Recipe Review from 2/18/08

With help from the Husband, I have four recipes to review this week:

Quick Chicken Chili (Fine Cooking, Feb/Mar 08, pg 86) 3.5
This would indeed be quick if one followed the recipe as written. I...deviated, again...I used my own beans (which are almost gone!) and some of the leftover Crispy Roasted Chicken that the Husband made a couple weeks ago. No worries! It was frozen! Recipe also called for 1 cup of frozen corn, but I had a can of corn niblets from a different recipe that never was made so I happily moved that can off the counter.

A bit of onion is sauteed, spices are added and warmed, chicken and broth to that. Beans, a can of diced tomatoes, and the corn at the end just enough to warm without making mushy. I initially thought this was going to be a soupy dish, but after is sat overnight, it was perfectly creamy and chunky. We did have this for one dinner and lunches the remainder of the week. This would also freeze nicely.


Simple Italian Style Meat Sauce (Cooks Illustrated, Mar/Apr 08, pg 8) 4
Oh, this was so very good and easy to make. Once again, start out by sauteing onions (I eat a lot of onions this way) and mushrooms and then add six cloves of minced, crushed or grated garlic. It seems like a lot, but believe me, I could have easily added more. Add a tablespoon of tomato paste and the seasonings and saute till nicely brown. Add the ground meat (buffalo in this instance) and once slightly browned, add the diced tomatoes and crushed tomatoes and cook until thick and bubbly.

This cooked up thick, creamy, and so very well seasoned. I served it over rigatoni with some grated Parmesan. This makes about six cups, and I froze about two. One cup is about one serving worth because it is so thick.


Cracked Wheat Bread (Duluth News Tribune, 2007) 4
(I'm bummed. I deleted the picture for this before I loaded it! Arrgh!) Anyway, the Husband was at it again and this time he converted this recipe to accommodate Harold, the sourdough starter. While I was away at work for most of the production, I do know that this conversion took a very long time. The sponge was started the night before, and flour added the next morning. Sometime between 7:00a and 7:00p there were risings and shapings. I did the final baking that evening. Recipe called for 35 minutes, but reality took a hour.

This baked up as a very hearty loaf, with whole wheat and cracked wheat giving it a dense but open crumb. I don’t know that he would do the conversion again, but I sure would like to try the bread as written and compare the two.


Stuffed Trout en Croute (Irish Pub Ckbk, pg 162) 4
In print, this wasn’t that difficult of a recipe. In reality, when under the clock, it becomes a challenge. The Husband has wanted to make this dish for a while now, and he finally had the opportunity this past Thursday. He hit a few...hiccups. He started assembling the dish a half hour later than intended, he inadvertently ate the bread for his crumb mixture during the day, and we found out that what I thought was two sheets of phyllo was indeed, only one. Oops.

Still, after getting a bit flustered and not only yelling at the dog for being underfoot (she gets underfoot) but myself (he thought I was going to take over but I was reading my mail! Really!) The dish was quickly halved and only two en Croute’s were made. The remaining two fillets were baked with the stuffing sprinkled over the top.

I don’t usually care for lake trout, but tonight, this dish was very good. The "packets" baked up golden brown and the fish and stuffing so nicely steamed on the inside. A liberal dose of lemon juice with the stuffing aided in cutting the potential richness of the trout and phyllo. I would make these again.