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...

In my search for the tender green bean, I decided to try the Instant Pot rather than the microwave for the initial cooking step.  I bought a large bag of “washed and trimmed” beans – 2 lbs – so that I could try the beans 3 ways. I went through the bag and checked them for stems (probably 10-15 beans still had stems), and rewashed them. Then I put them in the steamer basket of my Instant Pot and steamed them for 3 minutes.  Then I immediately put them in an ice bath to stop the cooking. They were very tender. In fact they bordered on mushy. I separated them into three bunches. I put some in the freezer, seasoned some for a sheet pan meal, and some others for Stir Fried Rice (see below).  But I felt like I needed more research, so back to the grocery store. This time I got regular and French beans.  I steamed the regular beans at 1 and 2 minutes in the instant pot. I steamed the French beans for 0 and 1 minute.  Then I roasted them all for 30 minutes at 325. ...

Ever since I tried to make green beans in a sheet pan meal, I have meant to get back to them. I still haven’t been very successful in getting them to cook on a sheet pan, but I keep tweaking the method, hopefully. I know that for many people, a chewy green bean is ok. I’m a little weird because I want them to be fully tender, but not mushy and still bright green. I know… You can’t always get what you want – but I can try.  I grew up on canned green beans. They were a bit mushy and usually a grey green color. I bought a can to feed to my grandson. They seemed the right consistency for someone who doesn’t have molars yet. He was un-interested and after tasting them I had to admit he had a point.  I remember my sister saying that you had to cook green beans for a long time to get the can flavor out of them. This makes sense. You have to get the can flavor out and put something else in. When I was a child it was usually bacon or salt pork. Once my mother started learning to cook w...

This week is New Year’s and that means Tamales. We plan to make Cream Cheese Chili Tamales and Turkey Tamales. Here is the recipe for those .  To go with the Tamales I usually serve salsa and cheese sauce.  I decided to make a fresh salsa this time rather than buying something from the store. I usually use a combination of these ingredients (how many I used this time): Tomatoes (4) Tomatillos (8 small) Poblano Peppers (2) Jalapeno Peppers (6) Garlic (20 cloves) Onion (2 med) Cilantro (1 bunch) Lime (4) Salt (2 tsp) In the past we have put these veggies in the smoker and it makes a great smoked salsa. I have also made the salsa with all these things, uncooked. The raw salsa is a little “liquidy”.  This time I decided to roast everything in the oven, except the cilantro and lime. I roasted them slowly (325°) for about an hour. Everything was nice and dry.  I took off any dried skins, but if they didn’t come off easily, I left them on.  All the veggies went into th...

I see that lots of people still have their Thanksgiving pumpkins sitting around, and some of them might still be good for roasting. Here are some of my conclusions:  1. A squished looking pumpkin is best. These seem to have smaller seed cavities and more flesh.  2. A round, jack-o-lantern friendly pumpkin is more likely to have thin, stringy flesh.  3. Even a thick skin pumpkin can be a little stringy, but the food processor will take care of that.  Here is another thing I found that was helpful. I bought these on Amazon. They are silicone and allow you to freeze things in one cup portions. I froze the last pumpkin puree like this and it really helped on freezer space. I’m looking forward to using them the next time I make broth. I think broth in 1 cup blocks will be very useful.  A friend asked me if I was missing the North Carolina Candy Roaster pumpkin. I will say that the Candy Roaster pretty much had it all – thick flesh, firm but not stringy, and swe...

For the past few weeks our church has been doing a pumpkin patch. There were all kinds of pumpkins and gourds. As the weeks went by if became plain that there were going to be a bunch of pumpkins leftover. Apparently, that is usually expected and of course that made me wonder if you could eat them.  Up until a few years ago, the only time I had ever tried to roast a pumpkin I used a standard carving pumpkin. It was stringy, pale and tasteless, so I went back to the can. While we lived in North Carolina we had access to the Candy Roaster. This vegetable changed the way I think of fresh pumpkin partially because it looks more like a squash than a pumpkin, but also because, roasted it was so much better than canned pumpkin! But would anything in the pumpkin patch be that good?  I read a couple of articles that indicated that the fancy heirloom type pumpkin were best for eating, so I decided to try a few to find out.  The picture above shows the pumpkins I brought home. We ch...

When I was young the only beet I’d ever eaten was from a can. I wasn’t a fan. My mom was a young wife in the early 1940’s and canned goods were the modern miracle. By the time my sisters and I were cooking in our own kitchens, canned goods were taking a second place to fresh veggies.  I don’t remember exactly when I was introduced to my first fresh beet, but it was a game changer. They taste nothing like a canned beet. The canned beet tastes like… well, can. The fresh beet has a sweet earthiness. They were a favorite around our house and still today if my adult kids request a specific meal from me, chances are it will include Harvard Beets .  A little over a week ago I got a share from a box of fresh veggies that my daughter picked up for us. As you can see in this picture, it was bountiful. We shared out the beets and I got 3 medium and 1 large beet.  Since I wasn’t planning to cook them right away I stored them in the veggie drawer in the refrigerator. You can store the...