How The Heck Do You Pronounce That?

My husband has told me several times about a chicken dish he once had, “Key-Eva, er…something,” he’d said, “It’s cheese in breaded chicken.” That’s all he could tell me but I forgot to investigate this mysterious dish.

Well tonight my third follower (and her family) was scheduled to come over for her thank you meal. I wanted to make something completely new, so I got out my cookbooks, thumbed through the pages of dinners and ran across a recipe for Chicken Kiev. If you’ve read the majority of my entries, you’ve probably guessed that I search recipes and come up with my own tweaks for the recipe.

Immediately, I made up my mind, “Hunny! We’re having Chicken Keye-V tonight.” I wrote down my tweaks and got started. I preheated my oven to 400 degrees and then loaded the counter with ingredients: a package of chicken breasts, a stick of butter, green onions; a half of a shallot, cilantro, Ricotta; sliced Havarti, two eggs and my container of flour.

The container of Ricotta only had about a half a cup left, which I figured was a good amount. I rough chopped three green onions and a handful of cilantro, tossed them into the creamy cheese, added garlic powder, salt and pepper; then stirred and set aside for later.

I beat two eggs, then whisked in about a half cup of whole milk; set the bowl aside. In a shallow but wide bowl, I poured in about a cup and a half of flour. Before setting it aside, I seasoned the flour with salt and pepper. It’s important to season flour for dredging.

I patted the chicken breasts dry with a paper towel. I covered a breast with Press & Seal. Starting in the center and working towards the edges, I used the flat side of my meat tenderizer to flatten evenly about ½ an inch thick. After each breast was flattened, I laid it onto a paper towel lined paper plate to ensure any leftover moisture was removed from the chicken.

I melted two tabs of butter in my pan. When the butter had just begun to brown I added diced shallots and turned the heat down just a little. Next, I quickly set up my stuffing and dredging stations. Working with one piece of chicken at a time, I put half a slice of Havarti, a heaping spoonful of Ricotta mixture and half a tab of butter on the chicken. Then I rolled the poultry inside itself, used a toothpick to keep it closed and used my fingers to push any escaping cheese back inside. Next, I floured the chicken roll, dipped it in my egg wash and floured a second time before setting it the pan. I gently tossed the roll from hand to hand to make sure any excess flour fell.

After hearing the immediate sizzle I began the process again until all four chicken rolls were browning. A few minutes later I turned each roll over so the other side would brown. A few minutes more and the rolls were put in a baking dish, covered with aluminum foil and inserted into the oven.

Just sixteen minutes later, I plated our “Chicken K-whatever” with rough-mashed potatoes and salad. I loved that the chicken was super moist and I think the Havarti and Ricotta blended well and came out light and creamy. The crust wasn’t too thick, but I think I can make it better next time.

After my guests left I realized I still didn’t know how to pronounce Kiev. I did a little Google research and learned Kiev is the capitol of Ukraine. Interesting information, but not the answer I was thinking for. Luckily a good friend has lived near Ukraine. So, I gave her a ring and asked her how the heck to pronounce Chicken Kiev. “Just like it sounds,” she replied, ”Kee-Ehv.”

Doubly-Double Stacked & Stuffed French Toast

Currently, I only have four followers. I have wanted to thank you all but wasn’t sure how. My husband suggested, “Invite them over for a meal; have them taste what they’re reading.” So, I had one follower over for burgers, and another over for Doubly-Double stacked & stuffed French Toast. If you’re local and following, expect an invitation to my house to see what the heck I’m cooking.

This recipe did not turn out as good as I wanted, but I feel I should post recipes that need work as well as the great ones.

A loaf of French toast, 16 ounces of cream cheese, hand-picked blueberries from S.B. Blueberry Farm (http://www.santabarbarablueberries.com/) and locally grown strawberries were most important for this breakfast. I also used a little butter (well, I say little, but mean a Paula Deen amount), toasted walnuts and pecans, cinnamon and syrup. I covered my layers with a mixture of whole milk, half & half and about a dozen eggs.

When you pick your own blueberries remember to thoroughly rinse. Oh, and unless you like the crunch of twigs, remove those.

Both the strawberries and blueberries had a bath in orange juice.

First, I used a cold stick of butter to heavily grease my deep dish.

Then, I used my fingers to put a thick layer of cream cheese on one side of four slices of French toast. I topped with blueberries.

The next four slices were again, layered with cream cheese and set on top the bottom layer. I put strawberries and blueberries on the cream cheese and then sprinkled some toasted walnuts.  The third layer had yet another helping of cream cheese, topped with strawberries and covered with a final slice of bread.

For the topping, I slowly toasted pecans then added a tab of butter. When that melted I poured some syrup into it and turned off the flame. I used a spatula to spread atop the casserole.

With a few tabs of butter on top, the layers were ready for my egg, cream and milk mixture. Then I covered it and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, and slid the dish inside. When my follower and her family arrived for breakfast a little over an hour later, I removed the dish from the pan. 

With warm syrup on top it looked like a wonderful breakfast. I think we all agreed that four stacks of French toast may have been too many because the center was very mushy. Next time, I’ll just nix the "doubly" and add a little honey and some zest to the cream cheese.

Thank you again to my friends who are kind enough to read my blog and eat my food!

What the heck is more American?

The 4^th of July means many things to Americans. Some find themselves feeling more patriotic, others are excited for fireworks; some are eating American style: grilling. My burgers over the weekend were three components: Hand patted burger meat, homemade onion rings along with homemade jalapeno rings.

I started with slicing three Vidalia (yellow) onions. I tried to make sure that the width of each ring was about ¾ of an inch.

I found this Louisiana Fish Fry on sale and knew I could use it for something. I decided to mix the ten ounces of fry batter with 2 ½ c of Buttermilk for the onion rings, but I made sure to set aside about 1/3 c of the batter for the jalapeno rings. I tossed the onion rings into the batter and used my (washed) hands to completely cover them. Then, I covered the bowl and put it in the refrigerator for a couple hours.

Nothing starts my day off right than slicing a bunch of onions, crying because of them and then smelling like them the rest of the day.  In all seriousness, I wanted the onion rings to soak in the batter for as long as possible, so doing that task before heading to the grocery store was a perfect amount of time.

With a hundred bags of groceries to put away, I first (washed my hands) opened my packages (3lbs.) ground beef and plopped them into a plastic bowl, seasoned it with a few splashes of Worchester sauce, ground red pepper and of course, salt and pepper. After I washed off my ground beef-y hands I quickly put the groceries away.

I’m not sure what’s more American: burgers or bacon? So, I decided to stop pondering and put bacon inside the burgers. I rough chopped six slices of raw bacon and soft sautéed with diced onion and two ounces of chorizo. [My husband loves chorizo and eggs, so I buy a package and freeze it. It’s easy to cut a portion and defrost in the fridge.]

After the chorizo and bacon were cooked (bacon was soft, not crispy), I poured the whole mixture over a paper towel lined paper plate so most of the grease would soak into the paper towel.

I find hand patting my own burger meat….fulfilling?  I used my (washed) hands to mix the bacon-chorizo-onion mixture into the ground beef; I made a ball of meat in my hands, so that the fingers on my right hand barely touched the thumb of my left hand. Then, I slowly patted the meat while smoothing the edges. Finally, I used my thumb to imprint a dent in the center of the meat. I do this so the center won’t bulge when cooking.

I’m sure you’ll see a trend here, but I washed my hands then set up my dredging station: Hot peanut oil on the stove, a bowl of flour for dredging to the right of the stove and my batter covered rings to the right of that. If you use one hand for picking up the rings, then your other hand won’t get covered in batter and flour. You’ll need one dry hand for holding your tongs.

While my pot of oil was heating up, I turned my stove-top griddle to medium low heat. Yes, you read correctly, I said griddle. What can I say? My cheap gas grill is wonderful at burning food, but nothing else. Until I can afford the grill I dream of, I’ve resorted to my griddle…believe me, it’s much better than my grill!

I’ve gone over dredging before. Don’t forget to tap any excess flour off. The steps to crispy food after dredging are: dredge one item, lay into the oil. Dredge the next ring, and insert into oil. Never dredge a batch and then allow any amount of resting time (before cooking). Resting any type of food in wet flour causes clumps and gooey-ness.

Don’t drop ANYTHING into hot oil! Splatter burns are torture. The key is to get your hand as close to the oil as possible and gently lay the onion ring, moving away from your body.

The onions rings came out great, though I burned the second batch due to, well chatting.

My husband loves jalapeno burgers, so I came up with an idea: completely seeded, I sliced into rings and soaked them in the same batter as the onion rings. I cooked these after the onion rings were finished, in the same pot of oil. The six of us we were on the fence about the crispiness of the jalapeno strips. Most of us agreed that next time they should be a tad less crispy.

With all three components grilled, battered or fried I assembled my burgers. With melted Cheddar and Jack cheese over the bacon burgers, I set atop the bottom of the mayo-d bun. Next came a few jalapeno rings, lettuce; onion rings. I drizzled BBQ sauce over the rings, squirted a little mustard on the top bun. 

What’s more American than Bacon Burgers? Sharing with family and friends, thanks to Mom and the Cochrans for joining us!

Afterthoughts: Next time, I’ll add more chorizo, because none of us could taste it. I think the onion ring batter was a little too thin, so next time I’ll mix with 2 c of Buttermilk. Also, I need to perfect my jalapeno rings.

I hope you all had a relaxing weekend? Let me know what you think of my burgers!

Where the heck is the strawberry capital?

I actually had trouble finding the answer to this. I will say that my county produces very large, very red and very tasty strawberries.  In fact, we don’t buy strawberries from the grocery store. No, we go to “The guy.” We locals talk about the guy like he’s a close family friend. The guy has what we want and we gotta have it. And he knows it. He won’t sell you a few to get you by, see he’s in the big leagues; he only sells to people that are serious about their strawberry addiction.

Why all this talk about strawberries? Well, we recently became a family of five: our foreign exchange student, Eva, is here for about three weeks.

I wanted to make her something truly American, so we decided on strawberry shortcake for tonight. The recipe I use is my mother in law’s, with just a few tweaks. I never really cared for the stick-to-your-teeth spongy cake. When my MIL made her’s with biscuits, I knew I’d never buy angel food cake again.

This is a great recipe for kids to help out, so hands washed and plastic knives ready, my kiddos went to work cutting, slicing and hacking away at the berries. [I make sure to put sliced fruit like this in a plastic, glass or ceramic bowl because metal bowls with juices (which contain acid) don’t make for tasty food.]

I preheated the oven, popped open a can of biscuits and brushed with melted butter, then sprinkled with granulated sugar. After I popped the biscuits in the oven I put a metal bowl in the freezer. I do this before beating heavy whipping cream. I find the colder the bowl and cream are, the better.

With the girls still chopping away, I squeezed half a lemon into the plastic bowl then used my microplane grater to zest a lemon into a small side bowl.

This is when I realized that strawberries were being eaten by my child laborers, so I finished the slicing task, added a little sugar and a little honey; a quick stir and then I hid the bowl from my “helpers.”

Homemade whipped cream is super easy and costs equal or less than a tub from the store. You can add different ingredients to diversify it too: chocolate syrup, vanilla extract or lemon zest. Tonight, I went with the latter and of course, some powdered sugar.

Warm biscuits are the best because the strawberry juice soaks into it just a bit but you still have the crispy crust on the top. 

Eva seemed to really enjoy one of our go-to American desserts. The only problem is, we used nearly our entire inventory of berries, so I think I’ll be visiting “The guy,” tomorrow. He won’t be surprised to see me twice in one week.

Have you added something to heavy whipping cream? Tell us what it was!

She ate there without me...WTH!

My best friend lives in Colorado Springs; too far away if you ask me. One thing we make sure to do when I visit her there is to eat at Old Chicago. Who cares that they have every sports event on millions of tiny TVs? We sure don’t, because we’re too busy eating their buffalo chicken rolls.

This happens to be an appetizer that we fell in love with a couple years. Who would be able to resist buffalo chicken rolled in dough, served with more buffalo sauce and blue cheese dressing? My friend betrayed me yesterday and ate there without me.  “I’ll show her,” I told myself, “I’ll make something just as tasty as those rolls.” So, all day I thought about buffalo chicken and this is what I came up with: Buffalo Chicken Calzone with Ricotta-Bleu Cheese dipping sauce. Uhhh, hey, you’re drooling all over your keyboard.

I have yet to attempt to make my own pizza dough. I find it much easier to buy the small boxes of Jiffy pizza mix. Add some hot tap water, mix it all together; let it stand for five minutes and voila, “homemade” pizza dough! I cooked up some garlic-y chicken cutlets I’d been marinating in the fridge (until I figured out what I’d be making), diced them and soaked them in Frank’s Red Hot sauce. I scooped some Ricotta into a bowl and then folded in a little bleu cheese dressing.

With Jiffy’s pizza dough, it suggests kneading [it] a few times before rolling out. After that was done, I very gently spread the Ricotta-blue cheese concoction onto the dough. I topped that with the chicken and finished it off with shredded mozzarella. Finally, I folded the dough over and brushed the top of the raw calzone with melted butter (you know me; I can’t go a day without some).

With the oven ready at 425 degrees, I popped my new recipe in and started on my secret sauce. When I say secret, what I mean is: I’m not sure what the heck I’ll be putting in this sauce today. Secret sounds better than that, though.

I started with a tab of butter and a little olive oil on low heat. When the butter was just about to brown, I whisked in some heavy whipping cream. After the cream heated a bit, I stirred in some ricotta. When the sauce had just begun bubbling, I shot it with some bleu cheese dressing. I had to taste it. It needed something, so I tossed in some shredded mozzarella; tasted again. Hmm… a couple splashes of Red Hot sauce and a final taste. I’m not sure why, but adding the Red Hot brought out the blue cheese flavor and finished the sauce off.

22 minutes later, the calzone was golden brown, piping hot and ready to eat! Of course, I had to get it in the spotlight for a few shots before we ate. 

My hubby absolutely loved this recipe and couldn’t get enough of my secret sauce. Take that best friend; I had buffalo chicken goodness without youuuu!

Just a note: The other calzone in the picture is Garlic chicken with pineapple and black olives served with marinara for dipping (It was super yummy, too).