Thursday, November 19, 2009

Recipe - Chicken with Rosemary and Apples

Crock pot recipe ... NOT QUICK but really easy

Again, corn free if you use safe ingredients. I'm not sensitive to grain fed chicken (yet) so proceed with your standard precautions.

2 cups sliced onions
2 apples peeled cored and sliced (you can leave the peels on if you're lazy. I do and it's great)
2 lbs cut up chicken breasts
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 tbs chopped fresh rosemary
1 cup chicken broth (or apple juice)
1/2 cup yogurt
1/2 tsp celery seed

  1. place apples and onions in bottom of crockpot
  2. layer chicken on top and sprinkle with salt, pepper and rosemary
  3. wisk broth/juice, yogurt and celery seed together
  4. pour over the top
  5. cook on low 6 - 8 hours

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Recipe - Chicken Paprikash/Spaetzel

I like recipes and need to store them online. An old friend of mine sent out a Facebook plea for recipes so I thought I would start typing them up.

These should all be corn free provided you use corn free ingredients. I will mention brand names where it matters...

Chicken Paprikash (love you uncle Joe)

24 oz. cut up chicken breasts (you can use thighs but dark meat sucks)
12 oz. sour cream (Daisy)
48 oz. Chicken broth or corn free Apple Juice
1 large coarsely chopped onion
3 - 4 tbs Hungarian Paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp ginger
2 bay leaves
1 tbs safe oil
1 tbs garlic

Saute chicken and onion in garlic and oil until browned. Add 1/2 of the broth/juice. Add all spices. Simmer over low-ish heat until cooked (start spaetzel now). Once cooked, use rest of broth/juice with 1tbs of flour to thicken.* Continue to simmer over very low heat until ready to serve. Just before serving, stir in sour cream.

Serve over Spaetzel or don't bother.

Spaetzel

1/2 cup Horizon Vit D milk
1 1/2 cup King Arthur flour
1 egg

Mix ingredients above. Dough will be relatively thin, think a little thicker than cake batter. If it's too thick, add a bit more milk. Bring a large pot of water to a high boil. Pull out a metal tsp measuring spoon (make sure it's metal). Dip the spoon in the hot water and scoop up a spoonful of dough. Since the spoon is hot the dough should slide right off into the water. Repeat this process until all of the dough is in the pot. If it appears that your little spaetzels are sticking together, grab a big wooden spoon and give the pot a stir. This will need to boil for a good 20 minutes.

Drain spaetzel from water and VOILA!

*For those of you who are new cooks, there's a trick to thickening with flour. Get yourself a small rubbermaid or other plastic container with an air tight lid. Toss a tbs of flour in the bottom of the container and about 2 tbs of some fluid (water, juice, broth, etc.). Pop the lid on and shake like mad until the flour no longer clumps to the bottom of the bowl. If you pour this concoction SLOWLY into your pan while continually stirring .. you are likely to add thickener without accidentally creating lumps.

A word of warning, my brother seems to think that flour doesn't need to cook. Technically that's true, but then it tastes like a mouthful of flour, which is awful. My rule of thumb is that flour needs to be at a simmering temperature for at least 10 minutes before you can consider it edible.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Cherry Habanero Jam

Delish, corn free and eeeeezzzzzzz!

1 lb frozen private selections (fancy kroger brand) pitted cherries
1 lemon
2 habanero peppers

1. thaw cherries for 30 - 45 mins on the counter in a bowl
2. cut lemon in half, place half in ziploc baggie and toss in the fridge
3. cut remaining half of lemon up in small-ish chunks
4. toss 1/2 lemon, thawed cherries and habanero (pull off the stem please) into a food processor
5. dump processed pulp into a pan with 1 cup sugar
6. bring to a simmer and simmer until all sugar is melted

voila!

I canned mine, and I'm not sure I did it right, so won't bother putting the canning directions here. Warning ... it's hot!

Sourdough!

Yes, I made it ... and yes, it's fantastic! I used King Arthur flour (all purpose) and my starter finished in only one day, my sponge proofed for 10 hours and my dough rose in about 1.5 hours... it was delicious!

TIP: I used an old spaghetti jar for my starter and put the lid on it ... bad idea, there's gas buildup that needs to get out. Also, I believe the metal in the lid reacted with the starter and killed the first one I made. Best solution I came up with was using a rubber band and a piece of cloth over the top. This let the gas out of the jar as well as keeping flies and such at bay.


Follow the Directions here: http://www.prismnet.com/~sjohn/sour.htm (blogspot link won't work... sorry you'll have to copy and paste into your browser)