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.

americana, thy name is meatloaf

A while back, I went off red meat for a year or two. During this time, I used ground turkey an awful lot, because I wasn't really that in to cooking yet, and ground meat is easy to deal with. I've long since started eating beef again, but turkey still tends to be my default ground meat - it's lighter, doesn't overpower seasonings, and generally cheaper.

At any rate, I've been experimenting lately with turkey meatloaf, and I'm quite pleased with the results. My first attempt (adapted from this recipe) was extremely basic - two pounds of turkey, two eggs, a cup of bread crumbs, some onion, a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, some poultry season sprinkled on top, 350° for 60 minutes. It came out well, if somewhat boring. Also the onion was overpowering, and I hadn't chopped it anywhere near thoroughly enough. The texture was okay - I think I used a potato masher to mix it all up, but I didn't feel like that had done a very effective job.

Then I tried something a little bit more like the basic recipe here. Two pounds turkey, two eggs, two tablespoons W. sauce, 1/2 cup of oats soaked in 1/3 cup of milk, 1/4 cup bread crumbs, and some onion. The result was a lot more ... damp. It didn't hold together terribly well, although the taste wasn't bad. The texture was also too smooth, largely because I used an electric mixer, which was a terrible idea, but I was tired that day, and it seemed sensible at the time.

So last night I did the turkey, eggs, sauce, a cup of crumbs, a much smaller amount of very finely diced onion, and about a cup of shredded cheese. Also, I added garlic & paprika, mixed it all by hand (literally, I just gloved up and squished it around for a while), and sprinkled curry powder over the top. This time it had to cook a little longer - about 75 minutes was the final total - but I was really impressed with how well it turned out. The texture was rough, but it didn't crumble the second you cut it. The flavor came out very well, and I love how the top crisped.

So, anyway. The classic suburban dinner, updated a little. Enjoy.

cooking with beer

I was inspired yesterday to attempt some beer cookery. I've been meaning to do this but my girlfriend has been resistant to the idea, not being a fan of beer, and I've generally been loathe to buy a six pack since I would then have several bottles mouldering in my fridge. Fortunately I found a beer store with a wide selection of singles, and Erin was out of town for the weekend, so I decided to see what I could come up with for a planned evening of video games with a friend.

I've wanted to try beer in a crock pot for a while, and I opted to go the ubersimple route - two chicken breasts cubed, in the pot with the beer, on high for two hours, after which I added teriyaki sauce and let it sit until the chicken fell apart. I used a Yuengling lager for this, and was quite pleased with the result. (Though next time I'm going to use a little less teriyaki.) I considered adding some flour to the end result to turn the liquid into more of a sauce, perhaps to put in something taco-esque, but I wound up just serving it over rice and broccoli, which worked out quite well.

To keep up the theme, I pulled out the old beer bread recipe, using a bottle of Lagunitas' Brown Shugga'. I was hoping that the overall effect would be both sweet and dark, but I was kind of disappointed. The overall effect was just a little odd, and a little too sweet - I had forgotten that the recipe called for sugar. I think I would have been better served switching the bottles, because I know from experience the Yuengling makes a good bread. Next time, I guess.

As a side note, I'm a taster. I check the flavor of my food every single step of the way. It is incredibly odd to not do so until the food is towards the final stages (i.e. cooked until non-alcoholic). It was disconcerting enough that I think I'm fairly unlikely to make a habit of this, although I do intend to keep it in mind for special occasions.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

When I make chocolate chip cookies, I usually aim for the crispier side of things, but these are nice and fluffy and still extremely enjoyable. The pumpkin is present more in the texture than in the flavor - I was able to guess the "secret ingredient" after eating one cookie, but they certainly aren't 'pumpkin-flavored' in any way.

This is the recipe as I received it from my co-worker, and I can vouch for the results, but I intent to fiddle with it some in the coming months - I'm not a huge fan of shortening, and I've recently learned that you can use coffee in the place of vanilla extract if you do it properly, so I may post some notes on variations later.

1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1 cup pumpkin (I used canned, but whatever floats your boat)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 pkg chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat to 350, cream shortening and sugar. Beat in egg, beat in pumpkin, beat in vanilla. Gradually mix in flour, then spices and powders, adding chips & nuts last. Bake 10-15 minutes - I went for 15 but it probably varies with your stove. It's really obvious when they're done, as they start to brown up around the edges.

Edited 11/13/2010: Somehow I forgot to put in the "add pumpkin" step the first time I posted this and it screws me up every time. So I fixed it.

old fashioned pancakes

We had a houseguest today, and I realized we had no breakfast meats available, so instead of the eggs & bacon I had planned, we wound up making pancakes. Rather than screwing around with experimental ingredients, I went digging for a plain "old fashioned" recipe, which I present here mostly for my own reference.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg
3 tablespoons butter, melted

Sift together dry ingredients, mix in wet. Put on hot, oiled skillet 1/4 cup at a time.

Edited 11/13/2010: You know, when I first posted this I left out the mixing instructions because I figured they were so obvious they were unnecessary. Yet every time I refer back to this entry to make these pancakes, I wind up clicking through to the source recipe to make sure I'm doing it right. Apparently I'm just hardwire to recipe format. So I put the instructions in for my own reference, silly through they might be.

rice pizza

I saw this post about 'doughless pizza' a few weeks ago and I've been meaning to try it ever since. It was actually scheduled for this past Wednesday night, but for various reasons I just got around to doing it now. The essential process is to take some rice (I cooked 1 cup of jasmine, used about 3/4s of the pot), mix it with an egg, press it down, add toppings (sliced tomato and diced onion), and then spread some mozzarella cheese over the top and bake the results. For some reason I was thinking I'd be better off baking it at a low temperature to cook the tomato properly, but obviously that was dumb, and I wound up turning the oven way up at the end to crisp things properly, which kind of didn't work. Also I didn't really know what to add for seasoning, so I kind of wimped out. So on the whole it wasn't great - but it did taste like potential.

Next time - and quite possibly next week, because this was really easy to make - I'm going to do it again. This time I'm going to mix oregano and pressed garlic in with the rice and egg. I'm going to chop the tomato very fine so it will cook quickly, and on top of the mozzarella I'll add something with a little flavor, maybe a nice sharp cheddar or some Monterey Jack or maybe both, if I still have both in the fridge. Then I'm going to cook the whole lot at 400 for about 15 minutes and see if that doesn't come out a lot better.

In the mean time, what I do have is going in the wok tomorrow with some teriyaki and I bet the whole mess will come out pretty well.

Chicken "French"

Erin wanted to make Chicken French this weekend, but things happen, as they tend to do, and we wound up not cooking Friday or Saturday, and Sunday she had schoolwork to catch up on, so I decided to give it a try. When we went hunting for the ingredients last weekend, I found a half dozen somewhat complex recipes and one really simple one, which I used for an ingredient list, and then forgot to bookmark. Of course I was not able to find it again today. So I just did what I was probably going to wind up doing anyway - I read over the half dozen complex versions, figured out the basics, and just went with what made sense.

So I started with chicken breasts, sliced them in to strips, pounded the strips out, floured them, dipped them in egg, and fried them. The leftover egg (not much) went in to the pan as well. I grated some extra sharp cheddar on to the top because some of the recipes wanted me to use cheese - specifically parmesan, which I didn't have. This wound up being an empty gesture, I think, because I couldn't really taste it in the finished product, but no matter. Into a small dish I poured about a quarter cup of sherry and maybe a teaspoon of lemon juice - I wish I could be more exact but I was just kind of eyeballing it anyway - which I then spooned lightly over the chicken breasts after I had flipped them. A few minutes later, with half the dish remaining, I decided to flip them again and dump the rest in, and then added more lemon (maybe another teaspoon) more or less on a whim.

At this point I panicked, because I realized that like a total buffoon I had forgotten to prepare anything to go with the chicken! I started a pot to boil for green beans, and began wracking my brain for a starch. Fortunately we had some leftover jasmine rice in the fridge, which I wound up just tossing in the skillet with the chicken, and fiddling with the whole lot while the beans cooked. The end result was, I'm afraid, kind of an ugly mess.

Fortunately we're not much for ceremony around these parts, so we ate it anyway, and it turned out to be really quite tasty. Much of the sherry and lemon had cooked off, so the flavoring was very subtle, which on the whole I think I prefer. The only thing that displeased me was the consistency of the coating, which did not at any point in the cooking process match what I've gotten when I ordered the dish in a restaurant, but since my version was much lighter than what I normally see, that's probably a good thing. We liked it enough that we've declared it to be On The List, and we plan to make it with relative frequency.

Next time I want to try using slightly less sherry, and trying some rice vinegar with it. I might give in to the temptation to involve some minor amount of breadcrumbs in the breading process, but I don't know yet. Also I completely spaced on putting garlic in the pan, which I think would have been a nice touch.