Quick and Delicious

I’m about to toss out a trick that caterers across the world don’t want you to know.

You ready? It’s this:

You can make stuff look classy by putting it in a baked cup.

It’s true that stuff is a lot easier to eat when it’s in an edible cup, but I’ve never really understood why restaurants and catering companies think they can charge MORE just because they are putting something in a silly baked cup.

But I digress.

Turns out that it’s dumb simple to make and fill baked cups with delicious things.

Spinach Artichoke Cups

Yield: 18-24 cups

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 large bunch of spinach, blanched and chopped (or one package of frozen spinach)
1 can artichoke hearts in water, drained and chopped
1/3 Cup mayonnaise
1/4 Cup sour cream
1 Tablespoon hot sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lemon, zest only
1/2 Cup Parmesan cheese, grated
Salt and pepper
Wonton Wrappers
Vegetable Oil

Helpful Equipment:
Muffin Tin
Microplane

Directions:

1) Lightly oil a muffin tin and stuff a wonton wrapper into each cup. Shape the wrapper up against the edges of the cups.

2) Bake wrappers at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. let cook and then take out the cups.

3) For filling, blanch spinach in salted boiling water for 30 seconds. Then remove and let cool on a few paper towels. Use paper towels to press out as much liquid as possible.

4) Drain artichokes and roughly chop them. Once chopped, also press them with a few paper towels to remove extra liquid.

5) Mix spinach and artichokes with other filling ingredients.

6) Fill cups with spinach mixture.

7) Store any leftovers separately.

The Filling

The thing to remember about this filling is that it’s a filling and not a dip. So I cut way down on the creamy stuff. You basically just want enough mayo and sour cream to keep the filling together.

Not Pictured: Parm cheese

When it comes to prepping the spinach, just toss it in some salted boiling water and let it cook for about 30 seconds. Then pull it out and let it cool briefly on some paper towels.

Once the spinach is cool enough to work with, press it with the paper towels to remove as much liquid as possible. Then just chop it up!

You could use frozen in a pinch.

The artichokes are just as easy to prepare. Just drain the can of artichoke hearts and roughly chop up the artichoke hearts.

Important Step: After you dice up the artichoke hearts, again press them with a few paper towels like you did with the spinach. The artichokes retain a lot of water and if you don’t press out most of it, your filling will be super-watery.

Once your spinach and artichoke are pressed, you can mix them all together!

Just good flavors.

There’s a lot of great flavors in this filling, but the two that really pop in my mind are the lemon zest and the garlic.

I used a microplane to zest my lemon and very finely grate my clove of garlic.

Remember when you’re zesting citrus that you just want the outside layer of rind. If you get into the white part, it becomes very bitter.

Just the zest!

Just grab a bowl and mix the spinach and artichoke with all the other filling ingredients.

It’ll probably need a good pinch of salt, but should be pretty much ready to go!

Are you feeling the filling?

Making the Cups

There’s no magic here unfortunately. It’s just ridiculously easy to make these.

All you need is some wonton wrappers, a muffin tin, and a bit of vegetable oil.

The multi purpose muffin tin.

Lightly oil each muffin tin with a bit of oil.

Then kind of just form a wonton wrapper into the tin. Don’t worry too much about making them pretty or uniform. All of the little folds end up getting really crispy and are fantastic.

Ready for a bake.

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. You could go a bit longer if you like your more crispy. I baked mine for 15 minutes for a really crispy final product.

Nice and crispy.

The cups should pop right out of the tin without any problem and once they are cool enough to handle, you can fill them up! I recommend about a tablespoon and a half per cup.

CHOMP.

If you have any leftovers they both keep fine, but just store them separately. If you fill the cups and store them, then the filling will make the cups kind of soggy.

This is a really delicious appetizer that really takes only a few minutes to make.

Whether you want to start a catering company or just impress the friends and family, this is a winner.

A thing of beauty!

Betsy has began expressing some frustration in my new work schedule. Not because I’m at home where I can cuddle with the manimals anytime I want, but mainly because it means that she occasionally misses out on brunch.

You see, I used to cook my weekend brunch posts the week before I would post them. Betsy and I would eat them together and they were generally some of her most favorite meals I think. Lately though, we’ve been traveling so much that I haven’t had a kitchen to use during the weekends! So I’ve been making my brunch dishes during the week, for lunch normally, and then posting them that weekend.

Betsy wasn’t happy about this scheduling change.

So this week, I actually woke up early one day and cooked her a proper breakfast.

This breakfast tostada set the world right again.

The Breakfast Tostada

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

4 corn tortillas, fried crispy
2 Tablespoons olive oil (for frying tortillas)
1 pound spicy sausage (chorizo for example)
1 avocado, mashed
1 Cup cheddar cheese, grated
A handful of spinach leaves
Cilantro
4 large eggs
1 Teaspoon of butter per egg (for frying)
Hot sauce

Directions:

1) Add a drizzle of oil to a large pan over medium-high heat. Add corn tortillas one at a time. Fry for 15 seconds on side one and then flip. Continue to fry (flipping occasionally) for another 2-3 minutes until tortilla is nice and crispy.

2) Remove tortilla to a plate with a paper towel to drain. Fry other tortillas and set aside.

3) Cook sausage in a large pan.

4) Mash guacamole with cilantro.

5) Spread guacamole on tostada. Top with spinach and sausage. Add grated cheese.

6) Fry egg in butter. Either over-easy or sunny-side up is a good option. You could also poach the egg for a slightly healthier option.

78) Top tostada with egg and garnish with hot sauce, cilantro, salt and pepper.

Making the Tostada

You can definitely buy the pre-made tostada crisps in the store, but I think it’s worth it to fry them yourself. For starters, it’s good to know how to fry up corn tortillas. Then you can make chips anytime you want (sweet heat chips anyone?).

More importantly though, the tostada just tastes a lot better coming out of the pan hot and crispy rather than coming out of a cold bag.

Corn works best.

Frying them is really straightforward. Just add a good drizzle of oil to a large pan and heat it over medium-high heat. Add your corn tortillas one at a time.

Fry each tortilla for about 15 seconds on side one, then flip it. Let them cook (flipping occasionally) for about 2-3 minutes until they are slightly browned and crispy.

These guys are all perfect.

Nice and crispy.

The toppings

There’s a huge number of toppings you could add to your tostada. Black beans would be nice for a vegetarian version, but I was in a sausage mood on this day so I just browned up some spicy sausage.

Any spicy sausage will work.

Betsy would probably leave me if I offered her a Tex-Mex dish without guacamole somehow incorporated. And rightfully so.

This was just a quick guacamole with mashed avocado and some cilantro. Nothing fancy.

Minimalist Guacamole.

Building the Tostada

This isn’t rocket science. The only tip I can give is to spread the guacamole right on the tostada first. It’ll act kind of like a glue and make sure everything else sticks nicely.

I added some fresh spinach on top of my guacamole, but that’s optional really.

Then I topped it with a heap of the sausage and some grated cheese. The heat from the sausage and the egg (coming soon) will melt the cheese.

Stackin' it up.

Once you get your tostada ready, it’s time to fry up an egg to top the thing.

This is a very important part of the dish in my opinion.

Add a small amount of butter to a small nonstick pan and melt it over medium heat. Then crack in your egg and let it cook for about a minute to 90 seconds until the white is mostly set. You could flip it and make the egg over-easy, but I went with the sunny-side up method for mine.

I like to slide a large plate over my pan for about 30 seconds near the end of the cooking process. That will set the whites on top of the egg but keep the yolk nice and yellow.

Most important.

Then just slide the egg right on top of the tostada.

Top with a good pinch of salt and pepper and any other garnishes you want like cilantro or hot sauce.

The egg is very important.

There’s some awesome flavors and textures going on in this dish. When you slice into the egg and the yolk spills over the crispy tostada (assuming you didn’t over-cook your egg), then you’ll be in brunch heaven.

This is also a perfect example of why it’s almost always worth waking up thirty minutes early to feed your loved ones a solid breakfast.

Happy wife. Happy life.

There’s a very important caveat to note before I get started with this post:

I do not have children.

I have a cat and a dog and they are more than enough for me to handle at this point in my life. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t COOK stuff for kids right?

I’ve been watching the last season of Food Revolution (sound) on Hulu during my lunch breaks and it’s pretty devastating to see what is called “lunch” at some schools in the U.S. How we expect kids to learn and grow while feeding them bad food is a mystery to me.

What you put in is what you get out.

But, I understand that it must be hard to feed children. I wasn’t a picky eater when I was a kid, but my sister definitely was and I remember watching my mom struggle to get a vegetable into her mouth.

At the same time, I think kids eat first with their eyes. If something looks fun, they are a lot more likely to try it out. So I came up with three fun ways to spice up the normal packed lunch that might make your kid more likely to, say, try a carrot.

This is all about presentation. It’s all the same stuff in a normal sandwich, but if your kid will only eat peanut butter and jelly this might be a way to get them to try out some other things.

It’s a scientific fact that food is more fun when it’s on a stick. That applies to sandwiches also! This takes about the same amount of time to make as a sandwich and just looks fun to eat. You could include a few little containers of ketchup and mustard for dipping sauces. Also, almost anything would work on these sticks.

Note: Betsy made the very astute observation that kids might not be allowed to have pointy sticks at school. If that’s the case, I think you could break off the pointy ends and be okay.

This one is a leap of faith really. My hope is that it looks so fun, that kids will want to eat it. It has lots vegetables in it though, which I hear is like arsenic for most children.

All you need for the sandwich is a tiny cookie cutter and some green, orange or yellow, and red veggies. Then just strategically place them on the sandwich and you’re all set.

You can put other stuff on the sandwich also (cheese, turkey, etc.), but just make sure the veggies and the bread with holes in it line up.

Easy!

I got this idea from a site called Planning with Kids and I thought it was just really fun.

I would’ve loved to open my lunchbox as a kid and see this sandwich.

The right way.

OK. Let’s talk about dessert.

A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is one of my favorite treats to this day. I still frequently have one for dessert.

I like to think of them as dessert instead of as a meal though which is why this sushi recipe works so well. You can include four or five little bites along with something really healthy and hopefully convey to the little ones that they are supposed to eat them last.

These might look tricky, but they are pretty easy to make actually. There are three keys to making these work:

1) Cut off the ends on the bread. It just makes it roll easier. I’m sure your kids will like this.

As I always asked my Mom growing up, “Mom, why do they even make bread with ends on it?”

2) Roll the bread thin (Upper right photo below). It’ll be easier to roll if it isn’t all puffy.

3) Go light on the PB & J. Otherwise it’ll just be messy. A very thin layer of both is more than enough.

Be sure to roll up the rolls pretty tightly so they stay formed and, if you have one, cut the rolls with a serrated knife so they cut cleanly.

These are just super-fun.

From above!

I ate all of these for lunch as I made them and I liked all of them!

Of course, that’s not the test though. The test is children. I figured it would be kind of creepy for me to go handing out my lunches at the local elementary school so none of these have been officially tested.

If you have kids, leave a comment and let me know if you think your kids would actually EAT any of these! If you try one out, even better.

School lunch photo by Chidorian.

Serious balls of meat.

I think when most people picture spaghetti and meatballs they envision a gigantic pot of red sauce with drowning meatballs dunked in it.

Because that’s what most people do when they make meatballs. It’s pretty easy to make decent meatballs and sauce if you do it this way, BUT… we can do better.

Especially in the summer, I’m just not in the mood for a thick sauce piled on my pasta. And that’s when this recipe saves the day. The meatballs, made of buffalo because of last week’s poll, are light and super-flavorful. Serving them over buttered egg noodles instead of sauced spaghetti makes this a great hearty summer dinner.

Buffalo Meatballs

Yield: 12 meatballs, serves 4.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound ground buffalo
4 ounces (about 1/2 Cup) frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1/2 Cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1 large egg
1/4 Cup bread crumbs (plus more for coating meatballs)
1 Tablespoon fresh basil
1 Tablespoon fresh parsley
1 Teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
Pinch of salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Mini muffin tin (yea you read that right)

Directions:

1) Thaw spinach and press out as much moisture as possible with a few paper towels.

2) Chop spinach and fresh herbs very finely.

3) Mix ground buffalo and other ingredients in a large bowl. This can be done in advance.

4) Form meatballs with 1.5-2 ounces of meat. Keep the mixture nice and light.

5) Once the meatball is formed, toss it around in bread crumbs until completely covered.

6) Set meatballs in a mini muffin tin (or on a sheet pan if you don't have one)

7) Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Turn once halfway through.

8) Serve meatballs over buttered noodles with Parmesan cheese and parsley.

Very adapted from an Alton Brown recipe.

Making the Meatballs

The problem with some meatballs is that they tend to either A) fall apart or B) be completely dry. These guys have neither problem. They have plenty of moisture and texture and stay together really nicely.

You could use dried herbs if you wanted (use 1 1/2 Teaspoons instead of a full tablespoon), but I think fresh works great.

Basic stuff.

While I think it’s good to use fresh herbs, I don’t think it’s important at all to use fresh spinach. I just used the frozen stuff, thawed it out and pressed out as much liquid as possible with a few paper towels.

Then just chop it up!

Squeeze it out good.

Add all your meatball ingredients to a large bowl and start stirring!

Ready for a good mixin'

The key when making meatballs is to keep the mixture nice and light. You don’t want to be pressing down really hard on the meat. Just stir it until the ingredients are mostly combined and think light thoughts!

You could make this up to 24 hours in advance if you wanted. Not that it takes long to make.

Try to keep it nice and light.

Forming the balls

I like to weigh my meatballs to make sure they are all pretty much the same size. This isn’t completely necessary though. You are basically looking for a 1.5-2 ounce meatball. It should be the size of a small golf ball basically.

Just roll the meat gently between your hands until it forms a ball. Again, keep it nice and light.

A scant two ounces is good.

Then add the ball to a bowl full of bread crumbs and roll it around a bit until it’s completely covered.

Repeat until all the balls are formed!

Breadcrumb bath.

Cooking the meatballs

There are a ton of ways to cook meatballs. Actually, pretty much any way you can cook stuff, you can cook meatballs. You could fry them, cook them on the stove, roast them… the options are pretty endless.

Alton came up with a great technique on his meatballs episode that I just had to try.

You cook the meatballs in a mini muffin pan!

Thanks Alton!

The benefits of doing this are two fold. First, since the meatballs are gently held above the bottom of the pan, the fat can drain away. Second, the even heating ensures that they get nice and browed all around while still keeping their shape.

I baked mine for 25 minutes at 400 degrees and turned the meatballs once halfway through. These are ready to go!

After 25 minutes...

Serving Options

Options are pretty limitless when it comes to serving. You could stick them on toothpicks, toss them in some red sauce at this point, or go the way I chose.

Cook up some egg noodles, drain them, and then toss in a few tablespoons of butter. Once the noodles are well buttered, serve the meatballs on top with some fresh Parmesan cheese and parsley.

This really lets the meatball flavor shine.

Butter noodles are the way to go!

These were really fun to make and took me only about 35 minutes start to finish. That’s not too bad for a really nice dinner.

Leftovers are great on a hoagie with provolone cheese!

Meatballs in a mini muffin tin. Go figure.

I like my pizza over easy.

I’m pretty sure that I could count on one hand the things that aren’t good on a pizza. Ok. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration (or Nickxaggeration as Betsy would say), but it’s not too far off.

I had some pizza dough left over from my grilled pizza this week so I figured I would use it with a fun pizza idea I’ve been carrying around in my back pocket for a while.

It’s pretty basic: Take all your standard breakfast ingredients. Stick them on a pie. Add cheese and sauce. Consume immediately.

As it turns out, I like my pizza over-easy.

Breakfast Pizza

Yield: 2 pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes + dough time

Ingredients:

Dough: (From American Pie)
This is enough dough for four pizzas actually, but you can freeze any leftovers.
5 Cups (22 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon instant yeast (or active dry yeast, dissolved)
3 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 Cups room temperature water

Other Stuff:
1 Cup Tomato Sauce
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes (sauce)
1 Tablespoon dried oregano (sauce)
Pinch of salt and pepper (sauce)
6-8 ounces bacon
2 Russet potatoes, cubed
6 eggs, 3 per pizza
10 ounces pepper jack cheese (you could use more or less to your tastes)
Handful of spinach, roughly chopped

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza Stone
Pizza Peel

Directions:

1) To make dough, combine water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Stir together and let sit for 5 minutes to make sure yeast is active. It should bubble.

2) Stir in flour until it’s well-incorporated and forms a ball. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then mix either with your hands or with a stand mixer. If using hands, repeatedly dip one hand in water and work the dough vigorously until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. If using a mixer, mix with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. If at any point, the dough is very sticky, mix in more flour.

3) Cut dough into 4 even pieces, coat with olive oil and add to a large plastic bag. Let rest for 20-30 minutes.

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but ideally overnight.

5) Remove from fridge at least an hour before making pizza.

6) Wash and cube (or shred) potatoes.

7) Slice bacon into chunks and cook it over medium heat in a large skillet. After about 10 minutes or when bacon is just turning crispy, remove bacon.

8) Cook potatoes in bacon grease for 10 minutes until they are cooked through and slightly crispy.

9) Prepare other ingredients: chop spinach, shred cheese, mix sauce.

10) Roll out pizza dough an add it to a peel lightly dusted with flour or cornmeal. Add a thin layer of sauce.

11) Add ingredients: cheese, potatoes, bacon, spinach leaving small holes for the eggs in the center.

12) Crack eggs onto the pizza being careful not to bust the yolks.

13) Bake pizza for 12-14 minutes in a preheated 500 degree oven on a pizza stone.

14) Remove and let cool for a minute before slicing and serving.

The Dough

I’m not going to go into detail on the dough in this post because I just used leftover dough from my grilled pizza dough. It’s a pretty standard pizza dough though, but you could use any pizza dough for this guy really.

Besides some dough, you’ll need some breakfast ingredients!

Breakfast!

I knew that I wanted to pre-cook the potatoes and bacon a bit because they won’t have time to get really crispy on the pizza.

I just roughly cubed up my potatoes to make for easy cooking. Nothing special. In hindsight, I realized that it might have been fun to shred them and do a kind of hash brown pizza thing.

Makin' hash...

I also roughly chopped up the bacon and cooked it in a large skillet for about 10 minutes over medium heat until it was just turning crispy. Then I removed all the bacon and cooked the potatoes in the same pan using the bacon grease.

Here’s all my ingredients ready to go!

All set for some pizza!

Making and Baking

I did my traditional oven cooking for this pizza which meant heating up my oven and pizza stone to 500 degrees. I let it preheat with the stone in for about 30 minutes normally to make sure it’s good and hot.

Then I rolled out my dough, put it on my pizza peel dusted with cornmeal, and added a thin layer of sauce.

Gettin' sauced!

Next, all the toppings: cheese, bacon, potatoes, and spinach.

Notice that I kind of made three little holes using the toppings. I bet you can guess what’s going in these guys.

Notice the holes...

I was worried that if I didn’t leave little spaces for my eggs, they would overflow and run all over the place which I think is right.

As is though, they kind of just nestled right into the holes perfectly.

If you want runny eggs on your pizza (good idea), then try not to break them. If you break a yolk, it’ll cook completely in the oven.

I know this because I broke one of mine!

Try not to break them...

When you’re sliding this guy into the oven, be gentle. The eggs will want to slide right off the pizza which would be very bad. I found that it helped to use a spatula in my free hand to kind of lift the pizza a bit as a slid it off the peel. If you’re careful you should be able to get it safely on the hot pizza stone with minimal issues.

Bake it at 500 degrees for 12-14 minutes. The eggs will take the most time to cook. They should be set, but still runny in the center.

Then pull it out and let it sit for a minute before slicing and serving!

Pretty!

Here’s the thing about this pizza: It’s delicious. But it doesn’t keep for anything. It’s basically awesome right when it comes out of the oven and an hour later it’s not so hot.

It doesn’t store well and doesn’t microwave or reheat well. So it breaks a lot of the normal pizza benefits in that respect. But as long as you have a few people to help you eat on it, it’s a fantastic breakfast dish!

Made from scratch. Nuff said.

I’ve made a fair amount of homemade pastas over the years. It’s actually one of my favorite thing to make in the kitchen (homemade spinach pasta for example). For some reason though, I’ve never gotten around to making lasagna from scratch which is totally silly since it’s technically the easiest pasta to make!

Before I get into the nitty-gritty on lasagna making, let’s talk about why I don’t love lasagna. While most dried pastas are pretty good, I find that dried lasagna noodles are a bit too pasta-y. If that makes sense. They tend to be really thick and you end up with these big masses of carbs.

This isn’t to say that I don’t like this kind of lasagna. It’s totally fine. But I knew before I even got started that homemade would have an edge just because I knew I could make the noodles super-thin which would lead to lots of layers.

Is it more work? Of course, but it’s a perfect dish for a Sunday dinner with the family and one that will leave plenty of leftovers for the week.

Homemade Lasagna

Yield: Makes a 10x14 lasagna pan

Prep Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Ingredients:

Homemade Pasta:
2 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
Pinch of salt

Sauce:
1 28 ounce can diced tomatoes
2 Cups strained tomatoes
1 large shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 Tablespoons butter
1/2 Cup red wine (just guess)
1 Teaspoon dried oregano
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 Teaspoon dried marjoram (optional)

Filling:
1 1/2 pounds ricotta cheese
2 bunches spinach
1 lemon, juice and zest

Other stuff:
1 pound fresh mozzarella
Salt and pepper
Fresh basil (optional)

Helpful Equipment:
Pasta roller (manual or kitchenaid attachment). Or you can do it by hand but you won't be able to get it as thin.
Lasagna Pan

Directions:

1) To make dough, mix salt and flour then make a well out of the flour on a clean counter. Add eggs to well and us a fork to lightly beat eggs. Continue doing this until the flour slowly gets incorporated with the eggs. Eventually they should come together in a dough. It's okay of the eggs break out of the well. Just do your best.

2) Knead the dough for 10 minutes until it's smooth and not sticky at all. If it's sticky at any point, knead it more flour.

3) Cover dough tightly with plastic wrap and let rest for at least an hour.

4) For sauce, add butter to a large pan over medium-low heat. Once melted add shallots, pepper flakes, and garlic. Cook until fragrant, about 3-5 minutes. Add red wine, followed by tomatoes and other spices.

5) Simmer sauce on low for 20-30 minutes until sauce is fairly thick.

6) For spinach/ricotta mixture, blanch spinach in boiling salted water for 30 seconds. Remove spinach to a few paper towels and once cool enough to handle, wring out spinach to get out as much moisture as possible.

7) Chop spinach and add to other filling ingredients in a bowl. Stir well to combine.

8) To make noodles, cut pasta dough into at least 4ths, but 6ths is good for beginners. Slowly work the dough through the pasta maker on the widest setting, kneading it and add more flour if you need to. Do this until the dough is smooth and the width of the roller.

9) Crank the dial down one number at a time until the pasta roller is at 8 or 9. 9 is very thin, but delicious.

10) Once all your noodles are done, cut them into large rectangles. Add them to salted boiling water for 30 seconds until they float. Then add them to an ice batch drizzled with a good amount of olive oil. (You'll have to do this in batches)

11) Remove the noodles from the ice batch and let them dry on a few paper towels. You can stack them up, they shouldn't really stick to each other. If they stick a bit, it isn't a big deal.

12) Make lasagna in a large deep dish, layering sauce, noodles, filling, and fresh mozzarella until you fill the dish. You should be able to get 7-10 layers out of the ingredients. Be sure to leave enough mozzarella to top the dish. It's okay to have some layers that are just sauce also.

13) Bake dish covered in foil for 30 minutes and then uncovered for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Lasagna should be bubbling and crispy golden browned on the edges.

14) Let cool for a few minutes before serving!

Making the pasta

Before anyone notices, I was making slightly more pasta than the recipe above because I wasn’t sure how many noodles I would need. I had way more than I needed though so you can just go with the recipe I posted.

Pasta always starts the same way. Mix a pinch of salt into a good amount of flour (I don’t really even measure anymore). Then make a big well in the flour and add all your eggs.

The well.

Use a fork to start mixing the flour into the eggs. One of two things will happen at this point:

A) You’ll work too quickly, break the wall of the flour and the eggs will spill out all over your counter. If this happens, don’t fret. Just do your best to mix the eggs in with the flour until it forms a sturdy enough dough so that you can knead it.

B) You’ll have way more patience than me and be able to perfectly incorporate the flour into the eggs until it forms a dough that you can then knead.

I got pretty close this time.

Careful...

But eventually my eggs escaped (sorry no photo because I was controlling escaped egg you see). But like I said, just keep mixing and eventually you’ll get a solid ball of dough.

The workout

Pasta dough is a lot stiffer than bread dough. It’s pretty hard to work with until it softens up a bit. But knead it you must. You want to knead it for probably 10 minutes until it’s smooth. If at any point the dough is sticky, knead in a bit more flour. You should have plenty all over your counter!

Eventually you’ll end up with a beautiful ball of pasta dough in the middle of a big mess of flour.

Not to hard really.

Wrap this guy in plastic wrap very tightly and let it relax at room temperature for about an hour while you work on the sauce and filling.

Get Saucy

I didn’t do anything fancy this time around with the sauce or the filling really. They are both simple, but totally delicious.

Keep it simple.

If you can’t find jarred strained tomatoes, you can use any tomato sauce. I do like the difference in texture between the crushed tomatoes and the sauce though so try to add some of both.

To start the sauce, just melt the butter in a large pot. Then add the diced shallot, garlic, and red pepper flakes.

Once this has cooked for a few minutes over low heat, add a few glugs of wine. I never measure this honestly, but I’d guess I add about 1/2 a cup.

Artsy.

Let that cook for a few seconds, then add all the tomatoes and spices. Bring the sauce to a simmer and simmer it for about 20-30 minutes to bring all the flavors together.

Then turn off the heat and let it cool a bit before making the lasagna.

The Filling

The only tricky part about this filling is preparing the spinach. You could use baby spinach I guess, but the adult spinach is usually cheaper and you can’t tell the difference in the finished version.

So if you’re using the adult stuff, clean it off well and break off the long stems. You just want the leaves. Then dunk all the spinach in boiling salted water for about 30 seconds until it just starts to wilt. Then remove it all from the water and lay it out on a few paper towels.

Let it cool for a minute or two and then press out as much water as possible. Really press it out.

You’ll be left with what looks like a small amount of spinach but once you mix it up it’ll be plenty.

Once your spinach is as dry as possible, chop it up roughly and add it to the other filling ingredients.

You can do this.

Rolling and Cooking Pasta

Your pasta dough should be nice and relaxed now. Take it out of the plastic wrap and cut it into manageable pieces. I find that sixths is perfect. You could go with fourths if you’re feeling ambitious but be ready for some really long pasta pieces.

I only used four of these.

Take one of these and work it through the pasta machine a few times. Add flour if it sticks at all. Use the machine to knead it on the widest setting. When the dough is a fairly even width, start cranking the pasta roller to thinner settings, one number at a time.

I finished my pasta on the absolute thinnest setting, 9, but you could stop at 8 if you want a slightly thicker pasta.

I could seriously see through mine it was so thin.

I could see through the stuff.

I actually thought about not cooking my pasta at all because it was so thin, but decided to do it.

I’ve tried a few different methods of cooking lasagna noodles to make sure they don’t stick, but the best method I’ve found is one I read on a 101 Cookbooks recipe.

Start with very salted water and add a few noodles (you can add more as you get the hang of it). After about 30 seconds, remove the noodles with some tongs and add them to a bowl of ice water drizzled with olive oil. This will cool them off, stopping the cooking, and the oil will make sure they don’t stick together.

Brilliant.

The noodles are surprisingly strong.

Once your noodles are cool, you can lay them out on a few paper towels and they shouldn’t really stick together. If they stick a bit, it’s fine. You should have more than enough noodles to finish the dish even if a few get sacrificed.

When all your noodles are cooked, you can finally…

Make some lasagna!

I’m not going to tell you an exact method on how to do this except that I always start with a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of my pan. Then basically just layer noodles, sauce, filling, and pieces of fresh mozzarella all the way up.

I did only one layer of mozzarella in the lasagna and saved the rest for the top.

You should be able to get a lot of layers since the noodles are so thin. I think I got about 7 or 8 layers in my version. Some I just did with sauce.

It’s a beautiful thing though when it’s finished.

Finally!

Bake this guy at 350 degrees, covered with foil, for about 30 minutes. Then uncover it and bake for another 30 minutes to get the top browned nicely.

This is well worth your time. Trust me.

The edges are heavenly.

See all those layers of crispy noodles around the edges? Those are the best part by far and really hard to get with thick noodles.

Some will think that this is too much work and obviously you can use the same filling and sauce recipes with store bought noodles if you’re short on time. The homemade pasta though is an added touch that I think kicks this standard dish up a notch.

Colorful things!

A few weeks ago Betsy and I went skiing for the last time for this season. Betsy and I usually have a pretty light lunch while we’re on the slopes. Sometimes we’ll split a sandwich or something just because I’d rather not be in a food coma while speeding (falling) down a mountain.

On this day, we split a really delicious wrap that involved wild rice, butternut squash, goat cheese, and a few other veggies. Because it was on a ski slope, it also cost like $10.

I figured I could make them at home for a very small fraction of that. I substituted beets for the butternut squash just because beets are a bit easier to find in the spring.

These are fantastic for healthy and quick lunches during the week though!

Wild Rice Wraps

Yield: 8 Wraps

Prep Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 Cup dry wild rice, cooked according to package
Chicken stock or veggie stock, for rice (probably need 3-4 cups)
Goat cheese, one ounce per wrap is good
Fresh baby spinach
2 beets, roasted and cubed
8 flour tortillas

Directions:

1) Roast beets at 350 degrees on a baking sheet for 60-75 minutes until knife tender.

2) When cool, peel beets and cube them fairly small.

3) Cook wild rice according to package.

4) When rice is cooked, stir in beets.

5) To make wraps, spread about one ounce of goat cheese on tortilla. Top with spinach and rice/beet mixture. Roll up and serve!

Roasting the beets

These wraps are easy to make, but not necessarily quick. Both of the two main ingredients (rice and beets) take a while to cook. You can obviously cook them at the same time though.

To roast the beets, just cut off the stem and bottom root section. Set them on a baking sheet and roast them at 350 degrees until they are tender. You should be able to easily push a knife into their center. It’ll probably take 60-75 minutes depending on the size of your beets.

These were mine after a good long roast.

Beets are so good.

Once they are cool enough to handle, peel the beets and cube them fairly small.

It’s kind of messy, but worth it.

Kinda messy but worth it.

The Rice.

If you’ve never worked with wild rice, it’s a different creature from the white stuff you’re used to. It has a really nutty flavor. It also takes about an hour to cook.

You should cook yours according to the package, but it’ll probably involve 3-4 cups of liquid per cup of rice, plus a pinch of salt and a drizzle of oil. I used chicken stock to cook my rice in, but you could use water or veggie stock if you wanted to make these vegetarian.

Basic stuff.

Just kind of throw all of this in a medium pot, bring it to a simmer, cover it, and let it simmer for about an hour.

Slow food.

When the rice is done, fluff it up with a fork and then stir in your cubed beets.

This would be a fantastic side dish as is. So you can use the leftovers for other meals pretty easily.

All mixed up.

Making the Wraps.

While you can use any flour tortilla for these guys, I found these fun veggie tortillas at the store. They came in different varieties (carrot, spinach, and tomato). I’m not exactly sure why the carrot version is yellow instead of orange, but whatever.

Carrot - Spinach - Tomato

For each wrap, spread about an ounce of goat cheese on the tortilla. This adds some nice richness to the wrap. Totally necessary in my opinion.

Can't go wrong with goat cheese!

Then layer on a good handful of spinach and top with about 1/2 Cup of the rice/beet mixture. Depending on the size of your tortilla, you might have to adjust. You want a stuffed wrap for sure.

Piled high!

Roll this up and you’re ready to go!

I sliced mine all in half so you could check out the cross-sections.

Rolled and sliced!

I found that a wrap is a really good healthy lunch. Two was almost too much for me. The rice is really filling actually.

I’m sure you could add other things to these wraps, but I wouldn’t get too crazy. The rice and beets are the stars of the show.

I think I made about 8 of these for the cost of one of the wraps on the slope. Go figure.

If you’re looking for a great lunch dish though, these hit the spot for me!

Grilled Grilled Cheese

Something has always burned my toast about grilled cheese sandwiches. They are never actually grilled. They should be called skillet cheeses or maybe a George Foreman Cheese if you rock that way.

In any event, I’ve never actually seen a real grilled cheese that’s actually grilled. So I decided to give it a shot.

Turns out that it’s called a grilled cheese for a reason: It should be grilled. There’s no two ways about it. If you have access to a grill, this is what you do from now on.

Grilled Grilled Cheese

Yield: 2 sandwiches

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

4 pieces thick, sturdy sandwich bread
4 ounces Pepper Jack cheese, or your favorite
Baby spinach, chopped
3-4 ounces bacon, chopped
3-4 Tablespoons butter, softened

Helpful Equipment:
A Grill!

Directions:

1) Roughly chop bacon and spinach and slice or grate your cheese.

2) Butter one side of all 4 pieces of bread.

3) Build the sandwiches before putting them on the grill. Bread, Cheese, bacon, spinach, more cheese, bread.

4) Prep your grill by setting up a very hot zone and a low heat zone.

5) Add sandwiches to high heat zone. Cook for 90 seconds, turn it 90 degrees, cook for another 90 seconds. Flip it.

6) Cook for another 90 seconds, turn it 90 degrees, then another 90 seconds.

7) Move sandwich to your low heat zone for 5-7 minutes and cover the grill. The cheese should melt nicely.

8) Eat immediately!

Prepping the Sandwich

I didn’t include this sandwich in my Grilled Cheese Trials series because the fillings I used were pretty basic, although delicious. My goal was to master the grilled method and worry about fillings later.

That said, I made sure to pick out some stuff that I knew would be tasty together: spinach, pepper jack cheese, and bacon. Get creative with fillings though. Don’t feel limited to these.

Basics for a good sandwich.

One thing you want to make sure you do when prepping your sandwich for the grill is butter it well.

You want a good even layer of butter on each slice of bread. This will make sure the bread doesn’t stick to the grill and also because butter is good.

I used maybe a tablespoon to 1 1/2 Tablespoons for my bread.

Gotta use tha butta.

Make your sandwich on a plate or something. You don’t want to be building it on a hot grill. You’ll just lose a lot of filling ingredients that way.

I stacked my sandwich with cheese, then bacon, spinach, and more cheese. It’s a good idea to roughly chop the spinach and bacon just so it’s easier to eat later on.

Go big!

Prepping the grill

The problem that you have with a grill is that it can get really hot and burn your bread before you even notice it. But we’re going to use that heat to our advantage also.

Prep your grill by making a really hot zone and then a low heat zone. Since I have a gas grill, I turned my front burner on high and left the back two burners off which gave me a great heat zones for this.

When you’re ready to grill, start the sandwich on the very hot zone. Make sure you preheat the grill for 5-10 minutes. You want the thing blazing.

90 seconds, turn 90 degrees, 90 seconds.

Here’s the time breakdown to get a good sandwich. Assuming you have a hot grill, start it for 90 seconds. Then turn it 90 degrees to get crisscross marks, then grill for another 90 seconds.

Now you need to flip the thing. This will be a tricky flip because most likely the cheese won’t be melted yet to hold the sandwich together. Feel free to use a hand to stabilize the sandwich as you flip it.

You should see some very pretty grill marks.

EXPERT.

Grill the sandwich for another 90 seconds, turn it 90 degrees, then a final 90 seconds.

Then move the sandwich to your low heat zone. The key now is to melt the cheese completely without toasting the bread anymore which is already nice and toasty.

Once you have the sandwich over low heat, cover it for about 5 minutes. That should do the trick in the melting department.

Come on... so good.

I like to slice mine in half for easier handling.

This was kind of a messy sandwich, but man was it good.

You want this.

So this makes an awesome sandwich, but that’s not even the best benefit of cooking grilled cheeses on the grill. I think the best reason to do it is if you’re cooking for a crowd! You could bust out 8 of these at once when if you were using a skillet, you’d have to make them individually.

So don’t fear the grill. It makes some darn good cheesy sandwiches.

Gimme the blues anytime!

Last week’s poll was a list of pizzas from a local pizza joint here in town. They make really unique and delicious pies so I thought I’d try my hand at recreating one of them.

Let me start this post by saying that I’ve never actually had their version of the winning pizza, The Delta Blues, but I figured I’d try my hand at it anyway. It’s described as a red sauce pizza with mushrooms, bacon, blue cheese, and spinach.

I figured I could handle that. This turned out to be a very flavorful pizza. My favorite part of it was actually the spinach, but we’ll get there.

Delta Blues Pizza

Yield: 2 pizzas

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour + time for dough

Ingredients:

1 recipe of pizza dough, below (makes two pizzas)
1 Cup pizza sauce, below
16 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
4 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
8 ounces bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 pound mushrooms, sliced and sauteed
4 Cups baby spinach, chopped
Salt and pepper

Basic red sauce:
1 Cup tomato sauce or strained tomatoes
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 Teaspoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 Teaspoon onion powder
Pinch of salt and pepper

New York Style Pizza Dough (From American Pie)
Makes 2 large pizzas.
5 Cups (22.5 ounces) bread flour
1 1/2 Tablespoons honey or sugar
3 Teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 Teaspoons instant yeast
3 Tablespoons olive oil (plus more for the dough later)
1 3/4 Cups room temperature water

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza stone
Pizza peel

Directions:

TO make the dough...

1) Add all the ingredients to a large bowl and stir together with a large spoon until the dough comes together.

2) Dip one hand in a bowl of warm water and vigorously knead the dough in the bowl, constantly turning the bowl, until the dough comes together and starts to firm up, about 4 minutes.

3) Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

4) Continue to work it for another 2-3 minutes until the dough is soft and smooth and very elastic.

5) Cut the dough in half, roll each half into a ball, and add each ball to a plastic bag coated lightly with olive oil.

6) Let dough sit at room temp for 15 minutes and then store in the fridge overnight.

7) Remove the dough from the fridge 2 hours before making pizza.

Making the pizza...

1) Combine all sauce ingredients in a bowl. Feel free to add other ingredients to your liking.

2) Cook bacon in strips in a large skillet, until they are browned, but not quite crispy. Remember that the bacon will cook in the oven as well.

3) Pour out the bacon grease but leave a tablespoon or two. Add your sliced mushrooms and cook for a few minutes over medium-high heat until the mushrooms release their liquid and turn soft and browned.

4) De-gas dough, roll it into a 14 inch round, and add it to a prepared pizza peel. Dust the peel with a bit of flour or cornmeal so the dough slides off easily.

5) Add a light layer of sauce to pizza followed by mozzarella cheese, bacon, mushrooms, blue cheese, and a pinch of fresh ground pepper.

6) Slide the pizza into a very hot, pre-heated 500 degree oven for 14-15 minutes.

7) When the pizza comes out of the oven, add chopped spinach to the top.

8) Let cool for a minute or two and then slice and eat!

Adapted from a Pablo's pizza.

Making the Dough

You could use store bought pizza dough for this, but for my money nothing beats homemade crust. Once you get the hang of it, it really only takes about 10-15 minutes to whip up. Of course, for a really good dough, you do need to let it sit overnight, so there’s some planning involved.

Sometimes I use my stand mixer for this, but on this day I did it by hand.

Get it?

Start by adding all the dough ingredients to a large bowl. Mix them together with a large spoon until they come together (top left). Then dip your hand in a bowl of warm water and knead the dough vigorously. After a few minutes the dough will start to firm up (top right). At that point, let it rest for 5 minutes which will let the dough relax.

Continue to knead it in the bowl with your hand. After another few minutes you should end up with a really soft dough that’s very elastic and stretchy (bottom left). Cut this dough into two even halves and stick them in some large plastic bags with a good drizzle of olive oil (bottom right). Let these sit at room temperature for 15 minutes and then store them in the fridge overnight.

Yes. That’s right. Overnight. That requires you to do some planning, but trust me. It’s worth it.

Making the sauce

I kind of mess around with red sauce and the above recipe is my most current version. Seriously though, I recommend that you just add a cup or two of tomato sauce to a bowl and stir in dried spices until it tastes good! If it tastes good straight, it’ll taste good on a pizza!

Saucy!

The Toppings

There are only three toppings for this pizza: bacon, mushrooms, and spinach. The bacon and mushrooms need to be cooked before going on the pie. Some people don’t cook the mushrooms before adding them to pizza, but I’ve found that this makes the pizza kind of watery because the mushrooms release a lot of liquid as they cook.

If you saute them for a few minutes though, they release most of their liquid and you don’t have that issue.

I cooked my bacon in strips in a large skillet until it was not quite crispy, but definitely browned. Remember that it’s going to cook further in the oven.

Then I used a few tablespoons of the bacon grease to saute my sliced mushrooms for about 5 minutes until they are soft and lightly seared.

The cooked stuff.

You’ll obviously need some cheese also. For this pizza, mozzarella and blue cheese are what you need! Shred the mozzarella and crumble the blue cheese if it isn’t crumbled already.

Cheesy!

Making the pizza

A few tips for making the pizza to really make it exceptional.

The first thing, and most important, is to make sure you get your oven as hot as possible. Hopefully you have a pizza stone you can preheat in the oven, but heat it up to 500 degrees and let it get hot for 20 minutes or so.

Second, be sure to take your dough out of the fridge about 2 hours before you want to make the pizza. Letting it come up to room temperature will make it easier to stretch and shape.

Third, when you’re shaping your pizza, feel free to use a roller to get it in a rough circle, but the dough should be very strong and you should be able to pick it up and fling it around without worry.

Once it’s the right size (probably 14 inches across), lay it on a pizza peel or a baking sheet that’s been coasted lightly with cornmeal or flour.

Fourth, go light on the sauce. A light coating of sauce is all you need.

This is my pie, shaped and ready to go!

Shaped and sauced.

Then I added on some mozzarella, my bacon and mushrooms, the blue cheese, and some extra mozzarella on top. I also added on a good pinch of fresh black pepper.

High and deep!

Slide this beauty onto your very hot baking stone and cook it for about 14 minutes. The crust should be a nice golden brown and the cheese nice and bubbly.

This is about as perfect as it gets.

14 minutes later...

What about the spinach?!

Don’t worry. I didn’t forget the spinach. The key to adding greens like spinach to a pizza is to add them right when the pie comes out of the oven. If you actually cook the pizza for 14 minutes with spinach on top, they’ll just shrivel up and burn.

But if you chop it up roughly, and add it to the pizza right when it comes out of the oven, the heat from the pizza will wilt it slightly, but it’ll still be a tiny bit crunchy.

Chop the spinach first!

You’ll want to let this cool for a minute or two, but then you should slice it up and eat it as soon as possible!

A slice of the blues.

I used a bit of a thicker crust for this pizza than I have with some other pizzas I’ve made because the toppings on this guy were pretty heavy. It turned out to be the perfect combination though. I really liked this pizza!

Homemade pizza is one of those things where the little details make all the difference. Homemade dough, a hot oven, and fresh ingredients can really make something special.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a FAN of The Delta Blues!

This worked just fine.

One of the best winter dishes I can think of is a really good chicken pot pie. The buttery crust paired with the thick chicken broth and veggies is guaranteed to warm the soul.

But there’s a few problems with traditional chicken pot pie. Most importantly, it takes a while to make! Making the crust, rolling it out, fitting the little bowls, making the filling, baking. Definitely block off 2-3 hours if you want to make it right.

Second, and less importantly to me, is traditional chicken pot pie isn’t the healthiest thing on the block. It usually has a lot of butter and cream in it which is delicious, but maybe also diet-busting.

Enter the chicken skillet pie, which won last week’s poll! This guy has all the flavors of chicken pot pie, less fat, and shaves an hour or two off your prep time. It’s pretty much a win-win and the flavors are all still very solid.

Chicken Skillet Pie

Yield: Serves 6.

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

Biscuits:
1 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 Teaspoons baking powder
1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 Teaspoon kosher salt
2/3 Cup buttermilk
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (only butter in the recipe)

Filling:
6 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 pounds chicken, trimmed of fat. You could use breasts or thighs
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, minced
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch pieces
2 red peppers, seeded and roughly chopped
1 rib celery, cut into 1/4 inch slices
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 Cups chicken broth
2 bay leaves
4 ounces spinach, chopped roughly
1/2 Cup frozen peas
1/4 Cup half-and-half or cream
2 Tablespoons fresh parsley (optional)
2 Teaspoons fresh thyme (optional)
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) For the biscuits, combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Stir in wet ingredients until combined. Spoon mixture onto parchment lined baking sheet into 6 equal biscuits.

2) Bake biscuits at 425 degrees until they are set and lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

3) Cool on a wire rack until needed.

4) To start the filling, add the flour to a dry pan and cook until lightly browned over medium heat, probably 6 minutes. Let flour cool.

5) Whisk chicken stock into cooled, cooked flour to create a slurry.

6) Add oil to an oven safe large skillet or dutch oven. Dry off chicken with a paper towel and season well with salt and pepper. Add chicken to hot oil and cook over medium-high heat until chicken is browned on both sides, about 4 minutes. Remove chicken from pan.

7) Add chopped celery, peppers, onions, and carrots to skillet and cook until they start to get soft, about 8 minutes. Stir frequently and use the veggies to scrape up some of the stuff stuck to the pan.

8) Add thyme (opt.) and garlic to pan and cook for another 30 seconds.

9) Add slurry and bay leaves to pan and stir to combine. Then set chicken pieces back in the pan. Cover and cook for 12-15 minutes until chicken is done. Remove chicken and shred it when you can handle it.

10) Let sauce and veggies simmer, uncovered, stirring frequently, over medium-low heat until sauce thickens, another 6-7 minutes probably.

11) Once sauce is thick, stir in spinach and cook until wilted.

12) Stir in shredded chicken, peas, and half-and-half. Once well combined, set biscuits on top of filling around the edges of the pan.

13) Bake at 425 until filling is bubbling and biscuits are nicely browned, probably another 10 minutes.

14) Serve it up!

Adapted from a Cook's Illustrated recipe.

Looks like a lot of ingredients, but most of them are veggies and they’re good for you!

Let’s start with the biscuits though as they really made the meal in my opinion.

Making the Biscuits

Even if you’re trying to be super-healthy, you need some butter in biscuits. There’s no two ways about it. Some biscuits have a Tablespoon per biscuit (so 6 in this recipe), but this original recipe brought it down to 3 and I upped it to 4.

I thought mine were perfectly buttery. Besides butter, buttermilk also makes biscuits really good. You can substitute whole milk in a pinch, but buttermilk does make a really noticeable difference.

The basics of biscuits.

To make these guys, just combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and then whisk in your wet ingredients (buttermilk and melted butter). Stir to combine and then drop batter into 6 even-sized biscuits on a baking sheet with parchment paper.

The batter should be really thick and hold its shape.

Dropped.

Bake these at 425 degrees until the biscuits set and are just turning a light brown, probably about 10 minutes. Then let them cool off on a rack if you have one. They won’t be cooked completely and that’s good.

We'll finish these guys later.

Making the filling

Normally, to make the thick sauce for a pot pie, you make a roux, which is butter and flour cooked together. It thickens liquids really well.

This recipe though involved a new technique that I was completely skeptical about, but it definitely worked. Instead of a roux, you just omit the butter and cook the flour and then mix it with the stock.

So start by adding your dry flour to a skillet over medium heat and cook it, stirring frequently, until the flour is a light brown color. It’ll take maybe 5 minutes, but keep a close eye on it.

Just flour...

Then let this flour cool for a few minutes and once it’s cold, whisk in your chicken stock. This creates a slurry which will thicken almost as well as a roux. It took me a bit longer to thicken the sauce, but the end result was about the same.

Gettin' all slurry.

To start the stuff in the filling, dry off your chicken with a paper towel and season them all liberally with salt and pepper.

Just salt and pepper.

Add your vegetable oil to a large OVEN SAFE skillet (I recommend one with high sides). If you don’t have an oven safe skillet, you could use a dutch oven for this actually.

Anyway, add oil to your pan over medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the chicken and brown on each side for about 4 minutes. The chicken won’t be cooked all the way through at this point, but that’s okay. Remove it from the pan when it’s well-browned.

Next, add the chopped carrots, celery, red pepper, and onion to the same pan. As the veggies cook, they’ll pick up any bits and pieces that are stuck to the pan.

Cook these until the veggies are starting to get soft, about 8 minutes.

This will start smelling good.

Then add the garlic and thyme if you’re using it (I didn’t) and cook for another 30 seconds or so.

For the next step, add all the slurry to the pan and stick the chicken pieces back in. Stir this all together, add the bay leaves, cover it, and cook this for about 12 minutes on medium until the chicken is done.

Add the slurry.

When the chicken is done, remove it from the pan and set it aside to cool for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, let the sauce and veggies simmer uncovered for a few minutes so the sauce can thicken nicely.

When the chicken is cool enough to touch, shred it with a few forks or just roughly chop it up.

When the sauce is pretty thick (this will take maybe 5 minutes), then stir in the spinach and stir it until the spinach is wilted which will take probably 30 seconds.

As a last step, stir in the shredded chicken, half-and-half, and the frozen peas. Now would also be the time to taste for salt and pepper. It’ll probably need a pinch of both but if you use certain chicken broths they contain a lot of salt so you might not need any.

Just taste it and adjust to your liking.

All together now!

Once your filling is stirred together, add the biscuits around the outside. The filling should be thick enough so the biscuits don’t really sink into the mix.

Such a good idea.

Return this pan to the oven and cook it until the filling is bubbling and the biscuits are nice and browned, probably another 10 minutes.

Then serve it up! Obviously each serving should come with its own biscuit.

Piled high and deep.

I was pretty shocked at how flavorful and rich this was considering there’s no butter in it. Sure, the little bit of cream or half-and-half helps, but for a dish with mostly vegetables and lean meat, it tasted really rich.

For me though, the dish is all about the biscuit. Mushing it up with a spoon and getting a bit of buttery biscuit and creamy broth is just amazing.

This is a dish that you can easily do on a week night (it took me about an hour) and I think you’ll really like the results.