Chicken Pot Stickers and Crab Rangoonies

I could order them for take out every day. I should restate that, Kyle and I both could.

For Kyle, I made his favorite, crab rangoons. We have been calling them rangoonies for years and lo and behold while looking for a recipe, Hungry Girl calls them the same thing. Her recipe is great and we loved it alongside the potstickers for a wonton wrapper fest. The recipe is here.

I love potstickers. So I decided to try my own. After experimenting with a few recipes I found online and the most awesome Asian meatball recipe from my cocktail party cookbook I came up with this simplified recipe. I find them delicious and I hope you do to.

1/2 lb ground chicken
2 scallions
2 cloves Garlic
quick shake Ground ginger
quick shake Ground cayenne
Salt
Black pepper
2 tsp Fish sauce
1-2 tps Wosterchire sauce
1 TBS Oyster sauce
1 TBS Dijon mustard
Wonton wrappers- I used 1/2 a package of Nasoya brand
broth- any kind

1. Mix everything except the wonton wrappers and broth together in a bowl
2. Put a small amount of filling in a wrapper, wet all 4 edges of the wrapper and pinch closed to seal
3. (do this part in batches) Heat a small amount of oil in a pan and when hot add 1 layer of the dumplings. Cook until browned on 1 side. Pour in a small amount of broth in the pan to release the potstickers. Once most of the liquid has cooked off turn the potstickers and cook the other side for 3-5 more minutes.

4. Eat and enjoy

Celebrity Chefs

I have a confession. I love food television.
I also have favorite and not-so-favorite celebrity chefs.
There are some that I love "them" and others who I love their food.
I always love Nigella Lawson, Anthony Bourdain, Ina Garten, and many more. I love Alton Brown but a few of his recipes have not worked in my non scientific kitchen. Rachael Ray annoys the crap out of me but she always produces yummy food and totally perfect kitchen supplies. I have never made a Paula Deen Refipe that worked.
I am really not a personality fan of Emeril but I can say that none of his recipes have ever failed me. This is why I always trust the recipes and the ratings on the recipes. So tonight I am trying this: braised chicken thighs with button mushrooms. I also am tossing in a side of sauteed swiss chard for  some green.

It turned out great!

The best meal round 2

Ok, wasn't that chicken delicious?
What about all the leftovers?

Grab your biggest pot and get ready.

I like the pot I have with the big colander inside it. This makes throwing out the end good easier.

Take the carcass and all the vegetable peelings you left out along with the "veggie rack" that you roasted the bird on. All that stuff. Toss it in the pot. Add cold water and salt to cover, turn on the heat and bring to an almost boil. Once it is bubbly, turn down the heat to low and let it go for about 3 hours.

Take it off heat and cool down. Pull out the colander full of totally spent carcass and veggie bits and throw it away. There is nothing left to do with that mess. Put the hot stock in the fridge.
The next morning skim off the fat and put the stock in some sort of container that you can freeze. Seriously, freeze this stuff and use it later. Maybe when you are sick or feeling lazy.

I like to use it in a Thai inspired noodle soup.

Saute' some garlic, ginger, and onion in a big soup pot with some oil.

Then toss in the chicken broth you just made/have/froze a few months back.
Get out the fish sauce. Yes, that funky smelling stuff that adds amazing saltiness. Shake in a bunch until the broth tastes amazing.

Add shredded chicken to the mix. I personally save the leg meat from the roast chicken because DH and I never eat them and they would go to waste.

10ish minutes before serving, add chopped bok choy (I like the baby bok choy better than the big stuff)  also put in about 2 oz. or bean thread noodles or rice noodles.

Put 2 TBS lime juice and a pinch of salt in a small bowl, add basil leaves  and cilantro and let them marinate a few minutes.  Right before you serve, put in the basil cilantro mix.

Eat and feel loved.

The best meal round 1

According to my father's mother, making a roast chicken for dinner is about the best thing you can prepare. Tonight I am making the most delicious version I know of. I am pretty sure you could throw the whole thing on a sheet pan with some salt and pepper and it would be great. Add a few vegetables, even better.
My version tonight is adapted from a Food Network Magazine recipe. I follow most of the directions there but not all.
Please excuse the lack of step by step photos. I am no  Pioneer Woman. I love her so much but I am unable to photograph mid step and sometimes get a little too caught up in the process. I also don't lay out the ingredients like I am supposed to. Sure, Mise en Plas is great. I am a working lady who just graded about 100 papers.

You need a whole chicken, kosher salt, pepper, some rosemary (really any herbs you like), butter, onion, garlic, lemon, tomatoes, green onion, and any other veggies you like to roast with.

Turn the oven on to 425F degrees.
Pat the whole bird dry and salt and pepper it inside and out. Let it sit there for a while to dry out the skin. While it sits, mash the herbs into the butter. Using your fingers lift the skin from the meat and loosen it up under the breast and legs. Then take a spoonful of the herb-ey butter and stick it under the skin. I call this "adding implants." Moosh it around under the breast and the leg skin. This makes it delicious and moist.

Then squeeze half of the lemon in the cavity, toss in a half or quarter of an onion in there too along with a few cloves of garlic and a sprig of rosemary or thyme or both.
Some people tell you to truss the bird. Some say it doesn't matter. I like what the grocery store does with the rotisserie birds. Cut a hole in the skin under each leg and stuff the leg through the hole.

Ta-Da! Leg trussing without using twine. I don't really care about the wings, I tuck them under so they are not hanging out.
Other myth, you need a roasting rack. Sure they are great, get air under the meat, keep it out of the juices. I don't use one. I use my Great-Grandmother's really old roasting pan.  A rack would never fit in the well documented red, oval pan with the high domed lid and off-center handles. Instead, I cut the rest of the onion up along with other veggies on hand (this time it was a fennel bulb) and set the bird on top. It works like a mini rack and the roasted veggies are great for round 2.

Ok, toss the bird in the oven, set the timer for 25 minutes, pour yourself a glass of the good stuff and go check facebook for a while.

Beep!
Time to set down the pinterest/facebook/twitter and check on the bird.

First toss some scallions and tomatoes in a bowl with some olive oil and salt. Pour those into the roasting pan with the chicken and set the timer for 50 minutes. Chicken little needs to be 170F before you can take it out.

Back to the interwebs. I am not the superlady who does the dishes in between steps.
After it reads a done temp. in the thigh, take it out and let rest for 10 minutes.
Then carve the bird and enjoy. Be careful, the skin is delicious.

Pecan Butter and Banana Bread

We hear about making our own nut butters all the time but they always have cashew or almond. I have a plethora of pecans here because I was supposed to make a few of my famous chocolate pecan pies an ended up not. I did some research on the interwebs and looked for ideas for the pecans in my pantry. About 20 page searches later I found some pecan butter recipes and did a little tweaking as I alwasy do.
 What I came up with was delicious and perfect on the banana bread I had just made with the bananas that had turned brown on the counter.
For the best banana bread ever I used the Doubleday Cookbook recipe for Banana Tea Bread but added cinnamon and extra bananas. I doubled the recipe and nearly tripled the bananas to make 2 loaves of delicious.
Seriously, the holidays put the oddest amounts of ingredients in my fridge and therefore I have to make do with odd combinations in the days after.

I ended up using a little more than 2 cups of Pecans-you could roast them but I did not.
about 2 sprinkles of cinnamon
a few pinches of kosher salt to taste
2 drizzles of grapeseed oil

1. Pulverize the pecans in the cuisinart -they will go from whole, to dust, to chunky, to paste
2. drizzle in a little oil until you get closer to the consistency you like
3. sprinkle in the cinnamon
4. add the salt pinch by pinch until it tastes like you want it

I sadly did not take any pictures of the process :( But here is my end product. I am keeping it in the fridge like I would with a natural peanut butter. I also used the plastic lids for the ball jar because I can write on them.

NEW MATERIAL

So, I just got 2 more recipe boxes from my other grandmother and a book of recipes handwritten by her aunt Gerelda. There will be more nostalgia happening soon.

Turkey Noodle

My mother is a spectacular cook. That being said, the item most requested by my sister for her to prepare is turkey noodle casserole. It is nothing but a comfort food.

It contains ground turkey, Parmesan, garlic, cream of mushroom soup, pasta, and frozen veggies.

These are the ingredients to turkey noodle casserole- minus the picture of ground turkey.

 

 

 Here it is browning in the pan

Make the pasta. Brown the turkey. Dump the noodles in a a strainer when they are cooked and in the pot, throw some oil and garlic. Then throw in the frozen veggies and make them not frozen. Stir in the soup, add the cheese, maybe add some milk, toss the noodles and turkey in the pot with the veggies and poof, you have dinner. Even my casserole-hating husband thinks this s a great meal.