Semi-classic Cobb Salad

I was perusing some of my favorite blogs, and this salad at Smitten Kitchen made me want to race out and make it.  Meaty and cheesy salads are, of course, the best kind.   I was forced to deviate a bit from the SK recipe due to personal taste and v. fuzzy bleu cheese (note: this fuzziness made the bleu cheese have a Magic Eye quality - I couldn't look directly at it and focus).  

First, I made the dressing (of which I took no photos) - about 1/3 c canola oil, about 1/4 c apple cider vinegar, the juice of one lemon, one minced garlic clove, 3/4 tsp dry mustard, 1/2 tsp Worcestershire, 1 1/2 tsp honey, and salt/pepper.  Vigorously mix - the dry mustard doesn't serve the emulsifying role that a prepared mustard would.  

Then we make our nice bed of lettuce - I used only romaine because I do not like watercress and because that is what I had:

I then added the sliced hard boiled egg, tomato, and some seedless cucumber

And now, the heavy hitters - grilled chicken, cheddar cheese, avocado, and BACON!

I wanted to make a beautiful salad display but didn't think through serving it - it ends up a big mess on the plate, but it was lovely and I want to eat it all the time.

Chicken potstickers

As part of a new healthier eating lifestyle for 2010, I've been wracking my recipe books and websites for healthy, lower cal, lower fat recipes that still have high flavor and still leave you feeling full.  I did some research and discovered that we could each have a plateful of chicken potstickers with some snap peas for less than 425 calories.

First, the potsticker filling:  ground chicken, green onion, low sodium soy sauce (which is still terribly salty as it turns out), sesame oil, garlic, honey, worcestershire, and an egg yolk (would had ginger if not for the vociferous objection of the husband).  Mix.  Chill.

Meanwhile, I made a dipping sauce - soy sauce, garlic, red pepper flakes, honey, a squirt of ketchup, and white wine vinegar.  This ultimately turned out to be way too salty, even for a salt lover such as myself.  Will consider modifications.

Next, I laid out all the happy won ton wrappers, ready to be filled

There we go...a nice little blobette of filling

I promise, I made a very bad one the first time, and I did take a pic, but it got lost somehow.  This one, while not perfect, is much better and actually sealed:

And here we have a plate of 16 - 8 for each of us

Time to cook them - about 2 tsp of veg oil into a very hot pan - 2 minutes of sauteeing to brown the bottoms (or nuclearize them if you have my stove)

Then add a half cup of chicken stock and pop a lid on for 3-5 min to cook the filling

The liquid will be all gone by this point

Plate it up with your sauce and slam it.  You can see some of the crusty bottomed ones there too.  Which I like, but may be too crusty for some.

As I said, the dipping sauce was out of control salty.  The filling was a bit bland.  So what I may do is just toss a bit of the sauce into the remaining filling and lose the sauce.  It was a very filling and tasty dinner and will DEF be riffing on this idea in the weeks and months of weight loss to come!

Ethnic dinner of the week

Since before Thanksgiving, I've had little taste for the traditional comfort foods - meatloaf, roast beef, turkey, potatoes. Last night's meal was another attempt to stave off the boringness of late - an "Indian" spiced chicken thigh over garlic rice with toasted almonds and green beans with more toasted almonds. I love toasted almonds.


I marinated the chicken thighs in yogurt seasoned with garam masala, a bit of pre-made curry powder, salt, pepper, cumin, and tumeric. Then the chicken thighs got broiled (I'd have preferred to grill them, but the 60 mph wind gusts prevented outdoor grilling). For the rice, I melted 1 tbsp of butter and a squirt of oil in a stock pot, then cooked a bit of garlic, then added the rice to toast it, then chicken stock/water. At the end, I added the handful of almonds. It was pretty good - the chicken was very moist after almost 2 days in the marinade (oops). The rice could have used a bit more salt but tasted good mixed with the chicken.

Cruncheh Chicken

As I near the end of my maternity leave, I find myself with a random assortment of garden produce (if not my own garden, then my parents'). Time to get my hands dirty and get rid of this stuff.

First off, we have a small butternut squash and a random green squash from my parents' house. I cubed these and coated them with brown sugar (not enough, as it turned out) and melted butter, then roasted them at 400 degrees for about an hour.


For the meat, I coated some boneless, skinless chicken with cornflake crumbs mixed with salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and garlic powder. They were ok - I think the smoked paprika was a little overwhelming, but the husband roundly enjoyed them. They were also baked at 400 deg for about 30 minutes.

Served those items up with more zucchini casserole to get rid of a large zucchini from the garden (along with a carrot lingering in the fridge). V. tasty dinner (will add more brown sugar to the squash for round 2 with this meal!)

Chicken Pot Pie for Ms. J

Ms. J and I were discussing chicken pot pies last week, and I decided I would demonstrate the making of them (at least, how I do it) to encourage her to experiment in her kitchen.

so here we go - first off, I have here 3 small onions, chopped, 3 carrots, diced, and 3 celery ribs diced with a wee bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper:


Then, because in my mind, you can't have comfort food without butter, drop in a few tablespoons of butter (or just a bit more oil):


Let that cook up and soften the veg for a bit, then add in a large handful of flour and cook for 2-3 minutes to get rid of raw flour taste:


Then start adding liquid - in my case, I added a hefty splash of white wine then chicken stock - start out slowly - you don't want it too liquidy. I probably added 1 1/2 c of liquid total at this point.


R asked for some potatoes in the pot pies, so I obliged. I think I'll leave them out in the future. I also added another 1/2 c or so of stock.


Then herbage - thyme, salt, pepper, some dill. You definitely MUST use thyme - I made a chicken pot pie without it once and it tasted disgusting. I also added some mushrooms at this point. In the future, I will saute them in a hot pan first - they didn't really add a lot of flavor to the party.


Then, because I wanted to, I added about 1-2 tbsp of cream


Then added in my previously cooked chicken and let 'r rip for a bit until the potatoes were soft.


Then, in my messy/rustic way, I lined 3 oven-safe bowls (in this case, little Fiesta pie plates) with some puff pastry and baked that at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes. Roll out the puff pastry first, as thinly as you can. It goes a lot further that way!


Then I ladled in the pie filling and topped them with more puff pastry (very rustic, right?) and gave it an egg wash (egg/water, beat, brush). You CAN, of course, roll the puff pastry out and cover and seal the entire pie, but I find that you end up wasting delicious puff pastry that way - some sticks to the cooking vessel and it is always too hot to peel off. Anyways, that's my two cents on that. I'll take an ugly pot pie over one where I lose puff pastry. Anyways, these also baked at 400 degrees, and took about 25 minutes (I threw on the broiler for a minute to get them really browned). Also, I added broccoli to my pot pie which was delicious. Broccoli is, however, the devil incarnate to Mr. R.


Voila (ignore the nasty baking sheet). My pie filling was a bit dry, I must say. I tend to overthink the runniness factor and then leave things too thick or dry. So, when I make these again, will reheat with more stock.


These were pretty tasty - be sure to taste your filling along the way and adjust for salt and other seasonings.

Thanksgiving trial run

I decided I wanted a roasted chicken and fixings for dinner on Sunday so I went to the local grocery store to take advantage of BOGO roasting chickens.

First, I made a stuffing to stuff the chicken - bread cubes, celery, onion, and what turned out to be gross chicken stock (I made it from the chicken neck and other innards, it tasted yucky but I didn't know that until after the fact)


Here is the lovely pale chicken in its too small roasting pan, resting on a bed of onions, garlic, and celery.



A "spice" mix of salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning and the olive oil to baste the chicken


A side dish of asparagus is oiled, salted, peppered and awaiting the oven.


Here's the manhandled carved turkey (there was an incident with the carving). Mashed potatoes in the background, asparagus on the side.


A lovely plate of ok chicken, good potatoes, yucky stuffing, and fine asparagus.


All in all, it was an OK meal. Not great. The chicken tasted a bit weird, the stuffing was gross due to that nasty broth. The veg were fine. The gravy was fine.

Must work on my A game before Thanksgiving!

Chicken casserole - blast from the past

I had a sudden craving for my grandmother's chicken casserole this week - so I hopped to it and made it.

As so many recipes start out, I sauteed some celery and onions in a pan - eventually seasoning with salt, pepper, and a tiny bit of poultry seasoning for kicks.


Meanwhile, the crowning glory and glue of all casseroles, cream of whatever soups - in my case a can each of chicken and mushroom. So appetizing to view, right?


I took about 1.2 lbs of chicken and roasted it with a bit of salt and pepper, then cubed it for the casserole. The softened celery and onion went in the bowl as well.


And a VERY generous gloop of Miracle Whip - the tangy zip makes the casserole. Even if you hate Miracle Whip, you shouldn't shy away from a recipe like this, it adds good flavor.

I added in some frozen peas then dished the mixture between two casserole dishes.


Do not, repeat, do NOT omit the crunchy topping - cornflakes and sliced almonds mixed with some melted butter.


Bake at 375 degrees until browned and bubbly. I put foil over the top for the last 15 minutes or so to prevent the top from overbrowning.

Mmm. A childhood (and adulthood) favorite. I'm done with summer - onto the season of soups, stews, and warming casseroles. I may try my hand at the much-maligned tater tot casserole in the future - there's something very appealing to be about using tots in a meal...

Mr. R's dinner time adventures

So, Mr. R had the day off on Monday, so he decided to cook dinner for me and my mom. He settled on Emeril's Cowboy Chicken Casserole with some modifications (flour tortilla strips instead of corn tortilla chips, added zucchini, and a few other very tiny modifications due to what we had on hand). He didn't realize this was a recipe we'd made before with "eh" results. Actually, re-reading my past entry, we seemed to have liked it then. And R liked it this time, but I was less than enthused. We put Anaheim peppers in, and they ended up not being cooked and were kind of "squeaky" instead of edible. R viewed it as "crunchy" and liked it. There was good flavor, but again, I think I'd opt for salsa AND tomatoes to give MORE flavor. And no anaheim peppers unless they've been sauteed or blanched. There was also a weird carb to casserole ratio - not enough carbs for me.

Isn't it pretty though? Mr. R did a nice job of preparing it.


Here is a "slice" of said casserole...an offensive bit of Anaheim at the top...but delicious garden tomatoes throughout. Yum.


I ended up picking out the peppers and serving it over rice with some salsa on top. Then I was good to go.

In-depth examination of the chicken braid/pocket

Last week, I returned to the now-favorite chicken braid concept once again. I've fully resorted to creating a chicken pocket rather than a braid for simple ease of preparation.

So, off we go. Saute onion and red bell pepper:

Meanwhile, I decided to make use of my garden bounty - zucchini - and added that along with grated carrot:

And garlic of course:

Once the onion and pepper are well on their way to softening, I added in the zucchini, carrot, and garlic and cooked until slightly softened:


I allowed the veggie mixture to cool a bit, then added in about 7 tbsp of reduced fat mayo, 1 1/2 c of shredded cheddar cheese, dill, salt, and pepper.

Fold into a lovely RF crescent roll pocket and bake until v. browned and bubbly.


And yet again, I forget to take a final picture. Oh well - you've seen the "braid" before.