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.You 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.  I 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.  

 

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 was not on there.  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?First of all, you should know that this recipe scared us.  I had suggested to my brother that we make this recipe for his kids when they came to visit, he declined.  I had the recipe in my head, however, so I had to make it.

It’s hot dogs cooked in a cream sauce with pickle relish and onions and green pepper.  Well, we think it’s green pepper.  Technically the recipe says “gr. pepper”.  After I had added the 3 TB of green pepper, it occurred to me that it could’ve stood for “ground pepper” because it seems weird for green pepper to be measured that way, but then I remembered that in Iowa when my mom was growing 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. Suprisingly, this recipe was not as bad as we thought it was going to be.  It was actually kind of good, but I think it helps that we got good hot dogs.  In hindsight, I wish we had butter toasted the buns.  It would’ve added a little crispy element.  Instead, it’s all sort of white and squashy and like the comfort food you never knew you needed.  Because we didn’t know, we served these with our normal ketchup and mustard on the table, but this is an up to your taste sort of thing.

For a fun variation, add cheese to the cream sauce.  It’s like a cheddarwurst.

We had a lot of sauce leftover that I secretly used in a creamy pasta dish later in the week.  Don’t tell the kids.

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.  It seems much easier to just do take out than have to go 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 all of 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.  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 and made beautiful decorations for this.  I might’ve egg washed it, made gorgeous cuts to make this into a work of art, but 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.  I guess it worked. The kids inhaled the meal.  John took leftovers to work and was asked about it.  He said it was good reheated.  In order for busy people to make this dish in time for supper, there is some pre-planning that needs to happen.  The night before, get the bread dough out of the freezer and put it into the fridge.  It will start the thawing process.  When you get up in the morning, move the bread dough into a container on the counter and cover it with plastic wrap. (Speaking of plastic wrap, John told me that due to some environmental concerns, 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, an overly lengthy rising time is not going to affect your end product enough that you will notice.  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. Substitute 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. 

Birthday Edition: Shrimp and Olive Pie

You asked for it and here it is.

Eating dinner the other night, we asked the kids what they would like to eat for their birthdays.  This year, I was going to be making them whatever they wanted instead of going out for it.  We discussed the merits of this favorite dish and that one.  Nicholas mentioned having a pie birthday.  Nothing but different types of pie all day long.  Including chicken pot pie, apple pie, and pizza pie.  Miles wants red beans and rice.  Caroline’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 is, I don’t know that I have ever 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, one brother declared he hated shrimp, one brother hates olives, John is not a fan of olives, but I wasn’t planning on cooking more than one meal.  I just don’t do that.

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.  I didn’t look up pie recipes, just recipes that used both shrimp and olives.  I found nothing.  I found fish recipes that used olives.  Seafood is seafood, right?  But at least now I had an idea.

I could see it all in a tomato based sauce, except I don’t think the kids would appreciate that.  So I re-evaluated, again.

I was stuck on the idea of a potpie.  I found a recipe in Great-Grandma’s book for Never Fail Pie Crust.  It’s exactly what I needed because I can make pie crust that tastes delicious, but always have trouble rolling it out.  Every pie I make has a patchwork crust. I made the pie crust.  It was easy.  I divided it into 4 pieces and threw them in the fridge.  I didn’t think it was going to win me points on the Great British Baking show, but it seemed to be a pretty decent pie crust.  Malleable, 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.

Now I was just down to the filling.  I started with some onions because onions go into these sorts of things.  I chopped them up and started sauteing them as I contemplated the contents of my fridge and freezer.  I found a bag of frozen vegetables from Trader Joe’s.  Misto Alla Griglia.  It was 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 those up into bitty pieces and threw them in with the onions.  When that was all nice 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 and realized that I hadn’t added the olives. I was wondering if it was a good idea to just chop them up and add them to the crust, but realized the birthday girl would not recognize them as olives, so I threw big pieces into the sauce.  I added some milk to make everything creamy, added my shrimp, threw it all in the pie crust, put the top crust on after rolling out with some Romano cheese (inspired by Beverly Goldberg’s Shrimp Parm) and baked until it looked done.

I don’t have an exact recipe for anything except the pie crust.  It’s just not the way I cook.

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.

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.

 

“Japanese” 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 those 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.

But there were still more questions.  Like what kind of chicken?  Cooked chicken?  Raw chicken?  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.

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).

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.

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.