Saturday Chef Original: Quick Breakfast Hash

When I was a child, I was a meat-and-potatoes-girl. While my friends and cousins clamored for Happy Meals and fish sticks, my favorite meal was Mary's Kitchen Corned Beef Hash, green beans and toast with grape jelly. Obviously, it was a rare treat as canned corned beef hash is an eventual heart attack in a can, but it was worth it. The foodie in me hates to admit that it still is.

Unfortunately, now it is harder to eat my beloved hash without bouts of panicked guilt and chest pains that are probably more hypochondria than physiology; thus I created a recipe that is a scrumptious substitute and thankfully anxiety-free.

This recipes is extremely versatile. I have made it with both ground turkey and ground veal. Although, since I’m sure most of you still have twelve pounds of turkey in the fridge, you probably want to try the veal.


Ingredients

1 lb. ground turkey or veal
1/3 to 1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
Olive Oil
1 to 1 ½ pounds baby red potatoes, cubed
Parsley (optional)
Seasoning Salt, Pepper

Cube red potatoes in small, uniform pieces rinse thoroughly in cold water. Place in pot cover slightly with water. Add pot to heat and boil.

Chop onions. In a separate skillet over medium high heat, sauté onions in a drizzle of olive oil for about 2 minutes. Add ground meat, and use wooden spoon to stir and break apart. Season as you wish. Add a handful of fresh parsley or parsley flakes for color. Cook until meat is no longer pink. Remove from heat.

Boil potatoes until slightly soft, about 4-6 minutes. Drain thoroughly. Pour potatoes in the largest skillet you have, and add a bit more oil. Season with seasoning salt and pepper. Cook for two minutes.

Add meat mixture and a bit more oil, pressing down with the back of wooden spoon to brown. After 2 minutes, stir. Repeat process 2 or 3 more times or until meat is done and a slight crust develops. Season to taste.

Serve with over-easy egg and toast.

*Note: It is always better to have more potatoes than hash. The potatoes will degrade when they are soft. It also tastes even better the next day.

Coming Soon: A Very Foodie Christmas; Edible Gift Ideas for Your Foodie Friends!

Do-Able Chocolate Eclairs: A Saturday Chef Show-Stopper

When I go to the grocery store, I almost always pick up one pristine, fantastic éclair from the bakery. I feel that this pastry alone could solve all the worlds problems—the war, the recession, global-warming, even the swine flu. With most foods I love, I had to find out how difficult it was to make at home. Surprisingly, the dough is not hard to make at all. It’s a classic pastry dough with a variety of applications and can be made with simple ingredients that we all have in our fridges and pantries—flour, water, eggs, butter. The pastry cream and icing, however, can not only be time-consuming to make, but also incredibly fattening.

Last month I had to plan a dessert party at work, and I wanted a show-stopper. So with a little culinary ingenuity and some help from a couple supermarket staples, I came up with an easy way to make eclairs that will impress your co-workers or guests--no heavy cream needed.

Pastry:
1 cup water
1 stick butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add water and heat until boiling. Add flour and stir until mixture forms a smooth ball. Remove from heat and let cool before adding the eggs, one a time. Dough should be sticky.

Drop tablespoons of dough onto a greased cookie sheet. Note: Most chef use a pastry bag and pipe dough onto the cookie sheet, but this works just as well.

Bake in oven for about 30 minutes until light brown. Set aside to let cool.

Filling:
1 3.4oz box Instant French Vanilla Pudding
6 ounces of Cool Whip

Prepare filling according to instructions. Once pudding has thickened, add Cool Whip and mix to combine.

When pastries have cooled, slice puffs open lengthwise, but not completely through. Spoon in filling.

Frosting:
1 can Milk Chocolate Frosting

Microwave frosting until warm and running. Drizzle chocolate frosting all over filled pastries.
Eat immediately or chill and serve within 12 hours.

Beginnings and Disclaimers...

A Disclaimer of Sorts: I am not a professional chef. I have never been to cooking school, unless you count standing outside the Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago after being lured there by the delectable smells. I am what I affectionately dub a Saturday Chef—a weekend warrior of the culinary variety, fortified by the education I have gleaned from two high school cooking classes, the Food Network and my own gastronomical experiments.

During the week, I’m stuck in the 9-to-5 rat race sponsored by Burger King and Popeyes and Panera. But once the weekend arrives, I have time to make elaborate meals like Braised Short Ribs with Roasted Pearl Onions, Shrimp and Black Bean Flatbreads, Hearty Chicken Chowder and even Coq au Vin.

While I’m not ashamed to spend all day making bagels by hand, and proudly call myself a foodie, I’m not a food snob. I enjoy an Extra Value Meal as much as the next girl. “Would you like fries with that?” ALWAYS!

I was raised in the Midwest, Indiana , then Wisconsin , by parents who enjoyed “simple American food,” and I ate as such until college when I discovered two things: 1) The Food Network broadcasted until 3 a.m. and 2) College fare is unhealthy, expensive and really gross. Thus, in the little galley kitchen with slanted counters and an arthritic stove, I became a Saturday Chef, buying things like rotisserie chickens and potatoes to cook on multiple meals on Saturdays and Sundays for the rest of the week. I learned a lot about quick but healthy meals from Rachel Ray and Giada De Laurentiis. I realized that “fancy food” wasn’t inaccessible to anyone as long as you had a little skill and a lot of patience from Alton Brown and Emeril Lagasse. Finally, I discovered that my father will eat my disasters—like Turkey “Brick” Meatloaf—even if I won’t.

Cooking became a new passion as much as writing was an old one. And it also made me a few friends from the dorms. At 21 years old, I hosted a few Saturday dinner parties in my apartment, showing my friends how to make lasagna, even though I’d never done it before. That is how I fell in love with cooking as well as eating.

I’m 27 now, and finally taking the advice of a good friend and starting this blog, where I will happily share some of my own recipes as well as my take on the old standards. Unfortunately, I haven’t struck it rich yet, so my culinary escapades are still relegated to the weekends, but my love for cooking is stronger than ever, galvanized by more successes than failures, and the beautiful fact that the more I cook, the more people there are to feed. So please stay turned for fun recipes, inevitable disasters and hopefully, a lot of good food.

Coming Soon:

Braised Chicken Thighs with Artichoke Hearts and Sweet Peas