Chocolate Hazelnut Potstickers

We had a lot of food for our Oscars celebration, and this was the star. I saw it on Hallmark's Mad Hungry: with Lucinda Scalla-Quinn, and you can see her recipe here. She calls them ravioli, because technically, that's what they are.  But the secret is using Wanton wrappers. I found my wrappers at my local King Soopers in the produce aisle of all places (I figured I would find them in the frozen desert area).

The wonton wrappers make this an extremely easy dish to make.  Just lay your wrapper out, put a tablespoon of your hazelnut spread on it. Then, using a pastry brush, brush water around the edges, and add another wonton wrapper on top of it (the water acts as a glue). Cut your wontons with a cookie cutter, or a a drinking glass.

Next, heat 1/4 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter on the stove. Add your wontons to the pan, and cover tightly. This will steam the wontons.  

Allow to steam, covered for two minutes. 

Remove the lid, and let the rest of the liquid evaporate. 

You'll know when they are done, the smell is fragrant and reminiscent of chocolate chip cookies being freshly baked. 

Remove from the pan. Two scoops of vanilla ice cream and orange zest finish this delicious dish! 

Oscar Worthy Crab Dip

It's the night of the Oscars, and if you don't live in Greeley, you're probably getting together with friends to watch the big event. Hopefully, it's not the late hour, and you have plenty of time to make some yummy appetizers. But, if it is the late hour, then here is a great recipe for you!

Final Product

It's my mom's Crab Dip. Here's what you need:
12 oz. Cream Cheese (I used the 1/3 Fat option), room temperature
1 can crab meet (best to go with quality here--you don't want tinny tasting crab)
1 bottle of Red Chili Sauce (Heinz or similar)
Half a lemon's amount of juice
2 table spoons worcestershire
Grated onion (I used freeze-dried chives), about two tablespoons
Parsley

Offset spatulas are great for spreading. I received mine as a gift from an elderly friend, but I'm sure you can find one in a   specialty cooking store. 

Mix the cream cheese, lemon juice, worcestershire and onion together in a small bowl. Using an offset spatula  spread this on your service platter.  Layer the bottle of red chili sauce on top of your cream cheese mixture. Next, sprinkle your crab meat over the chili sauce, and finally sprinkle your parsley. Refrigerate. Serve with Wheat Thins (I prefer plain).

Enjoy!!!

Quiche and Chatter

Eggs, the wonder.

There was a commercial a few years back which stated the Amazing Egg. Well, it's true. They are the corner stone of good cooking, unless you're french, then it's butter. But it's amazing to think that I used to HATE eggs, until a few years back.

Mini Quiche 

I made mini quiche this late hour. The recipe I used was simple: pie crust, eggs, cheese, and a filling (I used chopped bell peppers). The mixture is not important, but as a suggestion, make sure your eggs equal at least a 1/2 of your other ingredients). You can use anything for a quiche. I recommend checking in on your quiche a lot, thus the timing will depend. I will post a detailed instruction later.



Ingredients for these:

1/4 cup milk
6 eggs
1 cup cheese
1 Red Pepper, diced
1 Yellow Pepper, diced
Salt and Pepper to taste

1 Pie dough crust
Cooking Spray


Mix the eggs, milk, cheese, peppers and S&P. Set aside. For mini quiche, use a round cookie cutter, or if you don't have one a standard drinking class will work (I used two glasses of different sizes, as I used two different sized muffin pans). Put cut pie crusts into muffin pan. Spoon in egg mixture, just enough to cover the crust and a little bit of the side. Bake at 350 degrees, approximately 30 minutes (as always, it's better to start at about 15 minutes, and check in. Better to add time, as you can't take it away!).

The Best Pie Dough Recipe--EVER

Cherry and Peach Pie 

So, I realized after my last post that I have not actually discussed my favorite pie dough recipe on here. So, here we go. While watching the show Mad Hungry on the Hallmark Channel, I fell in love with several of Lucinda Scala-Quinn's recipes--and have discussed quite a few of them on this blog. However, the absolute staple recipe which I have come to love is her pie dough recipe, aka Basic Dough.

The recipe is extremely simple, and consists of four ingredients. I recommend using a pastry cutter, as I feel it gives the best results. Second, I would suggest paying close attention to the elasticity of the dough. Being the person I am, I am extremely hesitant about deviating from the recipe. If it says use "1/2 milk" then that's all I use. However, this is one place where it is okay to deviate. If the dough is too dry, add more milk.

Don't over work your dough (i.e. roll it out too much). A lot of the flakiness of the dough comes from the rather good chunks of butter, which melts into the rest of the dough, and creates air pockets (aka the flakiness). Thus, you want to see the chunks of butter when you are rolling out your dough.

Finally, this doesn't have to be a sweet pie only dough. I've used it for quiche, chicken pot pie, etc. The website also notes that you can freeze the dough (so you can make a lot of it in advance, just divide it before you freeze).

Chicken Pot Pie, full crust

Stuffed Cajun Chicken and Potatoes Gratin

To sum it up, before you read, "Yum."

I've been a bit absent from the cooking world lately, mainly due to lack of inspiration. However, I now have the Food Network again, and my mom got an iPad and now has Pinterest. Thus, how I found protein for this meal: Cajun Chicken Stuffed with Pepper Jack Cheese and Spinach. The recipe, was rather easy, and I did do as the author suggests, and I made my own Cajun seasoning. I did have to make a few substitutes (no onion salt, so used celery salt instead).  

However, I would say I will do it a bit differently, next time. The author suggests that you pound your chicken into a 1/4'' flatness. I did this on the first one, but it was nearly impossible to stuff, and the "rolling" was quite difficult. On the second breast, I merely "butterfly" cut the breast, so that I had a nice pocket, leaving two "seams" on the side, as well as of course the bottom. This made the stuffing of the spinach/pepper jack much easier. 

The next thing I altered, was I bought my spinach fresh, and cooked it. In case you were not aware, spinach cooks extremely quickly, and also significantly decreases in mass. The "bunch"of spinach you buy, will shrivel up to almost nothing, but it is all still there! (I just put some olive oil in a frying pan, put it over medium heat, and added the spinach, popped the cover on, and let it cook down, occasionally tossing it just to ensure it didn't burn.) 

Finally, I would just note that if you are cutting the recipe down, you won't need all of the spice. My mistake was not testing the mixture to note the spiciness. Thus, for the future, I will probably decrease the spice by half. 

On to other things. I used my trusty AllRecipes app on my iPhone to find the Potatoes Gratin. My amazing mom bought my partner and I a mandolin, so I of course had to find a recipe which I could use it for. This recipe is very straight forward, and I would rate it 5 stars. The taste is simple, and the onions really enhance the cheese and potato flavor.  

And the finale: 

This is a Tart Cherry and Peach pie. I used my favorite pie crust recipe which I've blogged about before, and the purchased filling from the store. I normally would not buy pre-made fillings, but this filling came in a jar. The crust is latticed as you can tell, and so darn flaky. I prepped the dough (one note I will make is, sometimes the dough is a little dry, so just add more milk. I think I ended up using 3/4 of a cup as opposed to 1/2, as the recipe suggested)  like always, and then preheated the oven to 350*.  I didn't make any changes to the filling, but I did taste it before I dumped it all in. 

This pie will be great with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. 

2 iPad Cooking Apps You Can't Live Without

Okay, so I am a big fan of my iPad. I would almost feel comfortable getting rid of several of my cook books because of the app. I won't, because I want a back up, but that is how much I love these apps. I'll go over the top 2 apps that I enjoy, and you can decide from there.

AllRecipes 

Believe it or not, I have been using this site (and cook book) for a very long time. But, the iPad app simplifies the whole process. First, it has this AWESOME feature which allows you to gain inspiration, and it is literally called "Inspire Me."  First, you select the course, then the ingredient, method and time. If you've paid for the Pro App, you also get the option of Occasion and Cuisine. Here's where the inspiration comes in. The app starts filtering pictures down, almost tetris like. Ones that you are interested in, you can tap the picture, and it brings up a summary screen. From here, you can decide whether or not you want to read the recipe, find more like it, or review it later. 

The Allrecipes app also has a few nice if you purchase the pro version. First, a recipe box (bye bye hand written note cards). Also, a shopping list. I LOVE the shopping list, because I can quickly go through it, and check off things I already have, so that I don't buy it over and over, and have a concise, easy to access list of what I need from the store. If you're a last minute, short hour cook like me, who likes inspiration on the go, this is perfect. 

The final part of the app, which is cool, is the way the app walks you through the steps. After you've decided what you want to cook, you tap the "Start Cooking" button. This brings the app into horizontal view, so you need to be sure you have a stand. It has a built in timer, for easy access, and you can quicklky tap through the different steps, which in a long recipe is really useful. 

One downside I found for this app, is that it sometimes times out. and when that happens, the timer (for me at least) has quit working. Now, I just did a test, to see what would happen, and I tapped out of the app using the [] button at the bottom of the screen. Then I reopened the app. The timer did go down. And I also used the top button to shut the screen off, and it still worked. So, maybe it was a one time fluke. 

Overall, I give this app a big thumbs up as a necessary, late hour cook's app. 

Next up: Epicurious

This app is nice. I don't have nearly as much to say about it as I do Allrecipes. One criticism I have, which I'm sure is up for debate, is the user interface (UI). The UI of epicurious seems to be slightly less friendly than AllRecipes. However, when I can't find something on AllRecipes, this is my back  up app. It has similar functions, such as the shopping list etc, which unlike AllRecipes, is free, but in order to sync your recipe box (from your computer perhaps?) you have to pay $1.99 for it.

This short hour cook's preference is allrecipes, but this is an excellent contender, and one that I still use. 

Ok, at this point, I bet you're slightly disappointed in my over zealous review of Allrecipes, and the lack luster review of epicurious. I guess, I'm biased. But these are two iPad apps that if you haven't checked out, you definitely should. 

Food (and persons) in Kitchen Unity

Undoubtedly, if you follow me on FB, then you have probably seen the majority of these pictures. However, I did want to share one final recipe, which I found from one of my favorite sites, allrecipes.com.

Josh is responsible for a good portion of this dish, but one of my favorite parts about this meal was the unity which was experienced in the kitchen. No, I'm not talking about my relationship (which I could, because that was very obvious also), but rather the unity which was experienced with the food.

The chicken was seasoned (by Josh) and pan seared until cooked. Mean while, I began prepping the sauce--which paled in comparison to the work Josh put in, as well as began prepping the other food. Melting butter, unfortunately, doesn't take a lot of skill. Finally, the chicken was complete. The fragrance was amazing, a combination of dill, garlic, and of course, chicken.

The sauce so simple, it is almost sad to discuss. Or at least, the recipe presented it as such. Josh suggested I deglaze the pan with a splash of wine (a suggestion, for which I would have been resentful of for not thinking of it myself, except I was just reaching the fridge for the wine when he said it). This was a GOOD decision. The deglazing of the pan picked up all of the extra bits of flavor left over from the chicken. Then, it was time to add the cream (whisk, whisk, whisk!), and finally the capers.

At this point, the meal had just come together. The couscous finished within 30 seconds of the plating of the chicken, and the artichokes followed.

You can find the original recipe here.