Rainy Day Inspiration

Hurricane Irene came and went, leaving my life virtually unaffected aside from the two days my family and I spent holed up in our 700 sq. ft. apartment in Brooklyn waiting for the end of the world. My husband went and did some last minute shopping on Friday and Saturday morning I went and did some last minute, panicked hoarding... it was interesting to see what people were buying. Cans of prepared food for the most part, Nutella, bread...mostly unhealthy non-perishables and water. I decided to buy a couple of cans of food just in case but I wasn't really prepared to lose gas or power. Denial was mostly the feeling I was entertaining, plus my husband is from Florida and he was practically born in the middle of a hurricane, so if he wasn't worried, why should I have been worried? And so, I bring you to photos of my culinary activities from the last two days:



Pulled chicken: this is so easy a monkey could do it...just saute some garlic and onion, add some dry spices (I did smoked paprika, mild chili powder, lemon powder, brown 1.5 lbs chicken breast at bottom of pot, add 8 oz chicken broth, juice from 1/2 lime and a glob of tomato paste and simmer, covered for 3 hours. Throw in some fresh cilantro if you have it, and salt to taste. Pull with a fork. You can add this to tacos, burritos, eat it alone, over rice, etc.


Pizza. DUH! I bought the dough for $5 at the local pizza place because I am intimidated by dough - it was enough for two pies. This is the one I made - topped with sauteed garlic-infused evoo (brush this on the dough), tomato sauce, sauteed red onions, roasted grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, mushrooms and finished with basil and more evoo. I added some sesame seeds to the crust but they got lost.




Brick chicken. It's all the rage. Instead of a roasted whole chicken the traditional way - this always tastes so dry unless you have a rotisserie handy (I don't) what you do is cut out the spine and breastbone and lay it as flat as you can, put a foil-wrapped brick on top and bake for an hour or slightly more at 350 degrees. I didn't have a brick so I used an enameled cast-iron dutch oven to press it.