Citrus-Herb Marinade

1 cup orange juice (bottled is fine)
2 limes, juiced
fresh herbs, few sprigs, leaves chopped
glug of olive oil
kosher salt (3/4 tsp per pound of meat)
black pepper or red chile flakes, to taste

Mix in a large freezer-duty Ziploc, add chicken, squeeze air out of bag, place on a dish, and refrigerate overnight. Lift chicken out of marinade before cooking. Discard remainder of marinade.

But no matter, we’ve got popicles! And the world is full of flowers and sausages!

I spend a lot of time sitting in the huge convection oven that is the state of Texas in summer watching a naked preschooler play slip n slide. Therefore…popsicles. Mama’s gotta keep cool. Preferably without alcohol. These help.

Some folks call it a paleta. I call it a popsicle. Mmm Mmm. (And then I hit my mother upside the head with it.)

I did warn you, right?

Whatever you call them, they’re awesome. Summer strawberries, fresh mint, the sweet/tart balance of honey versus lime juice. Kids love them but they’re also not too sweet for adults who tend to have more sophisticated tastes than the crap popsicles you can appease a kid with. Remember those plastic tubes of frozen food coloring? They give me and Owen Meany THE SHIVERS.

These are also a great way to use strawberries that are still good to eat but are looking a bit dodgy. You know the ones.

Don’t have popsicle molds? No problem. I use kids’ paper mouthwash cups and actually prefer them to proper molds. I can have multiple flavors available without buying more bulky plastic gadgets.

I’d even serve these at a grown-up party. I’m finding people are generally wanting fewer heavy desserts and I don’t think I’ve cooked for any group over the last two years that didn’t include at least one gluten-free or dairy-free or vegan eater in the mix. These are perfect for a crowd like that.

Even better, you just chuck it all in the whizzer and go.

Fish on.

Strawberry Mint Popsicles

Makes 8-10 small pops (depends on your molds or cups)

Minimally adapted from The Black Peppercorn. I basically just added mint and more rambling instructions.

4 cups strawberries, roughly chopped
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 cup water
3-4 fresh mint leaves (or to taste)
popsicle molds or cups and sticks (I use kids’ mouthwash cups)

Put all ingredients in the blender and puree until very smooth.
Pour into molds or cups.

If using cups, freeze for an hour, then insert sticks to partially-frozen slush. This makes the sticks stand up straight.

Freeze until solid.

Rinse under cold water to remove from molds or cup. Or you can peel the paper cups away with no rinsing, which is better if you want to plate them up fancy without slush forming.

(P.S. I have no patience or time for dealing with comment spam so for now I’ve got comments closed until I figure that out.  Also, there’s a lot of old links, too much stuff laying about, etc, and I’m hoping to work on that ASAP so this site will be easier to read. )

It’s been almost two years since I posted a recipe. I feel like I’m shouting this post into an empty theater. Is anyone even going to read this? My baby is now a toddler, and at least today, right at this moment, I feel like posting again, so here goes!

I’ll forgo the apologies about not writing, that particularly self-absorbed guilt that bloggers like to indulge in, and just say this: Food and poop don’t mix. One may cause the other but it only works in one direction.

I KNOW, I just said “poop” in a food blog. But I also resisted a cheesy math joke. So we’re even?

Ok, ok, onto the chicken. This chicken that I made twice in two weeks. This chicken that came from a need to use a hen I had in the freezer and to make dinner using nothing but what I had in my pantry. This chicken that left my never-orders-chicken husband swooning over his dinner.

Why did I say “hen” and not “chicken”? Because I killed and plucked and cleaned this hen with my own hands and it just feels right to call it a hen, to give it a bit more identity than “chicken”. But that’s a story for another day. It was an excellent bird, raised by excellent people. Dang tasty. This dish was also, fortunately, quite good with a more typical organic chicken.

The key to this dish is to let it marinate overnight. I’ve tried marinating for only a few hours and the flavor and tenderness were noticeably different.

Use chicken pieces with skin and bone intact.  If you use a whole bird, cut-up, for the love of poultry, eat those crispy wings first when they come out of the oven! And maybe don’t tell anyone else they ever existed.

Spice-Roasted Chicken

These spices are so intensely aromatic and the chicken takes on a lovely fragrance as it cooks. No sauce is necessary, but if you want one, this Curried Yogurt Sauce is an excellent companion, especially for cold leftovers. 

Serves 4-6

parsley or cilantro, minced, for garnish

In a small food processor, grind together garlic and spices. Add to a large zipper freezer bag with lemon zest, lemon juice, and olive oil. Add chicken, toss to coat. Squeeze air out of bag and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 375F. Place chicken, skin side up, on a baking sheet lined with foil. Do not crowd onto pan; make sure there is space between the pieces. Bake for 30 minutes, using the broiler for the last 5 minutes if needed to further brown the skin.

Note: I used a red chile powder that I get from an Indian store. You can use any ground red chile (not a chili powder blend with cumin) but the spice level may vary, so adjust according to your taste. Cayenne is the most widely available chile powder.

If you’re a chile freak, make this chicken now. Once dubbed “Scary Chicken” by a customer with a more timid palate, it requires cold beer and a love of the lip tingle. Is it for serving guests? No. Is it the equivalent of wearing a hair shirt? Maybe. Salvation through pain. More specifically, capsaicin, which I contend is addictive. The more you eat chilies, the more you want them.

I know I’m not alone in this chile fetish of mine; I sold a lot of this chicken over the years and plenty of other spicy food. There are people who never ordered from me again, but there were others, like Daphne, who literally did a dance in front of her coworkers when I delivered her Shrimp Sauce Piquant and told her I had made it extra spicy. That’s what a cook lives for.  I will never forget it.

This is a stupidly easy recipe. It’s hard to even call it a recipe.  You mince ginger, rub the chicken, and bake it. If you can barely nuke your Easy Mac you can still handle this.

With a mini food processor for mincing the ginger, this chicken takes about 10 minutes to get into the oven. Put on a pot of jasmine rice while it cooks and stir-fry some greens (bok choy, mustard greens, etc.) in sesame oil at the last minute. If you like mushrooms, toss some shiitakes into your greens.

And make sure you’ve got your beer chilled!

Chile-Roasted Chicken
A rub of chile-garlic paste caramelizes in the oven for deeply golden and crispy skin while fresh ginger adds its aromatic heat to the chicken. Not for the timid, this is seriously spicy. 

Serves 2

2 chicken leg quarters
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, peeled and minced
Huy Fong chile-garlic paste, see Note
kosher salt
disposable latex gloves (optional, but recommended)

Peel ginger by scraping with the side of a spoon. (See picture.) Mince in a food processor until pulverized.

Line a baking sheet with heavy duty foil. Place chicken on foil and pat dry with a paper towel.

Run a finger under the skin to loosen the skin from the meat. Do not detach the skin.

Wearing gloves to protect your hands from the chile paste, rub the meat (under the skin) with salt, ginger, and a generous amount of chile paste. Be sure to stuff some seasoning down the length of the drumstick.

Replace the skin and rub the exterior of the meat with more chile paste. Your chicken should be entirely coated with the paste, top and bottom.

Roast at 425F for 25-30 minutes or until done. If you have any doubts, an instant-read thermometer should read 165F when inserted into the thickest part of the thigh.

Note about chile paste:
Don’t confuse chili garlic paste with sriracha, the smoother “rooster sauce” that comes in a squeeze bottle. You want the chunkier version. You can also use sambal oelek, but add a couple cloves of fresh garlic to the ginger when you process it.

Delicious Sweet Baby
This recipe will take a full 9 months to prepare but you will be rewarded with succulently fat thighs, on you and the baby. 

Serves 2

1 (6 lb, 15 oz) baby girl
1 dozen onesies, in various shades of pink
5 cases newborn diapers
10 cases baby wipes
1 tube Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, optional
2 exhausted parents
the most local milk supply you can find
An infinite amount of patience, and willingness to get up in the middle of the night.

Hello readers! I haven’t disappeared completely.  I finally had my baby, this little bundle of love and cuteness.

More recipes coming soon once I can come up for air. I promise.  Hang in there with me while I get this little Sweet Pea past the hardest part.

We’ve had 40+ days of 100+ temps here in Texas and with that heat, combined with my HOLY CRAP hot flashes, I have basically stopped getting dressed and stopped cooking. Usually I’d suck it up and turn on the oven anyway, driven by my incessant need to cook, but the thought of doing it in overpriced-yet-still-made-of-polyester maternity pants in an already hot house while standing on swollen feet has put the brakes on my usual inclinations. Hence the total lack of blog posts lately.

Which all leads me to this recipe — a summer dish if there ever was one. This dish needs no simmering, no reducing, no baking, and unlike many “summer” dishes, no standing over a hot grill outside wondering if you might actually live on the surface of the sun. Summer grilling is for folks up north. We do that stuff in the fall.

Chimichurri sauce is a common condiment in Argentina, usually made with parsley, vinegar, onion, oil, and some source of heat like cayenne. This one uses mint, green onion, serrano pepper, lime juice, honey, and no oil, so is it really a chimichurri? I’m not sure but it sounds good anyway so I’m sticking to it. There’s a (apocryphal?) story that the original is named after an Irishman in Argentina — a hurried mispronunciation of “Jimmy McCurry” turns into “chimichurri” — so I feel a bit of leeway is built into the culture of the thing.

You’ll get to use a whole mess of mint for this sauce, which will please anyone who grows mint in the garden and has been frustrated with the fact that it grows like a weed and yet its most prevalent use is as a single sprig of garnish here and there. On a side note, does anyone else imagine that the little bugs on the mint leaves must all have minty fresh breath?

Additionally, this is a perfect meal for bikini season as it’s quite low in calories. (I suppose if you’re a dude in a Speedo you’ll like that too, but dude, really, ditch the Speedo.) You need very little oil to cook the fish and the sauce is practically calorie-free.

Now, I must again consider…we definitely Keep Austin Weird around here, but can Austin handle a sweaty preggo buying milk in her giant undies? We’ve had a thong-wearing homeless transvestite run for mayor, so why not?

Cornmeal Crusted Fish with Mint Chimichurri
A chopped herb sauce of mint and green onion warmed with serrano pepper, brightened with lime juice, and sweetened with honey makes a light summer condiment for pan-fried fish fillets with a bit of cornmeal crunch. You can use any thin white fish fillets for this dish; I’ve chosen catfish this time around.

Adapted from: Cornmeal Crusted Scallops with Mint Chimichurri, Cooking Light magazine, May 2005

Serves 3

for chimichurri:
1 1/2 cups fresh mint leaves
3/4 cup green onion, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 1/2 Tbs. fresh lime juice (about 1 1/2 limes)
4 tsp. honey
2 tsp. serrano pepper, or to taste
1/4 tsp. salt
black pepper, to taste

for fish:
3 (6 to 8 oz) white fish fillets, such as catfish
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal, for dredging
1 Tbs. canola oil

For chimichurri: In a food processor, combine all of the chimichurri ingredients with 1 Tbs. water.  Process until finely minced, stopping to scrape the sides down with a spatula.  If the herbs aren’t making good contact with the blade (and stop getting more finely minced) add a little bit more water, a teaspoon at a time, to loosen the mixture so that the food processor more easily combines the ingredients. Don’t add too much water or you’ll have a watery chimichurri.

Adjust honey, lime, salt, and pepper. If your mint was bitter you might need more honey.

For fish: Pat fish dry. Season with salt and pepper. Place cornmeal in a shallow container with sides, like a pie plate.  Dredge fish in cornmeal, shaking off any excess.

Heat 1 Tbs. oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Place fish in skillet; if the pan is hot enough you should hear a gentle sizzle. Cook 3 minutes, flip, lower heat to medium, and cook an additional 2 minutes.  Times will vary by thickness of fillets; the fish is done when golden brown and the thickest part of the fillet flakes easily with a fork.

For best color, do not move fish while it’s browning and avoid overcrowding your pan.  If three fillets don’t easily fit (with room to spare) in one skillet, divide them into multiple batches. Use 1 Tbs. oil for each batch and wipe out the skillet with a paper towel between batches.

Approximate nutritional info: 305 calories, 10g fat, 31g protein, 24g carb, 5g fiber.

Do you have a recipe that uses a lot of fresh mint? If so, you should post it in the comments here.

Grocery store corn is no comparison, at least not around here. It simply isn’t as fresh. It’s fine, but I don’t have the urge to bite into the raw kernels without cooking them. So when summer dinners call for corn, I tend to spruce it up a bit. Compound butters made with fresh herbs are great slathered over grilled cobs. If I’m servings steaks, maybe a sprinkling of smoked paprika and a hit of lime to give the corn color and a bit of acid to counter the richness of the meat.

Cutting the kernels from the cobs creates so many options, since you can sauté veggies and aromatics with the corn and dress it any number of ways that otherwise might not stick to intact cobs. Lots of herbs work well with corn—basil, oregano, thyme, or chives. Acids, such as citrus juice or vinegars, bring out the sweetness rather than mask it. You can serve sautéed corn hot or you can chill the mixture and call it a salad. Delicious both ways.

For this recipe I used what was handy: a red pepper and basil from the garden, a sweet onion and elephant garlic from the farm stand, and a lime.

Cutting kernels from the cob can be messy if you don’t take the right approach. If you cut the cobs on a cutting board, kernels will fly all over your kitchen. Instead, hold each cob upright in a large bowl and slice from the top down, as pictured. The kernels will fall in the bowl, not on your floor.

Be sure to cut the kernels at their base. If you cut halfway through, you are on the road to making creamed corn; the milky sweet starch will be released. Of course, homemade creamed corn is a delight and probably a whole post in itself.

When choosing cobs, pick heavy ears. Heaviness equals higher moisture content, which indicates freshness. Partially pull back the silks (which should not be moldy) and a little of the husk to take a peek at the kernels. They should look plump, not shriveled. Don’t worry about yellow corn versus white corn—the freshness will matter more than the color.

Lastly, if your corn just isn’t all that sweet, add a very light sprinkling of sugar to the pan as it cooks. Not every piece of produce can be perfect.

Fresh Corn with Basil and Lime
Crunchy, sweet fresh corn is cut from the cob and quickly cooked with onion, red bell pepper, and garlic then finished with a generous amount of fresh basil and a squeeze of lime. The acidity of the lime brings out the natural sweetness of the corn.

Serves 4

1 Tbs. olive oil or butter
5 ears of corn, kernels cut from cobs
1/2 small onion, small dice
1/2 red bell pepper, small dice
1 clove garlic, minced
10 leaves of fresh basil, minced
juice of one lime, or to taste
salt and pepper, to taste

Cut kernels from cobs by standing each ear of corn on its end in a large bowl and slicing from the top down.

Melt butter in a high-sided skillet over medium heat. Add onion, bell pepper, and a pinch of salt. Sweat until soft but not brown, 3-4 minutes. Add garlic, cook 30 seconds or until fragrant. Add corn, salt, and pepper. Raise heat to high and cook quickly, stirring, until corn brightens in color and is heated through. (If you prefer softer corn, use lower heat and cook longer.) Taste the corn; if it isn’t sweet, add a pinch of sugar to the pan and stir well. Remove from heat and finish by adding basil and lime to taste. Adjust salt and pepper. Serve hot or cold.

What’s your favorite way to cook corn? Leave a comment!