Pork and Farro Improv

This is a dish I invented on the fly, and it worked.

What I Used
Two cups uncooked farro
One pound of ground pork
Two big cloves of garlic
Half of a medium-sized onion
A bit of olive oil
A bit of apple cider vinegar
Salt and pepper

What I Did
1. Put farro in a three-quart pot and added four cups boiling water.  Then I put that pot on the burner on high until the water boiled again, lowered the heat to simmer, covered the pot, and set the timer for 20 minutes.

2. Stuck a standing colander in the sink.

3. Put a dutch oven on the stove, added enough oil to cover the bottom thinly, and set the heat to a low-medium.  (For enameled cookware, standard advice is to heat with the oil already added.  That's the opposite of the advice for stainless steel.)

4. Peeled and chopped the garlic into little pieces, and the onion into slightly larger pieces.

5. Put the garlic and onion in the dutch oven, and stirred until it began to turn a little bit brown.

6. Added the pork to the dutch oven and broke it up into little pieces and then stirred it and the garlic and onion until everything was light brown.  (At this point, I had a little problem because there was a lot of liquid in the bottom of the dutch oven, so that my pork was going to steam instead of browning further.  So I ran the sink tap until the water was hot, left it running, poured the pork mixture into the colander, and then poured the pork back into the dutch oven with much less liquid--and put the colander back in the sink.  The hot water protected my pipes from clogging with fat.)

7. Continued cooking until the pork was the darker brown that says "Yum.  Cooked meat."

8. Added maybe a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to the dutch oven and stirred everything around in it until it all disappeared into the meat.  I plan to experiment with adding a bit more next time I cook this.

9. Heard the timer go off on the farro and did a chew test to confirm it was nicely soft even though some water was left.

10. Poured the farro into the colander, shook the colander over the sink, and then poured all the farro into the dutch oven.

11. Stirred it all together, tasted, and added a bit of salt and fresh pepper. (For someone on a low fat diet, don't do the mixing. Let them choose the ratio of pork and farro.)

Cinnamon could be a lovely addition. 

Cinnamon with lamb in place of pork would mean heading toward Moroccan flavors. Maybe a few sliced apricots or some golden raisins cooked with the farrow would suit that?

Mushrooms could contribute, though probably not with the cinnamon option, maybe added with the pork rather than with the onion so they don't get cooked to oblivion. 

Other vinegars could be fun, and I wouldn't be surprised if wine or beer also worked nicely.  

Rice in place of farro would be great, or quinoa or bulgur.  

One more idea, imagine using the mushrooms and adding cream or half-and-half after the farro and the meat are combined.  I can't decide whether the vinegar would be a plus or a minus that way, but I'll try both next winter.

Quick Chicken, Mushrooms, and Rice

This happened this evening, starting with a Martha Stewart recipe and adjusting for ingredients on hand. Since Rebecca approved, I'm making sure I can do it again.

Ingredients
One pound of skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
A cup of white rice

Eight ounces of mushrooms, sliced

Half an onion, diced
Three tablespoons butter, divided into one tbsp and two to use at different moments
One tablespoon olive oil
A tablespoon of dried thyme
A teaspoon of "Better than Bouillon"
Three cups water ready to be heated in your nice countertop kettle

Steps
Turn on the kettle.

Check all your ingredients and do any final chopping.

Put the rice into a pot and use the same cup to measure two cups of water when it boils.  Put pan on the stove over low heat, cover it, and set timer to 20 minutes.

Heat the olive oil and one tablespoon of butter in a skillet or dutch oven.  Check that it's ready for the meat by dropping a tiny piece in and being sure it sizzles.

Add half the meat, turning it once a minute until it's a pale brown all over and a nicer looking brown in spots.  Remove that meat to a plate.  Repeat with the second half of the meat, including removal.

Add the other two tablespoons of butter and push them around until mostly melted.  Add the onions and stir for half a minute. Add the mushrooms, spread them around pretty evenly, and then stir roughly once a minute for about five minutes.

While the mushrooms brown, put another half cup of hot water in the measuring cup and add the "Better than Bouillon" and the thyme to it. Stir well.

Add the liquid to the mushrooms and onions, stirring well and gently scraping the pan bottom to get the beautiful brown flavor-filled stuff down there to merge into the liquid.  Cook that on medium for two minutes.

Add back the chicken, stir everything together, turn the heat to very low and give it about ten minutes to all merge nicely into shared flavor and matching heat.  Check once to be sure the liquid isn't disappearing, but you don't need much of it since you'll use it mainly to flavor the rice.

Put rice in bowls, add a share of the chicken and other ingredients and enjoy.

(First time through, I actually started with the world's simplest salad: a pile of spinach, a quick drizzle of olive oil, and a  quick little bit of ground salt.  I ate that while the chicken finished, then put the rice and chicken in the same bowl.)

(Martha Stewart used fresh thyme, didn't use the onions, and replaced half the bouillon and water with white wine.  I suspect that would be at least as good.)

Turkey/Navy Bean Chili over Rice

Two notes

This is a five-hour project.  It's not a vast amount of work, and you can do lots of other things while things simmer, but you have to be somewhere in the house to do the "stir occasionally" part.  It's perfect for the first cold, rainy weekend of the year.

Also chili is very mild: spice lovers could include a chopped jalapeno when they sauté the vegetables and double the chili powder.  The recipe I started with did that.

Ingredients

 1 lb bag of navy beans

1 lb ground turkey

2 cups uncooked brown rice (six cups cooked)

1 onion (finely chopped)

1 green pepper (diced)

2 stalks celery (finely chopped)

2 cloves garlic (minced)

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 bay leaves

1Tbsp chili powder

2 Tbsp cumin

1 Tbsp turmeric

1 Tbsp salt

2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp oregano

1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes

shredded cheese (optional)

chopped green onion (optional)

sour cream (optional)

Steps

Put the beans in a pot with a quart of water.  Bring to a boil for one minute, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and leave to soak.

After two hours, drain and rinse soaked beans, then set aside.

Heat oil in stockpot over medium high flame. Sauté onion, garlic, celery, and green bell pepper s until onions are translucent and the other vegetables are slightly tender.  Remove from pot and set aside.

Add six cups water, soaked beans, tomatoes and spices to the sautéed vegetables,. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for approximately 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

After the chili has cooked for an hour, put the brown rice and four and a half cups water in a separate pan, bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to low.  Set timer for 45 minutes.

Brown the turkey in a frying pan.  Drain and add to the chili.

The chili will be ready at the same time as the rice.

Serve in bowls and garnish with shredded cheddar cheese, chopped green onions and/or a dollop of sour cream.

That rice casserole

You know, the one that I made in the old light blue dutch oven that Grandpa Joe bought sometime in the early 1950s?  It's a fancy thing you can make to go with a very simple roasted chicken, and instantly have company dinner.  It's different enough that you need to make it three times to be comfortable with all the steps.

Ingredients
2 cups rice
8 tablespoons of butter (why it tastes so good)
8 ounces of mushrooms, sliced up
A cup of sliced up celery (probably four to six stalks)
4 cups water
A tablespoon of soy sauce
A tablespoon of oyster flavor sauce (A Chinese cooking ingredient usually located near the soy sauce)

Equipment
A frying pan and a casserole dish that holds two quarts or more.

Alternately, a dutch oven that can be both a frying pan and a casserole dish, plus a bowl to put some partly cooked things in so you can partly cook other things.

Steps
Preheat the oven to 350.

Slice up the mushrooms and the celery.

Put the rice in the frying pan and put in on the stove over medium heat.  Stir the rice constantly as it turns golden, about five minutes.  Pour the rice into the casserole dish.

Put two tablespoons of butter into the frying pan with about a third of the mushrooms and celery.  Cook until tender, maybe five minutes.  Pour that on top of the rice, and repeat the process two more times.

Combine the water, oyster sauce, and soy sauce. Mix well, then pour on top of the rice and vegetables, and mix well again.

Cover and put in the oven.

Bake 35 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.

Before serving, use a fork to toss the rice lightly around so it's loose and fluffy.

Source
This one also started out in The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, except that back then it had a lot more butter and it had onion and beef broth, where now it has two ingredients from Chinese cooking instead.

That thing with the ground beef

Ingredients
1 pound ground beef
1 can cream of mushroom soup in a can with a pull-top lid
1/2 of a soup can of milk
1 cup of rice (can be white/quicker or brown/better for you)

Equipment
A frying pan, a cooking pot with a lid, a big spoon or a metal spatula to stir with, a measuring cup, a stove

Chana Masala (aka the chick pea thing)

My go-to vegetarian dish.

Ingredients
Olive oil

2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoon minced garlic
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground ginger

2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp each of clove, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, cardamom
2 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes
1 tsp salt, or to taste
4 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Optional: two Tbsp cilantro (I never have this in the house)
Optional: Yogurt to go on top

Optional: Brown rice to go underneath

Equipment

Big dutch oven (in a pinch, start with a big frying pan, then switch to a soup pot when you add the chickpeas).

Steps

Mix together all the spices except the salt.

Film the bottom of a large saucepan or Dutch oven with olive oil, and place the pan over medium heat. 

Add the onion, and cook, stirring frequently, until it is deeply caramelized and even charred in some spots. Think twenty minutes or more, because the more color, the more full-flavored the final dish will be.