Until recently, I had always bought chicken two ways:

• Whole – generally for roasting
• Unique parts – breasts, thighs, etc – but multiple of the same kind – usually for easy dinners.

And then I made fried chicken, and everything changed.

I bought a whole chicken and had the butcher cut it up – as fried chicken naturally needs to be a mix of all the parts.

It was so easy that a few days later, when I was making Smitten Kitchen’s buttermilk roast chicken, I did the same thing.  Except that while walking home from the store, I realized it needed to brine overnight.  So I rerouted the breasts to that night’s dinner, and left the remaining thighs, legs and wings to marinate (and threw the back in the freezer with other chicken scraps for stock).

Plan was to roast the breasts bone and skin on (more flavor) – but that also means more time (and less healthy) and dammit I was hungry and needed dinner immediately.  So I reluctantly cut the breasts off the bone and removed the skin and with smidge of salt, pepper and olive oil, threw them on the grill (pan).

10 minutes later and boneless, skinless chicken breasts that were good.  Really good.  Good enough that I have since used this trick again this week.

Why was this the best boneless skinless chicken breast of my life?  My (unscientific) reasoning is that since the whole chicken was just cut and the then the meat just removed from the skin and bones, that it stayed incredibly moist and fresh.  Makes since, sense packaged meats or even those pre-cut in the butcher case are already starting to dry out and lose flavor.

And now I am starting to wonder if half the reason that fried chicken and buttermilk roasted chicken were so damn good is because of this.  But that’s good right?  It’s all in the ingredients anyway…

So there you have it – better chicken any time – oh, and cheaper too!!  Because let’s face it, as boring as they are, occasionally we all need some bonless skinless chicken in our lives.

When I bought my first iPhone, I made a rule – only download free apps.  Although they are pretty resonable, I knew that $.99 + $2.99 + boredem and I would be sacraficing good dinners for long forgotten apps.

And I am glad I made that rule, because it has saved me from needless buying.  But on occasion, I “splurge” and my favorite category to do so is for location apps.

Apps like UrbanDaddy’s ‘The Next Move’, goop city cuides and Know What are real lifesavers – in new cities or in your own.  How many times are we out with friends and can’t for the life of us think of a fun ‘bar-restaurant-you name in’ in the neighborhood when we need it?  It as if all that useful knowledge just slips away at just the wrong time.  But thankfully, now there is an app for that.

And the just announced sfgirlbybay’s Bohemian Modern San Francisco app from a local favorite blogger Victoria Smith & Know What is one more to add to my list.

At least I still won’t pay for the upgrade to Words with Friends.

What are your favorite apps? Any worth me breaking my rule?

Also – sorry for the  muliple phone related posts, but as I am trying to be more ‘mobile’ here, I guess you can see where my thoughts are.

Knowing that we all take more and more photos on our phones (particularly with fun filters and apps like instagram), I thought I would share with you one of my favorite tricks.  It works particularly well for self-portraits and the long-arm snaps.

Simply place your finger on the photo ‘button’ and then do not release until you are ready to take the picture.  This helps avoid tapping aimlessly and hoping that you make it work and also reduces blur.

Try it out and let me know what you think.  Do you have handy any tips for phone cameras?

(It worked great when I was last at the Phillips Collection in DC and trying to snap a pic that included most the the famed Rothko Room, above).

Lots of dinners –  at home, at friends, at our favorite local spots, at fun new restaurants.  Some of them I may even need to bring back as full posts – even if the pics are few and far between.

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Plenty of trips to the farmer’s market – especially on Saturday mornings at the Ferry Building, with a stop first for chilequiles or my favorite smoked sturgeon sandwich.

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A trip to Italy for a truly spectacular wedding, and then a few more days traveling with friends.  Pretty fab!

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We moved (yes, AGAIN!) and I worked with the oh-so-lovely Caitlin of Sacramento Street to get our dining room ready in time for…

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My birthday.  And yep, it was a big one – and we celebrated in style with lots of friends and even more champagne!

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And now here we are in February of 2012!  A year that is bound to have lots of excitement and adventures – and blogging too!

I never meant to be gone this long.  Actually, I never meant to be gone at all.  But I was – such is life, I guess.  I have been wanting to come back here, but I knew I needed a different format.  Shorter posts.  More frequency and regularity (said that before!!).  More life, inside and outside the kitchen.  I still want to reformat the blog, but I am not going to let that stop me from getting started again.

So here we are, and we will see where it goes…

Thanks for sticking around (or more likely coming back).

If spring has sprung for you anything like it has in San Francisco, I would recommend calling up your friends and having an impromptu dinner party tonight!  And maybe have platters around for lettuce wraps.

This version is a simple adaptation of an old Gourmet recipe, Cellophane-Noodle Salad with Roast Pork.  I first made it a few years ago, and when ripe mangos popped up in the market here, I knew it needed to be on the menu again soon.

This time, I used brown rice noodles instead of the cellophane (or mung bean) and loved the change.  A mandoline makes quick work of all the chopping, but I have done it by hand as well, and it’s really not too bad.  Also, to fit the warm weather, I grilled the pork this time — and didn’t miss turning on the oven.

The sweet, spicy, crunchy and cool combo is just perfect – and the hands on makes for a fun presentation.  It also goes particualrly well with a few cold beers!

Hope you have a great weekend and there is some sunshine your way!

Dinner last night was exactly what I needed to get me back here.  It was good.  No, really f*ing good.  Other things I have been making lately have been fine, meh, okay, but not enough to inspire me to download the pictures and write about them.

But then this smoky carrot puree comes and blows me out of the water.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we went to dinner with friends at Nopa (consistently some of the best meals – highly recommended to those visiting SF) and I haven’t been able to get one of the starters out of my head.

It was grilled sardines on toast with a carrot hummus.  Out of this world.  The carrot when combined with the sardines gave it an almost uni-like quality.  Ah-mazing.

And then my friend Kimberley posted a smoky carrot hummus on her blog a few days later. Obviously carrots have been stalking me.

I finely decided to give in and try out my own version, and now I am wondering why I waited so long.

Combined with a combination of spices that were subtly sweet, spicy and smoky these carrots became things of dreams.  And topped with a quick pan-roasted hake (quite possibly my new favorite fish — it has large flakes and is mild and a barely sweet, similar to black cod), it became the best dinner we could remember having.

So good, it even held up to its original inspiration.

As a quick aside, this puree is also great cold as a dip.  I may or may not be munching on the leftovers with sesame rice crackers while typing this.  No, I would never resort to snacking between breakfast and lunch.

Smoked Carrot Puree

NOTE:  I did absolutely no measuring when I made this, just eyeballed it all – no surprise there.  But it is too good not to share as a “recipe” – so this is my best guess.

Also, next time I will make a much larger batch, as I would love to keep it on hand in the fridge for quick snacks. For a dinner side, I would plan on about 2-3 (good size) carrots per person.

If you don’t have smoked salt, do not increase cumin to make up for it – it is a different kind of smokiness.  Smoked salt has more of that “beach bonfire” wood-smoke taste.  It is something I love having on hand to use as a finishing salt.  You can find it now in some grocery stores, specialty food stores, Williams-Sonoma and online.

• 1½ pounds carrots, peeled
• 4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
• ¹⁄₈ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon aleppo pepper (a few red pepper flakes would also work) :: aleppo pepper is slightly smoky and moderate heat
• smoked salt
• kosher salt
• pepper
• water

Preheat oven to 425ºF.

Chop the carrots into 2″ pieces, keeping them equal so they roast evenly.  Toss with 1-2 tablespoons olive oil (just enough to coat all the pieces), cumin, cinnamon, aleppo pepper.  Add a pinch of both kosher and smoked salt and a few grinds of freshly cracked pepper.

Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast for 25-35 minutes, until golden and soft, tossing once during roasting.

Once the carrots are roasted, transfer to a food processor.  Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and ¼ cup water and puree, adding additional oil and water (a tablespoon at a time) until it has the desired consistency.  Taste and adjust for seasoning, perhaps adding a few more flakes of smoked salt.

To serve, use as a base for your favorite chicken or fish, or as a dip with bread or crackers.  Top with a small drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of smoked salt.  Can be served at any temperature.

Isn’t it funny how some foods are elevated to tradition for holidays, and others are just there, when often enough we like the ones best that are more common.  Take corned beef – there is corned beef and cabbage and corned beef hash. I would always pick corned beef hash over corned beef and cabbage, yet the former is the one most associated with a holiday (St. Patrick’ Day, of course).

Being that I am part Irish (well, as much as I am anything – true mutt status) and the fact that my mom loved decorating for and celebrating just about anything, we sometimes had corned beef and cabbage on March 17, but it wasn’t necessarily a tried and true.  But who can blame her – boiled beef and cabbage don’t exactly make my heart skip a beat. And so up until now I had never made it myself.

That is until yesterday.

Last Sunday was spent with family, and when they got to our apartment, they came with gifts – corned beef, a head of cabbage, a few carrots and potatoes to be exact.  So here was my chance to try my own hand at tradition.

Thankfully when looking for a recipe, I found a baked version on Simply Recipes that seemed a bit more inviting than boiling then 4 pounds of meat in a vat of water and spices.

As for the cabbage, I took also took her lead and sauteed it, although I added a few grated carrots, and held back some of the diced cabbage and carrots and tossed it in at the end, to keep it a bit more fresh.  With a bit of vinegar, some parsley and a touch of mustard and brown sugar, it was a cross between sauteed cabbage and coleslaw.  And just about right.

If you are planning on making corned beef tonight, I would definitely recommend following Elise’s recipe, and in particular, the VERY IMPORTANT step about boiling it first to remove a bit of the salt.  This coming from a gal who likes things “well seasoned.”  I skipped that step because I was in a hurry and maybe didn’t realize how salty the corned beef would be, and I am still paying the price.  Let’s put it this way – I was so dehydrated this morning that I felt like I woke up from a 3 day bender.

But those often are pretty fun, so it’s not all bad.

Do you have any ways you have updated holiday meals?  Or do you like them just for tradition’s sake?

Note on the corned beef:

Mine was a bit larger than the original recipe, so I cooked it for about an extra 20-30 minutes for it to become tender.  Also (as you can see from the pictures) I realized (too late) that I was out of whole cloves, so I just rubbed the top with a teeny bit of ground clove {not too much, it is potent!} and then studded the far with bits of garlic.  I also mixed up a honey mustard, as I did not have one on hand.

So here are a few pics of things I have made recently, but that for some reason or another never made it up. Hope you enjoy these little snippets, and that I get my mojo back soon!

xxo

C

One Saturday I was craving and egg salad sandwich, but we were out of bread.  So I made Kim Boyce‘s Oatmeal Sandwich Bread.  And I was fairly insufferable the rest of the day, feeling smug and proud that I made bread just like that.

I don’t make pasta all that often for dinner, but when I do, this Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage is my go-to.  My love of broccoli rabe {or rapini} knows no bounds and it is fast and easy for a weeknight dinner. You can of course use pork sausage, but I usually do turkey here – and of course hot italian!

My dad made an amazing crown pork roast, but unfortunately I only snapped a few pics.

I know that over the year I have had crown roast of beef and lamb (great holiday dinners), but to my recollection, this was my first with pork.  He made herb garlic crust and we served it with a fennel orange salad with warm prosciutto dressing and {surprise, surprise} sauteed broccoli rabe with garlic and chile flakes.  Will definitely be making this again…if only I knew what recipe he used!

And to change things up ever so slightly, I swapped by favorite roast chicken for one that added lemon and garlic.  While it didn’t move into first place, it is fun to change it up – and I loved using the roasted garlic and lemons for a salad dressing that accompanied the chicken.

And of course, lots of messes have been made!!

It was a joint effort, as C+J picked up some some surf and turf (by way of skirt steak and sea bass) at the Ferry Building, we sort of split the veg based on our respective fridge’s, the farmer’s market selection (or lack there of) and the corner market, we covered drinks and sides and our friend Mike brought some goodies as well.

The spread turned out as follows:

Spicy roasted chickpeas, vegetable quesadillas and Micheladas {with a half-salted rim} à la Nopalito to start.

Steak tacos with grilled grass-fed skirt steak, quick-pickled onions, avocado and cilantro.

Fish tacos with sea bass that was so fresh it tasted like it was caught 5 minutes before dinner.  The bass was grilled with a chile-cumin-aleppo pepper dry rub {with a teeny dash of cinnamon} and piled on tortillas with everyone’s FAVORITE chipotle-lime cream and cabbage.

Rice, Beans and salsa ~ brown rice, Rancho Gordo cranberry beans, and store-bought fresh salsa doctored up with some of the leftover chipotles, to be exact.

Salad of butter lettuce, radishes, tomatoes and pepitas with cilantro-lime vinaigrette

Whether or not we made Kim Boyce’s oatmeal cookies later while watching a movie, I’ll never tell. But what is more disturbing, is that for what is possbily the first time ever, people were able to drive home from dinner at out house.  That combined with boys night equaling dinner and movie means I am likely much older than I think.

Don’t worry, I don’t expect this sort of maturity to last long.  And at least it tastes good!