Dinner tonight... "Perfect" Roast Chicken, Buttered Mashed Potatoes and Asparagus

Mr. Fritz and I had a perfect fall afternoon. We walked down to Roosevelt Island to see the changing colors of the trees, then walked over to Georgetown before heading back home. The air outside was crisp, the sky was blue, and the whole tenor of the day spoke to the reality that fall has finally arrived. So, I thought I'd aim to make the perfect fall meal: Roast Chicken with Buttered Mashed Potatoes. I got this recipe from Jamie Oliver (a.k.a. The Naked Chef) back in 2000. He shared it in response to a request for a meal that any twentysomething could make. I can barely remember my twenties at this point, but I will never forget how easy this recipe is to make. It's been ever-helpful over the years whenever I've wanted to serve up excellent comfort food.


There are a couple of secrets to its success: first, he uses fresh herbs tucked underneath the skin of the chicken. I used a mix of rosemary, thyme and sage. (Mr. Fritz said, "what, no parsley?" when I made this for him the first time a couple of weeks ago.) The herbs, plus a little olive oil an salt and pepper conspire together to give the chicken a great flavor. He (Jamie, not Mr. Fritz) suggests stuffing the chicken with lemons and rosemary. He says to let the roasting pan heat up in the oven before you place the trussed chicken on it. And, he instructs that the chicken be roasted in each side for five minutes at first before putting it on its back for the duration of the roasting process. The most difficult thing about this recipe is just preparing the chicken for the oven, and even that shouldn't take longer than 10 or so minutes.

The mashed potato recipe he shared is also incredibly easy. I didn't bother to peel the potatoes. I like keeping the skins on them. And I didn't feel like dirtying my mixer, so I mashed them (somewhat awkwardly) with a pastry cutter. The surprise ingredient in Jamie's mashed potatoes is nutmeg. A dash gives the potatoes just the right flavor. (Well that, and the copious amount of milk and butter you also add...)

Dinner tonight... Braised Brisket with Cranberries and Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Tonight, Mr. Fritz and I took a meal over to the Rev. and Mrs. Glade, my final meal-after-a-new-baby-delivery for this baby season. I'm not expecting to cook for another new mom until February or so when Mr. and Mrs. Robertson have their little girl. This particular delivery was extra fun because we ended up getting to share the meal with the Glades, and during the ensuing hour we had quite a few good laughs, especially when Mrs. Glade recounted her days in her high school marching band and one particularly unfortunate showing during a band performance in Toronto. There are few things as priceless in this life as dear friends. (Especially funny ones!)

In any case, I wanted to make something really special, so I decided on Braised Brisket with Cranberries as the main dish and Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes for the side dish. The brisket takes four hours to roast in the oven at 350, so it's a meal to make when you know you'll be around for the afternoon. It requires very little babysitting.

You begin by searing the brisket for 8-10 minutes in a heavy pot, then set it aside and make a bath for it to braise in -- saute a little flour, then add red wine, chicken broth, water, blackstrap molasses, a bay leaf and half a bag of cranberries to the pot. Once that's mixed together, you place the brisket back in the pot and set it in a 350 degree oven with the rack placed at the lowest possible point. Then you leave it alone for three hours. At the three hour mark, you add a one-pound bag of frozen pearl onions, and then at the 3:30 mark you add the rest of the cranberries. At the four hour mark, the brisket is done. But along the way, your kitchen will fill with the wonderful scent of the cranberries cooking and the beef roasting; perfect for a cold fall day! Even better: the end result was excellent. The brisket was incredibly tender and the cranberries and onions were lovely accompaniments. The liquids turned into a great gravy-like sauce and the whole dish together was fragrant and well-balanced. Definitely a keeper.


For the mashed potatoes, you also need to plan ahead just a bit because it takes an hour to roast the garlic (recipe below). I really need to pick up a potato masher; I ended up once again using my pastry cutter to mash them, which is not optimal. My mom uses her stand mixer to mash potatoes, but it's too much of a hassle for me to pull mine out for this. (My mother's potatoes, I should add, are legendary in how amazing they are.) Anyway, the roasted garlic definitely added a nice edge to the standard potatoes I typically make. (Roasting the garlic also made me recall the time I went to a restaurant in San Francisco called The Stinking Rose - an entire restaurant dedicated to garlic!). In any case, the potatoes turned out very nicely and I'm glad I went to the trouble of roasting the garlic.

ROASTED-GARLIC MASHED POTATOES
Everyday Food Magazine, November 2008
Serves 8. Prep time: 15 minutes. Total time: 1+1/4 hour

2 heads garlic
1 tsp olive oil
3 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch cubes
Coarse ground salt and pepper
1 cup half and half
4 Tbs butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut off and discard top quarter of garlic heads. Drizzle garlic with oil; wrap in foil. Bake until tender, 1 hour. Squeeze out garlic cloves; discard skins.

Place potatoes in a large sauce pan and cover with cold water by 1 inch; season with salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until potatoes are easily pierced with a paring knife, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain and return to pan. Heat over medium, stirring, until a thin starchy film covers bottom of pan. Remove from heat; add half and half, butter and garlic. Mash until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

A Perfect Fall Dinner

Welcome, November! The weather had a bit of a chill to it today, which put me in the mood for comfort food. Which was perfect, since we were expecting our spectacular friends Mr. Leamon and Ms. Kuhn over for dinner. I spent the afternoon preparing the meal so that I could fully enjoy spending time with our guests. On the menu: my favorite salad from Foster's Market in Durham, North Carolina, chicken pot pie, and my mom's apple crisp. I made the chicken pot pie and the apple crisp all the way up to the baking stage during the day, then put the pot pie into the oven about 30 minutes before our guests arrived and put the apple crisp into the oven as soon as I pulled the pot pie out. And I presliced all the ingredients for the salad, dousing the avocado and apple slices in lemon juice so that they wouldn't brown, and made the dressing, then assembled the salad just before we were ready to eat it. The meal was delicious - exactly what I had hoped for!

While I'd made the salad (which I first encountered while visiting Mr. and Mrs. Stevens in Raleigh a few years ago) and the pot pie (a Pam Anderson recipe for USA WEEKEND) many times before, this was the first time I'd ever made my mom's apple crisp. Her recipe was a little vague - she didn't specify how many apples to use or how long to leave it in the oven, and when I called to ask her, she said what all great cooks would say: "bake it till it's done." Translated: for a 9x13" pan, use 7-8 apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks and bake it for around 30-40 minutes, or until the apples are nice and tender and the "crisp" is golden brown. Taking a bite of the finished product immediately transported me to my childhood, a very happy time indeed! Thanks, Mom, for the apple crisp and for always being so good to me!!

Avocado, Cucumber, Green Apple, Feta Salad
Source: Foster's Market, by way of Mrs. Stevens

Grated zest and juice of one lime
1 Tbs. white wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint leaves
1 tart apple, peeled, cored and sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 avocado, peeled, pitted, and sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 cucumber, peeled, halved, seeded and sliced 1/4 inch thick
4 cups watercress, washed and trimmed of tough stems
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 onces feta, thinly sliced

1. stir the lime zest and juice and vinegar together in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until all in incorporated. Stir in the mint.

2. In separate medium bowl combine the apple, avocado, cucumber and watercress. Drizzle with the vinaigrette, season with salt and pepper, and toss gently. Arrange the salad on a platter or individual plates, top with the feta slices, and serve immediately.


Apple Crisp
Source: my sweet, amazing, talented mother

7-8 apples, cored, peeled and roughly chopped into good sized chunks
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup oatmeal (the old fashioned kind, not the quick cooking)
1 stick of butter, melted
1/4 tsp. cinnamon*
1/4 tsp. nutmeg*
1/4 tsp. salt
vanilla ice cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a 9x13" baking dish with the apples. Mix remaining ingredients together and pour mixture over the apples. Bake for 2o-30 minutes or until the apples are nice and soft and cooked through. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

*says Mom: "if you wish, you can use more or less cinnamon and nutmeg."

Enjoy!!

Dinner tonight... Slow Cooker Pot Roast

This is the first time since we got married that I made something in my slow cooker for me and Mr. Fritz. And actually, the impetus behind the meal was less Mr. Fritz and more Mr. & Mrs. Fleming, as it was my turn to bring them a post-new-baby meal. I knew I'd want to get the meal to them as soon as possible after work and that I'd want to make something that could double as a meal for me and T as well. With that in mind, I turned to the October issue of Everyday Food magazine and settled on Slow Cooker Pot Roast.

Yesterday morning, I cleaned and cut up the carrots and peeled and sliced the onions into wedges. I put the whole lot into a Ziploc in the fridge, making it all the easier to assemble the ingredients in the slow cooker this morning. And assembly could not have been simpler: I mixed together cornstarch and water in the bottom of the crock pot, added the vegetables and tossed them with a little salt and pepper, then set the 3 pound slab of beautifully marbled beef chuck roast on top. After shaking a bit more salt and pepper on the meat, I drizzled it with 2 Tb of Worchester sauce, put the lid on the slow cooker and set the timer for 10 hours on low. When I returned from work around 6:20 this evening, the house was fragrant with the scent of what I could tell would be a really comforting meal. And it was! As soon as I returned from delivering most of it to the Flemings, Mr. Fritz and I dug into the bit I'd set aside for us.



The beef was perfectly tender, falling apart with the touch of the fork. And the vegetables were carmelized and flavorful. I paired it with a salad composed of baby butter lettuce and fresh raspberries (on sale at the Teeter!) mixed with a Raspberry-Champagne Vinaigrette and served it alongside hot, crusty French bread. A perfect meal as fall sets in!

Dinner tonight... Simple, Classic Chicken Potpie

Mr. Fritz can thank Mr. & Mrs. Glade for tonight's meal. Mrs. Glade had kiddo number four in September and it was my turn to bring the family a post-new-baby meal. Since I knew the Glades enjoyed this particular recipe (I made it for them after baby two or three -- I can't keep the years straight anymore!), and since it yields two 9-inch potpies, I thought it would be the perfect chance to treat both them and Mr. Fritz to its comforting goodness. Also, it's fun to have a pie crust to monogram!


This recipe, by cookbook author Pam Anderson, is not terribly complicated. But it can be time consuming to prepare. My best advice is to make sure you do all the prep work before you head to the stove, because by the time you start sauteeing, things will move very fast. In fact, if you can reel in a sous chef on this one to help you chop, measure, etc., you should. (Mr. Fritz doesn't presently cook and, unfortunately for me, is not interested in entering The Mrs. Fritz School of Cooking in order to become sous chef material. I adore him regardless.) In any case, here's how I went about preparing it: First, I chopped the onions and celery and put them in one bowl. Then, I put flour and thyme in another bowl and evaporated milk and chicken stock in a third. The recipe calls for shredding the meat from 2 rotisserie chickens; that went into a fourth, large bowl. And I chopped a quarter cup of parsley and put that in a fifth bowl. After measuring out 1/3 cup of white wine and 1/3 cup of butter, with my kitchen counter looking like it ought to be on the set of a cooking show, I finally headed to the stove.

And from then on, it really did go fast: First, I heated up the milk and stock mixture in the microwave. As soon as that started warming up, I began sauteeing the celery and onions in a little olive oil for about 5 minutes, then added those vegetables to the bowl which held the shredded chicken. Then I dropped the butter into the pan and waited for it to melt and stop foaming. At that point, I added the flour and thyme mixture and stirred until it began to turn golden, about a minute or so, and then whisked in the hot milk mixture. That quickly thickened into a nice sauce. Then in went the wine, then a bag of frozen peas and carrots and the chicken, onions and celery plus salt and pepper and a quarter cup of chopped parsley. Mixed all of that up really well and distributed it between two 9-inch deep dish glass pyrex pie plates. Topped each pie with a refrigerated pie crust, fluted the edges, made a little monogram on each one by pricking the surface with an appetizer fork, then put them each on a baking sheet and into the oven for 30 minutes on the low-center rack. Crust turned a lovely golden brown and resulting pies were hearty and filling -- just right for a crisp fall day and just right to bring to a family in the midst of a joyful, if tiring, transition.