Kitchen Geekery

Today I made up some tomato soup and used my husbands new $5 gadget purchase, the robostir.  It actually worked very well, and was terribly amusing at the same time.

As seen on tv, and a stove top near you!

 https://www.asseenontv.com/robo-stir/detail.php?p=298896

Soup composed of:
roasted garlic tomato paste  (2 6 oz cans)
2 1/4 cups milk
Dried basil
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
1 clove smashed garlic

Soup was very good, but I was a little worried at first because I thought the little white specs were the result of some strange curdling with the milk.  Turns out they weren't kidding when they said that the paste was rich with roasted garlic!  The resulting soup looked a little funky because of it, but  you just can't have too much garlic for my husband, so he found it a success!

We served it up with some sourdough grilled cheese and bacon and some Ruffles.   I haven't had Ruffles in a very long time, so it was as exciting as a fancy restaurant for me!

Beer Bottle Chicken Fiesta

To continue with our chicken frenzy, yesterday I tried again with the shredded beer flavored chicken, this time with Domain DuPage, one of our favorite beers.  I made another big batch up, and tonight we had garlic and lime chicken nachos!

I cooked up:
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1/2 yellow onion
1/2 poblano pepper
3-4 cloves garlic (pressed)

in a pan, and then layered lime flavored refried black beans on top, followed by some queso fresco.

Served up with chips, guacamole, tomatoes, and sour cream. Mmm mmm mm!

I also tried out some "Lips of Faith" Mole flavored beer.  I loved it, but it didn't go so well with the nachos.  Great for dessert with a little chunk of salty dark chocolate!  My husband bought it for me as a treat, and it was delicious, but a little pricey for normal consumption, so in the future, nachos will be served up with more Domain DuPage!

One of my favorite events of the weekend is brunch. Sometimes it's just so nice to sleep in a little later than usual, skip normal breakfast, and then have some lovely combo of breakfast and lunch, late enough in the day that you could easily have a tasty beverage OR dessert (or both!) along with the meal.  Today we had brunch, another iteration of our hash brown casserole, and my husband made me some Irish coffee! We don't really like Irish whiskey for much, but for Irish coffee, it is the only choice! 

The Recipe

• One Irish Coffee glass (preferably with shamrocks and a gold rim), failing that, any smallish glass about 5 or 6 fl. oz.
• One long shot of good espresso
• Two fingers of decent Irish Whiskey (Jameson or Bushmills)
• Two tablespoons brown sugar
• FRESH heavy cream, laced with a dollop of white sugar, beaten until it's the consistency of custard, but not whipped to fluffiness. In Madrid they refer to this heavy thick sweet cream as "nata".

Procedure

1. Have everything prepared and ready before you start assembling as time is of the essence. Get your nata prepared and keep it nice and cold.
2. Pour the whiskey and brown sugar into the Irish Whiskey glass together.
3. Then use the espresso steamer to heat the whiskey until it is good and hot and the brown sugar is dissolved, about eight to ten seconds.
4. CAREFULLY put a match or lighter to the glass and flame the whiskey for a few seconds. This adds a je ne sais quoi to the flavor, and cuts down the alcohol, bringing the caffeine and alcohol into perfect balance.

Recipe care of http://www.ineedcoffee.com/00/irish/ which is pretty close to what my husband uses! 

Shipshewana in a Bowl

Shredded chicken take two: This batch went into what was my first attempt at making my own chicken soup.   I inquired from more experienced soup cookers at work, and got some advice about what to put in, in what order, etc, and headed off to the store for some veggies.  I already had, at home, egg noodles from Das Dutchman Essenhaus restaurant (Middlebury, IN  near Shipshewana) that we had cooked up and frozen around Thanksgiving.

Ingredients were as follows:   

2-3 cups leftover shredded chicken

6 tsp of better than bouillon (mixed into boiling water)

4 carrots sliced

2 1/2 celery sticks sliced

1/2 yellow onion diced

2 cloves minced garlic

2 cups egg noodles 

Ground sage

dried thyme

fresh ground pepper

fresh parsley

I browned up all the vegetables in the pot until they were softened, added the water for the bouillon and brought to a boil, added the bouillon itself along with the spices, and then threw in the chicken and noodles once everything was good and ready.  I  let it simmer for 40 minutes or so and then served it up with toasted rosemary garlic bread, along with some butter lettuce salad with beets and feta cheese. 

I love Essenhaus noodles, which I surprisingly got from Wal-Mart, and am also VERY fond of their stuffing (or dressing depending on where you are from).   I was pretty generous with my sage in the soup, and so actually the result tasted a bit like a blend of the noodles and the stuffing from the restaurant to me.  I thought it was good, my husband thought it was a little over-saged.  Something to remember for next time, but still, not bad for my first soup trial! 

Pressure Cooker Adventures

We have, up to this point, only used our pressure cooker a few times, but now that I feel like I can successfully use it without blowing up our apartment, I'm in love!  I found a recipe for shredded bbq chicken that I wanted to try, and the first step was to basically just chuck a bunch of chicken breasts and thighs together in the pressure cooker with a bottle of beer.

Well, my first mistake was that I didn't look into the pressure cooker carefully, and thinking the insert was present, thew in the chicken and only realized when the beer started running out the bottom, that it was missing.  Then, we started it up and for about 25 minutes it made scary noises and shot steam out like crazy (we were both peeking in the kitchen but a little nervous about walking in) and I discovered that I didn't have the pressure cork thing in the right spot. Oops!

In any case, turned out very moist and delicious made with Bass ale! We split it up into a few different batches and I made up the following sauce for part of it. It's a modification of the recipe I found, and turned out kind of mole like and quite yummy!

Seasoning:
cinnamon
smidge of garlic
  smidge of clove
crushed red pepper
hot sauce
masterpiece bbq sauce
honey
ground sage (tiny pinch)
chili powder
spicy brown mustard
cider vinegar

I was basically playing kitchen chemist and adding things I thought would go until it tasted good, and it turned out very well, and with a bit of a kick!


We served some up with some Indian sides, like chick peas & potatoes, and some peas & cottage cheese.