Stuff to freeze!

Day 67: Recipe 15

In my continued attempt to cook regularly, I scoured through my bookmarked items to try to find the next recipe, and decided to try Chicken Puff Samosas because

(a) I've never cooked anything like this before, and
(b) The pictures on this blog are so amazing that I'd gone way too long already without trying one of her recipes

Seriously, poke through her food blog. The pictures make my mouth water just from looking at them.

Actually, I'm going to go grab a samosa from the freezer before I finish writing this, because the pictures are making me hungry.

Chicken Puff Samosas modified from here
makes about 24

6 puff pastry sheets
1 chicken fillet (about 5 oz)
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tbsp sour cream
1/2 bell pepper
1/2 chili pepper
1/2 onion
1 T oil
honey
parsley
curry powder
paprika powder
pepper
salt
egg

If you got frozen puff pastry, pull it out so it has a chance to defrost.

Mince up the bell pepper, onion, and chili. You can peel it if you want, but I didn't, and didn't really find any issues with the texture.

Cut up the chicken, and then sprinkle some salt, pepper, and curry powder, and then mix it all up. Make sure everything's well coated I under-seasoned and then ended up adding a lot more later, so go generously - especially with the curry. But if you're sensitive to spice and taste, know that you can add later.

Heat up the oil and toss the chicken in, cooking it until it's really well done. Then dump the chicken into a bowl, but don't clean out the pan, and toss in the veggies (add more oil if you need it).

Cook the veggies over medium until the onions translucent, and then add in the tomato paste and sour cream. The original recipe had pineapple & pineapple juice, but I'm not a fan of pineapple, so I did a squeeze of honey to substitute the sweetness, without having to do the pineapple taste. Mix it all up, and then let it simmer over low heat while you tend to the chicken.

Get the chicken shredded, whether that's by hand, with two forks, or just chopping it up into little bits. Toss it into the veggies, and taste to see if you need to add anything again.

Taste a second time, because it's really good.

Taste a third them, and then tell yourself that you need to stop, or else you won't have anything left to fill the puffs.

Grab a small bunch of flat leaf parsley and chop it up. Then stir it into the chicken veggie mixture.

This must be the longest recipe I've typed up yet.

Sprinkle a cutting board with flour and put the pastry sheet down, and then sprinkle it again. This was my first time dealing with this kind of dough, so know that it's fragile and can be sticky. Roll it out so that it's flatter, and then cut each piece into quarters. Put some of the filling on it and then fold it over to pinch it up. The original recipe said to fold it on the diagonal to make triangles, but I much preferred the fold-in-half-to-make-rectangles ones because there was a more even meat-to-puff ratio.

Plop them on the cookie sheet. (Delicately, so they don't fall apart!) They're not going to expand by much, so you can put them relatively close together.

Okay, so this next part is optional, but fun. To add a little color to the outside, you can crack an egg, and brush it on it. To add a little taste to the outside, sprinkle paprika on the now-wet dough. Or, if you're completely uncoordinated like I am, mix up the egg and the paprika, and then brush the mixture over the dough.

Get your oven to 400 degrees, then put them in there. Leave them there for 12 to 15 minutes, and then take them out.

Eat.

Survey Says
They were GOOD. My husband said that they're "probably some of the best samosas [he's] ever had," but I suspect he's exaggerating a bit because he doesn't want to do the dishes. I think I want to try them with a non-pufflike dough, or maybe I just need to perfect working with the dough.

We froze them after cooking because I want more non-microwave-dinner stuff in our fridge. While writing this I ate 3 that I'd defrosted and they were great.

I want to try figuring out how to make veggie ones, but in the mean time I'm going to love eating the ones we have!

I love cooking.

The Oscars

Day 52: Recipe 11

So one of my coworkers has this awesome Oscar party every year and asked people to bring a snacky-type food to share. Last year, when I wasn't trying to cook regularly, I brought 3 different dishes. This year, when I'm about 41 recipes behind where I should be, I only brought one.

Go figure.

It was a goodie, though!

Roasted Red Pepper Dip
makes around 1-2 cups?

3 red bell peppers
2 cloves garlic
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Cut up your bell peppers into slices, remove the seeds, and roast them. I did it on our George Foreman, but you can also do it under the broiler in your oven (or toaster oven, if you have one). It's done when they're soft and kinda smushy. The skin should get kind of wrinkly.

With the garlic, you have two options. For a mellower flavor, roast them briefly, and for a bit of a spicy flavor, keep them raw. Or you could roast one, and throw the other in raw.

Toss the roasted bell peppers and roasted or raw (or both!) garlic into a food processor, and process. It's never going to be smooth just because of the texture of the peppers, but it's up to you if you want chunks or not, based on what you like from your dips. Once it's pretty well blended, start adding in the olive oil, bit by bit, to help it reach the consistency that you want. Be sure to taste while you're adding, though, because if you add too much it can dilute the red pepper taste.

Then add the balsamic vinegar. Again, taste as you go, because you might want more or less depending on how much you like balsamic vinegar. I love it, so I tend to go on the heavy side.

Pour out, and serve with veggies or pita chips! Or, really, anything, because this stuff is awesome.

Survey Says

I'm probably kind of biased, but I think this stuff is amazing. My husband seems to like it too, since he's been eating it and putting it on sandwiches ever since. And my coworkers tend to like it as well, so I'm going to say it's a keeper.

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas and Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Jalapenos

Day 2: Recipes 3 & 4

You know, it's a good thing I'm getting ahead, because next week I'm in charge of January Training for 100 RAs, so I'm going to be pretty busy, and probably eating lots of pizza.

Living on a college campus at 27 is pretty weird sometimes, but one of the cool parts is that if you're friends with your coworkers, you have friends that live really nearby! Tonight my husband and I went over to a friend's apartment, where said friend and I cooked and our significant others watched TV and talked video games until dinner was ready.

Each of us had brought a recipe, but we helped each other with our recipes, so I'm going to count both. The enchilada recipe is my mother in law's, and I'd made it once about 5 years ago when my husband and I were in the early days of our relationship, but we'd since lost the recipe and didn't get it back until we were visiting his family over Christmas. It uses cream of chicken soup, and I know that some people are morally opposed to that, so fair warning. The jalapenos were completely new, and the first time I'd really worked with them, aside from just chopping some up for chili. We also had a side of mexican rice, but that came from a package.

Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada (from my mother in law)
serves 4-6

6-9 corn tortillas
1 large cream of chicken soup
large container of sour cream
1 bunch of green onions
16 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
4 chicken breasts

In a large bowl, combine the cream of chicken soup and sour cream. Mix it up well. Cook the chicken breasts and shred them up, and chop up the green onions. Shred the cheese, if you haven't already. Then line up the soup mixture, green onions, cheese, and chicken in separate bowls.

Put light layer of the sour cream mixture on the bottom of a rectangular glass plan.

This next part didn't work for me, but I'm going to include it because I think it would have softened the tortillas some. Heat up a pan of oil, about one inch deep, and saute a tortilla to soften it up. Do it quickly enough that it doesn't get crisp.

Move the tortilla to a paper towel. Then put some sour cream mix, chicken, cheese, and green onions in the tortilla. Roll the tortilla up, and put it, seam side down, in the glass pan, on top of the sour cream mixture.

Keep doing this until all are done and the pan is full. We only managed to fit 7, so there was some chicken left at this point - I just stuck it along the sides of the pan, since there was room at the top and bottom of the enchiladas.

Take the remaining sauce and pour it all over the enchiladas, then throw the rest of cheese on there, and sprinkle the green onions, too.

Stick it in the oven at 350, and cook it until it's bubbly and the cheese is melted - probably around 20-30 minutes.

Stuffed Jalapenos Wrapped in Bacon (from The "Taste of Home" Cookbook)
makes 15 jalapenos, so how many it serves really depends on how well you like them

15 large jalapenos
2 cups shredded Monterrey Jack cheese
4 ounces of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup minced cilantro
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp paprika
15 strips of bacon

Cut the stems off the jalapenos, and remove the seeds and the membranes. If you haven't worked with jalapenos before, know that you should probably get some gloves to do this with, because those buggers are hot! Make sure not to touch your eyes (or your mouth, or really anything but the jalapenos) when you've got the juices on you, because it'll burn. And when you're removing the seeds, make sure you get the ones way down at the bottom of the pepper.

Mix up the cheese, cilantro, garlic and paprika, until it's blended well and pretty smooth.

Stuff the cheese mixture into the jalapenos, and then wrap the bacon around them.

Grill them until the bacon is crisp and the filling is heated - around 4-5 minutes. Make sure you're rolling around so that the bacon gets cooked on all sides.

Eat!

Survey says...
The enchiladas totally fell apart because I failed at the whole "cooking the tortillas in oil" thing. They were really good though, and we started talking about ways to modify it, like maybe making a casserole or layered-type dish. My husband wants to try mixing chips in, because he wants to mix chips in everything. (But this time, he might have a point - I think the texture difference would be good.)

The jalapenos were crazy spicy! We think that we might not have done the seeds and membrane right, because they really were hot. However the inside was really great, and who doesn't love bacon? I'd totally try this again and do a little more research on how the prepare the actual peppers.

Overall? Definitely trying both again, and I want to figure out how to make my own cream of chicken soup and use that in the enchiladas!