Aunt Susan’s Fish

Quick Sauté of Sole fillets

⅓-½ lb. Sole fillets (Flounder OK)
Bread Crumbs
Butter

Heat sauté pan over high heat. Add butter and turn to medium. Dip fillets in bread crumbs, shaking off excess.

When butter melted and starting to turn brown, carefully add fillets. Cook on one side for 1 minute. Carefully turn and cook for one minute on the other side. Serve with lemon wedges

1 serving

Goes great with sautéed spinach

Potato soup

This is cheap, easy and really, really good comfort food
1-2 TBS butter
1 Yukon potato, unpeeled and sliced in 1/4” slices
1 small onion diced
1 can broth
Salt and pepper
Melt butter in pan over medium heat. Add onion and sauté 5 minutes until softened.
Add Potato and stir to coat. Add salt and lots of pepper.
Add broth, bring to boil and simmer until potato is cooked and crumbling, about 15 minutes.
Serves 1
My family used to argue about whether the potato should be sliced or diced.
Since this is my blog, I went with sliced.

American Chop Suey

Another great one pan meal.

1 lb. ground chuck
Cooking oil
1 onion chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic
Red pepper flakes
Pinch allspice (if you have it)
Pinch cinnamon (if you have it)
1½ tsp oregano
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
1 lb. shaped pasta
½ lb. fresh mozzarella, cut into ½" cubes
Parmesan

Heat oil in skillet and brown meat breaking up into small clumps.

Remove meat and set aside, leaving oil in pan. Sauté onion for three minutes. Add garlic for 1 minute. Return meat to pan, stir in spices, add tomato sauce and water if necessary to cover meat mix.

Simmer 20 minutes.

Boil water for pasta and cook according to instructions. Drain, return to pot. Add meat sauce and mozzarella and stir, till mixed and mozzarella softened.

Serve with Parmesan

2-4 servings

half hour

Almost Meze

Using prepared foods from grocery/deli, make a cheap and hearty meal

From deli:
Prepared Hummus
Roasted pepper cut into ½” slices
Olives

From salad bar:
Tomatoes
Scallions
Cucumbers or Cucumber and Yogurt salad
Carrot

Pita bread

Oil (Pam is helpful)
Dried Oregano
Salt

Warm up toaster oven and set to broil.

Split open Pita and spray with Pam and sprinkle on oregano and salt

Broil until brown on edges

Chop pepper. Put all your veggie ingredients on Pita.

5 minutes

Henry’s Favorite macaroni and cheese

No baking involved. Easy clean up and you can eat it right out the pan. Use a fork please.

1 pound shaped pasta
2-3 TBS butter, softened
1½ cups Grated cheddar cheese
¼ cup grated parmesan

Cook pasta according to package instructions in lots of well salted water.

Drain and return to pan.

Add butter and stir to melt.

Scatter cheddar over pasta and blend gently.

Add Parmesan and blend.

Eat.

1-4 servings

20 minutes

You could sauté a ham steak (it's near the bacon in the grocery) until warmed and then cut into 1/2” pieces and add after cheese. You could also stir in frozen peas

Henry’s favorite pork chops

I always had to make an extra serving...

½ lb. very thin pork chops
Cooking oil
1 TSP rosemary
1 clove garlic
Salt and Pepper
¼ cup white wine

Heat oil in pan to hot.

Dry chops on paper towels. Sprinkle salt and pepper and rosemary on chops.

Sauté 1½ minutes on each side, pressing into pan to brown well.

Move to plate and cover with inverted plate.

Turn heat to medium, Add garlic and stir for one minute. Add Wine, turn heat back to high and reduce by half. Pour over chops.

Serve with Mac and cheese

1 serving

Best Salad Dressing ever

This is a very good, versatile recipe. In Italian, It’s Salsina Di Pepe Nero

Juice of lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
at least 4 garlic cloves, minced
1 TBS (yes, tablespoon) Freshly ground pepper
½ cup champagne vinegar
1½ cups EVOO

If you don’t have a lemon zester (and why not??) use a vegetable peeler.

Don’t go too deep. Zest before juicing--lemon will be firmer.

Combine all ingredients and let stand at least one hour.

Mix, Strain and dress your salad

2 cups

5 min

Strain all solids out and store in clean peanut butter jar in fridge. Refrigerated it will keep for months