Pantry Collective

Apparently, I am a big fan of beef bourguignon, since I actually have another recipe here for it. This one is quite a bit better, though. The sauce is thicker and more flavorful, and doesn’t rely on canned mushroom soup for flavor. I saw the recipe over at Ezra Pound Cake last week and knew I had to make this yummy winter stew again.

I left out the bacon (intentionally) and the pearl onions (unintentionally). I just never have bacon on hand and really didn’t want to buy it just for this dish. And I am one of those people who doesn’t love bacon flavoring in everything, although I know many people do. I’m sure it adds a lot of flavor to the dish, but I promise, if you leave it out it is totally fine. The pearl onions, on the other hand, were forgotten about until it was already served. Oops! I might throw them in when reheating the leftovers.

That’s fresh baked No-Knead Bread on the plate, along with creamy mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus (two accompaniments I repeated from the first recipe). Yum!

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Our CSA share came with a lovely head of Napa Cabbage and some beautiful green onions last week, and I knew I could make a delicious Asian-inspired salad with just a few more ingredients. The salad was delicious - crunchy, sweet and sour, and fresh tasting. It paired beautifully with the sesame tilapia, which is a really simple recipe that cooks up in no time and tastes amazing.

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Spring in Chicago is temperamental. We’ll have some hot days, so hot you’re considering installing the air conditioners, and then BOOM, it’s 45 degrees and cloudy for a week. Then a warm, sunny day that makes your heart sing, which leads right back into a chilly rain or even some hail. On one of those chilly, gray days, I needed something comforting. I had some beef in the fridge and some root vegetables on hand, so beef stew was the obvious choice. I decided at the last minute to add a hint of sweet (or at least the idea of sweetness) to this otherwise savory dish with some cinnamon and nutmeg. Make this in the crockpot and your house will smell AMAZING all day long.

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Do you love roasted chicken? Crispy, flavorful, sinful skin with succulent, tender meat below… maybe some roasted vegetables and potatoes that have (also sinfully) soaked up some of the delicious chicken fat? Have I got a recipe for you. I mentioned on Wednesday that I recently purchased a 6qt Lodge enameled cast iron dutch oven. I drooled over it for a few weeks and finally bought it thanks to two $25 amazon.com coupons I got with some reward points I earned through Chase Leisure Rewards. It came in record time (2 days, even with “super saver shipping”!) and I was eager to try it out, so I made sure that the meal I made that weekend would put it to good use. I was not disappointed. I’m sure this would have come out fine in my usual roasting pan, but I’m going to pretend that it was that much more delicious having been made in my pretty new kitchen toy. So there.

This chicken recipe is a mish-mash of a couple different recipes I found online. I wanted a balsamic glazed chicken with splash of citrus, preferably orange. I wanted it to be crispy on the outside and delicious inside (best achieved, in my opinion, with a high-temp roasting method). I googled and googled and eventually cobbled this recipe together. It was excellent, and it looked so pretty plated on a big serving platter we got as a wedding present. It’s a great dish to serve guests, because it comes out looking so beautiful, and the flavor is excellent. When I make it again, I’ll increase the number of carrots - they were so good, coated in that balsamic glaze!

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This isn’t the most glamorous meal, I’ll admit. But what to do when you have half a head of broccoli, a few almost-gone carrots, and some leftover roasted chicken? I wanted to use up the veggies before they went bad, and the chicken needed to be eaten, too. I could have just heated up the chicken, steamed the veg, and made some rice, I suppose… but I had a few other ingredients on hand in the pantry that could make the meal a little more exciting than just leftovers. I’m calling this refrigerator pasta because it’s made with stuff I had hanging around in (you guessed it) the fridge. Obviously there could be many different “refrigerator pastas”; this is just one quick and easy version.

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