Food Shouldn't Be This Dangerous

Last night, making dinner almost killed me. Well, not quite, but it was moderately disastrous. So I decided to make this Chicken Goulash with Biscuit Dumplings from this month's Food & Wine. I had all the ingredients and everything, but I completely messed up the timing of the recipe. This led to me trying to chop onions in a hurry. Life lesson: DO NOT chop onions in a hurry. I somehow managed to chop through the side of my thumb so deeply that it went halfway through my fingernail, leading to me having to sit down on the floor to avoid passing out from the sight of all the blood. This was a very Becky thing to do; I'm known for my capacity to hurt myself at any time. Nevertheless, it was still upsetting, and my thumb hurts like a mother.

After I recovered from that trauma and got the dish into the oven, I realized that I had forgotten to place it on a baking sheet. How did I realize this? When I heard the sizzle of bubbling-over sauce hit the bottom of my oven and started to smell my kitchen filling up with smoke. Oops. In addition to a sliced-open thumb I now felt like I was about to burn the house down. What a mess.

Fortunately, the dish was pretty good. This would have been much easier to make if I had had an oven-safe skillet, avoiding the need to transfer the chicken to a casserole dish before putting it into the oven. I wasn't crazy about the recipe calling for chicken thighs; they were a little fatty. What I liked best about this meal were the biscuit dumplings. Mine were slightly under-cooked, though, so make sure you don't take this out of the oven prematurely. Also, put it on a cookie sheet in case it bubbles over. And don't slice your onions in a hurry.


Chicken Goulash with Biscuit Dumplings
serves 4

• 2 lbs skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 2-inch pieces
• salt and pepper
• 1-1/2 c. all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 5 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cubed, divided
  
• 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 2-1/2 c. chicken stock or broth, divided
• 1 c. sour cream, divided
• 1 large white onion, finely chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 Tbsp. hot paprika
• 3/4 tsp. caraway seeds
• 1 tsp. thyme leaves

Preheat the oven to 425. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and dust lightly with flour. In a large, deep skillet, melt 1 Tbsp. of the butter in the olive oil. Add the chicken and cook over high heat, turning once, until browned, about 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken to a plate.

Meanwhile, in a food processor, pulse the flour, baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Pulse in the remaining 4 Tbsp. of butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Whisk 1/2 cup of the stock with 1/2 cup of the sour cream and drizzle over the dry ingredients. Pulse until a dough forms.

Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic to the skillet and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 3 minutes. Return the chicken to the skillet. Stir in the paprika and caraway and cook for 30 seconds. Add the remaining 2 cups of chicken stock and 1/2 cup of sour cream and stir until smooth. Add the thyme leaves and bring to a boil.

Scoop twelve 3-Tbsp-size mounds of biscuit dough over the chicken. Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake for 20 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and the biscuits are cooked. Turn on the broiler and broil for 2 minutes, until the biscuits are golden. Serve the goulash in bowls, spooning the biscuits on top.

Catching Up...Again

Sorry, people. I don't know what it is these days, but I am having a hard time staying on top of my blogging duties. I'm back at school (class started up again on January 2 - how cruel is that?) and doing the requisite post-holiday diet. I don't need to shed a ton of weight, so I'm kind of playing fast and loose with the South Beach rules. Here are a couple things I've made this week.

I made this Lentil Chili with Cumin and Green Onions last night. As it was cooking, I kept tasting it and feeling unsatisfied with it. It was fine, but not great. Things improved after I salted it well. But the flavors really came together and popped when I stirred in the green onions at the end. Not something I'd make again, but it was healthy, and I enjoyed eating it. I'm not going to bother with the recipe, but it's in the February 2008 edition of Bon Appetit. I'd link you to it, but I guess the February recipes aren't on the website yet. Sorry :(


My mom gave me a cookbook called The Gourmet Slow Cooker for Christmas, and a few days ago I tried the recipe for the Indian-style Chicken in Saffron-Tomato Cream Sauce. I was pretty disappointed with it, but I think my slow cooker technique is just lacking. Actually, I'd love some advice on this, if you've got any. My problem is that I put the skinned, cut-up chicken into the cooker with only a small bit of liquid, and a couple of hours later, it's floating in a bubbling bath of its own fat. So, the chicken ends up tasting really greasy, and the "cream sauce" is non-existent because I try to avoid eating as much of the liquid chicken fat concoction as possible. What am I doing wrong? Was the chicken too fatty? Should I periodically dump the grease out of the cooker? Inquiring minds want to know. Oh, and here's a picture of the finished dish.

Catching Up

Holy crap, it's been forever. I have a good excuse, though. I've been in the midst of final exams for weeks and really just have not had time for blogging. Fortunately, I have had time to do a tiny bit of cooking, so now that I'm home for the holidays and have all the blogging time in the world, here's a recap of some highlights from the last month or so.

This was one of those times when watching Food Network on the treadmill inspired me. I never watch Barefoot Contessa, but she happened to be making this chicken dish that looked yum. She marinated chicken in rosemary, lemon, and garlic, and then grilled it. I decided to bake it instead, but still, it was quite good. She also made broccolini in a balsamic vinaigrette. I replicated that as well, and I liked it even better than the chicken.


These cookies got me through studying for my Corporations final. Unfortunately, I don't have the recipe to share with you all because it's in a cookbook that I left at school (Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything). They were your basic oatmeal-raisin cookies with a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips thrown in for good measure.


This pasta dish was seriously the best thing I've made in a long time. I made a HUGE batch of it and then ate it for like five days in a row during finals. The sauce on this pasta was so yummy - a light cream sauce with ground turkey, sausage, spinach, and nutmeg, with lots of parmesan cheese melted in.


Oh, I also made a Moroccan chicken pot pie, but forgot to take a picture of it. Lately I've been obsessed with the raisins-olives combination. It's so salty-sweet and addictive. This pot pie was delicious and extremely fast to make.

Coming very soon: my December Daring Bakers post!

No Vampires

Have you ever butchered a chicken? You know, taken a whole chicken and hacked at it with a large knife to dismember it? I did yesterday for the first time. It was not pleasant. Actually, that's an understatement - it was kind of awful. It made me want to become a vegetarian immediately. I'll spare you the gory details, but it involved breaking bones. Ugh. I guess it was a good experience, though, because now I know how to do it. If you're ever faced with cutting up a whole chicken, there's a pretty good explanation with diagrams and stuff on p.368 of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, or you can look here.

Anyway, the butchering was worth it because this chicken with 40 cloves of garlic is amazing. This recipe really just screams "autumn" to me. Between the roasting garlic and the cinnamon, the smell it emanates as the chicken is cooking is one of the most delicious aromas ever to grace my olfactory organs. My apartment has never smelled better than it did for an hour last night when I had this chicken on the stove.

Added bonus: all this garlic is a pretty potent vampire repellent.

A glimpse into the pot:

And on the plate:

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic
Adapted from How to Cook Everything (Mark Bittman)

• 1 whole chicken, cut up, trimmed of fat, rinsed and patted dry
• 2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• at least 2 heads garlic, separated into cloves but not peeled
• 1/2 c. minced fresh parsley leaves
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 c. white wine or chicken stock

Place the chicken, oil, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, and cinnamon in the bottom of a large saucepan, casserole, or Dutch oven. Pour the wine/stock over all and mix together. Turn the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Cover tightly and reduce the heat to low. Cook, undisturbed, for about an hour, until the chicken and garlic are very tender. Eat the softened garlic cloves spread onto good crusty bread.

Just Stuff It

Before I get to my featured recipe, two things:
1) A public service announcement. If you bake homemade pita, make sure you put it in the refrigerator. Otherwise it will grow mold and all of your hard work (and burned hands) will be for naught.
2) A recommendation. If you have $400 to burn on dinner for two, go to L'Espalier for their seasonal degustation with the grand vintner's tasting. It is three hours of pure magical delight. You will not be disappointed.

Okay, so this week I made yet another delicious South Beach friendly meal. I'm not really into chicken these days, I don't know why, I just haven't really had a taste for it. But this was pretty good and I didn't mind eating it for dinner two nights in a row, with just a side of salted sliced tomatoes. (When you live alone you have the ability to live off your own leftovers.) That's possibly because I've been obsessed with goat cheese recently and have been using it in everything. I used to think I hated goat cheese, but sometime this summer I had an epiphany and realized that it is actually a little piece of cheesy heaven. So don't be surprised if you see more goat cheese pop up in my recipes in the future.


Goat Cheese-Stuffed Chicken
Serves 4

• 1/4 c. walnut halves
• 1/4 c. fresh goat cheese
• 1/2 tsp. lemon zest
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• four 6-ounce boneless/skinless chicken breasts
• 1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/4 c. low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 Tbsp. walnut oil
• 1/4 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley

Preheat the oven to 400°. Spread the walnuts in a pie plate and toast for 6 minutes, until fragrant. Let cool, then chop. In a small bowl, mash the goat cheese with the lemon zest, garlic and half of the walnuts; season with salt and pepper. Using a small knife, cut a pocket in the side of each chicken breast; keep the pocket opening as small as possible. Stuff the chicken breasts with the mixture and gently press to flatten them. In a large ovenproof skillet, heat the olive oil until shimmering. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and cook over moderately high heat, turning once, until browned, about 6 minutes. Transfer the skillet to the oven and roast the chicken for 5 minutes. Transfer the chicken breasts to a platter and keep warm. Add the lemon juice and stock to the skillet and cook over moderately high heat, scraping up any browned bits stuck to the pan. Simmer for 3 minutes. Stir in the walnut oil, parsley and the remaining chopped walnuts. Transfer the chicken breasts to plates, spoon the walnut sauce on top and serve.

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging #102, hosted this week by Ulrike from Kuchenlatein. WHB is a weekly food blogging event where bloggers post recipes using their favorite herbs, plants, veggies, and flowers. In my goat cheese stuffed chicken, the flat-leaf parsley in the reduction adds a nice herby flavor to the dish that would otherwise be dominated by the rich tastes of the goat cheese and walnuts. Flat-leaf parsley is one of two kinds of parsley (along with curly), and is thought to have the stronger flavor of the two. Flat-leaf parsley is also better adapted to cooking because it can better withstand high heat.

Crunch Time

It's been a while since I've updated, mostly due to my 10-day absence during spring break at the end of March. (It was lovely - I spent a weekend in New York City with my best friend from high school and then the rest of the time lounging on the beach in southwest Florida with some college friends.) Since getting back, I've been trying to eat healthier, since I always tend to binge on vacations. Over the last week I've made a lot of very simple, not-quite-blog-worthy meals: marinated and grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, fresh fruit, and the like.

Last night I stuck to my healthy theme but got a bit more elaborate. My friend Chris came over to watch a movie and we decided to make big, beautiful salads. The results were so pretty that I had to take a picture and post the recipe, which I adapted from one by Rachael Ray (yes, again).


Incredible Crunchy Salad
Serves 3-4

• Coarse salt
• 3/4-c. long grain rice
• 1 green apple, peeled, quartered, cored, and finely diced
• 1 small red or green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
• 1/4 medium red onion, minced
• 6 radishes, finely chopped
• 2 T plus about 2 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 T white wine vinegar
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• Coarse black pepper
• 1/4-c extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small package croutons or crostini
  
• 2 packages pre-washed lettuce mix (pick your favorite)
• 1-lb. chicken cutlets

Heat 1-1/3 cups water in a small pot. When it comes to a boil, salt it and add the rice. Cover and reduce to a simmer and cook the rice for about 18 minutes or until just tender, with a bite remaining. Remove the lid and fluff the rice, then spread it on a cookie sheet to quick-cool.

While the rice cooks, combine the apples, bell peppers, onions, and radishes in a small bowl, adding them to it as you chop. Dress them with about 2 tablespoons of the fresh lemon juice and lightly toss the crunchy mixture with your fingertips.

In a bowl, whisk together the remaining 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, the white wine vinegar, the chopped garlic, mustard, and some salt and pepper. Add the olive oil gradually as you whisk.

Season the chicken cutlets with salt and pepper and saute or grill over medium-high heat (I used a stove-top grill pan). While they cook, crunch two big handfuls of the croutons/crostini into small pieces. When the chicken is done, slice it into half-inch-thick slices crosswise.

Arrange the lettuces on plates. Scatter the cool rice across the salad, layer on the crunchy apple/pepper/onion/radish mixture and the croutons/crostini, and arrange the chicken slices on top. Drizzle the dressing in a slow, even stream all over the salad.

Getting My Groove Back

Like I mentioned in my last post, it's been a while since I've done the whole food blogging thing. Honestly, I haven't been doing much cooking at all. In the post-breakup weeks I indulged myself in ordering junk food and letting my friends feed me. Which was great, and what I needed, really, but now I'm finding out that I'm a bit rusty in the kitchen. Oops.

Last night I decided to cook myself an honest-to-goodness meal, and while it started out a little rocky, in the end I was pleased with myself. I didn't want to get too ambitious, so I picked a Rachael Ray recipe: Honey Chicken with Snow Pea Rice. Yeah, I hate Rachael Ray, but I felt like a 30 minute meal was about all I could handle. Also, I'd been craving Chinese food after watching an Asian-themed episode of the Phantom Gourmet. I figured this would hit the spot.

Well, I started off on the wrong foot as I put too much oil into the rice and then burned it by turning the heat up too high. Not my finest culinary moment. But I somehow managed to get my mojo back, and by the time the meal was finished (more than 30 minutes later, I have to admit) I was pretty darn happy. Small accomplishments, people... sometimes that's all you need.


Honey Chicken with Snow Pea Rice
Serves 4

• 3 T vegetable oil, divided
• 1 T unsalted butter
• 1-1/2 c. long-grain rice
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 c. dry white wine (I used pinot grigio)
• 4-1/2 c. chicken stock, divided
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 large handfuls snow peas, thinly sliced across the width
• 2 lb. chicken tenders, cut into bite-size pieces
• 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 3 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 3-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 3 T honey
• 1 T cornstarch
• 5 scallions, thinly sliced

Heat a medium saucepan or pot over medium-high heat. Add 1 T of the vegetable oil and the butter to the pot. Once the butter melts, add the rice, season with salt and pepper, and lightly brown the rice for 3 to 5 minutes. Add the wine and allow it to evaporate entirely, 1 to 2 minutes. Add 3 cups of the chicken stock and the lemon zest to the rice. Bring the liquid to a boil. Cover and reduce the heat. Cook the rice for 18 to 20 minutes, or until tender. Once the rice only has about 3 more minutes of cook time, remove the lid and add the sliced snow peas. Don't stir the rice; just add the snow peas on top and put the lid on. The steam will lightly cook the snow peas. Once cooked, fluff the rice and with a fork and stir in the snow peas. They should still have some crunch to them.

While the rice is cooking, preheat a large skillet over medium-high heat with the remaining 2 T of vegetable oil. Add the chicken, season with salt and pepper, and brown for about 3 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes, onions, garlic, ginger, and honey. Stir frequently and continue to cook for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the onions are tender. Add the remaining 1-1/2 c. of chicken stock to the pan and bring to a simmer. Once at a simmer, combine the cornstarch with a splash of water, and mix to create a thin paste. Add the cornstarch mixture to the simmer chicken, mix thoroughly, and continue to cook for 2 minutes, or until the liquid is thickened. Add the sliced scallions and the lemon juice to the chicken and stir to combine. Serve the honey chicken over the snow pea rice.

Recipe from Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats