Grilled Cajun Chicken Salad

Broke out my new countertop grill/griddle/panini press tonight, for the "grilling" part of this Grilled Cajun Chicken Salad with Spicy Ranch Dressing from Epicurious.



Tasty, yes. "Cajun" or "Spicy", no. I'll make it again, but with at least twice the cayenne pepper the recipe calls for, maybe a bit more. I found a nice arugula and baby greens mix for the salad, and had a hunk of sourdough bread on the side (because a carb-free meal is NOT a meal for me). The dressing is excellent; it could even be almost-healthy, if you used low-fat mayonnaise. It's creamy and tangy, exactly what ranch dressing is supposed to be like.

Semolina gnocchi

I have a bit of a tradition of making myself a nice dinner on the first night of the 24 season premiere each year. I'll sit there watching all the glorious violence, with my lovely meal and a glass of wine... Yes, the premiere of 24 is an event for me.



This year's offering was Giada De Laurentiis's Involtini of Beef, with her Gnocchi alla Romana (semolina gnocchi). Both recipes are from an episode of Everyday Italian about Roman cuisine. The gnocchi in particular were something I'd been wanting to make for a while. Semolina flour and chicken broth, cooked until it's the consistency of polenta, then mixed with an egg and spread on a cookie sheet to cool. As the mixture cools, it hardens to a point where it can be cut into pieces. Those pieces are arranged in a dish, topped with butter and cheese, and broiled. Relatively little work, really nice payoff.

I'm working my way up to potato gnocchi.



Kinda pretty, no?

The beef involtini are thin slices of beef rolled around a a veggie stuffing, cooked in a tomato sauce... also very good, but really, I made this meal because I wanted to try the gnocchi. :) They were a nice change from rice or pasta... this is a definite repeat dish for me.

Skillet chicken pot pie

Got this one from The Best 30-Minute Recipe, from the editors of Cook's Illustrated. Mine took a bit longer than 30 minutes because I went off from the recipe a little, but it was still quick.

Nice premise, though. Make a pot pie filling in a skillet, bake the top (I used biscuits) while the filling cooks, then top the cooked filling with the baked biscuits. And since the Cook's Illustrated people say that whack-a-dough biscuits are absolutely acceptable, I used a roll of Pillsbury Grands biscuits for the top. :)



For mine, I made the filling (chicken, onion, celery, carrot, peas, corn, with a sauce made from chicken broth, white wine, and heavy cream), then topped it with the uncooked biscuits and stuck the skillet in the oven. I wanted the biscuits to soak up some of the sauce as they baked, which added about 20 minutes or so on to the total time. It reheats very well, and the presence of LOTS of vegetables makes up for the heavy cream... at least, that's what I told myself. This was definitely a winner: one-pot meals RULE, and this one had a lot of flavor.

Holiday cookies

Big cookie swap at work. I spent Sunday making eight dozen of these:



I'm calling them raspberry schmear cookies. Originally, I was planning to do a raspberry jam sandwich cookie for the swap. And then it dawned on me that I'd have to make SIXTEEN DOZEN cookies in order to have eight dozen finished sandwich cookies. I don't mind doing some work, but that was going to be ridiculous. So, I mixed up the dough from the original cookie recipe and tried to figure out how to incorporate the raspberry preserves. I could do a filled cookie, or spread the preserves over the rolled out dough to make a spiral cookie... and then I started thinking about one of my favorite desserts to make, which is Giada De Laurentiis's jam crostata. It's a basic butter pastry dough spread with jam or preserves. As it bakes, a lot of the water evaporates out of the preserves, leaving you with a thickened, almost caramelized filling. When I need a quick no-fuss dessert, that's what I make. I thought that maybe I could get a similar result on a cookie by spreading a thin layer of the preserves on the cookies before baking....

Worked like a charm. The consistency of the preserves changes completely after baking. You're left with a thin, slightly sticky fruit layer, very different from the messy preserves you start with. The cookies stick to each other a bit when piled on top of each other, but come apart easily. I think they look very festive (part of the reason I used red raspberry preserves... very Christmas-y).

And as it turned out, the original recipe makes half the number of cookies it claimed, so it was a VERY good thing that I had already decided to go another route. The recipe said it would make 2 dozen sandwich cookies... I rolled mine out THINNER than what they called for, and got 2 dozen cookies, which would have only made 1 dozen sandwiches.

Anyway... basic sugar cookie plus about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of raspberry preserves spread thinly on top, baked at 325 degrees for 12-16 minutes.

Samosas

I went to a holiday party at a friend's house last night, a party that involved dinner. The main dish was curry chicken, and my contribution was a batch of homemade samosas, a yummy savory Indian pastry. Inspiration came from Curried Favors: Family Recipes from South India by Maya Kaimal MacMillan. This was one of the first cookbooks I checked out when I started working at the library, but somebody had placed a reserve on it and I had to return it before I got a chance to try any of the recipes... quite upsetting. The whole book makes me drool.

The recipe in the book is a bit labor-intensive -- not unreasonably so, but there's a good amount of work involved. To make things a little faster and easier, I got out my favorite kitchen appliance: my food processor. The version I made ended up being quite different from the one in the book. Not only did I make good use of the food processor instead of chopping and mixing things by hand, but I also had to make a quick substitution when I discovered that the onion I had on hand was older than I thought it was. The top of it looked fine... the bottom was scary. I needed something to take up the room that the onion would have filled. Out came a couple of carrots. Carrots and cumin work well together, so it was a good match for the filling.

Everything "shredded" was done with the shredding blade on the food processor. It takes 10 seconds to zip a couple of potatoes and carrots through. Without a food processor, you can absolutely chop everything up by hand. The dough can also be made by hand; after combining the ingredients, knead it for a minute or two until it is smooth.


Samosas
Makes 24 samosas, serves 8-12

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water

2 medium waxy potatoes, peeled, shredded OR diced into 1/4" cubes
Salt for boiling potatoes
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium carrots, peeled, shredded OR chopped finely
2 teaspoons grated ginger (freezing the ginger makes this a lot less messy)
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup frozen peas
Juice of half a lemon

Oil for deep frying (I used canola oil; vegetable oil or peanut oil are also good choices)


Combine the flour, salt, and oil in a food processor and pulse to mix thoroughly. Add the water a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing after each addition, until the dough comes together and forms a ball. Turn the dough out on to a piece of plastic wrap, flatten into a rectangle (to make it easier to evenly divide it later), fold the plastic wrap over the dough to cover completely, and refrigerate the dough while you make the filling.

Place the potatoes in a saucepan filled with cold, well-salted water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and boil for 5 minutes or until tender. Drain well and set aside.

In a large skillet over high heat, toast the cumin seeds in oil until they are light brown and fragrant. Add carrots and ginger, and fry until the carrots begin to soften. Add the coriander, garam masala, cayenne, and salt, and stir to combine.

Stir in the peas and fry for 2 minutes. If you find that the spices are sticking to the bottom of the pan, stir in a couple of tablespoons of water. Stir in the cooked potatoes and fry for 2 minutes, stirring to combine. Stir in the lemon juice and remove from the heat. Allow the mixture to cool before moving to the next step.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and divide into 12 equal pieces. Working with 1 piece of dough at a time, knead the dough for a minute in your hands, then roll into a ball. Place the ball between 2 pieces of plastic wrap, flatten with your hand, and roll out to a very thin 6" round. Cut the round in half; you'll now have two half-circles. Take one half-circle of dough, place a tablespoon of filling off to one side, then fold the other side of the dough over to cover the filling. Use a little bit of water to seal the open edges. Press the seals closed with a fork. If they're not completely sealed, they'll leak when fried. Repeat with the other half-circle of dough. Repeat the process for the other 11 pieces of dough.

In a heavy saucepan or deep fryer, heat oil to 375 degrees F (to prevent boilovers, the oil should only come about halfway up the sides of the pot). Fry the samosas in small batches; the size of your batches will depend on the size of your pot. Keep the oil temperature are 350-375 degrees while frying. Remove the samosas from the oil when they are light golden brown, and place on a paper-towel lined plate to drain (or use an Alton Brown draining rig: an upside-down cooling rack placed on top of a paper towel-lined baking sheet).