Chicken Pot Pies

My friend Denise makes amazing pot pies. I occasionally pull them out as emergency I-don’t-want-to-cook food, and have had a number of requests for the recipes. So with Denise’s help, here it is. Also, the filling makes quite a bit. We did a double batch when I took these photos, and had to do multiple batches of crust to make all the pies. So I’m afraid that the dough and the filling amounts don’t match, but trust me, you’ll WANT extra of these pies. Speaking of which, I think I need to go get one myself for lunch…

First, we’ll make the crust dough. In a large bowl, combine butter, flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder. Cut together with a pastry blender until the butter is in small crumbs.

 

Pomegranate Roast Chicken

This dish, and especially this sauce, has rapidly become a favorite of mine. I’ve cooked it twice now, and used a variation of the sauce for another dish as well. The chicken is tender and moist, the sauce has incredible flavor, and I love the vegetables cooked in the chicken drippings with butter and sage. I got this recipe from In Sock Monkey Slippers, and changed a few things, but the basic awesome recipe is from them. They also truss the chicken, which I’m too lazy to do.

To start, preheat your oven to 425 and cut up a bunch of root vegetables (potatoes, yams, carrots, squash, apples, and brussels sprouts all work well) and put them in the bottom of a roasting pan.

 

Chicken Cacciatore

Here’s another favorite dish that many of my friends request I cook when I have them over for dinner. One of my favorite things about it is how healthy it is, while also being fancy enough to serve to company. Eat healthy, impress guests, and relax with a glass of wine (or three) for an hour and a half in the middle of cooking. What could be better?

Start by rinsing the chicken and seasoning it with salt and pepper. Then heat some oil in a large dutch oven and brown the chicken.

Remove the chicken from the pot and add in the diced onions and bell peppers. Cook until they just start to soften, then add in the mushrooms and cook until those are soft too.

 

Spaghetti with Chicken and Thai Peanut Sauce

This is an old favorite recipe of mine, gotten from some quick pasta cookbook I got back when I was first learning how to cook. It’s pretty simple: boil noodles, marinate chicken, cook a peanut sauce, cook chicken, combine! I almost always pair this with garlic cheese bread, and usually a simple salad of some kind.

Start by marinating the chicken for 10 minutes (or, if you have time, a few hours refrigerated) in soy sauce, lime juice, your choice of cooking oil, garlic, and ginger. Then cook the chicken (no photos of that here, I forgot to take one), on a grill pan, the bbq, or something like a George Foreman grill, which is what I used. After cooking the chicken, let it cool and cut into 1/4 inch slices. While the chicken is cooking, boil the pasta water and cook the spaghetti noodles, and drain when they are done.

Meanwhile add soy sauce, lime juice, peanut butter, chicken broth, sugar, salt, and red pepper flakes in a small saucepan. Pour the marinade from the chicken into the saucepan as well.

 

Thai Chicken Mushroom Curry

I hope everyone had a great Superbowl, and managed to avoid being guilty about all the overeating! It was certainly good here, and we got a lot of great recipes tested that I’ll be posting soon. In the meantime, though, I got a number of requests recently for this recipe, so here’s a nice healthy curry for you.

Start by peeling and dicing some potatoes and then microwaving them quick to soften them (I never thought of this before. It’s a great idea!)

Next, mix some light coconut milk with curry paste (the original recipe called for red, we went with green) in a saute pan, and heat on medium high until bubbly.

 

BBQ Chicken Pizza

The Superbowl fast approaches, and with it, one of my favorite culinary events of the year. Last weekend I tested a new recipe that I plan to cook on Sunday, and here it is: Oven baked bbq chicken mini-pizzas with ancho chile bbq sauce.

You start by cooking and shredding a package of boneless chicken breasts. I skipped photos of this step, because I figure you all know how to do something that simple. I cooked mine on a george foreman, but you can grill them on the bbq, on the stovetop, even *shudder* boil them. I’m not a fan of boiling much, because it takes a lot of the flavor out of the chicken, but go ahead if you want to. As for shredding, the trusty website Lifehacker has a great article on shredding chicken in a stand mixer.

Once you have your shredded chicken, dice up half of a red onion, chop up a few slices of bacon (it’s the Superbowl, everything needs more bacon), and a cup of your favorite bbq sauce (I recommend this ancho chile sauce), and mix them together in a large bowl.

You can tell I mixed the sauce with just the chicken first, but either way is fine. Next, roll out some puff pastry dough, and cut into small circles. I used an old (aka bent to a weird oval shape) souffle ring, but anything about two inches circular will work. Heck, the top of a pint glass will do in a pinch. Place the dough on a baking sheet, spread some extra bbq sauce over them, hen top each mini pizza with the chicken mixture, and sprinkle grated cheese (I used pepperjack, but cheddar or parmesean would also work well).

 

A Healthy Coq Au Vin

This is a bit of a different recipe. Properly, coq au vin is cooked long and slow, and isn’t the healthiest dish ever. Eating Well took that and made a much healthier version, which still tastes absolutely amazing, and has rapidly become a favorite of both myself and my friends.

First you start out by coating the chicken in flour with a bit of seasoning, and searing them in a small amount of olive oil over medium heat. You want to reserve some of the flour and mix it with water for later use. The recipe calls for this to be done in a skillet, but I like doing it in a dutch oven.

Once the chicken is browned on all sides, transfer it to a plate, add a bit more olive oil, and throw in a bunch of vegetables. Mushrooms, carrots, and onions with a bit of rosemary are what we use here, but you could easily throw in some celery or even a turnip if you’d like.