The ABC's of Cooking: E Is for Eggs

Every head chef of every family needs as many go-to recipes that are quick and easy as possible, without sacrificing nutrition and flavor. At the top of my list I place eggs because HappyDayFarms has chickens and they are in full stride, providing eggs for both family and the farm stand. Even though the cost of eggs has gone up, all I can say is that eggs still stack up favorably as far as quick meals go. What eggs lose in terms of cost, they gain as far as ease of preparation.

Because I receive vast amounts of veggies each week from Casey, especially cooking greens to use for lunches, I am always trying to think of new ways to prepare them. If you are one who also gets beet tops, turnip greens, boy choy, spinach, kale, chard, cabbage or any other kind of cooking greens, and you sometimes feel at a loss as to how to use them, think about an egg stir.

Kid friendly? That depends on whether the kids have been raised on veggies from the garden/farmers’ market or McDonald’s and chili-mac. In any case, (no judgment) if the kids are traveling down a different culinary avenue, the adults still have to eat.

Almost identical to a frittata in terms of how an egg stir is prepared, one difference is that instead of eggs being the dominant ingredient, cooking greens are. The other difference is that a frittata is usually baked in the oven and an egg stir is cooked on top of the stove. I simply sauté the chopped greens in a skillet in farm-produced lard or olive oil until they are cooked (The time will vary for different greens), and then pour whisked eggs over the veggies, and cook them as I would scrambled eggs. 

In cooking eggs in this manner, I use a medium fire and stay attentive to the cooking eggs, because it only takes three-four minutes with a medium fire. I stir/flip them every thirty seconds or so to prevent the eggs from burning. With the liquid from the cooking greens, it is almost impossible to burn the eggs.

Once the eggs have cooked, I can turn off the burner, add cheese, put a lid on the skillet to allow the cheese to melt, and then serve. 

When I was teaching, I perfected cooking the seven-minute breakfast for myself, using a can of already cut-up potatoes, two or three eggs, grated cheese, salt/pepper and tortillas. Getting out a medium-sized skillet with lid, I opened up the can of potatoes, drained them and put them into the skillet over a medium fire, with enough oil to barely cove the bottom of the pan. At the same time I put the griddle on a different burner, to get it heated up for warming tortillas. 

I whisked the eggs together and as soon as the potatoes were hot, I poured the eggs over them and stayed on top of them so the eggs didn’t burn. I grated enough cheese to cover the eggs and potatoes, and when the eggs had cooked, I turned off the burner, put the cheese on, covered it with a lid and waited long enough to melt the cheese. I then filled heated tortillas with the mixture and added hot sauce or salsa as desired. 

Egg stirs can contain any variety of different ingredients, from veggies to macaroni and cheese, zucchini casserole, sausages, leftover chopped up enchiladas, chunks of rancho steak, chili con carne and whatever other leftovers you have in the icebox.

No discussion about eggs would be complete without a recipe for deviled eggs. I usually cook a dozen hard-boiled eggs to make two dozen servings for a gathering. If you have a special trick for peeling [fresh] hard-boiled eggs, then trot that baby out and dust it off.

Otherwise, place the eggs in a large saucepan in a single layer and cover them with at least two inches of water. Bring the water to a boil over a medium fire, reduce the heat and cook for twelve minutes. Take the eggs off the stove and run cold water over them until you can handle an egg under running water. I take the flat side of a knife and tap it firmly over every centimeter of the egg, breaking the shell into a spider web of tiny pieces. I then roll the egg on a wooden cutting board until small pieces of shell start to fall off.

Under running water I then find that the shell peels off pretty efficiently. And yes, there will almost always be a weisenheimer in there that will end up being your taste test.

By running the water over the eggs as I peel them, they naturally cool off, allowing me to cut them in half, lengthwise. I put the half-yokes in a separate dish, mash them up and add one-half cup of mayonnaise, two teaspoons of vinegar, two teaspoons of yellow mustard, black pepper to taste and smoked paprika as a garnish. 

I do not add salt as this is one dish where a little goes way too far. After mixing the yokes and the rest of the ingredients, I then spoon the mixture back into the empty half eggs and add the paprika, before chilling the deviled eggs for serving.

Growing up, the boys loved a breakfast of hash browns and chili omelet, with the omelet being formed by simply spreading a can of heated chili across six or eight already-scrambled eggs, with cheese on the top. It takes ten minutes to make a chili omelet.

Fried, easy-over, scrambled, poached or mixed with just about anything, eggs are one way to go.

 

The ABC's of Cooking: D Is for Dutch Oven

What is the difference between a Dutch oven and a big saucepan? About twenty pounds. My ten-quart Dutch weighs in at 28.4 pounds, empty. The two tabs which stick out on either side and accommodate the heavy wire handle, allow me to lug it around using both hands. When filled, it is an armload.

The weight of the Dutch oven is the reason why it is so effective of a tool. The cast iron pot absorbs the heat from the burner (or oven) and releases it back into whatever is heating up inside. The difference between cooking French fries in hot oil in a Dutch oven and cooking them in a conventional saucepan, is too much to ignore. I mean, if you like crispy fries.

I have three Dutch ovens and use the biggest one most consistently for everything from a hearty lamb stew to stovetop fried chicken. In summertime I use it exclusively on top of the stove; in winter it can go into the oven, if I want to get some heat infused into a cold kitchen.

Slow-cooking a big cross-cut rib roast or a leg of lamb, is tailor-made for a Dutch oven. After having put salt and black pepper on the roast, I will heat up a quarter-cup of olive oil over a medium fire and sear the roast on each side for three-four minutes, with the lid on. When that is done, I break the glaze with red wine before adding onions, garlic and water/broth and cooking it for several hours, depending on what I am going to eventually use it for. 

I will often shred the meat for taquitos, tacos or tostadas or else I will cut it into bite-size chunks for adding to any number of dishes I might be preparing. Slow-cooking the roast in advance merely gives me flexibility and thus, an advantage. With the meat already cooked and cut up, I can add it as early or late to a dish as I please, without having to prepare it from scratch. 

Stews, chili, pinto beans, chili chicken, French fries, stove-top fried chicken, slow-roasting any cut of meat, frying fish, stove-top mac and cheese, chicken strips, chili verde and soups are among the dishes for which I use a Dutch oven.

The Dutch oven is also great on camping trips because of how well it absorbs heat. It serves as a one-pot-cooks-all for either a Coleman stove or a fire pit. As for cleaning it afterwards, if you coat the outside of the pot with dish soap before you ever use it, you can clean the inside after you use it and then put it in a plastic bag until you get home, where you can wash it in the sink with a lot less hassle than on the camping trip. The soot comes right off because of the dish soap.

Among my Dutch ovens is a Lodge cooking wok that is also cast iron, which I use to cook up my side dishes of veggies for farm lunches. I always start with three or four ounces of chopped bacon, add a couple of diced shallots, a quarter-cup of balsamic vinegar and a splash of maple syrup, before I fill the wok with kale, chard, beet tops, cabbage or anything else Casey has brought to me to cook from the farm. I add chicken broth to provide plenty of liquid, I lightly salt it and liberally add black pepper and cook it for around fifteen minutes with the lid on, depending on what is in the wok, for an easy and delicious side dish. I taste-test as I go.

Unlike a Dutch uncle, who will give you all sorts of advice but doesn’t really do anything, a Dutch oven gits ‘er done.

Rancho Steak (My father started cooking this dish in the sixties, after his coworkers at the steel factory let him sample their lunches. Almost all of his coworkers were either Mexican or black. In our household we were taught that it was not the color of a man’s skin that counted, but what was inside that skin.)

3 lbs. cut-up stew meat

1/2 cup gluten-free flour (I use white rice flour) or any kind of all-purpose flour

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup red wine

salt/black pepper to taste (I start with a teaspoon of salt and a half-teaspoon of black pepper)

4 ounces of chopped bacon

2 onions or several shallots (I used leeks recently because I had them!)

4 or 5 cloves of fresh garlic 

2 Bell peppers

1 quart whole cooked tomatoes

1 pint tomato sauce

12 ounces cut up mushrooms

2 large carrots, cut up

3 large stalks of celery, finely diced 

I tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon red chili pepper (mild)

1 teaspoon paprika

2 bay leaves

1 quart of beef broth, though I use chicken broth because that is what I always have on hand. Any kind of broth works. So does water.

Optional: one whole jalapeño pepper, minced or any part of one to add a little spice to the dish. 

I whisk the flour, salt and pepper together before stirring it into the meat so that it covers it entirely. I heat up the Dutch oven on a medium fire on top of the stove, add the olive oil and brown the meat, usually about ten minutes, stirring it several times to keep it from sticking or burning. Once it is done, I break the glaze with part of the red wine, turn off the fire and remove the meat from the Dutch oven. I set it aside for the time being.

I use the Dutch oven just as it is, after removing the meat, and cook the bacon until it is almost all the way done, before adding the diced onions, Bell peppers, garlic, celery, carrots and mushrooms, using the water from the whole tomatoes to keep the veggies cooking without having them stick. I can also add any amount of the broth for the same reason.

After the veggies have had time to soften up, I add the rest of the broth, tomatoes, wine, spices, tomato sauce and the browned meat, and bring the mixture to a boil. I turn down the heat so it is more than a simmer, but not hot enough to require constant stirring and let it cook for two hours, to allow the meat to become tender. 

I always figure I need three hours to cook this dish, or it can be cooked at any point in time earlier, and heated up for the meal. I serve it over rice, but pasta or mashed potatoes work great also. 

The ABC's of Cooking: C Is for Chicken

We raise a lot of chickens here at HappyDayFarms, thus providing job security for me in the kitchen. One thing about our farm-raised birds, they are almost all in the six-seven pound range, thus allowing me to get two different meals out of a pair of them.

No discussion of preparing chicken for cooking can take place without first talking about the process of brining. Though there are multiple ways to accomplish this, I stick to the simplest one. This requires nothing more than adding three-fourths of a cup of salt to a small sauce pan of boiling water in order to dissolve it, and then adding the mixture to a tuppie filled with my two cut-up chickens, and cold water. 

I let the chicken soak in this mixture for four hours, before thoroughly rinsing the chicken and putting it back in the fridge until I am ready for it. In working with raw poultry, I am inordinately careful about cleaning up afterwards, using hot, soapy water to clean all surfaces that came into contact with the chicken or the water in which it was stored. After I am done with the washcloth, I replace it and the hand towel with clean ones. 

If I am barbecuing the chicken or oven-roasting it, I add a half-cup of brown sugar to the saucepan of boiling water. And if I am cooking the chicken in a liquid base, like cacciatore or oven roasted chicken in white wine and broth, I skip the brining process as being unnecessary. Brining adds moisture to a properly cooked chicken when it is being prepared in high heat, but the very act of cooking the chicken in a liquid base, ensures that the chicken will be moist.

I have a number of different ways I cook chicken here on-farm, including the aforementioned chicken cacciatore and oven-roasted in a white wine, chicken broth and mustard sauce. I cook a sweet and sour chicken, I barbecue it, I oven-roast it and I make stove-top fried chicken, the way Annie used to make it. I cook chicken teriyaki, I roast them whole, and I do a mean chicken stew.

I make chili chicken, chicken strips, shepherd’s pie with chicken, chicken enchiladas, taquitos, tostadas, burritos, and can make chicken tamales, though I leave that in the capable hands of my son, Ben. 

With more than a hundred meat birds on-farm at the moment, I am stoked to know that by summer’s end, we will have freezers well-stocked with chicken for me to cook up for lunches.

Recipes, recipes, who’s got recipes? I have some:

Oven-roasted chicken in white wine

cut-up chicken

one cup white wine

one cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

One teaspoon salt 

3/4 teaspoon black pepper

Fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon ground)

Fresh sage (or 1 teaspoon ground) 

Fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon ground)

One large diced onion or comparable amount of shallots, diced

four/five cloves of minced garlic or add garlic to taste

I usually cook two chickens at a time and they are giant, so I will always add to this recipe to accommodate more than just one cut-up chicken or a package of thighs and a package of drumsticks. How much rosemary, sage and oregano you use can be adjusted to taste. 

After sauteing the onions and garlic in olive oil, I cut five or six sprigs of rosemary, two large or three smaller stalks of sage and the same for the oregano. I rinse them off, strip the leaves off the stalks, chop them up and add them to the cooked veggies, along with the wine, broth, mustard, salt and pepper. I bring these ingredients to a low boil for just a couple of minutes and pour this mixture over the chicken before it goes into the oven.

I preheat the oven to 400 degrees and roast the chicken for fifty minutes, skin side down, turning it over after 35 minutes, before checking with a thermometer to see that it has reached 165 degrees internally. I serve it with basmati rice, gravy that I make from the sauce in which the chicken cooked, a side dish of cooked greens and a green salad. (At times I will roast it slower, at 350 degrees for a few minutes longer than an hour, before using the thermometer.)

Gluten-free oven-roasted chicken 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Coat bottom of the roasting pan with olive oil

1 cut-up chicken

1 cup gluten-free flour (I use white rice flour) or 1 cup all-purpose flour

I teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon salt (omit if chicken is brined)

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion powder

2 eggs

Whisk together flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika. Dip chicken parts in eggs and then thoroughly coat chicken pieces with flour mixture before arranging them in the roasting pan, skin side down.

Bake for 35 minutes, skin side down, before turning the pieces of chicken over and then baking for at least another fifteen minutes. Check to see that the internal temperature is 165 degrees before removing from the oven.

Chicken teriyaki

I have cooked this dish both in the oven and on top of the stove, depending on the temperature outside. Both ways produce excellent results. I tend to brine the chicken for this dish because there is not as much liquid in the roaster/skillet as in the chicken in white wine dish.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. (I will also cook the chicken at a lower temperature-350 degrees-for a longer time, if it is cold outside and I just want the kitchen to be warm and toasty. I have the flexibility to decide each time how I want to cook it.)

cut-up chicken

1 cup white wine

1 large onion or several shallots, diced

4/5 cloves of minced garlic

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup Tamari sauce (soy sauce)

1 tablespoon corn starch

1 tablespoon water

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

salt/black pepper to taste (I start with a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and go from there. It just depends on how much chicken there is.)

Optional: I always add a quart of whole tomatoes but that is because I always have them. They also make the sauce in the roaster more liquid, so less of a reason to brine the chicken.

If I am cooking on top of the stove, I will brown the chicken in a small amount of olive oil before adding the sauce, which I have combined and brought to a boil for a couple of minutes. If I am oven-roasting it, I will lightly coat the roaster with olive oil, arrange the chicken in it and then drizzle the cooking sauce over the pieces of chicken, turning each over so that the entire piece is covered. I will flip the pieces about two-thirds of the way through and make sure I baste the pieces with the sauce. I use a thermometer to see when they get to 165 degrees.

Sweet and sour chicken

cut-up chicken

1 cup white wine

1 pint tomato sauce

I large onion, diced (or several diced shallots)

4/5 cloves of garlic, minced

I tablespoon of corn starch or gluten-free flour (all-purpose flour can be used)

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup ketchup

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon Tamari sauce (soy sauce)

Preparing sweet and sour chicken is identical to cooking chicken teriyaki, both in the oven and on the stove-top.

Stovetop cacciatore with broth
cooking on the back burner.

Chicken cacciatore

cut up chicken

olive oil for sautéing 

1 large diced onion

6 cloves of minced garlic

2 bell peppers, diced

2 large carrots, chopped (optional)

mushrooms, chopped and sautéed

8 sprigs of rosemary, chopped (1 teaspoon of ground rosemary)

2 stalks of fresh thyme leaves, minced (1 teaspoon dried thyme)

Thyme, rosemary
and sage

2 stalks fresh sage leaves, minced (1 teaspoon dried sage)

1 cup red wine

1 quart whole tomatoes

1 pint tomato sauce (I use homemade marinara sauce)

1 6 ounce can of tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon maple syrup

salt/pepper to taste (I start with one teaspoon of salt and 3/4 teaspoon of black pepper)

Again, except that I always brown the chicken first for cacciatore, the rest of the preparation is exactly the same as both chicken teriyaki and sweet and sour chicken above.

This recipe for cacciatore is a traditional pasta sauce dish, but I also make a less traditional cacciatore, using chicken broth instead of the pint of marinara and the paste. The chicken tastes pretty much the same but the sauce is thinner and [obviously] less tomatoey. Most folks serve cacciatore over pasta, but in this establishment, I use basmati rice. 

browning chicken for cacciatore

Stove-top country fried chicken

cut up chicken

2 cups gluten-free flour (I use white rice flour) or multi-purpose flour of any kind

1 tablespoon poultry seasoning *

1 teaspoon paprika or smoked paprika

2 eggs, beaten

oil for frying (I use avocado oil)

As I have mentioned, I almost always cook two chickens at a time, so this recipe has more flour and spices than you would need for a single chicken or packages of thighs/drumsticks. Reduce as needed.

Otherwise, I dip the chicken parts in egg and then coat them thoroughly with the flour mixture. I preheat enough oil in a skillet over a medium fire, so that when I put the chicken in, the oil covers the chicken halfway up, more or less. I cook the chicken skin side for ten minutes, before turning the chicken over. I cover the skillet(s) while cookin it.

I reduce the fire under the chicken to low, and then cook it for twenty more minutes, using a meat thermometer to make sure it is at 165 degrees. If I am not dealing with mammoth chickens, this time frame is always long enough to make sure the chicken is fully cooked.

Chili-chicken

cut up chicken breasts from two chickens

olive oil for sautéing veggies

1 large diced onion

1 large bell pepper, diced

4/5 cloves of garlic

1 diced jalapeno (less if folks are sensitive to spicy food)

2 stalks oregano leaves, minced (or 1 teaspoon dried oregano)

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon paprika

2 4-ounce cans diced [mild] green chiles

4 cups chicken broth

salt/black pepper ( I start with a teaspoon of salt and 3/4 of a teaspoon of black pepper)

2 cans cannellini beans 

1 quart whole tomatoes (32 ounces)

fresh cilantro to taste

corn or gluten-free flour tortillas, preheated, on the side

I boil the whole breasts for thirty minutes, depending on the size, and then cut them up into bite size pieces. You can also shred the chicken if you prefer. I saute the onions, garlic and herbs in olive oil and then add everything else except the chicken and beans, preferring to let the base cook first since the chicken is already cooked, as well as the beans. I prefer to thicken my chili chicken with a quarter-cup of white rice flour, or corn starch, but that is optional. 

Once I am happy that everything has blended together, I add the chicken and beans and bring the chili to a boil, before letting it simmer until it is time to eat. Grated Monterey Jack cheese is a great additive and I serve the heated tortillas on the side. 

* recipe for poultry seasoning

2 teaspoons dried/crushed sage

1 1/2 teaspoons dried/crushed thyme

1 teaspoon dried/crushed marjoram

3/4 teaspoon dried/crushed rosemary

1/2 teaspoon dried/crushed nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

salt to taste (or leave it out and season each dish individually, which is what I like to do)