Sorry for the late post on this!

I want to hear about your best go-to recipe. The one you make when you don’t have a plan but you want to have an actual meal. The one for which you usually have the ingredients on hand. You can post an actual recipe or just a rough set of instructions.

I’ll start!

Our go to is steak tacos. Put a can of chipotle in adobo in the food processor or blender and mix until a thick paste. You can add some lime juice and cumin if you like, but you don’t have to. Marinate a steak (flank, sirloin, strip, whatever) in the paste for as long as you’ve got, from ten minutes to hours. Grill the steak (or cook it in a cast iron pan) until medium rare. Put on corn tortillas with guacamole and some cilantro. Delicious and super easy!

What are your go-to recipes?

I will choose the winner by the one that sounds most tasty.

Chicken soup/stew.

Always made after roasted chicken.

Large pot of water and carcass of chicken

Always have herbs in freezer and add the last hour of slow boil (3 hrs)

Garlic chives chopped before freezing. Takes the place of onions and garlic and chives. Lots

A few carrots and celery.

Let cool. Take out carcass and clean. Strain broth. Cook rice or noodles separately. Cook carrot bites and celery separately; then add.

Eat soon or let set in fridge over nite.

Add salt and pepper to taste. I like lots of ground pepper.

I used to make mac ‘n’ cheese a lot when the kids lived at home. I just made it tonight, and Mr. AM was very happy. (It’s not on our current heart healthy hit parade.)

We usually have an 8 oz bag of shredded sharp cheddar cheese in the fridge. And we usually have sausage in the freezer.

3 T butter
3T flour
1.5 cups milk.
2 cups Tillamook grated sharp cheddar (8 oz, I think), pre-grated because I'm lazy
generous sprinkle of grated nutmeg (optional)
1 lb cavatappi or shell pasta. Current fave shape: trottole
Will usually cut up 2 Aidell's chicken apple sausages and drop it into the boiling pasta for a minute near the end of the pasta cooking

start the pasta first; sauce doesn't take long but it takes a while for the pasta water to boil!

Make a white sauce: melt butter in saucepan over medium heat, add flour, let cook for about a minute while stirring. Add milk, keep stirring; sauce will thicken. Turn off heat, add cheese and nutmeg. That's the sauce.

Mix sauce and cooked pasta/sausage, sprinkle top with grated parmesan, bake at 375 for 15 mins (longer and it's TOO done). Lovely, gooey, cheesey mac.

This is easily scalable to half, or 1.5 or 2 times the recipe.

White chili with chicken and beans

Ingredients:
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1 large yellow onion, chopped
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 to 1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs or breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
* 1 tablespoon ground cumin
* 1 teaspoon dried oregano
* 2 (4-ounce) cans diced green chilies
* 2-3 cups chicken broth (you can add more if chili’s too thick) (2 cups is a can's worth)
* 2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
* Salt, to taste
* 3 cups shredded Monterey jack cheese (I only use about a cup, and it’s usually Tillamook Mexican blend)
* Pickled jalapeno slices for garnish (optional)
* Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

Directions:
In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until tender and translucent. Add garlic and continue to cook until fragrant. Add chicken and cook just until no pink remains, stirring frequently. Stir in the cumin, oregano, green chilies and chicken broth. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the beans and continue to cook for another 10 minutes, to bring flavors together. Taste and add salt if needed. Add 2 cups of the cheese and stir until melted.

Remove from heat and ladle into warm bowls. Sprinkle with more cheese and garnish with jalapeno slices and cilantro.

Linky

Here’s a more heart healthy dish. It’s quick because I buy cooked beets in the produce section (Love Beets) rather than roast them myself. I’m lazy that way.


Quinoa Salad: Beet/Garbanzo/Baby Spinach/Orange


Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked quinoa
2 beets, cooked/cut into bite sized pieces
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon organic agave nectar
1 can drained rinsed garbanzo beans
3 oz baby spinach leaves
Sea salt and ground pepper, to taste
1 fresh orange, peeled, trimmed, cut into bite sized pieces

Instructions:

Rinse 1 cup uncooked quinoa. Put in pot with 2 C water. Bring to boil, cover & simmer 20 minutes until water is absorbed and quinoa is tender. Fluff with fork and transfer to large bowl to cool.

Dressing: Combine the olive oil, orange juice, soy sauce, vinegar, and agave. Whisk. Set aside.

Combine the cooked quinoa in a mixing bowl with garbanzo beans and baby spinach leaves. Add dressing and toss. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Add beets and fresh orange pieces; toss gently.

Serve with a sprinkle of fresh goat cheese, or slivered almonds, if desired. It’s fine without, and makes a great side dish that way.

Serves 4.

I keep my recipes in an evernote file, so that’s why I can just pop them in over here!

quote:

Originally posted by AdagioM:


I keep my recipes in an evernote file, so that’s why I can just pop them in over here!

Me too! It’s so handy!

We’re having the quinoa salad tonight, because it’s quicker than the curry I had planned. Afternoon kind of fell apart on me!

quote:

Originally posted by dolmansaxlil:

quote:

Originally posted by AdagioM:


I keep my recipes in an evernote file, so that’s why I can just pop them in over here!

Me too! It’s so handy!

Me three!

Ok - this is so simple, and even if you're tired of chicken you'll like this. And it's fast.

Grilled Bruschetta Chicken



The marinade:

1/4c oil
2tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp italian seasoning
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

The chicken:

Maybe 1 or 1.5 lbs of thin sliced chicken breasts. I use them instead of regular breasts because they cook faster and much more evenly.


Topping:

3 plum tomatoes, diced
some chopped basil (1-2 tbsp, I just eyeball it)
1 tbsp lemon juice
slices of cheese - either provolone or mozzarella


First marinate the chicken breasts (marinade + chicken in bag in fridge). 30m if you can, less if you must. More is ok too.

Mix tomato, basil, lemon juice in a small bowl.

Grill chicken, outside or in. When it's almost done lay the cheese slices on them to melt. If you use thin sliced breasts they're done in just a couple minutes per side.

Then take it off the grill and put the topping on.



Did I mention it's fast? You can throw the marinade together in 2 minutes, without even getting your hands dirty. Chop the tomatoes and basil in 5. Cook in less than 10 (with thin sliced breasts)

It's so freaking simple, but the result is superb:

Pork chops
Bottled Italian salad dressing

Put pork chops in a Ziploc bag. Pour in bottled Italian salad dressing.

Let sit at room temperature for an hour, or up to 24 hours in the refrigerator. Grill chops over high heat for 8 minutes (longer if really thick chops). Eat.

Cinnamon Toast

First, mix up a batch of cinnamon sugar. You can use Splenda if you wish instead of sugar, but even with Splenda you'll need to use at least 1/3 real sugar in order to get it to melt properly when toasted. So you start with however large a batch you want of sugar, then you add cinnamon and mix throughly. I like to go with a fairly large amount of cinnamon, but go with whatever amount is to your taste. For me, when the cinnamon/sugar mix has a nice caramel or gingerbread color it's mixed perfectly.

Then you use any soft bread. I like to use white bread because this is in no way a healthy recipe so - why not? But any bread will work.

Toast one side of the bread using either a toaster oven or the broil setting in your conventional oven. This will leave the un-toasted side soft and warm.

Spread butter over the un-toasted side allowing the butter to melt into the bread. Be careful not to tear the bread and remember this isn't a healthy recipe so use plenty of butter. Starting with softened butter makes this simple. Margarine can also be used of course.

Sprinkle the cinnamon/sugar mix on top of the butter. Again, do this to your own taste but for me that means fully covering the butter with cinnamon sugar. I let my cinnamon/sugar sit on the bread for 15 or 20 seconds, and if after that time there are any patches that have fully melted into the bread I put a little more cinnamon/sugar on that patch. I want to have a small layer of "dry" cinnamon/sugar covering the buttered bread.

Put the bread back into the toaster over/broiler and turn on the heat. Keep an eye on the bread and when the cinnamon/sugar has been completely melted into the butter and is bubbling slightly, you're ready to go. Enjoy!!

This is a crazy sweet treat that I like to have for breakfast maybe once or twice every 6 months or so.

You can also do variations on this of course. If you use tinned biscuits for example you would start by melting your butter into a bowl and placing your cinnamon/sugar into a second bowl. Then you heavily butter a baking pan and sprinkle a layer of cinnamon/sugar into the pan. Taking one biscuit at a time you dip it, flip it, and re-dip it first in the melted butter bowl, then in the cinnamon/sugar bowl. Place each biscuit into the baking pan. Bake it for 2 to 3 minutes longer than you would for just the biscuits by themselves. Yum-yum.

Oh, the kids make something they call Bullsh!t Soup. It’s based on a soup side dish that I used to do when they were growing up.

4 cups chicken broth (one Costco box!)
1-2 cups water to dilute broth (however you like it. If you’re using homemade broth, don’t! But adjust for total soup volume of about 5-6 cups)
1 package extra firm tofu, cubed (small aseptic box package. If you buy tofu in larger whacks, about half of the tofu in that bigger box)
2 zucchini, cubed (don’t peel)
4-6 black or shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced, or I usually have them sliced/dried at our house, in which case they don’t even need to be rehydrated
Generous slice of ginger

Bring broth, ginger, mushrooms (if dry/pre-sliced) to a boil, then add everything else (mushrooms here if fresh) and simmer for about 5-10 minutes, until zucchini is done.

The Bullsh!t part comes in here: Add whatever seasonings you like. The kids have mentioned sriracha, Japanese Nanami Togarashi, toasted sesame oil. You can scramble an egg and stir it into the hot soup to make it into an egg flower soup. (They call that BootLegg Drop Soup.)

If you have leftover cooked chicken, you can slice and toss that in, too.

Reaching way back in my memory bank: My mom used to make an even simpler version of this. Chicken broth made with wing tips (a pretty thin broth!), frozen peas/carrots, scrambled egg for egg flower.

Every generation gets fancier and fancier! I like that my kids take a thing and run with it. So fun.

Baked Tilapia served with Coucous and vegetables.

Frozen tilapia filet from grocery store, season with salt, lemon juice, pepper, curry powder, cumin, etc. Top with some butter. Stick it into the oven and let bake for ~15 minutes @ ~400F.

While the tilapia is baking, take one of those “5-minute Couscous” box and prepare the couscous. This typically comes with seasoning/spice sack. Bring the water to a boil, throw in the seasoning/spices plus may be some butter or olive oil. Add some mixed frozen vegetables, bring it to a boil again, then mix in the couscous. Remove from heat and let it simmer for about 5 minutes.

Serve the tilapia along with the couscous. Protein from the tilapia, vegetables in the couscous, and starch from the couscous; the combo is nutritionally balanced. Near zero prep time, short cook time, no waste (except the packaging that comes with the tilapia and the box for the couscous).

Very little to wash up afterwards too ... just throw away the aluminum sheet on which you backed the tilapia, and wash the pot and spatula/stirring spoon you used to cook the couscous+vegetables, and the plate & utensils you used to serve the meal.

Thanks for the great responses so far! I have lots of yummy new things to try. There’s still time to chime in! I will select and announce the winner Saturday morning!

So many of these sound delicious! I, too, am a big fan of cinnamon toast as a treat, Dan. Ax, your fish recipe sounds delicious and super easy. Adagio, so many of those sound great! I am definitely going to try the mexican-inspired one with the cannellini beans (does that have a name?) and the beet salad. LL chicken soup is such a comforting food and I don't make it nearly enough. Matt quick pork chops are such a great idea - one I'll also share with Liam for college cooking! The winner (chosen by random number generator because I am horrible at making decisions) is jon-nyc for his Bruschetta Chicken. That's another one I'll put in my recipe file to try.

Thanks everyone for playing! Jon, please get in touch with Matt to choose the decor for June!