What to do with 3.5lbs of Chicken

Make more chicken tortilla soup! I made a batch back in November based on my friend Leslie's recipe. It was really good, but she suggested that next time I use some roasted chicken. Luckily, I had about 3 lbs of roasted chicken left over from my bird basting adventure:

Pile of chicken

Since it was the second time through I could whip up the soup pretty easily - 1 can salsa, chicken broth, chopped up veggies [carrots, celery, whole corn], and the afore roasted chicken. I have to say, it was better this second time. The chicken kept it's rich flavor AND mixed well with the soup. I don't think I'll roast a chicken again just to get an extra kick in the soup - but I would pick one up form the grocery store and toss it in.

4 out of 5 on Yum scale

I threw some sour cream on top and a few avocado slices and it was amazingly Texas tasting.  It reminded me of all my law school group of friends. We used to take an annual trip to Big Sky Montana over winter break to ski and try to make ourselves forget we were waiting for the last few of our class grades . Every year (and throughout the year when we could convince her to make it), Leslie would cook up this soup for us. Good times and good food. We've all scattered across the country in our various legal positions, but eating this makes me want to put in the effort to get everyone to Big Sky again.

Ok, enough waxing sentimental, it looks odd on me. We still managed to have some chicken left over so Ian made a chicken sandwich panini the next day, using both the chicken, and the cream sauce, as well as some leftover orzo we had lying around:

Kinda blurry because Ian tried to
pick it up while I was snapping the shot

Though I love both chicken and sandwiches, I really do not like chicken sandwiches. Something about the chicken overpowering the sandwich-ness...I'm not sure. Whatever it is, my bias was so much that I refused to even eat this fancy roast chicken sandwich. But Ian rated it a 3 out of 5 on the Yum scale, just so everyone had some context. I guess all of the leftover roast chicken will end up in the soup next time. That is definitely fine by me.

Holy Crap I Roasted a Chicken

I didn't know that roasting a chicken is hard. I knew that roasting a turkey is hard (I think that's why we still have thanksgiving, so we can limit the times a year we roast a turkey to one). Somehow I missed the logical step that roasting a chicken would be hard as well. I know that now.

I got the brilliant idea to do a roast on Monday, after a long and restful 3-day weekend. So, I marched to the grocery store, passed the obviously inferior roasted chickens they had on display, and bought a whole chicken - bones, heart, liver, gizzard, all of it. YUM. At this point I should have realized that I would then have to touch all the bones, heart, liver, gizzard, etc., but apparently I did not have my smart pants on that day.


I got home, cracked open Mastering and saw that the first thing I had to do was take all the gross stuff, chop it up and sauté it for the stuffing. Another big YUM. Turns out, all that stuff is not readily available in easy to reach compartments of the chicken. It is all gummed up together in there and you have to dig it out with whatever knife fits (I ended up using a combo of my paring knife and my chef's knife). That was the first 30 minutes of cooking. And don't let the picture fool you, I was the one digging out all that crap, Ian just came in at the last minute to scrape out the last remnants and marvel at how it all came out of that back end of the bird. Here's the result:

Inside yucky stuff

After the pre-first step, I got to continue onto the real first step and cook up all those delicious looking pieces of meat with some onions, spices, bread crumbs and cream cheese to make the stuffing. Even though everything in my head screamed not to, a took a quick bite of it to see how it was....and it was good. I don't understand, I don't think I want to do it again, but all that gross looking mush ended up being a really nicely flavored stuffing. Touche, MC.

Now edible looking and tasty!

Next step was to shove that all back into the (still) surprisingly small hole in the bird, and cook it up. Now when I say cook it up, I do not mean place it in the oven and go sip on my wine while I read the latest entertainment news. I mean keep a sauce bubbling on the stove so when you take the bird out every 10 minutes for the next 2 hours you can pour a tiny bit of it on to keep things moist. Meanwhile, I was also attempting to make the sautéed potatoes  from my first foray into Mastering, with the improvements you all suggested. 

Solid 4 out of 5 on the Yum scale.

For those of you who do not remember every post I put on here - how dare you - the sautéed potatoes were one of my biggest disappointments. It is basically butter and potatoes, two of my favorite things in the whole world, AND one of the most often used side dishes in Fancy French Cooking. So, when it was a big flop on meal #1 of the blog, I was a little dispirited. However, you all rallied and gave me a few tips on how to improve it. All of them basically came down to these two suggestions - sauté them longer and add more spices. Check. I sautéed them for a good 45 minutes (20 minutes longer than last time!) and added a whole bunch of spices - thyme, garlic salt, parsley, pepper - the good old classics. It worked! Honestly, it's still not my favorite way to eat potatoes, I'd rather have roasted them in with the chicken, but it was a big improvement over last time. 

So with the sides finished (I tossed carrots and onions in with the bird to get some more veggies involved - it worked out great, I highly recommend it), all I had to do was get the bird out of the oven and covered in a good sauce. To do this, the last few times I basted the bird, I added whipping cream into the mix - about 1/2 a cup in total. Then when the bird was done, I dumped out everything but about a cup of the juices in the pan and mixed that with another 1/2 cup of whipping cream and boiled it down for about 5 minutes with some spices. 

Boiling down the sauce - note the stray
onion that got left in!

Seriously, I think saucing has become one of my favorite things. It always makes stuff taste ten times better, and it's the last step so you are already excited about eating the meal you've been working on for so long. Best of all, it's quick. With the sauce done, all that was left to do was carve up the chicken and chow down. 

Yes, I tied the legs with a ribbon. I didn't have
any twine, don't judge me. 

And chow we did. It was a whole lot of meat for just one bird, and lord knows, after how much time I put into it, we were going to eat as much of it as we possibly could. Thankfully, it tasted great, and eating it was not a chore. I'd say a 4.5 out of 5 on the Yum scale. It was incredibly juicy, super rich tasting with the cream sauce, and filled the house with a mouthwatering smell. I would need a serious occasion to make this again, but then again, it's so good that it merits a serious occasion. I think this meal gets put up there with meringue as one of my labors of love in the kitchen. As such, there is no final pic of the plate tonight - I was semi-exhausted after the cooking and my camera was at least 3 steps away from where I was sitting. 

Baby, It Was Cold Outside Meatloaf

Those of you who were with me over the holidays know that I had "Baby, It's Cold Outside" stuck in my head for the whole week (one of the best and most creepy holiday songs ever). At the time, I was in Austin, and the temperature never approached anything close to cold, which made my constant singing of that song both annoying and untrue. I now realize that all my humming over the holidays was a harbinger for what was to come in the new year.

Snowy Tudor Cottage

As I complained about before, Denver greeted me with a frosty 6 degrees when I got back into town. As it is like to do here, the temperature fluctuated a whole bunch in the following few days, but then settled back into the 1-10 degree range for most of last week. Which is cold. Turn on your car 20 minutes beforehand, not only to get the windows to defrost, but also to make sure it will even turn on cold. For those couple days, all I wanted to eat was good old home cookin' food. And I did.

My first meal of the week was a Dullum family classic - meatloaf. I know a lot of people hold a grudge against meatloaf, but they are silly. Meatloaf is delicious when done right. I think a lot of time people end up making this dry cake type blob, and don't realize that adding a little bit more liquid turns that into one of the best feel-good meals you can have.

Here's the family recipe:

1 & 1/2 lbs ground beef mince (I use 97/3)
1 (8oz) can tomato sauce
1 egg
3/4 cups quick quaker oats
1/4 cup chopped onion (I replace with onion powder since Ian refuses to eat onion)
1-2 TBS worcestershire sauce
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp salt
thyme, garlic powder, mustard to taste
6 oz sliced mozzarella

The key to this recipe is the ground beef mince. This is not the ground beef you pick up in the store. It is ground beef you have picked up in the store and then made divine with anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours of effort. Mince is a reoccurring ingredient in Dullum cooking, and it turns out different for every dish (and pretty much every time you make it). First you brown the meat in a pan, and add in whatever ingredients that match what you are putting the meat into - here I'd use the worcestershire, mustard, oregano, garlic, onion, etc. Then you bring down the temperature, add some water and a torn up piece of white bread and simmer for however much time you have. It's not a huge deal, but it makes everything taste soo much better.

After you finish with the mince, combine all the ingredients except the cheese. Sometimes I add some water in at this point if I think it doesn't look juicy enough - but I have no idea how much. Then you layer it with the cheese in a pan, 1/3 the meat mix, 1/2 the cheese, next 1/3 of meat mix, second half cheese, then the rest of the meat mix. Pop it into the oven for an hour at 350. It may not be pretty, but it is really, really good.



To finish off the meal, I made some roasted potatoes and broccoli. While I had them in the same pan, I seasoned them differently to keep things interesting. On the broccoli I put salt, pepper and olive oil. This has become my new favorite way to cook my very favorite veggie. Jason, my brother in law, was the first to do this, and I think everyone in the fam now copies him. It is really easy, and gives a nice crunch to the meal.

Pre-cooked veggies

On the potatoes I used garlic salt, pepper, onion powder, rosemary and a little thyme. Then I put some tabs of butter on the potatoes so they wouldn't dry out. In the oven at 400 for 35-50 minutes (depending on how crunchy you want to broccoli) and enjoy.

4.5 out of 5 on Yum scale

It wasn't pretty, it wasn't all that healthy, but it hit the spot. Best of all, it has warmed up to a beautiful 50 degrees for the past few days and a lot of the snow has melted off. I might be inspired to make something as light as a salad...but I wouldn't count on it :)

A Tale of Two Breakfasts: Part II

As promised, here's my next adventure in Breakfast-ing. It happened yesterday morning, in another attempt to stay in pjs longer on a lazy Saturday. After the almost-fail of the waffles, I decided to stick to something I knew, my Dad's pancakes. This recipe I consider a family secret, so no posting it, sorry!

We used to eat these pancakes every Sunday morning while growing up. It was a big family event with tea and bacon and honey instead of syrup. It was all yummy, but the best part of the meal was the extra ingredient in the pancakes - chocolate chips. It was like dessert for breakfast, every kids dream. I wanted to recreate this feeling yesterday, but sadly didn't have the requisite chocolate chips. Since a major part of cooking in was to avoiding changing out of pjs, there was no way I was going to the store to get some. So, I decided to get creative...here we go again....

Instead of chocolate chips I decided to put in chunks of brown sugar in the pancakes to get the bursts of sweetness I so wanted. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but with my track record for getting creative, I decided to only do half that way. In the end that was probably a good choice. In my split second decision, I forgot to consider what happens when you heat up sugar - caramelization. It didn't taste bad, but it did make for a bit of a sticky mess on the pan and kinda random holes in the pancakes where the brown sugar should have been. In the end I'd say not worth the effort and the cleaning.

I did manage, however, to make some delicious and no fuss bacon. Despite my love of complicated cooking, my favorite way to make bacon is in the microwave. All you do is put it on the tray covered by a paper towel and zap it for 3-5 minutes. It soaks out most of the grease and leaves a really crispy piece of bacon that you can pretend is more healthy. I personally refuse to make bacon of the non-pig variety, so I need little excuses like this for me to pretend like I am not clogging my arteries at a break-neck pace.

It ended up being a pretty yummy breakfast, and I managed to stay in my pjs for an extra hour or so.

Pancakes with honey an bacon
4 out of 5 on Yum scale

Luckily, today for my birthday Ian ventured out and picked up breakfast from Snooze, a great breakfast joint around the corner from our house, so I didn't have to worry about screwing anything up. And now we are heading off to a wine bar near our house we have been meaning to visit since we've moved in, but never seemed to get to. Here's to happy breakfasts and happy birthdays!

A Tale of Two Breakfasts - Part I

I have been horrible about updating the blog since I've started work BUT today I made a non-New Years resolution to try and keep it up during the week, and have set a schedule for how to do so. Luckily, I have been keeping up with cooking and taking pics as I go, so there are a few recipes in the queue.

Since you shouldn't start anything off without a good breakfast, I think I'll begin my review of the past week or so there. Lately Ian and I have gotten into big weekend brunches that keep you full until dinner. This is mainly because Colorado does not have a "food" of any sort, and they decided just to claim an entire daily meal as their speciality. Being the foodies that we are,  Ian and I had to get to know the epicness that is Denver diners pre-11AM. As such, we have gotten used to stuffing ourselves with eggs, waffles, bacon and the like on the weekends. Considering all the fancy cooking I've been up to, I didn't think this would be too hard for me to replicate. But of course, my foray into the breakfast world did not go as planed...

Last weekend it was too cold to go outside, but we still wanted a big breakfast. I looked in the pantry and decided we had the right ingredients for waffles. It seemed quick and easy, and still super filling (see above requirements for brunch). Here's the recipe I intended to follow:

1 egg
1 cup flour
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup veggie oil
1/2 TBS sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla
salt to taste

NB: this is half of the normal recipe since I was only cooking for two, well, two and a half considering Ian's uncanny (and perhaps unhealthy?) ability to eat massive amounts of food.

Waffle mix with extra
cinnamon and nutmeg

The plan was simple, mix it all up, put it into our waffle-maker and poof - breakfast. Unfortunately, I didn't know that the vanilla bottle I bought was one without the slow drip top that they normally have. So, after mixing everything else together I flipped off the vanilla cap and poured about triple the amount of vanilla I needed. It smelled delicious. I had that moment that I have every time I cook with vanilla where I think "It smells soooo good, maybe more IS better!" Then I tasted it. Yuck.

But, I had already put all of the other ingredients in, so I didn't just want to throw it away. After pondering it for a few minutes, I decided to add some cinnamon, nutmeg, and double the sugar already in it. After some more taste testing, I added some more flour and water to get the base mixture a little more present.

I crossed my finger then put it into the waffle-maker. A few minutes later, out popped a yummy waffle, with a little extra kick. It kinda reminded me of french toast, especially once you put the syrup on. French Waffles, perhaps? [I think MC just rolled over in her grave - the next roux I make will be haunted by MC,  "french waffles! that is not art! that is not cooking! may all your rouxs be watery!"]

4 out of 5 on Yum scale

Even with the screw ups, it only took me about 15 minutes to cook it, and it managed to keep me stuffed until dinner. I would call that a success even by Denver's rigid breakfast standards [though not by MC's]. The success went to my head though, and this morning I thought I could make breakfast without a hitch....but I'll fill you in on the inevitable hick-ups next time.

First day of work = treating myself to pork chops

Monday morning I put on my favorite sensible pumps and went into the office for the first time. It was both exciting and nerve-wracking...and then back to exciting. Most of the day was spent in training, but I still got a feel of the office - the feeling was good. I was so excited that on my way home I decided to ditch my leftover spaghetti and swing by the grocery store and pick up whatever looked the most yummy.

After wandering the aisles for a while, I settled on pork chops with brussel sprouts and a baked potato. I had an alternative motive for making these sprouts - on new years Ian actually liked the brussel sprouts we had El Arbol  and I wanted to try and replicate them while he was still out of town. Things I knew about the infamous sprouts: they were buttery and lemony and slightly crunchy. Here's what I did:

5 brussel sprouts, cut in half
1 TBS butter, melted and poured on top
salt, lemon pepper and onion powder
Pop in the oven for 30 minutes @ 325 on the top shelf and eat.

3.5 out of 5 on the Yum scale

I didn't quite get there, but it wasn't bad for a first attempt. It was crunchy in the right way, but I didn't quite get the lemony-ness. I think next time I'll try adding some lemon juice as well.

Next up was the pork.  I didn't have time to marinate since it was an impulse dinner, so I just dropped it into the pan sans seasoning to brown (3.5 mins on each side). Then I took it out sprionkled it with salt and pepper, then cooked up garlic in the pork juice with a TBS of thyme. The pork then went back in pan and into the oven at 325 for 20 mins, flipping it at 10 mins. It was not as good as MC's [Ms. Child's] 24 hour marinade plus wine sauce pork chops...but it took a quarter of the time.

Right before I put it in the oven
4 out of 5 on Yum scale

The last piece to the puzzle was a baked potato. I love everything potatoes and I LOVE baked potatoes. I had a baked potato on Friday and I was ready for another one Monday. I like them that much. All I did was microwave it for 3 minutes and then toss it in with the BS for the 30 minutes. Then I stuffed it with some cheddar cheese, salt and pepper then ate it all up. YUM

5 out of 5 on Yum scale - but I'm biased

It was a pretty great dinner, even for one, and i only took me about 45 minutes with prep and puttering around my kitchen with a glass of wine (a major element of most of my cooking). Hopefully I will get excited at work more often and make more yummy improvised dinners!

Trials and Tribulations of the Denver Winter

On Sunday, after 10 days of family and fun in Austin, I returned to Denver. Unfortunately, Ian could not return home with me since there is an APA [American Philological Association] conference in San Antonio. Normally traveling alone is not a daunting task for me. However, this time I had 2 giant bags that contained most of our Christmas presents from the 3 family Christmases we went to, and I was pretty sure the car wasn't going to start.  The battery had already died once this winter due to the "extreme temperatures" and Sly (my pet name for my car) had been sitting in the airport parking lot in freezing temperatures for 10 days.

So, when I landed at Denver International greeted by 6 degree weather, I did not think my chances of making it back to the house were good. But, I determinedly grabbed my bags off the carrousel and trudged into the wintery wonderland that was long term parking. Luckily I wasn't parked too far out and got to my car in about 10 minutes. And miracle of all miracles, it started! Anther 10 or so minutes of scraping the ice off my windshield, and I was on my way home! (this wasn't so bad either since Aunt Jan got me an awesome ice-scraper-off-er that had a build in hand warmer - thanks aunt Jan!)

The drive home was another adventure in itself. We'd had the first major snow a few days ago, and it had not warmed up enough to melt off all the ice on the roads. I hadn't driven in snow on highways in years, so I was pretty sure I was going to fly off a frozen bridge and take out at least 10 cars with me. No such thing happened, however, and I managed to push the speedometer to a respectable 55 mph so the other drivers didn't run me over on their commutes.

I arrived home to find our cute Tudor cottage covered in a few inches of snow.

Backyard of snow!

At first glance, I rejoiced at the snow, thinking how pretty it looked. That feeling lasted about 10 seconds, until I skidded up the driveway and realized that I had to clear out all the snow. I put it off until the next morning when I grabbed the plastic shovel that our landlord left for us in the office. Two things I learned that morning: 1) don't let snow sit for a long time on sidewalks, it will cause the bottom layer to freeze to the ground; 2) no way in hell a plastic shovel can get through a frozen layer or snow.

I kept at it for about an hour, then gave up, hoping that it would get hot enough during the day to melt the rest. Here's the fruit of my labors:

It's not very impressive, I know. Even more embarrassing, I couldn't help wondering about the liability issues involved in shoveling the snow. Would I be responsible is someone slipped on the side walk? Would my landlord? Did I increase my liability by making it appear safe by my shoveling? I was about to make a sign saying "Caution, Slippery" when I decided that it was time I went back to work. As far as I know,  no one slipped on our sidewalk and I made it through my first 24 hours of a real Denver winter. Here's to  adapting to north!