Argh

You know what really falls by the wayside when you have a week long stomach virus? Food blogging.

I'm still down for the count, but rest assured, I've got some great stuff saved up for you, including turkey chili, homemade oreos, mini egg brownies and more. Don't hold your breath, folks! I'll be back soon.

Before winter ends

I have been scared of this post for months. It is long and complicated and I have a bunch of pictures. But as the weather warms up (finally! I hate winter. Except for the holiday bits), I realize that soon this post will become ridiculous as this is a cold weather dish that would be totally overwhelming in the summer. So there goes nothing: Chicken and Dumplings.

This is a bit of a weird choice for a nice Jewish girl from California to make. It's one of those classic Southern dishes that I literally have no experience with. But as I flipped through the Smitten Kitchen website (totally obsessed. Love her!), this dish popped up over and over again. I could make this, I thought. And so I did. Several times.

The first time I made this dish was for my friends Elana and Katie - a fellow California hippie and a Yankee from Massachusetts. They didn't know what to make of this either, but it was below 20 degrees and January, so they warmed up to it fast.

Chicken and Dumplings adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Smitten Kitchen warns you not to use fat free or low fat milk in this recipe. I couldn't agree more.

Stew
5 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
Table salt and ground black pepper
4 teaspoons vegetable oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick)
2 medium leeks , white and llight green parts only, cut in half lengthwise and then into 1-inch pieces
1 large onion, minced
6 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup dry sherry
4 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme leaves
2 bay leaves
1 cup frozen green peas
3 tablespoons minced fresh tarragon leaves

Dumplings
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
1 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons reserved chicken fat (or unsalted butter)

For the stew: Pat the chicken dry with paper towels, then season with salt and pepper. Heat 2 teaspoons of the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until just smoking. Add half of the chicken and cook until golden on both sides, about 10 minutes. Here it is on one side...


And then the other.


Transfer the chicken to a plate and remove the browned skin (I have made this a few times now and just noticed this step. Whoops! I always just removed the skin later. It worked fine). Pour off the chicken fat and reserve (use this later to make the dumplings!). Return the pot to medium-high heat and repeat with the remaining 2 teaspoons oil and the remaining chicken. Pour off and reserve any chicken fat. It took me way more than two batches to cook the chicken. But that's okay! You don't want to crowd the chicken or it won't brown right.

Add the butter to the Dutch oven and melt over medium-high heat. Add the leeks, onion, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.


Cook until softened, about 7 minutes. Stir in the flour. Whisk in the sherry, scraping up any browned bits. Stir in the broth, milk, thyme, and bay leaves.


Nestle the chicken, with any accumulated juices, into the pot. Cover and simmer until the chicken is fully cooked and tender, about 1 hour.

Look at my beautiful Le Creuset. I'm not bragging or anything. Okay, maybe I am. But I love it so much.


Normally I don't make a lot of stuff that has to sit for this long. But man, it was worth it.


Transfer the chicken to a cutting board.


Yum, chicken. Discard the bay leaves. Allow the sauce to settle for a few minutes, then skim the fat from the surface using a wide spoon. Shred the chicken, discarding the bones (and skin if you haven't already). Try not to burn your fingers. Use a fork or something. Return it to the stew.

For the dumplings: Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Microwave the milk and fat in a microwave-safe bowl on high until just warm (do not over-heat), about 1 minute. Stir the warmed milk mixture into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon until incorporated and smooth.


Return the stew to a simmer, stir in the peas and tarragon (I never used tarragon because I never had any. I just added some dried basil instead), and season with salt and pepper. Using a soup spoon, drop golf-ball-sized dumplings over the top of the stew, about 1/4 inch apart (you should have about 18 dumplings).

Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook until the dumplings have doubled in size, 15 to 18 minutes. The dumplings taste like biscuits. It was super tasty.


This is a great dish to take to your friends who just had a baby. It sticks to your ribs and it's so filling. It will make a Southern afficiando out of girls who have never been below the Mason Dixon line.

Channelling the obsession

If you know me, you know that I am pretty much obsessed with Cadbury Mini-Eggs (I blogged about it here last year ). It's such a well known problem that this year, I had not one, not two, but THREE separate friends who texted me photos when they spotted the first mini-eggs of the season this year. I feel like some sort of deranged chocolate guru.

To try and stop myself from eating a full bag of candy in one sitting, I channelled my chocolate obsession into another more productive obsession: Baking.

Here for your holiday enjoyment (you know how much I love themed food) are my first batch of Cadbury Mini Egg cookies. These are by no means the be-all-end-all recipe that I will come up with. But it's a start.

1 stick butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbs milk
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
as much of a 10oz bag of mini eggs as you have left over....I ate some. Whoops. Then I wacked the rest into tiny bits to work out my aggression/make the mini eggs into a good cookie bite size. Six of one....

First I just made my basic chocolate chip cookie dough - melt the butter, mix in the sugar, then the egg, vanilla and milk (you could cream the butter and sugar together - but I'm super lazy. Plus, I've been doing it for years now and I like the texture). Then slowly mix in the dry ingredients (I mix in 1/2 cup of flour at a time).

Now here comes the best part.....


Are you ready.....?


BAM!


Yeah, that's good stuff.

Um, you should probably mix the eggs into the batter now. Otherwise, you'll just eat them all. Or I will.

Scoop out the dough in cookie size increments (whatever that means to you) and bake at 350 degrees for ten minutes.


Not only do they taste good, the colors are so pretty and spring-y. Now if only it wasn't still winter.

Not for the health conscious

A few weeks ago, back when the Super Bowl was happening, I thought to myself, "Amazing! What a perfect opportunity to make the Pioneer Woman's Bacon Jalapeno Thingies!" And I bought all the ingredients and psyched up my friends.

Cut to the morning of the Super Bowl, when I am kidnapped by my husband and put on an early morning train to Washington DC and forced to watch the Caps/Penguins game (it was an awesome game. But still). So the Bacon Jalapeno Thingies were never made.

A few weeks later, it was the USA/Canada Olympic hockey game (not the gold medal one) and my hockey league was meeting at a bar to watch and yell and drink beer and stuff. This seemed pretty similar to the whole Super Bowl thing, so I decided to make the Thingies and bring them.

The Pioneer Woman's Bacon Jalapeno Thingies

Jalapenos (as many as you think you may need)
Cheddar Cheese (I used Cracker Barrel's 2% milk kind - no need for the fancy stuff here), grated
Cream Cheese (I used 1/3 less fat kind)
a few green onions, chopped
bacon!

Ok, this is super easy. Put the cream cheese, cheddar and green onions in a bowl.


Mix them up!


Slice all the jalapenos in half and scrape out the seeds and ribs with a spoon.


I'm in front of my computer watching TheWB.com. Don't judge.

Be careful when you touch the insides of jalapenos because they will make your fingers burn. Then if you touch your eye (or wherever), that part of your body burns.....So wear some gloves, or just wash your hands a lot.

Fill the jalapenos with the cheese mixture.


Wrap the cheese stuffed jalapeno with a piece of bacon (you will probably cut a piece of bacon in 1/2 or 1/3 for this, depending on how long your bacon is). Secure it with a toothpick.


You're going to put a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet and place all the jalapenos on it to bake. This way the bacon fat will drip below and not get everything all gross.

Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes. You want the bacon to look kinda browned. The Pioneer Woman advises you to just throw them under the broiler for a few minutes if that's not happening.


Take to a group of sports fans and hope that they like them.

Purim!

So this weekend was the Jewish holiday of Purim. I've had a hamantaschen recipe (the traditional Purim cookie) earmarked for some time now, but when it came to the day, Zack forgot to get eggs from the grocery store and I didn't get to start these until the holiday was essentially over. But cookies are good anytime, so I forged ahead.

Purim, for those of you not in the know, is the holiday where the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from extermination. The villain, Hamen, wanted to exterminate the Jews, but they were saved by Esther (she spoke to the King on behalf of the Jewish people) and today, everyone celebrates by dressing up and sending out gifts of food. Some people like to call it the Jewish Halloween. The cookies symbolize Hamen's pockets, or ears, or his hat, depending on who you ask.

(Ironically, the first place I read about Purim was in a children's book at my friend Alison Criss's house - my only Christian friend in elementary school - but that's neither here nor there)

At any rate, I wanted to make some cookies. And so I did.

Hamentaschen (adapted from Smitten Kitchen - my current obsession)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
3 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon orange zest (I used Meyer Lemon zest - it was great)
1 1/3 cups plus 4 teaspoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Jam, pie fillings, what have you. I used the Kahn family blueberry jam (amazing!), strawberry jam (from Smuckers. Substandard) and homemade poppy seed filling (because I am an overacheiver). Get the recipe I used here.

Cream butter and cream cheese together until smooth (I still haven't set up my stand mixer, so I used a wooden spoon.


Power to the old fashioned cooking methods!). Add sugar and mix for one minute longer, then egg, vanilla extract, orange (or lemon) zest and salt, mixing until combined.


Finally, add the flour. I added it 1/3 cup at a time and that seemed to work very well.

Form dough into a disc, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour.


I was out of plastic wrap, so I used a ziploc bag. Then I left it over night in the fridge because at this point, it was almost 10pm.

Okay, now it's Tuesday. I had to wake up early and meet with a mortgage banker and wear nice "I'm such a responsible grown up don't you want to lend me hundreds of thousands of dollars" clothes. I'm ready for some damn cookies. Preheat oven to 350°F. Realize your oven didn't turn on, go back to the stove and kick it.

To form the hamantaschen, roll out the dough on a well-floured surface until it is about 1/4-inch thick.


Using a round cookie cutter (or a biscuit cutter! I have fancy biscuit cutters now from Miyoko. Yay for getting married and people giving me kitchen stuff!), cut the dough into circles.


Spoon a teaspoon of you filling of choice in the center.


Fold the dough in from three sides and firmly crimp the corners and give them a little twist to ensure they stay closed. Leave the filling mostly open in the center.


Bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes.


My cookies turned out fairly misshapen. But you know what? They tasted good. The dough was really flaky and the homemade jam was a great filling. Like all Jewish cookies, they taste best warm.

Happy Purim!

For my dad

So, I made this last week when I was on a health kick but I didn't post it because my dad was on vacation and I couldn't bear the idea of him missing the healthy vegetarian meal I made and coming back to pictures of steak or chicken and dumplings or something.

My dad and I were talking on the phone the other day, and he was telling me about how he cooked up some red quinoa.


Quinoa is one of those super healthy grains that has protein and fiber and stuff that makes vegans sing songs about how eating meat is evil and killing the planet and stuff. I don't know from that, but I know it makes good alternative spaghetti! I figured I'd give it a try.

I saw this recipe online and I had all the ingredients on hand except feta cheese. I gave it a try but I don't really recommend making it without the cheese (unless you're my dad - in that case, go ahead).

Quinoa with Sundried Tomatoes and Feta

1 teaspoon olive oil
8 sundried tomatoes, chopped
2 minced shallots
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cup vegetable broth (or any broth), or water
1 cup dry quinoa
Pinch cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh ground black pepper
Feta cheese, as much as you'd like

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and add the tomatoes, shallots and garlic and sauté for 3-5 minutes until the shallots are soft.


Add the stock and bring to a boil. Add the quinoa and cayenne pepper.


Bring back to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. The liquid should be fully absorbed. Stir in the salt, pepper, cilantro and feta(if using) and serve.


It tasted super healthy. I thought that the cayenne pepper made the broth taste kinda weird, but maybe the feta would have balanced it out.

My dad would have totally loved it! If you're into hippie vegetarian food, knock yourself out with this.

Sunday....

Like many New Yorkers, I love brunch. However, unlike many New Yorkers, I have a husband who pretty much refuses to leave the house on the weekends before 2pm on pain of death (barring some work-related crisis). To get him to wake up at a reasonable hour, shower, put clothes on and leave the house (all before eating) would be nothing short of a miracle. So how to have brunch?

Make it at home!

This morning, after flipping through the smitten kitchen website (I love love love that website), I decided to make Edna Mae's Sour Cream Pancakes (and also some bacon). I decided on this recipe for a few reasons: the total cooking time was about ten minutes, I had some sour cream in my fridge and I'm down to about 3 Tbs of butter so I can't bake anything and I've been itching (ITCHING!) to cook.

So here ya go: make your own brunch. It rocks. Plus, whoever lives in the house with you will totally love you (unless you refuse to share).


Note: I halved the recipe because I only had half a cup of sour cream and it fed Zack and me perfectly well. The full recipe is below.

7 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/ 2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream (I used reduced fat sour cream and it was totally fine)
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Butter
Maple syrup

Stir the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt together in a bowl. Add the sour cream in on top and stir it together. Whisk the eggs and vanilla in a separate bowl (normally I would just dump it all in the same bowl, but I didn't want to screw up the consistency of the batter) and stir them into the sour cream mixture. Don't overmix.

Melt about a tablespoon of butter in your skillet or griddle and pour the batter in, a scant 1/4 cup at a time. Cook for about 2 minutes on the first side, or until bubbles appear all over the surface, flipping them carefully and cooking for about a minute on the other side. Repeat with remaining batter.

Stack up about three of them and put a lot of maple syrup on top. Serve with bacon and watch your husband plotz.