At Home...Dad?

"When my youngest brother, Red, was in Kindergarten, I was in seventh grade and would get home from school before he did. On Fridays, I liked to surprise him with fresh-baked treats. I would be sure to get the Betty Crocker wild blueberry muffin mix with blueberries that came in a can. I swore that's what made the muffins so good." – Tieghan Gerard, from Half-Baked Harvest








Foiled Again


The weeknight cook tries so many different dishes and techniques that it literally becomes impossible to sift back through the years and remember them all. If all five in the family stay relatively quiet and intent on whatever the dish, then that one gets one 'memory point' and is filed as a repeatable. If there is general discontent, a stabbing around at the recipe, and some talk of wishful thinking that maybe next time 'just make it a little less gourmet,' then that one might get filed as a 'forget it point.'  Since the very beginning, I have always filed as a 'memory point' the simple art of foiling. I had always used one specific recipe from an old and non descript cookbook for chicken, zuchini and tomato foiling recipe that, one way or another, always turned out well and was successful. The tecnique of foiling for weeknight dinners, I would think, could easily fill out its own cookbook. I wonder if there is much of anything that you couldn't wrap in foil, let simmer in the oven until either the vegetables, the meat, or both, soften and share their flavors? Thinking of foiling in this way is very cool because it is a great way to skip a day at the grocery store, and rely on what you find in the refrigerator. If there were two chicken breasts left, a pinch of pesto left in the little bottle, say, a few raisins, and four slices of mozzerella, that would make a good meal. Take all of the veg you have and slice it up uniformly, slip in one garlic per packet, maybe a bit of vegetable broth, and then pour this, fully cooked, over butter noodles? The foil packet holds flavor in, it traps moisture, it circulates heat efficiently, and nearly always protects the ingredients (that is to say that a bit of accidental over cooking doesn't necessarily ruin a foil packet. It's very hard to go wrong with tagine cooking, one pot skillet cooking, or anything in the dutch, but what about the foil?