Quick Chicken Sweet Potato Stew or Sweet Potato Dumpling = Fail

1.5 lbs cooked chicken, cut into pieces
1 cup carrot chunks
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 cup diced onion
3 cups chicken broth or stock
1 baked sweet potato
1 tsp fresh basil
1 tsp tarragon
1/2 tsp sage
1 bay leaf
3-4 tbls flour
salt and pepper

Brown the onion in some oil over medium heat in a large pot. Add the carrots and saute until slightly brown. Add garlic and saute until flavorful. Add the chicken and saute until slightly browned. Sprinkle on the flour and cook for just another minute. Add the broth, sage, tarragon and bay leaf and bring to a simmer, cover and let cook for about a half hour so the flavors mingle. Peel and mash the sweet potato and add it to the stew, along with the basil. Let it simmer for about 10-15 more minutes and add salt and pepper to taste.

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I know what you're thinking. "Stew? In July?" Well, I don't think it's been over 80 degrees here yet this year and the sun didn't come out at all last month. So it's been fall foods for fall weather. Personally, I love it (the weather and the stew). I'm really not into sun or heat, I like cold and cloudy. I want to move to Scandinavia wicked bad, but my girlfriend isn't having any of it. Ah well. Heh.

Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly how I should post this recipe. It is a fail, but the end result was still really good. And while I do think you should try this, I don't recommend going about it the way I did, it's way more work than is needed. But what started it all? Well, I had wanted to make sweet potato dumplings.

First I needed a vehicle for them. Chicken stew seemed appropriate and fitting with the weather. I had some braised chicken that needed using, so it would be a quick stew too. So, bacon fat. Because I can. Then I browned up some onion, nice and dark. Then, since it's a quick stew and I didn't need to worry about them getting too squishy, I tossed in some carrot chunks. I wanted to get some browning on them too. Then, of course, garlic (but no picture, sorry). Then the cooked chicken. I let them sit for a bit to try to get more browning, then mixed it all up. At this point I added a bunch of flour. I like adding the flour here better than coating the meat with it because this way the meat browns instead of just the flour. You don't want to just add the broth right now though, that would make it taste like raw flour. You need to let it cook for a minute or so. Then I added the chicken broth and the dry herbs (sage, bay leaf and tarragon). Covered it and let it cook for a while. As that simmered I took a baked sweet potato, cut it in half, scooped out the goodies and mashed it all up. Added an egg and some flour and such and mixed it up (there was a recipe, but I can't find it right now). Still looked really wet. I added a little more flour and then decided to just move along. This was a mistake, I should have used more flour. Oh well, live and learn. Scooped big ol' tablespoons of "dumpling" batter into the stew, covered it and let it cook for a while. Took off the lid, made a face and covered it to see if the dumplings would set. They didn't. I pulled them out of the pot and racked my brain. I was left with a bowl full of goop and a watery chicken and carrot stew. Great. Something was going to be wasted. Well, unless... I could put some of the sweet potato goop into the thin stew. That might thicken it and give it some richness too. Hmmm, yes. Maybe a little basil to brighten it. Uhm, yeah. That'll do. In fact, it's wicked good. So, win was snatched from the jaws of fail, but next time I'm not going to bother with trying to make the dumplings. I'm just going to add the mashed sweet potato to the stew and call it done. And that's the recipe I'm going to share. Let us never speak of the dumplings again.

Only Two Words Can Describe It

Apple Upside Down Cake = Sorta Fail

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 large, crisp apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a deep 9" cake pan. In a sauce pan melt 4 tbls of butter and the brown sugar. Cook until the mixture bubbles, then take it off the heat. Add the cinnamon and a pinch of salt, then stir. Pour into the bottom of the prepared pan. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and a 1/4 tsp of salt and set aside. Cream together the remaining butter and the granulated sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing till combined. Mix in the vanilla. Add the flour in 3 parts, alternating with the buttermilk. Drop the batter by the spoonful into the prepared pan. Don't worry if it's uneven, it will work itself out. Bake until golden and the cake springs bake when lightly touched, about 35 minutes. Let the cake cool on a wire rack for about 5 minutes then flip the pan onto a plate. Let it sit for a minute then remove the pan. Serve warm or room temp.

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So this recipe is adapted from... er... well, I have to give proper credit. It's just how I roll. But I have a feeling this is going to open up a can of worms that I'm going to prefer I didn't. It's from Rachel Ray. I don't like Rachel Ray. If you do, that's fine, I'm not trying to get her taken off the air or anything. I'm just not a fan. For one, when she smiles she looks like Jack Nicholson's Joker in the first Batman movie. And I loved that movie, but I don't want the person preparing my food to remind me of a psychotic mass murderer. Call me nuts. And for the rest... well, she just bugs me. I'm sure she's a wonderful person in real life, who loves her family, is kind to animals and such, but I just don't want to watch her do stuff. She rubs me the wrong way. I'm not exactly sure why, I think it might be all the giggling. But this cake almost makes me a fan. Of her recipes, if not the rest. It's fantastic. And I didn't even do all the fancy pants crap she did with it, like use cardamom and hazelnuts. I'm sure they would have been lovely in it, but I didn't have them. And don't let my pictures turn you off either, my cake turned out fairly ugly, but it tasted wicked, wicked good. I'm going to be doing another version soon and I know what to fix. And if it turns out ugly again, I'll name it "Ugly Cake" and if people don't want to eat it, well, that's more for me. So, let's do this thing.

First off, I cut the recipe in half. I got a small bundt pan for Christmas that I've been dying to use and I thought this would be a great thing for it. Turns out it might not have been. But the final verdict won't be given till I try it again. Which will be soon, I promise. And it will have raspberries. But that's neither here nor there. So, first we make the caramel. Butter and brown sugar in a pot. Gotta love a recipe that starts off like that. Melt and mix. Add cinnamon and a pinch of salt. More stirring. Next time I make this I think I might simmer it a bit more to help the sugar dissolve. I like a smoother topping, this was a little grainy. But still delicious. Then I creamed the butter and granulated sugar. Added eggs, and mixed. And vanilla. More mixing. Now flour mixture. The recipe says alternate the flour and buttermilk, but since I cut the recipe in half I didn't bother. It worked out just fine. Now, c'mon. Even the batter looks good. Look at that! Don't you just want a spoonful? Next I poured the caramel into the bundt pan and added the sliced apples. This was why I wanted to use the bundt pan, I thought this would be a neat effect. It didn't really work out, as you saw, but I have high hopes for next time. Next time I'm not cutting the recipe in half. Anyway, I spooned the batter in. See how the apples are still kind of sticking out? That's why I want to not halve the recipe. I tossed it into the oven and pulled it out about 20 minutes later. Being in a bundt pan (and halved) cut down the cooking time. But see how the apples are still sticking out and the caramel bubbled up around the edges? That's what I'm hoping to fix. Next time. But this time, it was just flip, sit and remove the pan. Voila! Ugly cake. But looks can be deceiving and this is a case in point. Moist, rich and spectacular. This was a great tasting cake. Frankly, it didn't last the night. Good thing it was a half recipe...

Ham and Corn Quiche

filling:
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup of whipping heavy cream
1/2 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp of pepper
1/2 cup diced ham
1/4 cup corn

Whisk everything together.


for the crust

1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup olive oil or canola oil
1/4 cup ice water (I use refrigerated water)


Mix flour and salt. Beat oil and water with whisk or fork to thicken. Pour into flour and mix with fork. Press into 9" pie crust. Fill with quiche mixture and bake at 400F until done.

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Ok, this was my very first time making a quiche. And I re-learned a valuable lesson. Just because something gets good reviews on the internet doesn't mean it will be good to eat. This crust sucked. I hate to be so harsh, but it really did. It just tasted like olive oil and made the whole quiche taste funny and greasy and was wicked squishy. Not what I was looking for at all. If I had replaced the olive oil with butter and prebaked it a bit it would have had some promise, but I think next time I might just make pie crust (what I was trying to avoid, for time reasons) and have done with it. It's also possible that I did something wrong, it sure wouldn't be the first time. Heh. I got the crust recipe from Recipezaar and it's the first time I've gotten something I didn't like from there. Oh well, it's bound to happen eventually. The egg part was good, but very soft. I seem to remember quiche being a little firmer. Next time I think I will cut the cream down and add another egg. But here is what I did anyway, you know, for educational purposes.

First I made the crust. Flour, salt and I also added some mustard powder and black pepper, but you couldn't taste it at all in the final product. Then I whisked together the water and oil till it looked, oddly enough, like egg. Mixed it all together and got a chunk of dough that was pretty easy to spread out into my tart pan. I finished off shaping it with a glass. Then I grabbed the cup and a half of cream. Shuddered a bit and added the salt, pepper and eggs. Then I realized there was no way I could whisk it in the measuring cup so I poured it into a bowl and whisked it in there. Added the ham and corn, mixed it around and poured it into the shell. Baked it at 400 for half an hour or so and there it was. Looked good, although I don't know if quiche is supposed to brown so much. The crust looked good, held it's shape well and didn't stick (gasp). But it made the whole thing taste like olive oil and pretty much nothing else. So I might try it again with butter instead of olive oil if I ever need a quiche wicked quickly, but next time I think I'm just going to make a pie crust. Or use phyllo. Spryte suggested over at Bakespace using slices of muenster cheese for the bottom. That sounds good too. I'll do one of those, and before too long.