Pico de Gallo, Salsa – Recipe for Fresh Salsa

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Pico de Gallo, Salsa Fresca – Fresh Salsa

This is one of my all time, most favorite recipes. Its super simple, loaded with the best fresh vegetables, is a snap to throw together and is absolutely delicious. Best of all, my children love it, especially my oldest, for whom I developed this particular version.

Pico de Gallo, Salsa Fresca - Recipe for Fresh Salsa

Now, pico de gallo is nothing but fresh salsa. The phrase is Spanish, and means rooster’s beak. I’d love to know why, but it cracks me up when I think of it. This is also readily adaptable – this fresh salsa can be made with all kinds of different ingredients, and with everything homemade, adapt it to your own liking. Swap out the tomato for fresh mango. Add more or less heat by varying the amount of jalapeno, or by swapping out for Anaheims for milder flavor or for Serrano peppers for more intense heat. My family loves this most with a ton of fresh lime juice – we usually use up to ¼ cup.

When I’m making this pico de gallo recipe, I often make at least twice what I’ll think we need for a meal. Of course I serve it with tortilla chips – that’s our favorite way to have it, and I love seeing the Horde snatch up loads of fresh, wholesome vegetables. It’s a great little appetizer, and something that I like to put out for anytime we do a movie night. But it’s also super for a dressing for a taco salad, as a topper for tacos of all kinds, to top grilled chicken or pork chops, tossed with black beans for a quick salad or perhaps my favorite way – to top a simple cheese omelet. With a little extra fresh salsa stashed in the fridge, I’m almost halfway to second meal.

If you’d like to have a more traditional fresh salsa, drop a cup or so of the fresh pico de gallo into a blender and pulse until you have a rough puree.  The couple of picky critters I feed that insist they won’t eat raw tomatoes eat the fresh salsa that way like there’s no tomorrow. Shhhh.

Ingredients – Pico de Gallo, Salsa Fresca

4 medium tomato, diced

1 onion, finely chopped

1 fresh jalapeno pepper seeded and chopped (or more if desired)

1 small bell pepper, seeded and chopped

½ cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped

3 green onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon fresh garlic, minced

2-3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Directions – Pico de Gallo, Fresh Salsa

In a medium mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and stir well. Taste and adjust for salt, pepper and lime juice. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes to allow the flavors to marry.

Note: You can seed your tomatoes if you wish, but I like leaving mine whole. Once the pico de gallo has chilled for a bit, you’ll see there’s a bit of liquid that settles to the bottom of the container. That liquid is my favorite stuff – it’s bright and vibrant and absolutely delightful. I use that as the dressing for a taco salad with grilled chicken and fresh chopped avocado. Mmmmm!

 

Simple Layered Chicken Taco Salad

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Simple Layered Chicken Taco Salad

Simple Chicken Taco Salad

Since we’re hitting grilling and picnicking season, I decided to tap some of the great salad recipes I have and choose one that met several criteria. It had to be delicious cold, it had to portable, had to be no fuss, and it really had to appeal to the kiddos. We’ve got the end of the year picnic approaching, and I wanted to make something that would appeal to my grade schoolers, something special to congratulate them on a job well done.

I think my favorite part of this recipe is that once I prepped the ingredients and stashed them in the fridge, I discovered they were so easy and appealing that the children starting making them for themselves. Not too bad, since they’re loaded with lean protein and lots of fresh veggies. Any recipe the kids choose to fix for themselves that contains that much good stuff ranks high in my book.

You also have a couple of choice with this easy chicken salad. If you’d like, serve the chicken and black beans warm, and top with the fresh vegetables at the last minute to keep them crisp. Or chill all of the components and layer them together ahead of time. As long as they are kept cold, the vegetables will maintain their crunch. You can certainly serve them in regular bowls. But they’re so pretty layered into pint mason jars, then wrapped in napkins – they make a festive, perfect, portable picnic food.

One further note – you can certainly make this easy chicken salad with any leftover chicken. But you can plan ahead too. Plan on grilled chicken and vegetables for supper the night before your picnic, and grill up enough extra to have enough for this recipe chilled and ready to go. Simply reserve enough of your vegetables from grilling to toss into the black beans, and your picnic will almost pack itself!

Simple Chicken Taco Salad

2 cups cubed, grilled chicken

1 teaspoon chili or taco seasoning

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 teaspoon chili or taco seasoning

¼ of an onion,  chopped

¼ bell pepper, chopped

2 ounces cherry tomatoes, chopped

1 cup Cheddar or Monterrey Jack cheese, shredded

2 green onions, chopped, tops included

½ cup sour cream

1 cup ice burg lettuce, chopped

2 ounces cherry tomatoes, chopped

Salsa, chopped avocado, tortilla chips

  1. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine black beans, chili or taco seasoning, onion, pepper, and 2 ounces cherry tomatoes. Stir to combine. Cook over medium-low heat until vegetables soften and are slightly tender, about 5-7 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool. (Or serve warm if using immediately).
  2. In a medium bowl, toss cubed chicken with taco or chili seasoning.
  3. If you wish to layer into mason jars, add ingredients carefully to keep the layers distinct. Feel free to use any container you wish. Divide ingredients among four pint jars, starting first with the chicken. Add a layer of the black bean mixture, then the cheese. Top with green onions, sour cream and ice burg lettuce. Finish with cherry tomatoes and serve with salsa, avocado and tortilla chips.

 

 

Baked Lemon Garlic Chicken

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Lemon Garlic Chicken – Recipe for Baked Lemon Garlic Chicken

Like many people, I have too many duties for the hours at my disposal. Because of this I’ve a several favored food staples that I keep in my refrigerator and pantry. Chicken, ground beef, pasta, potatoes and marina head up the lists of methods to build great dinners easily. I’ve learned that regardless how smashed for time I am, I can create quick, simple, inexpensive chicken recipes for dinner at least twice weekly, and this one is among the best.
Lemon and garlic are constants in my kitchen. Each offer wonderful flavor to a number of recipes, including this one. Baked Lemon Garlic Chicken leads my list for fast, simple and scrumptious. It combines vibrant, beautifully distinct flavors in a savory delight that appeals to everybody. Create this with either chicken breasts or chicken thighs, anything you have on hand or find on sale.
This recipe involves leaving the skin on. Because the chicken is cooked with the sauce, often it can lack color once the baking is finished. Consequently it works very well to run your almost-cooked chicken under the broiler just for a little bit, until it is golden and beautiful. This recipe works beautifully along with herbed rice, or rice pilaf, and don’t forget to serve the sauce.
One additional note - if you wish, you can double the recipe, then let the extra chicken freeze with the sauce as a marinade. Simply wrap it well, and defrost in the refrigerator before cooking. Or create the recipe as written, separate it into individual portions, freeze all of them separately, and you have a fantastic meal for just one or two. Perfect Baked Lemon Garlic Chicken in no time!

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 35 min
Will serve: 4 servings

Ingredients
• 1/4 cup olive oil – I prefer full flavored or extra virgin, but what you may like
• 3 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 2 lemons, one zested and squeezed and 1 sliced into wedges
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tsp . dried rosemary
• 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp . chopped fresh thyme leaves
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 boneless chicken breasts, skin on
• Fresh parsley, finely chopped, to complete
• Optional - 4 ounces. quartered cherry tomatoes
• Optional – 1 tbspcapers

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
With a small saucepan over medium low heat, heat the olive oil until very warm. Add garlic and cook for just about a minute. Do not allow it to burn – you actually just want to permit the flavors start to bloom.
Remove the oil from the heat, then include the white wine, lemon zest, lemon juice, herbs and ½ tsp of kosher salt and ½ tsp of fresh black pepper to the oil. Mix to mix, and place in the bottom of a 9×13 baking dish.
Dry chicken well and put all of them in the dish, turning to coat with the sauce. Place them skin side up. Dust lightly with salt and pepper (yes, that’s again). Put lemon wedges around your chicken, and add the cherry tomatoes and capers if perhaps you are making use of them.
Bake chicken for 30-35 minutes, depending on size of the chicken pieces. You’d like an internal temp of 165F. In the event the skin is under done or too light, let them broil for just a little bit or until golden. Cover your casserole with foil, and permit chicken to rest for ten minutes prior to serving. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed. Serve with its own pan juices, and sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley.

*Note – you may use boneless, skinless chicken and there are generally advantages and disadvantages to either kinds. Skin free cooks a tad bit more speedily, but could dry out and does not truly appear golden. Skin on pieces can be golden and toasty, yet really are a bit more fatty, and may seem a lttle bit ‘flabby’ without caution. Honestly - both of them taste terrific.

>Simple Pasta Primavera – What is Pasta Primavera? Springtime Celebration!

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Simple Pasta Primavera – What is Pasta Primavera? Springtime Celebration!

There are many recipes for pasta primavera, and they come in a thousand variations. From gourmet pasta recipes which call for cream, expensive cheeses, or unusually shaped pastas, to the simplest of recipes for pasta primavera, asking for nothing but a couple of vegetables and a drizzle of oil. They are usually all delicious too – and the thing is, they are every single one an authentic pasta primavera.

Why? Because the word primavera in Italian means nothing more than spring, and so when asking ‘what is pasta primavera?’, the answer can be found in any pasta recipe that connotes spring, it’s weather, it’s warmth, and it’s fresh produce. For this reason, not only is pasta primavera a very healthy pasta dish, it is also incredibly adaptable, quick, easy and delicious. It can serve as a main dish or a side, and many recipes for pasta primavera are even fabulous cold.

This particular recipe for pasta primavera is quick, easy, delicious and adaptable. Use whatever fresh vegetables you wish – and if you luck into a bit of the best of spring veggies, such as asparagus or ramps, throw them in! Cut the roasting time for the more delicate veggies, so as not to overcook them. If you’d like, start the carrots about ten minutes before the other vegetables, or just cut them into a finer julienne and toss them all in together. Or if you are simply craving fresh, bright flavors, make this any time of year with whichever veggies you find most appealing.

Give this simple pasta primavera a shot – you’ll quickly come to love it!

Ingredients

  • 2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into thin strips
  • 1 medium zucchini, cut into thin strips
  • 1 yellow squash, cut into thin strips
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • 2 bell peppers, one yellow and one red, cut into thin strips
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, both to taste
  • 1 tablespoon dried Italian seasoning
  • 1 pound bowtie pasta
  • 15 cherry tomatoes, halved and seeded
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Directions

Preheat oven to 450F.

In a large bowl, toss the vegetables with the oil, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. Transfer vegetables to a large baking sheet and spread into a single layer. Place into preheated oven and roast for about 15-20 minutes. Halfway through baking time, stir the vegetables. You want the carrots to be tender, and the rest to begin to brown, but not overcooked.

Meanwhile, in a large pot of well salted (tastes like sea water) boiling water, cook the pasta until either tender or al dente – to your preference. It should take about 8-10 minutes. Drain pasta, but hang onto about a cup or so of the pasta cooking liquid.

Toss the vegetables and pasta together in a large bowl to combine. Made sure to add the oil and juices from the veggies that collect on the baking sheet. Add cherry tomatoes and Parmesan, and enough of the reserved cooking liquid to moisten. Season with salt and black pepper to taste and serve immediately.

>How to Deglaze a Pan and Build a Pan Sauce

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I’m going to show you how to make a pan sauce, and we’re going to do this by deglazing. Now you can think of this as using a magic potion in the kitchen, and you’re going to do it with this magic wand.

Now over here all I’ve done is browned off a pork chop. And you want this nice rich, deep color, because that means you’ve got this stuff left in the pan. Now this is going to be the fond that we’re going to use to build a sauce. It’s called fond because that means foundation in French, and it’s the foundation for sauces, and it’s the foundation for flavor.

Now to deglaze, what you want to do is get that stuff up off the bottom of your pan and into your food where it’s going to do you some good. We’re going to do that this way – with a little wine. And you can do it with any number of things, just about any kind of liquid. I like using a little bit of acid, and wine is an acidic ingredient. You can also use vinegar – I love cooking with vinegar; it just adds amazing flavor. You can use alcohol of whatever kind, brandy if you want to.

Now next step, and I’m going to throw in…now this is how hard a pan sauce is. It seriously is this easy. A little bit of garlic, a little bit of shallot, and a little bit of chicken broth. You don’t much, and at this stage, we’re going to give this, I’d say, no more than three or four minutes. I’m going to let it come to a very nice, heavy rolling boil. We’re going to reduce it by about half in volume, while those shallots get soft.

This is just about perfect. We’ve allowed that wine to reduce and that intensifies all those flavors. It burnt off about all of the alcohol, but you’ve got amazing taste left in there. So this one we’re going to keep very, very simple. We’re going to finish it with just a pat of butter, and we’re going to whisk him in like that. And as soon as that gets melted down, we add the last little tiny thing. Are we good? There! This is just a little bit of fresh parsley.

That’s it! And I’m taking this straight this straight over this way. Perfect. And that is how to deglaze!

>Fond! What it is and how to use it!

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Fond and How to Use it

One of the most important things that you can learn how to do if you’re teaching yourself how to cook, is to learn how to cook with this stuff. Now, you’re going to hear this talked about in two different ways. There are going to be people who have studied classical French food and they’re going to be calling it suc – think of the French word sucre for sugar – that’s what that is. Here in America we call it fond, even though fond in classically French cooking is the next step. But we’re going to call this entire process of development fond. And I remember it, and help my kids remember it when I’m teaching them by remembering we’re fond of fond.

Now fond in French means foundation and what you’re doing with this stuff is building from it. And it’s the most valuable thing which you can develop in your kitchen. This is the first step in deglazing and this is the first step in developing a pan sauces.

Now what I’ve done in here, is I’ve browned off a whole bunch of bacon, and then I’ve browned chicken on top of it. All this luscious, lovely stuff down here in the bottom? That’s where the outsides of my foods have caramelized or developed their sugars. It’s incredibly rich, it’s incredibly deep in flavor.

Now my next step is going to be to use the fond, all of this wonderful stuff as a base for a sauce that I’m going to build to go with my chicken. I’m going to do that by simply deglazing my pan. Deglazing is not hard. You put some kind of liquid in there, keep it over the heat, scrape it up with a wooden spoon, and that’s what gives you the basis for just about any kind of pan sauce you want to develop. In this case I’m using some white wine, some chicken broth and some veggies, but you can use just about anything you can think of. And that’s all there is to it.

So – fond. We’re fond of it. It’s the foundation for all of our recipes. This is how you get really fabulous flavor!

>Peppercorns – Green, Pink, Black and White

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Video and transcript for Peppercorns – Green, Pink, White AND Black Peppercorns!, by Jan Charles, The Thrillbilly Gourmet

One of my very favorite ingredients to work with when cooking is pepper. Now pepper is ubiquitous, it’s all over the place. Salt and pepper is very, very common but there is so much more than that. You’re probably very familiar with simple black peppercorns. You can get them in all kinds of sizes, shapes and varieties. You just crush them up and apply as much or as little as you want. But that is not all there is to pepper, and a lot of it depends on the life cycle of when the little seeds – well, they’re drupes – are picked.

So – if you don’t let them get all the way to the black peppercorn stage you start out over here, with green peppercorns. Now these are very similar, they have the same chemical compound that give black peppercorn it’s little peppery kick. That distinct little bite that nothing else has. Now these are done in several different ways. You’ll often find them sold like this, in little tiny jars and they’ve been packed in a salt water brine or sometimes in vinegar, and to use them this way – let’s see if I can make this happen – just crush them with the back of a spoon. Just open them up and you’ve got that wonderful peppery kick. It’s softer though, and if you’ve gotten rid of the salt brine,  you have this beautiful, soft blossom of flavor, but without quite as much strength.

Now go on up in the life cycle and you wait a little bit longer, a white peppercorn is simply a peppercorn that has been picked right before it has developed that black outer casing. Now these are also done dry, and done just like you would do a black peppercorn. A lot of times white pepper is reserved for white dishes.  If you want to do a pretty béchamel and don’t want black pepper flecks, or if you run a puree of potato and don’t want the black pepper flecks, use the white pepper. You get much the same flavor but you don’t have, you know – little specks.

And finally, over here, we have pink peppercorns. Now this is a slightly different species than these other three, but they do have much the same flavor. You can buy these dried, and if you can see this, this one’s set aside by this, what  you have is this little tiny husk, and this little kernel on the inside. Now that husk is what it makes it so pretty, and pink peppercorn – and green peppercorn too – both have been rising in popularity recently. I’ve noticed that from browsing online – lots of people have been posting recipes.

Next time you’re looking at pepper – give one of these other ones a try. You’ll love the difference in flavor, and the variety, and you won’t be limited to just the black!

Vanilla!

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To use a vanilla bean, take a sharp knife – and you’re after all these little tiny seeds that are inside of it. I don’t think anybody but me has called that caviar, but that’s how valuable they are to a baker. And if you take the tip of your knife and run it this way, that is pure vanilla. And if you’ve ever eaten a custard or an ice cream that had all those little tiny black flecks in it that’s where they come from.
Now that’s the good stuff, use that when you’re cooking, but don’t throw the pod away. Once you’ve harvested the caviar, because this still has 100,000 uses. For example, dry it off, throw it in a container of sugar, and you’ll have vanilla sugar. You can let these sit there for a couple of weeks and the scent of the vanilla is already in the sugar. The scent is unbelievable – to die for. And the cool thing is you can keep adding sugar as you use it up, and it’ll continue to develop the flavor for a long time. I think I’ve changed this one out probably three times and it still has got a tremendous amount of flavor.
Now if you really love to bake, and you really want to play, extracts and whole beans are not the only way you can do it. This is ground vanilla bean, and what this has done, a manufacturer has taken an entire vanilla pod, probably after they have been used for extract, they’ve allowed it to dry and then they have ground it up. And you can use this in a custard, or in a cake or in ice cream, anywhere you would use real vanilla, and it’s probably – well – I’ve used it in a one to one ratio – a teaspoon of vanilla and a teaspoon of the ground vanilla bean. Really great flavor and the price is awesome -  a fraction of a lot of the great vanilla extracts.
Now this one you don’t find often, outside of commercial bakeries, but this one is – I’ll try to pour this left handed so y’all can see. This one is a vanilla paste. And it’s the same thing. It’s ground vanilla – there we go. See how it’s almost like syrup? It’s been sweetened, usually with a corn syrup of some kind. So you can only use this in a sweet application, the corn syrup doesn’t work really well if you’re making a savory vanilla sauce for a pork loin. But if you’re making cookies, and if you’re making cakes, you can certainly use vanilla paste.
Ok – so that’s it. Pretty much what you need to know about vanilla. You need to go try some of these!