Marinated Pork Chops and Roasted Asparagus

***This post is probably a month overdue, which is too bad since it was one of Tim's favorite meals ever. I will have to repeat this marinade!

Pork Chops

• 2 boneless 4 oz pork chops
• 2 TBSP soy sauce
• 2TBSP olive oil
• 2 TBSP Worcestershire
• garlic powder (I would have used fresh garlic, but when I got it out, I realized it was so old that it was sprouting new garlic.... which led me to wonder, can I plant that bad boy in my garden? Probably not.)

Put chops and marinade ingredients into a zip lock. Mash it all up and throw it into the fridge for up to 8 hours (the longer the better). When you're ready, take the chops out and grill-- or if you are like me and your grill runs out of gas after 2 minutes, put under the broiler.

I did the asparagus (fresh from the farmers' market) the same way I usually do-- olive oil, salt, pepper.

This meal took a whopping ten minutes to prepare, and it was great. The salty briney marinade on the pork really tenderized it. I actually cooked the pork and the asparagus on the same pan under the broiler, so they juices all mixed together and flavored the veggies too-- yum! This would be a fantastic weeknight dinner since it was so easy-- and a side of minute rice or a quick salad would balance it out! (Since we just had bruschetta, we didn't need anything else).

Chicken fingers, Asparagus, and Chipotle Dip

A few weeks ago, I got a new cook book. As I've said previously, I absolutely love to read cook books and use them for inspiration, but I typically do not love to use them when it comes time to cook. One recipe I found, though, changed my mind. There was something about the warning of "if you skip anything or do not follow all of these steps exactly your dish will not turn out" on a baked chicken finger recipe that caught my eye. Could these possibly be so complicated that they warrant that warning? I just had to know. So, I filled in Tim on my meal plan and he requested a dipping sauce for the chicken, and I decided to make some asparagus spears too. With a few tweaks, this meal could be absolutely great! The chicken was really tasty, but we found that dipping it in barbecue sauce was much tastier than the chipotle sauce. Next time I will either do barbecue or buffalo, but I will definitely make these chicken fingers again!

 Chicken Fingers

• 1 pound chicken breast tenders (I bought mine pre-cut, but it would be very simple to just cut up chicken breasts... or leave them whole for that matter).
• about a cup of buttermilk in a shallow dish
• about a cup of panko breadcrumbs in a shallow dish
• salt and pepper
• cooking spray 

First, preheat the oven to 425 with your baking sheet in it. While it's preheating, season the chicken tenders really well with S&P, and then dip in buttermilk. Allow excess to drip off and dip in Panko bread crumbs-- press them on so they stick and then put tenders on a wire rack to sit for a minimum of ten minutes. This is where, in the book, they had a big warning: DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP IF YOU WANT TO LIVE (okay maybe not that severe). After ten minutes, spray tenders all over with cooking spray. Take hot pan from oven and spray it with cooking spray too, and then bake tenders for 22 minutes. Yes, exactly 22. Weird, I know. Anyway, when you take it out, you will have golden brown, crunchy, amazing "fried" chicken tenders.

my go-to asparagus dish

Grilled Asparagus

• Asparagus
• Olive oil
• salt and pepper

Toss asparagus in oil and shake on seasonings. Grill or broil for 6 to 8 minutes depending on thickness of stalks. 

too-spicy chipotle dip

Chipotle Dipping Sauce

•  1 chipotle pepper from a can (I rinsed of the Adobo sauce b/c I don't love that added flavor)
• 3 TBSP mayo 
• zest from 1 orange
• 1/4 cup (? I didn't pay attention) plain yogurt (mine is local AND organic cuz I'm cool like that)
• a couple chopped chives (both in the mix and then for garnish

Put all ingredients into a food processor-- pulse til smooth. Taste and add more yogurt or pepper to achieve desired spicy level and add any other seasonings you see fit. Remember, the longer the dip sits, the spicier it will get. I forgot this little fact and thought "it hardly tastes like pepper" and stupidly added a second one. Three hours later when it was time for dinner, the sauce was so spicy I could barely stand it.

Grilled Chicken, Lemon-scented Asparagus, and Panzanella

Oh my gosh my blog is so messed up. Part blogger maintenance and spontaneous deletions, and part procrastination... but it is taking way longer than I would like to catch up.

So, instead of racking my brain for details about dishes I made two weeks ago, I figure I should jump to what I made last night (5/16/2011) for dinner while it is still fresh!

Grilled Chicken
After a successful marinade for my pork chops this weekend (blog entry will probably appear in a month), I have been on a marinade kick. When I was flipping through a grilling magazine grocery store, I saw the headline "black tea soaked chicken" and thought, "whaaaaat?" Anyway, I was so intrigued, I had to do it.

• 3 boneless, skinless, organic free range chicken breasts (b/c I'm paranoid about chicken)
• 2 scoops of loose English Breakfast tea and two cups boiling water
• whole cloves
• whole peppercorns
• 1 TBSP agave nectar (honey would also work-- but put this in while water is hot)
• worstestecan'tspellit
• olive oil
• salt

First, I made the tea (just left the leaves in) and allowed it to cool to room temperature. I then added the other ingredients minus olive oil and salt. The oil I rubbed directly on the chicken, and then sprinkled it with sea salt. Then, I poured the marinade over the chicken and put it in the fridge for two hours. With chicken marinades, it's usually the longer the better, so if I could do this again, I would probably try to put it on in the morning. Also, I might try pounding out the chicken to thinner, even pieces.
When it was time to grill, I just scraped off most of the tea and cloves and threw the breasts on a pre-heated grill for 12 minutes (turning once).


Lemon-scented Asparagus

Over sharing-- I have never in my life had my pee smell funny after eating Asparagus. I hear people talking about it a lot (which I realize is also weird), but have never experienced it myself. But this weekend I got fresh asparagus (or ass-per-gas as my dad used to call it) from the farmer's market and WHOA. Now I know what everyone else is talking about... and I do NOT like it! I'm going to go back to store-bought asparagus to avoid this horrible plague.

• Asparagus
• Olive oil
• Salt, Pepper to taste
• Lemon juice (could have used zest too but forgot and juiced it first)
• leftover cheese from Panzanella

Toss asparagus in oil (you hardly need any, just keep tossing), S&P, and a bit of juice. Grill for 6-8 minutes. Drizzle more juice and put cheese on to get melty. Eat and enjoy!

Panzanella
Leave it up to the Italians to come up with a salad made out of bread. I haven't had a good panzanella since I was in Rome last, but I for some reason was inspired to make it. Actually I know the reason. I looked at my counter and saw nearly-stale dinner rolls, ripe tomatoes, a red onion, a lemon, and olive oil. And then I looked in my cupboard and saw a bowl to put all of those things in and it was done. Anyway, panzanella is one of those things that allows you to get use out of ingredients you otherwise might throw away. It's different every time based on what you have available, so you should be creative!

• day-old (or more) bread (preferably crusty) cut or torn into bite sized pieces
• tomatoes, diced (I used two yellow and one red)
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• lemon
• olive oil
• S&P
• red pepper
• basil
• capers
• cheese-- I used a combination of parm, romano, and mozarella

Put the bread in a large bowl-- this is where the whole salad will end up. Put the tomatoes in a smaller bowl with a dash of olive oil and a generous amount of salt. Then, wait five minutes and be  amazed at how much juice the tomaters produced. Use a slotted spoon to scoop out the tomatoes and add to the bread, and keep all of the juice.  Put the onion in yet another bowl and cover with juice of half a lemon. Let this sit 5-10 minutes to "pickle" the onions. Then, put the onions (but NOT the juice from the bottom of the bowl-- throw that out b/c it is nasty onion flavored) with the bread. Add basil, capers, black and red pepper, and whatever other flavor you like to bread bowl. To the tomato juice, add more olive oil and the rest of the lemon juice and lighty whisk. Then, pour it over everything in the large bowl and toss. Finally, toss with cheese.

Shaved Asparagus Pizza and Strawberry Goat Cheese Spinach Salad

Shaved Asparagus Pizza

What a disappointment. I think I just had too high of expectations going into this dinner. I saw this recipe on smitten kitchen ages ago and have been drooling over it, and then when my friend Lisa sent me a very similar recipe and sang her own praises, I thought, "I have to try it!" It was definitely something that was outside of Tim's comfort zone, but I was hopeful he would adapt since he likes pizza crust, cheese, and asparagus separately...

Anyway... it was okay at best. I was just really disappointed. I feel like it was bland and the textures creeped me out. But man oh man, is it pretty!

Strawberry Goat Cheese Spinach Salad

• 1 bag baby spinach
• 1.5 TBSP poppyseed dressing (I just use store-bought)
• Sliced strawberries
• chopped pecans
• crumbled chevre goat cheese (about an ounce)

My salad totally stole the show-- It was a little twist on my go-to salad and it is one I will re-create again and again. My rule for salad is to toss it til you think you are done and then toss it three more times. The more you toss, the less dressing you need to use. So, for both Tim and I, I was able to use less than one serving of dressing. The flavor is still there, but the calories and fat are not. Another trick I use, is I first toss just the leaves. Then, I throw on half the mix-ins and toss a few times, and then throw the rest of the mix-ins on top.  For this salad, I only put the goat cheese on top. It was insanely good. 

Great expectations

I have been eying a recipe on smitten kitchen for a long time now and tonight I finally decided to try it out. I served asparagus, goat cheese, and lemon pasta because I really love all of those things (it also has tarragon... yum!) Other than fudging amounts here and there, I followed the recipe pretty much exactly. I also prepared salmon fillets in the oven (350 for 15 minutes, 1 TBSP butter, lemon juice, and tarragon on top). The entire meal took 15 minutes to prepare so that was a total bonus!

I loooove goat cheese (marry it and have many tangy creamy babies kind of love) so I was expecting to eat all eight servings of this and fend off any other potential feeders with my pasta tongs. But.......... it just fell a bit flat. I liked all of the flavors, but it wasn't as life-changing as I hoped. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy to have enough leftovers to provide me a healthy and tasty lunch the next few days, but I don't know how often I would repeat this recipe. 

Timmy was very excited to eat everything (obviously), but he was pretty wary of the pasta once he experienced the tang of the goat cheese. He wolfed down the salmon (I was also feeling "eh" about this), and then he actually suggested that next time I just do the asparagus in the goat cheese, lemon, and tarragon and I think I just might try it! If nothing else, it's really good to know how easily goat cheese melts and becomes an instant pasta sauce.

My "great expectations" weren't met, but it was still a healthy and pretty dinner with the boy I sorta like. Can't complain about that!

***Update-- I enjoyed the pasta served cold (I just added a bit more lemon juice, and salt) very much. I had it for lunch a few days in a row!