The best chowder ever... and a darn good grilled cheese!

So, still behind.  Always behind.  le sigh.  BUT... Catching up!

A while back, despite the beautiful weather, a creamy chicken soup sounded good.  And if I remember correctly, the weather actually cooperated and cooled down a bit the day we made it.  Thanks, Mother Nature! (This was at the end of May, not terribly recently.)

A lot of this was "What do we have in the kitchen that would be good in this soup?"  But I was really REALLY happy with how it turned out.  It was DELICIOUS.  But it took us a while to figure out what to call it, so we're settling on "Earthy Chicken Chowder" for now.  If you make it and come up with something better, comment and let us know! (Also, not the best picture, but believe me, it tastes better than it looks.)

Earthy Chicken Chowder

3 Chicken Breasts

8-10 c. Water

4 Chicken Bouillon Cubes

2 Potatoes, Cubed

2 Carrots, Chopped

3 Stalks Celery, Chopped

3-4 Cloves Crushed Garlic

1/3 c. Green Onions, chopped

1-2 T. Olive Oil

1/2 c. Fresh Parsley, Chopped

1 large sprig Rosemary

1 pkg Dried Wild Mushroom Mix

1 T. Black Truffle Pieces in Oil

2 c. Fat Free Half and Half

1/4 c. Rosemary Asiago, shredded

4 T. Butter

1/4 c. Flour

1/2 c. Fat Free Half and Half (Yes, it's here twice on purpose!)

Salt and Pepper to Taste 

(1 T. Onion Powder)

1. Boil chicken in large pot.  Remove from water and dice. 
2. Put dried mushrooms and 1 cup of the water the chicken was cooked in into a bowl to soak.
3. Boil remaining broth to reduce to 4-6 cups.
4. Add bouillon and potatoes.
5. In skillet, sautee carrots, celery, onions, and garlic in olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter with salt.
6. Chop soaked mushrooms and add to soup.
7. Add sauteed vegetables, rosemary, parsley, truffles, and any other seasonings you desire (we added onion powder) and simmer until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally.
8. Add half and half and asiago.
9. In a small pan, melt 3 tablespoons butter.  When melted, add flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 3-5 minutes.  Add 1/2 c. Half and Half while stirring.
10. Add roux (flour mixture) to the large pot and stir in. 
11. Add chicken meat.
12. Remove rosemary stem (needles will have cooked off into the soup).
13. Warm through and serve.
 

SOOOoooooo worth making.  Really.  Would I lead you astray?

We had ours, as you might have noticed from the images above, with grilled cheese.  Cept our grilled cheese had a roquefort parsley butter (to be explained in a later post by Dante), Swiss cheese, and Morel and Leek Jack cheese.  It was a little rich, but very good.  Especially dipped in the soup.

So... there's an actual recipe for you to make up for not posting for so long!

Happy Cooking!

Anniversary Dinner

Dante cooked this awesome dinner for me for our anniversary.  Cuz he's awesome like that.

On the left are yukon gold potatoes cooked in a foil packet in the oven with butter and olive oil and topped with rosemary asiago cheese.  On the right is chicken stuffed with red pepper and smoked gouda, topped with bacon, creme fraiche and caviar.  It was an awesome dish, although I have since decided that creme fraiche is not my favorite. (Which Dante thinks means I didn't like dinner at all.  not true.  dinner was AMAZING).

We followed this up with a really tasty crumb-topped pie from Grand Traverse Pie Company.  Mmmmmmmm.

Edit: This is our 50th blog post!  YAY!! Go us!
Happy cooking!

Cabbage, cabbage everywhere...

And so much stuff to eat!

So, given its versatility, amazing "healthiness", and super cheap price tag, we felt cabbage was something we should explore, since neither one of us really knew what to do with it beyond boiled dinner (which is also pretty amazing). 

So, we started with some awesome coleslaw which, due to the red cabbage in it, turned a pretty pink/purple color! lol.  But it was also quite tasty.  We blended a couple different recipes, though it was mostly based on Alton Brown's Coleslaw recipe, with a little tweaking here and there.

We then took said coleslaw and put it on the sandwiches in the above picture.  They were a grilled chicken breast with BBQ sauce (Sweet Baby Ray's, of course), Roasted Red Pepper, Coleslaw, and honey mustard on a pretzel roll.  We served these tasty, but super-messy, sandwiches up with the coleslaw and a home version of the Bavarian Inn's butter noodles.  Basically, homemade fettuccine with a sauce of melted butter and Frankenmuth chicken seasoning, topped with lightly-toasted pulverized Club crackers.  Dante says they're just like the ones from Bavarian Inn.

Our next use for the coleslaw (and one of the motivating factors for MAKING coleslaw) was Reubens.  MMMMmmmmmm Reubens.  I worked in a bakery/deli that served reubens and was never at all intrigued by them, but fortunately, Dante had me try one a while back, and I'm completely addicted.  Course, ours and the ones from the deli down the road are MUCH better looking than the ones I used to serve... Anywho... our reubens were on a rye/pumpernickel swirl bread with corned beef and Dante had pepper-crusted pastrami on his as well, with our fresh coleslaw (strained of some of its liquid), Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing, assembled and grilled on the Foreman.

Since we used less than half of each head of cabbage and made a  GIANT (and I mean Giant... largest one we have) mixing bowl FULL of coleslaw, we needed a good way to use up some more of the cabbage before it went bad (which fortunately, isn't too fast).  So we decided to try a beefy cabbage soup.  And oh my goodness did we have a lot of soup.  The picture below is the very pretty "before" picture, and that's an 8 Quart Stockpot.  Like I said, a lot of soup.

Our soup had red and green cabbage, carrots, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, baby bella mushrooms, celery, onion, and garlic with a little browned beef steak all cooked up in a beef broth base with two packets of Lipton Beefy Onion Soup mix and assorted spices.  Unfortunately, what started as this beautiful, colorful mass of vegetables cooked down to look rather less appealing and very ... brown (See below).  But it was VERY tasty.

 

We ate this with a slice of the leftover swiss melted on top and cheater (from a mix) biscuits.  YUM!



And that about wraps up the cabbage post, although we still have 6 pints of this soup in the freezer, so we'll be reliving it for a while! (In fact this may be dinner for tonight... hmm........)



Happy Cooking!

Bento #19- Apple Pecan Chicken Salad

No bento for Weds.  Went to lunch with my Grandmother at a chinese place near work.  Decent Sweet and Sour Chicken, but no leftovers! lol

Weds night, we picked up dinner at Wendy's.  I decided to skip my standard fries (gasp!) cuz it was SOOOOOO nice out Weds.  Got an Apple Pecan Chicken Salad instead, and oh my goodness.... DELICIOUS!  Seriously.  So when I went to the store to pick up ice cream later that evening,  definitely picked up the stuff to make my own.  I think they turned out pretty well, too! 

I used Romaine Hearts as the base, because I have a bag that needs to be used up.   In the original, I think they used a Spring Mix or something similar.  Anywho... Baked chicken breast, seasoned lightly with Tuscan Seasoning Blend, a tart, crisp apple cut into bite sized chunks (don't remember which kind exactly...), crumbled light bleu cheese, and roasted pecans (I bought plain pecan chips, tossed them with a little Olivio and sea salt and baked em at 350 for 5 mins or so- worked quite well).  Topped it all with a Fat Free Raspberry Vinaigrette (Wendy's: Pomegranate Vinaigrette).  The Wendy's version also had a couple dried cranberries, I think, but I forgot to add those to mine and didn't really miss em.

My salad, in one of my Hello Kitty bowls.  I put the chicken in a silicone cup so I could take it out and warm it up in the microwave, which worked quite well..

Dante's:  Same salad, plus a baked chicken breast.

Anywho... that wraps up the bentos for this week.  Didn't take one Friday. 

Have a great weekend!

-Rowan