Aftermath of the Feast

About eight years ago I took on a project for a new business in Missoula. The concept was interesting -- one that incorporated all kinds of beverages (except hard liquor). The specialties of the house were coffee drinks, teas, and chai. But there were a bazillion places to get that stuff so the business needed something to set it apart from the other coffee spots.

Hence, my project. I set about creating a menu of 12 meal-sized crepes, six sweet and six savory. I also created an extra number -- the store's signature crepe -- and I called it "A Study in Chocolate." It incorporated chocolate in six different forms -- a chocolate crepe, filled with chocolate custard with a sprinkling of chocolate chips, dusted with cocoa powder, drizzled with chocolate syrup, and topped with chocolate whipped cream. It was a huge hit.

But an even bigger hit came about when November rolled around and I created a seasonal special I called "Turkey in the Straw." I took an unsweetened crepe, spread cream cheese on it (instead of mayo), topped that with cranberry relish, then some replicated stuffing, bite-sized cubes of turkey and french fried onions (the kind you might see on a green bean casserole).

When the business's crepe-maker broke down (it was a super expensive model imported from Switzerland), instead of replacing it or having it repaired, the place decided to go out of the crepe business and concentrate on its various lines of beverages.

That saddened me. So I reclaimed my crepe recipes and re-purposed "Turkey in the Straw." This time, however, I used the same ingredients but instead of in a crepe, I decided to use a 10-inch flour tortilla. I rolled it up, burrito style, cut it in half on the diagonal and -- just like the crepe version from eight years ago, I couldn't make them fast enough.

So if you're looking for a way to dress up the leftovers from Thanksgiving, try my Turkey in the Straw burrito. A little salsa on the side probably wouldn't hurt.

The Kitchen Guy Holiday Rescue Menu

America's favorite eating holiday is almost upon us and that day - Thanksgiving Day - also signals the beginning of the big eating season. Holiday dinners, family dinners, business dinners, dinner dinners. That can be a lot of pressure if you're the one tasked with doing the cooking.

Enter (or shall I say re-enter?) the Kitchen Guy Holiday Rescue Menu.

I've put together a collection of side dishes and desserts, all designed to lighten your burden, starting on Thanksgiving Day right up through New Year's.

For sides, I've got Marbled Mashed Potatoes, a creamy blend of mashed Russets and mashed yams,
enriched with cream cheese and swirled together -- hence the name "marbled." My Brussels Sprout "Hash" has been very popular in years past and so it makes a return to the list of sides available for ordering. Perhaps the most requested, though, is my signature Cranberry Relish, made with caramelized red onions, balsamic syrup and a hint of brown sugar. You'll never miss the tin can indentations at your holiday table.

Desserts are the star in the Holiday Rescue Menu, as that's the lasting impression of almost every meal. So for all of my hungry friends around the state of Montana, I'll be baking Cranberry Upside Down Cake, Lemon Tart, Pumpkin-Ginger Tart, Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake, and Gluten-Free Dark Chocolate Torte with Chocolate Honey Glaze. There are other selections, too, but I wanted to highlight some of the more popular ones.

The Holiday Rescue Menu was absent last year as I had major surgery just before the holidays. But I'm all healed and rarin' to go to help you make the holidays memorable.

On Thanksgiving this year, there will be a once-in-a-lifetime concurrence of Chanukah -- so we're calling Thanksgivnukah and offering a variety of latke (potato pancake) preparations, including my award winning Latke Napoleon, regular latkes and a latke made from a mixture of Russets, Sweet Potatoes and Parsnips.

New this time around is a delivery schedule before Thanksgiving and before Christmas in all of Montana's major cities. We'll set up dates and times in Kalispell, Great Falls, Helena, Butte, Bozeman and Billings. There is a modest extra charge to cover the cost of delivery to cities outside of Missoula.

Check out all of the Holiday Rescue Menu offerings at my special online store. Click on this link: http://shop.kitchenguy.biz for the whole menu. And if you're one of the first 10 people to order, you'll receive a Kitchen Guy tote bag with your order.

Ready. Set. Order!

Italian-Asian Fusion

Seriously? Italian and Asian? Well, sort of. If you count the egg roll wrappers sold in the produce section of your supermarket as an Asian ingredient, then yes.

But technically, it's pasta. Shall we recount the Marco Polo legend about bringing pasta from China to Italy? Nah - this is a cooking blog.

Anyway, I did this recipe once before on TV and called it "Italian Chicken Bundles." With all of the changes in television technology, I needed a high definition version of the dish and in the process renamed the bundles "purses."

Perhaps I should have led with this: This recipe is one of my all-time favorites. When I was in the personal chef business, my clients loved this dish. It's designed to be an appetizer or first course, but most of the people who've tried my recipe report back that they made a dinner out of them.

Here's a picture of what it looks like. I think you'll see that, based on appearances alone, it's a beautiful dish. Tasting the filling will confirm it.

Your muffin tin is the perfect vessel to make the "purses." While the egg roll wrappers may seem to be sturdy pieces of pasta, they actually tear quite easily, so it's important to be gentle while pushing the wrapper into the muffin cup. Try to center it so that when you go to close it, the ends of the wrapper come together uniformly. It will make for a good looking bundle or purse after it finishes baking.

The ingredients in the filling are fairly mild, especially with the ricotta cheese and chicken. So I jazzed up the dish by placing the purse in a pool of spicy marinara. If spicy isn't your thing, then a regular tomato sauce or pasta sauce will do.

Here's the video followed by the recipe:

1 1/2 cups chicken breasts, cooked and cubed (bite sized)
3 large green onions, sliced thin
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium to large garlic clove, minced
2/3 cup gated Parmesan cheese
2 spinach bunches, washed, stemmed, steamed and minced
8 ounces Ricotta cheese
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
12 egg roll wrappers

Marinara sauce for serving

 

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook chicken and green onions in the oil over medium-high heat until chicken is lightly browned and onions are soft. Add garlic and cook one minute longer.Let cool slightly then combine 1/2 of the Parmesan with the spinach, ricotta, oregano and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper.
 
In a 12-cup muffin tin, brush melted butter into 10 of the 12 muffin cups, reserving half of the melted butter for later. Carefully press one egg roll wrapper into a muffin cup and fill with the chicken mixture. Close egg roll wrapper over filling by gathering the ends and gently twisting. Brush with some of the remaining melted butter.
 
Continue until all 10 muffin tins are filled.
 
Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.
 

Serve in a pool of marinara sauce and garnish with additional Parmesan cheese and Italian parsley sprigs.

Is there a problem with this omelet?

When I pick recipes to present on my television show, a lot of thought goes into the process. Maybe I should run it by some other people, based on the response to this week's recipe.

I thought that an omelet with bacon and avocado (repeat: BACON!!!!) would gain some notice. But looking at the counts on the various places where these episodes are posted, including the newsletter I send out every week, it is the least viewed episode EVER.

Hmmmm. What could be wrong? Could it be that everyone knows how to make an omelet. Could it be they've heard of this combination before. Could it be that they hate hate hate this combination?

I'm stumped. So I'm going to show it again in this blog and maybe some of you will enlighten me as to why it is -- far and away -- the least viewed episode in the 10+ year history of Kitchen Guy.

Here's the video, followed by the recipe:

For each omelet:
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
3 large eggs
2 oz bacon, crumbled
2 Tbsp Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
2 ripe avocado slices
1 Tbsp sour cream
2 Tbsp salsa
salt and pepper to taste

Crumble a slice of bacon. Heat butter in an omelet pan.

Whisk the eggs, adding salt and pepper, and cook until mostly set, but still creamy on top.

Evenly spread crumbled bacon and sliced avocado over half the omelet.

Fold the omelet and heat through, turning if desired.

Melt the cheese on top.

Garnish with sour cream and salsa and additional avocado slices.

The NEW Kitchen Guy Recipe Archive

I am pleased to announce the launch of the redesigned Kitchen Guy Recipe Archive, a compendium of all of the recipes I have cooked on my television show for the past 10+ years.

You will find the Archive easier to navigate in addition to having a search utility that allows you to enter an ingredient or a recipe title.

Another new feature is a print and PDF converter.

Thanks to my tech guy, Damon C., for carrying the lion's share of the load. All I did was retype and make corrections.

To access the new archive, go to http://kitchenguyarchive.com.

Oops. I Did It Again.

With apologies to Ms. Spears, I'm referring to another recipe I did involving Brussels sprouts because the hatred for them is legendary.

That's generally because your mother cooked them until they were dead and gray.

This week, I decided to deep fry the leaves, a process that requires a bit of precision work. First you must chop off the stem and remove the discolored outer leaves. The best Brussels sprouts have inner leaves that cling tightly to the layer of leaves beneath them, so you've got to exercise a bit of care to loosen the leaf enough to peel it off and have a whole specimen to plunge into hot oil.

As you'll hear in the video, I suggest that you keep the inner parts of the sprouts you've peeled to make another of my "turn the Brussels sprout hater into a Brussels sprout lover" dish. I was referring to the one that aired a few weeks ago that I call "Brussels Sprout Hash."

And now I can add a disclaimer or an admission of error in calling that dish "Hash." It has no potatoes. It does have bacon. But no potatoes. So it's technically not a hash. Does anyone, except the Culinary Institute of America really care?

The dipping sauce for this week's dish is quite spicy and if I could change one thing, I might add some extra honey to thicken it a bit more so it could cling to the leaves that turn into "chips" once they've been deep fried.

There's also a caution for you in my dialogue and that regards the high water content of the leaves and what happens when you drop them into a pot of oil that's at 350 degrees. They splatter and that hurts when it splatters on you. So you can use a pot lid as a shield of sorts until the splattering settles down.

I bought one of those home deep fryers a while ago and it actually allows you to close a lid at the same time you lower the fry basket into the oil. That certainly would take care of the splattering.

So here's the video followed by the recipe. And I promise: no more Brussels sprout recipes for at least a year.

1/2 lb Brussels sprouts
3 tsp honey
1 tsp Sriracha sauce
1/2 tsp Thai sweet chili paste
2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sesame seeds
canola oil for frying

Trim off the bottoms of the sprouts and discard the outermost discolored leaves. Pull off and set aside the next two layers of leaves, reserving the hearts for another use.

Make the sauce: whisk together honey, Sriracha, chili paste, lemon juice, sesame oil and sesame seeds in a small bowl and set aside.

Meanwhile, pour about 2 inches of oil in a pot and heat to 350º. Fry the sprouts in three batches, using the lid of the pot to protect your hands and face from popping oil. Cook for about 30 seconds or until the leaves are brown and risk. Drian on paper towels and sprinkle with flaky sea salt.

Once all of the batches are fried, transfer the chips to a bowl and drizzle some of the sauce over them. Toss lightly to coat and add more sauce if needed. Or pass the chips and let every one dip their own.

Apple Lasagna - Am I Kidding?

No. It's for real. A lasagna for dessert.

Pasta sheets are made from dough, aren't they? Of course they are. Pie crust is made from dough. Isn't it? Yep.

So what's all the fuss?

There are some purists out there who took me to task for messing with the Italian classic. But this isn't the first time I've messed around with classic lasagna. A number of years ago when I first started doing the weekly Kitchen Guy program, I made a crab meat lasagna -- probably one of the most expensive dishes I've ever made on the program. Do you know how much crab meat you have to use to fill a 9x13 baking dish?

Anyway, I decided to give this a whirl and treat the apple lasagna as if it were a hybrid between a pie and a crumble, hence the topping made from quick-cooking oats, butter and brown sugar. I could have added nuts and raisins -- hey -- that's a great idea! Next time I make it, I'm going to add nuts and raisins.

Seriously, if you want to surprise the family or dinner guests with an unusual dessert, this will do it. It has all of the elements of a lasagna, with the apple pie filling (I used the canned stuff found in the baking aisle of the supermarket, but you can certainly make your own), as a substitute for the meat and sauce; the lasagna sheets, of course, and the cheese filling.

In my traditional lasagna, I use a combination of cheeses, but I chose to use only ricotta. I suppose I could have used mascarpone, as it is already sweetened. But ricotta seemed the logical choice to keep up the lasagna-like appearance of the dessert.

So while you'll never find this dessert in any self-respecting Italian restaurant, it's perfectly acceptable to serve it in our homes. don't you agree? After all, we want to eat stuff that tastes good. And this dessert really tastes good. Here's the video, followed by the recipe.

8 lasagna noodles (uncooked)

2 20-oz. cans apple pie filling

1 32-oz. container Ricotta cheese

2 large eggs, beaten

1 tsp almond extract

1/4 cup sugar

6 Tbsp flour

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 Tbsp unsalted butter

6 Tbsp brown sugar

1/4 cup quick-cooking oats

freshly grated nutmeg

Grease a 9x13 baking dish and spread some of the apple pie filling on the bottom. Layer four lasagna noodles over the apple pie filling.

Mx together the Ricotta with the eggs, the almond extract and (white) sugar. When well-combined, spread evenly over the lasagna layer. Top with four more sheets of lasagna noodles and spread the remaining apple pie filling on top.

In another bowl, crumble together the flour, cinnamon, butter, brown sugar, oats and nutmeg. Sprinkle over the top layer of apple pie filling.

Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 45 minutes. Let stand for 15 minutes before slicing.

Top with sweetened sour cream or vanilla ice cream.