Thirty Minute Meals?

Yesterday I made Rachael Ray's Spinach and Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breasts.
They are quite delicious and they are relatively inexpensive to make, but they sure took more than 1/2 an hour.

I sometimes start dinner during commercials on the Food Network in late afternoon. It gets me in the mood.  I  drained the thawed spinach (am I the only one who thinks this is a yucky task?) Peeled and quartered the scallion and smashed the garlic.  Brushed off the mushrooms.  Got out the rest of the ingredients.  Sauteed everything, let it cool a few minutes and dumped it into the food processor.  So far so good.  Had to mix in the spinach and the cheeses, and that took longer than expected.  Messing with the admittedly tasty and healthy spinach IS a pain.

Then came another icky task.  Pounding the chicken. I decided to use waxed paper rather than ruin a zip-locked bag.  Big mistake.  The paper kept tearing and again, I had produced a sticky yucky mess.  I piled big blobs of stuffing on the now pounded breasts and used the toothpicks to seal after rolling.  Again, this was not a slam-dunk procedure. 

Browned the breasts and decided they were so big that they needed a bit of baking, too.   After that was completed, I made the sauce, fairly easy with good browned bits on the bottom.  Added the breasts back to the sauce, debated parsley or no parsley, decided NO, and served em up with garlic bread (home made) and fresh carrots and asparagus.  By now, you are probably thinking: "hmmmm, sounds like more than half and hour, and indeed, it was probably closer to an hour, and with the sides probably an hour and a half.

It was delicious, and I have enough for tonight, except I'll have to cook fresh veggies.  Woman's  work, or better stated, cook's work is never done.   These, by the way, are company worthy.  Just allow more than twenty minutes unless you are unchallenged by frozen spinach and the pounding thin of bulky chicken breasts.  so

Paula's Chicken Empanadas

Paula’s Chicken Empanadas:

Years ago I was horrified when Warburton's Cafe (now long vanished) stopped selling their Cornish pasties in the Harvard Square shop. Shortly after that, Warburton's followed the pasties into the cold oven of history, and the site became an Au Bon Pain, with O.K. food, but it wasn’t Warburton's.I remember sitting outside on a bench in the early spring sun with the beggar sparrows cheeping around my feet as the flaky crumbs of the pasty fell from my fingers. Together the sparrows and I devoured that wonderful, savory pasty.Of course, with the buttery crust and the red meat within, the pasties were "nutritionally incorrect" and that's probably why the Harvard Square Warburton's stopped producing them. Little demand. Except mine.Flash forward to Friday, when the Food Network’s Paula Deen (she of the butter and mayonnaise recipes) made chicken empanadas on her show. Lordy, I was salivating to beat the band and on Saturday I bought a jalapeno pepper and some pepper jack cheese.I changed the recipe to use my own crust (see previous post) and made other changes to spice things up. Yowza! Couldn't stop eating them. Here is Paula's recipe:http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/chicken-empanadas-recipe/index.html
My changes: cut filling in half, except for the jalapeno, add 1/2 sautéed onion and substituted pepper jack cheese. I used adobo seasoning instead of cumin and added the last dabs from the garden of cilantro before it froze.
The crust, which I make in the Cuisinart, is 1 1/2 cups flour, one egg yolk, salt, 1/2 t. medium chili powder, 1 stick unsalted butter and enough ice water until it forms a ball.

The Frost is On the Newly Purchased Pumpkin

Pumpkins are gold-plated this fall, having to do with the wet summer, I hear. Anyway, a nice big one set us back $10.00 at the supermarket. Walmart didn't even get them.

I made Paula's (food network) Mexican style chicken turnovers, and being cheap really paid off. Instead of using the store-bought pie crust ($3.49), I decided to make my own. Browsing thru recipes, in Elena's Mexican Cookery, she recommended putting chili powder in the crust. Yowsa! Did that even rock!

I made more or less Paula's filling except for adding half a chopped plum tomato, and substituting Adobo spice for cummin. I also used pepper jack cheese which gave it extra kick. Didn't remove ALL the seeds from the jalapeno. Yum, yum, yum. We baked, rather than deep-fried, and they were so good, served with salsa.

My pie crust recipe is from a food processor cookbook (Abby Mandel's) and the pie crust almost comes out to be amazingly good and it takes all of 5 minutes from measuring to fridge to chill. Rolls out like a dream. Man, I remember times I had to heave the whole mess in the garbage and start over, but this never fails.

Frost forecast tonight. I dug up my geraniums and put them in smaller pots (they spent the summer outside in a whiskey barrell) and brought inside. Big messy job, but won't I be happy come may when they can be moved back outside and I don't have to go out and buy 10 new geraniums. In this economy, one can take frugal measures.

Feeling smug because I saved $40.00 at the grocery this week and wrote some more of my book, did the estimated taxes and so on. Doing the estimate was not as hard as I had feared. There's something about those IRS forms that intimidates. Yup. I sucked it up and actually did it, and didn't take all day either.

So. . . off to watch the Red Sox game. Wore my shirt today for good luck. Being part of Red Sox Nation is not for the faint of heart. Onward.

Grapeshot

Look, Ma! No Apron!

Have you noticed the cleavage queens on the food network never wear aprons? My lord, if I cooked without coverage, it would be ugly. The only alternative is to wear old jeans and wipe your hands on the fanny. Can't imagine cooking without a parachute, so to speak. How do they do it? Nothing ever splatters or spills or inconveniently is where it should not be. Like all over you. Of course, aprons are not designed to exhibit cleavage (see above). Don't get me wrong, I love them all, and they cook up a storm, but how do they do it?

Wondering!

We are dining on chicken soup tonight. Nobody is sick, and it's not very romantic but hey, the ingredients were present and accounted for, and it's like a free meal. I've liven it up (well, a little) with biscuits with cheese and chives.

I hope you are all going out for a romantic feed. We think the crowds and the over-crowding and hence poor service don't make for a romantic evening, au contraire. So we'll be slurping the soup (quietly) and then enjoying a movie and maybe even a cognac. And a real wood fire. Now, that's romantic.