Spruce eats

Cooking With Christie: Crockpot Fiesta Chicken & Black Beans

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Inspiration: If you read last week’s Cooking With Christie post, you know I (after a couple of months of trying to keep the house cool) was finally able to fire up my oven and bake all kinds of stuff. Whilst I was scratching this itch, I also fired up my crockpot — so I could maximize my time in the kitchen. (Which always makes me feel accomplished at the end of the day.) I also had in my possession a can of Heyday Canning Co.’s enchilada black beans I wanted to try out.

(BTW: I am not getting paid to advertise the product; I just found it at a grocery store and discovered I love it!)

So I fired up my phone and found this recipe on Spruce Eats….And it is excellent!!! Quick and easy to assemble, it’s a great make ahead meal. Even better, the spices from the black beans and what the recipe calls for hold up well to the low and slow cooking time for this dish. (Which does not always happen.)

My Helpful Hint: Because canned food often contains A LOT of salt, I suggest using no-salt-added canned tomatoes & corn – or – better yet, using fresh tomatoes to help cut it out. (Because you can always add salt if you want, but taking it away isn’t as easy.) And a squeeze of lime juice.

Why? Because the best way to eat this dish, my husband and I found, was to melt some cheese on top and eat it with corn chips! Which adds more than enough salt to the dish!

Christie: I can totally see Tuppence making a version of this recipe when her kids were young so they could get their veggies and she didn’t need to spend all day in the kitchen!

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2023

Cooking With Christie: Who Knew Truffles Were So easy To Make?

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This Week’s Recipe: Chocolate Coffee Truffles

This Week’s Recipe: Chocolate Coffee Truffle

Inspiration: On a recent trip to a kitchen supply store, I picked up a truffle mold they’d had on sale. Blending this acquisition with the knowledge that not everyone is as keen on lemons as my husband’s former co-worker and I are, I decided to make something for the chocolate lovers attending their going-away party.

So I started hunting for a chocolate coffee truffle recipe….and couldn’t find one that combined all the elements I was looking for. So I decided to use one recipe for the filling, another for the shells, and a distant memory of Henry, from the Great British Bake Off, using a silicone mold.

It was weird, but it worked!

First: I used steps 2-4 of this recipe for the filling, and rather than putting it into a pan to cool, as instructed, I poured the concoction into a zip-top bag instead. As I intended to fill the chocolate shells, rather than coating the filling when it stiffened up, this cut down on the waste and mess. When the ganache was room temp but still pliable, I cut one of the bottom corners of the zip-top bag and squeezed the filling into the shells.

A Helpful Tip From Me to You: Don’t put it into the molds when the filling’s hot — otherwise, you’ll melt the shells. Also, make the ganache first, so it’ll start cooling as you work with the mold. It’ll save you time overall.

From The Office of Minor Mistakes: Do not put the filling into the fridge to cool — it will become way too stiff to use, and you’ll need to set it on the counter (in a sunbeam if there’s one handy) to warm back up to room temperature so it’s pliable enough to use.

Second: I used steps 8-14 of this recipe to form the shells.

From The Office of Minor Mistakes: DO NOT place the mold open side down while it cools — otherwise, the chocolate will try very hard to stick to your drying rack.

It seems like common sense, but when you’re buzzing around the kitchen making all kinds of other stuff and have never attempted these before, these subtle nuances can slip right over your head!

My other deviations: I used a double boiler for making both the ganache and the shells. It gives me much better control over the melting chocolate chips than a microwave. To keep the sweetness of the confection in check, I used a 60% cacao chocolate chip for the filling and a 72% dark chocolate chip for the shell.

Okay, from this write-up, these sweets appear tricky.

But they really aren’t.

The three major parts of this recipe requires rest time. Meaning you’ve got built-in time to either accomplish other bakes/chores/take a nap or, if you don’t have enough time to do everything all in one, you can do one part a day over three or four days.

Seriously, these candies look impressive but are so simple!

Christie: For once, I can see a certain Belgium detective actually enjoying one of my bakes! These bite-sized morsels of chocolate and coffee turned out perfectly from the molds and were really shiny!

And are perfect to give out to friends on Halloween!

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: Slow Cooker Pulled BBQ Chicken

Inspiration: About a week ago, I really wanted some barbecue chicken.

In the throws of this craving, I discovered I’d mislaid my original bbq sauce recipe during our big move. So I poked around the internet and found myself a new one on SpruceEats….

And true to form, I made some changes.

I omitted liquid smoke (because I didn’t have a bottle anywhere in the house) and added a tablespoon of ginger, a teaspoon of lemongrass/turmeric paste, a teaspoon of garlic, and a teaspoon of chipotle powder rather than cayenne. I also used Portlandia’s Spicy Worcestershire Sauce rather than the plain stuff and soy sauce rather than regular salt. In addition, I made the sauce the day before and let it sit in the fridge overnight, so all the flavors melded nicely together. Then I put half the sauce and chopped up chicken thighs into the crockpot for five hours.

It turned out great! Together with homemade hamburger buns, it was excellent!

Christie: I could see Tommy & Tuppence and possibly Miss Marple eating shredded bbq chicken sandwiches during a block party or at a village fete. I think the sandwiches are a bit too messy for Poirot or Mr. Sattersthwaite….

Cooking With Christie!

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This Week’s Recipe: Tom Yum Soup

The Inspiration: I am a fan of Guy’s Grocery Games on Food Network. Recently I was rewatching the Ultimate Spicy Games and one of the chefs, who’s from Thailand, made tom yum soup*. While watching her prepare the dish, I realized (so long as I’ve got more than thirty minutes) I can totally make this dish!

Turns out the most challenging part was finding the lime leaves! 

After visiting a half dozen grocery stores (my husband is fantastic), I finally found them – and frozen shrimp, which weren’t treated with sulfates! Which was a huge score! (Fun Fact: The sulfates help the little guys turn a deeper shade of pink when you cook them up.) 

Once I finally had everything, I used these two recipes to base my version on – one’s by Spruce Eats and the other on recipetineats.

Now, I stuck pretty close to the recipe for the broth, which was interesting. Because when I tasted the broth, before adding the veggies and the shrimp, I thought I had done something wrong. As the lemongrass and lime leaves made it kind of sour. However, after I cooked the veggies and shrimp in the broth – it transformed into the tastiest dish! 

BTW – I added a bunch of extra veggies to the dish because I couldn’t help myself: bell pepper, Fresno pepper, zucchini, and enoki mushrooms.

(*Of course, while writing this post, I rewatched the episode again…and discovered I did NOT pay very close attention. Patty, my inspiration, did not make tom yum soup – she made tom sapp soup. *sigh*)

Christie: Now, I can’t see Miss Marple making this for herself…However, if her nephew Raymond West had sent her to Thailand rather than the Caribbean for a vacation – I think she’d have tried it and loved it. (Especially since you can easily adjust the spice level.) 

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!