chicken 'n dumplin's

Growing up, my father always used to make chicken and dumplings, which for some reason he always called pot pie. Just one of those weird things, I guess. At any rate, I was casting about for something to do with leftover roast chicken recently, and I found a recipe for chicken & dumplings using leftover rotisserie. The recipe is here, but read on before clicking. (Also, be advised it auto-plays music.)

The recipe called for the meat from a rotisserie chicken and "two cartons" of broth, so I knew I was off to a questionable start, but I decided to forge ahead - the two cups or so of leftover chicken that I had more or less resembled the amount pictured, and since the brand of broth they used comes in 16 or 32 oz cartons, I figured out quickly that just one quart wasn't going to get it done.

A side note: I used one of those 'instant broth' goops that are replacing bullion these days. I haven't had a lot of success making it in quantities measured in cups, but by the quart it didn't suck. YMMV.

Anyway the gist is simple - boil two quarts of broth, add 1/4 cup milk, make dumplings, cook dumplings 20 minutes, add chicken & cook another 10 minutes, enjoy. I added a package of frozen vegetable medley (beans, corn, peas, carrots) just before the chicken and it came out really well. The problem was the dumplings - this recipe was just two cups of flour, two tsp baking soda, one of salt, and 3/4 cup of milk. The final product was kind of chewey, and kind of tasteless, which I guess one should expect from the recipe, but still. I finally broke down and emailed my father to find out how he made his. The answer, apparently, is that his are just 2 cups flour, 1/3 cup shortening, and ice water until it makes dough. No wonder they taste better.

I'll try this again the next time we roast a chicken, hopefully with more success.

mystery soup

So, once the chicken was picked clean and the meat all portioned out for its various purposes, I decided to boil the rest in to stock, as suggested by The Paupered Chef. In to the pot went everything that remained of the chicken, along with some raw bits I'd frozen after removing them from a batch of boneless skinless breasts a few week ago, and some miscellaneous veggie bits I'd stashed in the freezer (as per the comments on the post linked above). I wound up simmering it for the better part of four hours, then strained it as instructed, then like a dolt I put it straight in the freezer instead of giving it fridge time to separate properly. It still came out okay, although I suspect a lot fattier than it should have, but I wound up just using it as a basis for soup.

Now, in our freezer we had a bag of red meat, several months old, that we were unable to name. This is not as alarming as it sounds - Erin's family frequently comes by bulk meats, including several deer during hunting season and the occasional cow that they order (I'm not making this up), so we knew that it was edible, and we could see that it was not freezer burned. However, we had no idea what it was. So I decided the only thing to do was simply put it in a crock pot and hope for the best. This theory turned out to be fairly sound, especially when we realized that it had been sliced as stew meat already. So I floured it and browned it and tossed in in the crock pot with the usual assortment of celery, carrots, potato, chickpeas, bell pepper, green onions, sweet onion, and so forth. The stock went in as well, minus what fat had separated to the top, as did some rice vinegar and four cups of water.

So it turns out it was beef stew! Who knew? I like the way the chicken stock worked out, although the finished product does have a tendency to gel back up in the fridge. The flavors work well together. This is also my first successful beef stew.

It has occurred to me during this process that I don't actually know any other uses for chicken stock - does anyone have any suggestions?

chicken ... dumplings?

The leftover chicken is finally gone, although I haven't gotten around to using the stock yet. (More on that later.) After the pizza, I put together tacos, which were tasty but unexceptional, and tonight I made something that I don't have a good name for. See, I was going to make chicken purses, like I'd read about on yumsugar a while back, but I ran in to some basic problems with their recipe - I don't like ricotta, for one thing, and zesting a lemon always seems like a waste when I don't have anything else I really want to use a lemon for. So I opted to wing it for the filling, and wound up mixing together shredded chicken with a cup or so of CoJack, and then perusing my spice rack I wound up with garlic, onion, and mustard powders, plus black pepper. Then I added honey, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

I want to take a moment to address my frequent use of CoJack. For the record, it is not the only cheese I like. It is, however, my go-to cheese, and I keep forgetting to buy others. In case you were wondering. Which you weren't.

Anyway, I then spooned the filling onto the wonton wrappers, and promptly ran in to trouble - I don't know if I got the wrong size wrapper or what, but there was no way I could wrap them into the classic purse formation with anything resembling a reasonable amount of stuffing. So I wound up kind of folding them over, then flipping them and wrapping them into another, which didn't delight me but one does what one must eh wot, and so I wound up with little dumpling-shaped things. I boiled them til they floated as instructed, then wound up sauteing them for a bit in some butter - not the half a stick suggested in the recipe, because that's just too much butter, but enough to coat the pan. Because they wound up more or less flat along the bottom, and subsequently the top, I was only able to crisp the two large surfaces - a more circular formation would've cooked much more evenly when tossed.

Now, for all that these wound up very different from the original idea, they were very very tasty. I'm looking forward to trying again with different flavor combinations - I still haven't remembered to stock horseradish, which is all but criminal, and I have some ideas for a mixture that starts with rice vinegar as a foundation ... well, we'll see. We should be roasting a chicken again before too long.

chicken & onion pizza

Yesterday we had some really wonderfully good roast chicken for dinner. Of course, now we have heaps of leftover chicken that we have to find uses for. Tonight, I decided to try out yumsugar's chicken & onion pizza idea.

Of course, from there I had to find a recipe for pizza dough. I wound up settling on this one from Fabulous Foods, which I will document here for my own purposes: Pour 1 cup warm water in bowl. Add 2 tablespoons honey, 1/2 teaspoon salt, then mix. Add 1 packet yeast and mix. Wait 5 minutes. Add 1 cup flour & 1/4 cup olive oil, and (you guessed it) mix. Then add another 2 and 1/2 cups flour. At that point it should ball; add water or flour 1 tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached. Let rise 45 minutes, then punch. Let rise 60 to 90 minutes and use, or punch and let rise another 60 to 120 minutes depending on timing and patience. (I chose 90 minutes and then use this time.)

This dough was very tasty, and in fact we discussed that this is the recipe I should use if I want to make breadsticks or fried dough anytime soon. It comes out nice and fluffy with a good firm exterior. Due to prior bad experiences in this area, I was unwilling to try an untested dough recipe directly on the pizza stone the first time through, so I wound up using a large non-stick cookie sheet. This worked well enough, but it had the unfortunate side effect of not really browning the bottom of the crust in a way I would have liked - I will try that next time, since I know how it's going to behave.

Anyway, once the dough was ready and spread out over the sheet, I topped it with salsa, shredded leftover chicken, Cojack and onion. The recipe called for straight Monterey Jack, but I couldn't find it shredded and I was feeling lazy and besides Cojack is my go-to cheese anyway. It also wants one to sauté the onion before use as topping, probably to distinguish it from whatever onions one might find in the salsa, but I bought a nice big sweet onion and I wanted to taste it, so I didn't bother. It should be noted that I used a mild salsa because while I like spice, and pizza, I don't generally enjoy the two combined.

The end result in this case was very tasty. Between the fluffiness of the crust and the behavior of the salsa it could have been a little dryer, but I wouldn't say it was any soggier than your average extra-sauce pie. We did wind up dipping it in some spaghetti sauce we had in the cabinet, because we wanted a splash of tomato - next time I might just put some sliced tomato on under the cheese. All told an excellent use of leftover chicken, and one I definitely plan to use again.

fried rice

We had some leftovers in the fridge, but not enough to make a full meal, and part of our new initiative (due mostly to being broke on account of that whole college thing) is to not waste any food at all. So tonight I decided to give this whole 'fried rice with leftovers' thing a whirl, and see how it came out. I started with some garlic that's getting on in age, and I threw in the chopped carrots right at the outset so they would cook through. Then in went half a can* of French cut green beans and some Vidalia, followed by the leftover teriyaki-marinated venison backstrap we grilled last night, and finally three scrambled eggs and of course the rice itself. The whole shebang got a liberal helping of both soy and teriyaki sauce, along with some powdered mustard seed I found mixed in to our spice rack from God knows when.

The result was not bad, although it needs work. It felt a little bland; we wound up adding ground black pepper to the finished product which rounded it out nicely. Next time I want to start with a nice chili oil or such to add some zest - what I really wish I'd had on hand was some sort of horseradish.

The rice itself could've cooked longer (but everything else was quite done) - I had assumed since it was still quite warm it could go in last, but maybe I'll put that in right after the uncooked ingredients next time. Also I didn't make it with the normal liberal splash of olive oil, because I assumed it would get plenty enough in the wok, and I think that might have been the wrong choice - I think the extra lubrication would've worked wonders.

Still, I found it acceptable, and Erin enjoyed it to the point where she claims to be looking forward to eating the remnants for lunch. (Leftover leftovers? The mind boggles.) It was also pretty easy. I could see this turning in to a regular thing in our household for leftover disposal.

* Yes, I know. Canned green beans are gross. And who the hell eats canned green beans in the middle of summer? My girlfriend, that's who. I don't understand it either.