I was hooked on cream cheese pastry the first time I encountered it in a Cook's Country quiche Lorraine recipe. I have a very poor track record when it comes to successfully making "regular" pie crusts, whether all-butter, a mixture of butter and shortening, or (my most successful combination) butter and lard. I hate rolling out dough and I either add too much water or not enough--you would think this would be easy enough to recognize and rectify, but apparently I am missing some brain cells that help normal people deal with such things. So often I've ended up smushing the dough into the pie plate, which at best makes it shrink and at worst makes it tough. Sometimes it turns out passably, but it always tries my patience to the limit.
It is a much happier story when I use a combination of butter and cream cheese (and in this case, a little heavy cream), because the dough comes out uniformly moist, soft, and extremely forgiving of novice handling. How forgiving? Well, when I last made these pocket pies, I left out 1/2 cup of flour and didn't realize it until I had the two disks neatly wrapped and ready to chill in the fridge. I had to unwrap them, mix in the remaining flour, and rewrap them. Guess what? They were still perfect. Not a hint of toughness.
This recipe is adapted from Lucinda Scala Quinn's Mad Hungry. The last time I made them I tried using fennel leftover from the stuffed squash. It made the kitchen smell positively glorious and tasted terrific. I've also subbed blue cheese for the Parmesan, keeping the original carrot/onion/celery trio (just do about 1/3 cup of each, chopped). This is about as make-ahead as a recipe can get, designed to be kept on hand in the freezer, and it's a pretty quick process all told. They make the perfect fall lunch with a nice seasonal salad.
Chicken pocket pies with fennel and Parmesan
Yield: 10 mini-pies
adapted from Mad Hungry, by Lucinda Scala Quinn
For the filling:
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast (about 5 oz)
2 tsp. vegetable oil
1/3 c. water
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/2 c. onion, minced
1/2 c. fennel, diced small
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/4 tsp. fresh thyme, minced, or a pinch dried
2 Tbsp. flour
1 1/4 c. low-sodium chicken broth (if not low-sodium, reduce sea salt to 1/4 tsp)
1/4 c. fresh grated Parmesan
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1. In a small skillet, heat the oil over med-high until shimmering. Pat the chicken breast dry, season with salt and pepper, and place in the hot skillet. Cook til lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Flip chicken, add the water, cover, and reduce heat to low. Cook until chicken registers 160 on a thermometer, about 7-10 mins. Remove to a plate to cool, then shred into bite-size pieces with two forks and/or your hands. You should have 1 heaping cup of chicken.
2. Meanwhile, in a 10" skillet melt the butter. Add the onion and fennel and saute til softened and lightly browned, 4-5 mins. Stir in the salt, thyme, and flour and cook, stirring for 1 minute. Slowly stir or whisk in the broth. Bring to a simmer and cook til thickened, about 2 mins. Off heat, stir in the chicken, Parmesan, and lemon juice. Transfer to a bowl and chill in the refrigerator at least til at room temperature.
For the pastry:
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 c. heavy cream
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups + 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
(for egg wash)
1 egg
1 Tbsp. water
1. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese in a large bowl til combined. Add the cream and (this is why you want a large bowl, because it splatters) beat til combined. Add the flour and salt and beat on low until a ball of dough forms.
2. Divide the dough into two pieces and wrap in plastic, forming into disks as you do so. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight (if you have it in the fridge more than a few hours, let it sit on the counter for 15 minutes before trying to roll it out).
To assemble:
1. Lightly flour a work surface and a rolling pin. Working with one disk of dough at a time, roll out the disks to about 12" in diameter. Using an overturned bowl that measures about 5-6" across, cut out 3 circles per disk. Gather the scraps and re-roll once more, cutting out more circles.
2. Place a scant 1/4 cup of chicken filling off-center on a dough circle. Wet edges of dough and fold to form a half-moon shape, pinching the edges to seal and then crimping sealed edge with a fork. Repeat with remaining dough circles and filling.
3. If freezing for later use, place pocket pies in a single layer on a large plate or baking sheet, then transfer to freezer for several hours, until frozen solid. At this point you can dump them all into one freezer bag and keep them in the freezer up to a month or so. If serving immediately, place pocket pies on a large plate and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. Preheat your oven to 375. Brush the tops of the pocket pies with the egg wash and prick twice with the tines of a fork. Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Let rest 5 minutes before serving. If baking from the freezer, do not thaw; brush with egg wash and bake 25-30 minutes or til golden brown. (It's probably a good idea to prick them with a fork halfway through baking.)
Showing posts with label chicken. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chicken. Show all posts
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
second try at Indian
Last night I made tandoori chicken from BIR, and aside from the necessary tweaks that one must make when the smallest split chicken breasts you can find are at least half a pound heavier than the ones specified in the recipe (somewhere near America's Test Kitchen they apparently have them as small as 10 oz?), it was a success. I was surprised at how moist and juicy the meat was even after the extra 500 degree oven time. The flavor from the marinade was nice, but the chutney was really a pleasant surprise: I liked it without even trying. Fruit and spices and salt and vinegar is a bit of a stretch for me, but I'm glad I made it. It paired very well indeed with the chicken, which was by no means spicy (neither was the chutney, really).
The green beans (made before and loved) were disappointing: as I was trimming them I realized they weren't as fresh and "snappy" as usual, and I tried one last time, unsuccessfully, to find a good use for light coconut milk. I'm realizing that cooked applications simply are not going to work. The milk breaks and the resulting sauce is awful. So I have some leftover for smoothies and I am not going to sweat using a bit of full fat coconut milk in a side dish of all things, because there's just no replacing it.
Tonight I'm planning to try another new CI recipe that I've seen people rave about online: lighter mac & cheese with ham and peas. Recipe here. I am looking for other recipes just to use up the evaporated milk stockpile I have unwittingly built up over the past couple years, so any recommendations are welcome...
the one photo I bothered to take---mango chutney
The green beans (made before and loved) were disappointing: as I was trimming them I realized they weren't as fresh and "snappy" as usual, and I tried one last time, unsuccessfully, to find a good use for light coconut milk. I'm realizing that cooked applications simply are not going to work. The milk breaks and the resulting sauce is awful. So I have some leftover for smoothies and I am not going to sweat using a bit of full fat coconut milk in a side dish of all things, because there's just no replacing it.
Tonight I'm planning to try another new CI recipe that I've seen people rave about online: lighter mac & cheese with ham and peas. Recipe here. I am looking for other recipes just to use up the evaporated milk stockpile I have unwittingly built up over the past couple years, so any recommendations are welcome...
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
come quickly, September...
Well, it looks like I've managed to survive (most of) another Southern summer without melting and/or complaining incessantly. I think I was better than ever about resisting the urge to use the oven, dishwasher, and any other heat sources in the kitchen as freely as I do when temperatures are more moderate. That and a list of summer meal ideas (which I didn't actually consult much; merely making it was some sort of psychological boost) helped a lot. But having had a taste of cool mornings lately, I am more restless than ever to start using my oven for middle-of-the-day baking projects and slow-cooked meats; I have always intensely looked forward to fall for many reasons, and as I cook more the anticipation grows each year. Spring and summer certainly have their culinary delights, but for me, primarily a baker, the prospect of cooler weather leading up to the best of all holidays (Thanksgiving, closely followed of course by Christmas) is more tantalizing than anything.
I started making a top ten list in my head of the dishes I will be making as soon as it cools down. They are:
1. Pork vindaloo (from Best International Recipe; review here). My Indian repertoire currently consists of this stew and a delicious recipe for coconut milk-braised green beans, so I can't speak to authenticity or anything, but just as a stew it is fantastic.
2. Spiced carrot soup (adapted from Cafe Bouloud, as printed in CI's Restaurant Favorites at Home). I've rarely made a soup with such complex flavors--the finish with fresh carrot juice is brilliant--and the smell of the carrots braising in coconut milk and curry powder is out of this world. The original recipe calls for shrimp, and it does work well, but I often just make it plain and serve with a hearty, interesting salad and bread.
3. Spanish-style pork loin with sherry-raisin vinaigrette. This was a seriously good pork roast and I wrote about it here.
4. Chicken in a pot (much more elegantly known by its French name, poulet en cocotte). I tried this once last year out of BIR, and it was quite good, though it took much longer to finish than indicated and that always gets me flustered. It was still, as promised, a very low-fuss way of evenly cooking a whole chicken while keeping it moist, and it tasted very French and refined. And wintry.
5. Any big old cheesy pasta casserole that takes two hours to bake--any at all. Pastitsio in particular. (Another nice thing about cooler weather is that my motivation to exercise is ten times what it is in the summer, which is good because pastitsio will make even me feel compelled to schedule an extra few minutes into my next workout. And I am not a calorie-counter.)
6. Thai chicken soup (tom kha gai), also from BIR. The lemongrass, the coconut milk, the sweat-inducing spice from the chiles and curry paste...I could eat this stuff every day.
7. Sweet potatoes: baked, in soups, in pies, anything. There's a mashed sweet potatoes with vanilla recipe in Restaurant Favorites that I also need to try. Cream, vanilla, butter, and the best vegetable ever. How could that go wrong?
8. Chowder. Specifically corn (with generous amounts of bacon) and clam. I was fairly addicted to this clam chowder last year.
9. Simple, one-dish meat and potato meals you stick in the oven and forget about, like this one. That was a good recipe. Also, braised beef with polenta and crusty bread. Lucky you, the beef recipe is on Google Books here.
10. A hundred variations on grilled cheese and only one (the best) cream of tomato soup. CI's 30-minute tomato soup, to be exact. I've tried their standard (more time-consuming) soup, too, and I think it has nothing on the quick one. I must have made this soup 100 times last year and never got the slightest bit sick of it. Below is my adaptation of the recipe.
Cream of Tomato Soup
adapted from Cook's Illustrated, Best 30-Minute Recipe
3 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes
3 c. Swanson low-sodium or homemade chicken broth, plus maybe a little more
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsp. butter
1 onion, minced
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 Tbsp. flour
1/3 c. heavy cream
2 tsp. dry sherry
1. Put the tomatoes one can at a time into a strainer set over a large bowl. Squeeze out as much juice as you can: ideally you'll get 2 cups after all the cans are strained. Add broth to equal 5 cups of liquid. Bring the broth /juice mixture with the bay leaves to a boil in a medium saucepan, then cover and keep warm.
2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large pot or Dutch oven over high heat. Add the drained tomatoes, onion, brown sugar, tomato paste, and 1/2 tsp. salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the tomatoes look dry and are beginning to brown, 10-12 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.
3. Slowly whisk or stir in the hot broth mixture. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes to blend flavors.
4. Remove the bay leaves, then puree the soup in batches in a blender. (With hot liquids it's best to remove the little plastic cap inside the lid, and cover the hole with a thickly folded dish towel under your hand.) Return pureed soup to the pot and stir in the cream and sherry. Bring it just to a simmer, then remove from heat, season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste, and serve. (Yield: 6 servings. If you want to make this a day or two ahead, don't add the cream and sherry until you reheat it before serving.)
I started making a top ten list in my head of the dishes I will be making as soon as it cools down. They are:
1. Pork vindaloo (from Best International Recipe; review here). My Indian repertoire currently consists of this stew and a delicious recipe for coconut milk-braised green beans, so I can't speak to authenticity or anything, but just as a stew it is fantastic.
2. Spiced carrot soup (adapted from Cafe Bouloud, as printed in CI's Restaurant Favorites at Home). I've rarely made a soup with such complex flavors--the finish with fresh carrot juice is brilliant--and the smell of the carrots braising in coconut milk and curry powder is out of this world. The original recipe calls for shrimp, and it does work well, but I often just make it plain and serve with a hearty, interesting salad and bread.
3. Spanish-style pork loin with sherry-raisin vinaigrette. This was a seriously good pork roast and I wrote about it here.
4. Chicken in a pot (much more elegantly known by its French name, poulet en cocotte). I tried this once last year out of BIR, and it was quite good, though it took much longer to finish than indicated and that always gets me flustered. It was still, as promised, a very low-fuss way of evenly cooking a whole chicken while keeping it moist, and it tasted very French and refined. And wintry.
5. Any big old cheesy pasta casserole that takes two hours to bake--any at all. Pastitsio in particular. (Another nice thing about cooler weather is that my motivation to exercise is ten times what it is in the summer, which is good because pastitsio will make even me feel compelled to schedule an extra few minutes into my next workout. And I am not a calorie-counter.)
6. Thai chicken soup (tom kha gai), also from BIR. The lemongrass, the coconut milk, the sweat-inducing spice from the chiles and curry paste...I could eat this stuff every day.
7. Sweet potatoes: baked, in soups, in pies, anything. There's a mashed sweet potatoes with vanilla recipe in Restaurant Favorites that I also need to try. Cream, vanilla, butter, and the best vegetable ever. How could that go wrong?
8. Chowder. Specifically corn (with generous amounts of bacon) and clam. I was fairly addicted to this clam chowder last year.
9. Simple, one-dish meat and potato meals you stick in the oven and forget about, like this one. That was a good recipe. Also, braised beef with polenta and crusty bread. Lucky you, the beef recipe is on Google Books here.
10. A hundred variations on grilled cheese and only one (the best) cream of tomato soup. CI's 30-minute tomato soup, to be exact. I've tried their standard (more time-consuming) soup, too, and I think it has nothing on the quick one. I must have made this soup 100 times last year and never got the slightest bit sick of it. Below is my adaptation of the recipe.
Cream of Tomato Soup
adapted from Cook's Illustrated, Best 30-Minute Recipe
3 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes
3 c. Swanson low-sodium or homemade chicken broth, plus maybe a little more
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsp. butter
1 onion, minced
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 Tbsp. flour
1/3 c. heavy cream
2 tsp. dry sherry
1. Put the tomatoes one can at a time into a strainer set over a large bowl. Squeeze out as much juice as you can: ideally you'll get 2 cups after all the cans are strained. Add broth to equal 5 cups of liquid. Bring the broth /juice mixture with the bay leaves to a boil in a medium saucepan, then cover and keep warm.
2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large pot or Dutch oven over high heat. Add the drained tomatoes, onion, brown sugar, tomato paste, and 1/2 tsp. salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the tomatoes look dry and are beginning to brown, 10-12 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.
3. Slowly whisk or stir in the hot broth mixture. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes to blend flavors.
4. Remove the bay leaves, then puree the soup in batches in a blender. (With hot liquids it's best to remove the little plastic cap inside the lid, and cover the hole with a thickly folded dish towel under your hand.) Return pureed soup to the pot and stir in the cream and sherry. Bring it just to a simmer, then remove from heat, season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste, and serve. (Yield: 6 servings. If you want to make this a day or two ahead, don't add the cream and sherry until you reheat it before serving.)
Monday, June 27, 2011
a worthwhile slow cooker chicken recipe---can it be?!
Oh yes it can. Tonight we had this pulled jerk chicken, and it was outstanding. I have really no prior experience either eating or cooking Jamaican/Caribbean food---I doubt it was real authentic to serve the meat on hamburger buns---but looking at the ingredient list I thought the flavors sounded like they were worth a try. Besides that it was a very convenient and inexpensive recipe: I already had almost all of the marinade (the bulk of the recipe) ingredients in my pantry and fridge. The spiciness level was about a 5/10 to me; if you don't like heat you'll want to at least take the seeds out of the chile (I used habanero) before slicing into rounds, to avoid biting into one later. I also counted how many rounds I made before putting them in, so I could be sure to pull them out at the end.
Further notes: I halved the recipe but otherwise stuck to it pretty closely. My chicken was falling off the bone within 5 hours, and was possibly done a good while before that. I only turned the pieces once, but I think if you're making the full recipe with 4 lbs. of chicken that step is more important. For once I had no fresh cilantro on hand, and I never have fresh thyme, so I omitted both without trying to substitute. Oh, and "freshly squeezed orange juice"---give me a break. I don't think my dish suffered too much from the stale old Tropicana I used.
Didn't take a final result photo, but at least here's the view from the top of the slow cooker after putting everything in:
With the sandwiches I made yuca fries based off a couple of internet recipes, which did not turn out as well as I hoped. I might have crowded the pot because the oil temperature dropped way low for way too long after I added the fries, and I think it had an adverse effect on their texture. Kind of sad, and of course ketchup was no match for that mysterious spicy green sauce they serve with these at Papi's. Oh well, frozen yuca is cheap, so I'll have to try again with a little more research someday soon.
Further notes: I halved the recipe but otherwise stuck to it pretty closely. My chicken was falling off the bone within 5 hours, and was possibly done a good while before that. I only turned the pieces once, but I think if you're making the full recipe with 4 lbs. of chicken that step is more important. For once I had no fresh cilantro on hand, and I never have fresh thyme, so I omitted both without trying to substitute. Oh, and "freshly squeezed orange juice"---give me a break. I don't think my dish suffered too much from the stale old Tropicana I used.
Didn't take a final result photo, but at least here's the view from the top of the slow cooker after putting everything in:
With the sandwiches I made yuca fries based off a couple of internet recipes, which did not turn out as well as I hoped. I might have crowded the pot because the oil temperature dropped way low for way too long after I added the fries, and I think it had an adverse effect on their texture. Kind of sad, and of course ketchup was no match for that mysterious spicy green sauce they serve with these at Papi's. Oh well, frozen yuca is cheap, so I'll have to try again with a little more research someday soon.
Monday, April 11, 2011
weekend
Friday M worked from home, and for brunch I made us a diner-style omelet (From America's Test Kitchen 2009) that was quite good. I've made the basic recipe before, but concocted a filling this time based on what I had in the fridge: Black Forest ham, asparagus, and Swiss. I do love this omelet method: there are only 5 eggs in it (serving two), but after you beat the eggs to triple their volume and then fold in about 1/3 cup of whipped cream, it becomes quite an imposingly fluffy and very filling breakfast.
Friday night we were to have friends for dinner as they passed through on their way to the beach, but sadly they were stranded for several hours in the middle of Kentucky after their car broke down and didn't quite make it in time for dinner. It was hardly an inconvenience to put the extra chicken into the freezer and pare down the easy recipe I made to serve two. I really liked this method (from Daisy Martinez) of starting boneless skinless chicken breasts on the stovetop, then adding a sauce and moving them to the oven covered with foil to finish. Although the orange juice/lime marinade didn't knock our socks off, it added some interesting flavor. I would just be sure to season the meat with a little more salt and pepper before cooking it next time. With this I made the black bean rice from CI's Restaurant Favorites, and an intriguing new recipe, pandebono or Colombian cheese bread.
I should start a new paragraph for this. It's funny---I picked up a box of yucca flour (= tapioca starch) in the Hispanic section of the farmer's market a couple months ago because I remembered reading someone somewhere raving about something called pandebono, but I couldn't for the life of me find where. I began to think I had dreamed about something plausible that didn't exist (as often happens with me), so I googled around, discovered that it does exist and call for the yucca flour I'd bought, and settled on this recipe, which people who commented had actually made rather than filling the comment box with absolutely useless remarks like "wow lol looks tasty!" (Sorry, pet peeve.) I used all queso fresco rather than feta, per other recipes I saw. Mixing this bread scared me at first, because one egg for that much dry stuff plus semi-wet cheese did not seem like enough moisture. It really didn't come together until I learned how to squeeze a handful of the mixture several times, holding for a few seconds and passing to the other hand---it's hard to describe, but sooner or later it would cease being a frustrating mass of crumbs and become a very tidy ball. For an incidentally gluten-free bread I was very impressed with the results. The flavor, while maybe a bit sedate to an American palate used to the sharp flavors of cheddar and a continual onslaught of sodium, is delicious and somehow pairs well with the chewy texture.
**Edited 4/14/12 to add: Since I've gotten a food processor I made these delicious cheese balls again, and realized how much less work they are to shape when mixed that way. Just wanted to note that; if you have a food processor, it's definitely worth getting out for this. And if not, I still think they're worth a little extra work. Yum.
The photo above was Saturday night's dinner in the making: another Daisy Martinez recipe. This was a creamy pasta sauce with basil and artichokes (I use one 12-oz bag of Trader Joe's hearts rather than the 2 9-oz boxes she calls for, which seems like it would be too much to me). I used pancetta instead of the prescribed serrano ham or prosciutto, and I daresay it worked fine. I liked this sauce a lot, and while M said it was a bit girly, he got seconds.
Friday night we were to have friends for dinner as they passed through on their way to the beach, but sadly they were stranded for several hours in the middle of Kentucky after their car broke down and didn't quite make it in time for dinner. It was hardly an inconvenience to put the extra chicken into the freezer and pare down the easy recipe I made to serve two. I really liked this method (from Daisy Martinez) of starting boneless skinless chicken breasts on the stovetop, then adding a sauce and moving them to the oven covered with foil to finish. Although the orange juice/lime marinade didn't knock our socks off, it added some interesting flavor. I would just be sure to season the meat with a little more salt and pepper before cooking it next time. With this I made the black bean rice from CI's Restaurant Favorites, and an intriguing new recipe, pandebono or Colombian cheese bread.
I should start a new paragraph for this. It's funny---I picked up a box of yucca flour (= tapioca starch) in the Hispanic section of the farmer's market a couple months ago because I remembered reading someone somewhere raving about something called pandebono, but I couldn't for the life of me find where. I began to think I had dreamed about something plausible that didn't exist (as often happens with me), so I googled around, discovered that it does exist and call for the yucca flour I'd bought, and settled on this recipe, which people who commented had actually made rather than filling the comment box with absolutely useless remarks like "wow lol looks tasty!" (Sorry, pet peeve.) I used all queso fresco rather than feta, per other recipes I saw. Mixing this bread scared me at first, because one egg for that much dry stuff plus semi-wet cheese did not seem like enough moisture. It really didn't come together until I learned how to squeeze a handful of the mixture several times, holding for a few seconds and passing to the other hand---it's hard to describe, but sooner or later it would cease being a frustrating mass of crumbs and become a very tidy ball. For an incidentally gluten-free bread I was very impressed with the results. The flavor, while maybe a bit sedate to an American palate used to the sharp flavors of cheddar and a continual onslaught of sodium, is delicious and somehow pairs well with the chewy texture.
**Edited 4/14/12 to add: Since I've gotten a food processor I made these delicious cheese balls again, and realized how much less work they are to shape when mixed that way. Just wanted to note that; if you have a food processor, it's definitely worth getting out for this. And if not, I still think they're worth a little extra work. Yum.
The photo above was Saturday night's dinner in the making: another Daisy Martinez recipe. This was a creamy pasta sauce with basil and artichokes (I use one 12-oz bag of Trader Joe's hearts rather than the 2 9-oz boxes she calls for, which seems like it would be too much to me). I used pancetta instead of the prescribed serrano ham or prosciutto, and I daresay it worked fine. I liked this sauce a lot, and while M said it was a bit girly, he got seconds.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
on an ethnic kick
I didn't plan it this way, but this week I've made three recipes out of CI's massive Best International cookbook. As usual, I drew up my meal plan Monday morning, was happy with it, and then circumstances forced a change: I realized I would be about 3 miles from the Dekalb Farmer's Market on Tuesday while running an errand. Scratch original plan. Draw up new one that includes lots more produce and a Bell & Evans chicken.
First up was poulet en cocotte. I seem to be cursed when it comes to cooking whole chickens. Out of the three times I've tried roasting a whole bird, each time using what I thought was a trustworthy recipe, things haven't gone so well. This, the third time, was probably the best attempt, though by no means ideal. I was attracted to the ease of a French method of cooking the bird in a covered Dutch oven. It was indeed very easy to prep it and stick it in the oven for an hour, but as usual, it took longer than it should have (though my oven seems to be calibrated fine), and when the breasts were finally done the legs and thighs were nowhere near it, so I had to sort of poach them in the sauce. Frustrating, but we did get some pretty good tasting chicken out of it, after a while. I made braised leeks and a salad with it.
Last night I went out on a limb---and fell off. Vietnamese rice noodle salad, or "bun" as it's called in that strangest of strange languages, looked great on paper. Actually, if I had read the sauce ingredients more closely (lime juice, water, and 2/3 cup fish sauce!?!?), I might have had different sentiments. But I got the precise mixture of fresh herbs that were supposed to "make" this salad (mint, basil, and cilantro), and the only change, which I admit was consequential, was to substitute some leftover chicken for the pork tenderloin. The watery-ness, not to mention the fishy-ness, of the sauce together with the way it just pooled at the bottom of the noodles like a stagnant pond...not a repeat dish. It looked pretty, at least, and thankfully I halved the recipe and only had a small bowl of leftovers for a lunch. And, while I'm playing Pollyanna, we have lots of basil and mint left. And I didn't spend a ton of money on the pork. Okay, I'm done.
Here's to better luck tonight with...ham and swiss sandwiches, and pears. :)
OH, I made vanilla frozen yogurt today from Lebovitz's book. That was most definitely a success, and took about 3 minutes of measuring and then the ice cream maker did its thing. I am loving that machine.
First up was poulet en cocotte. I seem to be cursed when it comes to cooking whole chickens. Out of the three times I've tried roasting a whole bird, each time using what I thought was a trustworthy recipe, things haven't gone so well. This, the third time, was probably the best attempt, though by no means ideal. I was attracted to the ease of a French method of cooking the bird in a covered Dutch oven. It was indeed very easy to prep it and stick it in the oven for an hour, but as usual, it took longer than it should have (though my oven seems to be calibrated fine), and when the breasts were finally done the legs and thighs were nowhere near it, so I had to sort of poach them in the sauce. Frustrating, but we did get some pretty good tasting chicken out of it, after a while. I made braised leeks and a salad with it.
Last night I went out on a limb---and fell off. Vietnamese rice noodle salad, or "bun" as it's called in that strangest of strange languages, looked great on paper. Actually, if I had read the sauce ingredients more closely (lime juice, water, and 2/3 cup fish sauce!?!?), I might have had different sentiments. But I got the precise mixture of fresh herbs that were supposed to "make" this salad (mint, basil, and cilantro), and the only change, which I admit was consequential, was to substitute some leftover chicken for the pork tenderloin. The watery-ness, not to mention the fishy-ness, of the sauce together with the way it just pooled at the bottom of the noodles like a stagnant pond...not a repeat dish. It looked pretty, at least, and thankfully I halved the recipe and only had a small bowl of leftovers for a lunch. And, while I'm playing Pollyanna, we have lots of basil and mint left. And I didn't spend a ton of money on the pork. Okay, I'm done.
Here's to better luck tonight with...ham and swiss sandwiches, and pears. :)
OH, I made vanilla frozen yogurt today from Lebovitz's book. That was most definitely a success, and took about 3 minutes of measuring and then the ice cream maker did its thing. I am loving that machine.
Friday, February 4, 2011
week(s) in review
Beef stroganoff
Saturday I made sort of a Russian-French fusion dinner that came out very well. The stroganoff, which I mixed two CI recipes to get, did not look great color-wise but tasted just fine with the egg noodles (and, by the way, now I realize there is a huge difference between real egg noodles and the No Yolks brand...). Probably the star of that meal was the braised leeks, recipe in my ATK 2009 cookbook: I had no idea what to expect besides a vaguely onion-ish flavor, but it was so much more. And so very easy and quick. We loved them. The cheese blintzes for dessert (CI Best International Recipe) were nice, even if I decided after a few bites that I just cannot do sweet cheese made with farmer's cheese (and I'm definitely glad I didn't substitute ricotta as the recipe suggested—it's like the texture of farmer's cheese times 10). The cherry sauce worked pretty well, and I'm just glad I have a good crepe recipe I can fit to any occasion or filling. Also make-ahead by definition.
Leeks to be braised---didn't get a during or after photo because they were so quick, and covered half the time.
Sweet cheese blinchiki with cherry sauce
One night I pulled some split chicken breasts out of the freezer and pan-roasted them with a sauce. I love the concept of roasting a small amount of chicken and then making a pan sauce while it rests, even if my chicken seems always to take much longer than the original recipe indicated. I made a white wine and parsley sauce that night, then served with arugula salad and mashed potatoes. And bread. I do believe I am close to perfecting my ciabatta. Except for like every sixth time when the dough does that weird seize-up and becomes more like bagel dough, which it did this last batch. I just can't figure it out. I weigh both flour and water now (and realized that both my main liquid measuring cups are off by like an ounce or two if you go by the volume measurement!). But at least I don't do anything so stupid as throw the dough out in frustration...now I know that it still makes beyond decent bread, just not that light and airy delight that comes out when the dough is properly wet.
I made a lemon chess pie complete with a rolled out crust using 3 Tbsp shortening and 4 Tbsp butter, from an ATK cookbook I had out from the library. The filling was pretty good, if guilt-inducing even for me with another full stick of butter, tons of sugar and 5 eggs and blah blah blah. But the crust was not even remotely worth the calories. Don't know what the deal was there. Rachel gave me some lard that I will have to try in lieu of shortening the next time I'm up for pie...which may not be far off.
I made some delectable butter with the expensive but totally-worth-it pasteurized cream from Dekalb Farmers Market last week; put about 2/3 of it in the freezer as salted parsley butter for dishes, and we're about to finish the little roll I salted and put in the fridge for bread. Delicious.
One one class night, I made fried eggs and put them on toasted and buttered English muffins, serving with the warm spinach salad with bacon I've made so many times. It was good, though M does insist on having his yolks runny, which is not the safest...tsk tsk.
Last weekend I made Latin chicken and rice with roasted red peppers. It was okay. The rice was a tad crunchy, as it usually is with that dish when I make it—you'd think I could figure out how to fix that already! Probably should add a little more water and remove the chicken and let the rice cook longer. Duh. I also don't like using dark meat per the recipe because then you have to remove it from the bone, and with the dark red sauce you can't see exactly what you're doing, so inevitably some bits of nasty fat or bone get in and you have to spit them out and ahh, gross. But I used my birthday gift of piment d'espelette instead of paprika and it tasted pretty good in there. I sound like such an unrefined hick, yep. Avocados as garnish were indispensable; probably saved the dish, really.
I had to reheat the leftovers Sunday night but with them made a terrific corn chipotle soup, the only downside of which was having to throw out all the solids after I pureed it with my immersion blender, which maybe didn't get it finely pureed enough? I'll try the regular blender next time. But the strained liquid (i.e. the soup, hah) was extremely good, and went well with the chicken and rice. Recipe here.
Friday afternoon I cooked up beef shepherd's pie from CI's Best Make-Ahead Recipe for a family with a new baby. I thought it came out pretty well. I omitted the small amount of red wine that went in with the broth, because I wasn't sure about the rules on alcohol while nursing. I also used mostly Pacific beef broth, which I had just opened a couple days earlier, rather than chicken broth, since how could beef broth not work with a beef stew sort of dish? While making this I finally learned my lesson about making great mashed potatoes, and it goes like this: 1. Add cream. I never really knew what I was doing when I made mashed potatoes, messing around with sour cream which seeems to make them dry-ish, or adding sissy amounts of milk or maybe half-and-half. Forget it, you only live once. I'm making mine like this from now on. Also they had me mash them over low heat in the saucepan in which I had boiled them (3/4” slices of russets)---maybe that helped the texture be much smoother than mine normally are? The best part was that I had a little bit leftover of everything the next day so I made it again for us for lunch. M was impressed, said it wasn't what he remembered shepherd's pie to be growing up, however he had it then. I'll definitely try it again following the recipe exactly with wine and chicken broth, though.
Monday after lunch at Emily's I went to the legendary Patak. It was pretty cool. We already polished off the smoked turkey breast for sandwiches, which I think was laced with some sort of green herb and just meltingly tender and tasty. We had half the smoked salmon tonight, which sadly has gone up in price to $10 from $4/lb (which was what their website says), but it was so delicious. With that I made creamed spinach, and it was fine though the last couple times I've made it the sauce has seized up on me before I add the spinach, so it never really blends right...I don't know what that's about.
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