Chicken Pot Pie

When I was a little girl, one of my absolute winter favorites was chicken pot pie. That's why it came as somewhat as a shock to me that I had no recipe for it in the cookbook my mother put together for me. It's been over ten years since I've lived at my parents' house and at least five years since I really mastered cooking, and I have never made a chicken pot pie. I don't know if it was fear of being unable to recreate it the way my mom made it, or my lazy nature, as chicken pot pie is rather work intensive. Either way, I never should have let this get to this point, because chicken pot pie is really damn good.

CHICKEN POT PIE
makes 2 pies in 1.4 L dishes

Ingredients:
1 recipe pie crust
3 chicken breasts
~ 1 cup cream (1/2 cup for poaching, 1/2 cup for adding liquid)
1/4 C white wine
4 carrots, peeled and coined
1/2 package Birdseye frozen peas (this is about 5 oz)
1/2 mushrooms, stemmed and chopped
1/2 large onion chopped
1 T flour
1 T olive oil
2 t tarragon
salt and pepper
1 egg or 1/4 c egg beaters for egg wash on crust

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350 F. Trim and rinse chicken, pat dry. Place in a ovenproof dish in a single layer and season breasts with salt and pepper. Then pour over the first 1/2 c of cream, add slightly more if needed. Poach in your oven for 35 minutes. After 35 minutes the chicken should be cooked, let it cool and then cut into bite sized pieces. Reserve the poaching liquids. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and add your coined carrots. Let them cook for 2 minutes and then drain and set aside. In a large pan, sautee the onion in the olive oil. Add the tablespoon of flour. Cook for 5 minutes to allow the flour to cook. Then add the poaching liquid, stir well so that the flour mixture does not clump. Add the 1/4 C of white wine (or vermouth). Cook for 5 minutes. Then add the cut up chicken, peas, carrots, mushroom. Add the tarragon. Give it a quick taste, add more salt and pepper if necessary. Stir mixture together. If it seems really dry, you can add the other 1/2 c cream. Remember the mixture will release more liquid in the oven, so it will become juicer as it cooks, you don't want it overly soupy. Split the pot pie mixture between two ovenproof dishes. Roll out your two pie crusts. They will be thicker than a normal pie crust. Mold them down over the top of your dishes as shown above. Slash three vents in the top and use a basting brush to apply the egg beaters or well stirred egg as a wash to get the nice brown crust. Bake for 25 minutes at 425.

Hold the Mayo

My husband's fear of mayonnaise has been documented elsewhere on this blog, but for those who missed that post, let's recap. Ryan hates mayonnaise. In any form. Don't try to trick him by offering him any aioli, oh no. He'll eye it suspiciously, and if truly pressed, he'll taste it with all the suspicion of a picky toddler and finally state with conviction, "that's definitely some kind of mayonnaise." I am honestly shocked he can even place an order at a deli counter when he's faced with all those tubs of coleslaw and macaroni salad, foods rendered inedible by their thick pools of whitish goop.

I strongly believe that the BLT is one of life's great pleasures. But if you're anything like me, you figure that a BLT is really a BLTM. Mayonnaise is what makes the whole sandwich work! The nice creamy goodness pulls it all together.

Fortunately, I have a trick up my sleeve that will prevent this delicious sandwich from being banned from our house. Avocado. Sweet, ripe avocado. I hate to admit it, but it's really much better than mayonnaise.



BACON, LETTUCE, TOMATO AND AVOCADO SANDWICH
makes 2 sandwiches

Ingredients:
1 avocado
4 slices good bread - I like french country
8 slices bacon (or turkey bacon)
1 ripe tomato
2 leaves of lettuce

Directions:
Put the bacon on to cook in a large pan. Watch it carefully so it doesn't burn. Bacon only takes a few minutes on each side, but how long exactly depends on whether you are a crispy or chewy person. We like ours pretty crispy. Stick your bread in the toaster. While you're waiting for it to toast up, you can take your cooked bacon out of the pan and put it on a paper towel covered plate. Blot the top of the bacon too to soak up some of that grease. Wash and dry your lettuce and tear into nice sandwich size pieces. Slice up the tomato. Halve the avocado, scoop out the insides and mash up with a pinch of salt. When the toasts pop up, spread half the avocado on one slice of bread and then place the tomatoes on top. On the other side of the bread, put down one of the leaves of lettuce and four strips of bacon. Then place the bacon and lettuce side on top of the tomato and avocado side. Repeat to make another sandwich.

Long Distance Hug

Sometimes, everything is just completely and thoroughly, exasperatingly crappy and overwhelming. Right now is one of those times. And if I still lived in Boston, I would call my dearest friend and she would make it all better. She would give me a hug, and let me cry and then she'd bake me brownies. The crappy things would all still be crappy, but I'd feel less alone and more able to cope.

There are 300 miles between us, so I'll have make do. I'm starting with the brownies. It's the closest I can get to a hug, long distance.


J'S BROWNIES

Ingredients:
2 squares of unsweetened baking chocolate
1 stick of butter plus a few spoonfuls to coat the pan
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c flour
pinch of salt
spoon of vanilla

Directions:
Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a double boiler (or in a metal bowl resting on top of a saucepan with boiling water in it, like this:

After it's all melted, take off the heat and let it cool for about five minutes. Stir in the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing between each egg. Add the vanilla. Add the flour and salt. Mix well, scraping sides.

Preheat your oven to 375. Turn a 8x8 brownie pan upside-down and mold a sheet of tin foil to it. Take off the foil and flip the the pan. The molded foil should fit nicely inside the pan. Melt the extra butter and coat the foil in the pan. Pour the batter in and bake in a 375 degree oven for 20-30 minutes, depending how done you want them. Try not to over bake, as they will become dry and icky.

Americana

Lately, the United States haven't seemed very United. In fifteen days, we will have an election, where we will either elect the first black president or the first woman vice president. And yet, instead all of the hope and joy that should come with having these historic candidates, there is hatred and fear.

For tonight, focus on easier times, simple pleasures. Think of America, the country of apple pie and baseball. Because tonight the Boston Red Sox will play the Tampa Bay Rays for the American League Championship. And I will be eating apple turnovers to celebrate. If you don't have time to make them tonight, it's okay. The World Series starts Wednesday. Plenty of time to rekindle a warm and fuzzy feeling towards your country before you get out and vote.

APPLE TURNOVERS
adapted from Ina Garten's recipe and Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything
makes 6 turnovers

Ingredients:
1 package frozen puff pastry (only one sheet of puff pastry needed)
1 T lemon juice
2 cooking apples - I used Jonagold and Stayman Winesap.
1.5 T sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)
2 t flour
1 t ground cinnamon
1/8 t nutmeg
1/8 t ground cloves
1 egg (for egg wash)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Allow puff pastry to defrost according to package directions.
Prepare the apples. Peel, core and cut apples into a small dice. Mark Bittman who has considerably more free time than I do says to grate the apples, Ina favors a large dice. I split the difference. As you dice, toss the apples in a bowl where the lemon juice is already waiting. This will slow the process of the apples turning brown. Then add the sugar, flour and spices. When you've mixed it all well, check out the puff pastry. When it's thawed, cut into three pieces (if you buy Pepperidge Farm, it will likely be in three sections anyway). Then roll out each piece until it is about 3 or 4 inches wide, and cut in half to make squares. You should end up with 6 squares. Fill each square with between a 1/4 C and 1/3 C of the apple mixture. Fold each square into a triangle and use your finger, wet with water to seal by dampening the edge of the triangle before pressing the top layer of dough down. Then use a fork to crimp the edges. Mix the egg with a bit of water and then use a basting brush to apply the egg wash to the turnovers. The sprinkle each with sugar. Place on a baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees F.

Pumpkin Dreams, Smashed

I have long loved pumpkin flavored baked goods and desserts. It's practically a holiday when Dunkin Donuts begins stocking their pumpkin muffins. I stopped eating my favorite dinner at our favorite restaurant once I learned they had pumpkin creme brulee for dessert. I made smitten kitchen's pumpkin bread pudding even though I don't like bread pudding because it was pumpkin and dessert.

Much to my dismay, I have been met with failure after failure when making pumpkin treats at home. I didn't love the pumpkin bread pudding, because of the whole not liking bread pudding bit. There were those "interesting" pumpkin pies I made last year. And now, I have failed at making pumpkin muffins. I found the recipe on a blog. It wasn't a food blog. That should have been a clue. I was taken in. Hoodwinked. I made the muffins. They contained whole wheat which made me somehow feel healthy and noble, like I was making the muffins as healthy snacks, and not treats to be scarfed down at every snack opportunity. But the muffins? Not so great. Everyone who has eaten one tells me they are good. And fresh out of the oven, they weren't so bad. But let me tell you, they don't improve. Day one, I was convinced that they were just another mediocre muffin. Day 2 I had a nightmare that my husband said they were gross and wanted to throw them all out. Day 3, I tried toasting it (for reasons to be explained later) and threw it out after 2 bites. I'm ready to toss the remaining 15. I'll wait to see if my husband eats anymore, but after that, they're going. Food waste is wrong, but so is having nightmares about having to keep eating something.

For your consideration, the problems with the muffins were as follows:
They were awfully whole wheat-y. It overwhelmed the taste of the pumpkin, the added spices and the extraordinary amount of brown sugar they used. They baked up small and sad. You could blame me for not filling my muffin tin enough, but I'll tell you, I only got two dozen and the recipe said it made three, so I will refuse culpability in that matter. The tops of them are mushy. Perhaps underbaked. I'm not sure how that happened. It was the second batch of muffins this happened to, and they baked as long as the first, in an oven that had been hot longer. All I can think is perhaps they are getting squishier upon storing, and I don't really want to think about that. Just ick.

I am very sorry to not be giving you another recipe, but honestly, if you knew, you'd thank me for not sharing it. I promise if I am every successful in my pumpkin quest, you'll be the first to know.

Kitchen Things I Love: Desert Island Implement

Growing up, I had subscriptions to several teen magazines. They were always making lists of Desert Island Books or Desert Island Albums. They'd suggest which you should bring with you if you ever were on a desert island.

Oh yes, and there were quizzes where you'd choose your Desert Island Makeup, and learn some deep insight into your soul, based on your answer.

I have no idea what my desert island kitchen implement says about me, but you better believe if I could only take one thing with me, it would be my army fork.

My grandfather was in the U.S. Army and was stationed all over the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Japan. The original army fork was his, U.S. government issue, provided to him in his mess kit. My grandmother loved it. My mother loves it. I love it so much, that when I moved away from home, my uncle bought me my very own army fork, knife and spoon in order to preserve family relations.


You can use the army fork to mix salad dressing, scramble eggs, incorporate water into flour to create a dough. It has been the death of my whisk collection. I have more unused whisks than anyone wants to know about. I actually dragged some of them out of the corners of drawers and backs of cabinets just to show them to you. Need one? They're all practically in mint condition.


You can find your own army fork at an army-navy store. The set of 3 utensils is generally well under $10.

So what's your favorite kitchen tool, the one you can't live without, the one you would bring to a desert island with you?

Honey Cakes

At the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, honey symbolizes the hope that the new year will be sweet. I think that there are a lot of us out there who need to believe that this new year will be a sweet one. And while you're waiting and hoping, maybe some honey cakes will help. These are delicate, light, and just the right kind of sweet without being cloying.

Honey Cakes
from Donna Hay's Off the Shelf

Ingredients:
2/3 C superfine sugar (you can make superfine sugar by putting regular sugar in a food processor and pulsing on high)
6 oz (a stick and a half) butter
3 T honey
2 eggs
1 1/2 C flour, sifted
1 t baking powder

Topping:
whipping cream (the recipe calls for double thick cream which I have yet to see in the US, you can make your own whipped cream using heavy cream, I didn't add sugar to mine, but you may want a tsp of sugar in yours)
honey

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325
Mix together the sugar, butter and honey until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and continue to mix until creamy. Sift together the flour and baking powder and add to the eggs and sugar mixture. Mix well. Pour into a greased muffin tin. Bake for 15-20 min. Top with whipped cream and a drizzle of chilled honey. DO NOT drizzle the honey until the last possible moment. As it warms it will squiggle down your cake. Still tasty, but not so pretty for company.

The Little Things

I've been feeling overwhelmed, and when I'm overwhelmed, everything seems to suffer. My cooking, the cleanliness of my apartment, my patience with others, my ability to find a parking space.

Sometimes it's the little things that make everything okay. Having a freshly cleaned dog who smells like pina colada, having a husband who after 3 years of marriage now spontaneously makes the bed, having a homemade loaf of Portuguese sweet bread in the freezer, getting free dough when you have a mushroom pizza craving.

I was smiling before I even started cooking it, after all, who doesn't like free dough? I was even happier when it came out every bit as delicious as I'd hoped.

MUSHROOM PIZZA:
adapted from Rachael Ray's Mushroom Lovers' Pizza

INGREDIENTS:
1 8 oz package of white mushrooms cleaned and sliced
1 8 oz package of baby bella mushrooms cleaned and sliced
1/2 a small onion, sliced very thin
.5 to .75 lbs shredded gruyere cheese
dough (you can usually buy this from your local pizza place)
1/4 C dry white wine (you can sub vermouth)
1 bay leaf
1 T fresh thyme removed from stem and chopped
1 T Worcestershire sauce (this often contains anchovies, so would make the dish not vegetarian, you can omit it, or find a vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, there are some on the market).
2-3 cloves of garlic minced
salt, pepper
4 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T butter
small amount of cornmeal for cooking the pizza.

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 450F.
In a medium pan, combine the onion and 1.5 T olive oil. Cook over low heat for 20 minutes, stirring periodically. Check the heat carefully, you want to caramelize the onion, not make it crispy. It should slowly turn golden brown and the onion should taste sweet. Once that's started, in another medium pan, combine a T of olive oil, the butter, garlic, mushrooms and bay leaf. Cook over medium heat for about 12 minutes. Add the Worcestershire sauce and white wine and deglaze the pan, scraping up all the bits of stuck mushroom. Add salt and pepper, about 2 t salt should be good. Cook for another 5 minutes to cook off some of the liquid. Add the thyme.

Stretch or roll out your dough. On a large sheet pan, or pizza stone, sprinkle some cornmeal. Put the dough on the pan, and cook at 450 F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350. Remove from oven for topping. Sprinkle gruyere over the whole pizza. Then add the mushrooms and onions. Cook for 5-10 more minutes until cheese is melty and toppings are warm.

Back On-Air Soon

Shh...just watch the bars. The show will be on soon. (At least that's what my mother used to promise me.)

In the past few weeks the stars have not been smiling on my cooking fortunes. I have gotten home from work very late many a night; one or twice because I was actually working late, the other times due to unforeseen circumstances.

The unforeseen circumstances include:
1. A train fire which caused me to take a detour and subsequently spend 15-20 minutes lost in one of the country's top 10 most dangerous cities.
2. The closing of a major highway between my work and home due to a horrific tractor trailer accident
3. A night where I couldn't find my keys, finally found them in the ignition of my locked car, had my parents come with my spare key, discovered that the car wouldn't start, promptly went off to look for someone with jumper cables, carefully locking both the regular keys and the spare key in the car and having to call AAA.

None of these are very conducive to wanting to cook dinner. There has been much take-out. Any cooking has been done while whimpering softly.

I will return with food soon though, I promise. In fact, last night there was a pasta dish with eggplant, that I cooked and ate, which may come as a shock to those of you who know my feelings on eggplant.

I'm also planning a new once a month feature where I show you something from my kitchen that I love.

So stay tuned.

Cantaloupe and Peach Soup

My first thought as I was pureeing the heck out of this was, wow, this is exactly what I would want to eat if my jaw were wired shut. Granted, I have never had my jaw wired shut, but I do know not one but two people who have suffered this fate. One had her jaw deliberately broken to treat recurring pain from TMJ and the other, a drunken hockey player, fell out of his bunk bed. If I recall correctly, neither could eat solid food for quite some time. This is so light and sweet and refreshing it would brighten up anyone's day (even those of us with fully functioning jaws). I can picture packing a thermos of it for a picnic of cheeses and baguettes, or serving it as a light appetizer before a summer dinner. We served up bowls of it with dollops of vanilla yogurt for dessert. The yogurt is so creamy and silky mixed in with the peach and cantaloupe.
CANTALOUPE AND PEACH SOUP
from Enchanted Broccoli Forest
Necessary equipment: food processor or blender, an immersion blender will not work (in my case this meant blending one cup at a time in my trusty mini-prep. I really thought I was going to burn out its little motor).

INGREDIENTS:
1 cantaloupe (about 5 inches diameter)
4-6 peaches, very ripe
6 T fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 T honey
1 C freshly squeezed orange juice
dash of nutmeg
1/4 t cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:
Peel and slice all the peaches, removing the pits. Place them in a pot with the lemon juice, honey and spices. Bring it to a boil and then lower to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes.Remove the rind and cut the cantaloupe into 1 inch pieces. Add the cantaloupe and orange juice to the peach mixture and then use your blender or food processor to puree the mixture until very smooth. Refrigerate until very cool and serve.