Maple Glazed Chicken

This recipe is mentioned in the mashed sweet potatoes and is extremely easy.
This recipe serves 4

2 tablespoons maple syrup
4 chicken breasts
salt and pepper to season

Heat a pan to medium high heat and place a little oil to coat the pan. Season the chicken breasts and place them in the pan. Depending on the size of the chicken breast, cooking times will vary. For the medium sized ones I used, it takes about 3-4 minutes per side. Once the chicken is cooked, brush the tops with maple syrup and flip and brush the other side. Then flip, cook for 5 seconds and remove from heat. If you wait too long and let the maple syrup cook, it'll burn fast. No more than 5 seconds a side. I served them with the mashed potatoes and a nice salad.

Wasabi Chicken Pastries

The pastry dough for this recipe is from Rachel Allen and it is spectacular. Not only is it wildly easy to make, but it can be filled with anything you want and can be used for both sweet and savory applications. The only thing to remember is that if you plan on filling it with something that has a decent amount of liquid in it (therefore producing condensation while it cooks), make sure to make a few slits in it so the dough doesn't pop.

If you need to clear your sinuses and love wasabi, this is a great recipe but like I said, you can fill it with whatever you want for a wonderful dinner. I provide the measurements for flour and water by weight because when you're making something like a pastry dough, accuracy is vitally important.

6 tablespoons earth balance butter (I prefer the stick kind because it's easy to measure)
8 ounces flour
4 ounces water
1 egg
2 chicken breasts
1 tablespoon wasabi paste
1 tablespoon stone ground mustard
1 tablespoon kethup
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced pepper
extra egg for the egg wash
For the pastry, sift the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the center. Place the butter (cubed) in the 4 ounces of water in a sauce pan. Heat gently over medium high heat until the butter has melted and bring the mixture to a boil. As soon as it comes to a rolling boil, take it off the heat, scramble the egg and pour it in the well in the flour, and aggressively stir as you pour in the hot liquid until it comes together as a dough. Spread the dough out onto a large plate and let rest at room temperature for 15 minutes. Then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for a half hour.

While the dough is refrigerating, season and cook the chicken breasts on the stove top on medium high heat (cooking times vary depending on size). Once the chicken is cooked, remove them and place them in foil. Then reduce the heat to medium, and saute the onions and peppers until they're soft and cooked (about 5-6 minutes).

In a bowl, place the wasabi paste, ketchup, and mustard and whisk together. Then dice the now cooled chicken and place in the bowl with the sauteed onions and peppers and mix together until fully incorporated and let cool. You don't want this mix to be hot when you put it in the dough. WARNING - when the wasabi paste comes in contact with the hot onions, the steam will burn your eyes and be wildly uncomfortable (I found out first hand). Keep your head back when you mix all of these.

Once the dough is firm, preheat the oven to 425 and lightly flour a surface and roll out to 1/16" and cut in 4 1/2" circles (this dough will make 12 pastries each being .75 ounces of dough). On one half of the circle, put a tablespoon of the chicken salad mixture down. Then, use the egg wash to fold over the dough to make a crescent and seal this with your fingers. Then use the fork tines to close the seal and make a nice pattern. Brush the pastries with egg wash and bake for 15-20 minutes until the tops are beginning to brown. If you're not sure if the pastry is cooked at 15 minutes, place a toothpick in and if it comes out clean, you're good to go.

You can serve them while they're hot or room temperature.

Sweet Potato and Roasted Banana Mash

This may sound kind of weird but it's wonderfully sweet, healthy, creamy, and a fantastic side dish for something like a maple glazed chicken breast. Furthermore, it's pretty easy to make and gets all of its sweetness from the natural sweetness of sweet potatoes and roasted bananas.

4 medium sweet potatoes
2 ripe bananas
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup almond milk or soy milk
1 tablespoon margarine

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Slice your bananas in half lengthwise and sprinkle the cinnamon over it. Roast until the bananas are soft (it really depends on the size of the banana but it shouldn't take more than a few minutes). Remove the bananas from the oven and puree in a food processor and place in a large bowl.

Now for cooking the sweet potatoes, it depends on your preferred method. I microwaved mine but you can do it in the oven if you like. Once the sweet potatoes are cooked, let them cool and then process them as well. Once they are pureed, add the milk and margarine to the warm puree and puree again just to incorporate the milk and margarine. Then stir the sweet potato puree with the banana puree and serve.

Homemade Pasta

So if you have a pasta machine, this is a pretty easy thing to accomplish and it absolutely tastes better than dried pasta from a box. It is definitely more labor intensive than opening a box so if you're not going to have time to do it right, go with the boxed stuff because it's better than poorly made pasta.

Here's a wonderful rule of thumb for pasta making that I learned from Jamie Oliver. For every 100 grams of flour use 1 egg. To make enough pasta for a few people to have reasonably small portions, you could make dough with 100 g of flour and 1 egg. However if you're making a large dish or you just want to make a decent amount of pasta for 4-6 people, I'd double it. Also, if you make too much you can always hang the fresh pasta until it dries and then store it.

100 grams of flour
1 egg
dash salt

Here's the classic way to make pasta. Place the flour in a large mound (if you want to be really authentic, throw the flour mound directly on your counter top but you can certainly do this in a bowl). Make a well in the top and pour in the egg. Carefully whisk up the egg being certain that you don't get the flour everywhere and then once the egg is scrambled, slowly begin incorporating the flour until you have a cohesive dough.

Then, flour a board or your counter and pour out the dough. Now to be quite honest, you have to knead the hell out of this. You will have to knead this for at least 15 minutes by hand (No shortcuts). You'll know when this is done because miraculously, it will be a smooth and elastic dough.

Brush the dough with olive oil and then wrap in plastic wrap for at least a half hour (but I usually do an hour so I have time to clean up and sit for a few minutes).

Then when you're ready to roll this dough out, break it into sections and then re-wrap the remainder until you're ready to use it. Follow the instructions for your pasta machine and remember that when you cook this stuff, it cooks REALLY fast. Like in 2 minutes so watch it.

Shakshuka

Shakshuka is one of my favorite Israeli dishes. I can still distinctly remember eating this wonderful dish on the roof of a Jerusalem apartment looking out toward the West Bank on a hot spring day. This is a really easy recipe to make and yet it's fun for dinner parties and is a nice and healthy filling dish. I served this in individual souffle ramekins but you can easily serve this in a baking dish or cast iron skillet.

This recipe serves 4 so alter it based on the number of people you want to serve

2 cups tomato sauce (homemade is absolutely best but you can use store bought)
4 eggs
Fresh thyme and parsley for garnish

Preheat your oven to 350.

If you're using the souffle ramekins, pour 1/2 cup tomato sauce in the bottom of each ramekin and then carefully crack an egg over each being very careful not to pop the yolk because then this will just be messy. If you like runny yolk (which is really how this should be eaten because it adds a wonderful richness to the dish), bake for about 20 minutes. Start checking around 15 minutes because essentially, once the egg white has set and there is no longer any liquid whites, you're done. If you are like my girlfriend and do not like runny eggs, you'll need to cook this closer to a half hour until the yolk is fully set.

Garnish with fresh chopped herbs and serve immediately, just beware of the dish because it's really hot.

*If you're using a baking dish or cast iron pan to make this, simply place the tomato sauce in the bottom and crack the eggs around the pan.

Fall Vegetable Stew

This is a fantastic recipe for a few reasons. First of all, it's extremely healthy and yet warm and satisfying making it a wonderful cold weather dinner. Also, you can substitute different vegetables if you don't like what's in this recipe and customize a stew to perfectly please yourself and your guests. This recipe serves 4 at 300 calories a serving.

2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 cup sliced leak
3 cups low-sodium chicken stock
1 cup water
3/4 cup dark beer
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrot
3 chopped jalapenos (seeds and all. You can remove this if you're not a spicy food fan).
1/2 cup chopped parsnip
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
1/4 cup uncooked pearl barley
1/4 teaspoon dry thyme
2 bay leaves
3 tablespoons cream sherry (more or less depending on your taste. I personally think sherry adds a wonderful richness to soup)
1/2 cup dried lentils
1/4 teaspoon salt

In a Dutch oven, heat the oil on medium high heat. When the oil's warm, sautee the leaks for about 2 minutes. Then add the water, beer, and chicken stock and bring to a boil.

Once it's boiling, add the celery, carrots, parsnips, dill, barley, thyme, bay leaves, and sherry and return to a boil. Then cover and reduce heat to simmer for 15 minutes. Then stir in the lentils and cover and cook for 30 minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes, throw away the bay leaves.

Now this part is great because it's an extremely healthy way to thicken a soup. Remove 1 1/2 cups of soup and put it in your food processor. Make sure you remove the plug on top to let the steam out but put a towel over it unless you want to redecorate the walls in your kitchen. Once it's pureed, return it back to the soup. Bring it back to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Then, you're ready to eat.