Month: May 2018

Southwestern Hasselback Chicken

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Playing with hasselback chicken...
Hasselback potatoes and sweet potatoes are a special treat for the eye and the palate. Stumbling across a recipe for hasselback cajun chicken was a new and intriguing idea. Sometimes one doesn’t have everything on hand for a new recipe and that means it is time to play with it and make your own version. No green bell pepper. No andouille sausage and no cajun seasoning nixed the original recipe. Yellow and zucchini squash, red onion, a poblano chile pepper and an assortment of chile powders seemed like good way to try hasselbacking a chicken breast, but with a southwestern flair.

Roughly 50+ miles east of El Paso off I-10 is Fort Hancock, TX. It is a community of about 1,750 people in a green farming band along the Rio Grande in contrast to the sand, creosote and mesquite desert on the eastern side of the interstate. It is home to a modest trading post that has been in the same family for more than 100 years and to Chipotle Texas, a chile company that produces some wonderful chile powers and blends that make it worth a stop for several different kinds. My newest flavor blend is a Zesty Tomatillo Blend that is a bit on the mild side but has a wonderful complex flavor. Experimenting with it us an ongoing adventure. Visiting the store is a treat or you can also check out their website, www.chipotletexas.com and shop online.  The company now takes credit cards. Not too long ago, they would take your check for mail orders but wouldn’t ship your order until the check cleared. It is great that they have grown enough to be able to accept credit cards. If you are a chile fiend, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Hasselback is a term for making narrow slices almost through a base vegetable or meat, rubbing it with oil and seasoning it or inserting something into the cuts and then roasting it. The easy way to make the cuts is to put a chopstick or pencil on either side of what you are slicing to prevent your blade from cutting all the way through. Putting things into the cuts with out breaking the vegetable can be delicate work.

Below is the southwestern version of hasselback chicken stuffed with slices of poblano chile, red onion and squash. The Tomatillo Zesty Blend coated the chicken and was sprinkled in the cuts. It was mild and very tasty, but not quite spicy enough for my taste. Next time a little hotter chile powder will be added to ramp it up a bit. The chicken breast was cooked about 20 minutes at 450º on a foil lined baking sheet.

A few chile powders and blends in the spice pantry.

 

Southwestern Hasselback Chicken stuffed with squash, red onion and poblano chile and season with a tomatillo/chile blend. Served with baked potato and a kale salad.

Poblano Enchilada Quiche

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Poblano chiles and lots of eggs, cheese and cream in a tortilla crust accented with red Chile sauce is worth trying.

Overlook the old baking sheet and concentrate on the quiche. It is very rich, yet light in texture with tantalizing flavors. Next time out, egg beaters with just an egg or two and half and half instead of heavy cream should work and make it somewhat healthier.  The tortilla crust is something worth trying with other fillings. We’ll work on that in the Gringo Gourmet Academy Test Kitchens and report on the trials soon.

POBLANO ENCHILADA QUICHE
Ingredients
4 large eggs
¾ cup heavy cream
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 small to medium poblano chile pepper, stemmed, seeded and thinly sliced
2 scallions, thinly sliced
½ cup shredded Mexican blend cheese (or cheddar, or pepper jack or plain jack cheese)
1 10 oz can red enchilada sauce
4 six-inch corn tortillas, three cut in half

Method
Preheat oven to 400°. Whisk the eggs, heavy cream ½ tsp salt and a few grinds of pepper in a large bowl. Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over high heat. Add the sliced poblano pepper, season with salt and pepper and cook until tender and charred in spots: 5-8 minutes. Add to egg mixture along with scallions and all but two Tbsp cheese, stir to combine and set aside.

Pour the enchilada sauce into the skillet and heat until bubbling; remove from heat. Using tongs, dip the whole tortilla in the sauce until coated. Place in a 9-inch pie plate. Dip the tortilla halves in the sauce and arrange around the sides of the pie plate with the curved sides up, they will overlap a little. Reserve the remaining sauce.

Pour the egg mixture into the tortilla “crust”, smooth out the poblanos in and sprinkle on the remaining cheese. Drizzle with about three Tbsp of the remaining enchilada sauce. Bake until golden, slightly puffed and set – about 25 minutes.

Reheat leftover enchilada sauce, cut the quiche into six wedges and plate. Drizzle with heated enchilada sauce.  Serve with a simple tossed salad or the jicama recipe below.

Optional Jicama Side Dish
Ingredients
1 pound to pound and a half jicama
Juice of 1 lime
½ cup chopped cilantro
Method
Peel the jicama and slice into matchsticks. Toss with lime juice, cilantro, 2 Tbsp olive oil and ¼ cup water. Season with salt and pepper and serve with the quiche.

Po’ que poke?

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Poke (pronounced poh-keh) is trendy right now. We’re finding poke on menus, in specialty restaurants and even on food trucks. It is raw fish with an assortment of sauces and it is very good!
Running across a recipe for a “tuna and avocado tostada” was just another way of enjoying poke with a little  Mexican twist, so, por que no? (why not).

Toss 12 oz diced sushi-grade tuna with one tablespoon each soy sauce, orange juice, lime juice and 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil. Stem, seed and mince one serrano pepper (two might have been better), and season with salt and pepper.

Mash one avocado with the juice of half a lime and a little salt. Spread the avocado side to side on 6 tostadas. Tope with the tuna drizzle with chipotle mayonnaise and sprinkle with shredded red cabbage and cilantro and crispy fried onions.

Po’ que poke. Delicious, light and refreshing.

Notes:  Make your own tostadas by baking corn tortillas in a 375° oven. Spritz the tortillas with a little cooking spray, turn at five minutes a couple of times until they are lightly browned and crisp.  You can use 6″ tortillas.  I used three 3″ tortillas and heaped on the poke and avocado to make a meal for one.

Make your own chipotle mayonnaise with two to three tablespoons of mayonnaise and a teaspoon or so of adobo from a can or jar of chipotles en adobo. Thin with a little water to make a drizzling consistency.

I was too lazy to fry onions and didn’t want to buy a whole can of fried onions this time.  Maybe nest time!

Have the guy at the meat counter get your tuna from the freezer, not the tuna that’s been in the display case for who know’s how long!  It will be frozen and easier to dice and better tasting.  Remember, you’ll be eating it raw “cooked” by the citrus juices in the marinade.

Shrimp and Potatoes Doesn’t Automatically Mean Battered and Fried

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Battered and fried “spicy”shrimp with sides of fries and coleslaw are a wonderful indulgence once in awhile, but you can go low-cal garlic shrimp and potatoes as well. Broiled garlic shrimp and sugar snap peas and a side of potatoes mashed with buttermilk and chives can become another treat without the guilt at 44O calories per serving (including the richness of butter). Using buttermilk in the mashed potatoes was a new experience after years and years of using half-and-half. Buttermilk adds a special touch to the flavor. Thank goodness there were enough potatoes for a small second helping.

Think outside the paper box of fried goodness and try this different approach to favorite goodies.

Garlic shrimp and potatoes – favorites broiled, not fried.

GARLIC SHRIMP AND POTATOES
Ingredients
1¾ lbs large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 lb sugar snap peas, trimmed
6 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1½ lbs small red potatoes, halved
¾ cup buttermilk
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp chopped fresh chives
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Method
Preheat broiler. Toss shrimp, snap peas, garlic, thyme and olive oil in a large bowl and set aside.
Cook potatoes in a pot of water until fork-tender – about 10 minutes. Reserve ¼ cup cooking water, drain the potatoes and return to the pot. Add buttermilk, 2 Tbsp butter, ½ tsp salt and a few grinds of pepper. Mash, gradually adding cooking water if needed. Be sparing with liquids and don’t over-mash. Stir in half the chives.
While potatoes are cooking, spread the shrimp and snap peas in a single layer on a baking sheet. Broil until just cooked through and charred in spots – 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from oven, dot shrimp and peas with 2 Tbsp butter, sprinkle on the lemon zest and toss until the butter is melted and the mixture is well coated.
Divide potatoes and shrimp mixture among 4 plates. Drizzle with any juices (that would be herbed butter!) from the baking sheet. Sprinkle with remaining 1 Tbsp chives.

Lemon-Basil Chicken with Zucchini Noodles (and a new kitchen toy)

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Many fun meals have been made using a small, hand-held, inexpensive OXO spriralizer to make colorful and delicious vegetable “noodles”. It has become more fun with the introduction of a three-blade option allowing a choice of three sizes of noodles. This new toy and discovering a new recipe calling for zucchini noodles made experimenting mandatory.

Six-foot long zucchini and yellow squash noodles for Leah’s bridesmaids’ luncheon with the first OXO spiralizer.
New OXO serializer with three blades for three widths of vegetable noodles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lemon-Basil Chicken with Zucchini Noodles. Baby patty pan and zucchini squash were irresistible      garnish on the zucchini noodles.

LEMON-BASIL CHICKEN WITH ZUCCHINI NOODLES
 Ingredients
¼ cup plus 1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (6 to 8 oz each)
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
½ shallot, finely chopped
½ cup torn fresh basil, plus 2 tsp finely chopped stems
¾ cup low-sodium chicken broth
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
3 Tbsp cold unsalted butter
1-1/2 lbs zucchini noodles
Red pepper flakes for topping (optional)

Method
Spread ¼ cup flour on a large plate. Season chicken with salt and pepper and dredged in the flour; shake off excess flour.
Heat oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add olive oil and heat until shimmering. Add chicken and cook until golden and almost cooked through (5 – 6 minutes per side).
Push chicken to the edges of the skillet and add shallot and basil stems to middle of skillet.  Cook about 1 minute until soft, but not browned. Stir in remaining tablespoon flour and cook 1 minute to make a roux. Add chicken broth and lemon juice, bring to a boil while scraping up any browned bits. Reduce heat and simmer, turning the chicken occasionally until cooked through (165°in thickest part of breast) and sauce is thickened (3 – 4 minutes). Turn off heat and swirl in 2 tablespoons butter until melted and add the lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper.
Melt the remaining tablespoon butter in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add the zucchini noodles, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally until just softened (2 – 3 minutes).  It is easy to overcook the noodles and make them too soft! Toss in half the torn basil. Divide among 4 plants, top with chicken, sauce, remaining basil and red pepper flakes.