Chicken and Kale Hand Pies with Cheddar Crust

Wow. I didn't mean to be away from here for so long. I've been busy proofing books about existentialism (who am I? what is my purpose? If a cook swears in the kitchen and no one is there to hear it...), and while I know this sounds lame, still recovering from Christmas. From Dec. 16 until now we have passed sickness around in this house and, well, that REALLY threw things off schedule. There were a couple of attempted recipes, that while they weren't flops, they were just so much trouble that I'm not making 'em again and I would feel guilty sending you into the kitchen only to come out two hours later with six mini-potpies and a sink full of dirty dishes. I have your best interests at heart.

These hand pies are a different story though. They require a little effort but are terribly delicious. Flaky and savory. Easily made in advance and then popped in the oven while you read Go, Dog, Go for the 65th time today.

I made these more kid-friendly by saving out some of the plain cooked chicken and baking the leftover pastry scraps and there were no complaints. The recipe offers to let you cheat and use store crust and just add a little cheddar to the filling, but I really encourage you to make the crust in the recipe. It really put this dish over the top.

As always, we are adaptable around here and since I didn't have leeks I substituted shallots and I used curly kale instead of the black kale. I thought about making them even smaller, more appetizer size, but then I felt like they were rich and hearty and the bigger size suited them.



I love this funky blue plate that belonged to my husband's grandmother.

Chicken and Kale Hand Pies with Cheddar Crust

barely adapted from Everyday Food

 

Flaky Pie Dough, recipe doubled with one cup shredded cheddar added in with the flour

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 leek (white and light-green parts only), halved lengthwise, cut crosswise 1/4 inch thick, and rinsed well; OR 1/4 cup finely chopped shallot

1 small bunch black (Tuscan) kale, tough stems removed, coarsely chopped (I used 2 cups coarse chopped curly kale)

1 teaspoon fresh thyme, leaves or a pinch of dried thyme

Coarse salt and ground pepper

1 cup low-sodium chicken broth

1 cup cooked chicken, torn into bite-size pieces (about 5 ounces)

1 large egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Divide dough in half. On a floured sheet of parchment paper, roll out one half to a 14-inch round. With a knife or biscuit cutter, cut out six 4 1/4-inch circles (rerolling dough once if necessary)(don't have a cutter that big? I used the lid of a Crisco can but you could use a small saucer or bowl as well) and transfer, on parchment, to a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, cutting out six (larger) 4 1/2-inch rounds. Chill rounds on sheet until ready to use.

In a large skillet, melt butter over medium-high. Add leek, or shallot and cook, stirring, until soft, 3 minutes. Add kale and thyme, season with salt and pepper, and cook until kale wilts, 3 minutes. Sprinkle flour over mixture and stir to combine. Add broth and bring to a boil. Cook, stirring often, until mixture thickens, 2 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl, season with salt and pepper, and stir in chicken. Let cool slightly.

Place a heaping 1/4 cup chicken mixture on each of the smaller dough rounds, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Brush edges with egg and top with larger dough rounds; using fingers, press edges firmly to seal. Cut a small vent in each pie. Bake until browned and crisp, 30 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through. Let cool slightly on sheets on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

You could easily make these in advance and keep them, covered, in the fridge. I would add a couple of minutes of cook time if you do. You could also freeze these unbaked and then bake from frozen adding about 10 minutes to the cooking time; or, freeze these already baked and just warm through. 

Zuppa Toscana

I know that this is the time of year when the gym parking lot is full and not a drop of fat or refined sugar touches the lips, so you probably don't want to hear about a soup that contains sausage, bacon, and cream :0) but  this soup was eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-my-head delicious!

I made half the recipe which would easily serve 6 people and I used leftover collard greens instead of kale, which I chopped up very finely so as to not to alarm the little people that there were greens in their soup.

Zuppa Toscana

from JaneDeere

2 pounds Italian sausage, removed from casings

2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes, to taste

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup chopped onion

4 slices bacon, diced

4 large russet potatoes, washed, quartered & sliced thin

10 cups chicken broth

1 cup heavy cream

4 cups Kale, washed & chopped

S&P, to taste

1 loaf sourdough French bread, for serving

1/2 cup fresh Parmesan cheese, for serving

In a large soup pot, brown Italian sausage. Drain fat and add onion and red pepper flakes and continue to sauté until onion is translucent, but not browned.

In a small skillet, fry bacon until crisp, then stir in garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds. Remove from heat immediately. Add bacon mixture to sausage mixture, then add the chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a medium simmer.

Add potatoes and cook until tender (about 20 minutes).

Stir in cream and continue to simmer (do not boil) for an additional 10 minutes. Stir in kale and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with French bread and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Blackeyed Pea Soup with Sausage

New Year's Day, more than any other holiday, carries a lot of superstitions with it. Taking your Christmas decorations down by January 6. Having a clean house before New Year's Day. Doing all your laundry. Making loud noises at midnight to scare off evil spirits trying to weasel their way into the new year. It goes on and on. Even the name "January" has a mythical meaning. Janus was the Roman god of transitions with two faces, one looking forward to the future and one looking back to the past. Fitting for the month of January, right?

I do not consider myself an overly superstitious person. You are not going to find me skipping cracks (love you, mom!) or changing my course to avoid a black cat (here kitty, kitty). In the South, however, it is an absolute given that you should eat black-eyed peas and some kind of greens (collards, cabbage, mustard, or kale) on New Year's Day for luck and prosperity and I do not skip it! We have eaten 'em even if it is just a nibble of  a leaf and a bite of peas from a can! I'm not sure about the origins of this superstition and I feel like Shirley McClaine in Steel Magnolias when she was asked why she grew tomatoes if she hated eating them, "I am an old Southern woman. It is my obligation to wear funny hats and grow tomatoes." I do know that with the world becoming more and more homegenized every day I do like participating in something that is regional and unique to the area I live in.

I am a lazy, lazy woman between Christmas and New Year's. I like to play with my new toys and just not do much, which is why I am often eating a spoonful peas straight from the can on New Year's Day. This year I managed to get organized enough to find this recipe. Wham! Bam! all my prosperity and good luck in one dish!

Blackeyed Pea Soup with Sausage

adapted from janedeereblog

I used a 12 ounce bag of fresh black-eyed peas for this thinking that an hour would be enough to cook them, but I think they should have cooked the whole 2-3 hours to be softer. I also love slow-stewed collards so I added them after the first hour of cooking. There are instructions on the janedeere blog to make this in the slow cooker.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic

1 cup diced celery

1 (12 ounce) package fully cooked Andouille or smoked sausage links, chopped

10 cups chicken stock

1 (16 ounce) bag dried blackeyed peas, picked through, rinsed and drained

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 tsp. dried Italian seasoning

Optional: 4 cups collard, mustard or kale greens, cleaned and coarsely chopped

In a dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Cook onions and celery until softened. Add sausage and sauté until heated through. Stir in garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds to 1 minute – do not brown. Add chicken stock and black-eyed peas to the pot. Bring to a boil; cover and reduce heat to simmer. Allow to cook on low until peas are cooked, about 2 to 3 hours, adding the collard greens after the first hour. Add vinegar, red pepper flakes, thyme and salt and pepper to taste.

Cheese Ball

Can you tell what this is?

It's a snowman cheese ball of course!

I know, I know. What good is a snowman cheese ball recipe 3 days after Christmas?! But I know that some of you Pinners out there will save this for next year; or, if you're like me and you like to celebrate all 12 Days of Christmas, there is still room on your New Year's Eve table for this guy. And, heck, snowmen aren't just for Christmas! I think this definitely falls under the category of winter ;)

The idea came from here (Martha, you are truly a god!) and here is my favorite cheese ball recipe, but you could certainly use any white-ish colored cheese ball recipe that you like.

Merry Christmas

There comes a time when just plain 'ole no more can be done. The presents go under the tree, perfectly wrapped or not. The food is made and served, perfect or not. The house is as clean as it's gonna get and all those millions of little extras that you intended on making happen just vanish into thin air. I find a peace in that.

There were a million and one recipes I wanted to blog about, but I'm just going to leave you with a glimpse of what's been going on in our kitchen. And I know that when Christmas has come and gone, I won't remember a single one of those things I was going to do, only the people I spent it with :)

Merry Christmas, friends

 Pecan and Brown Sugar Crescents 

 Candy Cane Cookies

Gingerbread

 Paula Deen's Praline French Toast

Snow Globe Cake Pops

This post is all about keeping it real. I know these probably appear to be all fine and well but were you to inspect them closer you would see glaring flaws, craftily covered with mass amounts of sprinkles.

You may be familiar with the very talented, Bakerella, and the cake pop craze she started. When I saw these snowglobe cake pops on her site in July made by one of her Pop Stars, I knew I had, had, had to make them this Christmas.

Let's just say, the cake pop mojo was not with me this time.

 

Many of them fell off the stick and the coating was hard to work with and well, I could go on and on about the negatives but I'm going to narrow it down to the possibilities of what might have happened this time:

1. I used Candy Melts, not White Bark like I did the first time, and the Candy Melts were much thicker, thereby pulling the cake ball off the stick.

2. The addition of the gumdrop to the stick did not allow for enough stick to be poked into the cake ball. Also, note to self, the gumdrops need to be a lot bigger to make the snowglobe effect.

3. I used a cake mix this time but not the exact cake mix I used last time (but same flavor) and cream cheese frosting this time instead of vanilla. The cake balls seemed softer and held their shape less. I think I used Duncan Hines Butter recipe last time.

So, you win some, you lose some. I'm pretty sure the kiddos will enjoy these at Friday's party anyway :)

(and thank you to my lovely aunt, Bernice, for sticking out the whole thing and masterfully camouflaging the pops while listening to me cuss like a sailor chatter on about things)

Book Club

I love book club. I never miss it, even if I haven't read the book. I love the company of the women in my group and well, I'm never going to pass up the opportunity for adult conversation! We take turns picking the book and hosting the discussion. This month was my turn and I picked, If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon: Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married, which I can't imagine any woman not enjoying if she has a husband. or has ever lived with a man. or talked to a man. or stood in line next to a man.

For me, planning the food is almost as important as reading the book, so without further ado, here are the yummy things we chowed down on ate delicately with pinkies up while we discussed literahture.

Hazelnut-Butter Cookies with Mini-Chocolate Chips

Bon Appetit, December 2003

I thought these were delicious! They tasted just like the Ferrero-Rocher Hazelnut chocolates. I found the hazelnut butter at Natural Grocers and it was so separated that I had to whir it up in the food processor to get it back together again. Many of the reviews for this recipe cited problems with crumbliness that I didn't experience, I did increase the cooking time to 14-15 minutes but that may just be my oven so start at 12 minutes and go from there.

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup creamy unsalted hazelnut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 12-ounce package semisweet mini chocolate chips (2 cups)

Sift first 4 ingredients into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter, hazelnut butter, and both sugars in large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Beat in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Keep refrigerated. Soften dough slightly at room temperature before shaping.)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Using 1 level tablespoon for each cookie, roll dough between palms of hands into 1-inch balls. Arrange 1 inch apart on prepared sheets. Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies are golden brown, about 12 minutes. Let cool on sheets on racks 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks and cool. (Can be made 5 days ahead. Store airtight between sheets of waxed paper at room temperature.)

Little Gingerbread Scones with Lemon Glaze

adapted from Christmas with Southern Living 2011

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1 Tbls. baking powder

2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbls. crystallized ginger, finely chopped

1/2 cup cold butter, cut into pieces

3/4 cup plus 2 Tbls. whipping cream, divided

3 Tbls. molasses

1 Tbls. vanilla

Preheat oven to 425'. Combine first 6 ingredients in a large bowl; stir in crystallized ginger. Cut butter into flour mixture with a pastry blender until crumbly. Combine 3/4 cup plus 1Tbls. whipping cream, vanilla, and molasses. Add to dry ingredients, stirring with a fork just until dry ingredients are moistened. Knead dough in bowl 4-5 times just until it holds together.

Dump out onto a lightly floured surface, divide dough into 4 equal parts. Lightly pat each piece into a round about 1/2" thick. Cut each round into fourths and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush tops of scones with remaining tablespoon of whipping cream.

Bake for 16 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool slightly, then glaze (if you put the glaze on while the scones are too hot, it will just slide off).

These scones could easily be frozen, unglazed, in a plastic freezer bag up to 3 months. Bring to room temperature in bag, then warm slightly in the oven and proceed with the glaze.

Lemon Glaze

1 Tbls. butter, melted
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 Tbls. lemon juice

Whisk everything together in a mixing bowl, adding more lemon juice if not thin enough. This should be the consistency of a cinnamon roll icing.

Gouda in Puff Pastry

This was not really a "recipe", so please visit Baked Bree to see how she made this. It was ridiculously easy with a big wow factor. I used Beemster Classic Aged Gouda which I was able to find at my regular grocery store in the specialty cheeses. I probably used a generous 1/2 pound of cheese.

Ham-Wrapped Olive Shrimp

adapted from Christmas with Southern Living 2011

I think this was the hit of the night! They were gone so quick I didn't even get a picture (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

1 pound large shrimp (about 30), peeled and deveined

1/4 cup olive oil

1 1/2 tsp. lemon zest

3 Tbls. fresh lemon juice

3/4 tsp. dried crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp. salt

10 thin slices deli ham

30 pimento-stuffed olives

Stir together oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, red pepper, and salt in a large bowl. Add shrimp, toss to coat. Chill in fridge 30 minutes.

Preheat broiler 5 1/2 inches from heat. Cut each ham slice into thirds. Wrap each strip of ham around 1 shrimp and 1 olive; secure with a wooden toothpick. Place shrimp on lightly greased baking sheet and broil about 3 minutes per side. Serve hot.