Chicken Chipotle

Stan and I have a favorite Mexican restaurant in our area-Fiesta Mexicana.  These folks are from Jalisco and are super nice.  (And excellent cooks!)  Stan has been ordering their Chicken Chipotle and loving it.  This morning I got the bright idea to make the dish myself.  Google and I explored for a while and I grilled Stan on what was in the dish at the restaurant.  What I came up with is not a lot like what Fiesta makes, but excellent anyway, not to toot my own horn or anything!

Chicken Chipotle

2 canned chipotle peppers with a bit of the juice from the can

1 cup heavy cream

8 oz cream cheese

1/4 tsp cumin

1 tablespoon lime juice

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

2 tsp honey

Salt and Pepper to taste

2 pounds boneless chicken thighs, cubed (breasts will work, too)

1/2 onion, sliced

1 green pepper, sliced.

2 tablespoons oil

Salt and pepper the chicken and brown in the oil on medium high.  Lift out of the pan and cook the onion and pepper in the pan drippings.until the onion is tender and the pepper is tender-crisp.  While this is cooking, place the chipotle, cumin, lime juice, cilantro and honey in a food processor.  While the processor is running slowly pour in the cream.  When onion and pepper are ready, turn the heat to low medium and add the cream mixture to the skillet.  When it gets hot, add the cream cheese and stir until the cheese is melted.  And the chicken and cook until everything is heated through.  Taste and add more salt if needed.  Serve.

I served mine with rice that I cooked in chicken stock with a bit of cilantro, and refried black beans-one of my favorites.  Tortillas are nice, too, of course.

You can add more chipotles if you like, I might next time.  Stan likes his hotter than I do-I thought it was perfect, but I might be nice to him next time.  If you want to make it a little lighter you could substitute half and half and light cream cheese for the full fat stuff.  I don't think it would hurt the flavor at all.  It wasn't entirely allergy-friendly, there is a bit of tomato in the chipotles, but as long as it's cooked and I don't have too much at a time I can get away with it.  And the rice is something I usually don't eat, but this was a non-GMO rice so once again I allowed it.  I probably won't eat the rice again for a while but it was sure yummy tonight!  Oh, and I picked out the green peppers and gave them to Stan.  I'm not allergic, but my tummy isn't fond of them.

Supper

A big pork roast with carrots, cabbage, cilantro, basil, and dried fennel all from the garden.  No room for potatoes, I'll have to boil those alongside. 

The only problem is that I put it in the crockpot too late in the day.  I have now transferred it to the oven in the hopes that we can eat before bedtime!

Muffins

Decided to try adding more eggs to my muffin recipe.  It worked pretty well.  I waited to see if they were still good to eat the next day, and they're not bad so here is the recipe:

Eggy Muffins

1 3/4 cups flour  (my current mix is 3/4 cup tapioca and 1/2 cup each potato starch and sorghum)
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 stick butter, melted and slightly cooled

Stir together flours, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Beat eggs and milk, stir into dry mixture.  Whisk til smooth, stir in butter a bit at a time.  Pour into paper lined muffin cups and bake at 450 for 20-25 minutes.  Makes 12.

The extra eggs cause a cute little peak at the top.

Let me know how you like them.  Of course if you can eat rice I would use it along with a little of the other flours.  It's hard to get a good product without being able to use the rice-I have a lot of throwaways!  I eat a lot of mediocre stuff, too!

Breakfast

I found a link to several recipes for quinoa on Pinterest.  I'm even going to try one for a potluck tomorrow night.  But the juices flowed and I came up with this breakfast:  I rinsed and drained the quinoa-enough for 2 servings, then cooked it with just a bit of raw sugar, a handful of dried cranberries, and a sprinkle of sea salt.  After it cooled to warm I put half in a bowl and stirred some vanilla yogurt in.  I was getting really sick of eggs, eggs, eggs and I think this will add some variety.  I've always been a cereal person and miss it terribly.  The other half is in the frig waiting for tomorrow and another flavor of yogurt.

Seems to be sticking to my ribs-quinoa is supposed to be very high protein.

Had a bad day on Saturday.  It was nobody's fault, but we had a work day at the church, and as I went in to help I decided to ask the lady in charge of food what we were doing for lunch, but I completely forgot.  Before I could remember or make accommodations for myself (I should have been more prepared) a lovely older couple showed up with pizza.  If I had known beforehand I could have made my own and brought it, but I had spent the previous evening baking my safe snacks-I was up late with it and that was all I had time for.

Everybody is very exited about the work-we have just finished remodeling our sanctuary and moved everything back up from the basement Saturday.  The pastor has been running around taking pictures all along and lunch was no exception.  Only one problem-I now had to leave and go to one of the three "safe" restaurants in town to buy my lunch.  If I had known sooner, I could have bought it and brought it back to eat while the rest of the group ate their lunch, but I didn't have that chance, it just showed up.  I went to my husband and told him I had to go get lunch, and his reaction was, "that's nice" as he joined his friends at a table.  There was no room to sit with him, and no room at the other tables.  I went to my car and sat there for a while, but had a knot in my stomach so I went back in.  I walked up to Hubby and told him I was going to wait a bit, since I would have to eat alone no matter when I went.  Again the reaction was "that's nice."

I got a cup of black coffee and sat on the sidelines watching them eat while the pastor took pictures of all of them.  Then somebody brought a chair over and made me sit with the ladies, but that isn't necessarily a good thing because you're hungry and have to watch them eat.  I noticed they had designer root beer, which often is safe for me, so I went looking for some.  I found out it was safe but there was none left.  A lady offered me half of hers, but I felt like I was getting leftovers so I declined.

Then everybody went back to work, and I was getting shaky so I knew I had to get some protein.  I found my husband and said I was really going to go now, and he said, "good!"  As I turned I said "I guess I get to eat alone," but there was no response from him.  I gave him three chances to help me feel better and join me.  The first time I told him I was leaving he could have said, "Wait til I'm done and I'll go with you to keep you company" but that never happened.  Even if he had offered and I had declined that would have been fine.

I still have a knot in my stomach and haven't slept much.  The pastor's wife caught wind of my being upset and proceeded to hug me a lot, and wanted the pastor to take a picture of me, since I had missed out on the others.  Can we say "patronizing?"

Not sure who to be mad at-myself for not being better prepared, the people at the church who know I have these allergies and could have said something beforehand, or my husband for not being supportive enough.  I will get over this, but for some reason the pity party is in its fourth day, maybe a sit-down with the hubby is in order?  He's usually pretty supportive about my allergies, but he totally missed the BIG clues that day!

Anyway, hope you try the quinoa-enjoy!

Pizza Crust Victory!!

Sorry for not posting on this blog for a while-I'm finding out that just maybe two blogs is one too many.  My attention span is too short.  But for now I'll keep this one, even posting sporadically.

The one thing I've missed really badly has been pizza.  Not the sauce so much-I've never been a tomato person-but the chewy crust and all those spicy meats and melty cheeses......

A few weeks back I was perusing on Pinterest (yes, I got suckered in too!) and I ran across TWO recipes for pizza crust made out of cauliflower.  I know!!!

One called for raw and the other called for cooked.  I made both at different times and thought both were delicious.  But I liked different things on each one, so decided to combine recipes today-I think I have a winner.  So here it is, in its delicious simplicity:

Marty's Cauliflower Pizza Crust

1 small pkg frozen cauliflower
2 eggs
pinch salt
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Microwave the cauliflower in a glass dish for 3-5 minutes, enough to cook the "raw" out of it but not enough to make it mushy.  Drain and let cool to lukewarm.  Pulse in a food processor until it's the consistency of rice.  Beat the eggs a bit, then add the rest of the ingredients and stir til well blended.  This won't be firm like regular pizza dough-it will be pretty squishy.

Line two cookie sheets with parchment and spread half the dough on each pan.  Pat it out with the back of a spoon until it's a thin, nice round.  Bake at 450 for 12-15 minutes, until it's brown on the edges and has little flecks of brown across the top.

Now top it with anything you want-I made a white sauce with 4T mayonnaise and a sprinkle of garlic.  Then I topped it with pepperoni and browned, drained Italian sausage.  I sprinkled some shredded Parmesan over, then a generous amount of mozzarella cheese.  Put it back in the oven (same temp) until it starts to bubble a bit and the cheese is melting deliciously over the pizza.  Cut and enjoy.  You'll be able to eat this with your hands if you like.

Makes me hungry all over again just looking at it!

A Quick Hint

I have found, in all my baking experiments, that it's extremely difficult to get a light texture in your wheat-free baked goods.  Especially, as in my case, when you can't use rice flour.  A few weeks ago it hit me-what about club soda?  So first I used it in place of milk for some cupcakes, which were pretty successful, and last night I used it in biscuits.  They were very good!  The thing you have to do with non-gluten flours is cut back a bit on the liquid, since there's no gluten to hold the dough together.  The recipe called for 2/3 cups of milk and I put in 1/2 cup of club soda instead.  It worked perfectly and the biscuits even held together better than they have in my other experiments!  And don't worry if the club soda isn't the freshest-I used some that barely has any fizz and it worked fine.  Next on my agenda is scones-if it works for biscuits it should work for them!

Chocolate Chip Snack Cookies

First, let me apologize for not having posted recently.  I went back to work, and I work in the linens department of a major department store.  It's very physically demanding, so I am beat beyond my expectations when I get home.  Thank goodness my sweet hubby has stepped up and taken over some of the household chores in his retirement!  I've been cooking still, and have a couple new things to share with you.  The first is a snack cookie.  I had been making a similar recipe into waffles, but I have less and less time to bake, and waffles are very time consuming.  They were great, though, because I could take two squares, spread some slightly sweetened cream cheese on and make a yummy sandwich.  Then I could have a nice sweet, probably better for me, while everybody else is eating vending machine cookies and coffeehouse desserts.  So I set out to turn them into cookies that I could bake en masse on a big sheet and be done in about half the time.  Soooo here it is:

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Snack Cookies

2 eggs
1 1/2 C milk
3/4 cooking oil (whatever you're not allergic to)
3/4 C sugar (not much, but enough to fool myself into thinking I'm indulging)
3 1/4 C flour (my current mix is equal parts sorghum, tapioca and potato starch)
4 tsp baking powder (cornstarch free, of course-I use Hain)
1/2 tsp salt
2 C chocolate chips
1/2 C DRY instant mashed potatoes (I always use Honest Earth because it thickens fast and has no strange ingredients)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Beat eggs, oil, sugar and milk.  Stir together dry ingredients, except chips and potatoes.  Stir into egg mixture.  Stir in potato powder and chips.  This will start to thicken-wait for it.  Using a large cookie scoop, place on a greased baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes.  Cool.  I spread them with the sweetened cream cheese, put two together sandwich-style and wrap individually.  I store them in the freezer.  I love hardened chocolate chips so I like to keep the cookies cold.  They stick to your ribs better than the average cookie, too!

I think I have perfected a pasta recipe!  Most recipes contain corn or rice, which I cannot have, so I set out to make one up with my safe flours.  I want to make it one more time before unveiling it-hopefully not months from now-sorry fellow bloggers for the dry spell.