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Valentine’s Day is probably one of the most difficult days to make dinner reservations at a restaurant. You’ll be lucky to find a spot at your local fast food joint.  Don’t let that stop you from giving your special someone a scrumptious Valentine’s dinner. The trick is to make it yourself. No cooking skills? No problem. If you can shop and chop you can put this dinner together.  If you want to stick with a healthy dinner recipe, omit the cream in the avocado soup and use olive oil instead of butter with the vegetables.

Spicy Shrimp Cocktail

Fat, sweet, juicy shrimp served in a martini glass and dolloped with a savory spicy sauce starts off your dinner with class.  Purchase eight, big, peeled, deveined and cooked shrimp with their tails intact. Fill the bottom of the martini glass with chopped lettuce.  You’ll find lettuce ready to serve in the produce section.  Chop the lettuce into fine shreds.  Mix purchased seafood cocktail sauce with a squeeze of lemon juice and a few drops of hot sauce.  Place two tablespoons of the sauce right on top of the lettuce. Hook the tops of the shrimp around the rim of the glass so their tails are inside the glass.

Smooth and Creamy Cold Avocado Soup

The light green color of this sauce complements the pink of the shrimp. Purchase a package of guacamole.  Put it in a blender with one cup of cream, once cup of cold canned chicken broth and the juice of half a lime.  Blend till smooth.  Keep icy cold until served. Second soup course of your Valentine’s dinner is complete so on to the entrée.

Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Don’t panic.  You won’t be actually cooking the chicken. The deli section has roasted chicken breasts — as well as other parts but you won’t be needing them. Purchase three breasts, that gives you an extra.  While you’re at the deli counter purchase 1/4 pound of prosciutto and 1/4 pound of parmesan cheese, both sliced thinly.   If you can’t find prosciutto which is a highly flavored air-dried Italian ham, substitute another good quality ham.  Make a slit in the chicken breast to form a pocket.  Stuff in two slices of prosciutto and two slices of parmesan cheese.  Wrap each breast in aluminum foil so it doesn’t dry out.  Reheat in a 350 F. degree oven for about 20 minutes until the chicken is heated through and the cheese has melted. Unwrap before serving.

Side Dishes

You don’t need much for side dishes, a vegetable and potato or two vegetables.  Go to the produce section and find the bags of baby vegetables that are pre-cleaned and ready to cook in the bag.  Sometimes they’re called steamers.  Steam in the microwave per package directions.  Melt a tablespoon of butter — yes real butter — and drizzle over the veggies right before serving.

Dessert

No Valentine’s Day dinner would be complete without chocolate and strawberries.  Chocolate covered strawberries are available this time of year all ready for you.  But it’s more fun to dip your own.  Clean large berries under running water.  Pat dry.  Arrange the berries on a plate with a mound of whipped cream, a small bowl of brown sugar, small bowl of powdered sugar and small bowl of chocolate syrup, the kind you use to make chocolate milk. Dip to your and your sweetheart’s content.

If the kids are telling you they’re dying of hunger and you’ve got only 30 minutes before you have to get junior to the soccer game, and you to the PTO meeting, don’t panic. You’ve got time to make chicken wraps, a fast, easy, healthy dinner recipe. Try the Asian chicken wraps accented with hoisin sauce, scallions and shredded cabbage, wrapped in a warm flour tortilla. Or perhaps you’d prefer Italian wraps redolent with garlic and onions, tomatoes and basil. Finally there’s South of the Border wraps. Add brown rice topped with peas and carrots to round out the meal. Serve fresh sliced fruit for dessert. Dinner is less than half hour away.

Get Started

Sauté 4 ounces of chicken breast for each serving. Slice the breast into 1/2 inch slices for quick cooking. If time is really short, use sliced roast deli chicken instead or shred the meat off a cooked rotisserie chicken.

Asian Wraps

Spread the flour tortilla with about 1 tablespoon of purchased hoisin sauce. Hoisin sauce is a dipping sauce traditionally served with seafood, but goes wonderfully with chicken and pork as well. The flavor is sweet and tangy with a bit of smokiness. Children like it because the flavor isn’t overpowering.

Place about 1/4 cup of shredded cabbage and two thinly sliced scallions in the middle of each tortilla. Top with 2 ounces of the cooked chicken. Roll up burrito style.

Italian

When the chicken has just about finished cooking, add 1/2 thinly sliced onion and 1 small smashed clove of garlic to the pan for each 4 ounces of chicken. The onion and garlic should be cooked long enough to lose that raw taste.

Spread the flour tortilla with 1 tablespoon of purchased pizza sauce or tomato sauce. Add 1/4 cup of raw spinach leaves and the chicken. Top with 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese. Roll up and you’re good to go.

South of the Border

Think of these as fast and easy dinners inspired by the flavors of the Southwest. Chop one green pepper, two tomatoes, and one bunch of scallions for 1 pound of chicken. Add 1/4 cup of fresh lime juice. Mix in 1 teaspoon of cumin and 1/4 cup of chopped cilantro. Add from 1/4 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of hot red pepper flakes depending on how spicy you like your food. If that’s too much trouble, substitute 1 cup of prepared salsa.

After the chicken has cooked, add the salsa. Cook a few minutes until the liquid has almost evaporated.

Spread the tortillas with 2 or 3 tablespoons of refried beans and top with the chicken-salsa mixture. Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese on top.

If you’d like to make these wraps ahead of time, make them enchilada style. Put the wraps into a baking dish you’ve sprayed with cooking spray. Top with enough enchilada sauce to cover. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the sauce rather than inside the wraps. Freeze or refrigerate. Defrost about 30 minutes before dinner time and pop into a preheated 350 F oven. Bake for 30 minutes until the cheese has melted and is gooey and the sauce is bubbling.

You’ll be shouting olé when you taste this South of the Border treat. Use boneless, skinless, chicken breasts. For four servings: make a marinade of the juice of three limes. Add a bit of lime peel to the juice if you wish. Add 1 teaspoon cumin, `1/4 teaspoon of crushed chili peppers or more if you like spicy food, a clove of chopped garlic, and four chopped scallions. Combine with 1/2 cup of tequila. That sounds like a lot, but remember all the alcohol will evaporate during cooking, you just want the flavor. If you don’t want to use tequila use white wine vinegar or rice wine vinegar instead. Place the marinade and the chicken breasts in a plastic bag and marinate for at least an hour, up to over night. When ready to cook remove the chicken from the marinade and bake. You can also grill the chicken breasts. Serve with a black bean, corn and tomato salad and a couple of toasted tortillas.

October 15, 2011

The Green Bay Packers. are undefeated going into week five of the 2011 season.  The Packers have soaked the Saints, pounded the Panthers, beat up the Broncos and buried the Bears and now it’s the Falcons turn. Those Atlanta birds are going to be filleted and fried in this week’s football tailgating menu. Roddy White, the Falcon’s wide receiver will have to eat his words that the Falcon’s were the better team when they lost to the Packers in a 48 to 21 blowout, or blow up, as the case may be in the 2010 playoff game.

Start off with spicy nuts that are a snap to make.  Combine 1/2 cup of melted butter with 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and 1 tablespoon of hot sauce.  Toss with two pounds of unsalted mixed nuts.  Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes.  Serve hot or at room temperature.

Crunchy coated chicken — fried to a golden brown — and served with dipping sauces of bleu cheese, spicy chipotle mayonnaise and sweet teriyaki.  Add in honey mustard sauce for the kids.  If you’re short on time or just mesmerized by the game add in some prepared salads to round out the meal.  For dessert, Georgia is known for peaches, so peach melba sundaes are a natural.

Cut boneless, skinless, chicken breasts into slices about 1 inch wide.  Toss with seasoned flour.  Add your choice of dried parsley, oregano, crushed red chili peppers, black pepper and salt to the flour.  Dip the chicken slices into the flour and then into beaten raw eggs.  Lastly dip the slices into panko bread crumbs or sourdough bread crumbs.

Heat oil in a frying pan until it reaches 360 degrees.  Add the breaded chicken and fry until the coating is golden brown and the chicken is cooked through. Cut a slice open to check. The meat should be white with no pink showing through. Any juices should run clear and not be tinged with pink.

Offer bleu cheese salad dressing as one of the sauces.  Combine one cup of mayonnaise with 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon roasted chipotle pepper. Purchased teriyaki sauce is quicker than making the sauce from scratch. Kids will love the honey mustard sauce.  Simply mix honey with prepared mustard.

Peach melba sundaes are just what’s needed to cool down after a hot and heavy fourth quarter.  Let fans build their own with pound cake slices, vanilla ice cream, defrosted frozen peaches and raspberries.

Crunching on the Falcons never tasted so good. Go Pack Go.

Green Bay Game

October 7, 2011

The long NFL lockout is over and the season is moving forward. Tailgating is part of football whether it’s a high school, college or NFL game. Just because you’re not going to the game, doesn’t mean you can’t have a tailgating party. This week, in honor of the Green Bay Packers playing a pre-season game against the Arizona Cardinals, this football tailgating menu will feature grilled Cornish game hens, because that’s what the Pack is going to do to those little red birds.

Football tailgating menu

The game hens are marinated in a lime juice and chipolte bath overnight, then grilled. Finish with a spicy sweet sauce for an additional kick of flavor. The meat is succulent and tender with a south of the border twist.

Accompany the birds with smoky grilled potatoes and corn on the cob. A black bean salad is a nice touch. Finish with fresh peaches topped with vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with cinnamon.

Split the hens in half. They’ll grill more evenly. Plan on one hen person. Combine 1 1/2 cups lime juice, four crushed garlic cloves, one bunch chopped scallions, and 1 tbsp. chipolte powder for four birds. Add more or less chipolte powder depending on how spicy you like your food. Reserve 1/2 cup of the mixture and store separately. Put the remaining marinade and the split hens in a zipper-locked bag and marinate at least overnight.

Light the grill and grab a marguerita-lite. Pour a 6 oz. can of limeade with two cans of water and two cans of lemon-lime soda over crushed ice in a pitcher. Add 4 oz. of tequila. Stir well. Serve with a slice of lime.

Pull back the husks of the corn but don’t remove them. Rub off the silks. Fold the husks back over the corn and soak in cold water for about 30 minutes.

Vegetables often take longer to grill than chicken. Start the corn, wrapped in their husks on the grill. Give them about ten minutes. At the same time add the potatoes still in their skins but cut in chunks and threaded on a metal skewer. Move the corn and potatoes off to the side but still on the heat when you’re ready to grill the Cardinals –ah game hens. Grill for about 20 minutes, turning once. Insert an instant read thermometer. Poultry needs to reach an internal temperature of at least 165 F.

Mix the reserved marinade with 1/4 cup of honey. Brush over the game hens during the last five minutes of grilling. Do NOT use the marinade the chicken was in, discard it.  You’re almost finished with your football tailgating menu.

Use your favorite recipe for a black bean salad. Or simply combine 1 can of drained and rinsed black beans with 1 chopped red sweet pepper, 1 tsp. of cumin, 2 tbsp. of lime juice and 1 small can of chopped jalapeños. Throw in some scallions if you have them handy. Serve at half time then watch the Pack finish off the Cardinals while you finish off the ice cream and fresh peaches.

Read Brian’s Green Bay Packers Blog

Spicy pork sausage, sweet shrimp and chunks of  succulent chicken all wrapped up in a zippy tomato-based sauce and served over rice.  Take the traditional jambalaya out of the pot and onto the grill. This recipe is fast, easy and pretty low fat.  There is some fat in the sausages but each person only gets half a sausage. Recipe makes four servings.

2 cooked Andouille sausages or any spicy sausage, cut into four pieces each.

16 shrimp – the 13 to 15 per lb. size

2 chicken breasts cut into 1 inch cubes.

1 cup tomato juice combined with 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1 to 3 tsp. red pepper flakes, 1 tbsp. each dried thyme, black pepper, dried onions and three minced garlic cloves.  Divide into three zip lock bags. Add each meat to a separate bag.  Marinate for two hours.

Slice one red and one green pepper into eight equal sized chunks.  Slice two small onions into eight equal sized chunks.  Put in the bag with the Andouille sausage.  It’s cooked so you won’t be contaminating the raw vegetables.

Thread the vegetables, chicken, sausage and shrimp onto skewers.  Baste with the marinade from the sausage and veggie bag while they’re grilling.  Discard the marinade from the shrimp and chicken.  Chicken should be grilled until no traces of pink remain.  The shrimp is cooked when the shell turns bright pink and the flesh is no longer translucent.  If you use the 12 to 15 per lb. shrimp and 1 inch chunks of chicken they should both be cooked and ready at the same time.

If you don’t want to use skewers, grill the chicken breasts and sausages whole and the shrimp in a fish basket.  Keep the shells on the shrimp to keep them moist. The shrimp will cook faster than the chicken so put it on when the chicken is about 10 minutes away from being done. Cut each sausage and chicken breast in half.  Each person gets four shrimp, half a sausage and half a chicken breast.

Serve over seasoned white rice. Add chopped scallions, parsley, salt, pepper and butter to hot cooked rice.  Finish the meal with a crisp green salad to offset the heat from the Jambalaya.

Jambalaya on a stick makes great little appetizers. Remove from the skewers after they’ve been grilled. Cut the chicken and sausage chunks in half.  Serve a shrimp, chicken chunk and sausage threaded on a smaller skewer.

Travel the world and never leave your kitchen. With airports having huge time delays due to security lines and the uncertainty of air travel, visiting other countries can be a drag. Instead, bring the country to you through its food. We are starting our trip around the world with Europe and working our way from the East coast through to the Slovak countries and then Russia. Our first stop is Spain and Portugal located on the Iberian peninsula right below France. Bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the East, the Alborian Sea and the Atlantic Ocean on the West coast, both cuisines have lots of seafood dishes. Spain is a hop, skip and a jump across the strait of Gibraltar from Morocco to the south.

Paella is a peasant dish named after the pan it’s cooked in. That pan, standing on four legs, has a flat bottom, is round and several inches deep. A fire is built beneath the pan with twigs for as long as the food needs to be cooked. As long as the basis of the dish is rice, paella can contain a huge variety of ingredients. Perhaps the best known outside of Spain is seafood paella.

Not having a paella pan, use a flat bottomed skillet. Cook on a grill for an authentic touch or use the stove top and oven, as we did. Paella is too much work for less than four people. For each four servings use one cup of rice, 1/2 chicken, 4 oz. of chorizo and assorted seafood, about 1 lb. We used shrimp, mussels and clams. Lobster changes the dish from peasant to expensive.

Add 1/4 cup of olive oil to the pan placed on medium heat. When the oil is just starting to haze, brown the chicken, cut into serving size pieces. Remove the chicken from the pan when brown. Add 4 oz of chorizo. We don’t have access to the dried version of the sausage so used fresh pork chorizo. When the orange oil from the chorizo has been released and it’s starting to brown, add 1/2 cup finely chopped onion, 1/2 cup of green, red, yellow sweet peppers cut in strips and 2 cloves of minced garlic. Cook until the vegetables have softened, about three to five minutes. Add 1 chopped large tomato. Put the chicken back in the pan. Add 3 cups of chicken broth and 1 1/2 cup of rice. Chop a quarter cup each of cilantro and parsley. Add those plus 1 cup of frozen peas. Stir. Place the seafood on top of the rice mixture and push it down into the rice and broth. Place the pan in a 375 degree preheated oven. Bake uncovered for 30 to 45 minutes. Check after 20 minutes and add additional chicken broth if the pan is dry.

You may have noticed that saffron has been left out of this not-so-classic paella version. That’s simply because saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world. Saffron is the pollen from fall-blooming saffron crocus. Spanish peasants would not have had access to such a delicacy. In some ways, paella without saffron is more authentic than one with saffron. If you want the intense yellow coloring add a teaspoon of turmeric or dry mustard.

Dee Power is the author of several nonfiction books and the novel “Over Time.” She loves to share gardening tips. Find grilling recipes she and her partner Brian Hill have developed. They live with their two dogs, Rose an Irish setter and Kate, an English springer spaniel. And yes the Irish and the English do get along.

Heat grill to 350 degrees if electric or gas grill or until charcoal is covered with a fine gray ash. Use whole frying chickens about 3 pounds each. You’ll need one chicken for every two people. Remove the innards from the chicken. Rinse under cold water. Pat dry with paper towels. Rub chickens with olive or melted butter. Salt and pepper to taste. And here’s the fun part. Place each chicken over an open can of beer as if the chicken was sitting on the beer can. The can of beer is inside the bird’s cavity and the bird should remain upright. Place each bird on the grill and close grill cover. Check every 15 minutes. Chickens should be done in 45 minutes give or take 15 minutes. The beer evaporates over the heat, flavors the chicken and keeps it moist.