Hungarian chicken paprikash

So as most of you may have guessed, most of my good recipes either involve bread or belong to someone else.  So I have acquired a recipe from a person that might be the world’s best closet chef.  If any of you have seen the movie Outrun, this guy is a living example of the lead character in the film.  He is a large man that easily could scare off burglars and their little dogs too.  And I have to say a wonderful friend and just an all-around great person.  I will give him a code name of Howard to keep his identity a secret.  Well, Howard is a fanatic about cooking good food properly.  He uses all the right tools and his recipes are used by chefs in large restaurants.  The recipe I have from him today is an old family favorite. I hope you enjoy this one and let me know.  I can tell you this, if the recipe comes from Howard it can be trusted, I have used many of them.

Hungarian chicken paprikash

Prep time 20 minutes, cook in a crock pot on low 8 hours

Ingredients

1 large onion; sliced thin

1-2 tablespoons of butter

4 – 5 pounds of chicken

2 tablespoons paprika

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

4cups chicken broth heated

1 cup sour cream

In a skillet, sauté the onion in butter until tender.  Mix together in a bowl paprika, salt, & pepper. Place chicken in crock pot and sprinkle with ½ tablespoons paprika, salt and pepper mixture.  Spoon the onion mixture over the chicken.  Sprinkle onion with another ½ tablespoons of the paprika, salt and pepper mixture and add remaining 1 tablespoon of mixture to the chicken broth and heat.  Pour heated chicken broth over chicken place crock pot on low and cook for 8 hours.

Remove chicken and keep warm, remove 1 cup of broth mixture from crock pot and let set for 10 minutes to cool down.  Combine cooled broth and sour cream in bowl then add to crock pot stir.  Serve with chicken.

Spaetzle dumplings

Total time 15 minutes

Ingredient’s

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 eggs lightly beaten

1/3 cup milk

2 teaspoon salt

8 cups water                                      

1 tablespoon butter

In a large bowl stir flour eggs milk and salt until smooth (dough will be sticky)

In a large sauce pan bring water to a boil

Pour dough into a colander coated with cooking spray.  Place over boiling water.

With a wooden spoon press dough until small pieces drop into boiling water. Cook for 2 minutes until they are tender and float.  Remove with a slotted spoon; add to chicken sauce or toss with butter.

salad night

Well, I got a chance to have someone weigh me and measure how wide I am for the benefit of keeping one of my jobs.  And of course after that what I think of most is eating more salad.  Somehow the tape measure they use is quite a bit different than any I have ever owned.  According to them I need a diet and maybe some new clothes.  So let’s start with the diet, too cheap for the clothes.  I wrote previously on putting together a nice salad, but will throw in a few more tips.  First, always cut your vegetables so you are able to eat it in one bite and with a plastic fork. This just makes it easier to eat in any circumstance.  I cut my veggies pretty small so I don’t look like a squirrel trying to eat a tomato or try to cut it in half with a butter knife in a salad bowl.  Also if you have something that is hard by nature then consider grating it, like carrots.  Everyone likes the color and flavor but no one can stab them without making a mess. So help out us challenged folks and grate the carrots on a cheese grater.  Now, that is all good but to take your salad to the next level throw some fresh spices on top.  Fresh mint, dill, cilantro, and lavender (not all on the same salad) can really add the extra punch you are looking for.  Also stop buying salad dressing; it’s easy to make, it only has like three ingredients.  I was in line last week at Wally World and the lady ahead of my was buying dressing and the clerk remarked how good it was, and how you just can’t do that at home.  And in my cart right behind her I had everything I needed to make the very same dressing for a fraction of the cost. 

So here is tonight’s dinner.

2 big handfuls of romaine lettuce cut in strips.

2 tomatoes sliced thin and cut in half

One carrot grated. 

One handful of baby spinach leaves

One handful of broccoli florets

One small palm full of dill

Toss together and salt and pepper lightly, adding cheese is always a good bet,

And for the dressing tonight we will be having Ranch,

1 cup mayonnaise

Milk to thin if desired

½ cup sour cream

¼ cup parsley

1/8 cup fresh chives

And to this I will also add a small palm full of lavender.

Post your favorite salad ideas

Boneless chicken wings

birthday cake

My large birthday party event was last night and one of the big hits in my opinion was the boneless chicken wings.  Crispy, tender little bits of chicken with sauce to dip in.  This is a pretty easy recipe to do and seems to come out well.  First, the sauces.  You will need buffalo and blue cheese sauce and you may want to include a bbq sauce as well.  The Buffalo sauce is a mixture of butter and Franks Red Hot.  A 50- 50 mix get you the flavor without a lot of heat.  More butter will make less heat; less butter leads to more heat.  If you like it even hotter you can and ground red pepper  as well. 

Buffalo sauce

½ cup of butter

½ cup of franks red hot

1 teaspoon of brown sugar

1 tablespoon of vinegar

3 tablespoons of flour

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan.  Add the flour and mix well.  Add the rest of the ingredients mix well and set aside. 

The blue cheese recipe I use is a super-secret recipe acquired form one of the first restaurants ever to serve wings.  I will see if I can get the owner to share the recipe and story sometime.

For the wings I use boneless chicken breast.  You can find it on sale everywhere and it is very easy to work with.  I know the meat from your mass market places do not taste as good but we will fix some of that.

Chicken wings

6 boneless chicken breasts

¼ cup salt

¼ cup sugar

½ cup all-purpose flour

4 egg whites

½ cup corn starch

¼ cup cornmeal

¼ (more) all-purpose flour

Take your chicken breast and slice them crosswise about the width of a wing.  Take all the sliced up chicken and put it in a picture.  To the picture add salt and sugar and shake until dissolved.  Let this sit in the fridge at least an hour.  Take them out and drain them in a colander until dry.  Take three dishes and put them on your counter. To the first add just flour, to the second add the egg whites, and to the third add corn starch, cornmeal and flour.  Beat the egg whites to break them up a bit.  Take a rimmed baking sheet with a rack and set it near your work area.  Take a piece of chicken and roll it in the flour until dry.  Then roll it in the egg whites until all wet.  Then roll it in the mixed flours until dry, set it on the rack.  Repeat the process until all chicken is coated.  Set your deep fryer for 360 and let it warm up.  Cook the chicken until light golden and drain on paper towels.  Warm the buffalo sauce and serve the wings and sauces as dips for the wings. 

Holiday cooking

This Easter we have said good bye to our beloved Grama Dean.  It seems fitting that her death falls in the spring and nowhere near Christmas.  Grama dean was the enchanter of Christmas and all things jolly; possessing nearly every type of decoration and candy that is legally allowed.  As kids, we always looked forward to the wonderful Christmas eves spent on Horner street.  Later in life my kids also looked forward to the same elaborate showing of Christmas joy.  I am including a cherished hand written family recipe with this post for the famous GOO Floppy.  Now I cook and bake and try a lot of different types of food. So having said that and before you comment, yes I have read the recipe and I know it seems simple and maybe a little strange, but it works and it is good.  We spent many a holiday scraping the last of the goo floppy out of the pan.  I know we will all miss Grama this season and I am sure a lot of you out there are missing someone at the table as well.  May God himself join you and take that chair and give you some comfort.  Have a great Easter!

grilling flat bread

Well it is spring and the sun is out, so that means grilling season for a lot of folks.  So I will tell you my favorite thing to grill.  Now if you are a loyal follower you know I am not going to say steak.  And they may be good but I am not going for the burger.  My favorite thing to grill is flat bread or pita bread depending on where you are from.  Now these are really easy to grill and just look cool.  There are a few tricks to make this work out and two of them are simple to remember; 1) hot grill 2) lots of smoke.  So let’s work with the grill first.  Take some wood chips and start them to soaking, they need to soak for about an hour.  Maple, apple, and cherry are all good choices here.  Now, when we start cooking we are going to set one side of the grill to low and one to high.  Once the chips have soaked enough, make a small tinfoil pan for them and place them on the cold side under the cooking grate, as far away as possible.  Now let’s look at the scary, hard to make bread.  Now if you remember I posted a generic bread recipe that works for just about any bread.  And that is exactly what we are going to use for pita bread,

31/2 to 4 cups of flour

1 to 1 ½ cups or water

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

Mix your dry ingredients’ together then add the water.  Mix until it forms a dough ball.  At this point you adjust your water and flour.  If it is a bit too wet, add flour; a bit to dry, add water. Knead dough until soft and elastic.  Let it rise until it is doubled in size.  Time will depend on how warm your house is and how warm the water was.  Now you have dough we are back to the fun stuff.

Make the dough into 8 or 10 round balls a little smaller than a softball.  Roll them flat and that that is it.  Now let’s go to the grill.  Now open your grill, smoke bellows out, breath.  I do cheat a bit and I have been known to take my pizza stone out and put it on the grill.  If you do not have one it is ok it will still work.  Take a wad of paper towels soaked in oil and scrub your grill a bit.  Throw one of your flat breads on the grill.  They usually cook 4 to 5 minutes but it depends on the temperature of the grill.  Close the lid.  When the bread puffs up and get slight grill marks on the bottom it is done.  Take it off with tongs and toss on another.  Now that you can make pita bread, I will look for some Greek recipes.