Busy in the Kitchen

 

This is a shorter post again since this is another busy week for me. I'm getting a bit tired of this and look forward to some slower times. Hopefully soon.

Cooking in the summer is not my most favorite thing to do, especially when it is hot. However, this year it didn't get hot until August and even then there weren't too many days with temperatures over 90F (32 C). Still, I had many days when I didn't completely enjoy cooking - and you know, usually I do. This was a bit of a surprise to me that the lackluster mood lasted for such a long time.

Nevertheless, I was busy in the kitchen. The cooler season was sent out the door with a delicious chili that you can see in the top picture. Another favorite with my family is lemon chicken with orecchiette; this time I added shiitake mushrooms which I got from my trusted "mushroom man" at the farmers market. I used chicken breast and I think this was the last time I used that. Chicken breast is just boring, becomes dry way too fast and doesn't have much flavor. Next time I will go back to boneless skinless chicken thighs.

Another evening I made creamy chicken with lemon and thyme. I had seen something similar somewhere (I can't remember where) and decided to just wing it. I added cremini and we had pasta with it. It was quite good. Chicken seems to be the only meat we still eat apart from ground beef every now and then.

Another chicken recipe I made just a few days ago since I wanted to use fresh tomatoes and nothing out of a can (I'm not a big fan of canned tomatoes). This is tomato basil chicken breast, a recipe I found in NYT cooking, and here the chicken breast worked very well. It was a very delicious dinner. It was asking for capers and red wine vinegar which I simply omitted. You can find the recipe here.

Surprisingly I did quite some baking - I'm not a big baker apart from baking bread. I don't like that you have to be pretty precise when baking and that is not something I enjoy too much. At least not in the kitchen. At "cherry time" I made a cherry almond clafoutis, using almond flour instead of regular APF. The recipe (here) also asks for almond milk which I don't have, so I used regular whole milk and instead of cornstarch I used potato starch.

You can make this also with other fruit; I tried it with plums once and it was very tasty. This is a lovely recipe that I have done several times. But then I found a raspberry almond clafoutis in NYT cooking, a little bit different, but also with almond flour. I first was a bit skeptical about the measurements because I thought it was a lot of liquid and the raspberries are moist as well. If I would have followed their baking time (30-35 minutes) it would have been a mess, however, I baked it for 45-50 minutes and it was perfect!

At the farmers market I bought super delicious blueberries and thought about what to do with them. In an AARP bulletin (of all magazines!) I saw blueberry oatmeal cakes and thought that was interesting. Maple syrup instead of sugar (I hope David will be delighted that every now and then I do use maple syrup), soaked rolled oats instead of flour and almost no extra fat except for two TB of canola oil - a real winner. It helps that the blueberries are delicious and not your usual supermarket fare. I freeze these and we pull them out whenever we want. Great for the Geek to take to work.

Of course I made several jars of tomato sauce that I put in the freezer, but I also made 15 jars of raspberry preserve as well as several jars of apple sauce (which I freeze) because my neighbor gave me a good amount of her apples.

Those peaches from the farmers market were to die for! Peaches are my favorite summer fruit, sweet and juicy. When the juice runs down your arms while you eat them over the sink (in order not to make too big of a mess) they are just right!

Of course I baked bread, hearty whole wheat bread. I'm still experimenting with the recipe, tweaking it until I finally will get a loaf with the perfect amount of moisture.

Do you have a favorite summer dinner? Ours is caprese with tomatoes and basil from our garden. We always take turns who gets the "tower" in the middle.

With it we enjoy a lovely summer drink - fresh strawberries in dry Riesling. Cheers!

This is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday.