Favorite food, recipes, and more …
The August/September 2006 issue of Fine Cooking has an article on roasted potato salads – with recipes for making the salad three ways.
Here’s my modification – based upon what we had around the house yesterday! This is a great, quick recipe for a potato side dish – without the mess of the mayonnaise-based potato salads. Roasting adds a great potato flavor to the dish (vs. the boiled/peeled potato approach).
This Sunday dinner is perfect when BBQ season has arrived. This afternoon in Menlo Park was ideal – light up the Weber BBQ (charcoal version) and go! The ingredients are super simple: a Santa Maria-seasoned Tri-Tip from Trader Joe’s (or your favorite alternative) and a package of one of those Caesar Lite pre-packaged salads.
For a 5:30 PM dinner, start this at about 4 PM. You’ll have plenty of time to read the Sunday papers in between while things are happening. Add a bottle of Bogle’s Phantom and you’re truly good to go! Serves 2.
This is one of my all-time favorite quick meals – you can literally walk in the door and have a wonderful hot and healthy meal on the table in less that ten minutes!
And, Trader Joe’s would be happy – all of the ingredients come from there: Fire Roasted Vegetables in Balsamic Butter Sauce (frozen), Organic Brown Rice (frozen), and Just Chicken (fresh chicken pieces).
Add a splash of Chardonnay (a current favorite is the Olivet Lane Estate Russian River Valley Chardonnay from Pellegrini) and you’ve got a delightful, fresh, and very tasty stir-fry. Serves 2-3.
[Update: Christmas 2019 – Be sure the checkout this YouTube video recipe for slow roasting prime rib. This recipe uses the technique of an initial high-heat (500 degrees) roasting followed by literally turning the oven off and letting the roast continue to cook in the cooling oven for two more hours. That lower heat is the key to the magic of slow roasting!]
Earlier this week as part of our holiday get togethers, we had a family group over for dinner and cooked – for the first time in a long time – a prime rib roast. Prime rib is one of those special meals – just right for the holidays with friends and family! It was delicious – accompanied by roasted potatoes, and some spinach.
Elise has a great prime rib recipe over on her Simply Recipes site. We used the 450 degree for 15 minute and 350 for the rest – although we cranked it back up to 450 again for about 5 minutes before taking it out of the oven (a technique mentioned in one of Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa cookbooks).
Everyone reminds you about needing to let the roast rest for 15-20 minutes after you take it out of the oven — so I will remind you here too! 😉
Update (12/18/19): I’ve added a slow-roasted version of this recipe which makes especially delicious and tender tri-tip! If you’re making tri-tip for the holidays, try this new slow-roasted version for a special treat!
For our large Christmas Eve family get togethers, we like to serve main course meat entrees that are really easy to eat in a buffet style setting – without formal sit down dinner place settings for every guest. Most of our guests will be eating with their plate in their lap, so something lovely like a slow-roasted prime rib just won’t do.
We’ve settled on serving a combination of honey baked ham, just heated to room temperature in a 450 degree oven for little more than 5 minutes, and beef tri-tip roasts. The ham is super easy to prepare, comes basically pre-sliced (spiral cut) and preparation literally requires unwrapping it, putting it briefly in the oven to warm and then choosing which serving platter to use to present it! A couple of choices in gourmet mustards to accompany the ham and that half of the main course is ready to go!
For the tri-tips, we usually get three of them and try different rubs/marinades. My Dad particularly likes his beef plain – so one of the tri-tips will always just be salt and pepper rubbed. The others get a bit more exotic! But the rub’s not the point – the easy preparation in the oven is what these tri-tips are all about.
Doing the tri-tips in the oven sacrifices a bit of the smoky flavor from the Weber BBQ version — but the super-easy preparation and not having guests following me out onto the patio!) makes the oven version perfect for winter-time cooking and entertaining. But you’ll want to do the rubs (or marinades) enough in advance to ensure the beef ends up being very flavorful.
I call these my “Lazy-S” tri-tips – Lazy-S for Lazy Scott! Note: As I’m writing this, it strikes me that beef short ribs might just be another great holiday buffet dish. I mean the kind that have already fallen off the bone after hours of braising! I’ll have to experiment with that sometime – although on a day when I’ve got the energy and dedication required to tend short ribs much of the day!
[June 2008 Update: Looking to BBQ your tri-tip instead of roasting it in the over? See my latest, field-tested (!) recipe for grilling tri-tip on a Weber charcoal BBQ!]
[Christmas 2008 Update: We’ll be making our easy oven-roasted tri-tips again this year for our family Christmas Eve dinner!]
Directions
(Added: December 26, 2005)
For our Christmas family dinner this year, we roasted a 12-lb turkey that turned out delicious. For the first time, we tried a new technique consisting of roasting the bird upside down (breasts down) and high-heat kickoff followed by a two step heat reduction while roasting (a total of 3 different temperatures are used). All you do is manage time and temperature – nothing could be simpler.
In the past, we’ve done brining and that works well to yield a moist bird. But the high-heat upside-down approach used here delivered just about the best, most moist turkey we’ve tasted – without the hassles of brining. Note: I kind of had to give up brining – my wife just can’t stand the thought of open bowls of water and poultry in our refrigerator – she sees salmonella dancing everywhere around! Besides, as she says, there’s never enough room in the ‘frig anyway at this time of year!
Continue reading “Scott’s High Heat Upside-Down Roast Turkey Recipe”
This Christmas Eve, instead of our usual favorite Lemon Garlic Orzo side dish, we cooked a side dish of roasted small potatoes. We found a useful recipe here and modified it just a bit — and the results were wonderful!
There’s certainly nothing particularly healthy or low-fat about this recipe – but it’s so simple and results in some great small potatoes!
The original recipe for this simple side dish came from the now defunct S. Anderson Vineyard in the Stag’s Leap district of the Napa Valley. This is a great side dish for almost any meal. It’s flavors go especially well with the Roast Chicken!
Ingredients
Directions
(Added: April 22, 2001
Introduction
This recipe was inspired by the Holiday 2000 Williams-Sonoma Taste magazine.
Directions
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Combine marinade ingredients in a large bowl. Add beef and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours or, preferably, overnight.
Ingredients
3 pounds boneless, well-marbled
stew beef, cubed
1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1-1/2 pounds pearl onions or
shallots, peeled
3 celery stalks, peeled and sliced
1 14-1/2-ounce can diced, peeled
tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
Marinade
1 cup dry red wine
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 bay leaves
2 cinnamon sticks
4 whole cloves
3 whole allspice berries
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of nutmeg
Drain beef, reserving marinade. Melt butter with 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and sauté onions and celery until softened, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a bowl.
Add remaining olive oil to pan. Sauté beef, in batches if necessary, until browned, about 10 minutes. Return onions and celery to pan. Add reserved marinade, tomatoes, tomato paste, salt and pepper and enough water to just cover beef. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer partially covered, until beef is tender and sauce is thickened, 1-1/2 to 2 hours.
Yield: 4-6 servings
(Added: January 13, 2002)
A couple of years ago, the Chronicle tested a number of different recipes for roasting turkey and this particular best way brined turkey recipe came out on top – and has become a classic.
Update: We’ve come up with an alternative – without the mess of brining – that’s also just delicious! Try our high heat upside-down turkey recipe instead.
Scott's Kitchen 