Potatoes Au Gratin (Homemade)

8.5 cups sliced potatoes
1-1/2 cubes butter (3/4 cup)
3/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
2 cups cream
2 cups chicken broth plus 3 chicken boullion cubes added
White pepper to taste
Cheddar cheese to top

Cook potatoes in boiling salted water until partially done, 3-5 minutes, and drain. Place potatoes in a 13x9 dish. Melt butter in a saucepan and stir in flour to make a smooth paste. Add the milk, cream, and chicken broth and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. Add pepper and pour the mixture over the potatoes. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes, add the cheese on top and bake for an addition 4-5 minutes.

French Chicken Veronique over Curried Rice

When I make this I always do the curried rice with it. Best to start by cutting up the chicken breasts, then switch to preparing rice first (recipe below under the chicken recipe), get it into the rice cooker then continue with the chicken, that way the rice can sit up to one hour in the cooker and stay warm. This recipe serves 4 with leftovers.

French Chicken Veronique over Curried Rice
2-4 large chicken breasts, depending on how much chicken you want
4 tbsp butter
Salt and Pepper
1-1/2 Tbsp finely minced green onion or shallots (regular onion may be substituted, but very very finely minced).
1 cup dry white wine, or substitute 1 cup water with 1 tsp vinegar added
3 cups heavy cream
1/2 to 1 cup fresh green grapes (I use a half cup, I LOVE them but Trent thinks the grapes are weird.)

Trim chicken and pound it with a mallet or rolling pin to about 1/2" flat. (Don't skip this step, it makes the chicken much more tender. You can lay a piece of plastic wrap over the chicken to pound it, reduces any mess). Cut the pounded chicken into 1/2" strips, then cut across into rectangular cubes, about 1 x 1.5 inches.

Melt butter in a skillet until very hot but not brown. Add chicken, season well with salt and pepper. Saute the chicken over high heat, turning to cook all sides, just until the raw look is gone and it's turned whitish (it will not be cooked through yet, about 5 minutes), then remove the chicken to a paper plate, leaving as much of the juices in the pan as possible.

Add shallots to the skillet, and saute in the chicken juices briefly, just until slightly soft. Add the chicken back into the skillet. Add the wine. Cook over high heat until the wine has reduced by half. Add the cream, add the grapes, and cook over medium high heat until it is a saucelike consistency, probably 10-20 minutes. Serve over curried rice.

Curried Rice
1/2 cube butter
1 onion, peeled and finely minced
1 clove garlic, finely minced
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 medium apple, peeled, cored, and chopped into 1/4" cubes (apple is delicious in this but optional)
2 cups white rice, uncooked
3 cups chicken broth
2 bay leaves

In a small saucepan, heat the butter and add the onion, and garlic and saute about three to five minutes until soft. Add the curry powder and apple (if you are using apple) and stir to combine, cook this together for about one minute but don't allow it to burn, add rice to the frying pan and cook until well blended with the curry mixture, remove from heat.

Add the curry/rice mixture to the rice cooker along with the chicken broth. Toss in bay leaves and stir to combine. Set your rice cooker to the white rice setting and cook. Make the chicken while the rice is cooking, leaving the rice to stay warm in the rice cooker while you prepare the chicken. Remove the bay leaves before serving.

Chex/Crispix Puppy Chow

1 Cube Margarine

6 oz. peanut butter chips

12 oz or larger Crispix cereal

3 cups wheat chex (I would say this is one small box)

2/3 cup peanut butter

6 oz chocolate chips

1-1/4 cups powdered sugar...

then 1/1/4 cups powdered sugar again

Place cereal in a large bowl. In another bowl, melt butter, peanut butter chips, and chocolate chips in the microwave at 50% power, one minute at a time, until smooth and melty. Pour over cereal. Stir until coated well. Mix 1-1/4 cup powdered sugar onto the coated cereal mixture. Place this mixture in a PAPER grocery bag. Add the other 1-1/4 cup powdered sugar gradually and shake to mix and coat the cereal to look like puppy chow.

Cody's Chocolate Dessert

This has been called a lot of things, like the Robert Redford, but I think that is a silly name so I named it after my son, who always requests it. Most people do this dessert differently than I do, they bake the crust. I prefer a dry crumb-ish crust, so I do the crust in the microwave.

There are four steps to this. Make the pudding layer, make the crumb layer, make the cream cheese layer, then assemble. Doing it in this order helps because the pudding sets up a little while you do the crumb crust, and the crumb crust cools as you do the cream cheese layer, then you put it together.

Also get your butter and cream cheese to room temp, I get them out the night before and have the cool whip in the fridge, not the freezer so I can work with it.

2 bigger boxes Jello Chocolate Pudding Instant (5.9 oz)

2 bigger boxes Jello Vanilla Pudding Instant (5.9 oz)

6 cups Milk

2 cubes butter, room temperature

2 cups flour

4 Tablespoons sugar

2 8 oz packages cream cheese

2 cups sugar

2 cartons Cool Whip12 oz. each

Mix chocolate layer:

the 2 bigger boxes Jello Chocolate Pudding Instant (5.9 oz)

the 2 bigger boxes Jello Vanilla Pudding Instant (5.9 oz)

the 6 cups cold milk (Note that this is exactly half of what the package calls for, don't do package directions!)

Mix well with beaters for two minutes. Set aside to thicken.

Make Crumb Crust Layer:

In food processor combine

2 cubes room temp butter

2 cups flour

4 Tablespoons sugar

Pulse together until crumbly, transfer to a microwave safe bowl. Cook mixture on high, setting the microwave for five minutes. Stop the microwave every minute and stir the mixture vigorously with a fork to crumb it.

Spray a jelly roll pan very lightly with Pam spray. Place the crumb crust in the bottom of the pan and spread to distribute evenly, reserving about a half cup of the crumb mixture to use on the top at the end. Allow it to cool while you make the cream cheese layer.

Make the Cream Cheese Layer:

Combine two 8 oz packages cream cheese with two cups sugar and 1 1/2 (one and a half cartons) Cool Whip.

Assemble. This is a little tricky. Using a big spatula, carefully plop the cream cheese mixture over the crumb crust all over it, getting it distributed as evenly as you can. Carefully spread it with a smaller spatula without disturbing the crumbs very much, this takes a light hand, but is not too tough to do...just be gentle moving it around. I get this cream cheese layer all the way to the edges of the pan so I can use the side of the pan to scrape my spatula off, it helps. Then use a paper towel when you are done with that and clean the sides of the pan off so it looks nice.

Then on top of the cream cheese layer, add the chocolate layer exactly the same way, only I leave a little border of the white layer peeking out, it looks pretty. Be careful not to disturb the cream cheese layer too much.

Use the other half carton of the cool whip that is left and spread it evenly over the top, leaving a little of the chocolate layer peeking out.

Sprinkle the reserved half cup of crumb crust on the top. Chill until ready to serve.

Red Chile Colorado

Chile Colorado

I adapted this recipe from Sauteur website, trying to make Adobada, but it tasted more like my friend Zelma Savage’s red chile, so I decided to make it into that instead. I still have to find a rival to my taco wagon’s spicy pork…it eludes me. I may have to kidnap the owner and hold him ransom. But, anyway, this here is a really good, really HOT Chile Colorado that is a New Mexico style chile, it is like a soup/stew form but you can take the meat from the liquid and make tacos…but I really like the stew liquid and eat it like a bowl of stew or chili.

5 oz. dried New Mexico chiles, stemmed

1 large onion, finely minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

Butter or oil to sauté onion and garlic

2 tbsp. New Mexico chile powder

2 tbsp. honey

1 tbsp. white wine vinegar

1 tbsp. ground cumin

1-1/2 tsp. ground cloves

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

Juice of 1 lime

Vegetable or Olive oil for frying pork

3 lb. boneless pork shoulder or loin, cut into 1″ chunk

1 can chicken broth (14 oz)

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Warm corn tortillas and garnishments, for serving

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat chiles in a large stew pot over medium-high heat (no oil or butter, just dry), and cook, turning once, until toasted, about 5 minutes; transfer to a large bowl, cover with 8 cups boiling water, and let sit for 20 minutes.

While waiting for chiles, sauté onion and garlic in oil or butter in a separate skillet until soft and slightly browned, set aside.

Drain chiles, reserving all the soaking liquid.

Transfer chiles to a food processor along with 2 cups of the reserved soaking liquid, chile powder, honey, vinegar, cumin, cloves, cayenne, and lime juice. Add the sautéed onion/garlic to the food processor. Process all and continue incorporating the rest of the soaking liquid, you may have to empty your food processor once or twice during this process into a larger bowl. The goal is to have all the pepper seeds pureed with the sauce mixture Set this aside.

Return the large pot to medium-high heat and add oil and heat until just hot; season pork with salt and pepper, and working in batches, add pork to pot and cook until browned on all sides, about 10 minutes for each batch.

When all the pork is fried and set aside in a bowl, deglaze the pot with about a half cup of chicken broth. The goal is to boil the chicken broth and scrape up all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan that is left over from frying the pork. Boil, scrape, boil, scrape, add more chicken broth if you need to, and get the stuff off the bottom of the pan. Then add the pork pieces and coat with the scraping juice from the pan. Add the rest of the can of chicken broth.

Add all sauce and soaking liquid and bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid is thickened and pork is tender, at least one and a half hours, until it is the consistency you want. Serve with warm corn tortillas, garnish with cilantro, sour cream, diced onion and tomatoes, and lime wedges to kill the heat. SO DELICIOUS! You can’t stop eating it even though it’s hot.

Tortillas: I fry mine on my pancake griddle or skillet until just barely crisped, so they still fold but they are warm and a touch flaky. Mmmm!

Chicken Stew

My soup adventures continue...this was SO good.

Chicken Stew

Total prep/cooking time is about 1-1/2 to 2 hours, so this is a good weekend meal.

5 lbs bone in chicken thighs, skin on or off
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp vegetable oil (can add more if needed)
6 Tbsp butter
1 large onion, finely minced
6 Tbsp flour
¼ cup cooking sherry (or substitute ¼ cup water with ½ tsp vinegar added)
6 cans chicken broth (the 14 oz size cans)
2 cups whole milk
½ tsp powdered thyme or 1 tsp minced fresh thyme
2 tsp dried tarragon
3 bay leaves
2 cups sliced carrots
1 cup frozen peas
1 small box frozen spinach

Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in large stew pot. Fry the chicken in batches for approximately 10 minutes (five minutes per side). Transfer chicken to a plate and remove the skin. Pour off the chicken fat from the pot and scrape any leftover skin from the bottom of the pan. Leave some brown bits, but try and get most of the chicken skin out.

Add the butter to the pan and melt, add the onion and cook about 7 minutes until the onion is soft. Stir in the flour. Whisk in the sherry and stir, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan into the onions. Add one can of broth slowly while stirring. Add the rest of the chicken broth, milk, thyme, tarragon, bay leaves, and carrots. Nestle the chicken pieces into the stew. Cook until chicken is fully cooked and tender, about one hour. *Add the peas about a half hour into this cooking time. Taste after an hour, season with salt and pepper if needed.

Remove chicken from the pot, take the meat off the bones and discard the bones. Remove the bay leaves, return the chicken meat to the pot. Add the spinach. Heat through, cooking the spinach. If you want the stew thicker (I did) mix three tablespoons corn starch with ½ cup COLD water. Add that mixture to the boiling stew, cook to thicken. Repeat if it’s still not thick enough for you.

Potato Soup with Ham

This was my favorite mistake! Made soup for my dad who's having some problems eating, so I wanted to chop up the ham really small with my food processor, along with the celery and onion. Well, I completely pulverized it and was really mad, it was like baby food. It was two ham steaks so I couldn't waste it! So I just made the soup with the pureed ham. It was so good that way! I will do it again like that, or just cut the ham up into small bite size pieces.

The chicken soup base is from Winco bulk food, it's a powder type base. I use it a lot, very good soup base. While you're at Winco, might as well get the french bread "bombs" to use as bread bowls for this soup, just cut the middle out and fill with soup.

6-8 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced to 1/2" cubes
3 stalks celery
1 onion
Two ham steaks or equivalent leftover ham (probably 3-4 cups)
7 cups water
1/4 cup chicken soup base or 6 boullion cubes
2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp flour
4 cups whole milk

Prepare the celery, onion, and ham how you prefer...you can dice it very fine or puree in a food processor. I process the onion and celery very fine, and cut the ham into small pieces. Combine the diced potatoes, celery, onion, ham and water in a soup pot. Boil until potatoes are tender, at least 10-15 minutes and check them. Longer if you like the potatoes very soft. Stir in the chicken base or boullion and the pepper.

In a separate skillet, make a roux (relax, it's easy). Melt the butter over medium low heat and add the flour. Stir constantly with a whisk or fork. Cook about one minute until thick, keep stirring and don't let it burn. Slowly add about a cup of the milk and stir as not to allow lumps to form. keep adding the milk and stir any lumps out. Continue stirring and cooking until the mixture is thick, about 4-5 minutes.

Add the milk mixture (your Roux!) to the soup pot, mix to combine and heat through. Serve soup with bread or crackers. Delicious, easy soup that can be done after work for dinner, it took about an hour including all the vegetable prep time.