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).

What the heck, have a cookie.

I had a hankering for a cookie, but not just any cookie. I wanted a cookie that would make me feel like I was having coffee and enjoying a treat all at the same time. So, I decided to attempt caramel mocha cookies, or maybe they should be called caramel macchiato-chocolate chip cookies. Whichever name I decide to call them, I was hoping they’d hit more than one spot.

I of course, preheated my oven to 350 degrees and then gathered my ingredients for bowl #1. After I sifted flour, salt, baking soda; nutmeg and cinnamon I got out bowl #2 and worked on creaming together the rest of ingredients on my list: Crisco, butter, white sugar; brown sugar, caramel sauce and vanilla extract.

I used my hand mixer to blend the above, adding two eggs one at a time. 

After several minutes, I made 2 ounces of instant coffee and poured into bowl #2. Then I folded in a bag of chocolate chips.

With the oven ready, I spooned the dough on to cookie sheets and popped into the oven. Just 15 minutes later and the cookies were ready to be eaten…well; I guess I should have waited a few minutes (my tongue still hurts).

Ultimately, these cookies don’t have a strong enough coffee flavor for me. I ended up drizzling a little caramel sauce on top of the cookies after they’d cooled down. If I decided to tweak this recipe, I’ll be sure to post the changes.

Want the recipe? Leave me a comment!

What the heck is dredging?

Good question. In the kitchen, dredge means: to coat food with another food that’s in powder form; most often flour. I used this technique for tonight’s dinner: Sautéed Chicken Cutlets.

I recently read somewhere that some people will marinate their chicken in buttermilk before they dredge for frying chicken. I’m not much for friend chicken, but I did have some chicken cutlets that I defrosted last night. Instead of marinating them for many hours, I patted the pieces dry and then soaked them in heavy whipping cream for about an hour. The ONLY reason I did not marinate for longer, is because I didn’t know what the heck I was going to do with the chicken…until about 5 o’clock, that is. I didn’t have buttermilk but did have the heavy whipping cream.

While the chicken rested in it’s cream bath, I prepared the mix of rubbing seasonings: Pappy’s (http://www.pappyschoice.com/), a couple dashes of crushed red pepper, and extra fresh ground pepper. I also put flour on a paper plate, with a handful of flour in a small bowl. I did that, so I wouldn’t cross contaminate my container of flour. Yes, I am that person that washes her hands with soap and hot water constantly throughout preparing meals…This is a good habit to have…cross contamination can be dangerous! I highly recommend that you wash your knife and cutting board after you cut each item in your recipe, too.
Next I preheated my oven to 350 degrees, and mixed a can of green beans, a ½ can of cream of mushroom soup and 1/3 c of heavy whipping cream for green bean casserole; then topped with fried onions. I don’t change the recipe from the back of the French’s Fried Onion can, but this time I halved it.

After I put the casserole in the oven, I peeled three potatoes, cut them up, and then chopped up half of a cauliflower for my secret mashed potatoes. I’m sure you’ve guessed my secret ingredient by now…cauliflower! I also used a couple spoonfuls of sour cream instead of milk and about ½ a stick of butter. And yes, I realize the cauliflower doesn’t outweigh the dairy I mix with them. Oh, small tangent: We call cauliflower, “white broccoli” in front of our kids, because they love broccoli, but the word cauliflower freaks them out.

While the potatoes and cauliflower boiled away, I heated my pan with a little olive oil and a little peanut oil. I drained the chicken, rubbed with the seasoning mixture and then dredged in the flour.

When you dredge, make sure to pat any excess flour (or whatever you’re using) off your meat. The most important thing, though, is to immediately begin cooking your freshly dredged meat in hot oil. You’ll know it’s hot enough if your meat instantly sizzles. You want the oil to be hot enough for two reasons: (#1), if the oil isn’t hot enough, it doesn’t brown your meat, but (#2) soaks into your meat.

My husband walked in the door just as I was plating our cutlets while my kids were yet again asking, “What the heck is for dinner?” Even my four year old enjoyed this meal, which means that all four of us enjoyed a hot dinner tonight.

Question for the few followers I have: Would you like to see a link for my recipe(s)? Leave me a comment and thanks for stopping by!

Heck Versus The Lemon

I do not consider myself a baker, nor do I find baking relaxing. Baking causes a huge mess and it’s about a 50-50 chance that whatever I mix together and shove into my oven will turn out to be immediately thrown away.

With today being Father’s Day, my hard-working and well deserving husband is expecting two things: bacon for breakfast and for me to ignore each cupcake he eats throughout the day.

I never make the same cupcake twice. I almost always use a box mix, but will change the required ingredients. This box happened to be lemon and called for 1 ¼ cups of water, 1/3 cup of oil and 3 eggs. I decided to switch to 1 cup of whole milk, ¼ cup of lemon juice, 1/3 cup of sour cream and 3 eggs. To kick it up a notch, I decided to try something totally new: candied lemon peel.

While my tweaked cupcakes incubated in the oven, I started the process of candying lemon peel. First, I rolled the lemons on the counter top to bring out the juice. Then I cut them in half and squeezed the fresh juice into a measuring cup (for icing, later). I used a small knife to scrape the pulp and the bitter, inner, white layer of the lemon. I brought two cups of water to a boil, tossed the lemon peel into the pot and left them alone for about five minutes. I removed the peels and added two cups of sugar to the hot lemon water.

I sliced the peels and then put them back into the thick boiling nectar. When the thin yellow slices of peel were partially see through, I removed them and spread them out on parchment paper to cool. Twenty one minutes after I began the baking process, my lemon cupcakes were ready to cool down.

The easiest icing in the world: a few tablespoons of powdered sugar and the juice from half a lemon stirred together makes my favorite icing; mostly because I love lemon, but also because it’s so easy! I must admit that because I’m not a dedicated baker, I didn’t know about this icing until a couple weeks ago. The first bite of my friend’s blueberry pound cake with lemon icing on top and I was in love…

Anyway, I drizzled the icing over the cupcakes and topped them with my slivers of candied lemon peel. I couldn’t help but taste one of the cupcakes (actually, I ate the whole cupcake). The icing is amazing, and the lemon peel is a nice touch. The cupcake has a slightly off taste to it, like cheap lemon candy. So, after all is said and done next time, I’ll make lemon cupcakes from scratch.

Heck: Take One.

If anyone is out there, I should introduce myself: I’m Jen Heck. A small-ish town girl, married to the only person who vowed to put up with me and I am a mother to two daughters who are stuck with me, too.  Anyway, I am a stay at home mom with many previous jobs, all customer service; most required that I carried a tray and served people food.

Food. That’s the real reason I’m typing this. Food: the second most important item to be put in our mouths. Isn’t food interesting? Well, I guess thinking about a bag of frozen blueberries isn’t. But, going with your friends and family to a farm and hand picking blueberries is rather gratifying. I just recently went on this adventure, it was wonderful! Even more wonderful were the recipes my friend and I came up with: blueberry pound cake with lemon icing and fresh blueberry waffles.

I guess…maybe… I’m a little bored with my stay-at-home position. I mean, laundry is so not interesting. My kids find their friends down the street more entertaining than me, so I find myself alone in my house sometimes wondering, “What the heck am I doing?” So, I considered writing for fun, but my short story ended up only a couple paragraphs without a plot, with a quick death. I asked myself what I truly enjoy every day. The answer: cooking dinner.

I’m sure I’m no different than millions of other stay-at-home-executive chefs, but I do enjoy making a semi-healthy, full flavored meal that brings my family and me together.  I hope that my photo-journal entries of new recipes bring you and me together from time to time so you can see, “What the Heck Am I Cooking?”