What I Cooked Last Week
A New Recurring Segment
Weekend Cook: Grilled Chicken, Kale, Corn Salad, Grilled Bread, Tomato Jam
Grilled Chicken: this was a simple marinade of rosemary, olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper for 24 hours. Spatchcocked the chicken into fourths, started on the grill on high and then reduced to low to pack into the flavor.
My friend Hunter gave us some kale from his garden so I quickly sauteed that with garlic, olive oil, and salt as a little bed.
The corn salad here is pretty much become the only corn salad recipe I use, published in Bon Appetit a few years back from Chef Bryan Furman (the peach mustard in this one is also great). I usually sub fresno preppers for serranos, mostly for color, and topped with a little queso fresco I had.
Bread: my go to recipe is this one, though I’ve found the hydration to be a little high, so I cut a cup of water to start, and I usually make it to do two loafs. I solved the issue of not having two Dutch ovens by doing them both in cast irons and then adding a tray below. More on bread in future segments. Once the chicken was done, I cut the bread, slathered slices in olive oil, threw them on the grill, and let them get some nice crispy bits.
Tomato Jam: We had bought cherry tomatoes for another use but they got skipped, and the Rosemary Chicken called for this so I made it on Saturday afternoon along with some ghee for future use. Tasty, simple, and a nice flavor bomb.
Weeknight Meal / Easy Work Leftovers: Tofu Stir Fry, Jasmine Rice
Tofu is good, in my opinion. Particularly if you crisp it up first. I put these guys between plates and something heavy for two hours to drain, and then hit them with hot oil.
Then I do all the veggies we had grabbed last week: snow pea pods, onions, fresnos, garlic scapes, mushrooms.
This isn’t entirely vegetarian: I used a Beef Stir Fry recipe from Woks of Life, so there’s a bit of homemade chicken stock, plus I added a little tobanjan to give it a bit of kick.
I probably could have stood to add a little more sauce given I used two tofu blocks, but it balanced well with the jasmine rice.
WFH Lunch: Chorizo Stuffed Steamed Sweet Potato
A “healthy-ish” dinner depending on your perspective (steaming the potato rather than roasting keeps a lot of the essential nutrients packed in). Bon Appetit did this kind of as a Mediterranean lamb dish a few years back and I immediately saw the sweet potato as a vehicle for more Mexican flavors. We also always have chorizo in the freezer.
I had taken the rest of the fresnos I bought for the other meals and quick pickled them with some garlic earlier in the week, so the only thing left here to do was quick pickle some red onions.
You want to steam your sweet potato to a point where you can smoosh it with the back of a spoon, the more crevasses, the better. Then I added a bit of olive oil and salt to make sure it had flavor, then began topping: chroizo (essentially a spread), avocado pieces, fresnos, onions, cilantro, queso fresco. Done. Alongside prepping the chorizo and onions, this was maybe fifteen minutes of work.