Holt Cuisine

The thing about One Pot Meals is that frequently they aren’t. They have you cook the sauce in a pot then boil the pasta in a pot. Or they cook the meat in a skillet then add it to the sauce in a pan.  My goal was to make truly one pot meals. There will always be a few other tools like a knife and cutting board, bowl for marinade or cut up veggies, a measuring cup if one is needed, etc.  I also want to be able to walk into the kitchen and put a meal together in about 30 minutes. So here is how it starts. I looked into my veggie drawer and found zucchini, half an onion, some chopped garlic and a package of mushrooms. I also had some frozen pesto from last fall and a jar of capers. All those things pretty much defined the sauce.  But say my veggie drawer didn’t have zucchini and mushrooms. I could do pretty much the same things with a bag of frozen peas and carrots. (If your kitchen doesn’t have onions and garlic – it’s past time you made a grocery store run!!) For the prote...

I feel betrayed by my culinary mentors.  I was told and I believed that the only way to make pasta was in a large pot of boiling water.  It’s a lie.  What else have they taught me that I need to rethink?  My new favorite way to make pasta is to take my measured amount (2/3 cup of penne for two people). Add near boiling water to the cup and allow it to soak while you work on the sauce (at least 10 minutes). Give it a little stir once or twice.  When your sauce is about 20 minutes from ready to serve, add the drained penne. Add a little liquid if the sauce is dry. The soaking water would work or some wine.  Cover the pot tightly and turn the heat to simmer. Let it cook and hydrate in the sauce. Stir it occasionally, adding a little liquid if it gets too dry.  It’s ready to serve when the pasta is tender to your liking. We like it al dente, but not crunchy.  An additional advantage to this method is that the pasta takes in the flavors of the sauce. I...

I looked around in my fridge to see what needed to be eaten next (usually it is the veggie that has been there the longest). The thing that I wanted to be sure to use before it got too old was a box of mushrooms. It was a “Chef’s Sampler”  and had Oyster, Lion’s Mane, Coral Tooth and Chestnut.  A good friend had talked about a way she had of cooking patty pan squash with scrambled eggs and, though I couldn’t add the eggs it gave me an idea for this dish.  You could probably do this with any combination of veggies. I used the patty pan squash and exotic mushrooms, but zucchini and plain old mushrooms would be just as good. Ok, here’s my cheat. I bought a carton of mild Pico de Gallo at the grocery store – you know the fresh kind in the produce department? And instead of cutting up peppers, onions, and tomatoes, I just dumped that in.  Of course I did have to add fresh garlic and since I really like garlic, I used about 6 or 7 cloves, sliced thin. I bought this shelf s...

In the past few years I’ve begun to feel my arthritis and other sore bones and muscles more. I started looking at Anti-Inflammatory diets and recommendations. If you start reading on the internet you won’t get far before you find suggestions to eat more Turmeric and Ginger. These spices are common in many Asian and Middle Eastern dishes, but they are also part of many folk remedies.  About the same time, someone who has a grandmother from India suggested drinking Golden Milk for an illness. He said this and local honey were her go-to remedies.  Golden Milk is milk with turmeric and is widely regarded as anti-inflammatory and good for whatever ails you.  I started wondering how I could get more of this in my diet. You can usually find whole ginger root in my kitchen and I would buy whole turmeric root for use in broths, but didn’t use either on a daily basis.  I decided to see how they play together, so I got out my microplane grater and started in on a turmeric root,...

Aioli is a lime and garlic flavored mayonnaise and is frequently found on restaurant menus as a topping or drizzle over all kinds of savory dishes.  At our house my kids will stand around in the kitchen and go through and entire loaf of French bread smeared with aioli while they talk. But recently my youngest has developed an allergy to eggs. This sent me to the internet to see what the answer was.  Not surprisingly, there was lots of advice. Most of the places were creating a vegan mayonnaise. That wasn’t my goal, but if it was also vegan… cool. Nothing I made tasted awful because really, it’s garlic, lime and salt… how can you go wrong?  There was lots of information about Toum , a Lebanese garlic sauce. This is made with just garlic, lemon juice, salt and oil. I made some and it is delicious. It is creamy, but not really the consistency of Aioli. I can definitely see using it as a spread or dip on all sorts of things.  I continued in my search by trying an avocado...

When we lived in California, one of our favorite things to do was to drive into San Francisco (yes you could still find parking back then) and eat Dim Sum, a sort of brunch. The Asian restaurants in Chinatown would put delicious bites on steamer carts and push them around. You could just point at what you wanted off the cart. It was always a little risky because you were never quite sure what might be in the wrapper. The staff might be able to explain the dish but probably not. Here is a picture I found on the internet, just to show what it might look like.  Our first experience was with someone who spoke the language, so she explained the food. It was a fairly inexpensive restaurant meal back in the 80’s, so we went back by ourselves several times.  One of my favorite dumplings has always been the Shrimp Shumai. This is a round, open topped dumpling filled with a shrimp based filling.  You can buy them ready-made in the freezer section of your local Asian Market. You jus...

Some of you may remember the pumpkin project last fall. I ended up with a freezer full of pumpkin purée. Recently I finally got to use most of what I had left by making pumpkin brownies for a bake sale. They were really good and very easy to do. I have written about my opinion regarding box cake mixes . I really think they are one of the great Food Science masterpieces of our times. So in this case I started with a simple box brownie mix. The one I used was the plain one from ALDIs. It called for water, oil and eggs to be added.  Home puréed pumpkin is wetter than canned pumpkin, so I substituted one cup of my frozen pumpkin for both the oil and water. It was brownie mix, 1 cup frozen pumpkin puree, and two eggs.  I did a trial recipe to see if it was going to work using a 9x13 pan. They were too thin and the texture was a little stoggy. So I used a 9x9 pan and added a tsp of baking powder to the powdered mix.  I baked them according to the package times and to an intern...