Halloween Dinner

Nothing on Earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.
Steve Almond


So I've slacked - not surprising, but I haven't given up completely. I still take pictures as I'm cooking, I just haven't done anything with 'em yet. I will, though. Promise.

Tonight, being Halloween, I decided to make a spooky dish that I never managed to served as a special: A bed of witch's-hair tossed with pasta stars and topped with pan-seared scallops and a saffron-cream sauce, or as I like to call it "Full moon on a starry night."

Witch's hair is squid-ink angel hair. This is the one ingredient that kept me from running this as a special, because I could never find it. After buying supplies for my Halloween treat extravaganza, though, I decided to fake it. Twice.

Rather than buying the black angel hair, make your own by adding (entirely too much) Wilton's black food coloring to the pasta water. (I wanted the color to stick, so I used thin spaghetti instead of angel hair, for the longer cook/dye time.)

NOTE: You might stain whatever utensil you use to stir the pasta!

While both pastas cook (stars separate from the witch's hair), mince a clove of garlic and throw it in a hot pan with 2 Tbsp. of melted butter. Immediately add the scallops and salt and pepper (to taste). When the scallops are *almost* done, add a Tbsp of flour to form a quick roux. Then pour n servings of white sauce into the pan and add half a pinch of saffron.

Doesn't matter what white sauce - you can use a jar of alfredo, homemade béchamel, or even just dump heavy cream in the pan and make it ala minute.

Drain and rinse the pastas when they're cooked to your liking (the stars will finish first). Continue rinsing the witch's hair until the water runs mostly clear (to prevent it from coloring the white stars). Once rinsed and drained, gently toss the two pastas together.

Arrange a bed of pasta on the plate. Group the scallops wherever you want to place your moon, then pool the cream sauce in a circle over the top.

Ta-da!

(I recycled the black water to cook some bowtie "bats." More on those, later.)

Chicken or fish? It's chicken.

All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat!?' I'm trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don't win friends with salad.

Matt Groenig, The Simpsons

You wondered what to do with the leftover chicken from yesterday, didn't you?

We're going to first make a wet mix that can act as a base for tuna, ham, mustard-potato, and red-potato salad. This keeps fairly well, though not indefinitely, so making enough to last the week should be fine. Making enough to last the month - probably not.

I made my wet mix yesterday while the stock reduced. I knew I'd have leftovers, so while "slaving" over the hot stove, I prepped the wet mix.

Chicken Salad Wet Mix

1/4 ~ 1/4 Med. Yellow Onion, cut in chunks

It depends on whether or not you *really* like onions, and how ripe they are. The riper onions are more pungent.

2 ribs/stalks Celery, chunked

You *did* save the tops and roots from this, and the bits from the onions, right?

1 1/2 cup Mayonnaise

1 tsp. Salt

or more to taste, but I'd wait until it's mixed before adding much more.

1/2 tsp. Black pepper

Or 1/2 tsp. White pepper, if your significant other doesn't like "pepper" in their food.

Food processor or blender

Mixing bowl

Place the onions and celery in the food processor and puree. Press and drain if preferred (reduces the onion taste), then combine with the remaining ingredients in the mixing bowl. Stir well. Place in an airtight container and store in the 'fridge.

Add relish for tuna salad; mustard and boiled egg for potato salad (although I prefer chunks of celery and onion in mine); sour cream, dill, and chives for red-skin potato salad; and honey-mustard for ham salad.

Chicken Salad

1/2 cup Poached chicken, diced or pulled

2 Tbsp Wet Mix

Mixing Bowl

Combine the wet mix and the chicken. Add additional seasonings to taste.

As you can see, I made myself a sandwich. I had some leftover butter/bibb from lettuce wraps I made over the weekend, so I slapped some on a few pieces of Sara Lee's "45 calories and Delightful" wheat bread and made a sandwich. I'd have added some tomatoes, too, if I'd had 'em.

Now get it in yah bellah!

According to myfitnesspal.com, the wet mix has 77 kcal with 1g carbs and 8g fat. My sandwich had 304 kcal with 19g of carbs, 16g of fat, and 24g of protein.

It can be lightened even further by using a lite or low-fat mayonnaise, and/or eliminating the bread and using iceberg or butter lettuce for lettuce wraps.

Cost-wise, it's fairly cheap. The chicken is "free," since you accounted for it in yesterday's pot pie. One onion and two ribs of celery run less than a dollar (unless you buy organic, and then it's your own fault). The only "expensive" ingredients are the half-jar of mayonnaise (smaller jar, obviously) and two slices of bread. Let's say $3 for a batch of wet mix that'll make sixteen (16!) sandwiches or salads.

Stockin' up on Pie

You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.

Julia Child

Let's start with what I made tonight. I don't have a recipe for this, but the fiance had a craving for pot pie, so I came up with something. Sorry, I don't have any progress pictures, but I do have the end result, so that will have to do.

To start with, I needed poached chicken, and chicken broth. I looked at commercial broths, but at 570mg sodium per cup for the LOW sodium kind, I decided to make my own. As an added bonus, I managed to poach the chicken I needed, as well.

Before we go into the stock, though, we need to talk about vegetables. More specifically, let's talk about the leftover bits you always have when cleaning celery, peeling carrots, and chopping onions. There are three words: Save that shit.

Your squash ends, your tomato cores, carrot peelings, onions skin, celery tops, bell-pepper tops, etc - save everything vegetable related that won't adversely flavor your stock (broccoli and asparagus leavin's are bad, for example). Stick 'em in a freezer bag or other air-tight container and toss it in the freezer.

You don't have to use the scraps. An onion, carrot, and celery stalk or two will work fine, but why spend the money for 'em when the scrap is free?

Chicken Stock ( ~ 6 cups)

Note: You can use the same recipe for beef, pork, or vegetable stock. Just add the appropriate bones, or extra vegetables.

Vegetable Scraps or 1 small yellow onion, three celery ribs, and one carrot - all roughly chopped.

3 or 4 Chicken leg quarters (I use them because they're 59 cents a pound, but breast quarters will work. Bone and meat is what you're looking for.)

Water - lots of it.

8 qt Stock Pot (or larger)

Put everything in the pot and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until the meat is falling off the bone, then cook a wee bit longer.

Remove leg quarters from the pot, and pick the meat off the bone. Store the meat in the 'fridge and throw everything else back into the pot when you're done. (Yes, the skin is going to release a lot of fat, but it's also releasing flavor. We'll skim the fat off when we're done.)

Continue simmering until the half the liquid evaporates. Top off the pot with cold water and return to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer until half the liquid evaporates, again.

Strain through a colander, a tea strainer, or cheesecloth (or all three). Place the strained stock in the 'fridge and let cool. If you let it cool long enough, the fat will gel and you can peel it off the top. Otherwise, skim the fat if you need the broth immediately.

If I'm not going to use it immediately, I pour the broth into a muffin pan and freeze. Once frozen, I dump my stock-cicles into an airtight container and pull as needed.

Chicken Pot Pie (4 servings)

1 can Veg-all, drained (or your favorite veggies, small-diced)

1 can Regular Croissants or pie shells

1 1/2 c. Poached Chicken

1 Tbsp Margarine or Butter

3 Tbsp Flour

1 1/2 c. Chicken Stock

Salt, pepper, seasonings to taste

Baking dish

Small saucepan.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add the flour and stir well to create a roux.

Slowly add the chicken stock a little at a time, stirring to incorporate completely before adding more. Once all the liquid is added, it should resemble gravy. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and anything else (I like garlic), and it *is* gravy.

Spray the baking dish with cooking spray to make cleanup easier (pro tip!). Line with half the dough, spreading to the edges of the pan. The thinner, the better.

Too thick, and the pie will be doughy.

Mix the vegetables and the chicken. Place into the baking dish or pie shells. Spread the gravy over the chicken-veg mixture, and top with the remaining dough.

Bake for 10 ~ 15 minutes until the the crust is lightly browned. Remove from the oven and let stand for 5 ~ 10 minutes.

Now get it in yah bellah and enjoy!

In tha' Beginnin'....

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

Bernard Berenson

I used to cook for a living. I enjoyed playing with food, fire, and water, but grew to hate the hours. So I found something else to do. Something that didn't require twelve hour days and bathing at the end of the shift.

I didn't give up the old life completely. I still cook restaurant food, albeit at home, and I'm always looking for new dishes to try. After rediscovering and perusing my recipe file, I decided that I have plenty of recipes - I just need to actually cook them.

My plan is to prepare a new recipe whenever I cook, until I've gone through them all. I'm pretty sure that I'll give up about halfway through, but it sure sounds like a good idea.

(And let's just ignore the fact that I don't really need another social-media outlet to ignore. I'm well aware of that.)

~Brian "Bbq" Sauls