Chicken Pot Pie

I always forget how delicious chicken pot pie is as a winter meal.  Something about the warm creamy inside against the flaky and buttery crust - it is truly a hearty indulgence.  Chicken pot pie is perhaps one of my hubby's most favorite meals.  This recipe, from Southern Living Magazine is absolutely divine.  Give it a try and you will not be disappointed!

Chicken Pot Pie
Recipe from Southern Living Magazine
Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Serves 6

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
2 medium leeks, sliced
1/2 cup flour
1 can or 14.5 oz chicken broth
3 cups cooked chicken
        Note: I like to boil chicken breast and then dice but you can easily buy a rotisserie chicken and use that to save on time.  When I cook my own I buy about 1lb chicken breast to boil and dice.
1 1/2 cups cubed frozen or refrigerated hash browns with onions
1/3 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 package frozen puff pastry thawed
1 egg
* The recipe also calls for matchstick carrots, however I am not a fan of cooked carrots so I left them out

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Melt butter in a skillet over medium to medium high heat.  Add leaks and saute until slightly soft, about 3 minutes.

leeks and butter, it will make your kitchen smell sooooo good!

Sprinkle butter and leeks with the flour and stir constantly with a whisk for about 3 minutes.  The mixture will thicken.  Be careful to keep stirring as you don't want to burn the mixture.

Whisk in chicken broth, keep stirring constantly and bring the mixture to a boil.  You want to keep going until the mixture is bubbling and has thickened quite a bit.

Whisking with chicken broth added.

Once mixture has thickened, remove from heat and add diced chicken, potatoes, parsley, salt and pepper.

Take one of the defrosted puff pastry sheets and layer on the bottom of a pie pan or 9" square pan.  Fill with the chicken mixture.

 Take the second puff pastry sheet and place on top, then fold edges over or squeeze together with the bottom layer so the mixture is sealed inside the pastry layers.

Whisk egg with one Tablespoon of water and brush over the entire top of the pastry.  This will make the top nice golden brown.

Pop in the oven and cook for 50-60 minutes or until golden brown on top.  Now, dig in and enjoy!!!

Potato Latkes

I love to make latkes for Hanukkah.  I truly believe that holidays are made better many times by the food you are eating.  And of course, who you are enjoying said food with.  Latkes are a traditional Jewish dish prepared for Hanukkah.  The latkes are potato pancakes fried in oil; typically, they are topped with sour cream or apple sauce.  I love them with both.  The key to making these fried rounds of delight are to get them crispy and crunchy on the outside and a bit softer in the middle.

One of my good friends let me in on an amazing trick - use the food processor to shred your potatoes.  I now cannot claim that latkes are too much work.  Try it, it will change your life. I actually googled how to shred potatoes with a food processor and a great little YouTube video popped up.  Watch it to see how it's done.

The delicious meal made complete with latkes!

Without further ado, the directions:

Potato Latkes
Time: 30 minutes
Makes 12 latkes

Ingredients:
2 baking potatos
1/2 yellow onion
1/2 tsp or more cracked black pepper
1/2 or more tsp salt
1 Tablespoon flour
1 large egg slightly beaten
1/4-1/2 cup vegetable oil (should be about 1/4 inch filled in pan)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 225 degrees.

Fit food processor with shredding blade.  Peel potatoes and onion.  Shred potatoes and onion in food processor.  Take potatoe/onion mixture out and squeeze out excess water over a strainer.  Let mixture stand about 10-15 minutes to drain out extra liquid.

Put potatoes in bowl and mix with salt, pepper, egg and flour.  Once mixture is combined, heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat.  I used a cast iron skillet to fry the latkes, I find that non-stick pans don't do as good of a job frying...

Once oil is hot, drop tablespoons of potatoe mixture in pan, cook about 4 minutes on each side or until brown and crispy.  Cook the latkes in batches and keep done ones warm in the preheated oven.

Serve with sour cream, applesauce or topping of your choosing! YUM!

Cheese & Olive Plate

No recipe here, but I had to share the picture... typical Sunday afternoon, the hubby and I ate a late breakfast/brunch and were not hungry for lunch.  Instead we took a trip to Whole Foods, bought way too much yummy stuff and made up the Cheese plate as a "snack".  Who needs more than chesee, crackers, hummus, salami and olive mix?! Seriously.

Quinoa Casserole

I really like making casseroles... I mean, what's better than a whole bunch of goodness baked together in a one pot dish? The other night I was searching the net in efforts to find a quinoa based casserole.  I couldn't find one! Or at least, I couldn't find one that I liked.  The pickings were limited.  So instead, I decided to create my own and it turned out pretty darn good.  I think it was even better as leftovers heated up for a warm and satisfying but healthy lunch.  Here's a first crack at what I guess I'm calling quinoa casserole.

Note: there should be cheese on top...I totally forgot the tomatoes in the cooking process and added them at the end (you'll see in other pics) it's all about improvising right?!

Quinoa Casserole
Serves 6

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked quinoa
2 cups chicken broth
1 lb chicken sausage (I used Al Fresco garlic flavor) sliced into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces
1 bag mixed frozen vegetables (I used California blend)
1/2 yellow onion chopped
1 small bag of fresh spinach
1 can diced tomatoes with basil and oregano
1/2 cup shredded mozzerella cheese
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1 egg lightly beaten

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cook quinoa according to package directions using chicken broth instead of water.

In a large saute pan, cook onion and sausage together until onion is slightly soft.  Add in frozen veggies and cook until warm.  Add spinach and dices tomatoes, you only need the spinach to wilt as it will cook down more in the oven.

In a large bowl, mix together egg 1/4 cup mozzarella and 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese.  Once quinoa is cooked and cooled add to cheese mixture and stir together.  Add cooked veggie and sausage mixture to the quinoa mixture.

Spoon mixture into 11 x 7 glass baking dish coated with cooking spray.  Top with remaining cheese.  Cover with foil and bake for 30-45 minutes or until bubbling and cheese is melted on top.  Enjoy!

Spinach & Artichocke With Chicken Over Rice

I love the combination of spinach and artichoke.  It's classic, right? Granted, my favorite pairing of the two involves lots of cheese and gooey dipping consistency eaten with Tostitos... but alas, I can't eat that for dinner or I'd be sick.  I decided instead to make a spinach and artichoke dish that could be spooned over rice.  If preferred this could easily be made into a pasta dish as well.  It was delicious people!  Without further ado, here's the recipe - a Rachel original.

Spinach & Artichoke With Chicken Over Rice
Serves 2 (if you are me and my hubby) to 4

Ingredients:
1 lb chicken breast cut into bite sized pieces
1 T Italian seasoning (or 1/2 tsp Basil, 1/2 tsp Oregano, salt & pepper)
1 T olive oil
2-3 tsp chopped garlic
1/2 cup chopped onion (red or yellow, I used red)
1-2 Tablespoons prepared pesto
1 large bag spinach
1 can artichoke hearts drained and chopped coarsely
1 can diced tomatoes (seasoned or not) undrained
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 bag Uncle Ben's instant Brown Rice

Directions:
 Heat skillet over medium-high heat.  Season chicken breast pieces with Italian Seasoning - chicken should be pretty liberally coated.  Cook chicken in pan with olive oil until done.  Remove chicken from pan and set aside.

No need to clean the pan out, just re-heat pan and add garlic, onion and pesto, cook for about 2 minutes.  Add bag of spinach and begin to wilt the leaves.  When leaves are about 1/2 way cooked add artichoke hearts, diced tomatoes and chicken broth.  Stir to combine and continue to cook until spinach is entirely wilted.  Add cooked chicken back into pan and mix together.

Voila! Serve mixture over rice, sprinkle liberally with Parmesean cheese because cheese makes everything go from yummy to SUPER yummy.  Enjoy.

Mexican Rice

I was about to order fajitas for delivery last night when I realized I had pretty much everything to make them on hand.  I try to always have a healthy supply of tortillas, cheese, sour cream and tomatoes.  I also like to have a bag of frozen bell pepper and onion mix which makes a perfect fajita filling paired with any protein you want - chicken, steak, shrimp.

I thought I would make some rice to go on the side and since I had some onion, garlic and a can of Ro-Tel on hand, added that in the mix with the rice.  Super super easy and made for a tasty rice mix to go in our fajitas. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup long grain rice
2 cups chicken stock
1 can Ro-Tel tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 tsp minced garlic

Directions:
Heat small saucepan over medium-high heat.  Add onion and garlic and saute 4-5 minutes or until soft.  Add Ro-Tel, un-cooked rice and chicken stock to pan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 25 minutes or until rice is tender.  That's it, enjoy!

Kitchen Sink Cookies

You probably wont see a whole lot of baking recipes posted, confession is I don't really like baking.  Well, not as much as I like to cook.  In baking you have to be more exact and well, I like to add a dash here and a smidgen there when I want!  That said, Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies are perhaps one of my favorite things to bake.

If you've never tried one - do it! I usually follow the recipe on the back of a Nestle Toll House package of Butterscotch Morsels.  You find them waiting to be picked up right next to the more popular chocolate chips in the baking isle.  My hubby had a brilliant idea a few weeks back that we should doctor up the regular Scotchies.  What you'll find below is the modified recipe resulting in what I call Kitchen Sink Cookies because with coconut, butterscotch, chocolate chips, walnuts and oatmeal there isn't much else you can add to this delicious cookie.  Enjoy!

Kitchen Sink Cookies

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup butter softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2-2 cups oats
1/2 an 11oz package Butterscotch morsels
1/2 an 11oz package chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2-3/4 cup shredded coconut (find it in the baking isle)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Combine four, baking soda, salt and cinamon in a bowl.  In a separate bowl beat with an electric mixture the butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla extract.  Once that is combined, gradually beat in the dry mixture.

Stir in remaining ingredients.  You'll want to do each ingredient separate which will make it easier to combine. The mixture will be very thick and chock full of yumminess!  Try mix with spoon (at least I always do).  Drop tablespoon amounts onto ungreased cookie sheets and back for about 10-12 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Cool for a few minutes and then move to wire rack to finish cooling.  Now enjoy!!!!

Rosemary & Balsamic Chicken & Vegetables

This dish is super simple and smells soooo wonderful while cooking in the oven.  I served the chicken and veggies with brown rice which I have yet to master... it takes so much longer than white rice and I just can't seem to cook it properly! Oh well, some of the simple things become the most difficult... As with a lot of vegetable recipes, you can swap out veggie ingredients to use what you have on hand - eggplant, potatoes, onions, just about anything would work here. You can also make this a vegetarian dish by skipping the chicken part and boosting the veggie count.  Without further ado, here are the pics and recipe.

Rosemary & Balsamic Chicken & Vegetables
Serves 2-4 depending on how hungry you are...
Ingredients:
1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon (more if you like) black pepper
1/2 red bell pepper sliced
1/2 green bell pepper sliced
1/3 red onion sliced
1 zuchini cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1 yellow squash cut into 1/4 inch pieces
handful of grape tomatoes left whole
1 lb chicken breast

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400.

In an 11 x 7 baking dish mix together vinegar, olive oil, rosemary, pepper flakes, garlic, salt and pepper.  Mix all vegetables in the vinegar mixture in the dish, I just tossed them in and then stirred up with a spoon, making sure all veggies are coated.

Mixed veggies pre-cook.

Spoon veggies onto a baking sheet so they are in a single layer.  Set aside.  You should still have quite a bit of marinade in the pan.  Take your chicken breast and put in pan with marinade, turning so that the chicken is coated all over.  I had two chicken breasts that I split into four so it was easier to cook and portions were more manageable (although me and hubby ate it all up anyways).

Put vegetables and chicken in preheated oven.  Cook for about 30-40 minutes or until chicken is cooked through and veggies are tender.

Cooked vegetables

Cooked chicken

Voila! Serve piece of chicken and serving of veggies over rice, couscous, pasta, quinoa, whatever grain you prefer.  Enjoy!

Oh yeah, I sprinkled Parmesan cheese on top :-)

Fish Tacos, Black Bean Salsa & Spicy Slaw

I love tacos, pretty much any kind of taco.  There's a place here in Columbia that even has brisket tacos... YUM.  This is one of my favorite taco recipes for fish tacos, here I have adapted it from Baja Fish Tacos Recipe from Cooking Light.  The best part is the only thing you have to cook is the fish so this can be ready pretty quickly and most of it like the slaw and salsa you can make ahead of time.
In the South, catfish is very abundant and easy to find at most supermarkets.  I love this recipe with catfish but realize that it might be difficult to find if you are in another part of the country.  You can try this with pretty much any firm white fish like tilapia or mahi mahi.

Here are the three recipes for the slaw, bean salsa and fish in that order.

Ta-da! My assembled taco laid flat out.

Spicy Slaw
Makes about 6 servings

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups coleslaw (I buy the packaged kind in the lettuce section)
1/4-1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup non fat plain yogurt
1/2 lime juiced
3 green onions chopped, white and green parts
salt & pepper to taste (and I add Tony Chachares)
2 small jalapenos seeded and chopped (optional for spicy)

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.  Refrigerate for several hours before eating.  You can adjust the sour cream and yogurt amounts depending on how you like the consistency of the slaw.  Please note it is SPICY with the jalapenos so adjust that accordingly as well.

spicy slaw

Often times I'll just make things right in the Tupperware because I know I'll have leftovers... someone needs to design cute Tupperware!

Black Bean Salsa
Makes about 4-5 cups

Ingredients:
1 can black beans rinsed and drained
1 can corn drained
1 large tomato chopped (I left seeds in but you can leave them out if you want)
3/4 cup chopped red onion
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon chili pepper
1/2 lime juiced
lots of salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.  Now how easy is that!

Tupperware again...

I told you I made bean and corn salsa A LOT!


Fish Tacos
Ingredients:
1-1.25 lbs fish (as mentioned, I used catfish).  You can leave the fish whole and cut after cooking or cut into bite sized pieces prior to marinade.
2 Tablespoons taco seasoning
1 lime juiced
1 Tablespoon orange juice
shredded cheese
tortillas

Directions:
Place fish in a freezer bag.  Add taco seasoning, lime juice and orange juice.  Marinate for about 1/2 hour or up to a few hours.

This time around, I decided to try to grill the fish and it was wonderful! Other times I have just cooked on the pan.  Either way, cook fish through until it's done.  If you've left the fish whole you can cut it up into pieces or let people just cut apart the pieces they want.  Assemble tacos with cheese, bean salsa and slaw.

Cooked catfish

Chickpea & Salmon Orzo

I know a recipe is a keeper when the hubby says mid chew "you should put a star next to this one", meaning, make this again.  You know, not every meal gets those high remarks - heck once I actually threw out a whole thing of soup because I couldn't even eat it... I digress, bottom line: this one was a hit! If you like dill, you will love this.  You can easily make it a vegetarian dish or side dish by leaving out the salmon, you can even leave out the salmon & orzo if making as a size dish.   The amount can also be adjusted as it's easy to scale up or down the ingredients.  Adjust to fit your needs! Without further ado, here's the recipe.  Side note: I went a little picture crazy while I was making it... you'll see what I mean below.

Finished product - delightfully yummy!

Chickpea & Salmon Orzo
Serves 4-6
Adapted from Cooking light Orzo Salad and Salmon, Asparagus & Orzo Salad

Ingredients:
1 cup orzo
1 lb salmon (you'll cut it up later so it doesn't matter if it's one large piece or small pieces)
3 large green onions chopped, green and white parts
1/3 cup red onion finely chopped
1/2 cup fresh chopped dill
4 oz or 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 1/2 lemons juiced (use more or less to taste, I used one when I made it and had to add more - see pic and note below on juicer)
1 19oz can chickpeas drained
1 Tablespoon olive oil
Salt & Pepper to taste


Directions:
Turn broiler on.

Cook orzo according to package directions.  I've read before that you shouldn't rinse pasta after draining - but I've found that orzo particularly sticks and clumps together after cooking (not sure why) so I make sure to use oil in my boiling water and rinse after draining. 

While orzo cooks, chop ingredients and combine all ingredients green onions through salt & pepper in a large bowl and set aside.  Line a baking sheet with foil, place salmon on baking sheet and season it with salt & pepper.  Broil in oven 5-10 minutes (depending on size of piece) until the fish flakes easily with a fork.

Cut salmon into bite sized pieces as best you can.  The fish flakes and breaks apart so don't worry about uniform pieces.  Add salmon and cooked orzo to bowl and toss all together, here's where you can adjust the amount of lemon, salt and pepper. That's it - now enjoy!!! I served with garlic bread which was really just hamburger buns I needed to use up :-)  Oh, and another thing - you can serve the dish warm or at room temperature.  I even like the leftovers cold the next day - but I like cold leftovers and will eat just about anything...

And now for the pics!

Green onions - because they are pretty

Beautiful piece of salmon.  It was a little over 1 lb so it took about 10 minutes to cook through the thick end.  I bought it with skin on one side and the skin came right off once cooked.

My juicer - seriously, if you don't have one, think about getting one.  Makes juicing lemons and limes super easy and you don't have to worry about the seeds (most of the time)...

Mixture without orzo or salmon which you could also serve as

 a side dish.

Cooked salmon - YUM!

Time to eat! See my burger bun garlic bread? I'm a big proponent of using what ya got :-)

Italian Stir Fry

Veggie stir fry (quinoa pic is below)

I love to make what I think of as an Italian "stir fry".  There are so many different variations you can try.  Here, I used quinoa as the grain but you could use any kind of pasta (bowtie, penne), or brown rice, anything you feel like.  For the ingredients my favorite protein to use would be chicken sausage but again you can sub out another protein.  As for the veggies, the options there are endless!  Here's the recipe for the version I made this week.

Italian Stir Fry

4 Servings

Ingredients: 

3/4 cup cooked quinoa (cooks just like rice, I used 1 3/4 cups chicken broth to cook it)

Note: see pics, I tried to show what quinoa should look like when cooked.  The outer edge basically becomes transparent.

1 cup onion chopped

2-3 cloves of chopped garlic

olive oil

1 pkg chicken sausage sliced 1/4 inch thick (I used sun dried tomato this time but you can use whatever flavor you like)

1 can diced tomatoes with oregano, basil & garlic

1 medium zuchini chopped

1/4 bag of frozen mixed vegetables

1 package sliced mushrooms

1-2 teaspoons Italian Seasoning 

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil for about two minutes in large pan.  Add zucchini, sausage, mushrooms and frozen veggies to pan.  Cook until veggies are tender and sausage is cooked or heated through (make sure to read package as to weather sausage needs full cooking or not).  Add diced tomatoes and season with Italian Seasoning and salt and pepper to taste.  Serve veggie mixture on top a scoop of quinoa, top with Parmesan cheese.... mmmmmm.

Quinoa

Chicken & White Bean Chili

Last night I set out to make a white bean chili.  The end product although very yummy, turned out to be more of a soup.  Alas, sometimes what I have in mind turns into something slightly different... This recipe was a lot like the chicken tortilla soup I made about a week ago with a slightly different kick to it.

Poblanos, onion and garlic smelt divine when cooking

To make things a lot easier on myself since I wanted to put this soup together very quickly, I bought a whole rotisserie chicken and picked all the meat off the bones and stored in a Tupperware in the fridge until ready to use.  When looking through different variations of white bean "chili", there were options to cook your own beans or buy canned.  Again in efforts to save lots of time, I opted for canned.  Without further ado, here's the recipe!

Chicken & White Bean Chili
Servers 4-6

Ingredients:
1 small onion chopped
2 poblano peppers chopped
4 tsp chopped garlic
1 Tablespoon olive oil
5 cups chicken broth (I always use less sodium kind)
1 can Ro-Tel tomatoes
1 Cup frozen corn kernals
1 can Navy beans drained
1 can Grean Northern Beans drained
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
1-2 teaspoons Chili powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (optional if you want more spice)
Salt and pepper to taste 
About 1/4 rotisserie chicken, meat pulled apart into bite-sized pieces
Chopped green onion for garnish/serving
Sour Cream for garnish/serving
Jack cheese for garnish/serving
Tortilla Chips for dipping!


Directions:
Saute onion, poblano peppers and garlic in olive oil in a large dutch oven or pot until soft.  Add remaining ingredients through chicken and bring to a simmer.  You can simmer for as long as you like or enjoy once hot.  Super easy, right?!

I know... looks like tortilla soup!