My first mouthful of Polenta seemed to me to be a heavenly cross between cheese grits and cornbread stuffing — two of the most perfectly delicious dishes in the world (especially to a Southern girl.) From that one scrumptious bite, I was hooked — and you will be, too. That’s why polenta will play a part in what’s for dinner tonight.

Polenta has a reputation for being difficult because it takes some time to cook properly (no, you can’t use the instant stuff — that’s not learning how to cook; it’s just learning how to open packages). And tradition holds that it must be stirred constantly to acquire the proper texture without scorching.

However, with a nice, low, even heat under a sturdy pan, you can let your polenta simmer gently while you prepare something to accompany it, giving only the occasional stir to keep things moving along smoothly.

We’re going to let this meal be a little bit more freeform than usual. We suggest your favorite roast or chop with a nice, savory sauce (a mushroom glaze, perhaps?) served over our delicious, creamy Gorgonzola Polenta. For a vegetarian version, serve it alongside Oven-Roasted Asparagus with Dijon Lemon Sauce or Roasted Root Vegetables. Or go spicy with Arroz con Pollo.

Following the Gorgonzola Polenta recipe will help you get a nice grasp on the basic process for making a classic creamy polenta. When you’re ready to branch out, you can start adding in your own flavors and additional textures.

Here are some basic tips, though, that hold true for any polenta attempt:

• Keep an eye on it! Even though you don’t really have to keep stirring continuously if you keep the heat low to medium low, you still need to watch the liquid level.
• Don’t microwave it.  There seems to be a big push lately in favor of microwaved polenta. But anyone who’s ever microwaved anything knows things just don’t turn out quite right when they’re nuked. They may still taste OK, they may even be delicious … but microwave foods rarely taste like the real thing. At least give your polenta a chance the first few times, and clear off a stove burner.
• It’s not grits. I love grits. You (should) love grits. But polenta and grits are two different things. Polenta still retains a husk in a way that grits do not, and it requires a slightly longer cooking time. You can serve the two dishes in similar ways. But respect their differing heritages when learning how to prepare them.
• It doesn’t have to be bland. People will tell you polenta is nothing but cornmeal mush, and that they ate it as kids and hated it. But don’t judge a food by someone’s else’s (or your own) childhood impression of it. One of the reasons why people feed bland foods to children is because kids often reject usual or intense flavors they later grow up to love. Tired parents default to feeding youngsters foods that are inoffensive yet boring … and those kids grow up to hate those same boring foods. (You often can feed kids interesting foods by getting them involved in the process… but that’s fodder for a different blog.) Your polenta can be creamy and intensely flavorful. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Once you’ve mastered the basic polenta recipe, you can move on to more interesting textures and uses. Try our Polenta and Tomato Lasagna. Or find your own creative ways to work it in — we’ve even seen mention of firm polenta as a “crust” for a pizza-style casserole.

Happy Eating… and Pleasant Polenta!

So, I was leery of the whole “exotic tacos” idea to begin with. Sure, fish tacos are not so much wacky and out-of-the-ordinary in the Southwest, but in the Southeast, they’re just starting to make some popularity headway. Yes, ladies and gentlemen from parts unSouthern, there is more to Georgia than Atlanta, and in most parts of that great state (and Alabama, and Mississippi, and Tennessee…), tacos are ground beef, cheese and Rotel diced tomatoes in a crispy, yellow shell.

I, despite having lived in Texas more than anywhere else as a young person, had not experienced much in the way of seafood-based Mexican cuisine until a few months ago. Upon my triumphant return to the land of the Lone Star, I had a delicious shrimp feast featuring camarón over rice in an amazing sauce that was unmistakably Mexican. But I shied away from mixing seafood with taco shells (or corn chips, for that matter) until very recently.

Don’t repeat my mistake. Go ahead, dive in – the tacos are delicious.

You can make them with grilled fish, baked or fried. And you won’t want to stop at fish. Try shrimp, fried oysters – this is another dish that lends itself well to experimentation. As we noted in the past, tacos are incredibly versatile and so easy to make that they almost demand you give them creative flair.

Some tips for making the most of your fish taco experience:

•    Choose a firm variety of fish. Good choices include halibut, red snapper, striped bass, grouper, mahi-mahi, sturgeon, and swordfish.
•    Grill your fish filets whole, and then gently pull the cooked fish apart. Too much poking, prodding and stirring, in an attempt to break the fish apart during the cooking process, can leave you with a gummy mess.
•    You’ll still need to choose flavorings that work well with fish, but you can experiment with spice – chile and lime is a popular combination that seems to work extremely well.

We recommend: Dean Fearing’s Barbecue Shrimp Tacos with Mango-Pickled Red Onion Salad

Happy eating!

The first time I tried to cook gnocchi, I ended up with blobby things that were hard and mushy at the same time, like a mouthful of congealed, floury mashed potatoes.
I know… not exactly appetizing.
Henceforth, I have referred to them as “those lumps,” and I’ve avoided them at all costs.
But I tried a chicken dish with “lumps” a few days ago, and they were wonderful – the gnocchi melted in my mouth, and they had picked up all the lovely flavors of the cream sauce they were served in.
Now that I know how they should taste, I’m ready to try cooking gnocchi at home again for dinner tonight, and I think you should, too.
For your first attempt at this dish, you may want to pick up gnocchi at the store. While this offers fewer opportunities to mess up, it also means you won’t be starting with the freshness of gnocchi made at home. For tonight, I’m using store-bought, until I can get the cooking technique down just right.
So, first some background information.
Gnocchi are essentially plump dumplings commonly made from semolina, wheat flour, potato or bread crumbs. And I was right to begin with – the word “gnocchi” actually means “lumps” in Italian. Wikipedia says the use of potatoes to create the dumplings is a relatively recent development, though many of us are most familiar with that kind of gnocchi.
They are served up with everything from a classic tomato sauce to cheese sauce or pesto, and a French version of the dish, “gnocchis à la parisienne,” is made with pastry dough and served with a Béchamel sauce.
The secret to cooking gnocchi and not “those lumps” – To keep the gnocchi from overcooking, put them into already boiling water, and scoop them out as soon as they begin to float. To add flavor, try cooking them in boiling broth or adding a little olive oil and spices to the water before you bring it to a boil.
When you’re ready to try creating your gnocchi from scratch, they lend themselves to many creative dishes. Start with our basic gnocchi recipe, tossed with a classic tomato sauce. Then move on to more intricate flavors, like our Gnocchi Gratin with Fontina and Spinach or Braised Oxtails with Gnocchi. Once you’ve mastered those, try making your own varieties of gnocchi dumplings – some interesting versions we’ve seen include pumpkin gnocchi (great for fall), green pea gnocchi and even delicious dessert gnocchis, made with things like chocolate, apricots and plums.
Good luck to all of us, and happy eating!

Many people (particularly in the United States) think of peachy cobblers and flaky cherry confections when they hear the word “pie.”

But savory pies have long been a staple of tables around the world. Wikipedia says that “pyes” were referenced as a food in England as early as the 12th Century, and meat pies with fillings like steak, cheese, kidney, minced beef, chicken and mushrooms are still very popular in all parts of the United Kingdom. Here in the U.S., some regions are more fond of certain forms of meat pies and pastries than others. For example, parts of Louisiana are well-known for their delicious meat pies, and the Natchitoches meat pie (ground beef, ground pork, onions, peppers, and garlic, wrapped in a pie shell and fried up in peanut oil) is one of Lousiana’s official state foods.

For the most part, a savory or meat pie in the United State is a pot pie (or one of those things you slip in a silvery “Super Crispy” sleeve and microwave – but we’re trying to avoid those here. Work with us.).

And we’re OK with that, because pot pies are delicious. So our first suggestion for supper tonight is a nice, classic turkey pot pie – it’s filling, it’s scrumptious, and it will impress the people you’re serving it to.

But we want to encourage you to try some of the other ways meat pies are prepared around the world. (So you don’t have to resort to that old microwave pie-in-a-“crispy sleeve” thing again.)

Meat pies can be big, small or somewhere in between. The most common form looks like a half-moon, and you can think of them kind of like large ravioli. Some of the same tips apply: Don’t overfill, coat the edges with an egg white wash to seal them well. But some pie pointers apply, also: You’ll want to make small fork holes in the top of your little moon-shaped pie to vent steam.

The basic process is this: Take pie dough (you can use our easy recipe or pick some up at the store), place your (already cooked)  filling on one half of the pie dough circle (being careful not to put too much), brush egg whites on the dough’s edges, then fold in half. Next, gently press a fork around the edge where the dough makes a seam, to help discourage the pie from popping open. Finally, if you’re baking the pie(s) use the same small fork to gently poke a few holes in the top. If you’re making fried meat pies (yes, you can do that, but we recommend baking for health reasons), then you don’t want to poke the holes.

Now, go forth and make pies! This is one of those dishes that lends itself to experimentation. Use some of the recipes you’ve enjoyed in the past to create fillings that can be showcased in a new, flaky and delicious way.

Happy eating!

Jumbo flavor, jumbo fun.
Spaghetti is a great standby dish in most homes. So is lasagna. They’re satisfying, they’re tasty, and they’re pretty easy to cook.
But you have them all the time.
Boring.
There’s got to be a way to add a little wow factor without taking away from the ease and convenience those two dishes provide.
TA-DA! – through the magic of LHTC, we bring you the perfect compromise, pretty enough to take to a party, yummy enough to satisfy your Italian food craving, and so easy your 15-year-old son can (probably) make it.
On the menu tonight: stuffed jumbo pasta shells (conchiglioni, if you want to get all Italian about it).
First of all, we’ll address the stuffing issue. The most basic recipes usually call for a mixture of parsley or oregano, ricotta cheese, grated mozzarella, and parmesan (preferably not the kind in the can, but the kind that’s grated into tiny strips). Usually there’s also an egg or two added in to help the baked mixture hold its form once cooked. The final result is classic and delicious.
But you don’t have to use the basic stuffing recipe. You can add in sausage or spinach, take out the parmesan, or add in cheddar. You can do a stuffing with taco meat and green chilies to add a different kind of Latin flavor. This dish can be customized for the vegetarian or the meat-lover with equal ease. Let your imagination (and your taste buds) be your guide.
Some basic tips for cooking your shells:
•    Don’t get them too soft: You’ll be baking this dish after you set it up, and you don’t want the shells to completely fall apart. It ruins your presentation.
•    Don’t just dump them in a colander to drain – scoop them out and place them in the colander, so they don’t get damaged. You need big, beautiful, intact shells to hold your stuffing.
•    Run cold water over your shells once you get them into the colander, so they will cool more quickly and be easier to handle. It’s OK if they are not hot when you stuff them, because they’re going to bake before you serve them. It’s also a good idea to let your stuffing mixture rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before you start working with it, because it will hold its shape better and be easier to manipulate.
Because this is an Italian dish, your recipe is most likely going to call for some form of classic Italian sauce. So keep that in mind as you plan a filling. This doesn’t mean you need to create a stuffing that matches your sauce. Think the other way around. If you want to use a filling that has a lot of meat, change the sauce recipe: make a meatless tomato or tomato-and-mushroom sauce. If you want to go the Mexican route, add a little enchilada sauce to a basic tomato sauce, and go from there.
This dish can be as uncluttered or as complicated as you want it to be. Yet, even in its simplest forms, it always seems to have a little bit more flair than basic spaghetti.
Mangiare bene!

“Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow.
Mary baked it in a pie
And cooked it, nice and slow.”

Yeah, that’s not how that goes.

But it’s not unrealistic. Shepherd’s pie is as English as afternoon tea, and as popular a dish as any ever cooked on that side of the pond. So it’s not out of the question for Mary to have gotten a mite peckish and, um, invited her lamb in for dinner.

Here on this side of the Atlantic, we tend to make what is properly called a “cottage pie” – that is, the same kind of dish, but prepared with beef instead of lamb. It’s savory, it’s filling, and it’s an ancient comfort food that is the ideal thing to cook for dinner on a cool fall evening.

Like meat loaf, cottage pie (and other meat pies) grew out of a desire to stretch a family’s portion of protein into one more meal. Even a small bit of ground beef mixed into a pie filling added some savory flavor and energy-providing fat and amino acids to a meal. Meat pies were the province of the poor and the hard-working, to whom fat was a life-giver, not a diet-buster.

Of course, most of us hard-working folks these days labor along behind a desk, so we don’t need one more extra layer of blubber to keep us warm through the winter. However, there are ways to make this dish a little bit healthier than its fattier incarnations.

First off, cottage pie is made with ground beef. Even if you use a super-lean meat, you should rinse your beef somewhere in the cooking process. Do this with care, because what you’re rinsing off is burning-hot grease, but don’t skip this step. Once the meat is done browning but isn’t overdone:

1.    Clean out that sink and place a large colander into it. Grab an empty coffee can (or whatever holds your old bacon grease) and place it close to the sink.
2.    Take the meat off the heat. Then make absolutely certain there’s a clear path between you and the garbage disposal. No pets, no kids, no trash cans – nothing between you and the sink.
3.    Make one more check for obstacles, then pick up the pan, move straight to the sink, and gently pour the grease out of the pan into the coffee can, then pour the meat into the colander.
4.    Rinse the meat with hot water (after letting the water run, away from the meat, for a few minutes to clear the pipes of any leftover grease.) This serves two purposes: First, it keeps the meat from getting too cold. Second, it keeps the grease from solidifying and helps it run down the drain instead of immediately becoming a clog.
5.    Put the meat back in the pan, and then run the disposal.
6.    Move on to the next step in the recipe (adding vegetables, spices and other cook-ins.)

Vegetables are the next secret health ingredient for this dish. Most recipes do call for some vegetables, anyway. But we’re talking about additional vegetables – stealth vegetables.

Grate about a half-a-cup each of carrots and zucchini, then add into your meat as you are adding in sauce and spices. Let the carrots and zucchini cook with the meat. When they’re done, you won’t be able to taste them, but they’ll help fill out the pie (and fill you up), meaning you’ll eat less meat and consume fewer calories.

There are even ways to bring the fat level down in the delicious mashed-potato topping (an integral part of this dish.) Ignore the mashed potato recipe that comes with your cottage or shepherd’s pie recipe – look for a potato recipe that uses broth for flavor, does NOT include things like cream cheese, heavy cream or loads of butter, and be sure not to make your potatoes too thin OR two thick – go for a happy medium that can be baked without drying out but won’t liquefy and run into your meat mix.

Try out our cottage pie recipe here, or add one to our database of recipes.

Happy eating!

Welcome Fall With A Bowl of Stew

Summer has officially gone to bed and turned down the lights – the sky outside the windows here at LHTC is a deep, bruised gray, and it seems more like late evening than mid-morning. We’re going to need something hearty and warm for dinner tonight, something that reminds us of the glow of home pushing back early twilight, and long nights by the fire.

One of my favorite childhood meals was beef stew with fresh bread. I remember it as a collaborative effort, my parents moving in an almost-dance of fluid coordination to brown meat and chop vegetables and put plates on the table. It’s always been my dad’s privilege to go back once any dish is cooking and add in a spice or two. We cook by intuition, my father and I, though we have great respect for a good base recipe. (In fact, the first “recipe” I ever concocted on my own was a rambling, dictated plan for “Daddy Deer Meat Stew” that called for, if I’m not mistaken, about 18 thousand potatoes.)

Stew serves very well as a canvas for the culinary artist. Its flavors blend and swirl, meeting, touching, and then separating on the tongue into their own respective textures. A stew can be delicate, simple, hearty, complex, spicy, tender, lush – it requires only that you treat its cooking process with respect and that you remember it’s not a soup.

In its purest form, a stew is a collection of ingredients that have harmonized – it’s a chorus of many food voices all overlaying one another. It’s one of mankind’s most ancient meals, and one of our easiest, utilizing one pot and one fire to feed many mouths with little effort. Any grouping of meat and vegetables can come together into a stew – recipes abound for chicken stew, lamb and lentil stew, even stewed fish.

Which brings us to our next point: “Stew” is a verb. The dish is named for the process. To stew any food is to cook it long and slow in water or broth (or wine, even beer) until it forms a gravy that brings all the flavors in the pot together. Stewing is often used to soften tough cuts of meat, and stews are sometimes thickened with a roux (or with a packet of brown gravy mix – but you didn’t hear that from me.) There are even delicious vegetable stews, golden with the colors and flavors of a fresh harvest, that don’t have meat in them at all.

Tonight, for dinner, pick up the basic ingredients for a good stew: beef (not too lean, or it will get tough), beef stock, carrots, potatoes, onions and mushrooms, maybe some little green peas.  Then put it all together into a big pot and simmer it until the ancient scents of hearth and home fill your house.

When you get tired of plain beef stew, here are some more exotic recipes to try:
Green Chile, Turkey and Bean Stew
Winter Vegetable Stew over Quinoa
Lamb Stew with Chickpeas and Tomatoes

I go through every busy week with big hopes of eating some of my favorite breakfast treats over the weekend.  I dream about brunch filled with made-to-order omelets, Belgian waffles with fruit-flavored syrups & whipped cream, slices of 3 different types of melon, and bacon AND sausage.
Inevitably, I end up eating cereal.
During the weekdays, I make ever-changing mental lists of dishes I can whip up for dinner.  Then, it finally occurred to me to stop fantasizing about weekend brunch and do something crazy, make breakfast for dinner!  It’s the easiest answer!  I know what breakfast foods I love, and I usually have most of the ingredients in my fridge.  And who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner?
You can make:
Poached Eggs and Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes
OR
Florentine Scramble with a side of toast and Oven-Cooked Bacon
OR
Spinach and Bacon Quiche with some Roasted Oven Fries on the side

Enjoy, get a good night’s sleep, wake up and repeat!

You need something quick.  You want something tasty. Try something different with that pork tenderloin in your fridge.

Easy Dinner =  Pork Fajitas

Fancier Dinner =  “Easy Dinner” with homemade Flour Tortillas and Pico de Gallo

The Extravagant Dinner = “Fancier Dinner” plus Guacamole with Chile Rellenos on the side

If you only have the energy for making the fajitas, your meal will leave a smile on your face.  You can work up to the other stuff later!

They say you should never eat any meatloaf but your mother’s. And for the most part, that’s true. But, at some point, each person must become his or her own meatloaf-maker. The art of the loaf must be passed on through the ages. And so, friends, your day in the kitchen has come.

Like finger-painting, pottery and child-rearing, the meatloaf is a hands-on venture and less than an exact science. No one person’s ideal loaf is quite like any other. So please take the basic tips we offer you here today and expand upon them. That way, your children can one day insist to their children that all good meatloaf contains pickle relish and boiled eggs, just like Grandma makes. (That is NOT a serving suggestion.)

However, a good meatloaf has certain essential characteristics that must be present. Mastering these musts will help ensure that your loaf is technically perfect. (Whether it tastes good to anyone but you is a personal gamble you take when you begin to express yourself through the art of the loaf.)

A good meatloaf:

• Sticks together: A good meatloaf has enough bread (or bread crumbs), raw egg and meat to hold itself together as you add in a few other tasty ingredients. It should be slightly sticky and firmly cohesive as you mix it (and, yes, you need to get in there and mix it by hand, at least the first couple of times, so you can get a feel for how it should hold together). If it seems to be separating into small, individual clumps, you need to add in more meat or bread and egg. Do NOT over mix – this can’t be stressed enough. You want it to hold together, but the individual ingredients still need to be visible.
• Isn’t too wet or too dry: Make sure your meatloaf is the texture of wet, sticky bread dough – not cake batter, which is way too wet, and not moist stuffing, which means it’s too dry.
• Is NOT a giant hamburger: Meatloaf was originally intended to be a way to stretch small, leftover amounts of ground meat until grocery day. So the essence of the meatloaf is ground meat PLUS something else. Now we prepare and cook a meatloaf for a variety of reasons, but to be true to the spirit of the dish, you should make sure your loaf isn’t all meat and sauce. After all, if you wanted to cook a hamburger, you could just, you know … cook a hamburger.

Once you’ve got a basic recipe down (we have a couple of interesting ones to try here and here), try adding in your own tidbits and flavors. Some popular variations and add-ins include a barbecue meatloaf, meatloaf with green and red bell peppers added in, flavor enhancements like pre-mixed onion soup or dip mixes, and the afore-mentioned hard-boiled eggs (actually a very well-loved mix-in.) Just be careful to keep your basic meatloaf qualities in mind as you add things – this means you should never overpower your meat/bread/raw egg base with other ingredients. So add things in slowly, a little bit this time, more the next time.

But don’t be afraid to experiment — the loaf is an evolving artform.

We suggest serving your masterpiece with simple mashed potatoes (try mixing them with the meatloaf sauce or whip up a classic brown gravy) and steamed broccoli with or without a scrumptious cheese sauce.

Happy cooking!