Chipotle Chicken Poppers

Well, I've done it. I've made at least one item that both qualifies for the pillsbury bake-off and tastes half-way decent.

This first round experiment is an homage to a trip that I took about a year ago with my mom to Santa Fe. I just really, really fell in love with the food there and thought I should do something that's a little peppery as a first attempt.

Behold the ingredients that my alchemy would turn into a million dollars: 1 jalapeno, some shredded cheese, ground chicken, goya hominy, chipotles in adobo and (of course) some pillsbury dinner rolls.

I started off dicing and sauteing the jalapeno in a little oil. I took the jalapeno out, set it aside and added the chicken, about a tablespoon of the adobo sauce and one diced chipotle pepper (seeds removed). Once the chicken was cooked through, I poured in the hominy and let that heat through.

Thus began the assembly process. First I rolled out each dinner roll and gave them a layer of the sauteed jalapeno, which I had mixed with a little cheese. Then I piled on a spoonful of the chicken/chipotle/hominy mixture. I balled that all up and sent it to the oven!

Results were somewhat mixed. Everyone who sampled it had different feedback -- too spicy, could use more spice, too bready, needs more cheese. Suffice it to say, this was a good first effort, but will definitely need some tweaking before its "ready for primetime." Any thoughts on hominy? Is it too fancy or unknown for this competition? (I included it to help cut the spiciness of the chipotle, and to mix up the texture.)

Pleased to Meat You

Matt sent me a picture of a former Bake-Off finalist, a meatball pie. Man, doesn't that sound comforting, and filling, and good? There are actually specialized parts of our neural axons that respond to stimuli to create the sensation of pleased, satiated, wellness with regards to food. This chemical chain evolved as our primitive ancestors wandered the savanna millions of years ago, foraging for ball-shaped flesh and natural springs of marinara. Do Rachel, Tracy, and I have what it takes to access that neolithic pathway to Taste Country? This weekend will be our first attempt: expect greatness. (And photo journalism.)

Once Bitten, Twice Fried

This is just a little trip down memory lane, as I was inspired by Joanna to recall.

Back in the early spring of my budding culinary wanderings, I was trusted to feed myself -- using the gas stove and all -- by age 9. While yogurt was often good enough on a lazy day, I made what if combined would be an ominous, oozy sky-scraper of grilled-cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, and, as my family refers to them, cheese noodles. Entertaining oneself as a 9-year-old in TC for an entire summer for me meant running around the yard, climbing the enormous old cherry tree, riding my bike over hills both paved and in orchards and woods, and most frequently, swimming. All of these activities apparently develop a needy furnace satiated by hearty injections of dairy.

Joanna didn't come to my house very often, so we made the most of the time to swim ourselves prune-y and subsequently restore balance to the universe by dehydrating in the sun. Eventually, our little bodies required some nourishment. KoolAid, anyone? Yum. How about we get down to business with a bean burrito? Alas -- ! No refried beans graced the cupboards. A strange sense of self-confidence came upon me as I turned to Joanna with aplomb, narrowed my eyes with Christian Slater-like mischievous intensity, and said, "Let's just make our own."

We mashed kidney beans with abandon, sprinkled spices (at that time, mom's stock averaged an age of fifteen or so years old), and ended up with something quite...delicious.

Is there a moral or a message here? Is necessity the mother of invention? Do we need to come together in hard times to make the most of what we have, and throw dull care away? Perhaps those beans are a reverent, wise ancestor in the lineage of this quest to create the winning Pillsbury Bake-Off recipe. O, humble beans, how far we have come!

Chicken and Fail

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’d like to shape my first blog entry. Since this is a blog about aiming for culinary success, I thought an entry about a culinary failure might be appropriate.

This story is often referred to as “the chicken and dumplings catastrophe” by my family. My father still references it to this day if I mention a cooking project. “Just make sure it doesn’t end up like the chicken and dumplings.” Thanks, Dad. Back in, 1995 or so, my sister, Laura, and I had competed in a fun run in the Heights of Houston. One of us, (I want to say me, but I can’t be sure) placed in our age group – easy enough when there are only 3 other 13 year olds competing. The prize was a cook book filled with recipes from local chefs. Thus the foundation was laid. Laura and I decided to treat the whole family to a night off in the kitchen. We’d be cookin’ tonight.

We selected the chicken and dumplings recipe. I remember that making the dumplings was especially challenging for us. It involved a lot of kneading and rolling. After tirelessly building our dumplings from scratch, we went to add them to the soup base we had boiling on the stove. What happened next is sort of a blur in my mind. I honestly don’t know what could have gone wrong where, but within the next few minutes we had burned: 1) the soup 2) the pot 3) the pot holders. The result was a melted potholder stuck to the bottom of the pot indefinitely and a smoky flavor that permeated the soup, the kitchen, the entire house, and our souls.

The Helmicks are troopers, so we ate a good portion of the soup, all the while trying to convince ourselves that this was the smokiness BBQ champions the world over pine for. They say smells have the strongest recollections, but believe me, if you had tasted this chicken and dumplings, it would be blow-torched into your memory forever.

Yeast Envy

Lest anyone other than close (soon to be less close) friends and family stumble upon these words, perhaps a few moments more of introduction. What with all the "hailing from" and "calls home," it is fairly obvious that we are youthful adults braving the seas of dithering masses that make up a major metropolitan area, banding together in pursuit of home-making activities as though to fortify ourselves against the depredations of urbanity-scurvy. We inhabit the three boroughs of NYC that you would expect (Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens), and are fortunately graced with decent-sized kitchens.

Note: Claire's kitchen is inexplicably missing an oven. Someone selected a shiny, new electric range with four burners, then popped in on top of the wooden counter and drawers, thoughtfully leaving the cupboard beneath intact rather than spoiling it with such an unnecessary modern inconvenience as an oven. Then they presumably painted a fresh coat of white paint on said wooden counter-top, touched up the sink drain with some gray paint, and sighed contentedly reflecting on a job done. (Deep Breath.) So, Claire and Matt simply trot down two flights of stairs to a communal/office kitchen that equally as inexplicably *does* have a gas stove any ol' time they want to heat some fish sticks, or whatever.

Another note: Matt and Claire never make fish sticks.

As you can imagine, our kitchens see their fair share of baking. But one little eukaryote is a rare participant. We don't bat an eye when it comes to culturing batches of yeast for brewing beer, but the mention of rising dough usually causes us to turn food magazine pages with fear and embarrassment. Happily, we are liberated from the tedium and anxiety of warming water and anticipated transmogrification: bring on the Pillsbury dough tubes!

-Claire

And They're Off!!!

Hi. We decided to enter the Pillsbury Bake-Off contest. We like to cook, bake, baste, broil, perhaps even poach every so often. And with a built-in crack team of experimental chefs, we think we stand at least a quarter of a chance. Every Sunday for a couple of years now, we've been getting together to make something tasty and a bit challenging. So now it's time to put our skills, creativity, and down-home-small-town-gal moxie to work.

We are Rachel, Tracy, and Claire (and Matt and other friends who help chop, supply booze, and recount bad dates for entertainment). Rachel hails from Spring, Texas. Tracy only admits to "South Florida." Claire is very proud to come from the Cherry Capital of the World.

Here's our first idea: Frozen Bananas Foster Ice Cream Pie.