Chicken and Dumplings

Food. We're obsessed as a society with it, aren't we? Taking pictures of it, posting our dinners to Facebook. There's even a "food" setting on my new camera.

Some food, however, is hopelessly unphotogenic. Some food is downright ugly. Here's a great example of some ugly - but comforting and filling - food. No matter the lighting I put this in, no matter the angle I took the pictures from, chicken and dumplings is just not pretty. But it is fulfilling and warming on a cold evening, a throwback to the days before Facebook, when food didn't have to be styled or angled just so, or anything but delicious and satisfying.

Everybody loved this. The dumplings are chewy but fluffy. The stew, rich with homemade chicken stock and a twinge from a splash of dry Sherry. And it only got better on the second and third day, as the dumplings and chicken soaked up the flavors from the stew. I'm not sure how well it would keep beyond the third day as it didn't stand a chance in my house - I had to wrestle away the last serving from Josh just to get this ugly picture.

You will need:

For the stew
1 store bought rotisserie chicken, skin discarded and all meat shredded
Salt and black pepper
4 teaspoons vegetable oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick)
6 green onions, chopped, all parts
1 large yellow onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dry sherry
4 1/2 cups chicken broth or stock
1/4 cup whole milk (do not use anything other than whole)
2 bay leaves
1/4 teaspoon herbs de provence or dried thyme
1 cup frozen green peas
3 tablespoons minced fresh tarragon leaves

For the dumplings
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
1 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons butter, melted

For the stew: add butter to a Dutch oven and melt over medium-high heat. Add the green onion, yellow onion, andsalt and cook until softened. Whisk in the flour to make a roux, then whisk in the sherry, scraping up any browned bits. Stir in the broth, milk, thyme/herbs de provence, and bay leaves. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Add the shredded chicken to the pot and stir to combine. Discard the bay leaves. Simmer again, uncovered, for about 15 minutes.

For the dumplings: Stir the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together. Microwave the milk and butter in a microwave-safe bowl on high until just warm, about 45 seconds. Stir the warmed milk mixture into the flour/cornmeal mixture with a wooden spoon until incorporated.

Return the stew to a simmer, stir in the peas and tarragon, and season with salt and pepper. Drop golf-ball-sized dumplings over the top of the stew, about 1/4 inch apart (my pot was too small, so they were pretty much crammed in there - they were fine and didn't clump together). Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook until the dumplings have doubled in size, 15 to 18 minutes.

May Daring Cooks Challenge: Gumbo

As a (nearly) life long Southerner, I was ashamed to admit that I am certainly not a gumbo conoisseur, either in tasting or cooking. My roux could have cooked longer (I've heard stories of cooks standing over their roux for an hour plus), I used frozen okra (did you know that "gumbo" means "okra"?), and I did not serve my gumbo with rice, but corn bread. However, Josh brought the large crock pot full of gumbo to a work function the following morning and by the end of the day, the crock pot bowl was quite literally scraped clean.

Our May hostess, Denise of There’s a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we’d need from creole spices, homemade stock and Louisiana white rice, to Drew’s Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh.

You will need:

1 cup (240 ml) (230 gm) rendered chicken fat, duck fat, or canola oil

1 cup (240 ml) (140 gm) (5 oz) flour
2 large onions, diced
1 chicken (3 ½ to 4 lbs.), cut into 10 pieces
2 tablespoons (30 ml) (15 gm) (½ oz) store-bought Creole spice blend
2 pounds (2 kilograms) spicy smoked sausage, sliced ½ inch (15mm) thick
2 stalks celery, diced
2 green bell peppers (capsicum), seeded and diced
1 tomato, seeded and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
Leaves from 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 quarts (3 liters) Basic Chicken Stock (recipe follows), or canned chicken stock
2 bay leaves
6 ounces (175 gm) andouille sausage, chopped
2 cups (480 ml) (320 gm) (11 oz) sliced fresh okra, ½ -inch (15mm) thick slices (or frozen, if fresh is not available)
1 tablespoon (15 ml) Worcestershire sauce
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Tabasco, to taste

Season the chicken pieces with about 2 tablespoons of the Creole Spices while you prepare the vegetables.

Make sure all of your vegetables are cut, diced, chopped, minced and ready to go before beginning the roux. You must stand at the stove and stir the roux continuously to prevent it from burning.

In a large cast-iron or heavy-bottomed pan, heat the chicken fat, duck fat, or canola oil over high heat. Whisk the flour into the hot oil – it will start to sizzle. Reduce the heat to moderate, and continue whisking until the roux becomes deep brown in color, about 15 minutes.

Add the onions. Switch to a wooden spoon and stir the onions into the roux. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Continue stirring until the roux becomes a glossy dark brown, about 10 minutes.

Add the chicken to the pot; raise the heat to moderate, and cook, turning the pieces until slightly browned, about 10 minutes.

Add the sliced smoked sausage and stir for about a minute.

Add the celery, bell peppers, tomato, and garlic, and continue stirring for about 3 minutes.

Add the thyme, chicken stock, and bay leaves. Bring the gumbo to a boil, stirring occasionally.

Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, skimming off the fat from the surface of the gumbo every so often.

Add the chopped andouille, okra, and Worcestershire. Season with salt and pepper and Tabasco, all to taste.

Simmer for another 45 minutes, continuing to skim the fat from the surface of the gumbo. Remove the bay leaves and serve in bowls over rice.

Challenge post here.

Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup

It's no secret at this point that I can't stand buying readymade items at the grocery store that I could just as easily make at home. I just won't do it, especially in the case of canned soups. I mean, just look at the ingredients (if you really can call them ingredients) on the back of a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. Modified food starch, monosodium glutamate, soy protein and less than 2% of milk? Why bother putting that junk in your body when you can have something that not only tastes better, but consists of 5 ingredients that you can purchase without having to Google to find out what the heck they are first?

Ok, I'm done ranting. I understand the convenience of canned soups, especially for casseroles...but if you happen to feel like giving it a shot yourself, here's what to do.

You will need:

2/3 cup vegetable oil (or melted butter)
2/3 cup flour
1 cup chopped mushrooms
3/4 cup chicken or vegetable stock
3/4 cup milk
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Once oil begins to shimmer, add mushrooms and stir. Whisk in flour and stir quickly for 1-2 minutes, until the resulting roux deepens in color and the mixture starts to thicken.

Slowly pour in stock and whisk until combined. Continue whisking as mixture thickens - when it coats the back of a spoon, pour in milk and season with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium low and stir occasionally until ready to use.

I usually pour any leftovers into a Mason jar and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days, but it's at its best hot off the stove.

White Chicken Chili

I moved to Nashville friendless. Friendless and jobless (but fortunately, not homeless). I moved here not knowing a soul and never having stepped foot in the city. It was a huge leap of faith that could have brought any number of horrendous consequences, but this is very clearly where I'm supposed to be, and it's turned out to be best thing I’ve ever done.

The first friend I made in Nashville was a co-worker, a relationship that I long shied away from working in Human Resources, but she was relentless in her pursuit to engage me in conversation. Eventually she wore me down. Among other things, we bonded early on over our love of food and consequently, our diet and exercise hurdles and accomplishments (around the time we met, we had both recently shed 35 pounds). However, it didn’t take long for it to become clear that our cooking styles were radically different – she is a clean cook, who is all about ease and as few ingredients and steps as possible. I am a tornado in the kitchen and prefer to make complicated recipes as long and drawn out as possible. Where she reaches for Hershey's chocolate syrup, I’m measuring milk, corn syrup and cocoa powder and boiling it in a saucepan myself. She deems this “Vicki-tizing” a recipe.

Early on, she shared a recipe with me for White Chicken Chili, which includes diced green chilies, Great Northern beans, onions and cream of chicken soup. It did not disappoint, and I made it to the letter for years. I’m sure you know where this is going – in my quest to obliterate processed foods from my diet, I recently began making my own “cream of” soups, and this chili was my first guinea pig recipe. I noticed the difference immediately – the chicken flavor was more pronounced, the mixture itself was much paler than the familiar condensed soup day-glo yellow, and I felt much better eating it knowing there was not a trace of xanthan gum or maltodextrin in my soup.

This recipe includes the homemade cream of chicken soup, but if you can’t break free from the can, dump two whole cans into a soup pot, and proceed to “for the soup, you will need...” It's delicious either way.

For the cream of chicken soup, you will need:

½ cup of butter (one stick)
½ cup flour
1 cup chicken broth or stock
1 cup whole milk, warmed
2 chicken bouillon cubes
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in the bottom of a heavy-bottomed soup pot. Once the butter is melted (do not allow to brown), add the flour and whisk constantly until smooth, forming a roux. Add the warm milk to the roux and whisk constantly over medium-low heat until the mixture begins to thicken. Once the sauce coats the back of a spoon, add bouillon cubes and chicken stock and stir. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For the soup, you will need:

1-2 tablespoons olive oil
½ a medium onion, diced
1 can diced green chiles
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
½ tablespoon ground cumin
½ tablespoon red ancho or chile powder
2 chicken breasts, shredded or cubed (I like to pull the meat off a grocery store rotisserie chicken)
1 can Great Northern or Pinto beans, drained and rinsed
Salt and pepper to taste

In a separate skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. When oil is hot, add the diced onions and cook for 5 minutes before adding chiles and garlic. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add to cream of chicken soup mixture. Add all spices, salt and pepper to taste. Add shredded/cubed chicken and beans, and simmer slowly for approximately 10 minutes.

Note: this produces a very thick, chowder-like soup. If you like your chili/soup thinner, add another cup of chicken broth or stock.

Serve with sour cream, shredded Monterey Jack cheese, and cilantro.

Smoky-Spicy Beer-Cheese-Sausage Soup

Josh and I spent 21 hours in Chattanooga last Friday/Saturday. It was a whirlwind trip of good people, great sightseeing, and suffice it to say, phenomenal food. I certainly wouldn't have guessed that Chattanooga was such a foodie destination, but the numerous local/organic/sustainable restaurants and grocery stores prove otherwise. I’ll have a list of recommendations at the end of this post if you ever find yourself in Chattanooga.

My first and most heartily-recommended spot would be the Terminal Brewhouse, on 14th street (next to the Choo-Choo Hotel), the inspiration from which today’s recipe comes. When we find ourselves out of town, we generally try to order whatever appears to be the most special item on the menu, judging by clues in the item’s description or title (look for words such as “house-made” or “best-seller” in the description). Josh landed on a mind-blowing soup entitled simply, “The Soup.”

“The Soup” is your traditional beer-cheese soup, kicked up with the addition of smoked Polish sausage, chipotles and jalapenos. It was creamy, smoky and too spicy, but otherwise perfect. I had to know the secret…I had to have it in my kitchen. I’d say we got pretty darn close, if not dead-on aside from a significant decrease in spice.

You will need:

1 pound smoked sausage, preferably Kielbasa, chopped
1 large onion, diced finely
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 stalks celery, diced finely
1 medium jalapeno, diced finely
2 small chipotle peppers, canned in adobo sauce (I rinsed the sauce off to control the heat), chopped
2 12-ounce bottles dark beer (I used a combination of Porter and Bock - both Michelob)
2 ½ cups chicken broth
1 ½ cups plus 3 tablespoons heavy cream, divided
1 8-ounce block sharp cheddar cheese, grated
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon corn starch

Heat a large heavy-bottomed pot and add chopped sausage. Cook until sausage starts to brown and remove to a plate; reserve grease.

Add onions, garlic, jalapeno, chipotle and celery to pot and cook in sausage grease until soft. Add the sausage back to the pot, and stir to combine over medium heat.

Pour in one bottle of beer (I started with the Bock, but I can’t imagine it makes much of a difference what goes in first). Allow to simmer for 5-7 minutes, until the liquid reduces slightly as the alcohol cooks out. Stir and add chicken broth and salt. Simmer again for 10 minutes until the liquid reduces a little more. Reduce heat and add another bottle of beer (in my case it was the Porter). Simmer for a few moments and adjust seasonings again before turning heat to low and adding 1½ cups heavy cream. Simmer the soup for a good 20 minutes after adding the cream.

In a small bowl, add 3 tablespoons cream to one tablespoon of corn starch, and mix until a smooth slurry forms. Pour into soup and stir.

Once the vegetables are softened, the broth thickened, the alcohol cooked out and the soup is a uniform creaminess (you will know when there’s very little orange grease floating on top of the soup), turn off the heat and move the pot to a cool burner. Add the cheese and stir until melted (do not add cheese over a hot burner; cheddar gets gritty). Serve immediately.

Chattanooga Recommendations:

The Terminal Brewhouse
Aretha Frankenstein's - home to one of the best biscuits I've ever had.
Rembrandt's Coffee Shop - try the chocolate cappuccino cup, Italian soda and sweet tea.
Bluff View Bakery - I couldn't help but deviate from Atkins for this one. Asiago Cheese Boule. Oy.

Sweet and Spicy Award-Wining Chili

With swimsuit season looming, and butterscotch blondies in my not so distant past, I have delved hardcore back into Atkins. I feel good, but I'm not on a mission to make this into a low-carb blog, so I've decided against posting the majority of what I've cooked this week. The only exception would be the unBELIEVABLE German Chocolate cake we baked for Josh's mom's birthday, of which I totally forgot to take pictures. Guess that means I'll just have to make it again someday soon...5 pounds from now.

Anyway, tonight's meal was an honest-to-goodness award winning Sweet and Spicy Chili. Really. It won my family's annual chili cookoff award last Christmas. Say what you want, but that was some pretty steep competition. I'd never felt simultaneously bummed and satisfied in one moment until I saw my brother's face after it was annouced I beat him by precisely one vote.

That was my trophy, by the way. Rather appropriate for a chili cookoff, wouldn't you say?

I wish I could remember where the original recipe came from, but whoever dreamed it up is a genius. The flavors in this chili are out of this world, but of course the trick here is to let the chili cook long and slow to allow all the different flavors to meld. What's even more amazing is that even as they combine, you can just barely pick out everything individually: coffee, brown sugar and dark porter beer (Guinness is preferred) are unexpected but oh so welcome.

It's a good thing this stuff freezes so well, because it makes more than we could ever hope to eat in a week. I've already eaten it three times since Monday night.

You will need:

2 tbsp. vegetable oil
16 oz. coarse ground beef
12 oz. sirloin (prime grade is best), cubed into 1/4 in. chunks
1 large yellow onion, chopped into 1/4 in. dice
1 shallot, diced finely
4 cloves finely chopped garlic
1 red bell pepper, diced 1/4 in.
1 green bell pepper, diced 1/4 in.
3 jalapeno peppers, chopped with seeds and ribs intact
1 1/2 cups tomato paste (2 6-ounce cans)
1 1/2 tsp. fine-ground instant espresso
Scant 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3 tbsp. chili powder
1 tbsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground cayenne
1/4 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. salt (may find you need more - I kept it to about 3 1/2 teaspoons)
3 15 oz. cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups beef stock
1 28 oz. can peeled plum tomatoes, chopped (drained)
12 oz. dark beer (Guinness recommended)

Heat oil in a large heavy-bottomed stock pot over medium heat. Add onion, shallot, garlic, red and green bell peppers and jalapeno peppers and saute for 5 minutes until vegetables are translucent.

In the meantime, heat a separate skillet and cook ground beef and sirloin until no longer pink. Drain excess fat and add beef to vegetables. Stir to combine. Sautee for a couple of minutes, then add tomato paste, espresso, sugar and all seasonings, including salt.

After 10 minutes, add beans, stock, tomatoes and beer. Stir well and reduce heat to medium-low; simmer for about an hour.

This is not traditional chili, nor is it Texas chili (my apologies to my homeland). It is, however, very unique and a must-try for the foodies out there. You can still serve it up traditionally with sour cream, cheese and green onions, and cornbread crackers if you can get your hands on them. If you try this one, please report back!