Monday Lunch

Rummaging around in a "Chef's" refrigerator can muster up an odd bounty of bits of ingredients.  Occasionally, there's a way to pull several of them together for a truly impromptu dish. 

Case in point:

Today, I started tackling the pile of Magazines with turned down pages, to enter marked recipes into Mastercook.  Since I haven't done this since January, so there's quite a few to deal with. In the background I have the new Cooking Channel on, they are running a marathon of shows, each one seems to have two episodes back to back, sort of an introductory tasting of each personality. After finishing Everyday Food issues I realized I was starving.  Craving so many different tastes I knew I'd never be able to match the craving with a planned peanut butter and jelly sandwich!!  Albeit on Eli Zabar's Manor House bread!

 

So a-rummaging I went.  Found the container of leftover roasted tomatoes used for:Long Fusilli with Roasted Tomatoes what to make, what to do?  Don't want to cook pasta, after all, we had homemade ravioli for dinner last night (will write about that disaster later).  Eggs, beautiful cage free brown eggs!  Slice of the Manor House bread toasted with two scrambled eggs a healthy spoonful of the heated roasted tomatoes, a dollop of ramp pesto and a few shavings of Parmesano Reggiano!  Yum Yum!
I apologize for the picture quality it's from my crackberry, Nana, the photog was in the laundry room and I couldn't find her camera. And I really wanted to eat it while it was hot!!  But you'll get the idea from the fuzzy rendition!

Sunday Breakfast

Toasted Manor House Bread by Eli Zabar, with goat cheese and fig preserves! YUM!

--
Chef Jim
TRAVELING CULINARY ARTIST
traculart@gmail.com
http://www.travelingculinaryartist.com/

Spice & Easy

Food Network has a new show called SPICE & EASY.  I keep missing it and forgot to set the DVR for it for several weeks now! Finally, today I made sure I watched it.  It is a pretty good show, the hostess is Janet Johnston, who with her husband are the owners of three spice shops in Colorado called Savory Spice Shops.  Actually, a friend from Cookstalk forum has visited the shops in Denver, and told us about the show!  You can also order from their website.

Janet has a passion for herbs, spices and cooking so she's a natural for explaining how to "spice" things up!  Today's show was about a barbecue blend that they make from a recipe submitted by a customer during a contest held in the stores.  She made Ribs with Peanut Barbecue Sauce made with Chinese five spice; Chile Glazed Shrimp with Pineapple Ginger Salsa; Celery Root Slaw with wasabi and honey. And her dessert was Grilled Spiced Sugar Bananas with Spiced Nuts.

She used a brine to prep racks of ribs and then after slow baking them she basted them with the Peanut Barbecue Sauce. This got me thinking, I had boneless chicken breasts that needed to be cooked today in the fridge, why not use this brine and sauce for them? I had all the other ingredients as well and love Chinese five spice!  I also had broccoli/carrot slaw mix, so I'd make the dressing from her slaw too!  Yeah, two new recipes to test out today, admittedly tweaked, but still new! 

Brined the chicken breasts for 1 hour then baked @375º for 10 minutes; basted with Peanut Barbecue Sauce and baked for another 20 minutes until done!  Very moist and delicious!  I cut back on the wasabi as Nana is not a fan, and probably will go full on next time, it was so mild she didn't even notice it was there!  Also looking forward to trying the Celery Root version!  I used the broccoli, carrot slaw mix and added scallions, we finished it all! 

I think I'll make the shrimp in Rhode Island next time we visit, they would love it!  And maybe the bananas too!

Check out the show and definitely try the recipes!