Chicken Pot Pie

I love chicken pot pie. I grew up eating frozen chicken pot pie--we only got to have it when my parents went out for the evening. My brothers, sister and I thought it  was a real treat. The real treat is the chicken pot pie you make at home--it tastes the best.

If you use a rotisserie or leftover chicken and a prepared, purchased pie crust, you can save a lot of time and energy. Or, make them the day ahead.

Chicken Pot Pie

serves 6 to 8

2 Tablespoons olive oil (or butter), plus 1 T butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium sweet onion, diced

3 cups diced celery

3 cups chopped carrots

1 cup diced potatoes

1 cup peas

1 lb. mushrooms, sliced

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

4-6 cups chicken stock

1 bay leaf

4 cups cooked chicken, cut or shredded into bite-sized pieces

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons corn starch, if needed

1 teaspoon dried thyme

salt and pepper to taste

2 prepared pie crusts

1 egg plus 1 Tablespoon milk

Chop all vegetables. I think it's a good idea to use any vegetables you might have as leftovers too.

Saute the vegetables, minus the peas, in 2 tablespoons olive oil or butter until softened but not browned, about 10 minutes. Remove from pot and set aside. Then saute the mushrooms in 1 tablespoon butter until lightly browned. Return vegetables to the pot and add 1/4 cup flour and stir until well-combined, about 1 minute over medium heat. 

Add chicken broth, stirring constantly, and bring to simmer. Add bay leaf, dried thyme and season with salt and pepper.

Add cooked chicken, peas and cream, return pot to simmer. Adjust thickness of broth if necessary--in a cup, mix 2 tablespoons cornstarch with 2 tablespoons water--add a little at a time to pot, while stirring, to thicken gravy. Cook for a few minutes more to cook the cornstarch. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Next, the pie crust. My friend Laura gave me a recipe for pie crust years and years ago and I'm still using it. I make it in the food processor so it's easy. Put 3 cups all-purpose flour into the processor bowl with 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 1/3 cups shortening. Pulse, sparingly, until shortening is cut into the flour--it only takes a few short pulses. Transfer dough into another bowl and add 1 egg, 5 tablespoons of ice-cold water and 1 tablespoon vinegar. Mix gently until combined. Divide into three balls and refrigerate.

Using prepared or homemade pie crust, roll out dough between two pieces of waxed or parchment paper to about 1/4 inch. I found an ochawan (a rice bowl) that was about the right size for the ramekins--with a little bit of crust draping over the edge.

Cut pie crust to size of ramekins plus about 1-inch. Make 1 pie crust for each ramekin.

Fill ramekins. Moisten edge of ramekins and place pie crust on top, pressing gently to seal. Cut 4 slits into crust and garnish with thyme leaves. In a small bowl, beat 1 egg with 1 tablespoon milk. Lightly brush over crusts. This will give the crusts a golden-brown color.

Place ramekins on baking sheet and bake in 400ºF oven for 30 to 40 minutes or until golden brown and filling is bubbling.

While the chicken pot pies are baking, I clean up the kitchen.

Itadakimasu!

***

Meet Kelly and Erik. They're friends--and also relatives. Kelly must be in about 1st grade in this photo, and Erik in 3rd.

It's been a lot of fun watching them grow into adults. You might remember Kelly from my Beef Dip Sandwiches post. Kelly is talented at thrifting. She combs the thrift stores for items she can modify into things she can use.

Erik is an artist. He has always loved drawing and worked for a company doing marketing and designs for clothing. Now he's started a business called Cloud Kicker Society--a lifestyle brand for the Vapers. The website is coming soon.

He also loves music and used to be a DJ. Erik is soft-spoken and funny. He can cook, too.

Erik and Kelly's mother, Meg, recently retired and the whole family celebrated her retirement and birthday at a gathering over the weekend.

Every month, this part of our family has a gathering. The get-togethers  are so much fun and insure that the family will all know one another and stay close.

The parties have a theme for the pot-luck dinners--which adds more fun seeing and tasting what everyone makes. You might remember the Cajun-themed dinner featured on my Easy Oven Roux Gumbo post.

That's Mako on the left. He's the one that notifies everyone of the parties and themes. Every family needs a person willing to be one that keeps everyone in-touch. Thank you, Mako, for being that person!

Nancy, Jessica, Rick and Maria are enjoying the festivities.

Lena, Garrett, Meg (and I) are talking about wedding preparations. Lena and Garrett and getting married later this year--I'm so excited!

I finally got the opportunity to meet David, Brianna's boyfriend. Brianna is working on a dietetic internship and has a blog! You can find Instant B Play filled with lots of good information on nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.

Sriracha chicken wings and Easy Oven Baked Chipotle Wings were appetizers I brought. I am working on a recipe for the sriracha wings.

My other appetizer was this Homesyle Sushi Bar. This time I added some spam spears and tempura shrimp. The tempura makes for a nice and crunchy temaki--handroll sushi. Serve the sushi bar with a half-sheet of nori so people can make their own sushi the way they like it.

I wonder what the theme of next month's gathering will be!

***

Chicken Pot Pie

serves 6 to 8

2 Tablespoons olive oil (or butter), plus 1 T butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium sweet onion, diced

3 cups diced celery

3 cups chopped carrots

1 cup diced potatoes

1 cup peas

1 lb. mushrooms, sliced

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

4-6 cups chicken stock

1 bay leaf

4 cups cooked chicken, cut or shredded into bite-sized pieces

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons corn starch, if needed

1 teaspoon dried thyme

salt and pepper to taste

2 prepared pie crusts

1 egg plus 1 Tablespoon milk

In a heavy pot, saute vegetables with 2 tablespoons olive oil or butter over medium heat until vegetables are softened but not browned, about 10 minutes. Remove from pot and set aside.

In the same pot, add 1 tablespoon butter and saute the sliced mushrooms until tender, about 10 minutes. Add the vegetable mixture, add 1/4 cup flour and mix over medium heat until well-combined, about 1 minute. Add chicken broth, stirring constantly, and bring to simmer. Add bay leaf, dried thyme and season with salt and pepper.

Add cooked chicken and cream, return pot to simmer. Adjust thickness of broth if necessary--in a cup, mix 2 tablespoons cornstarch with 2 tablespoons water--add a little at a time to pot, while stirring, to thicken gravy. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Using prepared or homemade pie crust, cut pie crust to size of ramekins plus about 1-inch. Fill ramekins. Moisten edge of ramekins and place pie crust on top, pressing gently to seal. Cut 4 slits into crust and garnish with thyme leaves. Place ramekins on baking sheet and bake in 400ºF oven for 30 to 40 minutes or until golden brown and filling is bubbling.

Barbecued Blackened Rockfish

While shopping the other day at Costco, I came upon a package of wild caught rockfish. We were going to buy the farmed salmon, but after having seen the Salmon Confidential Documentary my brother linked to on Facebook, we opted for the wild caught rockfish instead.

My first thought was to fry the fish, but the ease of sprinkling on some spices and putting it on the barbecue prevailed. I keep a jar of spice rub in my pantry that I used on my Easy Oven Baked Chipotle Wings recipe, used that, and added a sprinkle of Old Bay seasoning, dried oregano and thyme for the blackening spices. I think a seasoning the rockfish with lemon pepper and paprika would be good too.

I barbecued the fish on the low heat setting for 5-6 minutes on each side, or until the fish has a little color--I don't like it to get too charred.

Simple as that!

The rockfish was served on a bed of blanched kale--we bought this big bag of baby kale at Costco too--and have been putting it in everything. I'm surprised we've almost finished the whole bag!

I prepared the kale by boiling about an inch of water in a pot and adding a few big handfuls of kale, turning the kale with tongs until it was just wilted. It took about 1 or 2 minutes, then I removed the kale to a small colander to cool, squeezed the excess water out of it and gave it a rough chop before plating. The taste reminded me of eating the tsukemono my grandmother used to make when I was little, from turnip and daikon greens--a little bit chewy and not unpleasant. Eating a little bit of the kale with a bit of tsukemono--Japanese pickled vegetables--was delicious.

The barbecued blackened rockfish was garnished with a bit of chopped chives and served on a bed of blanched baby kale with a bowl of brown rice, lemon wedges, and some tsukemono.

Itadakimasu!

***

In my Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs post, I showed you a photo collage that we had made into a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle for my mother-in-law.

She finished the puzzle relatively fast, not taking the 9 months (or so) that it took to finish her first puzzle of this era--she quit doing puzzles for about 20 years--and now spends a big chunk of her day contemplating the pieces. It's amusing to see her sometimes using her fist to pound in a piece because, "some time it doesn't fit right".

This puzzle was fun for the whole family to work on since everyone was in it--and it's enjoyable to sit around the table with Obaachan, reminiscing about the events in the photos while perusing the pieces. When you make your puzzle, set the dpi to 300--this one was 180 dpi and it came out a little grainy and the colors not vibrant.

Obaachan was so happy to have her puzzle done and hanging in her kitchen's eating-area. She looked at the puzzle and counted 12 pictures of herself (not counting her hand in the upper left) and said, "I won't be lonely anymore."

Turns out my husband likes to do puzzles too--I had this one made for him for Christmas. The colors look much better in 300 dpi. Putting the puzzle together on a piece of foam core posterboard makes it easy to move around if necessary.

Here's the original photo.

I haven't tried any other puzzle companies--you can find pages of them online. I liked Venus Puzzle because once I got my photo quality up, the puzzle came out much better, and I liked the shape of the puzzle pieces. Sometimes the puzzles we've done have really strange shaped pieces. 

Obaachan has about 15 puzzles completed, all stacked on top of the other on posterboard, and has been working on them for the past three years. I think she likes looking at all of them with a feeling of accomplishment. She says they keep her going even though each one is, "so, so hard," and each current puzzle is, "hardest one."

No printable recipe.

Family Cooking Competition

Over the holidays my family got together for several days of fun. These days it's rare that we're all together since we're becoming more spread out as the family gets bigger. It was iikimochi--a good feeling--to have the whole family together. Rick & Jessica came a little late and missed the picture, but not the festivities. Also missing is my sister-in-law Lorraine--other than that, we have everyone.  BIG THANKS to Wes & Connie for bringing their camera gear, posing everyone and taking this photo.

We ate and ate and ate! We also hiked, ate together at restaurants and had a family cooking competition which was a lot of fun! Before I tell you about the cooking competition, a little bit about our shabu shabu dinner.

You can have a sit-down shabu shabu dinner for 25 people--although my brothers had to stand in the kitchen--two at the island and one at the stove. I love my brothers--they're not fussy. With a big family, I've learned it's best to be adaptable--boyfriends & girlfriends are always welcome--as well as the non-RSVPers. 

Make sure you open the doors and windows because the steam will build with all those pots of boiling water going! A shabu shabu dinner uses a LOT of small dishes--I'm grateful my whole family pitches in for the clean-up so it goes fast.

On Saturday we had our 'Iron Chef'-type cooking competition. It was really fun! I'm going to tell you how we did it--if you'd like to try it, maybe you can get some ideas.

1. We decided "the kids" would cook--there were 9--and they drew numbers to make two teams. In our family, "the kids" are ages 20 to 33.
2. I wrote down a "secret ingredient" on a card, folded them up and one was drawn from a basket. Possibilities were bacon, apples, eggs, rice and potatoes--apples were chosen.
3. They had a $20 budget, but were allowed to use anything I had in my refrigerator and pantry. They asked if they could use their phones to find recipes and I said yes. We started at 11:30 AM, drawing teams-- judging began at 1 PM.

Requirements:

A. Make an appetizer, main dish and dessert using apples.
B. Take photos and/or video of each finished product.

On one team: Kelly, Leslie, Noah, Hannah and Paige. If you don't recognize Noah, he is Paige's boyfriend. Welcome, Noah!

I dug out some old In-N-Out hats when someone asked if I had any hairnets. Don't they look cute? The first thing my sister and her family wanted to eat when they got in to Southern California from Hawaii was an In-N-Out burger!

We don't know why, but the sound on this team's video didn't come through, so The Allman Brothers Band's song Jessica fills in.

Appetizer: Ground turkey & apple won tons with a sweet & sour apple glaze. Main dish: Ground turkey sliders with apple, pineapple rings and sauteed peppers, served with sweet potato fries. Dessert: Mini apple tarts with cinnamon apple sticky rice.

On the other team, Mitchell, Karen, Cody and Rick. That's Cody, second from the right. He lives in Hawaii, and had planned a Las Vegas vacation during the holidays and changed his plans to come home to be with us for Christmas. The whole family was SO HAPPY to have Cody here!

Below, Mitchell is smoking chicken. Karen cut up a whole chicken, brined it, put on some rub--from the Easy Oven Baked Chipotle Wings recipe that I had in my pantry. Mitchell has a new hobby of smoking meats--he's gotten pretty good at it! 

(Thanks, Dad, for handing down your smoker to me. I'm excited to try it.)

Here's Rick describing two of his team's dishes:

Appetizer: Honey glazed pizza with apple slices, goat cheese, bacon and arugula. Main Dish: Smoked chicken with roasted apple-jalapeño barbecue sauce. Dessert: Puff-pastry with cinnamon & apples.

4. Judging. We had 6 judges. 20 points were possible for each dish, 10 for taste, 5 for presentation and 5 for use of apples. Since my sister was visiting, I had a couple of her friends come over--as a surprise for her--to be judges. Jen and Kelly are so much fun--and they also brought a lot of food with them! Thank you! (Hmmm...I'll have to see if they're available for catering...)

5. Winners! The scores were close--the team that made the pizza, smoked chicken & puff-pastry was the winner. Margaret provided the prizes--they're coming in the mail since she forgot them at home!

I consider us all winners because we all had a lot of fun and got to taste everyone's good food. We don't get to be together often like we used to, and it was fun watching the kids work together in teams and listening to the judges critique the dishes.

The time in the kitchen was hectic and there wasn't a designated spot for photos of each finished dish, which I think I will change for future competitions. We all had so much fun & we talked about doing the competition again--this time with the kids judging the food!

Big THANKS to all that helped with the clean-up, especially Gary, who did loads of dishes without one complaint!

My family. What a FUN bunch. Gotta love 'em all!

No printable recipe.

Christmas Cookies!

I may have mentioned before that I have been baking Christmas cookies with my friend Laura since we were in high school. That's a long time--I won't say how many years! We have found a mix of cookies that we like and that we think go well together--this is what we make every year with new ones coming and going occasionally.

Oh, wait!

I forgot one of the cookies! The ones in the back that look like snowballs are called Sandies, also known as Russian Tea Cakes. The green trees and red poinsettias are Spritz, the rolled cookies in the front right are Laura's Bachan's Christmas Cookies, Almond Crescents are the ones with the colorful sprinkles and Butterhorns are in the center.

I thought I would start with the Butterhorns recipe with some updates, since I had already posted it once and thought I could get it out pretty fast. Turns out I need to get back into my blogging mode again--everything is taking a lot longer than I expected! I will be posting the other recipes in the coming days--except for Bachan's Christmas Cookies, they are Laura's family's secret recipe and I respect that. The other recipes are readily found online if you need them right away.

Butterhorns are my family's favorite cookie. You might remember my son-in-law Mitchell wanted to make them for table favors for his and Karen's wedding. More details are on my Butterhorns! post.

Laura is a much better baker than I, and she prefers the cookie dough be cut by hand instead of using the food processor, and divided into 4 balls instead of 5. She thinks the dough is flakier when cut by hand and when the dough is divided into 5 balls, the cookies are too small. I always trust Laura when it comes to baking, that's why the directions are a little different than those on the Butterhorns! post.

Butterhorns

Ingredients: 

Dough

2 cups flour

1/2 lb. butter

1 egg yolk

3/4 cup sour cream

Filling

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup chopped pecans

1. Measure 2 cups flour and 1 cup butter into a large bowl. Cut butter and flour together until well-combined and butter is evenly cut into the flour.

2. Add 1 egg yolk and 3/4 cup sour cream. Combine gently with a fork until dough is mixed well.

3. Divide dough into 4 balls, wrap in waxed paper and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

4. Chop 3/4 cup pecans into small pieces and mix with 3/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. 

5. Take dough out of refrigerator, sprinkle a little flour on the dough ball and roll into about an 11 inch circle, using waxed paper on the top and bottom, flipping occasionally and sprinkling more flour as needed.

6. Spread about 3-4 tablespoons of the sugar-pecan-cinnamon filling on top of the rolled-out dough and spread it evenly almost to the edge of the dough. Cut into 12 even wedges, and roll, starting with the large end and ending with the point. Tuck the point under the roll, shape into a crescent and place on cookie sheet.

7. Bake at 375ºF for 25 to 30 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on wire racks.

***

This year, Laura and I had a lot of helpers and that made this year the most fun and the baking went fast!

Rick is becoming an expert at making Spritz.

This was Jessica's first time baking with us! Sometimes when I edit photos I see Rick in the background. He makes me laugh.

I was so happy Keith was visiting from New York and was able to come over to bake! I was just about doing The Happy Dance all over the kitchen when Keith walked through the door. He's a special one!

Keith's sister Lauren is a special one too. Since I saw her last she has traveled Europe, learned to make French macarons, painted her house and is working on the special effects for a new movie.

Hmmm...Maybe Lauren will be a Guest Blogger and make macarons for FOODjimoto someday...

Right now she is working on the Christmas Cookies. Lauren has retired from her photography business--I could use some tips from her. If you look closely at the photo, you can see that her hand is in clear focus, but her face is not. I like it when my face is in soft focus.

All day the kitchen was bustling with activity.

Here, they are dipping the Almond Crescents in chocolate and then dipping them in sprinkles--they're a lot of fun to make. Keith and Lauren are fun to be around. Looking at the photo below makes me want to laugh and hug them.

Rick and Keith both have my heart--they are helping to keep up with all the dishes without being asked! It was the funniest thing--I heard Keith ask Rick while wiping a utensil, "Where does this go?" Rick replied, "If you don't know where it goes that means you don't do dishes here often enough..."

We all had to laugh because that's what Keith's grandma used to say to me through the years when I baked cookies or ate at her house years ago, and that's what the kids have grown up hearing. Keith said that's what he says when friends do dishes at his house. I love that.

We had such a nice day baking together. It was "ii kimochi"--a warm, wonderful feeling. Next year I hope my daughter Karen will be able to join us as well as Laura's sister Cherie.

Laura and I have been friends since childhood. It's comforting to have a friend like her--a friend I can count on through good times and sad. Thank you, Laura, for always being there for me and for sharing your wonderful children!

Next time, let's be sure to take a photo together at the beginning of the day instead of the end of the day when I'm all tired-out. Like I said, I like it when I'm a little out-of-focus.