This recipe used to be our go-to for entertaining vegetarians — back when vegetarians were, you know, a rare breed. Now, thankfully, the dish has moved into our regular dinner rotation. The hardest part about it is securing the sheep’s milk yogurt — but not really, you can find it at Whole Foods or even a slightly-gourmet supermarket — then it’s just a matter of remembering to cook more onions than you think feels right. The contrast between their caramel-ly sweetness and the tangy yogurt……I don’t want to get overly precious here, but: Oh. Boy.  It’s so good that I don’t mind cooking two completely separate meals for the grown-ups and the kids, who, sadly, won’t touch it no matter how many chocolate-covered raisins and Michael Jackson youtube videos I promise them as a reward. They get a TJoe’s frozen pizza.

Can't win 'em all. Our dinner (left); the kids' dinner (right)

Pasta with Yogurt, Spinach and Sweet Onions
3 glugs olive oil
4 yellow onions sliced
salt
1 pound whole wheat fettucini
2 6-ounce containers sheep’s-milk yogurt, drained through a coffee filter set in a strainer for at least 20 minutes
2 cups-ish fresh spinach
1 cup grated Parmesan

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the onions. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are golden brown, 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook your pasta in a large pot, adding spinach during the last 30 seconds. Strain, reserving 1/2 cup of the pasta water. In the same pot, whisk together the drained yogurt with the pasta water. Toss pasta with the yogurt mixture. Divide the pasta among 4 bowls. Sprinkle generously with cheese and top with onions.

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It’s freaking hard to work a full day, then put a family dinner on the table that you feel good about. But as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes the hardest part is just getting the ball rolling. I’m a big believer in my Dinner-in-the-Morning strategy, which basically just means that I take three or four minutes before I head off to work to complete one simple dinner prep task. It can be as simple as transferring chicken from the freezer to the fridge so it will thaw by 6:00. It can be chopping an onion or setting out the spices I need. Or, it could be throwing some chicken pieces into a ziploc filled with buttermilk and a few crushed garlic cloves, which I did one morning last week. The way I see it, not only is the act of marinating making my oven-fried chicken tender and flavorful, it’s also effectively signing a contract with my post-work self: I’m committing to this, says the contract, there’s no excuse not to close the deal later.

Buttermilk Oven-Fried Chicken

4 cups or so buttermilk (the skinny container)
4 garlic cloves, halved
6-8 chicken drumsticks, skin on
Cooking spray
1 1/2 cups plain Kelloggs Corn Flake Crumbs
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon cayenne if you think you can get away with it
salt
a few grinds of black pepper

Before you go to work: In large ziploc, combine buttermilk and garlic. Add chicken pieces. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes and up to 12 hours.

When you walk in the door: Preheat oven to 400°F. Line large shallow baking sheet with foil and spray lightly with cooking oil. In large bowl, combine corn flake crumbs, herbs, salt, and pepper.

Drain chicken and discard buttermilk. Dredge chicken in bread crumbs until well coated, then place, skin side up, on baking sheet. Spray pieces lightly with cooking oil. Bake until golden and cooked through, 35 to 45 minutes.

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I am ashamed to say that it has never been hard for me to throw away my childrens’ artwork. Not all of it, of course. My general rule is that it must be either a) truly technically astounding or b) depict a family member. Everything else: into the recycling bin. (Poor Abby is still recoveirng from seeing her rattlesnake watercolor being heaved into a truck by a mustachioed sanitation worker.) But I must admit, it’s pure joy being able to sacrifice an artfully decorated Easter egg at the altar of dinner. This motley dozen (do take note of the Michael-Jackson themed “Beat it” one) was the inspiration for a family favorite: Cobb Salad. The recipe is sort of Stone-Soupish — a hard-boiled egg is a nice starting point, but with bacon to fry and greens to wash and chop, it is indeed only a starting point — but it’s one of those recipes that seems to work no matter what you have in the fridge. Deconstruct it for happier results with the kids, and eliminate all evidence of egg shells down the garbage disposal. Click to the jump for the recipe.

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End-of-the-week vegetables are good for more than just homemade chicken stock. A few cuke slices, two bathrobes, some white towels, and one Enya song on repeat for, um, ever, was all we needed to kill the morning.

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I called Jenny on the way home from work tonight:

“I’m running for the 6:23 train, yeah, be home by seven, work was fine, need me to pick anything up? And oh, what do you feel like for dinner.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let me look–hold on–Girls, turn DOWN the Michael Jackson!”

I could hear her open the freezer, rifle around. “We have some chicken.”

Nah, not feeling chicken. Sick of chicken.

“We could do pasta.” I had pasta for lunch.

“Wait,” she said, “There’s a Jim Lahey pizza crust in here!” Pizza sounded good. “Okay, what should we have on it?” she asked. For some reason, I wanted potatoes…and cheddar cheese and caramelized onions. She raised no objections. I told her I’d make it, if she would defrost the crust and slice up some potatoes.

Forty-five minutes later, I got home to a crust on a baking sheet, a bowl of sliced red potatoes (about 1/4 inch thick, skins still on), and a preheated oven. The kids were upstairs in the bath. The dog did not appear to need walking. I went to work.

We didn’t have much in the refrigerator, pizza-wise, so I grabbed some olive oil, salt, fresh thyme, chives, an onion, and Trader Joe’s Mexican blend of shredded cheese. I boiled the potatoes in salted water for about eight minutes to soften them up and sauteed a sliced onion while I got the rest of my ingredients ready. “Do you think the kids will eat this?”  I asked as I was assembling. “Probably not,” she said. The girls were now in the kitchen in their bathrobes. Hungry. “Why don’t you make them a regular cheese pizza?” We had no mozzarella, but we did have a few sticks of string cheese, which I diced up and sprinkled over some marinara. I did a half cheese, half potato, and put it in the oven for about fifteen minutes at 500°F. As usual, the pizza crust came out exactly the way it always does (perfect, and infinitely better than a storebought crust), and thirty minutes after walking in the door, dinner was ready.

The kids did try the potato version, by the way. (We sold it to them as french fry pizza.) It appears they will allow us to move it into our rotation.

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