Goat Cheese-Stuffed Chicken

This meal was really flavorful and easy. This was the first time that I had worked with fresh mint. I found this recipe at MyRecipes.com. I made some changes to their recipe.

Ingredients:
4 oz goat cheese
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
2 large chicken breasts, slice each in half
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper


Start by preheating your broiler. Then, combine the goat cheese, breadcrumbs, mint, and parsley in a small bowl.



In each chicken portion, cut a slit for the pocket. Now, put the goat cheese mixture in each pocket. Roll chicken pieces up and tighten each with a toothpick. Season each piece with the kosher salt.


Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a skillet on medium heat. Now, brown the chicken on one side. Let it cook for 2 minutes.


The rest of the cooking will be completed in the oven. Please chicken portions on a baking sheet with the uncooked side down. Broil for 8 minutes. Check the chicken with your kitchen thermometer.

The chicken is served here with sauteed spinach, seasoned rice, and a glass of wine.

Super Bowl Appetizers

I know that these recipes are less exciting since the Super Bowl occurred three weeks ago, but these appetizers would still be awesome at any future function. I was a huge fan of both of these appetizers.

This Spicy Buffalo Chicken Balls appetizer is from a Martha Stewart recipe. I absolutely LOVED this recipe, and I'll be making these again in the future. They were spicy but the spice wasn't overwhelming.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
3/4 cup hot sauce
2 lb ground chicken (I had trouble finding this. Not all grocery stores carry ground chicken.)
1 cup chopped celery
1 2/3 cup breadcrumbs
2 eggs
2 teaspoons coarse salt
Blue cheese (as a dipping sauce)

Preheat the oven to 450, and grease a pan.

On low heat, add the hot sauce and butter to a saucepan. Heat and whisk this mixture until well blended.
Then, cool this mixture until room temperature. Now add the ground chicken, celery, breadcrumbs and eggs. Toss in a couple teaspoons of salt.

Now start forming the balls- just like you make beef meatballs. Place the balls on an oiled baking sheet. You want the balls to be touching on all sides. Cook for 15 minutes at 450. I pulled out my thermometer after the 15 minutes to make sure that the chicken was at a safe temperature. I get nervous about chicken. Let the balls cool for 5 minutes and then toss and coat the chicken balls with hot sauce. Blue cheese dressing can be used for dipping.I forgot to bring blue cheese dressing to my Super Bowl party, and they were just fine without the dressing. I served the chicken balls in a crock pot on warm. They are much better when served warm.

I also made Bacon and Cheese Wrapped Tater Tots with Hot Sauce. I found the recipe here. I substituted the Tobasco for some Frank's RedHot. They were super easy to make.

They were a hit. Obviously anything with bacon is awesome. I also served these in a crock pot.

Chili Blanco

This is a really flavorful chicken chili recipe. It was perfect for a Sunday afternoon.

I found a recipe in a Betty Crocker soup magazine, and a slightly modified version is below.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large white onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 cups of cubed chicken breast
1 can great northern beans (15 oz)
1 can cannellini beans (15 oz)
2 cups (16 oz) chicken broth
2 cans of chopped green chiles (4.5 oz cans)
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

This recipe gave me another opportunity to use my beautiful Dutch oven. First add oil to a dutch oven at medium heat. Toss in the chopped onions and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, and when the onions are soft, add the salt, cayenne, cumin, and cubed chicken. Stir, and brown the chicken. The chicken doesn't have to be cooked through at this point. After about 7 minutes add in the beans, broth and green chiles.

Cover and let simmer on medium-low heat for 25 minutes. At that point, check to make sure that the chicken is cooked through. Add the cheese and cilantro, and serve!

Chicken Pot Pie

I don't typically crave rich, creamy things like Chicken Pot Pie. But when I offered to cook dinner for an old friend, he had his little heart dead set on one. I searched hi and low on the interwebs for a recipe that I thought was a)easy enough for the weekday, b) satisfying enough for my tastebuds and boring enough to satisfying his. I came across Bon Appetit's February 2003 "Easy Chicken Pot Pie" version and I thought I had a winner.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner Indeed. I was simply amazed at how well it came together. Let's get at it.

Chicken Pot Pie (as I adapted from Bon Appetit:)

• 2 sheets pastry puffs (I got mine in the refrigerated section)
• Various herbs - parsley, thyme, sage, bay, oregano (I bought a "Poultry" mix from the fresh herb section- about 1/3 cup total)
• 1 shallot, diced
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 cup diced celery
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 1/2 chicken breasts, diced
• 1 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 2 medium sized potatoes - diced
• 1 1/2 cup frozen peas/carrots/corn

First, get to work, you have some chopping to do.  Enlist your handy, helpful sous chef to do things you don't like to do - like peel potatoes and cut up chicken.  In this case, it's best to have everything ready to go.

Preheat your oven to 375 and get a skillet going with some oil.  Toss in a bit of your herbs to start releasing some of their fragrence.  Sear your chicken chunks lightly on each side - about three minutes each side.  Do this in batches.  Don't over crowd your pan or you won't be able to get a sear going.  Also, make sure you're not cooking the chicken all the way through, as it's going into the oven later on anyways.  You don't want tough overcooked chicken. 

In another, deeper, skillet type pan (or dutch oven, if you're so lucky!), add your butter and the rest of your herbs and saute quickly for a minute.  Then add your celery, shallots,  and saute for approximately 5 minutes.  Your goal is to soften the celery and released the amazing herbs. 




Add in the chicken broth a bring mixture to a boil. 
Take a minute to enjoy the glass of white you've probably by now poured yourself.  You earned it.

Once boiling, reduce heat to medium low and add in chicken.  Simmer until the chicken is cooked through, maybe four or five minutes.  This really depends on how much you seared them.  I started to shred my chunks up during this process to bring them down.  Just take a fork, stab pieces and run your knife through the fork slats.  Easy.

Now here's where things got interesting.  I didn't read the recipe in its entirety before starting.  The next steps says that the chicken should be removed from the liquid mixture.  What?  Crap.  I removed with a slotted spoon and set aside.  Once the chicken is out, increase the heat to medium and allow to reduce to about 1 1/2 or 2 cups. 

This step took about 15 minutes. Which is good, because now is a great time to roll out your pie crusts and get them ready.  Place one of the crusts in the bottom of the pie pan.

Once the liquid is reduced, add your cream.  Have extra cream on hand.  I didn't have enough and I had to improvise.  Bring cream mixture to a boil and add potatoes and chicken.  Cook mixture for about 10 minutes until potatoes are soft.

Taste.  Isn't that amazing?  The shallots and the herbs are playing really nice together and the cream... wow.  After years of eating low cal, I have forgotten how amazing full fat cream is.  Yum.  Make sure to season with salt and pepper as you please.

Add the mixture to your pie pan. 












Roll the second crust out and cover your pie pan.  Make indents along the side with a fork to seal the two edges together.  Create slits in the top for the pie to breathe.





In the oven it goes!!! For 35 minutes.  By this time, it was about 9 pm.  The recipe calls this an easy pot pie, but jeez, it was actually pretty time consuming for a weeknight.
And once the crust is brown, it's time to come out.  Allow to cool for about 20 minutes.  This will let the liquid set a bit.

Delicious!

And get into it.  I clearly couldn't wait any longer.  It was pushing 10 pm at this point and I was hangry!  Because I didn't have any patience, the liquid was a bit runny. 

But the flavors... oh the flavors. 

I might have resisted the idea of chicken pot pie initially, but after this amazing, tasty, flavorful creation, I craved more chicken pot pie in the days following. 



Semi scary looking, but really amazing.



Buffalo Chicken Chili

I have been eying up buffalo chicken chili recipes for a few weeks. I printed out a few, and I plan to try making ALL of them. Here is a modified version of a recipe that I found at BettyCrocker.com. This recipe gets a thumbs up from me, and I feel like the other recipes won't be able to compare to these high standards. Also, the prep was super easy.

**Sidenote: I am typing with only my right hand because I have seriously burned my left hand on an iron skillet while making cornbread. Those ba$tards get HOT!

Ingredients:
3 chicken breasts, 1 in. cubes
1 cup of chopped onions
1 cup of chopped celery
1 cup of chopped carrots (I used some that I had flashboiled and froze.)
28 oz diced tomatoes
15 oz black beans, drained
1 cup chicken broth
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup hot sauce

Grease a crockpot. Toss in everything except the hot sauce into a crockpot. Stir.

How easy is that?!Cook for 8-10 hours on LOW.

Add the hot sauce, stir and serve with crackers!

Chicken Rotini Soup (for the soul)

Maybe Amy and I should change the name of this blog to My Kitchen, My Soup, because I think that's all that's been coming out of our kitchen's these days.  Soup is so warm and yummmy on these cool, blustery fall days, so I will chalk it up to that.  But there are worse streaks in life to be on (like fried chicken and deep dish pizza), so at least a Soup Kick is healthy... and good for your soul, obviously.  

I had some left over chicken from the BBQ pizza, so I searched high and low for a tasty chicken soup recipe.  I found this on Cooking Light and adapted it to my cooking whims, as per usual strategy.  

Chicken Rotini Soup



Nine ingredients about to become one.



• 2 cups water
• 1 (32-ounce) carton fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 cup prechopped onion
• 1/2 cup prechopped celery
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 medium carrots, chopped
• 6 ounces fusilli pasta
• 2 1/2 cups shredded skinless, boneless chicken breast
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

This is an easy one, so let's get down to the business of Chicken Soup makin'....

  

First, get out your Ginzu's and start chopping your carrots, celery and onion.   There's no need to arrange them in equal parts in a bowl like I did, but just go with it.  It was 11 pm at night and I guess I was feeling artsy.

While you're choppin' cut up a few chicken breast and toss into a pan to cook up.  Don't over cook.  No need to do anything fancy beyond a bit of salt and pepper and a dash of olive oil.

Once you've wiped away your onion tears, toss your vegetables into a sauce pan with a little bit of oil and the salt/pepper and let these bad boys soften up.  

Tender is the correct word, I beleive. 

Smells like home cooking.

Once your veggies are soft, add the broth and water and bring to a boil.  Once you're boiling, add in your pasta and cook the pasta al dente.  (About seven to nine minutes.)  Once those are in, take a taste - need more pepper?  Possibly some salt?  I needed more of each.  Plus, then I got way crazy and added some oregano.  This soup isn't supposed to be terribly over seasoned, but I did want various flavors and oregano just felt right.  As a final step, toss in the chicken to warm it up and you're set.  I let mine simmer for a while longer and then at 11:45 at night, I sat down with a bowl on my couch and watched Hell's Kitchen. 

As a secret closet bad ass, I've always wanted to order pizza at midnight and crack a bottle of champagne while watching TV in bed.  This totally wasn't the same, I get that, but I did feel like it was sort of the same concept. Right? 

ugh.  Getting older means being more practical and that is a giant suck.

Top with parsley and you're good to go. 

Roasted Chicken

Remember the offending chicken that I carried 1.5 miles home?

After such an ordeal, I was determined to prepare this chicken to perfection.  Boy, was I rewarded!  Every aching step through the Back Bay was worth the treat of Roast Chicken on a random weekday night.

Roast Chicken
Whole Roasted Chicken, size of your choosing.
Bay Leaves
Lemon
Sage
Rosemary
Garlic Cloves
3 Carrots
1/2 Onion
Salt
Pepper

Step One:  Wash your chicken.  Remove the giblets from the neck cavity and set aside.  I personally set aside in my garbage, as these innards are just too advanced for me to make anything out of.  Give the inside and outside of the chicken a good rinsing and pat dry.

Step Two:  Chop up two carrots, 1/2 an onion, a few cloves of garlic*.  You'll need some herbs to chop as well - I chose some fresh sage, some dried bay leaves, rosemary and thyme.  Use what you have on hand and mix it up.  Mix all together in a bowl and transfer into the cavity of the chicken.  You can also half a lemon and stick the lemon halves in the cavity as well.**  These are going to provide flavor to the chicken meat during the roasting process and fill your kitchen with mouth watering smells. 

Seriously, the fragrance overwhelmed my 350 square feet home... it was amazing.

Step Three:  Simple, simple.  I covered the outside of the chicken with olive oil and salt and pepper.  I went heavy on the fresh black pepper, but light on the salt.  Too much salt will dehydrate the skin and dry it out during the roasting process.  Try your chicken legs together with kitchen twine - or, use what you got.  Which for me, just so happened to be two jerry rigged twistie ties. 

Note to self, buy kitchen twine.

Step Four: Roast according to instructions on the chicken packaging.  Each chicken is different due to weight, so in order to avoid blowing up your digestive system with food poisoning, cook as instructed.  Baste with the pan juices three to four times throughout the roasting process so keep the skin moist.

My chicken took about two impatient hours.  I thought I was going pass out from all the amazing smells, so I was definitely saved by the pop up timer on this one. 



Bing!  Done!


Step Five:  Serve with your favorite sides.  I chose steamed carrots/zucchini and Toasted Coconut Basmati Rice.  Pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy.

I carved this chicken straight clean of any meat.  There was nothing left on the bones.  I am typically a white meat kind of girl, but in my carving, I sampled some of the dark meat on the underside of the chicken and I couldn't believe how amazingly moist and flavorful this section of the chicken was.  Yum.  I also started cleaning up way too fast and didn't stop to realize that I could have used the carcass to create chicken stock for soups moving forward.  I would have loved to do this, but I got ahead of myself.  Next time.

I won't lie - the next day, the leftover meat was amazing.  I could really, really taste the herbs from the cavity of the chicken - they had cleared infused the meat.  Yum-O.


* cut the ends off the garlic cloves and smash with the flat side of your chopping knife.  This opens the garlic up.
** if you use lemons in the cavity, before you half it, apply firm pressure and roll around on the countertop.  This will loosen up the juice and release more flavor into the chicken.

Curry Chicken Pot Pie

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I love curry.

This recipe was really easy and gave me an opportunity to work with puff pastry for the first time.

Here are the ingredients:

• 4 cups frozen vegetable mix, peas, carrots
• 1 to 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 1/2 cups low sodium chicken broth
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 2 tablespoons dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 2 cups cubed cooked chicken
• 1 package puff pastry

First of all, the food snob in me thinks that I'm above using frozen veggies. Now that I have made this recipe once, I feel comfortable modifying it and using fresh veggies in my next attempt at making this dish.

Start by cooking the frozen veggies in the oven with oil.
Then, combine 1 tablespoon of the butter, onion, and celery. Saute.

Add the other 2 tablespoons of butter to the celery and onion mix. Now add the curry and flour to this mixture.

Add the milk/broth mixture to the celery/onions. Whisk. Thicken it up!

Add the browned peas/carrots and cooked chicken to this mixture. Pour into a baking pan. I used a glass casserole dish.

Top with the puff pastry.
The ingredient list simply called for "1 package of puff pastry." I found puff pastry sheets with the other frozen pastry items at the grocery store. Then, as I made the recipe, I realized that I was supposed to have bought the puff pastry circles (Annoying!). That's why it looks a little goofy.

The cool thing is that the wrong sized puff pastry had no impact on the delicious flavor. The pastry was really tasty with the curry flavor.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

This is my go-to appetizer.

I usually have these ingredients in my refrigerator, and my guests always love it. You could make this recipe spicier by adding more hot sauce and some crushed red pepper. Obviously you can make it less spicy by using less hot sauce.

Ingredients:
2 cups of cooked, cubed chicken breast
8 oz of cream cheese (softened)
1/2 cup of blue cheese dressing
1/2 cup of hot sauce (I always use Frank's)
2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese


I always use Philadelphia cream cheese. I have dabbled with generic brands and reduced fat options, and I have always been able to taste a difference. Also, they don't seem to blend as well. I hate when my cream cheese isn't well blended.

I have made this recipe many times, and I have used many different options for the chicken. I have used baked, fried on the stove, and even canned. I prefer not to use canned chicken, but if I am in a time crunch, I definitely use it. I cooked the chicken on the stove this time because I didn't have a lot of time, and I didn't have any canned chicken.
Prepare yourself for the easiness?! Combine all of the ingredients and mix well. If the cream cheese isn't blending well, I sometimes get out the hand mixer. Cook for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

This is the finished texture. No photo could do this dip justice. Let it cool for about 10 minutes. I usually put this dip in a mini crock pot. This dip should be served warm. Serve with chips, crackers, or celery sticks.

Buffalo Chicken Pizza

I absolutely love spicy food. It feels like a fun challenge for me to eat the spiciest thing on the menu at restaurants, and I add hot sauce to a lot of recipes.

This Buffalo Chicken Pizza recipe did not require me to add any spice! It was pretty hot.

Now, whenever you make pizza, you could make your own crust. I have made it from scratch for other pizzas, but I was short on time for this meal. It was just easier to use a purchased crust.

Ingredients:
2 cups of chicken breast, cooked and cubed
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup of hot sauce (I always use Frank's)
8 oz bottle of blue cheese salad dressing
1 (16 inch) pizza crust
2 cups of shredded mozzarella
crushed red pepper

Combine the chicken, melted butter, hot sauce, and red pepper. Next, spread the blue cheese salad dressing on rolled out pizza crust. I love blue cheese dressing. Hot sauce and blue cheese are always a great combo.

Be careful if you shred your own cheese. I had a little accident. There goes my hand modeling career...

No cheese was contaminated in this accident.


Add the chicken mixture and shredded mozzarella.


Cook at 425 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Isn't that quick?

Finished pizza!! Doesn't that melted mozzarella look delicious?


A trick for reheating pizza-- don't use the microwave. Reheating pizza in the microwave leads to soggy pizza. To regain the crispy crust, toss the leftovers on a cookie sheet or pizza pan at 425 until is starts bubbling again.