Lesson Learned: Chicken Pot Pie

When the recipe calls for a 3 to 4 lb. chicken, don't buy a 7 lb. chicken. Because it won't fit in the biggest pot you have ( an "us" issue, as the 7.5 quart pot was clearly not big enough for a 7 lb. chicken to be submerged in water).

Precarious.

It will essentially double your cooking time (an "everyone" issue, as I assume most people like to eat dinner with in 4 hours of starting to prepare it) as well, as you try to cook down the chicken broth mixture you made with twice as much water, trying to cover your gigantic chicken.

It took forever, but it was pretty delicious (and we have lots of leftovers).  I also made up time by using thawed puff pastry instead of homemade pie dough, which cooks up super quick. 

Much better.

 The chicken pot pie recipe was used was from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Potato Pancakes

Paul and I had some amazing potato pancakes while we were in NYC, and were itching to replicate them at home. We found a great recipe combining both russet potatoes and a little sweet potatoes. They were really easy to make, and turned out tasty and crispy (even thought I accidentally put two whole eggs into the mixture, rather than separating the eggs and just adding the yolks to the potato mixture). To correct this, I did whip two more egg whites as listed in the directions, and they turned out well. I wasn't sure if I omitted this step, if it would make the pancakes less fluffy. I also was out of green onions, so I left those out. They tasted great with a little salt -- no need for sour cream or anything like that to flavor it up.

Meatballs!

The last time we made these meatballs and the corresponding sauce, we had a little bit of a problem with the spices. As you'll see from the recipe, Mario Batali suggests a tablespoon of red pepper flakes for the meatball mixture and a SECOND tablespoon for the tomato sauce. When we did that, together the meatballs and sauce were so spicy that all you tasted was heat -- and not the flavors with either. 


This time around, we cut WAAAAY back. We did a teaspoon of red pepper flakes for the meatballs, and none for the sauce. It was much better -- and (can you believe it) actually palatable! 

One of the dishes of baked meatballs.

Meatballs and sauce incorporated together

The final product!

We chose to have the meatballs as an open-faced sandwich, but you could easily serve them with pasta. 

Also - this version says to cook the meatballs in the oven for 2 1/2 hours. There's no way we did that. I think we cooked them in the oven for maybe another hour at most. I'll check my cookbook to see if the correct time is listed there, and post any updates. 


UPDATE: I checked the cookbook (Mario Batali's Molto Italiano). In the cookbook, you bring the tomato sauce and wine to a boil, add the meatballs, return to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes. 

Happy New Year!

Hi friends! We're camped out on the couch recovering from a super fun NYE with friends, but I thought I'd do a quick post about our food-related NYE festivities. At the party last night, each couple attending chose a country that was the theme of their contribution to the party. We each made a specialty drink and food item from our chosen country. Much to my dismay, since I'm super nosy and all, we weren't allowed to tell each other what we chose. 

Our spread!

I can hardly believe it, but we had a duplicate! Two pairs of Norwegian drinks/foods and one round of Korean food/drink (that was us). Even thought Norway was chosen twice, each couple did something different -- we enjoyed homemade glog and delicious vegetable and cheese toasts, and Norwegian beers in steins and spicy meatballs in a tomato and sauerkraut sauce. P and I had debated a bunch of different countries, but ended up going with Korean food once we found a recipe for a Soju (a Korean alcohol) drink that was called "abominable killer snowman." Decision made. 


I'll post the recipe we used -- we had made it once before, and it turned out great. Happy New Year, all! 

Pumpkin and Chicken Chowder

We received a super cute lil' pumpkin in our produce box. After letting it sit as our centerpiece/decor for a while, we decided to put it to good use -- as dinner. Paul found a easy and tasty looking recipe for pumpkin and chicken chowder.

I apparently forgot to take photos of this, but I stared by roasting the red peppers and jalepenos on a baking sheet. You put them under the broiler, turning them occasionally, until the skins blacken. This took about 10-15 minutes. Once removed from the oven, seal them in a plastic bag for 10 minutes. The steam will allow you to easily peel the skins off of all of the peppers. Once peeled, stem, seed and cut the red peppers into 1/2 in pieces. I diced the jalepenos, since I didn't want a huge bite of jalepenos. 

P.S. If anyone has a technique for keeping jalepeno juice from seeping into your skin (besides wearing plastic gloves when cutting them), please let me know. It is a frequent occurrence that I go to take out my contact lenses later that night and end up with burning eyeballs due to some residue left on my hands. I can avoid it somewhat by washing frantically after I'm done chopping them, but it's not foolproof. 

While the peppers were roasting, I prepped the pumpkin by peeling it, seeding it and chopping it into small cubes. I tried microwaving the pumpkin for a couple minutes to soften it before diving in. Paul looked absolutely terrified (I think he thought I was going to take a bath in exploded pumpkin guts), but it worked out fine. I nuked it for about 2 minutes, which softened things up and made it easier to cut into.

The peeling part will never be easy.

I washed off the leeks -- they can capture a lot of dirt in the different layers. You can either prep them (in this case, it was chopping them into rings) and then rinse them in water, or you can peel the layers apart and rinse them (which is what I did here). 

Pre-washing, obviously.

Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the chicken pieces and cook until browned. Remove the chicken and keep warm. Add the leeks and pumpkin and saute for about 5 minutes.

Here's the vegetable round before seasoning. The chicken is resting comfortably in the confines of our microwave.

Add the flour, cumin, chili powder, salt, and pepper and cook for 1 to 2 minutes.

The leeks and pumpkin coated in the spices/flour mixture.

Add the corn (frozen works just fine), peppers, chicken, broth, and oregano (I used dried, and about a teaspoon and a half instead of the 1 tablespoon fresh) and bring the soup to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, about 30 minutes.

Cooking away!

Top with sour cream and serve hot!

Everything's better with sour cream, amirite?

The soup turned out great, but was SPICY. Paul and I debated whether or not the 1/2 cup sour cream was to be put into the soup or just used as a garnish. We went with garnish, but you definitely needed a good amount to cool things down. However, the soup wasn't so spicy that it blew out your palate and therefore couldn't taste anything. 

I would definitely make this again, probably using only one jalepeno. We were also a little short on the pumpkin (I think our lil' guy was only 1.5 lbs vs. the 2 lbs. suggested in the recipe), so that may have contributed to the spiciness factor.

Update on Lentil Fritters

I tried to make lentil fritters again last week, and failed MISERABLY. I am totally confused. I've made the lentil fritters three times, using canned lentils twice and bagged lentils once. I purchased bagged lentils a second time for this recipe, and they were hard as rocks. I couldn't get them to do anything in the food processor (where they normally mush up into a paste to be combined with the remaining whole lentils to make the patties). 

I am baffled. I looked at both of the packages of bagged lentils (I had about a 1/2 cup leftover from the previous iteration), and they looked exactly the same. No mention of needing to soak anything (like you would dried beans) or that you'd have to do anything other than use them normally right out of the bag. 

The good guys.

Any thoughts? Paul took one look at the brick lentil patties, and opened the fridge to find something else. Back to canned lentils only, I guess.

Carnival Squash Bisque

Paul and I were planning out a dinner party for friends, and thought we'd make good use of the decorative squash we had purchased in October. We had bought two carnival squash, which are very pretty looking (and quite tasty, incidentally). We found a recipe for carnival squash bisque, which we decided to use for a base under some grilled chicken for the party. The recipe was relatively simple to make.


We first roasted the squash in the oven, adding some olive oil, salt and pepper into the whole squashes.

Carnival squash have seeds inside that look similar to a pumpkin.

Saute the carrots, onions and celery in butter in a large pot. Add the potato and stock (we used chicken), and bring to a boil. 

Here are the squash, roasting away! They look kind of puny in our oven, huh?

As the intended use of this recipe is a soup, it suggests scooping out the flesh of the squash, and using the outside for a bowl. Since we weren't making a soup, I cut off the rind, and used all the remaining pieces. 

Toss that in the soup, and cook for a little longer.

I have heard great things about immersion blenders (I'm asking for one for Christmas - I think I'd get a good amount of use out of it), but since I don't have one -- we pureed the mixture in batches in the food processor. 

Once back in the pot, add the cream, and season to your liking. At first we were a little concerned that it would be too bland to serve almost like a sauce underneath the chicken. Paul and I took small bowlfuls and tried mixing in different things -- I tried cumin, he tried rosemary candied walnuts, etc. 

At this point, I realized that I hadn't added in the thyme listed in the recipe (I still can't figure out where you're supposed to add it). That helped a LOT. Once we let it rest and cool down (we made it the night before in case of disaster), the flavors became more strong and we weren't so worried about adding spices or other ingredients to jazz it up.

Here's how we served it -- reheated, under grilled chicken in herbs de provence and a little olive oil. The combo worked really well together -- the thyme in the chicken coating matched up with the soup/sauce.

Were we to make it again, but as a soup, I think I would add a dash more cream to make it even more like a bisque. You could also run the soup through a sieve if you don't want to have bits of pureed vegetables and thyme in the soup.