Week Five: Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew

Posted on February 4, 2011 by elizabeth

I asked for a crock pot cookbook for Christmas this year, thinking that an actual book would help me stay motivated and organized in my efforts to complete #10 on my 30 Before 30 list. I have a tendency to bookmark random recipes on blogs or from friends’ links, and it often means that I’m left without anything very appealing when I actually decide to cook. Or, I’m left with endless recipes for things containing black beans, sweet potatoes, or both.

I am going through a pretty intense sweet potato phase right now, and the obsession seems to be mostly confined to baking the sweet potatoes and topping them with a little butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper. Sweet potatoes are so good that they really don’t need much embellishment, and the few times that I have tried recipes with sweet potatoes and a bunch of other crap, I’ve been disappointed.

This stew is very, very, VERY simple – it basically contains carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and chicken. It is proof of either my dedication to this Handmade52 project or my interest in this particular recipe that I actually bought, cleaned, and cut chicken breasts. I am really intimidated by raw meat, and this was actually the very first time that I bought and cooked chicken on my own. In spite of my poor parents’ endless lessons on cleaning and cooking chicken in any number of ways, I am both grossed out texturally and squicked by the whole “it’s raw chicken be carefullllll” thing. But I suffered through it, and maybe it wasn’t as bad as I feared. (I’m not going to start cooking it often, but at least I’ve, you know, done it.)

The main problem with this recipe is that it sort of doesn’t fit into my easy-quick-set it up before work crock pot expectations. There’s a lot of peeling and cubing of the ingredients. It took me about a half an hour to get this all ready, and adding a half hour to my morning routine to cut up raw chicken is not really in the cards. So I saved this for a day off, and that meant being able to cook it on high rather than all damn day. It started smelling really tasty just as I sat down around 5pm to get through the end of the book I’ve been reading this week, and it was hard to wait the remaining two hours to eat. The flavor is hard to describe, and not one that I’ve tasted before. Something about the combination of spices made this much tastier than I expected. Maybe it was the celery seeds? Either way, I really enjoyed this, and am looking forward to having it again!

Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew
From Crock-Pot Best-Loved Slow Cooker Recipes
Makes 6 servings

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed (mine were gigantic)
2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch slices (I used a whole hell of a lot of baby carrots)
1 can (28 ounces) whole stewed tomatoes, undrained (I might just used diced next time)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon celery seeds
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

Combine chicken, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes with juice, salt, paprika, celery seeds, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and broth in the slow cooker. Cover, cook on low 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours. To serve, sprinkle with basil.

Week Four: Lindsey’s Hat

Posted on January 26, 2011 by elizabeth

My sister has been very patiently asking me to make her a hat ever since she saw the first hat I crocheted for the first of all of the babies back in August. Once the time-sensitive hats were all made, we finally started deciding what kind of hat she wanted. There were a lot of emails back and forth; she knew she wanted earflaps and braided tassles, but wasn’t sure about the rest, and she really wanted to leave it up to me once she picked the colors (light gray, dark gray, and a small amount of red, to match her winter coat and the snow boots that she just got).

So I made her a hat, with earflaps, braided tassles, and a really fat pom pom on top for good measure.

The pom pom caused some grief on my part, just because I couldn’t get the plastic pom pom maker I bought to work properly on the first couple of tries. The hat itself is just a teensy bit too big, but Lindsey has really thick hair so it sort of balances out in the end. There are a few details that I’m not happy with, mostly because I was expecting to need quite a few more rows than I did, so I would have added more light gray on the brim, but that really doesn’t matter too much in the long run.

I think she looks totally adorable in it, and she loves the hat, so that makes it a success!

Week Three: Freezer Burritos

Posted on January 22, 2011 by elizabeth

I’m not sure anyone who’s out there reading this will be shocked when I say that I have a bit of a problem when it comes to burritos. So this week I tried an experiment, namely making a whole bunch of burritos and then freezing them for future lunches and dinners. My brother stopped by while I was still cooking (or, just as the smoke started pouring out of the microwave, but more on that later), and simply didn’t believe that I have never made my own burritos before. “But you like them so much, why wouldn’t you just make them yourself?” And I could only answer feebly, “Because Chipotle already does it perfectly?”

I found this Everyday Food recipe a few weeks ago and immediately printed it out. It seemed very easy, and bean burritos are my favorite anyway. Plus, I’m enough of a beginner that I need instructions for freezing and then subsequently reheating food to be spelled out for me line by line.

I set out to make these on Tuesday night, and it sort of started off badly and continued downhill. I didn’t calculate ahead of time that I had not bought the quick kind of brown rice, nor did I make anywhere near enough. Luckily, the long cooking time for the rice gave my slow ass time to chop the onions, garlic, and jalapenos. (Disaster number two: thinking that because jalapenos aren’t that hot, I didn’t need to pay attention to my hands and touching my eyes. Idiot.) Anyway, basically, you get the onions, garlic and peppers cooking, add the tomato paste (I’m still not sure I am happy about this addition; it totally overpowered everything) and beans, and cook until everything gets nice and combined.

Meanwhile, I decided to cook more rice, but in the microwave this time, because I didn’t want to use the same pot on the stove again? I really don’t know. I thought it would be quicker somehow, and something went wrong somewhere, because even though it still should have been way short on cooking time, in the amount of time it took me to let my brother in (and for him to help me carry my new desk into the apartment), the microwave was smoking, the rice blackened, and the tupperware warped and melted. (My apartment still smelled like burning the next day).

At this point it was almost 9pm and I was starting to lose interest in ever eating these burritos… but my brother convinced me to snap out of it and I wrapped them all up and ate one, too.

And it was pretty tasty, all told. The flavors had a lot of time to combine, and it wasn’t too liquidy, so it didn’t ooze too much.

I’m glad that I have seven future meals all ready to go, but this whole experience has definitely broken a bit of that whole MustFollowRecipe rule-following internal strictness, because the recipe? Made a decent burrito. But the way I’d make a burrito myself (rice, black beans, peppers and onions, salsa, cheese, sour cream and/or guacamole if I’m feeling indulgent) would have been better. And I can still make them ahead and freeze them.

Say it with me now: DUH.

Week Two: Teddy Bear Hat

Posted on January 14, 2011 by elizabeth

I have been cooking up this project for a long time, and it’s one of those things that I got so, so excited about that it was hard to keep it a secret. Before September, I had never made a hat of any kind, but the influx of babies among my family and friends lately has me completely, totally obsessed with making hats. I knitted a few first, but there’s something so satisfying and fun about crocheting a hat, maybe because I really prefer to start at the crown and work down, whereas the knitting patterns I’ve seen so far start at the brim and work up. (Maybe I just need to knit more hats, though!)

Anyway! I first saw this pattern on ravelry and ended up buying it from the Inner Hooker etsy store. Little ears on babies pretty much slay me. I actually have now made two of these hats, one to give to my cousin’s new baby for Christmas, and one as a first birthday present for Jonah. The pattern sizing seemed a little off, and I’m not sure if that’s because of the wrong hook or what… but I just made it in a smaller size (3-6 months for 1 year old baby J fit him perfectly; when I made the 12 month size it came out like 20+ inches in diameter which is like… gigantic). I ended up adapting the earflap design from the Stitch-n-Bitch crochet book.

But seriously, I love how this turned out and I loved making it and I hope you guys don’t get sick of hats, because I’ve got at least two more in the works.

Week One: Pad Thai

Posted on January 8, 2011 by elizabeth

Introducing my newest project, Handmade52! My goal is to create/craft/cook/bake/make something new each week for the duration of 2011. A whole project of cooking or crafts would probably be a little overkill, so I’m hoping that by combining them all into one big, nebulous project, it will be easier to stick with it. Of course, my rule-following self is already struggling (mentally) with such a vague guideline, but it’s okay.

This week I decided to start with something that I have loved for a long time, namely pad thai. I remembered that Kasia had a recipe that she was obsessed with, and since we tend to have similar tastes, I asked her to share her recipe, which came from Jaden Hair’s Steamy Kitchen cookbook. I pulled the book off the shelf at the library that afternoon, and made it on my day off today. As usual, the prep took me way longer than it probably needed to, and involved an overly large number of dirty bowls and cooking utensils.

I had intended to just use the original cookbook recipe, but I had some trouble finding some of the ingredients to make my own pad thai sauce, and ended up buying a pre-made sauce. Of course, that package came with a slightly difference recipe, and I was sort of disorganized when it came to combining the two.

The end result? Was a little underwhelming, and I was SO disappointed after what felt like a long time cooking for such a simple recipe. (It probably wasn’t as long as it felt, but a few near-disasters made it seem like forever.) The problem, I think, was that I bungled the noodles, which needed to soak before being stir-fried. Except the package I bought said to cook them like regular pasta, and I followed the recipe’s instructions rather than the package’s. The noodles were stiff and undercooked, which made it sort of hilariously difficult to mix all the ingredients together. (The noodles were stubbornly staying in one rather solid chunk.) I also probably used too much chicken. Or maybe not. I’m not sure anymore. I would try this again, though, because I think with some practice I can get it right.

Chicken Pad Thai
(Adapted from Steamy Kitchen’s Shrimp Pad Thai and the recipe on the back of the A Taste of Thai Pad Thai sauce, and inspired by Kasia)

8 oz dried rice noodles
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
1 lb ground chicken
2 tbsp chopped garlic (4 cloves, or thereabouts, which seems like a lot looking back)
6 scallions, chopped
2 cups fresh bean sprouts
1 lime, cut into wedges
1/2 cup chopped unsalted dry roasted peanuts
1 3.25 oz package Pad Thai Sauce

Soak noodles according to directions. Scramble the eggs lightly in a separate pan, and set aside in a separate bowl. Heat oil in wok. Add chicken, and stir-fry until cooked through. Push the chicken to one side of the wok, and add garlic and green onions to an empty area of the wok. Stir-fry until fragrant. Add the drained noodles, the cooked eggs, and the Pad Thai sauce. Stir-fry until the noodles are soft and all ingredients have combined. Add the peanuts and bean sprouts and cook a minute more. Serve with a lime wedge. Makes about 4 servings if your bowls are big like mine.