Rosemary Lemon Chicken

Do you love Rosemary? I am referring of course to the wonderful herb and not a person! It grows like a weed up here in the Sierra Foothills. Nothing could be better on a less than hot day, thank you nature for that, than baked chicken! My marinade for this dish is from Jamie Oliver, The Naked Chef, with a bit of modification…

Marinade Ingredients
3 large lemons
2 handfuls of fresh rosemary
10 cloves of garlic, smashed
10 glugs of extra virgin olive oil
Fresh ground pepper

Marinade ingredients

Using a big zipper bag, cut the lemons and squeeze the juice into the bag. With your hand squeeze the outside of the lemon to get the lemon oil into the bag as well. I do tear a few of the pieces too. Next, pound the rosemary, and take half to the side. Add half to the bag. Now take the remaining rosemary and sliding your hand down the stem, remove the leaves into the bag. Discard the stems. Then take the garlic and smash the cloves, peel away the skin, and add this to the bag. Add the olive oil. Then add about 10 twists of pepper from the pepper grinder. Shake the bag really well to combine the ingredients.

For the chicken part of the recipe, I used 5 leg thigh combinations. Wash the chicken and cut away any excess fat and skin. Add these to the bag.

Chicken is added to the marinade

Here is the chicken and marinade combined in the bag.

Chicken mixed up with the marinade in the bag

Marinate for two hours in the refrigerator. After the two hours, remove the chicken from the refrigerator, and let this sit out for about a half hour. Then pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Place the chicken in a foil lined pan skin side down.

Chicken in the roasting pan

Remove the lemon rinds from the bag. Add some of the rosemary pieces to the pan, and do the same with the garlic. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes turn the chicken. Baste with some of the pan juices, and set the timer for another 30 minutes.

I served this with oven fried potatoes and fresh steamed green beans.

Dinner is served!

The flavors of this dish is amazing! Now, let me give you Jaime Oliver’s recipe for the marinade. This was from his book “Jaime Oliver, The Naked Chef Takes Off.”

Rosemary, Garlic and Lemon Marinade
2 good handfuls of fresh rosemary, pounded
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
10 glugs of olive oil
3 lemons, halved, juiced and skin squashed
freshly ground pepper

Mix everything together and massage onto your chosen meat. Leave the meat in the marinade until you’re ready to cook it.

Let me know if you try this! You might even want to cook this chicken on the BBQ grill!

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Pinot More

When my husband goes off to visit his Mother, I cook the stuff that I like to eat. He tells me that I can cook these things when he is home, but I want him to enjoy what I make, so I save these dishes for a night like tonight! I wanted to do something different with lamb. And I wanted to use some of the wine we have sitting around the house!

Ingredients
1 cup of Pinot Noir (I used 2010 Chateau Davell Delores Pinot Noir, Mendocino), plus 1/2 cup reserved
1/8 cup of extra virgin olive oil
8 fresh rosemary stems, leaves removed and chopped
8 cloves of garlic, minced
fresh ground salt and pepper, about 1/2 tsp of each
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 rack of lamb
1 TBS local honey

Marinade ingredients

Put the wine, olive oil, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper plus the balsamic vinegar into a bowl and mix it well. Place the lamb and the marinade in a zip lock bag, and shake it up.

Marinating lamb

Let this sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. One hour before you are ready to cook, take the lamb out of the refrigerator. After an hour, turn the oven on to 350 degrees. While the oven heats, place your lamb in a roasting pan.

Lamb ready for the oven

Reserve the marinade. Bake until the temperature of the meat reaches 135 degrees. Remove from the oven, cover and let sit. While this is resting, place the reserved marinade into a sauce pan, and add the honey. Heat to boiling. Reduce this to half. Check the flavor as you go. If needed use the reserved wine.

Pinot reduction

When reduce to half, turn down to warm. Slice up the resting lamb into chops.

Lamb cut into chops

Plate the meat, dress with some fresh rosemary, and drizzle the sauce over the meat.

Dinner is served!

And, dinner is served! Let me know how you like this recipe!

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Slow Roasted Beef

In thinking what I would make for dinner tonight, I rummaged once again through the freezer, and a couple of days ago I discovered the roast I had put away. I will be slow roasting this and will also feature roasted potatoes, carrots and parsnips to accompany this dish. Slow roasting of the meat will keep the “pink” color of the meat from side to side, and any leftovers will make great roast beef sandwiches. So let’s head off to the kitchen!

Ingredients
1 – 3 1/2# beef roast
Fresh ground salt and pepper
1 tsp each of rosemary, thyme and basil
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
Extra virgin olive oil
2 Yukon gold potatoes
A good handful of baby carrots
2 medium sized parsnips

Allow four hours for this to cook. Take the roast out of the refrigerator and let it warm up. If there is a nice layer of fat on the meat, score it.

Score the fat

While it is warming up rub with the fresh ground salt and pepper. Using a mortar and pestle, crush the herbs one at a time. Then combine in a bowl to blend evenly. Rub this on all sides of the roast. Slice the garlic into thin slices, and cut into the meat and insert the slices of garlic. Next using a slight bit of olive oil, rub this over the meat.

Rubbed with herbs and oil

Once the roast has sat out for about an hour or so, turn the heat up on your oven to 200 degrees. While this is heating up, get your pan ready, and include a roasting rack to set the roast on. When the oven is ready, place this in the oven on the 2nd rack from the bottom. Set the timer for four hours. Do not open the oven!

About an hour and a half before the roast is done get your vegetables ready. Although I really love veges cooked around the meat, for this recipe, you will have to cook these separately. I cut the potatoes into chunks, left the already peeled baby carrots whole, and the peeled the parsnips, and cut those into chunks too. Then I used about 1 tsp of rosemary, and parsley, a couple of dashes of onion powder, and 3 twists on the salt and pepper grinders. Then I used about 2 TBS of extra virgin olive oil. Using my hands I mixed it up.

Potatoes, carrots and parsnips

Set these aside. There are a couple of steps that you will need to do with the roast, so at the 50 minutes before the timer goes off, preheat the oven for the vegetables to 375 degrees. Place those in the oven. Stir these periodically during roasting.

Roasting vegetables

When the timer goes off for the meat, remove it from the oven and cover it with foil.

Before hitting it with high heat

Then turn the oven up to 500 degrees. When the oven is hot, place the roast back into the oven and cook for 5 minutes. Check the internal temperature at this point. I cooked this to medium rare and pulled this out of the oven when the temperature hit 132 degrees. Remove from the oven and cover with foil. The temperature will go up as the meat rests.

Let the roast sit

After about 10 minutes the veges should be done, and the meat ready to carve.

Slice up the meat - see the garlic?

Plate it up with your veges, and use some of the juices to pour over the meat.

Dinner is served!

Stay tuned as I will be fixing up Steve’s Baked Tilapia tomorrow!

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Beef Stew

Normally I make beef stew in the crock pot. Yesterday with the snow event and no power for most of the day I had to prepare this on the stove top. Nothing is better than a stew on a very cold day, and our bones were definitely warmed by this dish!

Ingredients
1 1/2# stew meat
flour
garlic powder
salt and pepper
Hungarian paprika
1 onion
extra virgin olive oil
64 oz. beef broth
1 cup good red wine, I used Zinfandel from Storey Winery
3 potatoes
handful of prepared baby carrots
3/4 cup of frozen peas
1/4 # fresh green beans
2 bay leaves
1 TBS savory
1 TBS coriander
2 TBS rosemary
2 TBS parsley

Cut up the meat into bite size chunks…sorry the photo is poor… 😦

Meat is cut up and ready to use

Then take the flour, garlic powder, salt and pepper and the paprika and add to a zip lock bag. Put the meat in and shake it vigorously. Set aside. Next take the onion and chop coarsely. Add this and 3 good glugs of olive oil to your stew pot. Turn on the heat, add the onions. Cook down for about 3 minutes and then grab the pieces of beef out of the bag. Do not worry about excess flour as you grab the meat as it will thicken the stew. But do not add in the rest of the flour from the bag. Brown the meat. While this is browning, peel the potatoes and cut into bite size chunks. Trim up the green beans.

The vegetables are ready to go

When the meat is brown add the broth and the wine. Then add your vegetables. Next add the herbs.

Everything is added

Bring this up to a boil, and then cover, turning the heat down to low. Check your stew often to ensure that it does not stick to the bottom of the stew pot. Cook on low for about 2 hours, and then serve.

Dinner is served!

Don’t forget to have a glass of the wine that you used in the stew!

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Walk in the Garden with Me

Today is a wonderful day weather wise. While we need the rain, what we have had and the warmer than normal temperatures have made my garden come to life. Come and take a walk with me. I want to show you some really cool things that are happening today in the garden!

Let’s start out in the fruit orchard.

Almond Joy

Peach Perfection

The Universe in a Nectarine

The Apricot Reaches for You

Now let us wander around by the Daffodil’s.

The Skirt of the Daffidol

A Spider Makes a Home

Dew Drops

Charlotte Before the Web

The native plants are also starting to display.

Steaming Down wiith Manzanita

Cedar Chest Emerging

Now let us take a look at these herbs.

Rosemary in the Rough

The Life of Lavendar

And here are some other things that you might just overlook.

A Web Revealed

The Richness of the Rocks

And finally, under the redwood trees

Mushroom Exposed

Isn’t the emergence of spring wonderful! Let’s take a walk again later on in the season. OK? Hey, and thanks for joining me and letting me share with you some of the things I enjoy in the garden!

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Crockpot Braised Short Ribs

Temperatures are dropping, clouds are coming in and if we get any precipitation it will snow overnight. With the cold coming, I wanted to make an easy dish in the crockpot. I love the all in one dishes! This takes a bit of prepping, but it is well worth it!  Start this early in the day as cooking time is 9 hours, and prep time is about an hour.

Ingredients
4 cups of low sodium beef broth
1 onion, sliced and separated
8 beef short ribs
1 cup of flour
1 tsp fresh ground salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp rosemary leaves crushed
1 tsp thyme leaves crushed
1 tsp marjoram leaves crushed
1/2 tsp basil leaves crushed
2 TBS extra virgin olive oil
1 – 12 oz. bottle of a stout beer
1 TBS butter
5 cloves of garlic crushed
1 bay leaf

Get your ingredients ready…

Ingredients

Put the beef broth into a saucepan and heat to boiling. Reduce this to approximately a cup and a half.  This concentrates the beef flavor in the broth.

Cooking down the beef broth

While this is cooking down, slice the onion and lay the pieces in the crockpot making a “bed” for the short ribs. Next in a zip lock bag, add the flour along with the salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and basil. Shake the bag to mix up well. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. When the oil is hot dredge the short ribs and add to the pan.

Dredged short ribs added to the oil

Sear the meat on all sides.

Sear all sides of the short ribs

About half way through searing the ribs, the beef broth should be done. Turn off the heat and set aside. As the ribs get browned, move off the completed ones to the crockpot until all have been added. Try to get them in bone side down.  This will add the flavor of the bones to the juices that you will use to drizzle over the finished dish!  Next pour the beer over the short ribs. Dot them with the garlic. Add the bay leaf and butter. Then pour in the drippings from the pan. Then take the broth and pour a bit into the pan to knock up the bits that are stuck to the pan. Pour this and the broth into the crockpot.

Everything has been added to the crock pot

Cover the crockpot and turn the heat on low, and set the time for 9 hours. Do not lift the lid once this has started cooking!  I cannot possibly describe for you how wonderful the aromas are in the house!  If you want to impress folks and make them think that you spent all day in the kitchen slaving over the stove, this is the dish for you!

Tonight I will be serving these over jasmine rice, although mashed potatoes or buttered noodles are also good. Don’t forget to steam up a vegetable, and maybe a bit of crusty sour dough bread. Serve this up with a good stout ale, or try it with a Cabernet Franc.

Dinner is served!

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Life Close Up

What I like about spring is seeing everything burst back into life! Come revisit spring 2011 with me!

Almond Delight

A blossom from my almond tree

Rhapsody in Blue

The Vinca burst forth in a glory of blue!

Pink Passion

Nothing is sweeter than Nectarines!

It's a Honey of a Bee

A study of a honey bee in broccoli.

Dandy Dandelion

A dandelion close up!

Swimming in Salmon

A salmon colored daffodil.

Rosemary Explosion

The rosemary starts to bloom.

Enjoy the visit? Come back to see Spring 2012!

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Pork Loin Chops Wrapped in Bacon

While rummaging through the freezer the other day looking for something to cook for Sunday night I found that I had some huge pork loin chops. And, I found bacon as well! What a great combination, pork and pork! This morning I headed out to the garden to grab some fresh rosemary as this herb works so well with pork. Here is a dinner that is not only easy to fix but tastes great too!  The aromas that fill the house are amazing!

Ingredients
4 pork loin chops
8 cloves of garlic, minced
8 sprigs of fresh rosemary
8 slices of thick cut peppered bacon
fresh cracked pepper

I get the pork ready for cooking early in the day so that the garlic flavor settles in to the meat. Take the garlic rub it into the all sides of the meat. Next lay a piece of rosemary over the meat.

Pork rubbed with garlic and rosemary laid on top

Take a piece of bacon and start to wrap around the chop adding another sprig of rosemary to the other side. Secure the bacon with a toothpick. Wrap a second piece of bacon around the meat as you did the first. When all are done, crack some fresh pepper on both sides of the meat.

Chops wrapped in bacon

Refrigerate until an hour before cooking.

Take the meat out one hour before cooking. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 20 minutes, then turn and continue cooking for another 20 – 25 minutes. Check the temperature on the pork. The internal temperature should be 145 degrees. When done, remove the chops from the oven and carefully remove the toothpicks and rosemary.

When done remove the toothpicks and rosemary carefully

Let the meat rest for 3 – 5 minutes before serving.

Dinner is served!

I served this tonight with steamed peas and a garlic and herb rice pilaf!  If you are inclined to make a gravy, use the pan drippings!

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Roasted Pork and Vegetables

I love a dinner that is easy to make, tastes good, and that makes the house smell so good that you just can’t wait to eat it! This is one of those dishes!

Ingredients
3 pound pork shoulder roast, boned and wrapped in a sleeve
Thyme
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Parsley flakes
Salt and pepper
Extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
1 cup of chicken broth
14 Baby carrots, halved
2 good sized yukon gold potatoes, cut into good size chunks
1/2 pound of crimini mushrooms, sliced thickly
12 ounces of quartered artichoke hearts
1/2 cup frozen baby peas
Sonoma Gourmet roasted garlic rosemary oil
Thyme
Parsley flakes

Take the roast out of the refrigerator about an hour before cooking and rub with thyme, the onion and garlic powders, parsley flakes and some salt and pepper.

Rub the herbs and spices into the meat

After an hour,preheat the oven to 350, and heat the oil in a large skillet and brown the meat on all sides.

Brown the roast on all sides

In the same pan, add the onions and garlic and caramelize.

Caramelize the onions and garlic

Then add the broth to the pan. Make sure to scrape up the browned bits!

Add broth to the pan and scrape up all the bits stuck to the pan

Pour over the meat, cover with foil and place this in the oven.

While this is cooking get your vegetables ready. Put them in a bowl with the Sonoma Gourmet Dip and Toss, and add additional thyme and parsley flakes.

Get your vegetables ready

After the roast has cooked 30 minutes, remove it from the oven, remove the foil and toss. Place the vegetables around the roast.

Lay the vegetables around the partially cooked roast

Return the pan to the oven and cook for about an hour or until the temperature of the roast hits 140 degrees. Remove the pan from the oven, and take the roast out of the pan, set aside and cover.

Roast is removed from the oven, and the veges go back in while the roast sits

The roast will still cook for a bit so the temperature will come up to the safe temperature of at least 145 degrees. Return the pan to the oven for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove the vegetables from the oven. Slice up the meat,

Slice the pork

and serve it with your roasted veges!

Dinner is served!

Try this with a Mourvedre or a Petite Sirah!

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Bacon Wrapped Pork Loin

My dear friend Kat had a photo on her blog of a bacon wrapped pork loin. And my friend Conor did a wonderful salmon dinner with potatoes and spinach. I decided to do the bacon wrapped pork loin as I could not get a good piece of salmon, but I adapted Conor’s potatoes. Please take a look at both of their blogs as they both have lots of good info! Both links are to the right: Kat is She Cooks, and Conor is One Man’s Meat…

Ingredients
2 pork loins
Roasted garlic
Dijon mustard
Rosemary
Apple Smoked Bacon
Olive oil, extra virgin
Toothpicks
Russet Potatoes

First, start with the garlic. Take a head, slice the top off

Garlic before baking

and roast in the oven for about an hour at 350. Take out the pork loin and let it warm up to room temperature. Remove garlic from the oven.

Garlic is ready!

While the garlic is cooling get your potatoes ready. I cut them in half and then into thirds. Then following Conor’s recipe I placed the potatoes into a bowl of water to leach out the starch.

Potatoes soaking in water

This has to sit for a half hour, so while it is sitting, you can get the pork ready. It is a bit messy but well worth it! Take the pork loins and trim out the blue colored muscle. Then lay out the strips of bacon, and lay the pork loin on top. Rub with the roasted garlic, Dijon mustard and the rosemary. Wrap the bacon around the pork loin and fasten the bacon with the toothpicks. Place the meat in a 9×13 inch baking pan.

Pork Loin wrapped and ready!

Now drain the potatoes. In a bowl I added the potatoes with a bit of vegetable oil, Spike and salt and pepper. I mixed the lot with my hands, and then placed them on my new silpat non-stick pan covering.

Potatoes are in the oven!

Place these in the oven at 375 for 50 minutes. Place the pork in the oven at 375 for the same amount of time. Turn the potatoes after 25 minutes. When the timer goes off at 50 minutes, check the temperature of the meat. I took this out of the oven at 150 degrees, put it on a cutting board and covered it with foil.

Pork just out of the oven!

The potatoes came out of the oven and I placed these into a serving bowl with a dash of salt.

Potatoes right out of the oven!

Up here in the foothills, we have an area where they grow a whole variety of apples and it is known as Apple Hill. If you ever get the chance stop at Boa Vista. They have the largest variety of apples and pies, and also some wonderful apple sauce, which I am using tonight with dinner. Gravenstein no less!

Gravenstein apple sauce!

Get out the applesauce and have at the ready!

Slice up the meat…

Slice up the pork loin...

, and, dinner is served!

Dinner is served!

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