Chicken Quiche-adilla

Terry, my carpool buddy, is always bringing delicious food to work for us to sample. Last Monday he brought two quiches: chicken quesadilla and bacon arugula. While the bacon arugula was tasty, the chicken quiche-adilla, as I renamed it, was wonderful. The jalepenos provided just the right amount of heat, and the rotisserie chicken stayed tender and flavorful. I generally like quiche, but sometimes it just seems like you might as well have eaten scrambled eggs because it's so eggy. Not so with this one. Jason said it reminded him of a pot pie, one of his favorite foods, and I was glad of that because maybe now I won't have to make him pot pies, which are way more time-consuming than this. Or maybe I'll start making my pot pies with a tortilla crust too. Enamored with the success of creating pies inspired by other food items, Jason has requested a Tater Tot Pot Pie. But I'm not sure about that. Not everything can be baked into a pie. Or maybe it can.

Terry said the recipe was probably from Cooks Illustrated, but Jason found it at grouprecipes.com, where it goes by the (boring) name of Chicken and Cheese Quesadilla Pie.

Chicken Quiche-adilla

1(10") flour tortilla,burrito size
1 rotisserie chicken, skin discarded, meat shredded in bite size pieces (about 3 cups)
/2c finely chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup drained, jarred pickled jalapenos,chopped
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
salt and pepper
2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450. Grease 9" pie plate. Press tortilla into prepared pan and spray lightly with cooking spray.Toss chicken, cilantro, jalapenos, 1 cup cheese, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper in large bowl till combined. Spoon over tortilla.
Whisk eggs, milk, flour, baking powder and 1/2tsp salt in bowl until smooth. Slowly pour over filling, then sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake until surface is golden brown,about 20 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes. Serve with sour cream and salsa.

Notes: I was alarmed by the large amount of flour at first, but it worked out just fine. The cilantro I had was brown and goopy, so I omitted it. But really, cooked cilantro doesn't have much flavor anyway. I would suggest chopping up some fresh and sprinkling it over the pie when you serve it.

Bacon explosion: The love story of a man and his meat

strawberry margarita pie

I've always loved including liquor in food, mostly because when I was younger I could get my mom to buy the liquor for me if I promised to make her desserts like Black Russian cake or strawberry margarita pie. Now I have to buy my own darn liquor, but this pie is worth it. Plus I have most of a bottle of a tequila left, with which I can make real margaritas to accompany the pie. I can't remember exactly where I got this recipe. I think I adapted it from one of my mom's cookbooks that featured products by name, e.g. "Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk." But it's so hard to remember through the sweet tequila haze. This recipe is nothing more than a guideline--I've never really measured ingredients for it, but it always turns out fine, so adjust to taste.

Strawberry Margarita Pie

crust
1 1/2 cups pretzel crumbs
1/3 cup melted butter
1/3 cup sugar

combine pretzels, butter and sugar and press into pie pan. Bake at 350 until crust begins to brown, 7-8 minutes. Watch closely to prevent burning. Cool completely.

filling
about 1 pound strawberries, fresh or frozen
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup tequila (or to taste...the more tequila you use, the softer the frozen pie will be)
juice of 1-2 limes, depending on how much you like lime
1 tablespoon triple sec if you've got it (you probably won't miss it)
1 cup heavy cream (or two cups Cool Whip, if you must)

Blend everything except for the cream until smooth. I used my immersion blender, but you could use a blender or hand mixer. Pretend you're making a milkshake. At this point, you could drink it, but it's much nicer frozen.

Whip cream separately, then fold into strawberry mixture. Taste and add lime juice and tequila until it's a creamy version of your favorite strawberry margarita. Pour filling into cooled crust and freeze for several hours. Serve with a tequila garnish.

Green Curry

While it's easier to use a store-bought curry paste, making your own is definitely worth the effort, especially if you have a food processor or a mortar and pestle. I use a recipe I've adapted from Thai Home Cooking, which also has recipes for other curry pastes. I like my curry to be flavorful but not so spicy, and it's easy to adjust this recipe to your tastes.
Here's the ingredients you'll need for the paste:

2 tablespoons coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, chopped
2 stalks of lemongrass, inner white part only, chopped
2 teaspoons lime zest
1/4 cup chopped cilantro stems
1/4 cup chopped shallots
4 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons turmeric
small Thai chilies to taste (I use 2 and it's plenty spicy; the original recipe calls for 40)
2 cups Thai basil leaves

Toast the spices in a small frying pan over medium heat until you can smell them. This doesn't take long, so watch out for them burning. Grind them to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle.

Put all the other stuff in a food processor and process. I like to give it a few whirls with the tougher ingredients (lemongrass, garlic, shallots, ginger) before adding the basil. Add the spices at the end. If your mixture is too dry to process, add a few squirts of lime juice from that lime you zested.

The paste will last up to 4 days in the refrigerator, but it can be frozen as well.

You can use this paste for any dish calling for green curry paste, but I usually make green curry with chicken. Here's what you'll need in addition to the paste:

2 cups coconut milk
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil
about a pound of boneless skinless chicken breast, thinly sliced
1/2 cup Thai basil leaves
various vegetables--I use a couple zucchini and onions, sometimes eggplant or potatoes
lime juice and salt to taste

carefully open the can of coconut milk and spoon off the thick coconut milk on top. You should get 1/4 cup or so, depending on the brand. Heat the coconut milk over medium high heat, stirring constantly, until it separates. If it doesn't separate, add a little oil. Add green curry paste and fry for two minutes. Add chicken and cook until meat is opaque. Add remaining coconut milk and whatever vegetables you're using. Cook for about four minutes, or until your vegetables are soft enough for you. Add lime juice and salt, and throw in the Thai basil leaves at the last minute. I like to serve this over jasmine rice. It'll serve at least four people.

Pizza pizza

I ate a Red Baron pizza for dinner tonight, which reminded me I still needed to write a post about the pizza I made a few days ago. Not that my pizza and the Red Baron pizza had that much in common. I mean, I used a white sauce, while his was tomato all the way.
I think the crust is perhaps the most important part of a pizza--it's the foundation, for gosh sakes. For my crust, I use a recipe for ciabatta bread that I adapted--the original was difficult to work with and had way too much salt.

When I make pizza, I start pretty early in the day, say around 11 a.m. That's when I throw together 3/4 cup water, 3/4 cup flour and a tablespoon of yeast. It looks about like this:

About four hours later, it looks like this:
That's when I mix in another 3/4 cup water, two teaspoons of salt and two tablespoons of olive oil. Then I just dump in some flour, about a cup at a time, and mix it with the Kitchenaid until it's still kinda sticky, but not so much that it sticks to my hands.
Then I let the dough rise for about two hours, punch it down, let it rise two more hours. Then comes the fun part: choosing the toppings for the pizza. This time, I went with a sort of a basic alfredo sauce, with some roasted garlic thrown in to liven things up. On top of that went Italian sausage, bacon, sweet Italian red pepper, olives, pineapple and mozzarella. When I got the mozzarella out of the refrigerator and noticed half of it was moldy, I was a little concerned. But hey, you gotta have cheese on a pizza. Unless, of course, you're vegan. I just cut off the green parts and grated up what was left. Here's the pizza going into the oven:

And here's the pizza, just moments before it was devoured:
Red Baron, you can kiss my ass.

Applebutter

So, last weekend I made applebutter. It's kind of old news now. I'm not going to say too much about it, except it took FOREVER. And by forever, I mean it cooked for more than 12 hours and it still wasn't quite as thick as I wanted it to be. But it sure turned out tasty!
Here's the ingredients I used:
10 pounds apples
about 2 cups of sugar
a tablespoon of cinnamon
a few dashes of cloves and nutmeg
a squirt of lemon juice
about 2 cups of water

I cut up the apples in chunks and threw them in a pot with the water, seeds, peels and all. After they were nice and soft, I ran them through my Kitchenaid food mill attachment. At that point, I had a lovely applesauce. Then I put the sauce back in the pot with the sugar and spices and waited. I had started this project at about 11 in the morning, and by midnight it was still pretty runny, so I put it in the fridge and heated it back up in the morning. Oh, at some point I also ran an immersion blender in the sauce, which made it nice and velvety.
I finally got tired of waiting and decided to go ahead and can it up. With my brand-new pressure cooker, I canned about 9 half-pint jars using the boiling water method: Basically, I sterilized the jars, filled them with applebutter, put the lids on, and put them in boiling water for 15 minutes. I can't wait to do it all again next time I pick apples. Really.