Curry hot pockets

This is my first (recent) attempt to make something like an Indian calzone that doesn't take too long to make.

The Filling
1 yellow onion
1-2 tomatoes
2 small/med golden potatoes
1/2 lb ground meat (we used lean beef)
Frozen mix of carrot, peas, green beans
1 red bell pepper, chopped
Midas vindaloo paste

In an effort to make this easy, I wanted to use as many frozen/jarred things as possible.
Heated 2 Tbsp oil and fried chopped onion until golden.  Added 2 Tbsp vindaloo paste and cooked for a minute.  Added ground beef and cooked until done.  Added chopped tomato (which also served to deglaze a little bit) and then frozen veggies and red bell pepp.  Cooked until all heated through.

Took about 20 min start to finish.  Want to add cilantro and toasted cashew next time, but forgot this time.

The Calzones
Used 2 packaged TJ pizza dough.

On a clean floured surface, cut each dough into 3rds (for 6 pieces).

Shaping it was a challenge.  Did a combination of rolling and throwing.
Tried to make a rectangle with each, spooned in filling, and folded over.  Did the "roll from bottom" trick on edges.
* Be careful not to make it too thin...I did break at least one.
* If counter not well floured, can break when you try and pick it up.

Making them took probably 20-30-ish minutes (I didn't time it).  Most of the time is just that pizza dough is hard to work with.

Put them in oven @ 375 for 30-40 min.

Came out tasting great, though! =)

Greek-Style Chicken Breasts: five stars from Mark and me

Greek-Style Chicken Breasts: five stars from Mark and me

I'm looking for a nice, moist breast with enough flavor to hold over for a day or two in the fridge (because I like to keep the serious cooking down to three or so days a week). This one really works and gave me a chance to try a goat-sheep milk feta cheese (Earth Day was last weekend and I'm told even goats and sheep beat cows for Earth friendliness. Presumably they aren't ruminants and are less frequent belchers.)  In summer I like that it doesn't require an oven. I can finish up the thing in about 1/2 hour.

First, the brine:
4 cups warm water
1/4 cup kosher salt
2 tbsp whole peppercorns
4 cloves garlic, smashed

Put in a glass dish and put the chicken breasts in (|4 skinless, boneless breast halves, about 6 ounces each. Put it in the fridge for about 1/2 hour. This is a great time to make The Sauce.

l large sliced onion
1/1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 ounce chopped pitted kalamata olives, about 14
1 large tomato or a lot of cherry tomatoes (good way to use up the cherry ones)
1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley or, when I have a lot of fresh thyme in the yard, I use that
2 teaspoons fresh oregano or about 1 tsp dry
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
feta cheese to sprinkle on the top (about 1/2 tablespoon per serving but it varies a lot)

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat* (not as hot as chicken pan), add oil, swirl it around and add onion. Saute four minutes.  Add olives and tomato, saute 3 minutes or until tomato begins to break down. Remove pan from heat and stir in parsley or fresh thyme, plus oregano, and lemon juice. The original recipe calls it done at this point. Since Mark does not like onion if he can see it, I put it in my food processor and grind it up until the chunks are fairly small . Put it back in the  pan, take a taste, and add more of whatever it seems to need (usually I add more tomato, sometimes a splash of broth or a little water). Set it on warm.

Now for the chicken:

Heat a heavy skillet to medium high and coat with cooking spray. Sprinkle breasts with salt and pepper. When the skillet is good and hot, put in the chicken and brown about six minutes per side. (Obviously, smaller breasts cook faster.)

While the chicken is cooking, make |Orzo according to package instructions. I often make it with chicken broth, using about two to one orzo and both. When it is done, just drain it and leave it with the lid on until the chicken is ready.

While all this is going on, make a vegetable or dessert and clean up the kitchen. This recipe seems to create a lot of mess!

Chai tea recipe

Halved this recipe (since Maria doesn't like Chai):  https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bas-best-masala-chai

Pretty good, but not as good as the aunties.  Not sold on the use of maple syrup.  Will keep trying and post back here...

Aji-Amarillo Coconut Milk Chicken

So we made this very delicious braised chicken for Sunday night dinner. Goes with a recent theme of exploring bone-in skin-on thighs, crisped in a heavy pan/pot, and then baked to perfection with a (hopefully) still crispy skin crust.

Started with this recipe:
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/12/braised-chicken-aji-amarillo-coconut-milk-recipe.html

with these modifications:

• I used our large oval dutch oven for this but I think it would have been OK in a smaller pot, try the 5 quart dutch oven next time.
• Ended up being a lot of coconut oil, I think we could reduce it to 1 TBSP since we get a lot of oil from the chicken fat being rendered.
• Our Aji Amarillo paste is pretty hot so we were nervous to put the 1/4-1/2 cup noted on the recipe. We used 1 TBSP blended with 1/2 a yellow bell pepper (fire-roasted on the gas stove). When mixed with the coconut milk, there was almost no heat at all and the flavor was mostly of coconut milk, so next time we will probably go 2-3 TBSP and a whole fire-roasted bell pep.
• The sauce was a little thinner than we would have liked. We might simmer the sauce a bit longer in step 3 (before adding the sweet potato/squash) to concentrate it a bit before continuing with the recipe.  We thought this is better than adding a thickener because we want to increase the flavor as well.
• It's springtime so we didn't have access to butternut squash. No problem, swapped for a large sweet potato which worked great.
• We chose to eat this over asian-style steamed rice, yum! Even Nadia gobbled it up (sort of).

Pictures: