookies will be soft when taken from the oven.  Cool on a rack 

About 5 dozen  
I used parchment paper on the cookie sheet and that worked, too.  I'm sure this recipe predates parchment paper for home cooks.  


Bon Appetit!

More Chicken Soup for the Pocketbook

Chocolate Pecan Pie *

We have a low-cal cheap quiche that it going into it's second night.  I've also made some of my chicken soup with found everything and a big pot of homemade broth with chicken leftover from a Dr. Atkins low-carb menu.  We'll finish the quiche for breakfast and the chicken soup for lunch. 


Leverage your cooking.  One of the ways to do that is to read the grocery ads and cook for the week by buying the specials.  For example, this week our supermarket had steak, chicken breasts and kielbasa on sale.  Roast beef in the deli.  Baby carrots and slice mushrooms.  Hey, those would be good with steak.  Some spaghetti sauce over the chicken and you have the makings of chicken parm.  The Kielbasa lends itself to grilling or cooking in a big heap of saurkraut and veggies.  Cheap veggies, like carrots, potatoes and onion.  Yukon Golds were on special.  Good with steak and with kielbasa.  Fruit salad with strawberries, bananas, apple and oranges.  All on sale.  Make a dinner salad with oranges, too.  Maybe a rice pudding using on sale milk.  Go for it!  


Every week I save between $10 and $25 by using coupons and buying specials.  And we eat well, thank you, with very few processed foods.   You can, too.  It takes a bit of menu planning, and this you can do during commercials or whenever.  Doesn't take a lot of time.  $25 a week is $1300 a year.     That's a new computer, a nice little vacation or money socked away in the savings account.  Or just eking along to get by.  Healthy eating, too.  You can do this.   Give it a whirl. 

* Pecans were a gift, chocolate left over from holiday baking, homemade crust.  Every now and then we all deserve a treat.  Remember that nuts, while not low-cal, are nutritious.  


The Cheeseparer

Bon Appetit Scores a hit with Pappardelle, Pancetta, Brocccoli Rabe and Pine Nuts

We tried this dish  last night and agreed that it was even "company worthy."  So tasty.  In a weird twist, the pasta (imported Italian pappardella ($3.99) cost most than the meat ($ 2.00 worth of pancetta).  There's something about this combination of flavors that really hit a home run.  On the web site, some cooks advised cooking a fennel bulb (or half) with the onion, and I think that would make it even yummier.  Always look for ways to incorporate more veggies into your food.
Serve with a salad.  The price of lettuce has gone down a bit.  You can also make carrot salads and cabbage salads.  Or serve a half grapefruit instead.  Cucumbers with a bit of yogurt or sour cream and some dill make a wonderful salad.  Grapefruit and avocado?  Yowza!   My grandma made a salad (Waldorf) with apples, celery, walnuts and some mayo.  Think outside the "leaf."   


Dynamite Recipe  


To save gas, we're working extra hard to combine trips.  Just think and plan ahead, sometimes difficult until it becomes habit. 

Kielbasa BOGO

Kielbasa BOGO!  Does that sound like the name of a rock band or what?  For readers who never worked in the retail industry, a BOGO is a "Buy One Get One," also known as a "two-fer."  Roche Brothers, the supermarket where I shop, sometimes has a BOGO on Kielbasa.  We like the lighter turkey Kielbasa because it is less greasy and lower in calories.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I love ribs, fried chicken, heavy cream, etc., but when you have a chance to cut some calories and not lose any flavor, go for it! 

I make a middle Europe dish, (so homey, so comforting) with the Kielbasa.  I take 1-2 pounds of sauerkraut and rinse it (get rid of some of the salt).   Saute an onion, diced, a carrot, also diced in oil/fat of your choice until tender.  At a small portion of chopped tomato,  1/2 of  an apple, diced, the sauerkraut, the kielbasa,  (one pound, cut in half), some dry white wine, a little chicken broth, some caraway seeds, paprika (regular or smoked).  Cook as long as you can, adding more liquid if necessary.  If you are feeling carefree, saute a couple slices of chopped bacon to get your fat and cook the bacon with the kraut.   

Serve with mashed or boiled potatoes and a green salad.  This would make an excellent slow cooker dish.  I don't have a slow cooker, but maybe you do.  The sauerkraut becomes mild and savory and the concoction is actually rather mellow.  Add a clove or two of garlic if you like.  Improvisation is good.            

This will serve 4 if you aren't piggy.  Make the salad big.  There should be enough sauce in the kraut to nap the potatoes.  This is tasty and cheap.  My shabby little secret.  I use Hungry Jack mashed potatoes.  I know.  I know.  The more cream you put into them, the better they taste, but I try to stifle this impulse.  

The Cheeseparer