Pick-and-Place Cookies

I love baking, and I especially love cookies.  What I don't love is making a batch of several dozen cookies and having them all stare at me saying "eat me" in that singsong-y voice that cookies have.  I also don't love when I really am in the mood for only one gooey, freshly baked cookie and have neither the time nor the ingredients to make an entire batch.  And then there's that singing cookie thing again...

Is there a solution to this dilemma?  Well, yes, there is, and it comes from the inspiration of ready-made food producers.  There is both refrigerated and frozen cookie dough, which keeps the dough for a longer period of time.  There is also this fantastic notion of refrigerated cookie dough that is already portioned out into individual cookie amounts.  All you have to do is "pick" up the individual dough portion, "place" it on the cookie sheet, and bake.

Well, I went to work figuring out the easiest way to replicate this idea at home, and I came up with an easy, hassle-free solution.  I'll give you a hint: it involves ice cube trays and the freezer.  The result?  Beautiful, freshly baked, ooey gooey cookies made from scratch in the quantity I wanted to eat, and in about 15 minutes after getting home from work.  The best part is that this technique can be used with your favorite cookie recipe!

Pick-and-Place Cookies

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Idle Time: Undefined
Cooking Time: 9-11 minutes

Yield: Varies

The above parameters may vary depending upon the cookie recipe you use.

Ingredients:

- One batch of your favorite cookie dough (I like the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag).

Tools:

- Ice cube trays
- Baking sheet

- Cookie Scoop (optional)

- Plastic Wrap/Plastic Freezer Bag

Directions: 

1)  Follow the instructions for your favorite cookie dough recipe.  This includes preheating the oven.

2)  Decide how many ice cube trays of cookies you would like to save for later.  Remember, that each ice cube "pocket" will make one cookie.  Make sure that the trays are washed and dried properly.  

3) Using either a cookie scoop or spoon, fill each of the ice cube pockets in the trays with the right amount of dough for an individual cookie.  Don't worry too much about over-filling, as the freezer will harden the dough, preventing blocks of cookies from sticking together.

4)  Take the trays that are now filled with cookie dough and either cover them with plastic wrap or place them in a sealed freezer bag.  this will help keep the cookies clean and free from rogue flavors that might be floating around your freezer.

5)  Put the trays into the freezer.  Make sure that they stay level, otherwise, the dough will run together before it has a chance to harden.  If the portions of dough are not level with the top of the pockets, do not stack multiple trays, as this will mess up the cookie portions in the bottom tray(s).  

6)  Bake the rest of the cookie dough into cookies to enjoy now (mine took 9 minutes per batch).

7)  Wait until the next time you get a craving for a cookie.

8)  Preheat your oven to the required temperature.  

9)  Remove a tray of cookie dough from the freezer.  The cookie dough does not completely harden like an ice cube, but stays slightly sticky to the touch.  Therefore, take a spoon and "scoop" out an individual cookie portion, placing it on a baking sheet.  Repeat for the number of cookies you wish to bake.

10)  Bake the cookies the required amount of time.  Remember that you may need to add a couple of minutes to the baking time that was required for the freshly made cookie dough.  This dough is coming from the freezer, so it will need a little more time.  Just keep an eye on them and adjust the cooking time according to your dough and oven.  My fresh batch of cookies took 9 minutes per batch, and my Pick-and-Place Cookies required 11 minutes per batch, as an example.  

11)  Enjoy!

Don't Freeze Milk-Based Soups

Ok, so my blog revolves around suggestions for helpful hints in the kitchen.  Things to do that help make your life easier, or recipes that work.  Well, I'm beginning to think that posts about mistakes I've made might turn out to be just as important to you, so I'm going to start throwing those posts into the mix.

This post is about just that - a mistake I made that turned what used to be yummy food into something gross.  I decided to freeze a cheddar corn chowder.  Bad idea.

Freezing soup is a great way to save the food for later.  Normally, this works beautifully.  Not so with a cheese/cream/milk-based soup or chowder.  You see, what I found out the hard way, is that the freezing process causes the cheese/cream/milk to separate into chunky bits floating in the clear-ish liquid base.  Reheating did not fix this problem.  I tried.  It was more than a little gross and disappointing.

Bottom line - DON'T freeze a soup or chowder that has a cheese, cream, or milk base.  Make sure you finish it before it goes bad.  The freezer might be my friend, but it certainly wasn't my chowder's.

Simple Chicken Salad

Perhaps you aren't in the mood for a warm, fork & knife style sandwich for lunch, like the Fork & Knife Chicken Sandwich.  Well, fear not, odd duck (just saw a show with a food cart called "Odd Duck," so I had to figure out how to use that phrase!).  This is a recipe for a simple - yet quite delicious - chicken salad that can also be made from the leftovers of the Roast Chicken with Vegetables.  It can be eaten as a sandwich (which is my favorite), over a bed of lettuce, or with a fork and some crackers.  As always, don't be afraid to tweak the proportions of this recipe to suit your own tastes.  Once you get the hang of it, you can also experiment with other spices and ingredients.

Simple Chicken Salad

Prep Time: 5+ minutes

Cooking Time: N/A

Yield: 2 cups

Ingredients:

-  2 cups roast chicken, chopped (all skin and fat removed)
-  3/4 - 1 cup mayonnaise
-  2-3 Tbsp sweet relish
-  2 tsp garlic powder
-  2 tsp onion powder

Tools:

-  Bowl
-  Spoon/fork/spatula

Directions: 

1)  Make sure the pieces of chicken are approximately bite-sized and put them in your mixing bowl.

2)  Add the mayonnaise, relish, garlic powder, and onion powder, and mix until well combined.

3)  Taste and adjust the amount of each ingredient as you see fit. 

4)  Proceed with eating the chicken salad.

Helpful Hints:

-   I do not recommend freezing chicken salad.  If you are going to freeze anything out of this recipe, just prep the chicken by chopping it up and freeze that in a container until ready to use.  Make sure you thaw it thoroughly first...otherwise you'll be eating chicken ice cube salad...which is decidedly not appetizing.

-  This is exactly what I do to make tuna salad.  My nonna and mom have been making tuna salad this way for as long as I can remember, so I just transferred the recipe to chicken salad.   All you do is substitute a can or two of tuna (I prefer the chunk white albacore) for the chicken.

-  This recipe very much follows the "eehhhh, that looks like enough" measurement style.  You pretty much add stuff until it looks right.  After making this enough times, you will be able to make this without measuring and get it perfect every time.

Enjoy!

A Note About My Cooking Style

As I've been writing my recipe posts, I've realized that there's something very important I should discuss with my readers - my cooking style.  My cooking style is often reflected in the way I write my recipes, especially when I note that you should experiment with different spices or proportions of ingredients to suit your own tastes.  This also means that my recipe measurements are the best approximation of the amount of an ingredient I use - so it's perfectly fine if you decide to use a little less or more of something, or substitute an ingredient for something you are more familiar with, or simply add something extra.  In fact, I encourage this approach.  You aren't cooking for me (although that would be very sweet of you) - you are cooking for yourself.  Cook what will make you happy...cook like an Italian.

My cooking style is the result of growing up surrounded by Italian-style cooking.  If you don't know how that works, let me give you a basic run-down.

-  Cooking involves using your hands - be prepared to get messy.  Become "one with the food," so to speak.  When you put your heart and soul into a dish, it will show.

-  Measurements are given as "pinch, dash, eeehhhhhh that looks like enough."

-  Recipes are for the weak at heart.

-  Meals are once-in-a-lifetime events.  The proportions will always be slightly different, so you will never be able to exactly replicate a dish.  That's ok - it makes cooking an adventure!  It also helps you to cherish each and every meal.

-  No two people will cook the same way, or use the same amount of a particular ingredient - this is what makes Nonna's pasta sauce hers, and why, try as I might, the same exact "recipe" will never let me make Nonna's sauce - only my sauce.

-  The only way to learn to cook is to roll up your sleeves, and get into that kitchen.

To sum it all up is a quote that I have hanging in my kitchen: "Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon."



So what's the moral of the story?  Read a recipe I've written and try it out.  Add more or less of a spice.  Substitute olive oil for butter for a different taste.  Don't go out and buy ground beef - chop up some of the chicken that's already sitting in your fridge.  Take my recipe and make it yours...make it work with the ingredients already sitting in your pantry.  Yes, it's scary the first couple of times you try this because it may not work out.  But you'll never get there if you don't give it a shot!  In the words of Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"

Fork & Knife Chicken Sandwich

Part of making large meals to save your budget is learning how to deal with the leftovers.  No one really wants to eat the same thing every day, but you also can't afford to buy a lot of different ingredients.  This is a recipe for what I did with some of the leftovers from Roast Chicken with Vegetables.  It is delicious, hearty, hits the spot, and only involves 3 extra ingredients that you should have lying around in your pantry.

Fork & Knife Chicken Sandwich

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 1-2 minutes (varies with microwave)

Yield: One sandwich

Ingredients:

-  1-2 cups roast chicken (pulled off the bone, all skin and fat removed)
-  3 Tbsp of juices from roasting the chicken (more or less to taste)
-  1 Tbsp mayonnaise
-  2 slices bread


Tools:

-  Microwave
-  Microwave-safe bowl

Directions: 

1)  Put the pieces of roast chicken (already pulled off the bone, with all skin and fat removed) into a microwave safe bowl.

2) Open the container of juices from roasting the chicken.  If you have not already removed the layer of fat since roasting the chicken, you will see a white "film" on the surface of the juices (which will be more firm - like Jello).  Don't worry, this is normal!

3)  Use a spoon, or something similar, to skim the fat off of the top if you have not already done so.  Just throw it directly into the trash.  Once you've skimmed the fat off, you won't need to do this again, as more fat won't develop on the surface.

4)  Once the fat has been removed, spoon about 3 Tbsp of the juices (more or less to taste) over the chicken waiting in the bowl.

5)  Microwave for 1-2 minutes, or until the chicken is nice and hot and the juices have liquified again.  Time will vary depending upon your microwave and the amount of chicken you are reheating.

6)  Prep the bread by spreading mayonnaise on both slices, and seasoning with pepper, to taste.  Place the bread - mayo side up - on a plate.

7)  Use a fork, your hands, or some other utensil to place the pieces of chicken on the bottom bread slice.

8)  Drizzle the juices left in the bowl over the chicken, letting the rest get soaked up by the bottom slice of bread.  Put the top slice on, and break out the fork and knife!

Enjoy!

Handy Tools: Roasting Pan

A roasting pan, like the one I used to make Roast Chicken with Vegetables, is specifically designed to make the process of roasting as easy as possible.  Roasting is such an easy way to make a meal that will save you a lot of money in the long run, so having a roasting pan is extraordinarily useful because it makes the process all but foolproof.  The following are the features that make a roasting pan (with lid!!!!) so useful:

1)  Perfect size and shape.  No need to fiddle with making sure that the chicken will fit in the pan, the pan is deep enough to hold the liquid, or the lid will fit over the turkey.  A roasting pan is designed to handle exactly these food items - making sure that your meal will fit!

2)  Dome-shaped lid.  Get a roasting pan that has some kind of dome-shaped - or at least very tall - lid.  The purpose of this shape is twofold.  First, the height of the lid helps accommodate larger items, allowing you to cook more in a smaller space.  The second - and most important feature - is that it helps with self-basting.  This fact is so important that I'm going to give it its own number in the list!

3)  Self-basting lid.  The dome-shaped lid of roasting pans (that come with them) today is self-basting.  What does this mean?  Well, remember the water that I put in the bottom of the pan in the Roast Chicken with Vegetables recipe?  As the roasting begins, the chicken (or turkey, etc) will loose flavorful juices, which will mix with the water on the bottom of the pan.  Now, remember back to Thanksgiving commercials from when you were little, and they'd show a woman taking a turkey out of the oven, and using a baster (nozzle with a bulb on the end) to take the juices from the bottom of the pan and drizzle it over the turkey.  This is a crucial step for making sure that the turkey (or chicken, etc) does not loose flavor or moisture.  Well, the self-basting lid does this for you.  As the water/juice mixture heats up, it evaporates.  When it hits the lid, it condenses and falls back down onto the chicken (in my case).  It's one less thing you need to worry about while the chicken is roasting, but the flavor and moisture will still be there.

4)  Grate.  Most roasting pans will come with a grate with handles that rests in the bottom of the pan.  This keeps the chicken and vegetables off of the bottom of the pan (which helps prevent sticking and burn spots), and makes it easier to lift the chicken out of the roasting pan for carving. 

As far as kitchen tools go, a roasting pan is a great investment that will help make things like roasting easier, but can also be used without the grate to cook other dishes.  Make sure you get one with a lid....otherwise, you'll need a baster and a fondness for acting out old Thanksgiving commercials.  Just enter the search "Hi-dome roaster" in your favorite search engine, and I guarantee you'll find one at a price your wallet can stomach. 

Roast Chicken with Vegetables

Nothing is easier to get you started cooking than a roast chicken.  Cross my heart.  Not only is making a roast chicken easy, it is also incredibly easy on the wallet - especially if you get a chicken on sale!  In addition, the leftovers from a roast chicken are delicious just reheated as is, or they can be remade into sandwiches, chicken salad, and countless other dishes.  I firmly believe that a key to being happy with cooking is to eat a variety, otherwise you won't want to do it.  You can have a variety with a roast chicken, without much more investment in other ingredients.

One of the things I like to do is compare prices for ready-made food and food I make myself - just to make sure that I am really saving money.  Here's a quick comparison of a store-bought, ready-to-eat rotisserie chicken and the roast chicken that I made myself.  (Just a note, roasting and rotisserie is the same method of cooking, it's just that the latter of the two rotates while it cooks).  One approximately 4lb store bought chicken will cost you $6 on average: that's $1.50/lb.  I just bought a 9lb chicken on sale for $8, or $.89/lb.  In order to buy 9lbs of chicken ready made at the store, you'd have to spend an extra $5.50.  Let's say you buy a chicken once a month.  That adds up to $66 per year that you can save by making a chicken at home.  Sound like a chunk of money you'd like to save?  Thought so.

So, here's my basic recipe for Roast Chicken with Vegetables.  You can certainly roast a chicken without the veggies, but you're already investing the time to roast a chicken...what's cutting up a few veggies and throwing them in, too?

Roast Chicken with Vegetables

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cooking Time: Varies based on the size of the chicken

Yield: Varies

Ingredients:

-  One roasting chicken
-  Olive Oil
-  1 Fresh Lemon
-  ~2 tsp Herbs de Provence (or a similar substitute).
-  Several Root Vegetables (Onions, Carrots, Potatoes, Yams)  One or two of each should do.  Feel free to experiment with other root veggies, too.
-  Water - enough to cover the grate at the bottom of the roasting pan.

Tools:

-  Roasting Pan or other oven-safe piece of cookware with a lid (just make sure the chicken will fit first!)
-  Cooking Twine (optional)
-  Cooking Thermometer (optional)

Directions: 

1)  Preheat the oven to 350F.

2)  Remove the bird from the wrappings.  Make sure you do this over the sink, as there will be blood that will drip out.  You don't want to have to worry about cleaning blood off of your countertop.

3)  Reach into the cavity of the bird and remove the packet of "stuff" (a.k.a. giblets). This packet has the innards of the chicken in it.  Sometimes the bird will come with the giblets, and sometimes it won't.  It's best to check and make sure because you do not want to roast the bird with the giblets still inside.

4)  Rinse the chicken - inside and out - in cool, clean water.  Pat the chicken dry with some paper towels, and place the bird - breast side up - on a dish or pan.  This will help keep the chicken in one place as you season it.  A dish or pan will also catch any excess seasoning that falls off, making your cleanup easier.

5)  Take a piece of cooking twine and tie up the legs of the chicken.  This is an optional step.  It just makes handling the bird a little bit easier.

5)  Take the fresh lemon and cut it in half.  Insert both lemon halves into the cavity of the chicken.  In lieu of lemon halves, you could also use stuffing.

6)  Gently separate the skin covering the breast from the meat.  Try not to tear the skin, and do not remove it.  The skin helps retain moisture and prevent the meat from becoming too dry.

7)  Once you have the skin loosened, pour some olive oil (about 1 Tbsp) and herbs de provence (about 1 tsp) in the pocket formed beneath the skin.  Rub the olive oil and herbs into the meat as best you can.  Add more oil or herbs as you see fit.  This will also vary depending upon the size of the chicken you use.  The purpose here is to help infuse flavoring directly into the meat, rather than only on the skin (which is not always eaten).

8)  Use another Tbsp of Olive Oil and tsp of herbs to cover the skin of the chicken.  Don't forget to cover the skin of the wings and legs in addition to the breast.

9)  Fill the bottom of the roasting pan with water until it just covers the grate at the bottom.  If you don't have a roasting pan, make sure to read the amended directions after step 12.

10)  Place the chicken in the roasting pan, on top of the grate, breast side up.

11)  Roughly cut the vegetables to be roasted with the chicken.  Large chunks are fine.

12)  Toss the vegetables around the chicken in the roasting pan.

Amended directions for use without a roasting pan:  Chop the vegetables first, and scatter them across the bottom of your pan.  Then, fill the bottom of the pan with about an inch of water.  Use the vegetables in lieu of a grate to hold up the chicken, and put the chicken on top of the vegetables - still breast side up.
 
13)  Put the lid on the roasting pan and place in the oven.

14)  Roast the chicken at 350F according to the following rule of thumb:  30 minutes per pound and add 15 minutes if there is a substantial stuffing (i.e. the lemons don't count as stuffing).

15)  The chicken should be done when the meat of the inner thigh close to - but not touching - the bone reads 165F.  The stuffing (if applicable) should also read that temperature.  I did not use a thermometer this time because the chicken came with a pop-up timer.  See that little white plastic piece in the picture?  That's the timer.  When it "pops" open, the chicken is done.

16)  Carve and serve.  Use a spoon or ladle to get some of the juices from roasting to drizzle over the meat and vegetables.  I tried to get a pretty picture of the plate of food, but the drumstick fell apart before I got it to the plate.  I left it like that to illustrate how tender this chicken was.

 

Things to do after you've eaten:

1)  Whatever chicken is left, carve and put it away.  This will make life easier when you want to use the leftovers.

2)  Collect the veggies and save them in a separate container, too.

3)  Don't throw out the juices!!!  Instead, strain the juice into another container (to remove the larger chunks of vegetable or chicken from the juice).  Let the juice come to room temperature before putting it in the fridge.  When the juices cool in the fridge, they will solidify and a fat layer will form on the surface.  This is normal.  Just use a spoon to skim off the layer of fat into the trash.  The juice will re-liquify when heated.

I've made several different dishes from the leftovers, and they are still coming.  I will post them, too, to give you some more ideas of what to do with the leftovers.  

Enjoy!