Tag: Main Dish

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Chicken New Boston

I Googled Chicken Old Boston just to see if there was a reason that this recipe was called Chicken New Boston.  Even searching for Chicken New Boston yielded nothing on the first search page.  So this recipe may be new information for everyone.

So what do we think of when we think of Boston? Some people think of sports (we try not to acknowledge those teams).  Some people have the experience of Matt Damon’s Boston or the Boston of the New Kids on the Block.  There is the Boston of baked bean fame and the Boston of the Tea Party.  Boston clam chowder.  Ivy League Colleges covered in actual ivy.  Then there is the Boston in Cheers.  Let’s talk about that Boston because we’ve been watching that on Netflix sometimes and it helps make my metaphor better.DSCN2715You know how on Cheers there are the people like Norm and Cliff?  They are that gritty side of Boston.  The working class people from working class neighborhoods.  Old Boston, if you will.  If you were to imagine dinner at their houses, you’d imagine a roast that has been simmering all day.  Maybe a nice plate of spaghetti.  Food that is practical more than pretty.  Food that will keep you going in cold weather.

And then there is Diane.  There is no way she would sully her insides with that sort of food.  She’s lofty and above it all.  She represents that other part of Boston.  The part of Boston that embraces new food and new culture.  Chicken New Boston is something that Diane may whip up in her kitchen while wearing a ruffled apron.  DSCN2716I did not wear a ruffled apron while making this dish.  I think I was barefoot…

 

Chicken New Boston is a breaded chicken in a creamy sauce with mushrooms, artichokes and sherry.  Conceptually, it’s delicious.  Realistically, I had a hard time keeping the cornflakes on the chicken.  It might just be a me thing.  The sauce was amazing (even with the cream o’soup). It’s the sort of sauce that you’d want to mop up with bread or eat on top of noodles.  It’s sophisticated enough to make me feel like I should’ve put on my pearls.  Chicken New Boston

 

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Deviled Hot Dogs

Deviled Hot Dogs

I just saw a chart the other day for how hot dogs are eaten in other places.  Probably unsurprisingly to you, this recipe didn’t appear on the list.

This recipe also sparked a lot of discussion about what makes something “Deviled”.  Is it the addition of mustard?  I mean, deviled eggs and deviled hot dogs have that in common.  But then I ponder about things like any “Diablo” recipe and those tend to include chilis.  Is there actual criteria when naming something “deviled” or is it just an adjective that people assign willy-nilly?DSCN2650First of all, you should know that this recipe scared us.  I suggested to my brother that we make this recipe for his kids when they came to visit, he declined.  He’s such a chicken.

Since the recipe was in my head, I made it.

What is it?  Deviled hot dogs are hot dogs braised in a cream sauce seasoned by pickle relish and onions and green pepper.

Well, we think it’s green pepper.

Technically the recipe says “gr. pepper”.  After adding the 3 TB of green pepper, I realized that “gr pepper” is also “ground pepper”. It’s weird to measure green pepper in tablespoons. However, in Iowa, where my mom grew up, ketchup/catsup was considered spicy.  3 TB of ground pepper is a lot of black pepper for any recipe (with the exceptions being something HUGE or something like pastrami) and most of the other recipes that have “gr. pepper” make it obvious that the reference is to green pepper. DSCN2651Surprisingly, this recipe was better than expected.  It was actually kind of good. I think it depends on the quality of the hot dogs, but use what you like.

In hindsight, butter toasted the buns would improve the meal. Toasting prevents the sauce from soaking deeply into the buns. It adds a little crispy element.  Untoasted buns are sort of white and squashy and like the comfort food you never knew you needed.  Because we didn’t know the correct way of proceeding, we served these with our normal ketchup and mustard on the table, but this is an up to your taste sort of thing.DSCN2653

For a fun variation, add cheese to the cream sauce.  It’s like a cheddarwurst.  Add beer to the cheese sauce and you really have something special.

We had a lot of sauce left over.  I secretly used it in a creamy pasta dish later in the week.

Don’t tell the kids.

The Recipe:

Deviled Hot Dogs

If you like this recipe, check out Devilish Behavior and Deviled Green Beans, Devils Food Cake with Marshmallow Frosting, and Buried Treasure Delicious Hot Dish.

Pinnable Image Deviled Hot Dogs

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Supper In a Bread Loaf

Supper in a Bread Loaf

There are days where making supper is just hard.  I am crap at following recipes (before this).  I am a reforming bad meal planner and never seemed to have the right combination of ingredients in the house to make the meal that I really wanted.  I’d have to scour cookbooks and the internet in order to find something that I was in the mood for using the ingredients I had on hand.

If you don’t already realize it, this is a very bad, time consuming way to go about meal prepping and planning.

It can result in creative and tasty dishes, but ends up being very frustrating.  Take out seems much easier than going through that stress every night.  It also doesn’t help when you ask the family what they want to eat and either no one has an idea or everyone has different ideas.  Making these decisions after a long day of making other far more important decisions is hard.  It’s a lot of pressure.  Making the decision to go through these recipes and make them all has taken a lot of pressure off.  I still don’t always have the right ingredients, but meal planning is significantly easier.  DSCN2433Enter Supper in a Bread Loaf.

This recipe is the poor man’s version of Beef Wellington.  It is because of this recipe that I had frozen bread dough in the house for the French Apple Coffee Cake.

Had my house already been clean, my children all in school, etc, I might have taken extra bread dough  to make beautiful decorations on the roll.  I might’ve egg washed it, made gorgeous cuts to make this into a work of art.  Instead, I just did the most basic version of this dish.

Well, sort of.

The directions say “season to taste”. For those of you that know me well, you know that my brain automatically shot in infinite directions.  “Oh, this could be good seasoned with taco seasoning.”  “Ooooohh, what about using my Krakow Nights seasoning?”  “I have some fresh herbs in the garden, but I think those might be the wrong choice.”  I settled on adding a bunch of Fox Point Seasoning.  I thought it would add flavor, but keep it true to the original intention of the dish.  It worked! The kids inhaled the meal.

My husband took leftovers to work.  His co-workers asked about it.  He said it was good reheated.  DSCN2439In order for busy people to make this dish in time for supper, there is some pre-planning that needs to happen.

Put the bread dough from the freezer into the fridge the night before you want to make this dish.  It will start the thawing process.  In the morning, move the bread dough into a container on the counter.  Cover it with plastic wrap. (Speaking of plastic wrap, my husband told me that environmental concerns means plastic wrap no longer has the coating on it that allows it to stick to anything. It now only sticks to itself.) Leave this on your counter until it’s time to actually make supper.

For this purpose, a lengthy rising time is not going to affect your end product.  It may even allow some of the bread dough flavors to develop a little more.

If you cook extra ground beef, throw it in your freezer for something else.  It’s much easier to do dinner in a hurry when at least part of it is already cooked. DSCN2443Substitute chicken, turkey, pork, or whatever for the meat.  For a vegetarian version, use mushrooms, cooked lentils, or eggplant as your filling, add some sauteed greens.

This is one of those unapologetic dishes that is basic and filling.  It’s open to all sorts of interpretation.  Open up your fridge, your pantry, and your spice cabinet, get creative.  If you have a great version of this dish, please feel free to let me know about it.

The Recipe:Supper In a Bread Loaf

If you like this recipe, check out 7 Make Ahead Dinners For Busy Moms and Other Important People and Freezer Meal: Tuna Burger Casserole

Pinnable Image Supper in a Bread Loaf

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Birthday Edition: Shrimp and Olive Pie

Shrimp and Olive Pie

You asked for it and here it is.

 

While eating dinner the other night, we a

 

sked the kids what they would like to eat for their birthdays.  This year, I intended to make them whatever they wanted instead of going out for it.  We discussed the merits of this favorite dish and that one.  My oldest mentioned having a pie birthday.  Nothing but different types of pie all day long.  Including chicken pot pie, apple pie, and pizza pie.  My middle wanted red beans and rice.  The youngest’s favorite foods are shrimp and olives, but she thought having pie seemed like a really good idea, so jokingly I suggested she have shrimp and olive pie.

I should’ve realized that she was going to latch onto the idea and not let it go.  It’s the sort of girl she is.  The problem was that I had never heard of shrimp and olive pie.  I threw those exact words into Google, hoping there would be a brilliant recipe.  There wasn’t.  I asked some friends and relatives and mostly got “ew” as an answer with a few helpful suggestions.  It was edging nearer and nearer to the date and I still hadn’t had a brilliant inspiring flash as to how this was going to work.  Even more so, My oldest declared he hated shrimp, the middle and my husband hate olives, but I don’t cook more than one meal.  I just don’t do that.

The day was getting closer and I still had no idea what I was going to do.

One day, while in the shower, washing my hair, I had the brilliant realization that Mediterranean cuisine had to include shrimp and olives.  Right?  I consulted my Mediterranean cookbook for confirmation of recipes that used both shrimp and olives.  I found nothing, but I found fish recipes that used olives.  Seafood is seafood, right?  At least now I had an idea.

I imagined it in a tomato based sauce, except I didn’t think the kids would appreciate that.  Time to re-evaluate.
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I got stuck on the idea of a potpie and found a recipe in Great-Grandma’s book for Never Fail Pie Crust.  It sounded like what I need because I can make pie crust that tastes delicious, but I always have trouble rolling it out.  Every pie I make has a patchwork crust.

I made the Never-Fail pie crust.  It was easy.  I divided it into 4 pieces and threw them in the fridge.  It wasn’t going to win me points on the Great British Baking show, but it seemed to be a pretty decent pie crust. It was malleable, had a decent texture, you know, the stuff you look for in a pie crust.  I could immediately tell that it would be much easier to roll out than other pie crust.  As long as I floured my counter and rolling pin properly, it didn’t seem like this was going to be a terrible mess.

With the pie crust made, I was just down to figuring out the filling.

I started by sauteing  some onions because onions go into these sorts of things.  Right?  As they were cooking, I contemplated the contents of my fridge and freezer.

I found a bag of frozen vegetables from Trader Joe’s.  Misto Alla Griglia.  It’s a mixture of marinated and grilled eggplant, red peppers, and zucchini.  I had been contemplating just putting some random herbs from the garden into the pie, but this made it much easier.  I chopped the veggies up into bitty pieces and threw them in with the onions.  When the mixture was warm and the onions were tender, I threw in some flour and stirred.  I added a generous splash or 6 of white wine, a bit more butter.

It was at this point I realized that I hadn’t added the olives yet. I was wondering if it was a good idea to just chop them up and add them to the crust, but the birthday girl would not recognize them as olives, so I threw big pieces into the sauce with the rest of the ingredients.

To make everything creamy,  I added some milk.  After that, I added the shrimp and threw it the mixture into the pie crust and added the top crust after rolling out with some Romano cheese (inspired by Beverly Goldberg’s Shrimp Parm) and baked until it looked done. About 45 minutes.

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Because this was all done on the fly, I don’t have an exact recipe for anything except the pie crust.  I just added things until it was right.

The question is then, is this good?  Should I try this at home?  Yes, please do.  I was the only one that ate leftovers.  The crust didn’t microwave well, but as a concept this worked out really well.  Despite everyone claiming to dislike one or more of the ingredients in the dish, everyone ate it without complaining.  I could easily see it made more like any British fish pie recipe with some peas and thyme.  I recommend not using pre-cooked shrimp because it overcooks during the length of time it needs to be in the oven.

The Recipe:

Never Fail Pie Crust

Mix together in a large bowl:
4 cups flour
1 t baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
1 T sugar
1 1/2 cup lard or shortening

Mix well, then add:
1 beaten egg
1/4 cup of cold water
1 T vinegar

Blend well, roll out.  Makes 4 single crusts or 2 double crusts.  Keeps 2  weeks in refrigerator.

For other great pie recipes, check out Breakfast Pie, Apple and Pecan Pie, and Pumpkin Pie.

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“Japanese” Chicken

Popover Chicken

It’s probably good that I got bifocals the last time I went to the eye doctor.  Looking at this recipe, I swear I read “Japanese Chicken” and since it was on the same page as the Egg Foo Yung, I decided that we could have an Asian night and I would cook both of t recipes.  While looking at the recipe, I couldn’t figure out why it was called Japanese chicken when there was nothing Japanese about the ingredients.  When did they start using tarragon in traditional Japanese cooking?  But this was Iowa and well before I was born, maybe tarragon was exotic?  I also had a hard time realizing that “Pour over chicken” was not “Parmesan Chicken.”  Perhaps it was the handwriting?  Right before I went to cook this recipe, I realized that “Japanese” actually said “Popover”.  That gave me a lot of answers.Popover Chicken

But there were still more questions.  Like whether the chicken should be raw or cooked?   I took a guess.  I think I guessed wrong, but considering the information I was working with, it was certainly not as bad as it could’ve been.

We had gone to the Butterfly Exhibit at the Botanical Gardens and the kids had all gotten a coupon for a free junior cone of custard for completing the scavenger hunt, so we did backwards dinner where we ate dessert first.  I believe that things work out the way they should most of the time.  Because we had bellies full of custard, no one was hungry immediately upon getting home.  So it was less important that dinner took over a half hour longer than estimated.

As a warning to anyone that may try this, raw, still slightly frozen chicken thighs on the bone do not cook completely at 350° for 50 minutes.  This information will come in handy for all sorts of things, so remember it.  However, if after 60 minutes, you turn the oven up to 450° and cook them for another 15 minutes or so, the pink goes away.DSCN2458

Another note, raw, bone in chicken produces a lot of juice.  This will make the popover part of the dish turn into something that somewhat resembles a dumpling.  Only the top of the popover is that delicious, light airy substance that we love to fill with homemade jam. (Not in this dish, but in general).

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I think done correctly, using pre-cooked chicken, B/S chicken breasts, or some sort of shredded chicken, this would be a really nice sort of fun meal.  Like a pot pie…oh, like a potpie…That is a brilliant idea for someone’s upcoming birthday.

After this meal, I think I owe my family one of my normal meals with a delicious cake or great dessert.  Even if the main courses are crap, Great-Grandma made great cakes and desserts.

The Recipe:

Popover Chicken

3 eggs
1 1/2 cups of milk
1 1/2 cups of flour
3/4 t salt
1 T oil
1 T chopped Tarragon

Beat first 4 ingredients together for 1 1/2 minutes.  Add oil.  Beat 30 seconds more.  (Do NOT overbeat)

Pour over chicken in a casserole. (Maybe this meant a chicken casserole, not just a casserole dish?) Bake 50-60 minutes at 350° or til done.

For other great casserole ideas, check out Sausage and Bean Casserole, Tuna Burger Casserole, and Hot Chicken Salad.

Popover Chicken Casserole

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Egg Foo Yung

Egg Foo Yung

There are times where I fail at a meal completely.  It doesn’t happen often, but it does occasionally happen.  Since John can remember, there have been only handful of meals that we absolutely could not eat.  This was one of them.  It wasn’t something like that episode of Chopped where the contestant mistook salt for sugar.  The dish didn’t burn.  The eggs weren’t spoiled. It was nothing that I did wrong.  It was the recipe.  Maybe cooking Chinese food created by Iowa farmers with German heritage was a bad idea.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  I do remember thinking while looking at the ingredients “how bad can this be?”.  DSCN2449

We spent the meal creating alternative names for this dish.  Egg Foo Yuck, Egg Foo Old, Egg What the F!&@.  It was horrible.  It tasted like the Rock River smelled a few years ago when the carp all got herpes and died.  The river was a stream of dead fish, the fish got caught up in the trees on the side of the river.  The smell was horrific.

The Egg Foo Yung was horror movie worthy.  It was like dirty socks mixed with dead fish.  The texture was silken tofu-y.

It was like something that Gordon Ramsey pulls out of a drain on one of those episodes of Kitchen Nightmares. You know what I’m talking about.

In case you are wondering, cans of chop suey vegetables are really just cans of bean shoots with 3 pieces of carrot and one piece of celery.  It is gross on so many levels.  It looks disgusting, it smells disgusting, there is nothing good I can say about it.  I’m hoping to not find more recipes that call for this ingredient.

Canned shrimp is probably fine in other uses, but even so it didn’t ruin the dish any worse than anything else.  I really can’t think of much that would make this dish worse except a can of tuna…and serving it with soy sauce like the recipe suggested.  Don’t do that.  It makes it worse.   DSCN2451

If you have decided that my description is not scary enough and you are going to insist on making this, it probably takes 20 minutes on low and covered to set the egg, but please, do not make it.  You will regret wasting the ingredients, you will think of all the delicious things you could’ve made with those eggs.

Thank goodness this was not the only thing we had for dinner.  The roasted beets with blueberry vanilla goat cheese and the zucchini and tomatoes cooked with Penzey’s Fox Point Seasoning were delicious.  And the other dish I made to go with it was something I thought was called Japanese Chicken, but that’s the next post.

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Pork Meatballs

Who even knew that Cream of Onion soup was a thing? Apparently, it’s just me.  I asked John that question when he got home and he knew. I know my friends are laughing at me as they read this.

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I haven’t used canned soup in over a decade.  There were all those articles about sodium content and then I realized that it just didn’t taste like homemade soup from fresh ingredients. I am a snob. I like what Andy Warhol did with cans of soup.  I ate canned soup growing up.  I have eaten recipes that other people have made with canned soup, but I just didn’t buy it or use it in my own cooking.

 

So when Miles chose this recipe and it called for a can of cream of onion soup, I had no idea that was a thing that still existed.  I knew about cream of asparagus, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, I think I had even seen cream of shrimp at one point, but because I don’t look in the canned soup section of the grocery store, I just didn’t know.

In the rules I set up for myself, I decided that I was going to follow the recipes exactly as written (except in cases where there were no instructions).  So with my shopping list, the boys and I set out for the grocery store.

The grocery store with children is always a challenge.  I like the company, to a degree, but they need to figure out how to steer the cart where I want it.  I hate the number of times I have to say “no” about things.  We are normally the loudest people in the store (and everywhere else we ever go), but our loud is normally more pleasant than obnoxious (or so I like to think).  We enjoy being together and making each other laugh and we are friendly.  Anyway, we went to the meat section and there was no ground pork.  There was pork sausage and pizza sausage, but no plain ground pork.  I asked the guy at the counter if there was any.  He explained that he couldn’t get any out because he was cutting something else and cross-contamination and whatnot, but if I could wait until 2.  It was noon.  I wasn’t going to drive back to Stoughton for ground pork.  I could’ve gone to the meat market across the street from my house, or as the kids suggested, I could just grind my own.  It’s a pain, but doable.  I grabbed some country style ribs and put them in my cart and started to walk to the yogurt area, when I saw the guy from the meat counter waving behind me.  I’m sure we were hard to find in the store since we are so quiet and all…This sweet, sweet man had taken pity on me and had stopped what he was doing and secured me the two pounds of ground pork I needed for the recipe.  He wouldn’t let me thank him or say anything to him about it or even acknowledge that he had done it because the store cameras may pick up the action.  I just hope he realizes how much I appreciate his efforts.

DSCN2340I, stupidly, didn’t start the recipe until much later than I should’ve because I was baking something else that I had started too late.  The oven was set at 375 for that and I forgot to turn it up to 400 which I didn’t realize until the end of the cooking time.  It might’ve cost me a bit on the browning of the meatballs, but they were still cooked through. I ended up getting supper on the table and had just enough time to eat before I sent John off to a Euchre tournament at the coffeehouse.  You know, like everyone does.  I figured it might be a good way to start meeting people in town.  John likes Euchre.

At dinner, instead of having epic rap battles, coming up with punny new jokes, or discussing new game ideas, we discussed these meatballs.  Nick was sure they had too many onions and picked them out.  (Reminder to self to cut them smaller next time).  The flavor of the pork was good.  The bread soak held in the juice.  Nick doesn’t think meatballs should have bread. I didn’t bother to explain the bonding principles to him this time.  I just rolled my eyes.  For some reason, the meatballs’ flavor reminded me of the inside of potstickers.  No idea why.  The cream of onion soup didn’t make the creamy sauce I was expecting from reading the recipe.  It was creamy, but could’ve probably benefitted from the addition of some milk to thin it.  John commented that this was one of those recipes where, if he had made it, he would’ve been very proud of himself, but because I had made it, it was just ok.  Miles ate it and declared it delicious, but that might’ve been partially prompted by the ego he had invested in having chosen the recipe.  He declined seconds and was “starving” by bedtime.

It’s not a pretty recipe.  It doesn’t make something eye-catchingly beautiful.  I’m sure there are ways to make it look better, but I’m not going to make that sort of effort for family dinner when it’s already late and everyone is starving and has places to be.DSCN2354

This is the sort of dish that is a great base for experimentation.  It could benefit from the addition of mushrooms, or French-fried onions on top of it.  You could easily make the balls smaller and serve them at a party on toothpicks.  Throw them on bread with whatever sort of veg you want, add some cheese, make a sandwich. Make the meatballs, make the soup, make meatball soup.  Add to pasta.  Meatballs are good.  Make your own cream sauce for these, if you prefer.

These are good basic pork meatballs.  Not the sort of dish I get overly excited about, but am rarely disappointed to be served.
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*This recipe is part of a red spiral bound book that was originally the Iowa State College Freshman Handbook that was presented to the Class of ’53.  The pages have been pasted over with recipes.