Stay Home and Cook: Give Me All the Comfort (week four).
As we begin our fifth week of working (and doing everything else) from home, I’m looking back fondly on week four. More specifically, I am looking at the meals we made during the fourth week. It started out innocently enough, with a great sheet-pan meal, but quickly spiraled into a land of extreme comfort foods and flavors.
Fried rice, cheesy (the cheesiest) chickpeas, homemade quesadillas, and a noodle dish that I want to re-create immediately; not to mention our usual Sunday night pizza.
Yes, for the fourth week I fully admit we ate quite well and indulged to our heart’s content. And guess what? We loved every single bite. I regret nothing! The way I see it, this whole situation is a good time to figure out what “balance” means in terms of eating well at home.
Of course, we aim for healthy meals and avoiding processed foods as much as possible, but that’s not always feasible given the world’s current circumstances.
Listen, I get it. Living on frozen pizza and cereal can sound quite appealing (I love cereal). It’s easy! And it’s sometimes really delicious. And sometimes that is what is in stock at the grocery store.
So while we are not diving head-first into a bucket of ice cream (yet), we are leaning into our cravings, but somewhat (partially?) responsibly.
How do we do it? Well, we are making everything from scratch, attempting portion control, and acknowledging that this is a time in our lives when pizza, noodles, and fried rice in the same week isn’t the worst. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s comfort food to the max and it is incredibly delicious. Balance looks a little bit different right now, and that is OK.
Sheet Pan Chicken with Broccoli and Sweet Potatoes
Original recipe.
For the nights when you’re not exactly sure what you want, but you do have a variety of options, then I would suggest creating a sheet-pan meal. We had broccoli, sweet potatoes, and chicken all available and while I wasn’t set on a particular dish, I knew I wanted the prep to be easy. Sheet-pan dinners are the delightful result of putting many ingredients on a baking sheet, cooking them all together, then all of a sudden dinner is served.
My one requirement for seasoning this particular dish was that I wanted an “Asian-style vinaigrette,” which is basically my go-to-style when I don’t want our dinner covered in cheese. Using ingredients such as sesame oil, Tamari, fresh garlic, fresh ginger, and rice vinegar to create a seasoning or sauce is a great way to create loads of flavor, but still keep it light. For this dinner, we roasted everything without the sauce, then used this “vinaigrette” as a dipping sauce on the side.
Sheet-pan dinners are great for these not-so-normal nights because they can be adjusted for whatever you happen to still have in the fridge. We are keeping stock of sweet potatoes these days because they’re filling, nutritious, and perfect for the sheet-pan nights. You could say the same thing for broccoli, but I’m not quite at the point where I will admit to liking broccoli. ;)
Chicken And Veggie Fried Brown Rice
Original recipe.
One of my favorite foods will always be fried rice. However, a key ingredient to making it properly is to use cold, cooked rice, which is not something we regularly have on hand. But! Due to the current quarantine, we are home all day, working next to the kitchen, thus enabling us to make that necessary rice hours before it’s needed.
To make a long story short, we made the rice during the work day, way before dinner, so that it had plenty of time to chill in the fridge and become perfect “cold, cooked rice” to be turned into perfect fried rice for dinner. Ta da! A silver lining to being home all day, every day.
For this particular dish, we used organic brown rice and packed it with chicken for protein and plenty of veggies. An aspect of creating comfort food at home that I find extremely beneficial is that you can control how “indulgent” your meal turns out to be.
While fried rice isn’t the healthiest food ever, it’s also not the worst. By filling it with lean protein and veggies, along with the most scrumptious sauce, it comes across as being ultimate comfort food all while being filled with nutritious ingredients.
Now, I am not saying every time you cook comfort food that it needs to have a healthy angle. Cook what you want! But I do think it’s important to incorporate elements of health into your favorite dishes from time to time. (note: I am not giving you healthy-eating advice. I’m just sharing what works for me.)
We talk about balance all of the time around here and this fried rice is a great example of that concept. Yes, it’s a divine dish filled with flavor and goodness, but it also had nutrition. Hooray!
Easy Skillet Cheesy Chickpeas
Recipe available here from WhatsGabyCooking.com.
Speaking of ultimate comfort food, with a splash of health, let’s get into this skillet of wonderful immediately. I found this recipe as I searched for dinner inspiration and realized we had everything in our pantry to make this meal.
We are just about out of the essentials so I was very excited to realize we had what we needed and wouldn’t have to leave out or substitute any of the ingredients. Bonus? It was a naturally gluten free recipe!
Not only was this dinner naturally gluten free, and prime comfort food, it was also the easiest dinner to make, (possibly) ever. We cooked together, in a large cast iron skillet, a large can of chickpeas with a jar of the awesome Rao’s tomato basil tomato sauce, then soon after covered the whole skillet with mozzarella cheese. We threw the cheesy skillet under the broiler briefly so it would get super-melty and bubbly, then it was time to eat. Couldn’t be easier! And you know what? The dish was perhaps one of the most delicious flavors to ever come out of our oven. I know. That’s a bold statement, but I’m standing by it.
If you’re in the mood for chicken parm (who isn’t?), but don’t have chicken and do have chickpeas (or prefer meatless), then make this dish. It’s basically chickpea parm and it tastes so good. ;)
Charred Cauliflower Quesadillas with Homemade Flour Tortillas
Recipe for tortillas is here from King Arthur Flour (be sure to use their GF flour).
Recipe for filling adapted from this recipe by Smitten Kitchen.
For all of the taco nights we’ve had over the years, we have fallen quite short in the number of quesadilla nights we’ve also enjoyed. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that tacos are seemingly quicker to make or the fact that it’s fairly difficult to find gluten free flour tortillas in the grocery store. But not anymore! Why buy it pre-made if you can just make from scratch at home? Problem solved.
With extra time for dinner prep these days, making gluten free flour tortillas from scratch was suddenly an option. A quick Google search led me to the classic flour tortilla recipe on the King Arthur Flour website (link above) and the only substitution necessary was to use their own Measure-for-Measure gluten free flour instead of regular all-purpose. How easy is that?
Admittedly, Seth prepared the tortilla dough and told me it was extremely easy, but then we cooked them together. I rolled out each tortilla and he cooked each one on a cast-iron griddle. Team work!
We opted for a meatless, veggie filling for our quesadillas and settled on the charred cauliflower recipe from the wonderful Smitten Kitchen (link above). While we were missing a couple ingredients, the end result was pretty much as delicious as I had remembered.
We made this dish once before using corn tortillas (last year) and I can tell you this now in no uncertain terms: quesadillas are far superior with (homemade) flour tortillas. My goodness they were incredible!
Of course, quesadillas are comfort food, but it all balances out since we made the tortillas from scratch and filled them with vegetables. Healthy-ish, hearty, and a splash of indulgence. My favorite combination! Make the tortillas yourself next time you crave quesadillas - they will be totally worth it.
Fun fact: re-heat your extra tortillas in the microwave! On a microwave-safe plate, layer each tortilla with a damp paper towel so that they warm and steam. The texture will be great even on day two. :)
Pork and Spinach Chow Fun
Recipe for Fun Sauce is in the book Myers + Chang at Home
By Friday night, it was clear that our pantry was even more bare and ingredients were fairly minimal. However, we had a pound of ground pork in the freezer, spinach in the fridge, and a box of rice noodles in the pantry; dinner was solved. And it was going to be awesome.
Instead of improvising a sauce for the noodle-stir-fry we were about to make, we chose a sauce from our go-to sauce cookbook, Myers+Chang At Home (link above). This is a famous restaurant in Boston and their cookbook includes countless recipes for their amazing dishes, but also includes the sauce recipes which work their magic on a set of pantry staples.
So instead of making the “Beef and Broccoli Chow Fun,” from the book, we made the Fun sauce from this recipe and created our own version of the dish with ground pork, spinach, mushrooms, shallots, and garlic. Wow! This dinner was stunning and scrumptious, divine and delicious, and just basically fabulous.
Maybe I was just extra-hungry, but I could’ve eaten then entire wok of this dinner. It was that good. I received several notes once I posted it on Instagram that night so it looks like all of you want this meal as well. :)
We all know that a bowl of noodles is major comfort food, but I would argue that how you cook those noodles, and what you add to them, especially the sauce, is what makes that bowl so comforting.
This dinner came to be from a little research and a bit of taste-searching - what did we want to sink our teeth into? Which type of cuisine would be the ultimate comfort food for a Friday night? Turns out pork and spinach chow fun may just be the ultimate comfort food - I would eat it every night of the week. :)
Double Mozzarella and Sautéed Mushroom Pizza
Original recipe. Gluten free (and vegan) pizza crust is from Zeia Foods.
Even after all of the comfort foods throughout the week, I was still excited for our Sunday night pizza ritual. We kept it simple with just sautéed mushrooms and mozzarella, partially due to our minimal ingredients, but I found it to be just as delicious as some of our heavier-topped pies. Pizza should showcase the cheese and toppings, but I’d never want the crust to disappear.
I loved that with this two-topping pie I was far more aware of the scrumptious, crispy crust and the flavorful mushrooms. They balanced each other quite well. Not to mention the double-layer mozzarella. Sure, I could have put all the cheese under the mushrooms, but creating a “sandwich” on top of the crust (cheese-mushrooms-cheese) made it that much more amazing.
Each bite was incredible and balanced; the cheese to mushroom to crust ratio, in my opinion, was just perfect. Another delicious, pizza Sunday is in the books. :)
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I hope your cooking at home is going well and that you’re still finding inspiration to make great meals. We’ve never cooked dinner this many days in a row, ever, and it’s pretty incredible. We’re focusing on our favorite flavors and embracing the comfort foods we crave because that’s what we want right now.
From our kitchen to yours, I hope you’re feeling well and cooking whatever you want. I know it will be delicious.
Enjoy, stay safe, and be well.
