What's Cooking: Chicken Chili, Crispy Rice Salad, Truffle Egg Salad, Squid Ink Pasta & More!

Lots of cooking this week, but without a stove top or oven!

We moved our stove over to the new house so the propane tank could be installed and tested, so now I’m in the in-between phase where we’re not moved into the new house but the stove is gone! And the cabinets have to be fixed before the hood vent can be installed, so that in between phase is going to be a little longer than initially planned.

Therefore my toaster oven and Instant Pot are getting a workout right now and cooking is requiring a little more creativity but is still possible.

Whole Chicken, Clay Pea, Butternut Squash & Sweet Corn Chili

I had a smallish whole chicken in my freezer a friend has given us from their backyard batch and it was time to use it up!

I started by soaking Sea Island Clay Peas from Marsh Hen Mill in water with a splash of vinegar for 24 hours. This helps with digestibility, for me, at least.

And then I defrosted some pork and chicken bone broth, cut up a big butternut squash and sautéed onions and garlic in the Instant Pot, before adding the broth, seasonings, sweet peppers, the squash and the soaked peas.

Then I put the trivet on top of that mixture and the whole chicken on top of that, seasoned with garlic and onion powders, chili lime seasoning, smoked paprika, coriander, cumin and black pepper.

I cooked it for 50 minutes on high pressure and removed the chicken (carefully since it was ready to fall apart!). I let that cool, shredded the chicken (saving some of the skin for chicken skin cracklins inthe toaster oven) and then stirred it back into the chili.

At that point, I added sweet corn from my freezer supply (the crop we grew this spring!). I don’t like for corn to get overcooked because I find that it’s the sweetest when just barely blanched.

We topped it with creole cream cheese and sharp cheddar cheese and ate it with an arugula salad (not pictured) and it really hit the spot!

First Salad of the Season & Brioche Bun BLTs

The day before I cooked the chili, we celebrated the first green salad of the season with a combination of River Queen Greens’ arugula, Mountain View Orchard Asian pears, Resurrection Gardens Corn & Pepper Chow Chow, Southern Maids goat feta, Church Alley’s vinaigrette and some pistachios.

That went with some bacon ends BLTs, except if possible I always use basil in place of lettuce. If there’s no basil, arugula is my second choice.

We didn’t have any Honey Oat bread handy, so I decided to try the BLTs on brioche buns. And while the buns are amazing for so many things, here I’ll be honest that it was too much bread. The whole meal was still delicious, I just know now that while the brioche is perfect for burgers, fish sandwiches, egg sandwiches and more, I think a thinner bread to bacon and tomato ratio is better for BLTs.

Crispy Rice & Tofu Salad

This was a last minute lunch idea since I had leftover rice and the majority of a pack of Tien Dat’s fried black mushroom tofu cubes.

Inspiration came from this Pinch of Yum recipe. I didn’t have cilantro or mint or peanuts, but I followed the dressing recipe and everything else pretty closely.

You mix the rice with curry paste and cook it until crispy (says to do so in an air fryer, took longer but worked fine in the toaster oven, too). I sliced up the tofu cubes and added them after the rice had already cooked for 15 minutes or so.

And then I tossed the cucumbers with mesclun mix and lots of basil. Definitely will be making again!

Pork Shawarma & Baba Ganoush Bowls

I had a pack of pork stir fry strips and a bunch of eggplant to use up, so stir fry would seem obvious, but I was looking for a different flavor profile and stir frying in the Instant Pot doesn’t really work well since you can’t adjust the temperature on the sauté feature.

So instead I went more Middle Eastern and seasoned the pork with coriander, cumin, garlic, fenugreek and turmeric and roasted in the oven until crispy.

I also made a big batch of baba ganoush with roasted eggplant, tahini, garlic, lemon juice and sumac. And then we had some rice and a salad with mesclun and arugula, diced delicata squash, goat feta, pistachios and corn & pepper chow chow.

Easy Instant Pot Truffle Egg Salad (No Peeling!)

This was a revelation. I usually prefer hardboiled eggs or deviled eggs to actual egg salad. But I knew I wasn’t going to be cooking scrambled eggs for breakfast tacos for a bit with my stove in the new house, so I decided to give Instant Pot egg salad a try.

Before we had a full (mini) kitchen in the tiny house at the farm, I had hard boiled eggs in the Instant Pot many times.

For this though, you skip the peeling step by cooking basically a hardboiled egg loaf and cracking the eggs before cooking. It sounds kind of weird, but it was great for us also because we eat only cracked eggs, so inevitably when we try to hardboiled them they can leak out a little.

So you set the trivet in the Instant Pot, add a cup or two of water and then oil a metal bowl or pan that will fit inside and crack the eggs into it.

For this I did 14 eggs at high pressure for 6 minutes, then slow release for 6 additional minutes, then quick release. And the eggs came out perfectly firm. I then let them cool, popped them out of the bowl onto a cutting board and diced for the egg salad.

There is a truffle mayo that Grant and I love, so I used that, a little dijon mustard, lemon juice and black garlic salt. It was an absolute dream and even better eaten on a brioche bun with arugula or basil and my homemade bread and butter pickle relish.

Squid Ink Gemelli with Shrimp, Clams, Leeks, Mushrooms & Squash

This took some steps to make in the Instant Pot, but I was determined to get us another delicious weeknight meal to last the rest of the week.

I have cooked pasta in the Instant Pot on high pressure before, but it tends to come out mushy. And fresh pasta that had been frozen seemed even more difficult to figure out how many minutes to cook for.

So I actually boiled water in my electric tea kettle and then poured into the Instant Pot on the sauté feature. I had to babysit putting the lid on but not sealing and removing before it boiled over a bit, but it worked! I got al dente pasta and then drained that and moved on to what was going with it.

First I sautéed leeks in butter, then added lion’s mane, oyster and shiitake mushrooms. Once those were cooked, I added gumbo size shrimp and seasoned with Smokey Shiitake & Black Garlic seasoning. Then I added back in the pasta as well as chopped up whole clams.

Still on the sauté feature I added goat milk until it thickened a little and eventually Pecorino, Romano and Parmesan cheeses.

I also cooked a batch of summer squash and zucchini in the toaster oven and we ate it all together topped with more cheese and basil.