Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies

One of the gems on the new Cooking Channel is Rachel Allen: Bake! While many of the Food Network shows will feature desserts, there are fewer regular series that focus on them. Rachel Allen is a charming British woman who finally convinced me to like blondies! I'd never had any blondie that could top my favorite chocolate brownies until I tried these. To be clear, they are heavy on the peanut butter, so "blondie" may be a stretch-- they're really a thick peanut butter cookie.

Three-Cheese Mushroom and Spinach Calzone

I used to be a vegetarian for six years. I was a terrible vegetarian; I ate a lot of cheese, french fries and chocolate. These calzones would have fit the bill. Now, I say calzones because I made four individual calzones as opposed to one large calzones and cooked the calzones for a few minutes less. Since there are just two of us, we eat a lot of leftovers and making four individual calzones enabled us to easily package the extras in a brown bag lunch. I used the frozen pizza dough from Central Market-- it's next to the pizzas in the freezer section and is softly garlic-flavored. Next time, I may substitute mozzarella for fontina; I doubt I could taste the difference and it'll be cheaper.

4/10/11 update: tonight, substituted 1/2 lb. of hot italian sausage for the spinach and omitted the fennel seeds and red pepper flakes-- worked well. Also, learned that fontina is easier to grate if you freeze first-- 15-20 minutes.

Grilled Chicken with Garlic-Herb Dressing

I suppose there are herbs in this Tyler Florence recipe, but the true heart of the grilled chicken marinade is the roasted garlic, which is also a handy thing to snack on while you cook. (If you've never roasted garlic before, the recipe has great simple directions. There's no need to peel the garlic before roasting.) I've never bothered with either the grilled lemons or the radicchio. This may mean that my chicken is not truly "ultimate." Instead, I've used this as a quick company grilling dish. I'll make the marinade the night before and use bone-in breasts so that every piece cooks evenly and there's less of a need to monitor once they are on the grill.

Chocolate Lovers' Brownies

My all-time favorite classic brownie recipe has an unlikely origin-- it's from the Disney Family Cookbook, and I've been using it for at least 15 years. The 8 ounces of semisweet chocolate in addition to the unsweetened chocolate make for a sweeter brownie. These brownies are so overwhelmingly chocolate-y there is no need for frosting or topping other than a shake of powdered sugar. Serve with lots of milk :)

Southwestern Chicken Salad

This southwestern chicken salad is one of those things I would pay for at a restaurant or in the prepared foods aisle at Central Market, but would stupidly never think of making for myself, save some prodding from Real Simple (July 2010 issue). It would probably even be called "Southwestern Chicken Salad" at Corner Bakery, or maybe "Chicken Fajita Salad" at Chili's. I digress--I used cut up chicken breasts instead of rotisserie chicken; I would advise just making extra chicken with whatever method you're using and then toss it in. The black beans were the best part, and I ended up adding more since the recipe called for less than a whole can. Finally, I used a plain whole wheat tortilla instead of chips because I had it on hand. A corn tortilla or tortilla strips or anything else would easily work.

Potato Salad with Bacon and Parsley

This June 2009 Real Simple recipe for potato salad with bacon and parsley has become an instant classic in our house (and, seriously, that June 2009 issue was a real winner!). This salad has all of the flavor of a classic mustard potato salad, but it's light enough to be truly called a salad, and not a heavy side. The addition of the bacon elevates the recipe into something almost gourmet. One note: children apparently are not fans of the red wine vinegar. Good thing I am.

Sweet and Spicy Chicken

From the same alluring Real Simple picnic article as the oatmeal-raspberry bars, here's the sweet and spicy chicken. To start: I was confused by the direction that the chicken should be cut into 10 pieces. We went ahead and did an 8-piece cut (2 breasts, 2 thighs, 2 legs and 2 wings). The premiere of Top Chef: D.C. used the 8-piece method in the quickfire challenge, so I'm sticking with it. If you want to do a 10-piece method, see the illustration here. Otherwise, this is a simple spice rub that you could likely prepare ahead of time, then quickly rub onto the chicken prior to baking. Although the spice rub looks like a small amount, it is more than enough to cover all of the chicken pieces. I rubbed the spices underneath the skin as well as on top of the skin. The name is so descriptive I don't have much more to add!