Chicken Noodle Soup! Or, Theresa Actually Cooks Real Stuff!

I decided that today, I was in the mood to cook something really fancy. So I went to one of my fanciest cookbooks, and picked out a recipe. Oddly, the Mission Of Hope Cancer Fund cookbook? Really fancy. It's even got a recipe in it from one of the Iron Chefs. And we're not talking Cat Cora or Michael Symon here kids. We're talking Chen Kinichi. Oh, yeah. Apparently he cooks at (or cooked at at the time of the book being published) a restaurant in New Orleans. Of all the places in the world, right?

At any rate, I selected Chicken Noodle Soup. Except I did it the semi-homemade kind of way.

The recipe called for an onion, a full bunch of celery and 2 cups of carrots. And peas. And a full fryer chicken!

I had a couple of things working against me here, that lead to my embracing the "semi-homemade" version of this recipe:

1)I only had $20, and had to purchase EVERY ingredient on the list

2)I cook for a picky eater who was likely to pick out only the chicken and the noodles and waste all this celery

3)It was 4 pm, and I didn't want to have to mess with cooking a whole chicken.

So the good people at Kroger kind of saved me here. They have frozen mirepoix, which covered me for onions and celery (and carrots), and then I got a frozen bag of peas to cover me there. Throw in a $5 chicken, and a bag of egg noodles, and your pretty well out the door!

It doesn't call for any herbs or anything. Brown the vegetables, put in the chicken (of course, if your not doing it the semi-homemade way, you have to cook the chicken and all of that), stock, noodles. Set.

I did make a blunder at the end, and I dumped in the entire bag of noodles, which made it really chunky (it made it pretty much entirely noodles and chicken, I won't kid you), but if you are like my boyfriend and like the stuff out of soup but not the broth, then even the blunder isn't so bad. :)

I don't have permission to republish the recipe, although I wish I could. It's very simple soup, but very delicious. Although admittedly, it didn't satisfy my urge to cook fancy food. So that was a bummer.

I Live, And I'm Super Excited!

So poor Chef has kind of gotten lost over the last few weeks, and I do apologize for that.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've actually been doing alot of footwork for the blog though. According to my Comp 2 professor, I can't legally republish recipes without permission from their authors, so I've been digging out cookbooks of mine, and contacting the authors to seek out permission to republish in the blog.

I'm very close to getting permission to republish one!

When I start republishing recipes, I do intend to test the recipes as often as time and being reasonable will allow. One of the books I've almost got permission for, the first recipe in the book is holiday punch, that starts with a base of two bottles of wine. Yeah...I live alone with my fiance and a three year old. We don't have any chance of drinking two bottles of wine before they go bad. :O So that one will go untested at least. Unless I can find someone to drink wine. I told my fiancee that he was taking the punch into work, he didn't look that excited at the prospect. :D

Theresa And The Story Of The Most Convoluted Dinner I've Ever Made..

Often times, when I ask what's for dinner, my fiancee will challenge me to make Chicken Fricassee.

Today, I went "I see you your Chicken Fricassee, sir!", and googled that stuff right up.

Let me say, the finished product was so good. Soul food in the finest sense of the word - hearty, creamy, and with enough substance that it really settles into your ribs. It does, however, have a great ability to grow, so when your plating it, plate about half of what you think your going to want! We both learned that the hard way!

Thomas Jefferson's Chicken Fricassee.

That is the link to the recipe I made. Why it's cited as being Thomas Jefferson's, I don't know, but there you go.

The recipe could not have been simpler, both in terms of ingredients and in terms of the actual process. The only thing that made it so convoluted was that it took so bloody many steps!

Brown the chicken. Take the chicken out, make the gravy. Put the chicken back, let it simmer. Take the chicken AND the gravy back out (but store them seperatly, naturally), and saute the onions and mushrooms. Then put the gravy back in, then put the chicken back.

Doesn't it seem like that could have been streamlined at least a little? It wasn't at all hard, and the ingredient list is fairly short, there was just so many steps to it. Although oddly, I looked in another cookbook that had a chicken fricassee recipe, and it had a shorter list of steps, but a longer list of ingredients. So evidentally, it's an either or type of situation.

My next step was a pumpkin cake. Came from my Bisquick cookbook. Basically, it was bisquick, pumpkin pie pumpkin (which either my Kroger doesn't have pumpkin pie pumpkin yet, or alot of people were baking pie today, because I had to go with canned pumpkin, rather then pumpkin pie pumpkin), egg and sugar. Bake. If I'd gotten the pumpkin pie pumkin, I can imagine that it would have tasted like a really great piece of pumpkin pie. Don't get me wrong, it was still delicious, it just wasn't what I imagine the good people that wrote that book in the 1970's were really going for.

But I bought the big can of pumpkin, so I get to try pumpkin pancakes too!

And thus, we bring to a close an entry that included more mention of pumkin then I'd ever thought possible. Good night and good eats!

Marlboro: The Cookbook. Kid You Not.

So I can't resist the call of a good kitschy cookbook. I just can't. If it's something goofy and offbeat, I am SO there.

Some recent finds include:

Cooking With Friends. Like, Friends the TV show.

Soupcon I: Seasonal Samplings From The Junior Leauge of Chicago

Sugar Plum Fare from the Scholarship Committee from the National Ballet School

The Hagen Family Cookbook. Evidentally, this family went together, collected all their recipes, and had them published into one book. It's really heavy into Norweigan foods, which is interesting.

And the Marlboro "Cook Like A Man" cookbook, which leans heavily on the talents of one Bobby Flay, because every recipe contains enough pepper that I got uncomfortable just reading about them. Looking over the cookbook prompted my fiancee, who is a smoker himself, to go "Yes, because you've killed so many of your taste buds smoking Marlboros, that you have to use that many peppers, just to taste the food!"

Good eats! I plan to work my way through at least one of them soon!

The Theresa/Paula Deen Project Is Off To A Rousing Start!

The Theresa/Paula Deen Project is off to a rousing start!

My unsuspecting first recipe was Mexican Chicken:

One 10 3/4 ounce can Cream of Chicken Soup
One 10 3/4 ounce can Cheddar Cheese soup
One 10 3/4 ounce can Cream of Mushroom soup
One 10 ounce can Ro-tel tomatoes
1 whole chicken, cooked, boned and chopped, or 4 cups leftover cooked chicken
One 11 1/2 ounce package flour tortillas
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

In a large bowl, stir together the three kinds of soup and the tomatoes. Stir in the chicken. In a greased 13x9 inch pan, layer the tortillas and the chicken mixture, beginning and ending with tortillas. Sprinkle the cheese over the casserole and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

---

I put alot of footwork behind this recipe. I bought a package of chicken breasts, and I had a package of chicken legs, and boiled the both. Then I pulled the chicken - which admittedly took a long time, because the little buggers were HOT - mix up all the soups, throw them in the oven, good to go, right?

As we sat down to dinner, my fiancee confided that he didn't believe that this recipe was worth the amount of work that I'd put into it.

Can I tell you? The picky eater, who never gets adventerous, and hates to try new stuff? Had THREE plates. THREE! T-H-R-E-E. Can you tell that I feel like I've slayed giants here?! And not only did he personally have three plates, but my three year old, who eats like a bird, cleared his!

I'm on FIRE!

This recipe serves 8, so I divided the recipe into two different plates, and put one in a glass casserole dish that we cooked today, and put one in one of those disposable pan, that my non-chef picky eater fiancee has been given instructions for ow to reheat for another day this week. I take college classes on Tuesday and Wendesday, and that'll make a perfect dinner for another night. Even someone who doesn't cook can hang with "warm it up until the cheese melts"!.

I've also got a mess of chicken left to do something with. The Chicken Casserole recipe is probably my next suspect. I've got all the ingredients, save for pimentos. And you know, for having the reputation that all of Paulas recipes start with a pound of butter, an awful lot of them start out with a can of cream of mushroom soup.

Until tomorrow! :)

The Theresa/Paula Deen Project?

Last night, as a joke, I suggested The Theresa/Paula Deen project to my fiancee as a joke. He took me up on it!

If you don't know the spirit of which the joke was intended, here's a few facts:

The Julie/Julia Project is the blog that the movie Julie And Julia was based on. Julie Powell decided to cook her way through Julia Childs "Mastering The Art Of French Cooking", and keep a blog while she did it.

My fiancee is quite a picky eater. Like, the level of picky that it's easier to tell you what he will eat, then it is to tell you what he won't eat. And we got a new kitchen table this weekend, and for some reason, he got all sorts of inspired, and started talking about Paula Deen.

Which brings us back to my suggesting the Theresa/Paula Deen Project, and him taking me seriously. He was totally into it. Go figure!

So I selected "The Lady & Sons Too!" this afternoon at the bookstore, and I'm in the process of making the Mexican Chicken recipe as we speak.

The Theresa/Paula Deen Project might have gotten it's official start! Exciting!

Michael Chiarellos Rules For Cooking

Right now, I've got pretty much every Michael Chiarello cookbook my library would let me take out at once, and I found something fun that I thought I'd share.

In the front of "Flavored Oils: 50 Recipes For Cooking With Infused Oils", he offers his "rules for cooking". They are:

1)Don't cook if you don't want to.

2)Don't cook when you are full.

3)Shop when you are hungry.

4)Cook with the ingredients in the biggest displays. This is usually produce at the peak of its season.

5)Make the food your own - substitute and experiment - just never say "I can't make that because I don't have that exact ingredient."

I like number four. It makes total sense, but who thinks of that? I never had.

Tofu Alfredo...I Gotta Say, I Kind Of Love It...

I am nothing, if not open minded. Cloth diapering? Why not? Soy Milk instead of Cow? Bring it on. Tofu noodles instead of regular? Oh, sure.

So my recent culinary experiment was tofu noodles. I don't know if anyone has heard of Hungry Girl, but they are often singing the praises of the tofu noodle - all of the fun of pasta, with none of the bad stuff (gluten, sugar, CALORIES), and I actually found some at my friendly neighborhood Meijer store.

So I got the fettucini noodle, and made some alfredo sauce out of my Betty Crocker cookbook...which I'm madly looking around trying to find, so I can give you the recipe. Alright, found it. Check it out:

1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup whipping (heavy) cream
3/4 cup rated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper

In a 10 inch skillet, heat butter and whipping cream over medium heat, stirring frequently, until butter is melted and mixture starts to bubble; reduce heat to low. Simmer 6 minutes, stirring frequently, until slightly thickened. Stir in cheese, salt and pepper.

That's just almost painful it's so simple!

The noodles, you just drain, rinse, microwave for one minute (or boil on the stove for two to three), pat dry with a towel, and serve. You can have vegetarian - or with a little more work vegan or completely gluten free - alfredo on the table in six minutes. Tell me that that's not completely dangerous information!

With the sauce, I'll admit to taking a bit of a short cut, and having it not entirely pan out. I got green can parmesan cheese, and the sauce had to be RIPPING hot, otherwise you could tell the difference in the texture.

As for the noodles - a little more snap then a noodle might traditionally have (although I'll admit to liking my noodles a little overdone anyway, so that might be why I think that), similar mouth feel, smooth in my mouth, didn't taste any different then I'd expect any other noodle to taste.

I was truthfully impressed with both the sauce recipe, and the noodles. So impressed, that I nearly drowned myself in tofu alfredo last night. Eesh. So it's low cal, but your probably not supposed to eat the whole package by yourself. :D

It's New Cookbook Day!

Here at Chef, we're still grinning over our new cookbook find - Cat Cora's Cooking From The Hip. The book encourages improvised cooking. Get the idea of the recipe, and then sub at will. I've not tried any recipe in full yet, but to celebrate the day, I'm printing up a new recipe for everybody. Not from the book though, although that's coming! :)

Beef in Chipotle Sauce

1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
3 1/2 pounds beef roast, such as English or Chuck
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
2 tablespoons freshly minced garlic
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup drained canned diced tomatoes
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped chipotle chilies (we use canned)

Combine salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, and coriander. Cut meat into 2 inch by 4 inch chunks and rub seasoning mixture over beef. Cover and chil about 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat oil in large ovenproof pot over medium-high heat. Add half of meat and brown on all sides, about 9 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Repeat with remaining pieces of meat. Reduce head to medium.

Add onions and garlic to the same pot and cook until onion is soft, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes.

Add stock and bring to a boil, scraping up browned bits.

Add tomatoes, lime juice, and chipotle chilies. Return emat to pot and arrange in a single layer. Bring to a boil; cover and cook in oven until meat is just tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

Tip: This is delicious served in a heated tortilla garnished with guacamole, chopped tomatoes, and sour cream.

Information:
active time: 25 minutes
Passive time: 2 hours
Roasting time: about 1 1/2 hours
Yeild: 4 to 6 servings

Eat well, in celebration of new cookbook day!

The Koolickle Experiement. Or "No, Seriously. Don't Drink The Kool-Aid".

If you watched Feasting On Asphalt: The River Run, you probably remember the Koolickle. If you don't...imagine a bright pink pickle. Yeah.

To my delight, when I checked out Feasting On Asphalt: The River Run: The Book (I don't think that's the whole title, but it made me laugh to type it), they included the recipe for Koolickles, and you KNOW I had to try it out.

Alton and his crew stopped at Joe's White Front Cafe in Rosedale, Mississippi, and encountered the Koolickle for the first time. It looked scary, but according to ol' AB, is suprisingly delicious.

Now I know, your probably going "Koolickle?! What is that?!". It's what it sounds like it probably is - a pickle. Soaked in Koolaid.

The recipe:

1 gallon jar kosher dill pickles
2 packages unsweetened cherry Kool-Aid
1 pound sugar

Drain the liquid into a large container. Add the Kool-Aid mix and the sugar to the liquid and stir until sugar is completely dissolved. Remove the pickles from the jar, slice them in half lengthwise, and return them to the jar. Return the liquid to the jar of pickles. Not all the liquid will fit, but make sure the pickles are completely covered. Place in the refrigerator and let sit for one week.

Now, I wasn't willing to commit to a full gallon of pickles, because I was probably going to be the only person in my house willing to give this a shot, so I bought just a regular size container of pickles.

The evidence:



The juice. I used a half a cup of sugar, and one packet of Kool-Aid. I'm not much with the math, so I'm not sure if I cut it down right. We'll have to see, I suppose. No one has ever died from a pickle, so I assume I'm safe. ;)



The pickles, rejuiced. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to wait a week. Maybe we'll just go in 24 hour incriments.

And there's another restaurant pictured in the book with a sign advertising that they have "Southern Style Sweet Pickles" in Cherry, Strawberry and Grape. So the Koolickle experiment will continue, I trust. There's lots of Kool-Aid flavors!

Coffee Cake...In A Jiffy!

So I've blogged a couple of times about this funny Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cookbook that I got at the librarys booksale, and at end of the day, I just couldn't turn it down. I made the Banana Coffee Cake. The last few weeks, we've bought bananas at the store and not really eaten them, so I'm eyeing these rapidly browning bananas, and I went "Aah, what the heck?"

The recipe:

2 cups Bisquick baking mix
1/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup chopped nuts
Creamy Icing and chopped nuts for topping

Creamy Icing:

1/3 cup confectioners sugar
2 teaspoons milk

Combine baking mix, sugar, butter, egg, milk, banana and 1/2 cup nuts; beat vigorously 1/2 minute.

Spread batter in greased round layer pan, 9x11 1/2 inches.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes. While warm, spread with Creamy Icing and sprinkle with nuts. Serves 8.

Can I tell you guys - this recipe was crazy good, and crazy easy. Moist and soft, you could taste the banana running through it, and taste the nice warmth from the nuts. I used walnuts because that was what I had in the house, but you could totally vary the taste and texture by changing the nuts you use.

I also liked this recipe because it was SO easy. I have a two and a half year old, and he gets so excited to get to come in the kitchen and cook with mama, and this is one we could totally do together. And a hearty thumbs up for that!

I had to make some slight adjustments to the recipe - I found out after the batter was completely mixed that I didn't have a cake pan, so I had to bake in the five small bread tins that I had. lol - it's really true! So that threw off my baking time as well. So if you adjust like I did, watch out for that. At 20 minutes, my bread pans were basically still batter.

The only beef I really had with the recipe was the frosting. I just didn't feel like it added to it at all. The recipe called for the frosting to be applied while the cake was still warm, and it completely melded into the recipe - you didn't get any added sweetness, and the banana provided enough moisture on its own, so you didn't need the frosting for that either. So when I make this again, and trust me, I will, I'll probably take a pass on the frosting.

Cookbook Finds...

I went to the library book sale yesterday (and today!) and made some really interesting cookbook finds.

Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cookbook? Oh yeah, baby! Copyrighted in 1971, it's actually something I've never really seen before - the recipes are seperated out by Holidays. It includes jems like the "Christmas Biscuit Tree", "Orange Crunchies", "Hot Cross Buns", and most interestingly, a recipe for Chocolate Pudding that INCLUDES Bisquick. Say what?! That might be too interesting to not make. I have clogging practice tomorrow morning, and they always love it when people bring food. I might bring some Bisquick Chocolate Pudding. lol - am I the only one that kind of goes "Ewww..." when I read that?!

I also got Minnie Pearl's Nashville Country Cookbook, which I only flipped through real fast, but I'm sure promises to be really entertaining. :)

I also checked out the "Feasting On Asphalt: The River Run" by Alton Brown. Anyone remember the famous cherry pickles? The recipe is TOTALLY in the book. Kid you not. Cherry pickles. In the book. Oh yeah, baby!

I also got a book called "Cooking For Women In A Hurry" put out by the Culinary Arts Institute, or some such. That just looked so bizarre. I couldn't say no to it.

High five for cherry pickles and Bisquick Chocolate Pudding! I'm totally making them both. I just decided. :)

Cookbook Find Of The Week...

I love to go perusing my library for cookbooks - I run up to Staples and copy off all the recipes I want to find, in the case of one, I find myself chasing all over creation for specific ingredients from the book, and I even convinced the library to just outright give me one, because it was missing pages.

One was just too interesting to pass by. "You Won't Believe It's Gluten-Free!" by Roben Ryberg.

I think if you've got someone in your life living gluten free, they need this book. This book is cool.

There are recipes for everything a gluten free eater misses, and can't afford to buy the overpriced gluten free versions of - pie crusts, ice cream cones, fried chicken, baguettes, pancakes, onion rings, chocolate chip cookies, and more.

I also love that as she goes through the book, she gives different tips for Gluten Free eating, including one that I found especialaly interesting. From page 207 "Most charcoal in the United States is held together with a wheat-based binder. If you're not working with a gas grill, wood-based charcoal, or real wood, cook your serving in tightly sealed foil to avoid cross contamination", and another tip that when dining out for Chinese food, to bring your own soy sauce, and request that your dish is prepared using freshly washed equipment.

My only beef with this book, if I had to have one, is that some of the ingredients are going to be kind of hard to find. Most all the baking recipes require xantham gum, and unless you have a specialty shop in close proximity, that's going to be darn hard to come by. In the case of my mother in law in particular, it's going to take about an hour to get to some Xantham Gum. Boo for that! She also calls for things like rice flour, sorghum flour, and millet flour, which, again - if you don't have a specialty market near you, is going to be hard to come to find. So, like I said - if I had to find a beef with this book, it's that some of these ingredients might be real hard to come by, depending on where you live in the country.

Coming tomorrow, a trip to a rad grocery store, and I finally found an ingredient I've been looking for forEVER. And maybe we're baking up cookies all toddler style. We'll see. :)