Martha Monday: Chicken Enchiladas

I fretted over whether to do this chicken enchilada recipe or not.  I have already found THE enchilada recipe that I LOVE!  And it is not this.  When I looked at the ingredient list I was really skeptical.  Would it have enough flavor?

The answer is NO.

There is nothing really wrong with the recipe.  It's fine.  It just doesn't blow you over and make you want to dance the Merengue.

Here's what I did.  I poached the chicken in salted water.  I shredded it.  I made the sauce - oil, garlic, cumin, flour, chicken broth, water.  When I whisked my chicken broth into the hot flour, I flubbed it.  All I had were large lumps of cumin-scented flour in thin broth.  I whizzed it in my blender quickly and got it to incorporate correctly.  Problem solved.  Once the sauce thickened, I mixed some with the chicken.  Filled up the corn tortillas.  Put them in a baking dish.  Smothered them with rest of the sauce and cheese.  Baked.

They were OK.  Just OK.

What really blew me away were the Quick Cowboy Beans (thanks Rick Bayless) and the Sauteed Swiss Chard and Onions I served with the enchiladas.    So follow the links to those recipes and leave the enchilada one alone.

I'll share my favorite one with you.  Soon.

Martha Monday: Chicken Fried Rice

My house smells like a Chinese restaurant right now.

Tonight I cooked up our Martha Monday project - Chicken Fried Rice.  Thanks to Desi over at SteakNPotatoesKindaGurl for a yummy pick.

Now I admit that I changed the recipe a bit.  First I used brown rice instead of the white stuff.  I threw out the requisite sweet pepper.  Yuck!  And put in some carrots and peas.  And some minced garlic.  And in place of the vegetable oil I substituted toasted sesame oil just to bump up the flavor.

This was really good fried rice.  It was hearty with all that chicken and brown rice.  And crunchy with the veggies.  And flavorful too.  My seven-year-old gobbled it up as fried rice is his favorite meal.  The three-year-old complained about "all the fruit" in his rice.  Huh?  But then he picked out the chicken and carrots to fill his belly.

Well, I think I might go open some windows . . . you know so my house doesn't smell like a Chinese restaurant tomorrow.

Chicken Fried Rice
Adapted from Martha Stewart


Ingredients:
1 cup brown rice
2 cups water
1 pound chicken breast, thinly sliced into bite size pieces
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons sesame oil, divided
1 cup carrots, cut into matchsticks
1 cup snow peas, cut in half
1/2 cups frozen peas
2 eggs
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 cup chicken broth


Directions:
1.  In a saucepan, combine rice and water.  Bring to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat to low.  Cook for 50 minutes or until all the water is absorbed and rice is tender.  (This is best done the day before you want to make the fried rice.)


2.  Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat.  Add 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil.  Season chicken with salt and pepper.  Saute chicken for three minutes or until cooked through.  Remove from pan and set aside.


3.  Add 1 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil to still-hot pan.  Add carrots and snow peas.  Saute over medium heat for about 2 minutes.  Remove from pan and set aside with chicken.  At this time you can put your frozen peas in with the reserved chicken and veggies.  The residual heat will defrost them.


4.  Add 1 tablespoon sesame oil to still-hot pan.  Break eggs into pan and scramble with a spatula.  Add scallions, ginger and garlic.  Cook for 30 seconds.  Add the brown rice that you cooked in step 1.  Add the soy sauce and sugar.  Stir well and continue to cook over medium-high heat.  Now add the reserved chicken and veggie mixture.  Stir well and cook until heated through.


5.  Pour in the chicken broth.  It will bubble and evaporate rather quickly.  Give the rice one last stir.  Take it off the heat and serve.

Martha Monday: Fruit Roll-Ups

Brette, from Martha and Me, challenged us to try one of the recipes in the September issue of Living.  It was a pretty easy recipe but I, of course, hit a few bumps along the way.  Martha directed us to puree four cups of berries or stone fruit with 1/2 cup sugar and a tablespoon of lemon.  We were then to cook it in a pot over medium heat until thick, about 30 minutes.  Pour mixture through a sieve onto a baking sheet lined with a nonstick liner or parchment.  Tilt pan until evenly distributed.  Bake for about 3 hours at 170 degrees.  Sounds easy right?

Well, I chose nectarines as my fruit.  All I did was take the pits out.  I pureed them, skin and all, with the sugar and lemon juice.  Then I started to cook it in a pot on the stove top.  It was fine until it started to bubble and splatter and spit molten hot nectarine glop all over my stove.  And then all over me!  I put up with this for only 15 minutes.  After all, wasn't it going to bake in the oven?  Did it really need more time on the stove?  I ignored the idea of a sieve, as my blender had done a great job of pureeing, and just poured it onto the parchment lined pan.  I tilted it and slid it into the oven.  Three and a half hours later . . . it was still gooey in the middle.  Hmmmm.  Perhaps those 15 minutes were necessary.  Finally, after a total of SIX HOURS in the oven at 170 degrees, my fruit leather was the proper consistency.  Once cooled, I rolled it up right in the parchment it was baked on.  A serrated knife easily cut it into eight servings.

And . . . my test subjects sat down to taste it . . . YUM!  They both agreed that this stuff was sublime.  Of course, never having had commercially produced fruit roll-ups, they have nothing to compare it to.  I've already received a request to try blueberry roll-ups so I may actually be making these again sometime soon.

Sewing Sampler

My grandmother died seven years ago.  She wasn't always the easiest person to be around but, as a child, I didn't always know this.  Here's what I did know about her:

She made the best darned chocolate chip cookies I've ever eaten.

She rode her exercise bicycle every morning before the sun was even awake.

She had the neatest necklace that had beads in the shape of little pink hearts.

She taught me always to wear a hat so as not to get skin cancer.

Her dinner rolls were yet another of her culinary achievements.

When I visited her she let me stay up late watching TELEVISION!

She prominently displayed my school picture on top of said television.

She read her Bible over and over again.

There's lots more I could say about my grandmother.  I cherish her presence in my life, yes, even those not-so-easy moments.  After all, not everyone gets to have a grandmother.  And not everyone gets to have a grandmother who passes on such vivid memories and important lessons.

One of my grandmother's legacies to me is her sewing machine.  It's been tucked into a closet for five years.  After all, she never did teach me to sew.  I have the machine but not the knowledge to use it. So, I finally pulled it out, bought a book, purchased some supplies and started playing around.

Two broken needles and much wasted thread later, I made my first project from the book Stitch by Stitch by Deborah Moebes, a sewing sampler.  It's a bit of cloth with every single stitch my sewing machine can do.  I even practiced using the buttonhole foot!  I know I still have a long way to go before I sew my first napkin but it's a start.

Thanks, Grandma!

Daring Bakers Challenge: Candylicious!

Most of you know that I'm usually late posting for The Daring Bakers or Martha Monday.  Usually I have no excuse but my own laziness.  This time, though, I can blame it on Hurricane Irene.

Irene blew through here Saturday night, knocking out my power and, ugh, my cable.  Power was restored bright and early Sunday morning but Comcast failed and failed and failed to give me my much-desired Internet and phone access until five days after Irene blew through here.  FIVE DAYS!  Five days without Facebook, without Wikipedia to answer all my son's questions, and without you dear blog readers.  All two of you.

But here I am to tell you about my amazing wonderfully yummy candy!  (Yes, this is what I ate for moral support during the storm.)

We were challenged to make two candies, one chocolate and one non-chocolate.  I embarked on the non-chocolate one first.  Since my boys had recently picked 20 pounds of peaches I decided to use some of them in a Fresh Peach Pate de Fruit.  These are jelly-like candies.  Kind of like Sunkist Fruit Gems.  I pureed peaches, added sugar and liquid pectin.  I boiled and boiled and boiled away until I reached the right temperature.  Then I poured the hot mixture into a parchment-lined pan.  The next day I encountered a big jelly-like square of peachy fruity yumminess.  I sliced them and rolled them in sugar.  They were a bit soft and squidgy so I let them sit out for a day or two.  This dried them up a bit.  They were really sweet!  But also peachy and good.  My neighbors had nothing but nice comments about them.  It's a fun way to use up ripe fruit.  Something different from jam and pies.

The next candy I tackled was the chocolate one.  The challenge was really to temper chocolate and turn it into a candy.  I decided to make peppermint truffles so I could practice in time for Christmas.  I made a white chocolate peppermint ganache and rolled it into balls.  Then came the chocolate tempering.

Tempered chocolate is chocolate that's been heated, cooled, and heated again to certain temperatures.  It has a nice shine and snap to it and is worth doing if you are making candies for presents.  I used the seeding method.  I melted my chocolate.  It was supposed to reach 120 degrees but I somehow got mine all the way up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.  Oops!  The next step was to add a big hunk of chocolate to cool the chocolate to 80 degrees.  My big hunk of chocolate was fully melted before the temperature got down to 110 degrees.  Oops!  So for the next 45 minutes I stirred and waited and waited and stirred.  Once it FINALLY reached 80 degrees I put it back on the heat and got it up to 89 degrees.  Done!

I dipped all my ganache balls into the tempered chocolate and let them harden on parchment paper.  The final touch was some green pearlized powder mixed with vanilla extract and smeared on top.  It added a little shine and a little glitz to the truffle.  The truffles were beautiful and yummy.  I will definitely be making more around Christmas.  And, yes, I'll even temper my chocolate.

Thanks, Daring Bakers, for another great challenge!  If you want to get the recipes and directions for all kinds of candies click on the Daring Kitchen link and get your sweet tooth ready.