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White chili: nothing seasonally appropriate here!

September 2, 2010 By 3 Comments

You know, I really had the best of intentions this summer. I was going to cook with seasonally appropriate ingredients and the blog was going to full of luscious fruit crumbles, delicately flavored salads, and other things that make you think “ooh, summer is full of tasty, tasty treats!” Alas, it wasn’t to be; call it laziness, call it still not having an installed stove, call it weeks upon weeks of 90+ weather. Whatever it is, I accept full responsibility for it [except the weather part, even I have my limitations].

Anyway, I’m back with something that you’ll be thanking me for two months from now when the weather drops below 70. I make my standby chili so much I could probably do it in my sleep and I can rattle off the full recipe to anyone that wants to listen. So I decided to spread my wings and leave my comfort zone by making …. WHITE CHILI. Okay, so maybe it’s really not that monumental. But it was delicious, so that’s gotta count for something.

White Chili
2 lbs boneless chicken (thigh or breast is fine)
3 15oz cans of cannellini beans, drained
4 cups chicken broth
8 oz of salsa verde
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
8 oz frozen corn

In a slow cooker, add the chicken, spices, liquid smoke and chicken broth. Let cook 6 – 8 hours, or until chicken is tender and can be easily shredded. Remove chicken from the slow cooker and shred it. Next, add in the drained beans. With an immersion blender [or regular blender, which will undoubtedly be messier] combine the beans and chicken broth until you have a smooth, creamy consistency. Add in the salsa verde, corn, and the shredded chicken. Let that cook on low for about 30 – 45 minutes to combine the flavors and bring everything back up to temperature. Serve immediately.

This has such a warm, earthy flavor to it thanks to the cinnamon and cumin. The liquid smoke adds a good depth of the flavor and the corn adds some sweetness and texture. This would be great garnished with sour cream, maybe some avocado, and definitely cheese.

Filed Under: Tex-Mex Tagged With: , , ,

Pulled BBQ Chicken Sandwiches. Mmm.

April 22, 2010 By 2 Comments

My husband is currently complaining about the movie Julie & Julia. I, too, have a few complaints about that movie, but mine are mostly related to the fact that I could have done entirely without the “Julie” segments of the movie and had the whole thing focused on the fabulous Julia Child. Her relationship with her husband, her passion for cooking and everything about her is just imbued with such joie de vivre, whereas the parts of the movie that focus on Julie are so lackluster and you can’t help but feel annoyed with her over and over again. And maybe that’s the point; although the Julie “character” [this is in quotes because I don't think the real life Julie Powell is as cute and cuddly as Amy Adams] is dull as dishwater and whiny and very “me, me, me”, I also think she’s very representative of a whole generation of people out there who equally felt adrift in life and without any passions to guide them.

I’ll admit I’ve felt that way, and I’m ashamed to also admit that I finally started this blog after I read Julie Powell’s book. It’s something I had wanted to do for a few years but never got up the gumption to do it; finally, I just did and I am pretty pleased with the results. Plus, it’s forced me to rediscover my passion of writing and it allows me to futz around with my fancy camera and hope for the best. It’s got a little of something for everyone!

But the biggest reason I’m so happy I started this blog? I probably would have missed out on some pretty awesome food. Case in point is what I made for poker this week: pulled barbecue chicken sandwiches. It’s something that’s really simple, but the combination of the home made barbecue sauce and the tender, slow cooked chicken made for one of the best poker night dinners I’ve made in a really long time. Which was certainly attested to several times as I was told over and over how good it was. The fact that some people had four sandwiches was also a tip off.

I got the sauce recipe from allrecipes.com and it was amazing. I know I use a lot of superlatives, but for real: this barbecue sauce is tangy, sweet, smoky, with just the slightest kick to it. It’s a perfect fit for so many things.

Bourbon Whiskey BBQ Sauce
1/2 onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup bourbon whiskey
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon salt
2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/3 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons liquid smoke flavoring
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 teaspoon hot pepper sauce, or to taste

In a large pan over medium-high heat, add the onion, garlic and whiskey. Bring to a simmer and let cook for about 8 – 10 minutes or until onion is translucent. Mix in remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer about 25 – 30 minutes or until thickened. This makes about 4 cups.

Now, the original instructions say that you can strain the sauce before letting it cool and sit overnight. I, however, was in no mood for that and used my immersion blender on it. The onions were perfectly blended into the sauce and it actually thickened it up enough that next time I’d probably cut back on the tomato paste. Because oh yes, there will be a next time.

I let the sauce sit overnight, and then the next day I put 2.5lbs of frozen chicken breasts into the slow cooker along with all of the barbecue sauce and set it to cook on low for 8 hours. When I came home, the whole apartment [and everything in it, including our cat Paul] smelled like the barbecue sauce. And then? THIS:

A pulled barbecue chicken sandwich. The stuff dreams are made of, if your dreams are filled with juicy, shredded meat with just the right amount of sauce that tantalizingly lingers on your taste buds. Yeah, seriously, it’s that good.

Filed Under: meat, poker food Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Hot & Sour Soup … for the SOUL.

September 14, 2009 By 30 Comments

Why is it that only chicken soup is for your soul? I mean, this hot and sour soup is ten times better than any chicken soup I’ve had in recent memory. It’s got a great heat and tang to it, and it’s so warm and comforting. Plus, I made it when I was sick [I hate you, New England weather] two weeks ago and it cleared my sinuses like whoa.

Only a picture of the finished product, because I swear, there’s only so many diced/sliced/chopped vegetable pictures I can show you before I start feeling silly. Plus, as it turns out, bamboo shoots don’t photograph that well.

I only discovered my love of hot and sour about five or six years ago, when the husband took me to The Island Hopper when we were first dating and I was in the city visiting him. It was so good – velvety in a way that chicken noodle soup only wishes it was, ten thousand times more flavorful, and again with the sinus clearing. [Sorry, but it's true!]

The soup is also ridiculously easy to make and can easily be made on the stove top or in a slow cooker. The first time I made it was in the slow cooker, but last time was just a quick 45 minutes on the stove top.

Also, this is in no way a traditional hot and sour soup; it, like everything else I make, is a bastardized version of the original. The recipe has most of the traditional components, but isn’t quite the same.

Hot & Sour Soup:

4 cups chicken broth
1/2 pound of chicken, poached, then shredded
1/2 package of button mushrooms, sliced
1 small can bamboo shoots, soaked in cold water for 10 minutes to reduce bitterness, then cut into thin strips
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 – 2 teaspoons chili paste
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons fish sauce

Everything goes into the pot at once and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. I wish I had complicated instructions, but I got nothin’. Now, the first time I made this soup, I used 1 teaspoon chili paste, and I thought it could have used more heat. With 2 teaspoons, the heat was nearly all you got when you first tasted the soup, so maybe start with 1.5 and go from there; for me, the 2 teaspoons was perfect, but the husband thought it was too hot and had to add more vinegar to his to balance it out. The fish sauce really adds a nice depth of flavor, plus it got it closer to the color I’m used to seeing in restaurant hot and sour soup.

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Filed Under: vegetables Tagged With: , , , ,

Jambalaya is fun to say and eat!

August 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Man, what is it about certain foods? That no matter what you do with them, they’re just not pretty. Jambalaya is one of those foods; I’m not even sure why, really – you’d think with the chunks of tasty meat, the way the rice takes on the color of the cooking liquid and how it becomes all glossy and fat, it’d be something nice to look at. But it’s not. And why am I going on about this? Because I’m not going to force you to look at lots of pictures of unattractive food. You’ll get the necessary pictures and that’s it.

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In my quest to stop making so much damn Mexican food for poker, I looked online for a good slow cooker recipe. As previously mentioned, my kitchen is like the seventh circle of hell in the summer, so I really do prefer not to use the stove on poker night when there are 12 people in my apartment. I finally came across a few recipes for jambalaya, but none of them seemed exactly what I wanted. I also realized that jambalaya is pretty much just a bunch of tomatoes, meat, and spices – even I can’t mess that up. So I went with what I figured would work out best, and as it turns out, I WAS RIGHT. This was so good.

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You know what I don’t like about slow cookers? Is that they inevitably [or at least for me] create a ring of goo on the top, wherever the food you’re cooking doesn’t touch. Why does it do that? Is it just to mock me and my food blogging? Is it secretly laughing at me as I try to get a picture that doesn’t have its ring of shame prominently featured? Ugh. Screw you, slow cooker. If you weren’t so helpful, you’d be sitting somewhere with the husband’s griddle.

But I digress.

The recipe I came up with went something like this:

1.25 pounds chicken thighs, diced
1 pound chicken breast, whole [frozen!]
1 pound sausage [you can use andouille or any other hot sausage]
1 onion, diced
2 cans of diced tomatoes, 28 oz each
2 cups chicken broth
4 teaspoons Cajun seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1 box of instant rice

Throw everything except the rice into the slow cooker. Mix. Cook on low for 8 hours. Come home, dig out the chicken breast and shred it, then toss it back into the slow cooker. Mix some more. Throw box of instant rice into mixture and continue cooking with the lid off. Once all the liquid is absorbed, the jambalaya is ready.

Now, some of you may be saying, “but Michelle! Why should the chicken breast be frozen? You make no sense!” And while part of that is true, I’ve realized that my biggest problem with the slow cooker is that [boneless] chicken breasts tend to taste … not so great when cooked for long periods of time. I thought I’d try throwing full, frozen breasts in there and see how that turned out. It actually worked really well, as the chicken was tender, but not mushy, and had a good taste to it still.

Overall, I was really happy with how the jambalaya turned out; it had some good heat to it and was really comforting and filling. Everyone seemed to really like it, and even though I had a billion gallons of food in the slow cooker, it was literally scraped dry by the end of the night.

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Filed Under: Grains & Rice Tagged With: , , , ,