Uncle Scott Salad

I started cooking when I was about eight or 10 years old, I guess. I asked my mom to teach me how to make scrambled eggs so I wouldn't have to wake her up on weekend mornings to make me breakfast. From there, my love of cooking evolved.

I'm no expert, but I take a great deal of pride in my cooking, and I've received many compliments. I've also usually been one of the best cooks I know. So of course, I wind up marrying a woman who's brother is a professional chef.

Truth is, it's been a great thing. My brother-in-law Scott has taught me a lot in the kitchen. Ironically, at holidays, I do most of the cooking for a couple of reasons. First, Scott's usually working, and secondly, people don't ask me to do TV shows on the holidays, so why should he have to spend the whole day cooking, right? But he usually arrives just in time to help me with that last-minute rush to get everything done and make sure the turkey is cooked.

Anyway... a lot of what Scott makes is, at least for now, a little above the subject matter of this blog. But there is one recipe of his that is incredibly simple and that we ask him to make when he comes to dinner at our house: Uncle Scott Salad.

Here's how simple it is: Get a bag of salad mix at the grocery store. Scott uses the one with lettuce, carrots and some cabbage. Dump it in a big bowl. He tops it with croutons, red onion slices, tomatoes and roasted sunflower seeds. Dish it out into smaller bowls and top it with your favorite dressing. That's it.

Of course, you can add in your personal favorite salad toppings, like the mushrooms I added to the salad above.

I know it's not much of a recipe, but it's really good, and let's face it: We could all use a little more salad in our diets, right?

Crock Pot Chicken and Dumplings

If you haven't figured it out by now, the Crock Pot is perhaps the ultimate cooking vessel for easy-to-make comfort food. And by easy, I mean typically a one-pot meal. Thus is the case with the Crock Pot version of Chicken and Dumplings, which is based on a recipe I found doing a simple search online.

Ingredients
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup frozen mixed vegetables1 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp Onion Powder
1 cup chicken stock
Salt and pepper
1 (10 ounce) package refrigerated biscuit dough, torn into pieces

Directions
Put all the ingredients except biscuits into the Crock Pot and cook. At least 30 minutes to an hour before serving, put torn up biscuits on top of everything. Replace lid and continue to cook until biscuits are cooked.

When the biscuits are cooked, use two forks to shred the chicken a bit and serve.

Crock Pot Classic: Beef Stew

Fall has arrived, and the weather is starting to turn cool. That means it's time to break out the Crock Pot, which may be the single greatest kitchen gadget around.

If you have a Crock Pot (or slow cooker), and rarely use, I will teach you its versatility. If you don't have one, go get one. Seriously. I'll wait. You can get one for $15 or $20 at most stores, and it's worth every penny without a doubt. So go ahead.

OK. Now that we all have a Crock Pot, we'll start with a little education on what it is. Your slow cooker should have two main parts (though I have heard tell of a bizarre one-piece version that's a pain to clean, so stay away from that). First there's the base, which features a plug, a heating element and a knob. Some slow cookers have timers and various settings. Mine has a single knob that switches between Off, Low and High. Second there's the crock itself, which is a ceramic pot that sits inside the base. Of course, there is also the lid, which is very important, as I'll explain.

By the way, don't worry about what your Crock Pot looks like. Nowadays you can get them in all sorts of colors, but as you can see, mine looks like your Grandma's. It cooks just the same.

So the key to Crock Pot cooking is low and slow. The heating element in the base heats the crock evenly at a low temperature, which then allows the food to cook evenly, usually with the help of some liquid inside.

Now, you can make just about anything with a Crock Pot. I use it mainly for mains, but I've also made a great cheese dip for parties, I've seen it used to keep apple cider warm and there are even recipes for breakfasts and desserts.

As we start with Crock Pot cooking, I'll begin with a family favorite. If you asked me about a comfort food my Mom made when I was a kid, I would immediately think of her beef stew. It would have to be my favorite thing she made regularly, in part because when she did it in the Crock Pot, it would cook all day and fill the house with a delicious smell by the time you got home from school.

Beef stew is very simple, as you only need a few ingredients. First, of course, is the beef. I like to wait until the super market has stew beef on sale and buy a couple of packets at 1-1.5 pounds each. By the way, this recipe works for pot roast, too, with some slight derivations I'll explain later. You're just using a hunk of meat instead of the bite-sized pieces of stew meat.

Now, my Mom always browned the beef in a skillet, so that's what I do. While that cooks, I turn on the Crock Pot and add the vegetables to the Crock Pot. Now there are three must-have veggies for a good beef stew: potatoes, carrots and onions. A little celery is also good to add a little flavor. Now, at some grocery stores, though not the ones I shop at here in NC, you can sometimes find a frozen Stew Mix, which has all these essentials. If you can't, just buy each frozen or fresh. My Mom often uses or adds canned potatoes. I've used the frozen mix and then added a couple more fresh, peeled potatoes, which helps thicken the stew. When I made it most recently, I used fresh potatoes (halved), baby carrots and an onion cut into eight pieces, then added some frozen mixed vegetables (carrots, green beans, corn, peas) just to get some more veggies.

OK, so your veggies are in, and your beef is browned. Drain the fat from the meat and put the meat in the Crock Pot on top of the veggies. Now it's time to add a little flavor. Take an envelope of onion soup mix and add it to a cup of water. Pour it over the meat and veggies. Now put the lid on the Crock Pot. Remember, I said the lid is key. You have to make sure the lid is on well and not letting any steam out, as this will cause the Crock Pot to lose heat, which will hurt the cooking process.

You'll notice I didn't say what setting to put the Crock Pot on. Well, that's because it all depends how long you plan to cook. If you only have four hours or so, put it on high. If you have longer, put it on low. I typically, just as my Mom did, put this all together before I leave for work. I put it on low, and let it cook all day, so it's ready to eat when we get home, and the house smells so deliciously wonderful!

Believe me, this is a wonderfully simple and tasty dish that will not disappoint.

Now I mentioned that there are a few differences if you're making pot roast. I made some the other night with a kit I bought at the store. The directions on that did NOT call for browning the meat first, but it did call for putting the raw meat in the Crock Pot first, then topping it with the veggies and water. That's all. Talk about simple. When it's done, don't bother setting the table with knives, unless you need them to put butter on some bread, because everything else is fork tender!

In the coming days, I will share some more Crock Pot recipes, to prove what a wonderful tool it is, especially for busy families.

Veggie & Turkey Sausage Lasagna

I know, I've been very slack lately posting recipes, but I'm gonna try to do better with several in the can, as we say in TV.

This recipe is another lesson in Italian cooking, as I long ago promised, but an intermediary step. It is lasagna, but not traditional in a couple of senses. One way is the ingredient. The other is a short-cut in the cooking.

This is something I came up with kind of on the fly. We were looking for a big family dinner with leftovers that had some nutritional value. So I lasagna took care of the first part. Vegetables took care of the second. This is also another of those recipes you can tweak for whatever your taste.

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil1 lb turkey sausage (removed from casings and crumbled)
1 cup chopped onion
3 cloves garlic chopped
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup broccoli florets
1 zucchini sliced
1 cup sliced mushrooms
Handful fresh basil
2 jars tomato sauce (whatever kind or kinds you like)
1 box no-cook lasagna noodles
1 lb ricotta
1 lb shredded cheese (I believe I used one bag of Italian recipe and one Taco blend)

Directions
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet or wok (a wok is actually ideal for later). Brown sausage. When it's about done, add onion, garlic, carrots and broccoli, and cook until they start to get soft. Add zucchini, mushrooms and basil, and cook until they start to get soft. Add a little sauce and the ricotta. Cook until the whole mixture is well mixed and starts to get a little bubbly.

Spread some sauce in bottom of a large roasting pan (aka lasagna pan). Place a third of the lasagna noodles (no need to cook these) on top of the sauce. Spread some more sauce on top of noodles. Spread half of the sausage/veggie/cheese mixture, and sprinkle with some of a third of the shredded cheese. Top with another third of noodles, then more sauce, then the rest of the mixture, a third of the shredded cheese, last of noodles, more sauce, last of shredded cheese. Sprinkle some Italian herbs on top if you'd like, and yes, I like!

Cover pan with foil and bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 15 minutes until the whole thing is bubbly and melty. Yes, those are technical culinary terms.

Congratulations. You have made lasagna. Eventually we'll get to the real deal, but like I said at the top, this is a great intermediary step to learn some of the basics.

Serve this up with salad, garlic bread and the rest of the sauce heated.

We fed four adults and a child, and still had about half to put in the freezer for another day plus a couple servings for lunch at work the next day. I originally planned to make it with much less of the sausage, but I'm glad I used it all. It added a great flavor! You could make it without meat at all, but again, I think you'd lose a lot of flavor.

Gold Medal Meals: Teriyaki Bowls

Last week I mentioned to my wife that for dinner Friday night, in honor of the Olympics, we should have something British. Unfortunately, I didn't find a recipe in time that I liked, so we wound up having Chicken Tacos. That led to another idea, though. I decided for the duration of the Olympics, we would have a dish inspired by a different country each night. Check off Mexico.

Of course, there is no shortage of international cuisine to choose from, but the theme of this blog is to focus on stuff that's not crazy hard to make. So for night No. 2, I thought long and hard. Finally I decided on something Japanese: Teriyaki Bowls. This is something I fell in love with when I lived in California near a restaurant called Yoshinoya. Basically, it was a bowl of steamed rice with Teriyaki chicken (or beef) and steamed veggies. When I moved to Gainesville, FL, there was a place called Maui Teriyaki that served something similar. All in all, it's a tasty dish that's pretty healthy.

Ingredients
2 cups rice (Whatever kind you like. I used brown rice to make it a little healthier)
1 bottle Teriyaki sauce (I used low sodium)
2 chicken breasts sliced into thin strips
1 bag frozen cauliflower, carrot, broccoli mix (the store here calls it California mix)
1/2 an onion sliced thin
1/2 a head of cabbage sliced thin

Directions
-Cook rice according to its directions.
-In a medium saucepan, bring one cup of water to a boil. Add the frozen veggies. Return to boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Drain, reserving liquid.
-In a large saucepan, heat the Teriyaki sauce and onions over medium-high heat. When it starts to boil add the chicken. Put the California mix veggies on top of the chicken and the sliced cabbage on top of the veggies. Pour some of the hot water from the veggies over the cabbage. Cover with a lid.
-When the sauce starts to boil, reduce heat to medium, and let cook for 10-15 minutes, or until chicken is cooked and all the veggies, especially the cabbage, are tender.
-Put rice in a bowl and top with cabbage, veggies and chicken. Add more sauce if desired. (I remember extra sauce being one of the best parts at Maui Teriyaki)

That's it. Like I said. It's pretty simply, and really yummy. I like to add some hot Chinese mustard to mine.

So two nights down, and a couple more weeks to go. It looks like a sudden strong thunderstorm kept my wife from getting to the grocery store, so we'll honor Team USA with some authentic American southern BBQ (take out).