This is Marie with a short chapter about cooking experiments in general and a recipe of my father’s in particular. My father likes to experiment with food and is much more allergic to the concept of following recipes than I am. I just change ingredients and proportions; he throws instructions out entirely and uses recipes solely as a source of inspiration. When he sent me this recipe, it was with the instruction that I play with it and report back. I am including the recipe itself, as it’s completely typical of my dad…note that there is only one unit of measurement in the whole thing:

INGREDIENTS
Red/yellow/ green bell peppers
Roma or other flavorful tomatoes
Red/yellow onions
Olive oil
Oregano
Basil
Marjoram
Garlic
Salt to taste (watch your blood pressure)
Black pepper
One stick of butter
Shrimp or diced chicken breast

Banana peppers
Cayenne pepper
Paprika
Chili powder
Other spices and flavors can be added, but I do not recommend peanut butter or soy sauce.

One difficulty with following this sort of recipe is that if something works particularly well, it can be hard to figure out which variation actually caused the positive result. On the other hand, one will never get bored because the final result always changes, and there’s no problem if all the peppers in the grocery store look like they got hit with the Uglifier Ray; just pick a different veggie. Do try to use fresh garlic rather than the dried stuff if possible.

I decided that my vegetables would be some of the wonderfully fresh farmer’s market zucchini, tomatoes, and red peppers acquired just the other day. The meat was of course going to be some of the frozen shrimp I bought on my last visit home (locally caught and purchased from the wife of the shrimper–the very best kind!) There is absolutely no way for me to recall how much I used of anything. However, the specific spices used were pepper, the Penzeys Italian blend (sorry, Dad, I didn’t have time to go to the store for fresh herbs…though I am sure they would have been AMAZING!) Adobo spice, and a small amount of lemon pepper seasoning to brighten up the shrimp a bit.

I sauteed the veggies just to soften them up a bit and then started working on the sauce. I was rather dubious about using an entire stick of butter, but it melted into the olive oil beautifully and combined with the spices. Once the chopping was done everything came together very quickly; once you decide on your proportions this is a very good weekday cook-something-in-a-hurry-because-traffic-stunk sort of meal.

This is Marie, whose usual contribution to the culinary delights detailed in this blog is eating something on the menu different from what my husband ordered, so we can share. Today I am contributing a recent success in the “what can I make with whatever’s on hand” cooking technique. I happened to have some kale on hand and my original plan to use it was increasingly impractical with the change in the weather, so I searched for inspiration and decided that this recipe, available here, looked like a good candidate for experimentation.

I called over my guinea pig husband and he made positive noises so I put it on the “do soon” list. I am definitely interested in more interesting ways to use pasta since Monday is pasta day and as much as I love my basic spaghetti recipe, every so often one has to do something different. This is simple, quick, and very tasty. If the subject of kale hasn’t scared you off already but you still have some reservations, my vegetable-phobic stepdaughter took seconds, and wants to bring leftovers to school tomorrow for lunch (she didn’t, but the enthusiasm was still appreciated).

Kale was in the freezer; it had been waiting to be mashed into potatoes, but what with spring progressing as quickly as it has been, it seemed likely there would be no mashed potato weather again until this upcoming fall. Some may have noted that the recipe was from last October, but the recipe is definitely suitable for warmer days. Garlic we had in plenty due to a previous recipe, and needed to be used up as it had also noticed that spring had sprung. Onions are always on hand, as are various options in cheese. I kept the changes to a minimum. I decided it needed some chicken seared in my nice Italian spice mix. The kale cooked down very well, and though the recipe called for being exceedingly careful not to let it get too dry, that wasn’t too much of a challenge. Mind you, I used slightly more olive oil than called for. It’s a healthy fat, after all!

On a whim, and because the plates needed some color, I decided that the strawberries that were supposed to be for dessert would be on the dinner plates instead. That worked surprisingly well. This is a recipe that goes very, very well with sweet/sour flavors. A citrus salad or cranberry relish would also probably do well as a side.

Normally I do more to alter a new recipe, but in this case the original is so simple that it seemed better to fiddle with the sides. However, in the future I plan to try mushrooms and/or pine nuts, possibly with a dash of balsamic vinegar. My sister also mentioned an interesting variation on this theme, using spinach instead of kale.

This is Marie, whose usual contribution to the culinary delights detailed in this blog is eating something on the menu different from what my husband ordered, so we can share. However, on intermittent Sunday nights I am doing something a bit more special than just the daily “what can I make with whatever’s on hand” cooking technique.

For these meals, I am entertaining myself (and with any luck my guests and family) by making a meal out of recipes from Bon Appétit magazine and serving them to my friends. So far the results have been tasty, although not always terribly photogenic. This week’s endeavor was the Bison and Red Wine Shepherd’s Pie. The photo below was borrowed from Bon Appétit’s site, where you can read the recipe. I’ve made bison chili before and liked the results so this looked like a good opportunity.

I am constitutionally unable to attempt a recipe without changing something. In this particular recipe I changed a fair amount. That can be dangerous, especially when your victims/friends will be there pretty soon to proof the results, but on the other hand it makes the recipe a bit more “mine” (my own, my precious). The most significant change was that the recipe called for bacon, right at the beginning. Also, the cut of meat needed was not available; there were no bone-in options. Those two things could very easily change the entire meal. The bacon was presumably there to add extra flavor notes and possibly some fat, and the bone…well, there are few stew-like meals that can’t be improved with a bit of gelatin from a fresh bone. The meat was fairly well marbled so the fat wasn’t an issue. The compromise I came up with was to throw in a bit of chuck hamburger to compensate for the lack of bacon.

Our daughter came along to help with the shopping. She was in charge of checking all the displays for free samples while I picked up potatoes, onions, pearl onions, some really nice sweet organic carrots, and went on a wide-ranging but ultimately successful quest for parsnips. She was also in charge of hitting one bunch of celery with another to mime the fate that should befall all celery, followed by a deep philosophical argument regarding the exact status of celery as food and whether anything else (besides celery) that was not originally a food item could be improved with peanut butter. I did not feel this particular recipe could be improved with peanut butter; fear not. However, considering that another part of the recipe involved turnips, which I hesitate to use, celery and turnips were both passed over in favor of some frozen sweet corn. Oh, and my paprika was not sweet, it was smoked, but I figured that would also help compensate for the lack of bacon. In fact, there was a disturbing moment for me as the meat was originally browning, when a smell arose from the meat that nearly (but not quite) triggered that part of my palate that revolts violently to the presence of that particular cut of pig. Thankfully it passed quickly, but if you are a bacon fan, you would probably not want to follow me in leaving the pig out of this recipe!

At this point it seemed that any further changes would make the whole point of the exercise moot, so I tried to follow the rest fairly exactly. One of the first rules of recipes is to add an hour of prep time to anything that has more than about 5 ingredients or which requires stages of cooking. This was no exception, and another half hour or so could have come in handy as the pie went into the oven just about the time as the guests walked in the door. The neat chopping tool my in-laws gave me might have cut down on the time, but I was rather attached to the idea of having the carrots be neat discs of the same general size, rather than irregularly-sized bits. Anyway, once everything was bubbling away and looked to be cooking down well I realized that there was going to have to be some compensation for the lack of a bone. A small amount of corn starch seemed to do the trick. The girlchild also provided some good encouragement along the way, as “Ewww, bison?!?! Is that like a buffalo?” turned into wide-eyed “Man, that smells good! How soon ’till dinner?” Eleven isn’t necessarily a terribly experimental age, so I assume resistance; if it changes to enthusiasm I get extra points.

Everything went very well up to the point where the last touch was added. The potatoes had an egg wash that was supposed to brown and make the peaks all pretty, but the gravy was bubbling so vigorously that I didn’t dare leave the pie in the oven long enough for the really pretty browning to set in. Even the garlic toast didn’t brown well. Therefore, there is no picture of the untouched serving dish. However, everyone took at least seconds and some took thirds. The corn went very well with the other vegetables, retaining a bit of a crunch. The pearl onions were almost as sweet as Vidalias. Dessert was pumpkin bread that baked while we ate dinner. Overall a successful evening, even if the aesthetics weren’t quite up to standard. The important thing is that we had a good time and the food was appreciated.