I’m on a pretty good streak of making a bunch of meals on weekends so that we have quick and easy meals on weeknights. Last weekend, I came across this recipe for Indian Spiced Chicken with Tomato and Cream and knew it would reheat nicely. It takes some time to make, so it’s best for cooking on a weekend. But it’s a one pot meal!
This adapted version is awesome over cooked rice. If you like a thicker sauce, you may want to add some water mixed with cornstarch at the end to thicken.
Note: I was sent a box of Krusteaz Buttermilk Protein Pancake & Flapjack Mix in order to write this post. Opinions are mine alone.
Happy National Pancake Day! Also known as Shrove Tuesday, coincides with Mardi Gras, the end of Carnevale, and the beginning of Lent. It’s a day to indulge, but you can indulge while still eating something nutritious!
To celebrate National Pancake Day, Krusteaz sent me a box of their new Buttermilk Protein Pancake & Flapjack Mix. This mix is packed with 15 grams of protein per serving! This pancake mix needs just water to become light and fluffy pancakes. For added protein, you can substitute in milk and add eggs to the mix as well!
I decided to up the nutrition of these pancakes with the addition of mashed sweet potato. Not only does it add a bit of sweetness to the pancakes, sweet potatoes are a great source of Vitamins A and C.
With all of the protein and vitamins in this recipe, a little bit of browned butter won’t hurt, right? 🙂 I topped these pancakes with a bit of browned butter chopped pecans and a drizzle of maple syrup to make these Sweet Potato Pancakes with Brown Butter Pecans.
My mom’s birthday was earlier this week and I wanted to make her a treat to celebrate. She might be citrus’ biggest fan, so I knew I had to incorporate a couple of citrus components into it. This Citrus Poppy Seed Pound Cake was the result!
When I first began learning to cook, Coq Au Vin was one of the first recipes I attempted to make. And boy, did I fail miserably. So I’ve stayed away from the recipe since — I haven’t tried to make it in over a decade!
I figured it was time to finally try making it again, and use my trusty multi-cooker to make it fail-proof!
This one-pot-wonder for Pressure Cooker Coq au Vin takes about 80 minutes to prepare, so I’d suggest saving this for a weekend. I made this on a Sunday and saved it to eat during the week.
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more if needed
4 ounces pancetta, diced
2.5 lbs chicken, assorted pieces (I used bone-in and boneless chicken thighs and legs)
salt and pepper
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
For whatever reason, I do not cook with broccoli. In fact, the last recipe I posted on my blog that included broccoli was in 2012!
I don’t exactly love broccoli, but I started feeling bad about my lack of broccoli in my cooking. So. Here’s a simple but delicious pasta recipe that comes together fast enough for busy weeknights!
I’ve mentioned before how awesome the Philadelphia food scene is, and it seems to only be getting better! One of the latest additions to the Philadelphia restaurant scene is Makhani, which just opened in Old City. Owned by restaurateur Shafi Gaffar, the restaurant includes a 34 seat dining room as well as a private space on the second floor for up to 50 for special events. The restaurant also provides delivery throughout Philadelphia.
Makhani, which means “with butter”, specializes in North Indian curries that usually have thick, moderately spiced and creamy gravies. The use of dried fruits and nuts , as well as the incorporation of dairy products like milk, cream, home-made cottage cheese, ghee (clarified butter) and yogurt, play an important role in the cooking of both savory and sweet dishes. Everything in the kitchen, from the breads, to the sauces, to the desserts, are made in-house and from scratch using high quality, fresh ingredients from Chef and his culinary team. Makhani will also offer authentic Indian dishes in a specially designed Tandoori clay oven brought over direct from India. On the menu, look for an extensive list of notable vegan options, as 50% of the menu is vegan.
Source: Society Hill Films
The made-to-order, farm-to-table menu from executive chef Sanjoy Banik is a relatively uncommon approach to Indian restaurants in the region. The flavors of Indian food can take up to ten hours to develop, so many restaurants pre-batch their preparations. The menu includes modern spins on traditional North Indian cuisine, and also features some unexpected ingredients, such as lobster, scallops, and lamb shanks.
Source: Society Hill Films
Gaffar is originally from Bangladesh, where is family owns a mango garden/farm and works as inspiration for many dishes on the menu, including Indian Mango Chicken (shown above)- a dish made of “spiced chicken breast cooked in our homemade mango sauce with fresh mangoes.” I decided to try to make my own version at home using my multi-pot to mimic the flavors of a dish that requires cooking for a long period of time to fully develop its flavors.
My version uses chicken thighs and differs in overall flavor to the version at Makhani, so I strongly suggest trying out their version as well!
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground sweet paprika
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
8 oz frozen mango chunks
1 (14 oz) can light coconut milk, thoroughly shaken
1 medium onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
0-2 dried red chili peppers, depending on your spice tolerance
I know that most of us are probably partied out. But it can never hurt to have some really great (and easy) party appetizer recipes on hand, like these Baked Cranberry Almond Brie Bites, right?
This recipe for Baked Cranberry Almond Brie Bites is a bite-sized version of baked brie wrapped in puff pastry; some versions of baked brie are stuffed with jam and nuts. This mini version uses mini phyllo cups stuffed with brie and cranberry sauce, then is topped with toasted almonds and fresh thyme. Mini phyllo cups (paid link) are typically available in the dessert frozen section of the supermarket.
Note: I was sent a sample of Speck Alto Adige PGI in order to write this post. All opinions are mine alone. #sponsored
During the winter, I cannot get enough comfort food recipes. To me, Italian food is the ultimate comfort food — usually quite simple to make, with a few high quality ingredients that make the meal good enough to share with company.
I wanted to highlight an ingredient that you may not have heard about before: Speck Alto Adige PGI. From the Alto Adige region of Italy, Speck Alto Adige PGI is ham that has been air cured and lightly smoked. It can be used in recipes that call for bacon or prosciutto, and add a nice smoky, herby flavor to the dish. When buying, look for the PGI certification. The PGI certification of Speck Alto Adige means “protected geographical indication” and ensures that you are buying an authentic product made in its area of origin under strict guidelines.
To highlight the uncommon but delicious flavor of Speck Alto Adige PGI, I decided to make a speck and anchovy pasta topped with garlic breadcrumbs.
This recipe for Speck and Anchovy Pasta with Garlic Breadcrumbs is based off an Epicurious recipe and delivers great flavor without a lot of effort. It just so happens to mostly use ingredients that I tend to have around my house, so that was a nice perk too!
I’m hoping you’ll allow me to post one more cookie recipe this season. These Chewy Gingerbread Cookies are too good to not post!
Every year, my mom and I bake multiple cookie recipes to give to friends and family. While there are some that we bake every year, (like these Hot Cocoa Cookies), we try to make a new cookie each time. After many years of trying to make gingerbread cookies and failing at the decorating part, we decided to try making gingerbread cookies instead.
This recipe makes a wonderfully soft and chewy cookie all with the yummy flavors of gingerbread.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Shepherd’s Pie is one of my absolute favorite cold weather meals. It’s really simple to make and has all the components of a solid meal, just stacked into a layered pie form!
I like to make shepherd’s pie on weekends, assemble, refrigerate, and then cook later in the week on a busy weeknight. This recipe is based off a shepherd’s pie recipe from the Food Network.
I love the combination of chocolate and pumpkin together. So when I was trying to think of an update to a traditional cookie, my mind went right to these flavors, which brings me to this recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Rugelach.
Rugelach are the perfect cookies for this combo. Traditional rugelach uses an apricot spread that is sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, walnuts, and raisins, and then rolled into a spiral. The pumpkin butter takes the place of the apricot spread, and mini chocolate chips are substituted in for the walnuts and raisins.
I really love sweet potatoes. I have a pretty bad sweet tooth, so sweet potatoes are right up my alley. Growing up, we used to always have them mashed with a ton of butter and topped with roasted marshmallows. Mmm.
This version for Pressure Cooker Mashed Sweet Potatoes is a bit more stripped down, no marshmallows here. The natural sweetness is allowed to shine through (although I do enhance it a bit with some maple syrup)!
Plus, because I cooked the sweet potatoes in my Pressure Cooker, this recipe is done in no time!
Ingredients:
4 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into similar sized pieces
1 cup water
1/4 cup unsalted butter (or coconut oil to make dairy free/vegan)
Who doesn’t love a “one pot” meal? No one wants to do a ton of dishes after dinner!
I love cooking with my cast iron skillet, which is actually my grandmothers. Cast iron does a great job of evenly heating food and searing meat, and stands the test of time. Every meal I make in my cast iron feels kind of special, knowing my grandmother also used to cook in the same skillet.
This recipe, adapted from Epicurious, is a nice comfort food dinner, with juicy chicken thighs, sautéed fennel and leeks, and hearty orzo, and is perfect for chilly nights.
Note: I was sent a copy of AMERICAN COOKIE: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved for Generations for review. Opinions are mine alone.
Every cookie recipe has a back story, from the chocolate chip cookie to thumbprint cookies. What’s truly interesting about these back stories is how they align with the shaping of American baking through the generations. I love cookbooks that provide a back story to the recipes, like AMERICAN COOKIE: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved for Generations by Anne Bryn. Did you know that the first snickerdoodle cookie recipes were actually bars? Or that the first Girl Scout Cookies were baked at home to help raise money to send girls to camp?
Source: Penguin Random House
I assume I’m not alone in associating different recipes with different parts of my own life. I can’t look at a Peanut Butter Cookie without thinking of my family’s recipe, passed down from my great grandmother, or snack on a Neiman Marcus “$250” cookies without recalling many December weekends spent making them with my mom as a child.
I was first introduced to rugelach cookies — a cookie made by rolling a triangle of dough around a sweet filling — by my mother-in-law. She makes them every Christmas and has since my husband was little. So when I saw a recipe for Apricot and Raisin Rugelach in AMERICANCOOKIE, I knew I had to try them as a nod to my mother-in-law’s fantastic baking every December. This recipe differs from my mother-in-law’s version but the general idea is still there.
Rugelach cookies were first brought to America from Austrian-Hungarian immigrants, and has over time been adapted and modernized by Jewish-American bakers. Apparently, the original dough was quite time consuming to make. Somewhere along the line, cream cheese was added to rugelach dough, resulting in an easy to work with and flaky dough. Rugelach cookies have become a staple in many American households, and typically include raisins, nuts, spices and jam or preserves as a filling.
Ingredients:
Dough:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all purpose flour, plus more for rolling the dough
As someone who does her best to cook a bunch of meals over the weekends to eat during the week, my slow cooker is one of my most used appliances. I recently tried to move it into a closet to declutter my kitchen, but I keep asking my husband to help me retrieve it so often that he’s questioning its removal from our counter top.
One of my favorite takeout meals is Butter Chicken, so I wanted to learn how to make a version at home.
I based this recipe off a recipe from NY Times food, but adjusted it for the slow cooker, because we all know how much I love a slow cooker recipe. My version makes about 8 servings.
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups Greek yogurt
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 ½ tablespoons ground turmeric
2 tablespoons garam masala
2 tablespoons ground cumin
3 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
2 onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick
4 whole tomatoes from a 14oz can of whole tomatoes (~1/2 of the can), chopped
