Katy Cooks

I try to have some homemade chicken broth in my freezer at all times. I use it all the time – for soups and stews, to make grains, to whip up a last-minute gravy. It’s endlessly useful, and it’s really not that much trouble to make. I find that a batch lasts me 3-4 months. I know you can buy broth at the grocery store, but I really like knowing what goes into my broth (locally raised happy chickens and vegetables) and being able to control the amount of sodium in it. If you use store-bought broth, go to your pantry and check out the sodium content; it’s pretty scary.

The other night I noticed that I was down to my last few pints of broth, so it’s been on my radar to find some time to make a batch. I was able to make it to the Wednesday farmers’ market at the Triangle this week so I got a whole chicken from Smith and Smith. My plan was to make the broth that afternoon, and then let it cool and ladle it into jars after the kids went to bed. I got home from the market around 5:00 and put the frozen bird in my biggest soup pot along with a wide variety of veggies. You can pretty much add anything; here’s what I put in mine:
The outside leaves of a head of cabbage
The tops and leaves from several celery stalks
The tops and tails from the carrots I just got, and a couple of misshapen whole carrots
Mushrooms stems that I saved from making stuffed mushroom the other night
A couple of fresh bay leaves
A handful of fresh basil
Several cloves of garlic
An onion

I had everything in the pot except the water when my husband came home starving. I had planned broth, but not dinner. Oops. It was clear we were going out for dinner, so I had to figure out what to do with my pot ‘o chicken. I didn’t have time to add water and bring it to a boil, plus I don’t feel comfortable leaving the stove on when no one’s home. The pot wouldn’t fit in the fridge and there was no way I was decanting that whole mess into a Tupperware – even if I had one big enough. I figured the chicken was frozen and would be fine sitting on my counter for a couple of hours. (Disclaimer – always thaw your meat in the fridge, not on the counter. Really.)

We got home at around 7:30 and I added water to my ginormous pot and started her to boil. By 9:30 the house smelled delicious and I had visions of what I was going to do with all of that broth. If I was one of those people who could stay up late and still be functional the next day, I would have let it boil for longer, but after about 2 hours I called it done. I strained the broth and let it cool for a while on the counter before putting it into the fridge for the night.

I didn’t have a chance to ladle the broth into jars for a couple of days, which was fine, though you shouldn’t wait more than 3 days before using or freezing it.  This batch made about 34 cups of broth. It makes me stupidly happy to think of the money and trash that I’m saving by making my own broth and putting it in reusable jars, instead of buying it in boxes. Imagine what 8 quarts of organic chicken broth would cost? I spent $17 on a chicken and, except for the onion, just used vegetable scraps that would otherwise have gone into the compost. It makes me think of that kids' book, Stone Soup.  “Soup from a stone, imagine that!”

“Katy Cooks” highlights one year of cooking every recipe from Fresh Seasonal Recipes, the updated cookbook from The Happy Kitchen/La Cocina Alegre™. This blog will feature cooking challenges and successes, meal and menu planning, and how to juggle kids, work and life and still serve a healthful, home cooked dinner.
__________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve read a number of baked rice recipes and have always wanted to try one. It’s such a simple concept, but still seems unusual. Basically, instead of cooking your rice in a pot on the stove, you dump the water (or, in this case, broth) in a pot with the raw rice and stick in the oven and forget about it.

I almost always have a freezer full of broth. It makes my happy. I make a big pot of either vegetable or chicken broth about every 3-4 months, divide it up into canning jars and stick it in my freezer. That way, when a recipe calls for broth, I always have some delicious, organic, low-sodium, homemade broth ready and waiting. I don’t have a microwave, so when I haven’t planned ahead and taken the broth out the night before to thaw in the fridge (and I almost never plan ahead), I’ll just place the jar of frozen broth in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes. Once the edges have melted enough to pour the broth ice block into a pan, it just takes a few minutes to completely thaw over low heat. Be on the lookout for a blog entry on chicken broth in the next week or so; I’m almost out.

This is a total fix-it-and-forget-it meal. The rice has about 10 minutes of prep work before it goes in the oven. Likewise, the roasted vegetables just need to be washed and cut before you put them in the oven and forget about them too. Since we’re kind of between seasons here in the Central Texas calendar-says-it’s-fall-but-it-feels-like-summer, I used a different variety of vegetables than the recipe calls for. I left out the potatoes since I was serving rice, and I added zucchini and yellow squash.

A word about roasted vegetables, if you’ve never made them, you are missing one of the great pleasures of cooking and eating. Making roasted vegetables couldn’t be easier. You can roast pretty much any vegetable. In fact, I’m trying to think of a vegetable you can’t roast and nothing is coming to mind. Seriously. If you think of one, let me know. I could eat roasted vegetable 3-4 times a week, no problem. And now that it’s turnip season, there’s no stopping me. Here’s a tip – roast some small, white turnips in Texas Olive Ranch’s Mesquite Olive Oil with a little salt and pepper. I crave it. But I digress…

With dinner in the oven being ignored, I’m available to answer emails, pay bills, do laundry, and all of the other things that there’s never enough time to do. This kind of bums me out. Cooking is one of the things I do to avoid all of those other, less appealing, chores. Oh well, I’m sure if I just hang out with the kids or read a book on the couch, there will still be laundry to do tomorrow. Unless I’m busy cooking

“Katy Cooks” highlights one year of cooking every recipe from Fresh Seasonal Recipes, the updated cookbook from The Happy Kitchen/La Cocina Alegre™. This blog will feature cooking challenges and successes, meal and menu planning, and how to juggle kids, work and life and still serve a healthful, home cooked dinner.
__________________________________________________________________________________

“Katy Cooks” highlights one year of cooking every recipe from Fresh Seasonal Recipes, the updated cookbook from The Happy Kitchen/La Cocina Alegre™. This blog will feature cooking challenges and successes, meal and menu planning, and how to juggle kids, work and life and still serve a healthful, home cooked dinner.
__________________________________________________________________________________

My daughter, Hannah, asked me to make potatoes for dinner tonight. She’s the kid whose dinner would consist of potatoes, bread and pasta with a side of rolls if I’d let her. As it turns out, I had planned to make Rosemary Potatoes that night anyway, so I got to do what I wanted and still look like an accommodating mother. Win, win.

This recipe isn’t hard at all, but slicing the potatoes does take some time. I have a fabulous mandoline that is compact and easy to use (I also have another one that is huge and unwieldy and was a big, fat waste of money, but that’s another story) which made quick work of the slicing. It also gave me very thin, even slices which helps with the cooking time. If your slices are different thicknesses you will end up with some mushy potatoes and some crunchy potatoes.

While the cheese/parsley mixture is very simple, it is surprisingly delicious. I’ve hesitated to make this recipe before because it didn’t sound that interesting to me. I was wrong. Despite it’s simple ingredients and traditional preparation, it is a real crowd pleaser that I’m considering making for Thanksgiving dinner.

The best part, however, came the next night when I had to figure out what to make for dinner. I still had half a potato casserole in the fridge. I layered the leftover potatoes in a deep-sided pan with caramelized onions and crumbled bacon. Then I poured some lightly beaten eggs over the potatoes and put it over medium heat with a lid on the pan. After the bottom was nicely set I uncovered the pan and moved it under the broiler until the eggs were completely set and the top was nicely browned. It was a delicious Spanish tortilla! You could certainly sprinkle some additional cheese on top if you wanted to, though I thought the cheese from the Rosemary Potatoes was enough. If it had been summer I would have added some oven-roasted tomatoes on top as well. Mmmmm. I’ll have to remember that in June.