For Dinner This Week

For dinner this week:

Beef Stew
This is one of the only items on this list that I have made before, and I've made it many times. It is the BEST beef stew I've ever tasted. I alter the recipe, though, by leaving out the chestnuts and adding lots of extra carrots and potatoes, my favorites.

Concord Grape Pie
This just looked awesome when I saw it on Martha Stewart a year ago, but I thought I would never go to that much trouble. Well, I saw concord grapes in the market the other day, and I decided I'd give it a whirl. For those of you who don't have concord grapes in your local stores (I had never had them before coming to New England), they are really different from regular green and red grapes. The skins come off really easily, and the inside is a gelatinous, squishy ball, with an inextricable seed inside. So I have always found them really hard to eat. However, they taste EXACTLY like grape candy. I always thought the candy companies totally made that flavor up and called it grape, but no, that's what concord grapes taste like.
If you go to the link, you can actually watch a video of how to prepare the grapes.

Maple Orange Chicken with Acorn Squash and Sweet Potatoes
I saw this recipe on the Food Network earlier this summer, but it just seemed really out of place for summer fare. So I filed it away in my brain and decided to pull it out for fall, and that's what I'm doing. I love squash and sweet potatoes, and I love hoisin sauce, so I hope it turns out well.

Roasted Chicken with Vegetables
This recipe is the closest one to the way I roast a chicken. If you've never done it before, you really should. It seems daunting at first, but it's really not that hard once you get the hang of it. There are just some basic things you need to know, which I think this recipe covers. And there's a bonus to mastering this recipe: if you can roast a chicken, you can roast a turkey, easy. It makes Thanksgiving much less stressful to know that your turkey is going to come out just fine.

What I do differently: I brush melted butter instead of olive oil onto the chicken, and I usually use rosemary instead of the thyme they suggest. However, I'm kind of tired of rosemary. It's been my herb of choice for several years, so I think I am going to experiment with other things for a while. I am really liking thyme these days.

Oh, and my other favorite thing is to put all manner of veggies underneath the roasting rack. For one thing, it's a one-dish meal this way. But also, the drippings from the chicken flavor the veggies, and they come out delicious. The way I do this is to cut them all up into the appropriate sizes (smaller chunks for the veggies that take longer to cook), toss them in some melted butter and whatever herb(s) I'm using on the chicken, add salt & pepper, and spread them in the bottom of the pan about 45 minutes to an hour before the chicken will be done. Veggies that work well for this include: potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, winter squash, summer squash, mushrooms, and tomatoes (throw those in 15 min. or so before the end since they cook quickly). I've even used asparagus. I usually put so many veggies in there that they make a layer at least two inches deep, so it takes them a little longer to cook than just a few items would.

Also on the docket this week: homemade (a.k.a. bread machine) bread or rolls. Yum.