In the Kitchen With Mattie

Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category

I think by now most people who know me also know I love home made soups. I make many kinds here at home but I also indulge in a few canned ones that I find good. One such soup was made by Progresso and back when we lived in NY I would always have a few cans on the shelf in the pantry.  It became one of the things I missed most when we moved south years ago. Whenever we have gone up to visit family back east I am always packing a case of it into the car for the house here along with anything else I can squeeze in that still allows us room to sit and drive. It’s funny how some things are just so close to your hearts and bring back memories. Hubby and the boys didn’t miss my favorite soup because they don’t like soup anyway, but for me it was a big thing.

 

Hubby worked all day today and late into the night so I was having dinner by myself and decided that with all the stock I had in the freezer and as I had everything else I needed to make the soup that is exactly what I did. I made myself a nice pot of soup!  Hubby got home a bit earlier than we expected and he smelled the soup and decided to have a bowl himself………he didn’t stop at one! So now all my great soup is gone and I’ll have to make more, well maybe later this week I will, but for tonight I will just remember how great it tasted for dinner.

 

Matties Chickarina Soup

 

8 cups of strong homemade chicken stock

4 stalks celery chopped

4 carrots, scraped and chopped

1 small onion, diced fine

1/4 cup chopped parsley

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 cups of diced chicken

about 2 dozen tiny meatballs

3/4 cup dry tubbetini pasta (Ronzoni is a good one)

 

For this I used a digital pressure cooker. Into the pressure cooker put the chicken broth and all the vegetables. Close the cover and set the timer for 5 minutes. When the timer shuts off let the pressure drop by itself and then open the cooker and add the pasta (cooked separately in a small pot) and the diced chicken and meatballs, bring back up to a boil without the cover and simmer for 5 minutes to blend the flavors. I usually add about a cup of baby spinach at the end so it just wilts but I had none at home tonight and didn’t really feel like going to the market.

The chicken in this soup was already cooked, diced and frozen. The meatballs to were already cooked and frozen weeks ago. The meatballs are a plain one without heavy seasoning in them, I usually make about 200-300 and store them in a large freezer container until I need them for this soup or sometimes I put them into lasagna or I use them when I make some pasta for small children, they find them easy to eat.

 

Tonight dinner was made on one pan on the stove! I seasoned some pork chops and cut some large baking potatoes into planks and then seasoned it all with Mrs Dash Salt Free and some Janes Crazy Mixed Up Salt for good measure. I simply wiped the grill with a bit of oil and set the potatoes on the surface to cook and get crispy, they had already been steamed in the pressure cooker so I was just trying to crisp them up and season them. The combination of those two seaoning mixs really upped the flavor, I’ll be using them together again on other things.

 

The grill pan I got a few weeks ago has become a favorite of mine for the way it allows me to cook a large quantity of food at one time. Add to that  the fact that the pan also cleans up very quickly with a quick rinse in the sink and I really love this pan. It fits over two burners so you can regulate the heat under each item as you need, tonight I put the flame on a bit higher under the potatoes than I did under the four pork chops.

 

Once one side of the potatoes got crispy and I turned them over I then placed the chops on the other half of the pan, they got a beautiful sear on them very quickly.  Because I didn’t peel the potatoes the skin on them also got crispy and tasted just like the potato skins you get out in restaurants, I think I will have to try making those skins on this grill instead of the oven next time we are in the mood for them.

 

All in all dinner tonight was quickly cooked in about 15 minutes, not bad for a nice pork chop dinner. I did the broccoli in the microwave in 5 minutes and we had a small tossed salad too.

I had 4 whole chickens in the fridge that needed to be cooked so today I decided to pressure cook them and the debone them and use the meat in other dishes. In the process I also got a lot of stock that I packed into containers and put in the freezer for use in soups and gravy. The reason I had so many chickens was the local store we favor had them on sale this week for a great price and when I can get them at a great price this is what I do, I buy extra and that way I have the meat already for use in other recipes. Now I have a few packages in the freezer to use in pot pies, soup, croquettes and so on.

 

After all the cooking and deboning today I naturally used some of the chicken for dinner. I deboned one and made a simple gravy from the stock by reducing it, adding some green onions, parsley and pepper and then thickening the resulting broth with some Wondra flour mixed with some water. I served it with plain steamed rice and broccoli on the side. We enjoyed it and hubby has some to take for lunch later in the week. I really think a pressure cooker should be a part of every cooks arsenal, they make quick versital meals. My favorite stove top models a re made by Kuhn Rikon, these cookers are fantastic! They say they are made to tighter specs and after using one of them I am convinced it isn’t hype, my meals come out much more flavorful when made in one of their cookers.

My next favorite stove top models are from Fagor, I have been using them since the early to mid 1990′s and they have turned out some great meals and still work as well as ever.

When I just want to “set it and forget it” I turn to one of the digital cookers I have here, all of my digitals are from QVC the home shopping place and are their own house brands, they truely are set it and forget it appliances and quite handy to have when you have other things to be doing while dinner is cooking.  You don’t really have to babysit any cooker but with a stovetop model you do have to regulate the heat to get it set just right and then you will come back to turn off the stove, with the digitals you simply put your ingredients into the pot close the lid set the pressure level and timer and it will come to pressure, cook and shut off on it’s own, most will also go to a keep warm setting when the actual pressure cooking is finished.

I got my first pressure cooker back in 1970 when I got married, I bought it for myself even before I bought a set of regular cookware and have been using them ever since. If you work and have to get dinner on the table fast at the end of the day I really think you should consider getting yourself a pressure cooker, there is a perfect model out there for everyone.

 

Tonight I was in the mood for some soup so I gave some thought to what I was in the mood for exactly. While perusing the freezer to see what I had on hand I came across a lot of pork bones from some roasts we had eaten. Seeing as I also wanted to make some room in the freezer for the up coming holiday season and all the cooking it entails I pulled all the bones out and set them on the counter, I also took out two containers of pork stock I had already made from some of the other roasts we had enjoyed. The bones were nice and carmelized with some bits of meat left on them and I knew they would make a nice stock for some soup.

 

While trying to think of what I would add to my soup I thought of my favorite Chinese place back in NYC and their great Won Ton soup that would just hit the spot on a cold snowy day back when I was still living and working up in the city. Hubby was going to the supermarket earlier to pick up some bread, eggs and a few other staples so I also asked him to pick me up some won ton skins……..he gave me a strange look.

Hubby doesn’t like won ton soup as he says the dumplings in it are filled with “mystery” meat and as a fussy eater he wants to know exactly what is in everything he eats, I do manage to sneak things in on him from time to time but he doesn’t trust too many people to prepare his food. I decided to make some of the dumplings with the bits of pork from the bones and I would make some others with ground chicken breast, I knew he would definitely eat the ones with the chicken.

I took  two nice sized chicken breast halves out of the freezer and when they defrosted I put them in my little Ninja container along with a few slivers of carrot for a bit of color and a green onion, I added a splash of soy sauce and some pepper and chopped it all together until the chicken was finely minced. I did the same with the bits of pork, added some seasoning and minced it all together. I set these aside while I continued to prep the rest of the vegggies to go in the finished broth later.

Into my large Kuhn Rikon 12 quart pressure cooker I put all the bones, about 4 pounds of them, I added a whole onion, a nice slice of ginger and a bit of salt and some pepper and then covered it all with the already made broth and water. I set the top on the cooker and turned on the stove, when it came up to pressure I let it cook for an hour, I wanted a nice strong broth. Pretty soon the smell in the house made the dogs go nuts, they kept running into the kitchen to sniff the air. Poor babies, I just know they think they will be having some nice pork roast later from what they are smelling………I think they’ll be disappointed!

After an hour I let the pressure reduce on its own and then strained the stock, it smelled amazing so I tasted a bit of it……….just to be sure it was good, you understand………it took me a whole mug full to make sure! And good it was! I would have probably eaten it just the way it was but I wanted to make a meal out of the soup so I needed to wait and finish it properly. I put it back into the pressure cooker with the rest of the slivered carrots, celery and onion I had cut and put the top back on it, I let it come up to pressure for two minutes and then took it off the stove and released the pressure. Meanwhile I steamed the dumplings in my digital pressure cooker for 5 minutes to make sure the chicken in them was well cooked, the pork was already cooked in those dumplings so they only needed to be reheated in the broth when we ate.

 

We sat down to eat and hubby LOVED the soup! That is very exciting because he doesn’t like soup, never has and usually I eat the whole pot of whatever kind I make all by myself. He actually said if there was enough he was going to take some for lunch at work tomorrow, he loved the dumplings too. After more than 40 years of feeding him he finally sees the light as far as soup being a satisfying meal……..WHOOPEEEEEEEE!! This will become a regular dish here at home, hubby even went back for seconds!

Hubby mentioned the other night that he hadn’t had a quesadilla for quite a long time. Apparently when I used to work in another state he and the boys ate these all the time here at the house. However, they made them with just cheese in them so I really wouldn’t call them a quesadilla, to me it was more like a plain grilled cheese sandwich, made on flour tortillas.

 

Today earlier I grilled some steak and chicken and then chopped them up after they chilled a bit. I also sauteed some fresh mushrooms and grill some onions. I was also going to grill some red peppers to go in hubbys but he has had them everyday for the past week so he is kind of burned out on them right now. I grated a large block of Colby Jack cheese and chopped some tomatoes too. Hubby and Matt went to the range to shoot and will be home shortly so I will make some of both chicken and some steak ones for them. The one in the pictures was mine that I ate a little while ago, it had the steak, carmelized onions, mushrooms and of course the cheese, I then grilled on on my Caphalon two burner grill pan until the cheese was melted and the tortilla was very crisp. I like mine with the sour cream and tomatoes but the guys just like theirs plain without those two additions.

 

If you need a quick simple dinner let me suggest you make some of these, especially if you have leftover roast chicken or beef roast just sitting in your fridge waiting to be made into something for dinner, they take about 10 minutes from start to finish to make and grill, you can’t beat that for a quick after work weekday dinner.