books and food

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This Week’s Recipe: Cranberry Orange Chicken

Inspiration: Whilst perusing recipes one day, I was listening to Bob’s Burgers with half an ear and their Holiday Special came on…and I’d a sudden hankering for cranberry sauce. However, since I don’t generally eat it by the spoonful, I looked in the fridge and spotted….chicken thighs.

Whereupon I tilted my head and thought — why not?

So I emptied an entire bag of frozen cranberries into a pan with a third of a cup of water and a cup of sugar, then cooked them until the berries just start to burst.

While the sauce is simmering away, I added the bone-in-chicken thighs to a crock pot — then added the juice and zest of an orange, a couple of teaspoons of ginger, and several (eight) Calabrian chilis. Once the cranberry sauce thickened, I chucked it in as well and set the cook timer for ten hours.

The chicken turned out delicious….However, it was an odd shade of purple when it finally finished cooking….which was interesting. But once we’d stuffed it into a taco, the slightly unappetizing hue was disguised.

Christie: Griselda Clement, the Vicar’s wife from Murder at the Vicarage, strikes me as an experimental cook — should the mood strike!

Cooking With Christie!

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This Week’s Recipe: Hearty Mushroom Barley Soup

Inspiration: So, on a random Saturday, we were driving randomly around and spotted a new cash & carry grocery store and decided to check it out. Inside we found all kinds of nummy treasures! One of which was a very reasonably priced and nice looking three-pound carton of mushrooms. Upon arriving home, I realized I now needed to figure out what to do with them all…

Hence, soup!

Perusing my cookbooks and the internet, I discovered this recipe!

Unsurprisingly, I did make a few alterations to the original recipe by adding an extra pound of mushrooms (because they are delicious), a couple of bay leaves, two small sprigs of tarragon, soy sauce (for the salt) and lots of pepper! And it turned out great!

Next time I may add some finely diced dried mushrooms for some extra flavor.

Christie: Honestly, I can see any of Christie’s character’s whipping this up or ordering it at a restaurant to feel all warm, toasty, and lovely inside on a fall or winter’s day!

Cooking With Christie!

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This Week’s Recipe: Best-of-Both-Worlds Enchiladas

Inspiration: Okay, So last week’s recipe of red enchilada sauce directly ties to this week’s. Due to stupid, stupid allergies, I can’t have the majority of canned red enchilada sauce. Hence I made my own!

Again, leery of allergic reactions due to cross-contamination, as deli counters often use peanut oil in their fryers or have other items containing nuts. I roasted my own chicken.

Then I consulted the recipe in the book (below) to make enchiladas.

However, because I’m not feeding a small army, I needed to pare down the Pioneer Woman’s recipe. So rather than making both green and red enchiladas, I stuck exclusively to the latter. I then added diced Fresno peppers, black beans, shredded Mexican cheese, and a bit of hot sauce to a bowl of diced chicken. Finally, after rolling the filling into blackened tortillas, I smothered them in yet more cheese and peppery enchilada sauce and baked!

Perhaps a bit more toasting to the flour tortillas would’ve helped them from becoming a bit soft….but overall, I’m pleased with this first try!

Christie: Again, I can see Colonel Race enjoying this dish on his travels. Or Mr. Harley Quin partaking of a plate on one errand or another should he find himself in a restaurant serving a dish similar to mine. (Though executed with a far defter hand.)

Cooking With Christie!

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This Week’s Recipe: The English Breakfast Situation

Surprise, surprise, surprise! I got a new cookbook called The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Super Easy! and of course, I needed to share a few of my faves from inside with you guys! 

The first of which, renamed in our household to the English Incident (because I was trying to recall Mrs. Drummond’s title and nearly nailed it), this recipe is indeed super easy and very tasty! It’s also one you should only indulge in when you know lunchtime is going to be late or when you’re going on a hike and need a lot of fuel to sustain you — because while it’s super easy, it makes A LOT of food, even when pared down a bit.

(This is not a complaint, just an observation — FYI.)

Now, because I made this for dinner (the best time for breakfast dishes, IMHO), I tweaked the recipe just a bit: omitting the bacon entirely, used smoked apple & chicken sausages, and as my pantry was bereft of fresh parsley, I used a couple of handfuls of peas (we’d just picked from the garden) instead. 

I also used one less egg, one less sausage, and slightly increased the amount of mushrooms. (Because we love them so.)

And it turned out beautifully! A great one-pan wonder that takes less than twenty-five minutes to whip up.

(Hopefully, the Pioneer Woman won’t mind the rejiggering of her recipe!)

Christie: Honestly, I can see any of Agatha Christie’s detectives loving this breakfast as it’s just a slight twist on a Full English!

Cooking With Christie

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This Week’s Recipe: Crockpot Baked Beans

This week’s recipe owes its origin to a craving for a full English breakfast. However, because my husband and I are watching our pennies, going out to eat to our favorite tea room isn’t in the cards. But purchasing a bag of dried beans is, and that’s precisely what I did.

Of course, when looking up the recipe, I made a slight strategic error. Instead of looking up British baked beans – I looked up baked beans. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but there is a subtle difference between the US and British baked beans. Whereas the British version tends to be in a lighter, brighter sauce – the US version tends to have a darker, sometimes spicer, sweet/savory sauce.

Unfortunately, I didn’t ping to this difference until after I added all the ingredients to my crockpot. Meaning, there’s another Cooking With Christie in the offing with the recipe closer to the one I’m craving!

In any event, here’s the base recipe I used…(Thanks to Spruce Eats for the recipe.)

…and being me, I did fiddle around with it: I crumbled in four strips of bacon, switched the called for hot sauce with Harissa paste, swapped the chopped onion for 1/2 tsp of onion powder (which I like better), added 1/2 tsp granulated garlic, 1/2 tsp black pepper, 2 tsp spicey Worcestershire sauce, and 1 Tbsp of apple cider vinegar.

(The extras, other than the bacon and Harissa, aren’t pictured. After taking the photo, I decided the beans needed a few more layers of flavor!)

Christie: The Christie detective I can see as most likely to trying and enjoying a darker, spicer version of the traditional beans found in a full English breakfast is Colonel Race. Mainly, due to his adventurous, globe trotting and espionage filled exploits. Miss Marple or Poirot might try them on their travels – but I can’t see either truly enjoying them…or any sort of spicy food for that matter!