Chicken Kabobs

So, I got the chance to participate in BlogHer's Knorr Chicken Stock Recipe contest. SO exciting. So, with Derek's help, we created something out of a little tub of concentrated stock. I get to now claim having created a recipe from absolute zero. It was a blast! And the results? Delicious. It makes a light but filling summer meal. I highly recommend it. But of course, I created it. ;)

Mediterranean Chicken 

1 Knorr Stock Concentrate

1 cup boiling water

1/2 cup chopped chives

2 garlic cloves chopped

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary 

1/8 teaspoon dried ginger

1/8 teaspoon Red pepper

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons olive oil

8 chicken breasts, chopped

Grilled Greek Olives

8 oz mixed olives

1 bell pepper

1/2 cup marinade

Lemon Rice

3 cups boiling water 

1 Knorr Stock Concentrate

3 cups rice

1/2 lemon, zested and juiced

1 teaspoon paprika

Salt and pepper to taste

Four pitas, cut in half (or 8 halves, depending on brand)

Serves: 8
Cook time:
Chicken, 20 minutes
Olives, 10 minutes
Rice (instant) 15 minutes

And now for the details!
Marinade:

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Whisk stock and boiling water until dissolved

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Mix in the yogurt until completely incorporated

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Add all the spices and olive oil together, then add to yogurt/stock mixture.

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Chop the chicken. 

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Cover chicken with marinade. Reserve 1/2 cup marinade (before covering the chicken) for later. 

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Refrigerate 6 hours. 

Skewer  the chicken and pour the marinade that dripped off from the chicken back over the chicken.

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Chop bell pepper and kabob with the olives, use the 1/2 cup reserved marinade on the veggies. 

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Grill chicken for 20 minutes on medium heat, turning frequently to cook evenly. 

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Grill veggies for the final 10 minutes. 

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Lemon Rice: 

Boil 3 cups water, add 1 Knorr Stock Concentrate, whisk to combine, bring water to boil again, add rice, and 2 bay leaves. 

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Cook according to package instructions. 

While the rice is cooking, zest and juice half a lemon.

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When rice is finished, remove the bay leaves and discard.

Add lemon juice and zest, 1 teaspoon paprika and 2 tablespoons olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste.

Grill the pita for one minute on each side. 

Viola! Mediterranean Chicken, Greek Olives and Lemon Rice with grilled pita on the side. 

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From June 2011

Yum!

Some notes:

~If you don't have time to marinade, just dredge the chicken and grill it immediately, it will still be delicious.

~If you can't/don't grill then you can stove-top grill the chicken. Just skip the skewer stage and use a well-oiled skillet and turn frequently to avoid burning, cook it on medium and it will be done in about 10 minutes. Toss the olives and peppers in with the chicken the last few minutes.

~ You can control the lemony flavor of the rice by adding more or less zest and lemon. An entire lemon's zest and juice yields a very tart rice, but the flavor will mellow by the next day, so if making ahead of time, a whole lemon won't be too much.

Enjoy!

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How to Make Tomato Soup--Or Not

Dear Reader,

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I wish I hadn't thrown down the towel until AFTER I'd taken the picture. 

In order to blend up tomato soup, one must hold the lid on. If one does not, one gets tomato puree everywhere. In addition, when you do finally realize you should hold the lid on, use a hot pad if you're taking tomatoes directly OFF the stove and INTO the blender. 

Love,

Morgan

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How To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies

After Erin's FANTASTIC and GENIUS "cookie log" post, we decided it would be indeed rude to not provide you with a way to make cookies to actually freeze.

So, the ones pictured in the "cookie log" post are actually pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

And I didn't make those for this post.

Someday. But not today.

Don't be TOO sad though because I won't lie, these are quite nice as well.

Ready?

Set!

GO!

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe:
1 cup butter
3/4 cup PACKED brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla (or almond extract)
2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups chocolate chips
Makes 4 dozen, give or take.

Now the instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Put the sugars and butter together. (Sidenote: Is there anything better than a PACKED amount of brown sugar?)

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Add eggs. (Well, the following picture is misleading. Crack and remove shell, as you add them. Don't just drop two whole eggs in there, with their shells. That would be unwise.)

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Cream (which just means run your mixer until the lumps are gone and all is smooth.) I usually run my mixer on a pretty high setting to accomplish this faster.

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Add dry stuff and your vanilla (or almond).
Mix a bit by hand to keep the flour from going everywhere.

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Then mix it all on medium-medium high until it's gone from muck to cookie dough.

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Add your chips. I used milk chocolate today. You can use anything that comes in chip form. Or not. I've used crushed up candy bars before too. That was fun.

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(Sidenote: My counters are never cleared off for picture taking. Oh well.)
Mix chocolate chips by hand. I suppose you *could* use a mixer, but why would you?

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Give the beaters to the kids to enjoy. Or in my case, my 16 year-old brother.

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Much to Oliver's frustration.

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And now, the drop it on the pan method.
See, I considered doing beautiful, perfectly round balls of cookies for you. But I don't own a cookie scoop. And the whole point of our little corner on the interwebs is quick and easy, yes? So, without any fancy tools, just two spoons, you can accomplish fine-looking (not perfect) nicely-sized cookies.

Here's how:
No need to grease.
Scoop a nice full spoonful with one spoon. We shall call this spoon #1.
Use spoon #2 to scrap off excess (so nothing hangs over the edge of spoon #1. If you skip this step, you might get little tails that burn.)

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Put the spoons on the the pan and use spoon #2 to pop the dough off spoon #1.

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Using spoon #2 push the cookie dough onto the pan. Use spoon #1 to finish the job if necessary.

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Viola!
A pan full of unbaked cookies. Not perfect, but fast, and done. A dozen fits nicely on a cookie sheet.

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Bake for 10-ish minutes. Only you know your oven. One oven I've had baked these in 8 minutes. This batch went for 11, and I decided it was too long.

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And enjoy. These cookies are soft, but not cakey. I do not approve of 1. Crunchy, hard cookies or 2. Cakey dry cookies. These are a lovely happy-medium, and they are extremely easy to do, yes?

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And I am I only one who despises baking all the cookies once I'm done mixing? I HATE that it takes multiple batches to get it all finished.

So, sometimes, I cheat, and grease a cookie sheet, take all the dough and make one giant pan-shaped cookie. Once it's baked, I cut the giant cookie into cookie "bars" and call it good. I didn't do it this time, but I sure was tempted. It works perfectly fine too. You can thank my mom for that stroke of genius.

Double or triple these for a batch or two of "cookie log" as well. These freeze beautifully.

Yay cookies!

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How To: Frozen Cookie Dough

If your family is anything like mine, they like cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. And, we prefer homemade cookies to pretty much any national brand cookie, so I end up making cookies pretty frequently. In an attempt to keep my sanity and cut down on my time in the kitchen, I've started freezing cookie dough. Now, freezing cookie dough isn't that big of a deal, right? Just throw the dough in a bowl and put it in the freezer, right? Well, the problem with that system is that it takes for.ev.er. for a giant blob of cookie dough to thaw, and this is usually not practical. Not only that, but a bowl is difficult to seal tightly and takes up a ton of space in the freezer. Given these facts, I offer an alternative:

The Cookie Dough Log

This is a fast and efficient way to always have fresh cookies on-hand. And, the best part is, it really doesn't take any extra time. The next time you make cookies, all you have to do is double the recipe and you'll have everything you need to freeze a couple cookie dough logs. When the time comes, you can just take one out of the freezer, slice it up and bake fresh cookies! It's perfect. Here's how to do it:

1. Double your favorite cookie dough recipe. When I was a kid, my mother used to have "cookie" Saturdays. She'd make double batches of 3 or 4 different cookie recipes and we'd all help create the cookie dough logs for the deep freezer in the garage. If you have a large freezer, I'd recommend this; it only takes a couple hours and you'll have enough cookie dough for a whole year of brown bag lunches. If you're like me and only have a tiny freezer then one, doubled batch of cookie dough is plenty.

2. On a counter, lay out a length of aluminum foil (I use about 18-24 inches at a time). I use heavy duty foil and so I only use one layer; if you're using regular foil and plan to keep the cookies in the freezer for a while, you might want to consider using 2 layers. 

3. On top of the foil, lay out a layer of plastic wrap. I cut the plastic wrap to be a little longer than the foil. Spray the plastic wrap with cooking spray (this is really, really important! Don't forget this step or your cookie dough will be impossible to get off of the plastic wrap when it's time to bake the cookies!) My layers look like this:

4. Scoop a little of the dough onto the plastic wrap. I do this with a large wooden spoon and a plastic spatula. Do this only a little bit at a time or it'll get super messy. Continue dropping dough across the plastic wrap in a line, forming a cookie dough "log" about 2 inches wide and 2 inches thick. Don't worry about it being perfectly formed right now, just get the dough on the wrap. I start and stop about 3 inches from each end of the foil. A log this size will usually make about 1-2 dozen cookies, depending on how big you make the cookies. I chose this size because it freezes and thaws pretty quickly and makes just enough cookies for my husband and I. Bigger logs will take longer to freeze and thaw; rather than making larger logs, I'd simply plan to thaw more than one at a time (if you need more than 1-2 dozen cookies at a time). So, at this point it will look like this:

5. Use your spoon or spatula to even out the log. Fill in the gaps and try to make it a uniform thickness and width. Once it's pretty close to "perfect", wrap it in the plastic wrap. I fold the long sides over the top first, and then use my hands to re-shape the dough a little bit, just to make sure everything is even. Then, I twist the short ends tightly and tuck them under. Make sure the seal is tight and that you've squeezed as much of the air out as possible. Like this:

6. Wrap the dough log tightly in the foil. If you are making more than one kind of cookie dough, I'd recommend labeling the foil with the type of dough and the date. Again, make sure this wrap is pretty airtight:

7. Put the log on a flat surface in the freezer. Repeat steps 1-7 until you've wrapped up all of the dough you want to freeze.

To Use:

Thaw as many logs as you want to use in the refrigerator.  When the logs are thawed, unwrap one at a time. While the dough is still cold, slice of "cookie" sized chunks of dough and bake as usual. It should be cold enough that you can just pick up the slices and place them on the cookie tray. I loosely wrap the dough and put it back in the fridge while each batch is cooking because if the dough gets too warm and soft it becomes difficult to slice and just makes a mess. If the dough is really soft, even after being refrigerated, you can put it back in the freezer and slice it when it is mostly frozen. Let the slices thaw a bit on the tray before you bake them.

Happy cookie making!

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How To--Steak N' Everything Sandwiches

Okay, so we used to call these "Philly Cheesesteaks" but we had to change the name because, in reality, they are much more than that. These fantastic yummy sandwiches are a MEAL and they are literally DELICIOUS.

A backstory for you: my friend Lisa and I used to cook 2x a week for each other's families for dinner. It meant that I had two nights off a week, and we got to experience new recipes. It was a WIN-WIN. One month I brazenly said in an attempt to be daring and fun, "I will make Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches."

And I had never made them in my life.

So, with my fantastic husband at my side, I threw some things on a skillet, and one of our favorite meals of all time was created. It took a couple of times to get it PERFECT (and I'll reveal soon what made it PERFECT).

And now, without further ado, I give unto you STEAK N' EVERYTHING SANDWICHES

Recipe: (This makes 4-6 sandwiches, depending on how much you use per sandwich)
1-3 Peppers (bell of some sort) (depending on how much you like)
1 big onion or a couple of green onions (depending on what kind you like)
2 cloves of garlic (or more, or less, whatever)
3 roma tomato
(You could do mushrooms, but um, blech.)

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4 oz of cheddar cheese
4 oz of reduced fat Chive and Onion cream cheese (THIS IS THE SECRET INGREDIENT! THIS IS WHAT MAKES IT PERFECT. THIS IS VITAL TO IT'S DELICIOUSNESS!)

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1  pound of roast beef (I get mine fresh from the deli. It's BETTER!)
Some kind of fancy rolls (we used bollio this time, we've used artesian breads and did paninis once, that was fun)
Lettuce
Mayo

Now the how-to:
Chop up your veggies. (Only chop up 1 tomato, save the rest for later) My food processor is in a box somewhere, so I hand chopped it all, and I was unhappy.

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Chop or tear your roast beef
Preheat a large skillet on HIGH
Sautee the veggies DO NOT ADD OIL, 2 minutes or so.

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Throw in the roast beef. It is fatty enough that you don't need oil.
Cook on high for just a few minutes. The red of the roast beef will disappear.
Turn down the heat. (This is when I realized I needed a bigger skillet. So I upgraded.)

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Add the cream cheese. Stir it all up. (I bought an 8oz container and used 1/2 of it. Much more might be too much.)

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(At this point it will smell so dang good, but don't dive in yet, you'll get burned.)

Add the cheddar cheese. Stir.

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Let simmer on low for five or so minutes. In truth you can leave this for a long time without ruining it. I've let it sit for 30 minutes or more, and it was delicious.

Now, for the sandwich assembly.

Most places that serve Phillies don't bother with lettuce, tomatoes and mayo, but I am here to tell you to BOTHER WITH IT. It finishes off this sandwich to perfection. Don't leave it off. (Unless you hate that stuff, then do whatever you want.) With the Chive and Onion cream cheese and the lettuce/tomato/mayo combo, you will have a hit on your hands. The HOT meat/veggie/cheese + the cold, crunch of the lettuce/tomato/mayo is divine. DIVINE, I say.

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ENJOY.

Other than the peppers (which my four year old was offended by) it is ALWAYS a hit at our house. Side with a fruit salad and some chips and your meal is MADE!

Oh, it is just so delicious.

Go try it, and then come back and tell us about it.

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