Easier Than Falling Off a Log
August 22, 2010 at 5:37 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
These curry puffs are famous! They made it onto an episode of Quiet Desperation*, the Boston reality sitcom and web sensation! Well, I mean, I brought them to a party that was being filmed for it, and although I took care to stay away from cameras myself, a character tried to pass them off as his own. They are that good.
*not linked here because I know some readers prefer theirs to be a PG-13 life, and this, well… isn’t. Google it or search it on Youtube if you’re intrigued.
The recipe is from the always-inspiring Kayotic Kitchen. I only made minor changes, and they were strictly based on what I had on hand, rather than actual editorial decisions. I had phyllo left over in the freezer from the green onions in phyllo, and I’ve only got regular hot sauce and not sweet chili sauce. I don’t think the hot sauce situation made any difference – it wasn’t too spicy and wasn’t unbalanced or anything – but it would have been improved, I think, by puff pastry instead of phyllo. Partly this is because phyllo’s kind of fussy and puff pastry isn’t, partly because chicken is a sturdy type of filling and phyllo is delicate. And what can I say, I just like puff pastry better. But this was fine and everything, it worked – I just think it would have worked better the other way.
Curry Chicken Puffs
Ingredients
a bunch of phyllo dough – or puff pastry! – I used about 1 roll of phyllo
if using phyllo, a bunch of olive oil for brushing
1 chicken breast, cut up
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced (Kay grates hers; I’ve tried that but it just ends up clogging up my grater and I have to poke out the cloggy bits with a toothpick)
2 tbsp hot sauce
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp seasoning salt
5 tbsp breadcrumbs – I used the “Italian” kind because that’s what I had on hand
2 eggs
sesame seeds
salt and pepper
olive oil for cooking
Method
Preheat the oven to 400.
Grind up the chicken in the food processor.
Add in the hot sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, seasoning salt, and a few hearty cranks of pepper, and process until everything’s nicely combined.
Scoop it all into a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge while you do the next stuff.
Heat a cap of olive oil in a pan.
Saute the onion over lowish heat for about 4 minutes.
Add the garlic and continue sauteeing for another minute.
Add the curry powder and stir it through everything, then remove from the heat pretty much right away, so it doesn’t get bitter.
Get out the chicken mixture and stir the onion and garlic through it.
Stir in the breadcrumbs.
Lightly beat one of the eggs and stir that in too.
Get out the phyllo and brush each sheet with olive oil and layer a few of them. I used 3 layers, I think, or occasionally 4.
Scoop a sort of loaf shape of chicken along one edge of each square of phyllo, then roll it up around the loaf.
Repeat until you run out of filling or phyllo.
Beat the remaining egg and brush it over the phyllo rolls.
Sprinkle all the rolls with sesame seeds.
On a silpat- or parchment-lined baking sheet, bake them for 20 minutes or until just starting to brown.
Cut each roll into bite-sized pieces (I got 4 per roll).
You can eat it hot or cold – mine had to be cold, since I made them the night before, but I preferred them when they were hot.
August 8, 2010 at 11:14 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
See, this isn’t called “Cheesy Chicken Pasta,” it’s Queso Chicken Pasta. That means it’s Mexican food that had a baby with a baked pasta dish. And a delicious baby it is.
It’s from Evil Shenanigans, which are the best kind of shenanigans. I’m pretty sure the only thing I changed was that I used a chipotle pepper instead of a jalapeno (because that’s what I had on hand, and also anything smoky is more delicious than not-smoky) – that and halving it so it was suitable for two people and a bit of leftovers, rather than two people and enough leftovers for a small army.
Queso Chicken Pasta
Ingredients
enough pasta for 2 people
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 a chipotle in adobo (seeds scraped out because I’m a wuss… leave them in if you’re more B.A. than me), minced
1/4 tsp cumin
a few coriander seeds, maybe cracked under the flat of a knife blade if you can keep them from rolling long enough
1/2 tbsp flour
2/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp cream cheese – which is, helpfully, just about the amount in one of those single-serving packets you can buy
3 oz “nacho taco” shredded cheese blend
1/4 cup Ro-Tel tomatoes (I know, this is a pain – it’s about half a small can, if I remember correctly), drained
1 cup cooked chicked, shredded
Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Cook the pasta 2 minutes less than the package dictates.
Drain it and set it aside.
Spray a smallish casserole dish with cooking spray.
Get a pot and heat the oil in it over medium heat.
Throw in the onion, garlic, and chipotle and saute for 3 minutes.
Add in the cumin, coriander, and salt, and continue sauteeing for another 2 minutes.
Next, add the flour and cook, stirring, for another 3 minutes, making sure that all the flour is incorporated.
Pour the milk in, slowly, whisking the whole time, until smooth.
Simmer the mixture until thickened.
Turn off the heat (but I left it on the same element, so some residual heat is all well and good).
Whisk in the cream cheese and 2/3 of the shredded cheese, until anything of a cheese nature is melted.
Stir in the tomatoes.
Pour your pasta (remember your pasta? You had some, a long time ago) into the casserole dish.
Add the sauce and the chicken, and mix everything so that it’s all nicely coated.
Top with the remaining shredded cheese.
Bake for 20 – 30 minutes, or until bubbly and melty and glorious.
August 6, 2010 at 11:05 pm · Filed under dessert, food
So I got an ice-cream-maker attachment for my KitchenAid for Christmas. As you might imagine, using it wasn’t really on my mind for a good while. But then summer happened, and it happened in a big way. So I fired the thing up, and you wouldn’t believe it (or maybe you would, but I just expect things – especially when wielded by me – to fail) but it was perfect. Perfect! The consistency was exactly like ice cream, which sounds like a stupid syllogism because, uh, it was ice cream, what else is it supposed to be like, but I can ruin things really well! And when it involves something fussy like tempering egg yolks… I mean, the odds of failure were very high. So to have it not only work, but succeed marvelously? I don’t know if it’s my ice cream maker attachment or me or just a good luck day, but whatever it was, it struck gold this time.
So first of all it’s chocolate. And the original used milk chocolate, which I am extremely not against despite heavy food snob pressure otherwise (I suspect it’s due to trying to make their own indulgences “good for them,” while other people, you know, food plebs, just eat chocolate because they like it and can’t think beyond their taste buds – this may sound harsh but read a fancy food blog sometime! You wouldn’t believe what comes out of some people!), but I had some bittersweet chocolate hanging around and made up the balance of the amount I needed with Somerville’s own Taza Chocolate. And then the stout used was Murphy’s, obviously, because that is how we roll. And it was dark and interesting and silky and delicious. Oh… and I also just went with heavy cream throughout instead of using some in one part and using milk in another part. It wasn’t because I’m a full-fat crusader or anything, I use regular 1% in recipes all the time where it calls for whole milk or 2%, but the two behaviours stem from the same root, and that’s frugality. I’m not going to buy a whole different kind of milk just for a recipe! And I’m also not going to buy a little carton of cream and use exactly half of it when the amount of milk or milk product required by the recipe would use up the rest of it. I bought it, I’m going to use it! I’m especially not going to buy two different milk-type-things neither of which I use regularly and neither of which I will use up.
Dark Chocolate Stout Ice Cream
Ingredients
7 oz dark, bittersweet, or unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 cups heavy cream, divided
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
4 egg yolks
3/4 cup stout – if, like my husband, you think Murphy’s already tastes like a milkshake, then the choice of which brand to use is clear
1 tsp vanilla
Method
Put your chocolate pieces in a bowl with a strainer on top of it.
Mix 1 cup of the cream, the sugar, and the salt in a pot until hot and steamy (I did this over medium heat).
While that’s heating, whisk the egg yolks in a separate bowl – a nice big one, you’re going to pour the cream mixture into it in a minute.
Ok, so when the cream mixture is steaming, start pouring it into the yolks, gradually, whisking the entire time. If you think this may require an extra hand, you may be right.
Once it’s all combined, dump it back into the pot and put it back on the heat, stirring constantly with a spatula until the mixture thickens enough to coat it.
Now pour it through the strainer onto the chocolate.
Stir until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth.
Whisk in the other cup of cream, then the stout and vanilla.
Plop the bowl into an ice bath and stir until cool.
Put the bowl into the fridge (I covered mine with plastic wrap) overnight.
Then, freeze it in your ice cream machine per its instructions.
This was supposed to have a soft-serve consistency because of the alcohol, but I found that it had a normal hard ice cream consistency – creamy, not rock-solid, but not soft-serve by a long shot. Maybe it’s because of all the heavy cream I used? Anyway, this is delicious, and dark chocolate pairs so well with dark beer.
July 25, 2010 at 9:42 pm · Filed under breads, food, side dishes/appetizers
I feel that I have an excuse for my dereliction of posting lately, despite having a huge backlog of recipes and photos and whatnot – namely, that this has been Epic July: we’ve had something every weekend, and this coming week will be the only week I’m at work every day. And you’d think that this would only give me more time to post but that’s not so; whenever I’ve been not at work, it’s because we’ve been traveling to another state, or something equally time-consuming, and then I’ve had to make up missed gym days by going every night after work when I am there. And then I get home all late and anyway my point is I’ve been busy. Here’s something I made for a work party a couple of months ago.
The recipe comes from No Tea After 12, which appears to have taken this post down? Hmm. Well, the blog is still there, so go look at the rest of it, even if this post isn’t available anymore.
Parmesan Parsley Bread
Ingredients
2 1/4 tsp fast-acting yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
3/4 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
3/4 cup whole wheat flour, sifted
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup lukewarm milk
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Method
Grease an 8-inch cake pan, or a brownie pan or whatever suits you.
In a small bowl, stir the yeast into the lukewarm water and leave it to dissolve and foam up. If it doesn’t, chuck it out and start over. You don’t need to waste your time with LOSER YEAST.
While that does its thing, stir together the flours, sugar, and salt in a different bowl.
Cut the flour into it with a pastry cutter, until it resembles coarse sand.
Beat in the egg, yeast, and milk (I used the dough hook on my stand mixer, because it’s bread) until it starts coming away from the sides of the bowl.
Put it into the pan and cover with plastic wrap and a damp cloth.
Leave it for 2 hours or until doubled in size.
A little before the time is up, put your oven on to preheat to 375.
When the dough is ready, dot the top with little nuggets of butter.
Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown.
It was pretty successful at the party!
July 11, 2010 at 11:28 pm · Filed under food, meals
I don’t really have much to say about this one, partly because it was a while ago, and partly because I got 4 hours of sleep last night thanks to the worst drive home ever – an hour and a half drive turned into a 4-hour ordeal involving both getting pulled over AND a major-league flat tire, compounded by the tow truck that AAA called for us not showing up, so they had to send their own… an hour and a half later. Matt dealt with the tire situation today, and I did all our regular weekend stuff like grocery and laundry. So I don’t really have month-old chicken (not like that, though) on the brain. P.S. it’s also hot here. So all I’m going to do is post the recipe and call it a night, if that’s ok with everyone.
It’s from… errr, crap. It appears I mislabeled it. It is not from where I thought it was from, so I have no idea. I’m sorry, original owner of this recipe! I’m not trying to plagiarize! If you read this, let me know so I can put your link up here.
Oven-Roasted Mexican Chicken
Ingredients
enough chicken for 2 people – I used these little mini chicken breast parts, don’t know what they’re really called, but that’s why they look all wee
1/3 tsp hot sauce
1/3 tsp pepper
1/3 tsp salt
2/3 tsp dried oregano
2/3 tsp mustard
2/3 tbsp chili powder
2/3 tbsp worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp olive oil
juice of half a lime
2 cloves garlic, minced
Method
Whisk all ingredients except the chicken together in a bowl.
Put the chicken in a big ziploc bag and pour the marinade in as well.
Seal it up and smoosh it around until you’ve got everything nicely coated.
Put it in the fridge for anything between 1 and 24 hours.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Create a little contraption out of a baking sheet and a wire rack (I used the rack from my roasting pan standing on a regular baking sheet lined with tinfoil for easy cleanup) and arrange your chicken on the rack.
Bake for 30 – 40 minutes or until the chicken is done.
Seriously, they’re not just all shriveled up! THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THAT SIZE!
P.S., also, I just baked a tart that was a complete and utter failure. I was going to take it in to our new-office-warming party tomorrow, but I guess they’ll just have to survive without it.
July 4, 2010 at 11:09 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
I brought these to a barbeque on, um, Memorial Day weekend? Not sure. Anyway, you can tell how behind I am.
The recipe comes from Tobias Cooks. I love green onions, so this sounded pretty delicious, and while I’ve used frozen puff pastry before, I’d never used phyllo pastry. Turns out I’m better with puff pastry, but this wasn’t a disaster or anything – just a little awkward and crackly. I did have an impossible time trying to get the leftover phyllo rolled back up in its little wax paper burrito again – couldn’t fit it back into the box it came in – so there are little shards of frozen phyllo debris all over the freezer. I suppose I should really do something about that.
Green Onions in Phyllo Pastry
Ingredients
8 green onions, chopped
frozen phyllo pastry (I didn’t use the whole package)
olive oil
salt and pepper
sesame seeds
Method
Preheat the oven to 400.
Take your chopped-up green onions and toss them in a bowl with some olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Take a sheet of phyllo and brush with olive oil.
Layer a second sheet over that and brush with some more oil.
Put a scoop of the green onion mixture along one edge of the phyllo – I preferred putting it along the short edge, but I also think my phyllos were a bit misshapen since I couldn’t get them to unroll the whole way. Try both and see what works best for you.
Roll the phyllo up in a tube around the filling and try not to let it fall out the ends. Actually, the falling out was more likely to happen, for me, at the cutting stage, but who am I to tell you about your life?
Repeat the phyllo-and-rolling process until you use up the filling.
Cut the tubes into bite-sized units with a knife – careful that you don’t utterly savage them like I thought I would do more than a few times.
Brush a little more olive oil onto the top of each piece and sprinkle sesame seeds on it.
Place the pieces on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silpat.
Bake for 30 minutes.
The original recipe says that you can serve them warm or cold, but I definitely preferred the one I ate hot out of the oven. The other ones weren’t bad, but the texture is better all crispy and hot. Also, I feel like I always needed to add another layer of phyllo. This might have been because of my truncated and misshapen phyllo layers, I don’t know, but the couple of times I went ahead and added another piece, it didn’t ruin it. So if you feel like adding extra sheets, I figure go for it.
July 3, 2010 at 9:14 pm · Filed under food, meals
I have a really hard time remembering to pronounce the word “pasties” correctly when referring to food. The first syllable is “past” as in, well, past. These are not stripper attire, they are hearty portable meals! When I was eating it, I was all “Look at me, I’m a Welsh miner!”
The recipe is from Taste and Tell. Not only did I halve it to make 2, I took the good advice of that recipe when considering the size to make these little numbers – they had been enormous in the original, so I made one enormous one for Matt, and two half-ones, one for me and one for leftovers (by which I mean Matt ate it later). I think I’d like to add more seasoning the next time I make this, but the crust is excellent. It’s essentially the same as the pie crust I make, which, not to brag, but it’s awesome – except instead of fruity pie juices seeping into it, it’s got savoury meat juices seeping into it. Dreamy.
Beef and Potato Pasties
Ingredients
1/2 lb ground beef (although I bet you this would be great with chopped up hunks of steak, too)
1 medium russet potato, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1/2 tsp salt
a few good cranks of pepper
2 cups all-purpose flour
10 tbsp (1 1/4 sticks) butter, cubed – this looks like a lot but you are essentially making 2 pie crusts, and 5 tbsp per crust isn’t that much, and if you’re only eating a small pasty, you’re having half that. So relax, cowpoke.
Method
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix beef, potato, onion, salt, and pepper together in a bowl.
In another bowl, combine the flour, salt, and butter with a pastry cutter, until it’s more or less at the coveted “coarse meal” stage. Bonus: one really buff arm.
Pour in 1/3 cup ice water (or at least really cold water, ok, it’s not like I’m going to come to your house and check) and combine until you get a doughball.
Separate the doughball into however many pasties you’re going to make; I made one large and two small, but your mileage may vary.
Flatten each separated piece of dough into a disk, and throw them in the fridge for 10 minutes.
On a lightly floured piece of waxed paper or whatever you like to use, roll out each disk to be… some size. For a full-sized pasty, a Welsh-miner-sized pasty, roll it out to 10″ diameter. Or do some other size depending on your wants and needs.
Plop a loaf-shaped unit of beef-and-potato mixture into the center of each disk.
Bring the two sides of the dough together around the filling, making a seam on top, and pinch shut.
Place them on a silpat- or parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until golden brown.
June 28, 2010 at 10:51 pm · Filed under dessert, food
Made these to bring to the picnic that wasn’t, along with the potato salad. I’ve never made a flourless cookie before; I made these out of curiosity, not necessity. Matt said that they were really light, and they were. They felt like they would have floated on water. I don’t know that I’m necessarily going to make them again, though, because the texture was a little unusual – not bad or wrong, just… not quite cookie-like in some way. Maybe I’d get used to it if I ate flourless cookies more often.
They’re from The Little Red House. Hers look more substantial than mine. Mine spread out like you wouldn’t believe (see the picture at the end for proof!) and ended up quite thin. Maybe I did something wrong. It’s possible I forgot something. As I type up this recipe, I’ll keep a weather eye out for anything that doesn’t match up.
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
1 cup peanut butter – I used smooth, but I don’t see how chunky could hurt
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup oats
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Method
Preheat oven to 350.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together peanut butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
Mix in eggs until fully combined.
Add oats and baking soda and again mix until fully combined – that’s the beauty of a flourless baked good; you don’t have to worry about overmixing!
Stir in chocolate chips.
Arrange scoops of dough on a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet (not that it really matters how you arrange them, they’ll just end up covering the whole thing in the end).
Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.
See?
June 26, 2010 at 7:58 pm · Filed under food, side dishes/appetizers
A few weeks ago, a friend and I were going to meet up and go on a picnic. I made this and also some cookies (next post!), and bought some fancy bread and cheese, got grapes… and then we didn’t wind up going. So I ate this for lunch for a few days.
This is a pretty good potato salad. I love dill, and that comes out pretty strongly in this one; the balsamic vinegar also adds a nice sweetness to it. The recipe comes from Dragon’s Kitchen, which I’ve long had on my blogroll (see… just to the right there… looky). I didn’t really change much. I halved it, and I substituted the cilantro with more parsley, but that’s it. I mean, like I said, it’s a pretty good potato salad – it’s a more or less traditional one, with the mayonnaise-based sauce and the celery and all that, which is by no means a bad idea (at least if you’re me). The number one potato salad in my heart remains this one, but that’s a totally different kind of beast (and it has bacon), so I don’t think I’m cheating on either one when I praise this one.
Dill and Balsamic Vinegar Potato Salad
Ingredients
5 red potatoes, cleaned but not peeled, and cut into bite-sized pieces
2/3 cup celery, chopped, which was… a couple of ribs, I guess?
1/4 cup parsley, chopped or something – I hate chopping parsley, it’s so flat, so I just kind of tore it up and bruised it in pulling it off the stalks, and that released the flavour and bob’s your uncle.
2 tbsp dill
juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
Method
Boil the potatoes until tender (15 minutes-ish?).
Drain them and set them aside to cool to room temperature. If this means you have to eat a couple of pieces just to check, well, that’s unavoidable.
While the potatoes cool, mix all the rest of the ingredients together in the bowl you’re going to use.
Add the potatoes and mix it all together gently so as not to destroy the potatoes, but make sure everything gets nicely coated.
Store them in the fridge, but take out half an hour prior to eating. An instruction which I did not always obey, mind you.
June 20, 2010 at 10:23 pm · Filed under dessert, food
This is the other thing I brought to the barbeque to which I also brought the cucumber salad. I only got to have one, and I really, really wish I’d gotten to have more. I called them Snickers cookies because they have the same bunch of flavours as a Snickers – they aren’t those cookies with mini Snickerses in them. They’ve got peanuts, chocolate, and caramel, in the forms of crunchy peanut butter and those little Dove caramels enrobed in chocolate. And tying it all together is cookie deliciousness. I want one right now, honestly.
I got the recipe from Babble, where it is not called “Snickers Cookies.” They also did not use crunchy peanut butter, and they did not need to use the pastry flour trick because I guess they had real pastry flour hanging around. They also made a point of flattening their cookies down. I did not, and mine probably had a smaller diameter, but they looked bigger because they had more height. I didn’t want to smush them down because I didn’t want to rupture the chocolate holding the caramel! To be honest, this was happening a little bit without my help… a couple of cookies had caramel oozing out the sides.
Snickers Cookies
Ingredients
3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
4 tbsp butter, room temperature
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
either 1 2/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour, OR if you don’t have pastry flour, you can make it by replacing 1 tbsp of flour per 1/2 cup with 1 tbsp of corn starch and sifting the two together. In this case, that’s 3 and a bit tbsp flour replaced with 3 and a bit tbsp corn starch. You may recognize this as the cake flour trick. Same deal.
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Dove Caramel Promises, get a whole bag, you won’t use them all but I can’t tell you how many you’ll need
Method
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and peanut butter.
Add honey and brown sugar and continue to cream until light and smooth.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating until fully combined before adding the next egg.
Once you’re all set with the eggs, mix in the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour (including the corn starch, if you’re doing the let’s-make-this-into-pastry-flour trick), salt, and baking powder.
Slowly mix into the peanut butter mixture until just combined.
Chuck the whole bowl into the fridge for 20 minutes (the fact that the bowls of stand mixers are metal will work in your favour here, as it will chill the dough faster).
After 20 minutes, take it out and get a baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat or something, and start assembling the cookies: take one scoop of dough, put it on the sheet, put one of the chocolates on it, cover with another scoop of dough, and press the sides together to hide the caramel completely. Do this until you run out of dough.
Now throw it back into the fridge for another 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350 while the cookies hang out in the fridge.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until the edges just begin to brown.
So I’ve had this post ready to roll for about 2 weeks now, except that I couldn’t get into my site’s control panel (first because it stopped accepting my password, and then the file for the control panel was magically missing), so I couldn’t upload the photo. But now I finally can! Hooray!
And speaking of photos, I’d have really liked to have gotten a picture of a cookie with a bite taken out of it, to prove that these aren’t just thick and lumpy peanut butter cookies, and that there really are chocolate caramels in the middle, but I didn’t take my camera to the barbeque.
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