Jamie DeCaria, Founder of Savorra, is on a quest to eat more real food
Join me on my quest to eat more "real food"! I passionately believe in the health benefits of eating food made from fresh, "real" ingredients and I want to share this with others. I am not a gourmet chef, but I have learned a lot about cooking along the way. And the big secret is ... it's not that hard!
On this site you will find SIMPLE recipes for turning fresh ingredients into tasty meals, in less time than you might think.
Roasting vegetables is such a simple technique: cut the veggies, pour on a bit of olive oil and seasonings, stir, and throw it in the oven on a baking sheet. And the taste is phenomenal! Roasting brings out the vegetable’s natural sweetness and flavor, the natural sugars caramelize, and flavors intensify as moisture evaporates in the oven. Think Brussels sprouts are repulsive? Try roasting them. My one year old gobbled down about twenty sprouts in five minutes. Carrots, cauliflower, and asparagus are also delicious.
Broccoli presents a bit of a challenge with its round, non-pan-touching shape, and its delicate florets, but I found a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated that had some great suggestions for overcoming these challenges. I have further simplified their recipe and it turns out some great tasting broccoli, even making that hitherto useless stalk taste delicious. Enjoy!
Time from start to dinner: 20 minutes
Serves: 4
1 head broccoli
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
salt
pepper
Preheat oven to 500 degrees and adjust rack to the lowest position. Cut off the broccoli’s large stalk, remove the outer peel (use a vegetable peeler if it’s smooth, or just chop it off with a chef’s knife if it’s knobby), and cut stalk into 1/2″ thick slices. Cut the crowns into roughly 2” wedges. In a large bowl, coat broccoli with olive oil, and sprinkle in remaining ingredients. Stir again to combine. Arrange broccoli into a single layer on a rimmed cookie sheet, and roast in oven until brown and tender, about 10 minutes.
I love tzatziki sauce! GOOD tzatziki sauce, that is. I had some very disappointing tzatziki when out for lunch the other day (it was way too sweet–were they using vanilla flavored yogurt???) and had to go home and make it myself to restore my positive memories. And they are restored! This sauce is so good. It tastes amazing with the Greek chicken, on fresh green beans, on a piece of whole grain bread or pita, or just straight out of the bowl. Kidding about that last one. Although I may have considered it.
But enough about the sauce, this marinated Greek chicken recipe is delicious on its own; moist, flavorful, and low effort with a simple lemon, garlic and herb marinade. I made it as shish kabobs, but it would also work with whole pieces of chicken if you prefer. The chicken goes nicely with a Greek salad or some simple rice and fresh steamed green beans. Cover the whole plate with tzatziki!
Time for both dishes: 35 minutes active time, 3+ hours start to dinner (with marinade time)
Serves: 4
Greek Chicken Shish Kabobs
1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 Tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt
Cut chicken into shish kabob sized pieces (Roughly 1″ cubes. My chicken thighs were thin so I cut them in larger strips and then folded them in half as I threaded them on the skewer.) and place in a shallow glass pan that just fits the chicken. Whisk together all remaining ingredients and pour the marinade over the chicken, making sure all pieces are coated on all sides. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours, up to overnight.
Thread chicken pieces onto skewers and grill over medium-high heat until cooked through (roughly 10 minutes), turning once.
Tzatziki Sauce
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
1 1/2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups Greek yogurt
1/2 tsp salt
Cut the peeled cucumber in half lengthwise, use a regular metal teaspoon to scrape out the seeds, then finely chop. Combine cucumber with the remaining ingredients and mix well. Cover and chill for at least one hour to allow flavors to blend.
Savorra Tips
-Save time by preparing the lemon juice and garlic for both recipes at once. Who wants to wash a cutting board and knife more than you have to?
-Greek yogurt is much thicker than traditional yogurt and makes a nice thick tzatziki. If you can’t find it, regular plain yogurt will taste the same, but your sauce will be more liquidy. Still better than no tzatziki!
Last night I threw together this pasta to deplete some of the abundance of veggies in our refrigerator and it was so tasty that I had to share. I will definitely be making this again. We still had lots of fresh zucchini, summer squash, and green beans from last week’s CSA box, with more due to arrive today. I also found garlic, onion, tomatoes, and basil for a tasty sauce, and some pasta in the cupboard. Sounds like dinner!
Time required: 25 minutes
Serves: 4-6
14 oz penne pasta
1 Tbsp coarse salt
3-4 Tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 cup tomato, roughly chopped (I used cherry tomatoes)
coarse salt and pepper to taste
2 large zucchini or summer squash, sliced 1/8″ thin
1/4 cup fresh basil, chiffonade (see tips) (or 1 Tbsp dried basil)
2 cup fresh green beans, ends trimmed
1/2 cup green onion, sliced 1/4″ thin
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, chop your veggies.
Add 1 Tbsp coarse salt to the boiling water and stir in pasta. Set a timer for 4 minutes less than the al dente cooking time suggested on the package.
Put a large skillet over medium-low heat and add olive oil. Once oil is hot, saute garlic and onion until fragrant (about 1 minute), then add tomatoes and saute until softened (about 5 minutes). Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat up slightly to medium, add zucchini and continue to saute until soft, another 5 minutes or so. Stir in basil in the last minute or two of cooking, then remove the pan from heat.
Back to the pasta. When the timer goes off, add green beans to the pot and boil another 4 minutes, until both the pasta and beans are done. (Ideally, they are both done at the same time!) Drain and put the beans and pasta in a large bowl. Top with the zucchini/tomato mixture, stir together, and sprinkle green onion slices on top. Yum!
Savorra Tips
Cut basil into chiffonade strips for a quick fifteen pieces of flair. Stack basil leaves on top of each other and roll the stack tightly like a jelly roll from one side to the other. Using a sharp knife, cut the roll into 1/8 inch slices and voila!—basil flair.
This is an adaptation of a risotto from my absolute favorite cookbook, The New Basics. This is the rare cookbook where nearly every recipe will have you saying, “oh my god, that is the best xyz I have ever tasted.” If you don’t have a copy, I highly recommend picking one up. It is so choice. Many of the recipes can be a bit more time intensive (better for weekends), but your patience will be rewarded.
This risotto is not too time consuming relative to some New Basics recipes, but at 50 minutes, may be a bit too much for a busy weeknight. That’s okay, it reheats well so make a bunch on the weekend and throw it in the microwave on Monday night for the tastiest meal you’ll ever make in two minutes.
Time from start to dinner: 50 minutes
Serves: 8
1 bunch asparagus
4 Tbsp olive oil
2 cup onion, chopped
2 Tbsp garlic, minced
2 cups Arborio rice
8 tsp chicken bouillon
1/3 cup green onion, 1/4″ slices up to three inches of green
2 Tbsp fresh thyme leaves, minced
1 cup Parmesan, freshly grated
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
First, blanch the asparagus. Fill a large, heavy saute pan with two inches of water and bring to a boil. Add asparagus, boil for five minutes (or until tender crisp) and transfer asparagus to an ice water bath to cool, reserving the asparagus water. While you’re blanching, chop the onion, garlic, and other ingredients.
After the asparagus is out, dry your saute pan and heat the oil in it. Add onion and garlic, and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Then add the rice and stir occasionally for another 3 minutes. Meanwhile, measure 8 cups of the asparagus water, add the bouillon and keep it at a simmer in a separate pot (add plain water to make 8 cups if needed). Once the asparagus has cooled, cut it into 1 inch pieces.
Let the stirring begin! Slowly add 1 cup of asparagus stock to the rice, stirring constantly. Simmer the rice and continue to stir until the stock has been absorbed. Once you can move the rice and liquid no longer immediately moves to cover the bottom of the pan, it’s time to add more stock. Add a half cup, let that absorb, add another half cup (are you still stirring near constantly?), then add the asparagus. green onions, and thyme. Continue stirring and adding stock a half cup at a time, until the rice is just tender. Check for tenderness after 20 minutes, it should take about 20-30 minutes total since you first started adding stock.
Once you have achieved tenderness, stir in the Parmesan, and salt and pepper to taste. Bellissimo!
Savorra Tips
This risotto tastes great on its own, or together with a juicy grilled steak.
My friend Ryan made this salad years ago and I fell in love with the perfect blend of ingredients: healthy spinach, creamy Gorgonzola, and a tangy, just sweet enough, strawberry dressing, topped with a crunch of croutons. I have been making it regularly ever since; staying true to the recipe exactly, a rarity for me.
When I suggested that Annalisa and I film this recipe as a unique salad idea, my dietician friend was willing to let the croutons slide, but said the mayo dressing must go! Annalisa wondered if we might be able to use protein-packed Greek yogurt instead; something she recommends as a healthier swap for sour cream. Always up for a challenge, I agreed to give it a try.
I knew that the tart Greek yogurt was not going to be a straight swap for deliciously creamy mayonnaise, so I cut back on the vinegar and added a touch of honey to soften it up. Blach! Still way too tart. Salt always helps, right? Nope, not enough this time. Bring on the second batch! I only needed two tries to declare myself a culinary goddess. I cut back on the vinegar even further, doubled the strawberries, and kept the honey and salt from try #1. Perfection! This new, healthier version, tastes just as good (possibly even better!) than the original. Try it with some grilled steaks for a deliciously simple dinner. Enjoy!
Time from start to dinner: 7 minutes
Serves: 4
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
4 medium strawberries, finely chopped (frozen berries work well)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp honey
16 oz fresh spinach, washed and dried
1 cup crumbled Gorgonzola
1 cup croutons
Whisk together first five ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Add spinach and Gorgonzola and toss to coat.
Divide salad into four serving bowls and top with croutons.
Savorra Tips
To have this delicious salad two days in a row, make extra dressing, but do not combine it with the spinach until you’re ready to eat it. Not even Popeye likes soggy spinach.
Time to dust off those crock pots, kids! While crock pots have an old fashioned aura about them (thanks for the wedding present, Great Aunt Esther!), they are still a great device for saving time. Just throw in a few ingredients in the morning and magically, a fully cooked dinner appears at the end of the day.
I found this recipe on about.com when looking for something to do with a head of cabbage from my CSA box. I thought it would be tasty with pork, a meat I rarely cook, so I had a small pork roast on hand as well. Commence internet search: “cabbage and pork roast.” I turned up a few results: one with so so reviews; the other, a crock pot recipe that sounded similar to a cabbage recipe I had enjoyed before and had two glowing reviews. I decided to go for it.
The results were delicious. Soft cabbage, but not too soft, coated in a perfectly balanced sweet and sour sauce and a pork roast that was juicy and tender with some tasty caramelization, thanks to its brief stint in the skillet prior to roasting. Don’t tell, but as I was putting away the leftovers, I may have been seen slurping the extra sauce out of the crock pot like it was soup. Continue reading Sweet & Sour Cabbage with Pork Roast
One of my favorite freezer friendly recipes is an Italian classic that comes to me from the Polish side of my husband’s half Italian family. Yup. My mother-in-law makes a delicious marinara sauce which was passed down via a family cookbook with very vague measurements. I have interpreted these “measurements” and my husband says the results are authentically Politalian.
This marinara is a bright, flavorful sauce with fresh basil and some tomato chunks to add a nice texture. Great with any pasta, perfect with meatballs, or if you’re feeling crazy: pour some over goat cheese, heat it in the oven and serve with lightly toasted Italian bread for a delicious appetizer. This makes a large batch so you can enjoy some now and have enough left to freeze with just the single recipe, but it also works well if you want to double the recipe and freeze a lot.
Welcome to the second installment of “Why I Heart my Freezer.” After discovering the time savings benefits of freezing, more recently I started using the freezer to save money; storing fresh herbs, other raw ingredients, and stock-making materials.
My favorite way to save money with the freezer is by freezing fresh herbs. I like to cook with fresh herbs because they’re so much tastier, but I found that I would use a tablespoon or two and then the rest would slowly turn into green mush in my refrigerator; making it an expensive proposition. I tried just throwing the leftover herbs in the freezer, but they also turned into an uncuttable green mush. Then, I found a solution. When I know I’m not going to use fresh herbs before they go bad, I chop the herbs, mix them with a bit of olive oil (just enough to hold them together), separate them into recipe portions in an ice cube tray (usually a Tbsp per cube for parsley and cilantro and a tsp per cube for all others), freeze the tray, and then drop the individually frozen cubes into a plastic bag for longer storage. Don’t forget to label the bag! I have been doing this for a few months now and it is working really well. The herbs taste great and it’s also a time savings because they’re already chopped when you pull a cube out of the freezer. Just defrost and toss it in the recipe. And, I love having a variety of fresh herbs to choose from at all times. Did I mention that I really like this idea?
I have also started saving money by storing ingredients before they go bad and I have to go back to the store to buy them a second time. (Also a time savings!) I have stored uncooked veggies, like hot peppers and half a head of sliced cabbage, and brown bananas for banana bread. Warning: do a little Google research before storing fresh produce because not everything will fare well in the freezer. I was considering putting a head of cauliflower in there, but learned that it would likely end up mushy. I am now storing nuts like pecans and walnuts in the freezer because nuts can turn rancid pretty quickly if left in the cupboard. This way I always have them on hand to throw on a salad or in baked goods. And, whenever I buy a chunk of Parmesan cheese for grating, I store the rind in the freezer when I’m done. It adds a nice flavor to many hearty soups.
Saving scraps for stock in the freezer is also a great idea, and while it does not have the time savings benefit of freezing herbs, it does have health and taste benefits. I first started saving turkey and chicken bones after my parents yelled at me for throwing them away and now have started saving veggie scraps for veggie stock too. Making your own stock tastes far better than canned broth or bouillon and it has a lot more nutritional value, with all of the vitamins from the bones or vegetable peelings and none of the sodium/MSG found in packaged varieties.
I am really appreciating my new friend, the freezer, and am always interested in new freezer ideas. My latest experiment is cooking large batches of fresh dried beans and freezing what I don’t need. Dried beans are much less expensive than canned, sodium-free, and BPA-free, but they do take time to prep and cook so this is my attempt to make it easier. The beans are still in the freezer, so I’ll let you know how it turns out. In the meantime, what are your favorite freezer tips? Share them in the comments section.
For much of my adult life, my freezer has sat mostly barren, containing just a lonely frozen pizza and some ice cream. As I have become a bigger cooking enthusiast, however, I have discovered that this frozen tundra can be quite helpful–saving me both time and money.
Today, let’s talk about saving time. I really enjoy cooking, however, when we started to prefer eating at home seven days a week, I quickly learned that I still only wanted to actually cook three of those nights. So I have experimented with making double and triple batches of favorite dishes, freezing half or more to pull out of the freezer later for a zero effort dinner.
Some dishes are better suited for the freezer than others. I have had success with soups of all kinds; pasta dishes like lasagna, mac n’ cheese, and marinara sauce; and meat dishes like shepherd’s pie, enchiladas, and meatballs. I had a bad experience with scalloped potatoes (don’t worry, the nightmares are fading) and now avoid freezing veggie dishes that would be sensitive to the moisture changes of freezing. But for many recipes, the food tastes just as good as it did the first time around and it really is a huge time saver. It takes a nominal amount of time to make a larger batch, and then a month or two later, whenever you are in the mood for that dish again, just pull it out of the freezer, defrost, heat, and you’re done! Check out my Freezer Friendly section for recipes that freeze well and say “thank you” to your freezer.
If this makes you want to hug your freezer, look forward to my next post re: using your freezer to save money, where I will share a few of my latest favorite freezer tips, including how to successfully save fresh herbs.
Check out Savorra’s first video recipe! I partnered with provisionsRD, registered dietitians, to bring you a step by step video guide to my Quinoa with Chicken & Mushrooms recipe. Take a look to learn more about the health benefits of quinoa, the subtle differences between red and white quinoa, and other fun facts.
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Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) is an ancient grain that has been making a resurgence lately because it is high in protein and gluten free. I like quinoa because it’s easy. As an extra bonus, it’s tasty, and it can be used as a nutritious base for almost any combination of ingredients. This Chicken & Mushrooms recipe packs enough flavor that the quinoa dish can be paired with a plain steamed veggie, such as broccoli or asparagus, to complete the dinner simply.
Time from start to dinner: 40 minutes
Serves: 4
1 cup quinoa
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp garlic, minced
8 oz mushrooms, sliced 1/4″ thin
1 1/2 cup chicken broth
1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast
salt and pepper
1/2 cup provolone cheese, shredded
. This is the rare cookbook where nearly every recipe will have you saying, “oh my god, that is the best xyz I have ever tasted.” If you don’t have a copy, I highly recommend picking one up. 
