In farro with mushrooms the farro is taking the place of rice which would have made this dish mushroom risotto. Farro is a tasty grain and kind of looks like brown rice’s big brother with a nuttier flavor and a more pronounced chew. The nice thing about farrotto is that you do not have to stir it constantly like risotto. After sautéing the mushroom, garlic, and onions it just cooks at a low simmer for about 50 minutes and then you uncover it, turn up the heat, and reduce the leftover liquid while stirring hard to create a sauce.
It is pretty homely looking so I made a salad to brighten our plates up.
We are still getting tomatoes from our daughter’s plot
Farro with mushrooms and a green salad
We used some chicken and beef stock and some pancetta to bolster the flavor of this dish but you could easily make this vegan by using vegetable stock and make it heartier by using additional stock from soaking dried porcini mushrooms. The jumping off point for our dish is NY Times Cooking, Farro with Mushrooms. (Unfortunately no longer a free site)
We have three new recipes on a week that begins on a Wednesday and ends the following Monday. It is kind of a hybrid week since it is starting in the middle of one week and ending on Monday. John has told me that he does not want our weeks to begin on Monday going forward because it is a bad food shopping day. Okay, we will see how this works.
Anyway here are this week’s entrees. There are three new recipes. I am excited!!
John and I arrive back in California around 10 AM which means we got up really early this morning to drive to Las Vegas for our flight. We need something simple for supper. Curried chicken and rice fits the bill!
My contribution is chopping the onions and carrots. I have hurt my back so am spending limited time standing up. So many hugs to John for taking the lead role in dinner tonight. It is a combination of chicken, rice, onions, garlic, raisins, and carrots cooked all together with a curry spice blend – an easy and enjoyable one pot meal.
Since we are going home on Tuesday, this will be my last post until Wednesday. We have scrubbed the kitchen sparkly and cleared all the decks of everything in anticipation of a photographer coming to take pictures so we can sell our house. No eating in this house!
Our final dinner is shrimp tacos with spicy black beans. John uses the grill to cook the skewered shrimp and toast up the tortillas. They both taste so good done this way that I think it will be our default way of making shrimp tacos.
Shrimp tacos and spicy black beans
For my part I season the black beans with cumin and add a can of Rotel and a little hot sauce. I make crema with yogurt, cumin, and salt. We have purchased some mango salsa which goes really well with the shrimp. A little cabbage, cilantro and a squeeze of lime and we are done!
What could be more American than steak, potatoes, and a salad. The surprising thing, though, is that this dinner turned out much more delicious than any comparable dinner of recent memory. What is up with that?!
John sous vide the steak but because it is a last minute substitution for the scallops we are supposed to have, he starts it from frozen and he cooks it at 125F for 2 1/2 hours. This is followed by a quick sear on the grill. Wow, is it good! Our rib eye cap weighs only 10 ounces raw and we split it between us. We take small bites savoring the depth of flavor.
Rib cap steak, steamed new potatoes, salad
My contributions are some steamed potatoes which I cut up, oil, and salt first and a salad using up bits and pieces of what we have left – some salad greens, parsley, cabbage, a little cucumber, a couple of small tomatoes, and some feta. Somehow tonight our dinner is the perfect storm of deliciousness.
On Thursday as I was making the couscous for dinner I thought that I would put in some vegetables to give it some color and texture. But I was also thinking, I know I will have leftover couscous and I can turn the couscous with its vegetables into a soup.
For lunch today with the addition of a little turkey sausage I made couscous soup with vegetables and turkey sausage. We call this combination affectionately, sludge soup because the couscous tends to fall to the bottom.
Turkey sausage and couscous soup
And speaking of planned-overs, for dinner we defrost a container of spaghetti sauce. I made a large amount of spaghetti sauce in June and froze three containers worth. We had one container the first day we arrived in Utah, one tonight, and I will save the other one for when we are back at the end of October.
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Not only do John and I consider planning, shopping, and cooking fun, we also save a ton of money by not eating out. The dollars it costs to make your own meal are about 1/6 of what you would spend at a restaurant. I figure the amount we save must be at least $5000 a year. That it more than enough for a vacation!!
Today’s classic chicken is John’s sous vide chicken breast served au jus with my confetti couscous, and spinach. We are supposed to be having butternut squash but the cut up squash I bought has not liked sitting around for a week. Couscous is always a good quick substitute. I give a quick chop to a carrot, celery, green onion, and parsley and add them into the couscous for some color and texture. The spinach is Stouffer’s spinach soufflé from the grocery’s frozen aisle.
We are in the process of selling our house here in Utah and a couple of real estate agents came over on Tuesday to look at our house and give us their pitch. Needless to say by the time we were done with them no one felt like cooking dinner. So we had pizza. Our weekly menu is now pushed back a day and the dining out day has been eliminated (for now.)
Our vegan dinner this week is one of our favorites, chickpea stew.
Chickpea Stew
In order to make sure that we actually had time to do the prep and cook the stew, I cut up most of the vegetables in the morning. Doing the mise en place early makes the actually assembly very quick. As you can see there are carrots, onions, celery, greens, tomatoes, scallions, and garlic that need chopping up. After sautéing the vegetables I add the chickpeas and lastly the ditalini which cook for about 10 minutes. At that point you add the greens and let them wilt. I make this with half water and half vegetable stock. Tasty and nutritious!
Happy October! Our air conditioning is fixed and it looks like lower temperatures (inside and out) are on the way!!
We have made 3-cup chicken before using the America’s Test Kitchen recipe. We have had varying results. Because we are trying to not heat up that house too much, we decide to try making this dish using the sous vide method. I really like this method because it makes the time when you are going to serve the dish so much more flexible without any detriment to the meat.
Sous vide 3-cup chicken with rice and broccoli
We use the marinade and the garlic, ginger and oil in the vacuum sealed bag and cook it for about 2 hours at a temperature of 175F. I make the rice in our Instant Pot and sauté the broccoli. We decide not to thicken the cooking liquid as that would have meant using another pot. All in all it turns out pretty well and we will probably do it this way in the future.
Omnivore 