I had so much fun with the other day’s WCC meal, that I made another crockpot dish a couple of nights later. Really, any excuse to use my smoked paprika.

Chicken Paprikash w/ Sour Cream
Adapted from a recipe on Epicurious.com
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1/2 tbsp smoked paprika
2 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
2.75 - 3 lb pounds chicken pieces — legs, thighs, breasts (all bone in, skin on and ready for business)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp + 2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup cup chicken stock or low-sodium chicken broth
1 can artichoke hearts in water, drained and quartered
1/3 cup sour cream (use full fat, low fat could curdle)
Fresh dill, chopped, for garnish

Add the 1 teaspoon oil to a heavy skillet and add the onions and paprikas and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Cook until onions soften and paprika smells really good — about 4-5 minutes over medium heat. Spread mixture evenly over bottom of insert.

Rub garlic halves over chicken then throw the garlic in the crock pot. Sprinkle chicken with pepper and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt. In the same pan used for the onions, heat the remaining olive oil until hot but not smoking (over moderately high heat).

Add chicken pieces and brown, turning occasionally, until golden, about 6 minutes. Transfer to slow cooker (do not clean pan), layering chicken on top of onion mixture.

In same saucepan over high heat, bring stock and artichoke hearts to simmer, scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan.

Pour over chicken in slow cooker, cover, and cook on low until chicken is tender but not falling off bone, 5 to 6 hours. Mine was good in about 5 hours. Remove the chicken to a platter and cover with foil. If there looks like there is a lot of chicken fat on the surface, try to skim some out.

Turn the crockpot off. If you are kind of nervous, stir a little sauce into the sour cream to bring it up in temperature a bit. I am not ashamed to admit that I did this. Then, stir the warmed up sour cream into sauce. Combine well. Pour over the chicken. Garnish with dill and serve.

You can also put the chicken on a bed of spinach noodles and serve everything individually in bowls. Leftovers make a great lunch, as this makes at least 4 - 6 servings.

Weekend Cookbook Challenge is being hosted by La Mia Cucina this month and the theme is…pressure cookers (which I am scared of), crockpots (which I love) and Dutch ovens (which I also love, but I use pretty frequently already).

So, crockpot it is! And the cookbook I used was Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. This is also the only crockpot cookbook that I have. Typically, I just get crockpot recipes off that Internet thing.

Oh and Happy Saint Patrick’s Day — now, here’s a Mexican recipe!

Pinto Picadillio
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium-size yellow onion, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp cumin
3 cups slow-cooked* or two 15.5-ounce cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
One 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
One 4-ounce can diced green chiles, drained
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
1 cup vegetable stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups cooked long-grain white or brown rice
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup sliced black olives, drained
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves (originally it called for parsley)
handful of chopped green onions
2 tbsp slivered almonds, toasted

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, bell pepper and cumin. Saute until softened, about 5 minutes.

Transfer the vegetables to a 3 1/2- to 4-quart slow cooker. Add the garlic, beans, tomatoes, chiles, apples, and stock; season with salt and pepper, cover, and cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours.

About 10 minutes before serving, stir in the rice, raisins, olives, cilantro, green onions and almonds. In addition to a dinner right out of the crockpot, this makes a great lunch. Add some cheese, sour cream and chips. You know you want to…

* Cooking dried beans in your crockpot is easy! And fun. But kind of boring. Anyway, soak your beans overnight, then, drain put into your crockpot and cover with water (I covered by about 3 inches). Add an onion, halved and a few cloves of garlic, cracked open.

Cook on low for about 8 hours. Mmmm….beans. And, the nice thing is, I just drained out my beans, measured 3 cups out and then just used the crockpot to cook the Pinto Picadillio.

Thanks again to La Mia Cucina for hosting!

A couple of weeks ago, when the weather was nice and cool, a big pot of melted cheese sounded like a great idea. Lately, with the temperature in the high 80’s, not so much.

But, we can relive those memories right here. This is based on a recipe in Fondue: Great Food to Dip, Dunk, Savor and Swirl by Rick Rodgers. This is the same cookbook that I used for my last fondue experiment, Cheddar, Roasted garlic annd Zinfandel fondue.

For this one, I changed a number of things from the original recipe — used half and half instead of cream, decreased the cream cheese, added the wine and added more seasonings.

For Fondue
1 cup half & half
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 cup white wine (I used a pinot grigio)
1 garlic clove, minced
4 oz cream cheese, cut into small cubes, at room temperature
8 oz goat cheese (chevre), crumbled with a fork, at room temperature
1 tbsp + 1 tsp cornstarch
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp minced fresh basil
1 tbsp minced fresh chives
1 tbsp minced fresh parsley
1 tsp minced fresh marjoram — (or any combination of fresh herbs that you want to use — just shoot for about 3 - 4 tablespoons total)
Salt & freshly ground pepper, to taste
Optional: 1 1/2 tsp Fox Point seasoning (This is a blend of dried shallots, garlic, chives and green peppercorns and I really love it in stuff like this)

For Dipping
Crusty bread
Blanched broccoli or cauliflower florets
Diced, cooked chicken or turkey
Diced green apples

In a small pan or stove-top fondue pot, heat the half and half, wine and garlic over medium heat until bubbles appear around edges of the mixture. Gradually whisk in cream cheese until smooth.

In a medium bowl, toss the goat cheese with the cornstarch, mustard and shallot seasoning blend, if using.

Gradually whisk the goat cheese into half and half/wine/cream cheese mixture until smooth. Cook gently since overheating makes goat cheese grainy. Continue to whisk gently until the goat cheese melts and it is all creamy. Stir in remaining ingredients (the herbs and the lemon juice).

Taste, add salt and pepper as needed. Okay. Just one taste you. Leave some for the rest of us.

If you need to, transfer mixture to a fondue pot kept warm by a votive candle or flaming gel thingie. Since I just made mine in the stove-top safe fondue pot, I just carried it into the dining room and set it on the base, over the gel flame (on low).

Dip the bread, broccoli, apple and chicken into the fonddue. I found doubling up on the chicken and apple to be especially tasty in the creamy, herby cheese.

Also this week: salads, salmon and almond cake. Woo!

For Christmas this year, one of my presents from jwa was a creme brulee torch. It’s awesome. I used to always use the broiler for caramelizing the tops, and that works fine, but it’s just so nice to whip out the torch and do it quickly, without heating the custard up as much as putting it under the broiler does. Plus, it is kind of fun to burn things!

Here’s a recipe I adapted from Bon Appétit magazine. When making creme brulee at home, I tend to use half and half, rather than heavy cream. I know, I’m deluding myself there, but it does make me feel a little better.

Oh and I also added a little orange zest to the half and half while it simmered on the stove top. I like to think that added a little extra something. In addition, I chopped my ancho very roughly (okay, I just cut it in half) and then strained all the floaty things from the cream after it had simmered. That worked very well rather than dicing things smaller and leaving them in the custard, I think.

This wasn’t strongly spicy but it did have a slight after taste of heat. I liked it a lot. So did jwa.

Ancho Chocolate Creme Brulee
3 cups whipping cream (or half and half)
1 cinnamon stick
1 dried ancho chili with seeds, stemmed and roughly chopped
Pinch of ground cumin
1 strip of orange zest
1/3 cup plus 6 tsp sugar
6 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped
6 large egg yolks
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine first 5 ingredients and 1/3 cup sugar in heavy large saucepan and bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Let simmer for a minute or two and then remove from heat.

Strain the hot mixture into the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Whisk egg yolks in large bowl to blend.

Gradually whisk in hot chocolate mixture.

Divide custard among eight 3/4-cup custard cups or soufflé dishes. Place cups in heavy large baking pan. Add enough hot water to pan to come halfway up sides of cups. Bake custards until almost set in center, about 35 minutes. Remove cups from water and cool completely. Cover and refrigerate overnight. I had a few bubbles on the top of my baked custards from the pre-bake whisking, but since I was covering with sugar and bruleeing I wasn’t too concerned.

Preheat broiler. Mix remaining 6 teaspoons sugar and ground cinnamon in small bowl. Sprinkle sugar mixture over custards. Broil until sugar melts and caramelizes, watching carefully and turning often, about 2 minutes.

Alternatively, if you have a handy-dandy kitchen torch, use that to caramelize the tops of the custards.

Let it sit a minute or two to make sure the top hardens and then crack it with a spoon. Ahhh. Now that’s a great sound. And it tastes very good too!

This recipe is from Fondue: Great Food to Dip, Dunk, Savor and Swirl by Rick Rodgers. I think I’ve had it for about five years but I haven’t used it before this batch of fondue. Why use it now? Well, jwa got me this awesome fondue pot for my birthday! It was on my Amazon wish list but I didn’t really expect to get it (because, dude, it’s a $135(!!) fondue pot), and he completely surprised me with it.

I thought he was going to get me the tea kettle on my list and I picked up the box and thought, “Damn. This is very heavy for a tea pot.” Well, that’s because it was a cast iron fondue pot. Hooray!

For the first recipe, I thought and thought. Then I thought about it some more. What is worthy of the first fondue in this great new pot? Well, one that has red wine, a whole block of Tillamook extra sharp cheddar and two heads of roasted garlic, that’s what.

For the fuel, I went to the Williams-Sonoma by work and got a 3-pack of those gel tubs for fondue pots. It worked just fine in the burner. Oh and in my haste to start snacking (I mean, c’mon — it’s a whole pot of melted cheese and wine!!!), I forgot to wipe down the edges of the pot. So, pictures are not as pretty but we were dipping faster. Hey, it’s a trade off I’m willing to live with.

Cheddar, Roasted Garlic and Zinfandel Fondue
1 cup Zinfandel wine
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
12 ounces extra-sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup roasted garlic puree (2 heads of garlic, roasted, then squeezed out and mashed with a fork)
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Start by preparing your dippers. Cut up the bread, blanch the broccoli and brown the sausage.

When that is all done, bring the zinfandel and red wine vinegar to a simmer in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan. Then, in a bowl, toss the grated cheeses with the cornstarch. Add a handful of the cheese at a time to the simmering wine and vinegar, stirring until melted. Continue adding by the handfuls until it is all incorporated.

Next, whisk in the roasted garlic and add the pepper flakes. Taste and add a little salt and pepper to taste.

Transfer the fondue to a fondue pot and serve immediately. Keep hot over a fondue burner. Dip with broccoli, browned turkey sausage and hunks of bread — we used cubes of pumpernickel and some olive ciabatta.

For the broccoli, I just blanched the broccoli in boiling water for about 2 minutes.

Using the cheddar worked pretty well. The fondue had a very smooth consistency at first but towards the end of the pot, it did get a little grainy. I didn’t mind too much (and jwa not at all) because the flavor was so good. I’m thinking some sort of chocolatey dessert fondue next.

This is intensely peachy and lightly thymey. It’s a great summer treat. I can’t believe how much I love my ice cream maker. It does so many things — gelatto, ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet and even frozen drinks. What can’t it do? Fine. It can’t knit a blanket. Whatever. Who wants to eat a blanket anyway?

I used chardonnay in this recipe but water will work just fine. I just happened to have an open bottle of wine on hand. The basic recipe is from the Ultimate Ice Cream Book, which is really coming quite indispensable around the house. You can peel the peaches if you like, but I think the flecks of darker color makes it look all pretty.

Peach & Thyme Sorbet
1 1/2 lb peaches, pitted and slices (4-5 peaches)
1/2 cup Chardonnay or similar white wine (or water)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
juice of 1 lemon (or a bit less if your lemon is super juicy)
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp fresh thyme leaves

Combine the sugar, wine and corn syrup in a small pan. Place over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Boil without stirring for 1 minute. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Place the peaches in a blender or food processor, along with the lemon juice, salt and cooled sugar syrup. Process until the mixture until smooth. If you think your blender may need a little help, start by only adding half the peaches at first, get those processed and smooth, ten add the remaining peaches.

Freeze in your ice cream maker. As usual, it’ll be soft serve when done. Freeze in the freezer for a couple of hours for a firmer sorbet.

Enjoy with a few sprigs of fresh thyme.

Here is my entry for Sugar High Friday 21: Ice, Ice baby, hosted by The Delicious Life. And if you haven’t seen the original posting you really should. It’s very funny.

My original plan was to make nutella gelatto but I altered that plan when I had some extra blueberries lying about and jwa posed the question, “Do we really need nutella gelatto?” I replied, “Yes, of course we do,” but after a little more thought, decided to go with the healthy option. Although, I think it’s a little suspect when the person who just made a pineapple upside-down cake questions my nutella gelatto plan — but I suppose that’s a moot point now. I just thought I’d point it out.

One thing I do really love about this sorbet, though, is that it is so simple. Fruit + liquid + sugar + a little lime juice. That’s it. And, in using so few ingredients, the blueberries really stand out in this sorbet.

For the liquid, the original recipe called for water. This is where the Je Mange la Ville adage, “Why use water when you can use wine?” kicked in. I was thinking of using a zinfandel but we didn’t have any around. Then I remembered the Bonny Doon Bouteille Call that we had in the house. It was sweet, thick, all raspberry tasting and just waiting to be used for something delicious. I thought it would work great in this and it did. I would also imagine that using raspberries instead of blueberries would work well too with the boo-tay call.

I decreased the sugar in the original recipe from 2/3 cup to 1/3 cup because the wine is on the sweet side. You will need to adjust the sugar based on what liquid you use. Oh and speaking of the original recipe, I found that in The Ultimate Ice Cream Book.

Blueberry Bouteille Call Sorbet
1/3 cup sugar + 2 tbsp
1/3 cup Bouteille Call wine (or a zinfandel — if using a non-dessert wine or water, adjust the sugar accordingly)
1 heaping quart blueberries
juice of 1/2 lime

Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and place over medium heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

Place 1/3 of the blueberries in a blender with the wine syrup. Blend, then add the remaining blueberries and blend until smooth. I start with 1/3 of the blueberries just to make it easier to start blending in the beginning.

If desired, strain through a colander to remove some of the skins. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. It’ll be soft but ready to eat.

Freeze for 2 hours for firmer sorbet.

Thanks again to Sarah at The Delicious Life for hosting this event! Coming up: Monday: Greek Chicken Pie — I promise!

Tagged with: SHF21.

It’s Friday (in a couple of hours) and it’s supposed to be 100+ in Portland. What to do? Why, make a frozen drink on a stick, of course. Last year, as I was wandering around Fred Meyer or Target or someplace like that, I saw this plastic popsicle mold and thought it might be fun (you can get nicer ones at Williams-Sonoma and Cooking.com and places like that, although, I really like the little plastic drip tray on mine). Anyway, all you do is pour the liquid in, freeze it and you have a melony treat.

Add some liqueur and vodka and what more could you want? Besides — the color alone is awesome.

Midori-Melon Popsicles
Recipe from Gourmet magazzine).
1 peeled ripe honeydew melon, cut into cubes
5 tbsp Midori (melon liqueur)
3 tbsp vodka
1 1/2 tbsp superfine granulated sugar
Special equipment: 6 (1/3-cup) ice pop molds

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Pour purée into a sieve or colander lined with a double thickness of cheesecloth, set over a bowl. Let the mixture drain, undisturbed, for 30 minutes.

Discard the foamy solids in sieve. Pour liquid into molds and freeze at least 24 hours. If you have separate wooden sticks for your mold, insert those after about an hour of freezing time.

Now, I only had a four-popsicle mold (instead of six), so I had a little leftover melon mixture. If this happens to you, don’t be afraid to pour it over some ice and kick back with a melon drop. I was going to use this for my SHF post but then I came across a recipe for Nutella Gelatto. Yeahhhhh. That should be up next week…

Speaking of Next Week
I know today was supposed to be either the garden or the Greek chicken pie. Well, it’s too hot to sit in the garden or turn on the oven, so I don’t really feel like posting about either thing. Both of those posts will be coming soon, when we should be back to a more reasonable 80-ish outside.

***

In other news, jwa and I tried the Hawthorne Fish House (same owners — same menu) tonight. Not bad. I forgot my camera, so no full review. The calamari was good (very lightly coated and not rubbery at all). The best calamari I’ve ever had, though, was at Pacific Way Cafe when they had it for an appetizer special. It had this cumin-dusted batter and a spicy dipping sauce. It was crunchy and spicy and….

Okay, I lost my train of thought there. Sorry. jwa had the spicy catfish last night, which was really tasty and I had the perch. I liked it (reminded me of the Midwest and everything) but after I tried his, I wish I had gotten that. I wasn’t crazy about the wasabi-buttermilk slaw but that could just be because I’m not a huge cole slaw fan. I would definitely go again for the catfish and calamari alone (along with an ice cold Alaskan Amber) — and the jalapeno tartar sauce, which was a great accompaniment.

This, unfortunately, is a post with only one image. Perhaps because I wasn’t sure it was going to work out — but it did. It was actually very good. Goes to show you that when a recipe that you are following doesn’t turn out like it’s supposed to, sometimes you end up with something that’s even better! Or, okay, you mess it up and then attempt to salvage it…

I was going to make Alton Brown’s Lemon-Ginger Frozen Yogurt, but with orange instead of lemon — see, I was already changing stuff. But, instead of grabbing the giant container of plain yogurt — I grabbed the vanilla yogurt. When I started to drain it through the cheesecloth, I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t draining. Then I realized I wasn’t using the plain. Doh!

I contemplated briefly just throwing it all out but then I decided to not drain it at all (since the liquid wasn’t separating correctly) and to just use the vanilla and see what happened. Saved me 10 hours right there. I combined the vanilla yogurt and all of the ingredients into a bowl, chilled the mixture for a couple of hours and popped everything into the trusty ice cream maker. The verdict: Wow, it was so good! I love it when cooking mishaps have happy endings, don’t you?

Vanilla-Ginger-Orange Frozen Yogurt
1 large container (27 oz / about 4 cups) low-fat vanilla yogurt
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/3 cup granulated sugar (taste it and see what you like, I might have used closer to 1/2 cup sugar)
3 tbsp fresh orange juice
zest of 1 orange
1/2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
1/4 cup sliced crystallized ginger (or a bit less, depending on your tastes)

In a bowl combine the vanilla yogurt, corn syrup, sugar, orange juice, orange zest, and fresh ginger. Chill in the refrigerated for an hour or two. Transfer mixture to ice cream maker and process per manufacturer’s instructions, about 25 minutes. Add the crystallized ginger right before turning the machine off. Let it mix for about 30 seconds. Transfer frozen yogurt to an airtight container and freeze for 2 hours.

Tacos are the perfect year-round food. In hot weather, you have the cool cheddar cheese, tomatoes, lettuce and sour cream or yogurt and in the Winter, there’s the sides (rice and beans) as well as the chicken, beef, pork, veggie or soy filling to warm you up.

As announced in the title, this week is all about vegetarian meals, a theme that is very near and dear to me as I was a vegetarian for about six years. This meal is of the faux-meat variety. Soy crumbles replace the ground beef in the sort of All-American, pan-taco filling of my youth — hamburger, onion, bell pepper and seasoning mix. But this one is a little different as I stared and my Penzey’s-stocked spice rack and pulled jars down with reckless, carefree abandon. Then I reached for the instant espresso. Mahahahahaha!

Today’s post is the tacos, taco shell making and a lime-tequila-tomatillo salsa. Tomorrow is Spanish Rice (Arroz). When will the fun end?

Chile-Espresso Soy Tacos
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 Pkg soy meat crumbles
1 small onion, diced
1 small bell pepper, diced
1 jalapeno, seeds and ribs removed, diced
1/4 cup water

Seasoning:
3 tbsp chile powder
2 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tsp instant espresso
1/2 tsp dried cilantro
1/4 tsp dried orange peel
1/4 tsp dried jalapeno

Accouterments:
Romaine or Iceberg lettuce, sliced
tomatoes, diced
cheddar cheese, grated
Plain, low or nonfat yogurt
cilantro, chopped
Salsa
Taco shells

Combine all seasoning ingredients into a container with a lid. Stir leftovers in a cool, dry place.

Start by heating about 3 tablespoons of your seasoning mix up in a dry pan over medium heat for a minute or so, until you can smell all of the spices.

Add the oil and mix until you have a thick paste, then add the onion, bell pepper and jalapeno and saute until soft, 3-4 minutes. Add the soy crumbles and break those up with a wooden spoon, until it all resembles dry, seasoned ground beef. Add the water and simmer briefly, until liquid is mostly absorbed and it looks and smells like something you really want to put in a taco shell. Add a little fresh cilantro and serve in a bowl, ready for taco assembly.

Sometimes I add a little baby spinach to the taco filling, while it is still in the pan, and let it wilt down. I didn’t this time, as jwa usually complains about my tendency to perform last-minute spinach inclusion on meals.

Now, the idea here is to create a (huge) taco bar. So, have all of the toppings ready and positioned in bowls. This is the cheese, tomato, lettuce, chopped cilantro, salsa and yogurt or sour cream. Chopped black olives, as well as sliced jalapenos are also nice. Oh and have a big bowl of chips, too. If you do this right, you will barely have room at you table to sit and eat your meal.

Taco Shells
This is a fun little contraption that I found at cooking.com a couple of years ago. I just brush a little oil on the taco-making pan, pop the tortillas in the microwave for 30 seconds to make them pliable and the put them on the molds. Brush the tortillas with a little more oil and bake them in the oven for 10-15 minutes and we have taco shells!

Rounding out this taco feast is a tomatillo salsa from the El Paso Chile Company Margarita Cookbook. Yes, it has tequila in it. You need something in the meal to balance out the coffee, no?

Lime-Tequila-Tomatillo Salsa
6 tomatillos, husked
1 jalapeno, roasted, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp tequila
1 clove garlic
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup white onion, chopped
1 handful cilantro
juice of 1 lime

In a saucepan, cover the tomatillos with cold water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water and cool. Core the tomatillos when they are cool enough to handle, being careful to retain juices.

Add the tomatillos and any liquid to a food processor. Add the jalapeno, tequila, garlic, onion, cilantro and salt. Process until smooth.

Enjoy the salsa with chips and all the taco fixin’s, including refried beans and Spanish rice.