Chicken Divan - my way

Ok, there are a few casserole dishes that are my standard go-to dishes for company, to take, or just to use up whatever is in my fridge.  For this reason, there are two things that are always in my cupboard, at all times, guaranteed.

Before I confess, I will say I hate (seriously hate hate hate) canned soups and in particular that mushroom soup pap.  The two things I always have in my cupboard is two cans of Campbell's cream of chicken soup.  Not diet soup or sodium free or healthy or fat free just regular, straight old, cream of chicken soup and frankly, the few cents extra for Campbell's makes it worth it, as much as I hate to admit it, it's better.

THAT being said, let's make us some fake chicken divan!! 

Get some leftover cooked chicken, as much as you'd like that will cover the bottom of a 9x13 dish.  I usually save 1/2 of my roasted chickens and shred it to make one giant dishful.  You also need one small bag of frozen broccoli, either florets, small pieces or whole, your choice.  I prefer to use fresh of course but the frozen works fine and we are cheating all the way around on this recipe so go for the frozen bag next time you're in the freezer section.  At my HEB it's $1.29 I think so it's a cheap investment to keep in the freezer.  You do have to have broccoli here, I've tried other vegetables and they just don't work.  

MY FAKE CHICKEN DIVAN

You'll need :

About 1/2 cooked chicken or 2 cups cooked
15 oz bag frozen broccoli
tube ritz crackers
about 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

In a 9x13, buttered, dish, spread the frozen broccoli, breaking up any giant chunks that are stuck together.

Cover the broccoli with the cooked chicken either shredded or cut into chunks. 

In a large bowl, combine: 

2 cans cream of chicken soup

1 can water

1 cup mayonnaise

1 Tbsp curry powder

zest and juice of 1 lemon

salt, pepper

Stir and taste!!  depending on your curry powder and lemon you may need to adjust up.  The sauce should be tart yet have a depth from the curry.  

Spread the sauce over the chicken. 

Grate cheddar cheese in a light layer over the sauce.

Crush 1 tube of Ritz crackers, toss them with a little melted butter or olive oil and cover the cheese. 

Bake at 375 about 45 minutes or until it's bronzed, bubbly and you can smell dinner! 

Serve with steamed basmati.  This is one of my favorite 'fake' dishes and I make it often!  I hope you enjoy it!! 

Before it went into the oven and when it came out.  The bubbly crunchy bits around the end are the absolute best ;)

  

 

Scoop it out and serve it on mountains of steamed rice.
  


Make this, often.

/enjoy

Roast Chicken

This is my 1 hour chicken.  Ok, it takes longer than an hour but if I call it 1 hour chicken it feels faster. 

I always cook two of them when I do this.  There is nothing wrong with a "spare" cooked chicken.  I have plans for it in the week since these are only about 4 lb birds, an entire bird generally is inhaled on roast chicken night.  Although I HAVE made a full dinner of leftovers from the bones, one thigh and one wing which always seems be left, I prefer the luxury of a full bird!

HEB had whole roasters on sale for .85/lb so both of these only cost me $7 and we'll eat for a week.  Not a bad deal at all.


My "recipe" is as follows:

Dry the chickens, plunk their innards in a pot with some fat and fry them dark brown, cover them in water, a piece of celery, a piece of carrot and salt and pepper and set it off to simmer.  Use this stock in any gravy you make or seal it up and put it in the fridge for use later in the week.

Set the oven to 400. Season the birds with salt and pepper, sage, herbs de Provence and thyme.  Use any herb you want here, these are just my favorites.  Season them liberally inside and out, toss 1/2 a lemon inside, squeeze it too and truss them up tightly.

Put a scrape of butter on the bottom of a roasting pan and put the birds in, on their sides.  Add a large pat of butter on the top of each bird and roast for 15 minutes.
Remember to baste on each flip a few times.
After 15 minutes, flip the birds to their other sides and add another pat of butter.
After 15 minutes, flip the birds onto their breasts, butter them!.
After 15, flip them onto their backs, turn the oven to 425 and cook the birds through, maybe 20-25 minutes?  Cook them till their juices run clear or the breast is at 160 if you are a temperature taker.
Baste them frequently, they'll get crispy and buttery and crazy good.

*in total it's only 1/2 stick for 2 birds (1/4 cup) it just sounds like way more!

Take them out of the oven, put them on a dish covered loosely with foil for about 15-20 minutes.  This resting time really matters.  I cut it up with scissors, put it on a serving dish and serve it with peas, mashed potatoes and gallons of my delicious gravy.  You can also just de-grease the pan (pour all the juices in a heat proof jar or any tall vessel and shove it in the freezer for 10 minutes, the fat will rise and start to harden so you can remove it.  SAVE the fat in the freezer, sealed, for when you want to fry anything and have it taste much better) and serve it with the juice as a light sauce which is also painfully good.

It may take a little work but it's easy work and you can be preparing the vegetables and having a glass of wine in between bird flip intervals ;)  It really does make a world of difference flipping a bird around, it browns much more evenly and I think the juices are distributed and it's very very moist and fabulous.

Roast one, be happy.

  

/enjoy

Salmon Cakes and Asparagus

It's been 106+ in Austin for weeks.  And weeks.  And weeks.  As much as I love to cook, it's just too hot.  To cook anything.  Inside or outside.  I had to kill a couple of hours while Connor was in band camp so I wandered the local grocery, use their air conditioning!  They had asparagus on sale and I had a hankering.

I remembered I had left over mashed potatoes in the fridge, some romaine and a can of salmon.  Voila, dinner for 3 for nothing basically.  

I splurged and bought the asparagus.  Even though it was skinny I knew I could enhance it's "asparagus-y-ness" and have myself one heck of a feed for $1.99/bunch.  I found the biggest bunch ;) 

I made my Nana's hot water hollandaise.  It's rich and creamy and induces less guilt due to the fact the butter is reduced and boiling water is added.  I add black pepper and a smidge of tarragon to mine which makes it my own version.  I'm all about the futzing.

I don't know if it's a family recipe so I will hold off putting the recipe out here for the moment and check with the current matriarch. I made it in the blender, transferred it to a pot to thicken and moved it into a jar, sat in hot water, and it waited for me.

  

The salmon cakes are the 1 1/2 cups of left over mashed potatoes, a drained tin of salmon, one green onion, salt, pepper, 1/4 cup breadcrumbs soaked in the juice from the salmon tin.  I formed them into 9 1/3 cup balls and tossed them into the fridge until I was ready for dinner. 

I rolled them in 2 beaten eggs then into Panko breadcrumbs and fried them in peanut oil until they were brown, crispy and heated through.  

  

I drained them on paper towel quickly then put them in the pan with the cooked asparagus to keep warm.  The asparagus got a reasonable dose of salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.  I cooked it in the toaster oven!!  to avoid heating the house and they were great!!  I cooked them at 450 for 8 minutes.  They came out crisp tender with a roasty flavor and just perfect.
  

oh yummy roasty goodness.  I grated a few passes of lemon zest on them fresh out of the oven, I could have eaten nothing else.



Connor opted for the salmon cake, hollandaise, salad combo.

  

I thought the simple approach best, a couple of crispy cakes and a generous helping of the crisp tender roast asparagusy goodness.  Naw, who are we kidding, hollandaise me baby!  Yes, we all know that after the photo shoot, I slathered the hollandaise on my salmon cakes too.  Painfully good.
 

It has the illusion of health and the rich decadence of a hollandaise that's light yet flavorful!

/enjoy

Waffles

Sometimes, you just feel like waffles.  Real waffles.  I think those boxes of circular cardboard that you get in the freezer section are revolting.  They should have some warning on them stating they don't actually taste like waffles, but that's just me.

I have an old Betty Crocker cookbook that my mother gave me hundreds of years ago and I cook from it still.  There is a really basic, delicious, waffle recipe in there that I use as a base.  I add vanilla and cut the sugar a little bit, I also tweaked the procedure but it's still simple, basic, delicious and something you should make. 

I "found" my waffle maker a couple of months ago during a massive "what the hell is at the bottom of this closet anyway?!?!" purge and was delighted!  It heats really evenly and gives a nice range of done-ness.  I like my waffles crispy on the outside and soft on the inside so I bake them at 4.5.  I turn it on before all else so it waits for me until it holds my waffles hostage and makes me wait for the green bling announcing my joy is forthcoming!

If you need to go off and make some immediately, here's the recipe.  For the rest, take the photo tour below...it's so worth it ;)

WAFFLES

2 eggs
1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup melted butter (you can half with oil)
2 cups a/p flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

Whip the eggs and sugar until VERY thick and fluffy. Add dry ingredients, milk and vanilla, mix until just blended.  Add the melted butter in a stream while you whip on high, quickly, until very thick without any lumps of flour.

Cook in waffle iron.  Eat, repeat.



Here's the rest of the tour:

Put the eggs and sugar in the mixer and beat like crazy.  We want very very pale and very very thick here. I also was feeling chef-y this morning so I properly measured out my flour, baking powder and salt; the milk and the melted butter.
  

This is the color of the eggs and sugar, it's just shy of being able to ribbon on itself.  Add the milk, and flour alternatively rather quickly, add a splash of vanilla and drizzle and melted butter in.  Look how thick this batter is, it's exactly what you want!
  

My waffle iron is pretty well used but I still spray the first time when it's hot.  Put a thick ladleful on each square and shut the lid.  Wait, wait, wait.  Mine takes about 3 minutes but really, it's an eternity.
  

Red light...wait wait wait.....GREEN LIGHT...EAT EAT EAT!

 

Oh look at these babies.  This recipe makes 10 decent waffles.  They are crispy on the outside and tender and yummy on the inside.  I keep them on a rack on a sheet pan in the oven to keep them warm and crispy while you make them all.  Connor tends to steal them as they come off the iron.  I have them laid out on a rack now cooling.  These things freeze beautifully.  I freeze them individually so Connor can grab as many as he wants, throw them in the toaster oven and have a real toasted waffle for breakfast or lunch or a snack.

 

Ok, that's the waffle story. This is the P.S.

My mother and I were skyping this morning. Sometimes we talk about food.  Oh wait, we ALWAYS talk about food.  It's our thing.  I think I judge the happiness of us and of our relationship based on what the food topic d'jour may be.  Crispy loaves of french bread spread with soft cold butter, soft savory meat pies with mashed potatoes, 1857 Mrs. Beeton sausages, egg and chips from her youth; it speaks volumes and I think it's our food that keeps us grounded.  Anyway, I digress, we are here to talk about waffles and that's precisely what we were chatting about.  We talked about mixing flavor and ingredients into a base batter and wondered if the iron would be too hot for a "sprinkled" add in.  Well, never one to sky away from a science experiment, I ventured bravely into waffle battle sprinkle land.

I have bananas and I have pecans.  Yeah, this is the way to go, sprinkle on the batter, cook, top with fresh bananas and pecans and some Canadian maple syrup.  You don't even want to know how delicious this is.

I sprinkled the batter with a generous helping of chopped banana and some pecans, closed the lid and waited.  The bananas cooked into the batter and the pecans got lightly toasted.  All good.  Nothing burned, nothing scorched and they were perfect for my waiting addition of a couple more slices and a few more nuts.
 

Sure, it's beautiful but we need syrup!
 

Sometimes...I shouldn't be allowed in a kitchen.  This ranks with one of the best things I've ever made.  Hot, crispy, tender, sweet, savory, ab-so-lutely perfection.


I'm going to need a moment alone here.  Make these, let me know how delicious you think they are too.

/enjoy

Apple Cobbler

One of my favorite ways to spend time is sitting with grand ladies of Texas and listening intently while they tell me about the food their mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers cooked, 'back in the day'.  I had just such an opportunity last week.  Ms. MaryJo sat under a large Live Oak tree with an enormous straw hat that she'd embellished with hundreds of brightly colored ribbon twists and told me stories.  She talked about killing snakes by shooting their heads off, by chopping 'vermin' up with a hoe and she talked about the food.

One of the things she told me to make was a "real cobbler".  I can't imagine arguing with Ms. MaryJo so I didn't, I dutifully typed out (on my iphone) the directions as given and this is the result.  Yes, it's ridiculously good, easy and I'm going to make it all the time.  This is apple but the same day I made a peach and my mother made a raspberry/blackberry.  It turns out perfect each time and it's old fashioned, pure and ab-so-lutely delicious!!! 

The "recipe" is below the beauty shots.

Heat oven and take a stick of butter or margarine or both (this is half and half) and put it in your pyrex dish.  Shove it in the oven to melt it.

Meantime, heat about 2 cups of some sort of fruit.  If it's fresh, cook it down in a saucepan a little bit with some water and flour.  If it's in a can, just heat it up.  I heated up a can of unsweetened pie filling to which I added a little cinnamon, a squirt of lemon to freshen it, some water and a little flour.  I nuked it. In another bowl, mix the batter.

  

When the butter is melted, pour in the fruit and sort of flatten it out a bit but don't mess with it too much.
  

Pour the batter into the middle of the hot fruit, hot butter/margarine.  Do not mix!  "You can run your knife through to do a figure 8 once or twice but don't mess it around"
  

Bake it 30 minutes then sprinkle it with some cinnamon and sugar then let it cook another 15 or so, until it's bubbly and beautiful.  *I think this is pretty beautiful.
  

She said let it sit a bit then eat it.  So I let it sit, then we ate it.
  

I added a little cream. See how it's thick like a super moist cake with the fruit in layers through it.  Oh my goodness it was so crazy crazy good.  The sprinkle of sugar cinnamon added a really lovely crunch.
  

Connor added cream out of a can.

Apple (fruit) Cobbler ala Ms. MaryJo

Heat oven to 375

1 stick butter or margarine

2 1/2 cups hot fruit for filling with a little (4 Tbsp) flour mixed in

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup milk

sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle

1 stick of butter or margarine (1/2 cup) melted in 9" round or square pan

Add hot fruit to melted butter and spread out gently, don't mix in! 

Mix flour, sugar and milk in separate bowl and pour into the middle of the hot fruit.  Gently run knife through in figure "8" pattern to distribute if you'd like, you can do it without doing the cutting in.

Bake in 375 oven for 30 minutes, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake another 15-20 minutes until it's bubbly and brown and you just can't stand it anymore. 

Let rest a few minutes before you devour it.  

/enjoy!