Watched the most recent episode of Good Eats and at the end the Chicken Biscuit Pot Pie Alton made looked delicious. After the show was over and we looked at each other and communicated via brain talk that we would be eating that. Headed to our new secret Russeses and got some supplies. They did not have chicken sausage, but they had turkey and I grabbed it. I asked an older gentleman if vitamin A milk is whole milk, he thought it prob was, but prarieland sold whole milk so I was good. Then I spoke with 3 older ladies about aluminum free baking powder, none of them knew what it was and Russeses did not have it. Seems some folkk do not like the aluminum being in there for safety reasons, but it does not make a difference while baking.

We had roasted a chicken the day before and the recipe was pretty simple. Sage cost a lot, but I think it helped or something. We did not use the thyme. We are just not fans of thyme.

We only used 1/2 of the pound of the turkey sausage.

When we added the liquid I started getting scared. It seemed like there was way too much liquid, but kept going.

After the chicken was in there and it was pretty thick I was feeling confident.

Shredding frozen butter is just odd.

It came out so good. Oh man. It was enough to feed 6 people, but it was amazing. We liked it so much we decided we need to work it into our meal rotation. We do not need to make such a huge amount of it though. We also figure we do not need to bake the biscuits in the pan of goop. Tonight we will be making the biscuits again, but on their own in the oven, with a bit of granulated garlic added to the mix, and coated with some butter.

voodoo chicken and skillet fries from beerorkid on Vimeo.

Prob one of my better vids.

But BorK, you have already made a post about this. Dude, I know but this one has more pics in it and I like splain and stuff.

Take a chicken bewb or two and smash them down to an even thickness between some cling wrap. You can moisten the inside and outside of the cling wrap with water to make it less sticky. it really seems to help.

Use the flat side of your smashy thing and not the toothed side. You do not want a puddle of destroyed chicken goop. You want a slightly smooshed and even thickness bewb. It is still going to rip the meat a bit, but not too bad. It does not need to be really thin, just evenly thick. You could use a can of food to do this, but use one with a smoothish bottom cuz one with a ring will hurt it bad.

schmashed good

These are the spices I used to make a cajun seasoning. I know there is cajun seasoning as one of my spices, but I still for some reason feel the need to add some single spices in there to make me happy that I am in control of this situation. Be careful with the cayenne though.

Coat the smooshed bewb with your seasoning really well. This is what is going to flavor the whole dish and the cream and the cheese are going to fight the spice and try to make it all dull so spice up that bewb good.

Put a pan on medium heat and let it get hot. I like to use stainless pans because I am going to be wisking it and it sure does look pretty. If you want to test how hot the pan is fling some water from your fingers and wait for a sizzle. After it is hot pour a bit of olive oil or cooking oil in there. You prob do not want to waste good olive oil Like I am doing in the above pic, but I like to live on the wild side. Just enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. We are not deep frying. The oil should heat up pretty quick so go grab that bewb.

We are not trying to blacken this, just cook it. Burnt spices really do not taste good so monitor your heat. I end up going a bit below medium. If it is smoking you are way too hot. Check for doneness on the first side and flip once. Might need to add a bit more oil and the oil is going to absorb some of the spice and change colors. The 2nd side should cook pretty quick.

Once done pull off and let rest. I like to put it on a piece of foil I have crinkled up so it can drain the juices. I seal it and let it carryover while I work on the rest of the meal. You will slice it later and maybe find out that it is not all the way cooked. That is fine because it will be going back into the sauce when it is cut up and it will finish up no prob.

Pull the pan off the heat so the goodness does not burn off and cut up some garlic and sun dried tomatoes.

If your pan is still hot keep it off the burner and add the garlic and SD tomatoes to the pan. Might need to add a touch more oil. Scrape them around on all the golden fond in the bottom of the pan and lightly cook for a minute or two. We are talking med low or lower if you put it back on the burner. Burnt garlic and burning all the seasoning leavings is going to ruin the whole meal. The SD tomato and garlic will prob get coated in all the fond in the pan and look gross, but do not worry.

Now we are going to add some white wine to add flavor and get all the goodness out of the crap in the pan. You pan should not be hot so you do not need to worry about this steaming all over. Add enough to cover the stuff and then let this simmer down and reduce on close to medium heat for a few minutes.

How about we cut up some tomatoes for a pretty garnish. Are the necessary? Nope, but they look good.

For some reason I forgot to get a pic of my cut up chicken. grrrr… Oh well, cut it up how you want. I go for bite size pieces. If there are juices in the foil or plate make sure to add that back into the sauce. it is magical dripping I tell ya.

Add some heavy whipping cream to your reduced sauce and stir it around.

this would be a good time to boil the pasta of your choice.

Throw that chicken in the pan now and simmer close to medium to reduce that sauce. Unfortunately this is the part you just need to learn by doing it. Getting the sauce to the right thickness is a bit tough. The warmer it is the runnier it is going to be. By the time it is on the pasta and plate it will thicken up. Oh and you still have to add the cheese which will thicken it up more. if it seems thick in the pan add some more cream, stir, and pull.

Shred some parmesan cheese very fine. I use a microplane which makes the smallest little slivers of instant melt cheese.

Get that cheese in there and make sure you have a bit left over as garnish. it just looks nice darnit. Stir it up and melt it. Now is the time to decide if it is thick enough. You could let it simmer some more, but not too hot because the cheese might mess up on ya. You could throw the pasta in there too, or just pour over pasta.

Garnish and enjoy.

I hope you were not looking for a recipe with measurements and the like. I do not roll that way. Cooking from a recipe is important in baking, but experimenting it by doing it and tasting along the way is going to help you so much more than any recipe will for cooking. Plus I do not know how many people you are going to be feeding or how hungry you are. Hope you enjoy it if you try to make it. maybe put a spin on it and use shrimp or something.

Being lazy on a sunday we pretty much just watched the food channel all day. There was a show on how Guy Firedi and they showed one of his signature dishes and it looked so good. We started talking about dinner and I wanted to try something new. We both said this dish. (Theresa you owe me a coke) Cajun Chicken Alfredo is money, off the hook, and winner winner chicken dinner.

I was a little worried about putting too much spice on the chicken, so I went light on the cayenne and then added granulated garlic, paprika, salt, black pepper, and Penzey’s cajun seasoning. Instead of usinf a cast iron pan I cooked it in the pan I was going to build the sauce with so I could get all the flavorful fond in the sauce.

Almost burnt it, but in the end it did not matter. Pulled the chicken out and sliced it into chunks.

Threw some garlic and the sun dried tomatoes in for a minute and then deglazed with some white wine.

Added heavy whipping cream and the chicken chunks. Once it had reduced down to a nice sauce mixed in parm cheese and we poured it over some pene pasta.

Threw some more cheese on top and some diced tomatoes for garnish. It was delicious. Not exactly a healthy meal, but amazing. If I was going to try this without seeing how Guy did it, I would of made a bechemel for the sauce. This one was really easy and fast too. nom

So we trying to make some new meals. Have had some failures, but nailed it Friday night. Some folks suggested some good sites to find recipes. Epicurious seems like a favorite, but after scanning a bunch of recipes I was getting frustrated and decided to try an recreate dishes we would get if we went out. It has worked for us before and usually comes out pretty good. Theresa likes the voodoo chicken from Lazlo’s and I decided to try something like that.

Voodoo Chicken
Boneless breast blackened with Cajun spices, topped with a three-cheese sauce.

When it comes to blackening chicken I usually stick to just cayenne, salt, black pepper, and maybe some garlic salt. I checked out Alton Brown’s blackening for salmon and added some celery seed, onion powder, sage, paprika, and mistys seasoning. Spread lightly over the flattened breasts and sauted in olive oil and clarified butter.

I did not get good pics of this meal cuz I was a bit flustered.

Made up a bechamel and used whipping cream in there. Added asiago, parmesean, milk, and black pepper.

Deglazed the saute pan with some reisling wine, reduced it a bunch, and then added that to the cheese sauce.

Bread came out much better at 500 degrees, thanks DISH. Had some yukon gols potato slices with it. I sliced up some roasted red peppers to garnish the chicken.

It was one of the best meals that I have made in a really long time. It is totally on our list from now on. The flavors were very rich. The cheese sauce was amazing and having just a litle on there made it not overpowering. Can’t wait to have it again.

Got this idea from triple D when they visited Dixie Quicks (Site seems down) in Omaha. YOUTUBE of episode (recipe 2 mins in)
Mixing fresh peppers and onions into the sauce seemed like a great idea since we have modified the standard anyway.

We have been rocking the peppercorn steaks for a long time. It was getting a bit old and we decided to chill on them for a while. I saw the vid and knew we had to try it. I picked up the biggest NY strip I could find, some Anaheim peppers, and onion. I really did not check the steak enough and it was not a good cut at all Still decided to try it out because the sauce looked so interesting.

Lightly coated the steak with cracked black tellicherry peppercorns and salt to sear the sides. Loaded it in the toaster oven to cook through.

After searing the steak in some clarified butter in went the onions and peppers to get them sweated.

added some concentrated beef broth to deglaze the fond and begin the sauce.

Added some table cream and simmered the sauce to a consistancy we like and poured over the steak and mashed potatoes. The steak was bad, but the sauce was simply amazing. I doubt we will ever go back to it without the onions and peppers.

Borky Lou 3:52
IMG_0876 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
figured out a secret last week. put the basil on top of the sauce but under the cheese to keep the flavor in there and not let it burn

Spkthed 3:54
whoa, that’s fascinating…

Loves me those Le Quartier pizza crusts. Really light sauce, fresh mozz, garlic salt, black pepper, and mushrooms and olives that pee all over the pizza and make me have to soak it up with a napkin

i usually make sauces with milk to cut down on the fat, but we had to try a heavy one. Oh man was it good. I looked up some recipes and some called for thickening with corn starch while others said to reduce the cream. I decided to use a bit of roux and reduce the cream.

So I actually measured for this one. Started on the roux and used 3 tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of all purpose flour. Slightly browned it and put in a coffee cup for later use.

Wanted to keep the sauce really simple and garlic powered.

a bit of clarified butter to lightly cook the garlic. 2 whole cloves diced into little bits.

1 cup of heavy cream

1/2 cup of table cream

Added a bit of pepper and simmered it down a bit

this is 1 ounce of microplane shredded asiago. I ended up using near 2 ounces when it was done.

a bit of parsley at the end for some color

and some farfalle to hold it.

The sauce at the end was silky smooth and packed with flavor. It was really good. Got that feeling of ingesting a lot of calories after the small portion I ate. Nom

MMMMMmmmmmm sausage gravy and breaded and fried beef. That is as rich and bad for ya as it loks. I have tried making my own CFS a long time ago. It did not turn out well.
Theresa’s parental units got us a gift box from Hollenbeck farms and it has a bunch of minute steak which will fill my breakfast desires for quite some time.

Pretty simple. Browned up some sausage I got from the store, drained it and set aside.
Made sure to get crunchy bits for extra nummy flavor.

The sauce is a simple bechamel (roux with milk), which I spiced up with salt, pepper, paprika, and some sage.

mixed in the sausage to add flavor during a low simmer while I got the steak going.

Flour, pepper, salt, and paprika to season the flour. Dredged the steak in the mix, some egg, and then back in the flour.

There is a steak under all that gravy. I just poured it all on just in case
Made it through about 1/2 of it. It was really good.

I think this recipe got lost when I got my account closed from youtube. I will do it again here really soon cuz it is one of my staples.

Anyway I made this and cooked some shrimp to go with it.

I spiced them waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much and it was strong, but so good. I made it through 1/6th the pasta, but the shrimp was good.