What to do on a Friday?

This is a first for Mormon Cook. I am writing this post on my phone via email. Tonight was one of those nights where we didn't desire to make what we had planned and we are cutting back on eating out. So Mrs. MC brought some supplies to my mom's house (we also wanted to be out of the house) and said make something. So here is the invention. I call it Butter Braised Herb Chicken. (This was taking way to long on the phone, I switched).

So here is how it went down. I started by frying some whole fresh herbs in the pan with some olive oil. I used a couple sprigs of Rosemary, Thyme and Sage. Fry these for a few minutes and then pull out. Add to the pan two cloves of garlic chopped. Fry this for just a little bit. Don't let it brown or it will get bitter.

Next put the chicken in the pan. I used three skinless breasts. You could use almost any chicken but this worked well. Cook the chicken until browned on all sides. Then add back the herbs on the top of the chicken. Add a few tablespoons of butter and cook 2-3 more minutes until butter is melted and foamy. Next add enough chicken broth to cover the chicken half way. Cover and cook until the chicken is done.

Remove the chicken and the most of the herbs, let a few leaves and such stay behind. Add about a cup of milk and return to boil. Make a thickener by mixing milk and flour and add thickener like you would for gravy until the sauce hits the thickness you want. Now return the chicken to the pan and cover with the sauce. Thats it. It was yummy.

On the side we had Broccoli done a la melting pot. We have decided after eating it as Melting Pot in their broth fondue that we like broccoli this way. So in order to do it I put three cups of chicken broth in a pot added bunch of chopped cilantro and three limes cut in half, squeezed into the pot and then added peel and all into the pot. Boil this for about 5-10 minutes and then strain all the stuff out and boil your broccoli in it. Its amazing.

Pleasant Pheasant

So this one time I went hunting and shot some pheasants and quail. Having done this often while growing up I was excited to show my new wife how to dress these birds. I have a picture somewhere of them laying on newspaper in the front room of our apartment. Needless to say Mrs. Mc was not all that impressed with the procedure. She didn't really want to eat any of them after seeing me skin and gut them. One would think this would put Mrs. Mc off game birds entirely for the rest of her life, but being the creative genius I am I have figured out a way to make Pheasant pleasant to her palate.

You will need some pheasant, diced up into about 1/2" cubes or smaller, a sheet of puff pastry and some carrots, onions, celery, cooked rice, diced apple and spices. The process is quite simple. Make a mirepoix with the carrots, onions and celery and sweat until the onions are clear and translucent. Then add the apple and cook for a few minutes. Add in the pheasant and cook until the pheasant is done, usually only takes a few minutes, its rather lean and the pieces are small.

Once you are happy with the doneness of the bird I add the spices. I use cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, pepper, salt, garlic powder in varying combinations until it tastes good. It should be sweet but also savory. Think pumpkin pie and all the good fall crunchy leaves under foot flavors you can imagine and you will get the idea. Finally toss in the rice and mix it all together. This is the filler. It can be eaten alone but adding it to the pastry makes it even better.

Next put your sheet of puff pasty on a baking sheet and cut it in half width wise. This should give you pieces like the ones in the photo. Then you simply fill your pieces and carefully roll them up with the seem at the bottom. Bake these on about 400 until they puff. Cut them up and eat them. It makes a very nice dish and it looks pretty too.

Repentance and Catch Up

So its been a while since there has been a post and Mrs. MC has been begging me to begin again. I looked over the pictures and realized that I don't even remember how I cooked some of this stuff so I decided that as a means of cleansing the past and starting fresh a new I will simply post pictures of what we have cooked with some descriptions and then moving forward, especially now that I should be working from home more and thus cooking more, I will be more diligent in posting.

These photos are from a Vindaloo we made from one of Madhur Jaffery's recipies. If you like Indian food and really want to learn how to cook it, do yourself a favor and buy her Indian Cooking book. This book is amazing. We have yet to find something that wasn't good in here. Everything is well worth the effort. As with any Indian from scratch recipe I recommend reading it and prepping all the spices first so you can work fast. Anyway, this was a lovely Vindaloo. A little hot but next time we will make it hotter.

Next on the catch up docket, Cathedral Windows. These are a tradition from Mrs. Mc's family and we make them every year just like they did. We however are chocolate snobs and instead of using Chocolate chips or Hershey's nasty chocolate we use Cadbury's Dairy Milk, except now that Kraft has bought out Dairy Milk we are apprehensive about its future quality. Anyway this is the only good use I can think of for those weird fruit flavored colored marshmallows.

I made my own fish and chip batter! I used Flour, Sparkling water, baking powder and some spices I think. It was way simple and the batter turned out great. The pictures make we want to make this again. This time I will note the recipe and post it.

Next up Stuffed Mushrooms. This recipe I can tell you. Its something I have done a few times before. I take the Cremini mushrooms and remove the stems and leave the cap with the little depression where the stem was. Then I chop up the stems, some red bell peppers and some garlic. I fry up a wee bit of sausage, preferably hot italian and once the sausage is cooked I throw the cut up stems and red peppers into the mix and saute them. Once that is all cooked I let it cool for a minute and add some parmesan cheese and panko bread crumbs to the mix. Then I stuff the mix on the mushrooms, splash some olive oil on the bottom of a baking dish and sprinkle some salt on that. Place the mushrooms in the pan with the stuffing facing up, then bake at like 350 until the crumbs brown. I have added extra crumbs to the top before as well. Its yummy.

Finally we made these awesome Chocolate cookies. I raided all the chocolate we had in the house as it called for copious amounts of the brown gold as attested by the piles on the scale. These combined into an amazing cookie. Again next time I make them the recipe will be here.

So that is my catch up post. I am sorry there are no recipes but hey sometimes you have to make a cut and start over. That is what I am doing. If you want any recipes to these things post a comment and I will dig through my memory or files and find one.