February 23 - March 1, 2010

23 T – 1-2-3 BBQ Sausage, Corn on the Cob, Fried Okra, Broccoli Slaw
24 W – Pizza Crescent Bake, Salad
25 R – Chipotle Chicken with Cool Avocado Sauce, Couscous with Mushroom, Carrots
26 F – out
27 S – Asian Vegetable Pasta, Spring Rolls
28 U – Mojo Chicken with yellow sauce, Rice, Black Beans
1 M – Spaghetti, Salad, Italian Sweet Bread

February 16-22, 2010

16 T – Chicken Gumbo, Red Beans and Rice, King Cake
17 W – Minestrone Soup, Italian Sweet Bread
18 R – Beef & Bacon Stroganoff, Noodles, Carrots
19 F – Chicken Ranch Potatoes, Salad
20 S – Italian Shepherd’s Pie, Salad
21 U – Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Tomato Soup
22 M – Parmesan Chicken, Scalloped Potatoes, Carrots

Last week I didn't get around to posting my meal plan. Our meatless meal was Creamy Butternut Squash Soup and Onion Cheddar Biscuits. The butternut squash really surprised me. I am very "take it or leave it" when it comes to squash and I did not expect to like it. It was very mild, but the biscuits more than made up for that. They were tasty and "dippable" in the soup. In the end, I have found that no matter how emphatically you insist to children that avocado or butternut squash have basically no unusual taste, they cannot get past the unusual color!

Today, although I have never made a special meal to acknowledge the passing of Mardi Gras, I thought it would be a great time to have gumbo. I followed the recipe linked, except I used chicken and smoked sausage instead of shrimp.


Our Mardi Gras meal was inspired by a recipe in Taste of Home for King Cake. Instead of making a real King Cake, I saved 1/3 of the cake we baked for Rob's birthday and froze it. We iced it with a lemon glaze and colored sugar (we had to make the yellow and purple). We searched for a tiny plastic baby everywhere we went - but only found what we were looking for this morning at a cake shop - actually I had to buy 6 for $.89.

Annalise found the baby :)

And in a failed effort to occupy the children while I made a roux, I had them make Mardi Gras masks, I say failed because they painted the table, the floor, and themselves green in the process. I guess the mask came out ok ;)

Gravy Train: Yellow Curry Sauce

Back before they halved their portions and doubled their prices, we liked to eat at Chicken Kitchen. The biggest benefit of Chicken Kitchen over Pollo Tropical was that their chop-chops* came with a choice of sauces...but everyone I knew always got the yellow curry sauce. Since Chicken Kitchen went high-brow, Pollo Tropical has begun offering a yellow curry sauce. Because we like the yellow sauce so much, I searched far and wide for a homemade substitute. And recently, I struck gold...or yellow I guess :)

Yellow Curry Sauce:

1 part yellow mustard
4 parts mayonnaise
curry powder to taste

Mix well, refrigerate until ready to serve. Very good over chicken or rice and beans.

(*So far as I can tell, a chop-chop is just a one dish meal with chopped up meat - usually chicken - rice and beans and other ingredients that can vary.)

How To: Make Puff Pastry

One of Caleb's favorite dinners is "Star Pot Pie" - that's what he calls it. It's a chicken pot pie and instead of topping it with biscuits I cut stars in puff pastry and top it with them. Puff Pastry isn't super expensive, but it isn't super cheap either. I wanted to make it myself, but felt discouraged when I read:

...keep in mind first and foremost that this most delicate and challenging of pastries must be made the way porcupines make love - that is, very, very carefully. Then shut off the telephone for an hour or two, cut yourself some paper pattern guides...and get to work."

in Joy of Cooking (page 643). I didn't even bother to try their way! I did, however, find a recipe online that admits to not being exactly orthodox puff pastry, but you could've fooled me, the result is a very puffy pastry that looks and tastes like puff pastry. It is not hard and not time consuming. Here is a picture to prove it:

This was a scrap piece after making pot pie - I bake the scraps and dust them with powdered sugar for dessert. You can see in the picture the layers of flaky goodness. And I can assure you it is 100% homemade with two small children underfoot.

Puff Pastry

1 cup flour
1/4 cup cold water
1/2 cup cold butter
1/4 rounded tsp salt - that is 1/4 + 1/16 or just a smidge more than 1/4 tsp

Mix flour and salt well. Cut butter into 1/2 inch slices and mix lightly in the butter and salt. Stir in water. Get out a big piece parchment paper or flour your work surface and pour out the dough. Obviously the butter will still be in huge chunks. Knead it 10 times and make a ball, then shape it into roughly a square shape. Roll it out into a big rectangle about 15x12 inches, I don't bother to measure it. (And ignore the big chunks of butter, they will work themselves out.) Then, fold the long sides in like you'd fold a letter. Think of the remaining rectangle as being in 3 squares stacked on top of each other. Then fold the top square down and the bottom square up over each other to make one square - there will be 4 folds, resulting in 9 layers. Wrap the dough in parchment or wax paper and store in the fridge for 20 minutes. Re-roll, re-fold - now you have 81 layers. Back to the fridge for 20 minutes. Again re-roll, re-fold - now there are 729 layers!!! This is basically a stopping place. I usually put it back in the fridge and leave it there until I am about ready to use it, then I take it out for about 10 minutes, then roll it and cut it.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes if you are just baking the pastry. For the pot pie, I bake at 400 for 25 minutes.

Daily Bread: Flatbread

Although the recipe recommended rice, something in me thought flatbread would be just the thing to have with our Indian dinner tonight. At first I figured I'd buy some, but I found a recipe online and decided to give it a try. It is not difficult, but it is not fast, so it is something I will probably rarely do. After you make the dough, you portion it out into little balls and roll them very thin.

Then you cook them on a hot griddle (or in my case a cast iron skillet) - interestingly, the griddle or skillet must be dry - no cooking fat added.

Cook on each side about 1-2 minutes.

Flatbread:
2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
Thyme - the recipe said 3 tbsp fresh, but I only had dry, so I just added about 1 tsp.
3/4 cup water

Mix dry ingredients well, add water and stir to make a ball. Then knead about 5 minutes. Grease a bowl, put it in the bowl to rise - about 1 hour. Portion out, roll, and cook as above. The recipe said it would make 20, my first one was too small, so I made 10.

We served it with Chicken Korma, which reminded Rob of an old roommate and reminded me of this little West Indian restaurant over on 168th St...yum!

And Cucumber Salad, called for jalapenos, I omitted them because I knew that would make it too hot for the kids. They both liked all 3 dishes. The Korma could have been spicier for me, but really it tasted very good.