Main Dishes

Slow Cooker Chicken Cordon Bleu

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Oh my goodness, this is so yummy and definitely on my “comfort foods” list from now on.  The recipe was super easy to put together. We enjoyed it, and it looked a little on the fancy side to serve to our guest. Yet all I had to do was put it all in the slow cooker and wait for it. It was creamy and really satisfying. We served a really great spinach salad with it and some rolls and corn on the cobb. Enjoy!          
6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
(or one breast per person. I had 8.)
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 cup of milk (I used 1-1/4c)
6 slices of deli ham
(OR 1 slice per breast…get some really good ham!)
6 slices of Swiss cheese (1 slice per chicken breast.)
1 (8 Oz) package of Stovetop Herb Stuffing mix 
1/4 cup melted butter
Mix the soup and milk in a bowl. Pour some of the soup onto the bottom of the slow cooker and spread it around so it coats the bottom of the cooker. Then layer the chicken breasts over the sauce.  Next layer the ham over the chicken and then layer the Swiss cheese over the ham. If you had more chicken breast, like I did, then you would do another layer of chicken breasts and ham and cheese.
 Sprinkle the stuffing over the top and then pour the remaining soup mixture over the stuffing. Try to cover the stuffing. Then pour the melted butter over the that.  I think it works best if you try to wet your stuffing. You don’t want it to be crunchy. Spread the soup mixture a bit over the stuffing or even try to poke a spoon or fork down and in between the layers. Cover the slow cooker and cook on med to high for 4-6 hours.
Adapted from recipe by Six Sister’s Stuff

Grilled Caprese Sandwiches

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Grilled Caprese Sandwiches

    My hubby and I were lucky enough to go to Europe a few years back and while we were there, we absolutely feel in love with all things Caprese. The combination of fresh tomatoes, fresh mozarella, and fresh basil is absolute perfection. This sandwich is a great, fast way to get a caprese fix. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

8 slices of your favorite bread 
One ball of fresh mozarella, cut into 1/4 inch slices
4 Roma or Plum tomatoes, cut into 1/4 inch slices
Traditional Basil Pesto
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Freshly ground black pepper


Directions:

Heat skillet to medium. Spread one slice of bread with a thin to moderate layer of pesto to taste, put tomato slices on top of pesto. Grind pepper over tomatoes. Top with layer of mozarella and another piece of bread. Drizzle olive oil on skillet, place sandwiches on skillet with another heavy skillet on top to form a press (or use a panini maker). Cook for 2 or 3 minutes, flip and repeat until golden brown and mozarella is melty and gooey.

Notes: I used homemade bread and that always takes any sandwich over the top. You could also make your own pesto, which I have never tried but intend to someday…..I also find that it helps to drain the tomato slices a bit to take out some of the extra water. 

Source: anediblesymphony.blogspot.com

Chicken Enchiladas with Avocado Cream Sauce

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Here’s another winner in the enchilada department.  You cannot go wrong with this creamy sauce.  I’ve always been a fan of poblano peppers.  Try them in all your Mexican dishes.  They are wonderful in chicken chili!

Ingredients:

2 T. olive oil
1 medium white or yellow onion, peeled and thinly sliced
2 poblano peppers, stemmed and thinly sliced
1 jalapeno pepper, finely diced
8-10 flour tortillas
4 c. shredded cooked chicken
2-3 c. Monterrey Jack cheese
optional garnish:  fresh cilantro, sour cream, and/or shredded cheese

Avocado Cream Sauce Ingredients:

2 T. butter
2 T. flour
2 c. chicken broth
3/4 c. sour cream
1/2 t. cumin
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. garlic powder
1/4 t. pepper
2 California avocados, peeled and pitted
1/2 c. chopped fresh cilantro
juice of 1 lime

Directions:

1.  First make the avocado cream sauce.

2.  Melt the butter in a skillet over medium high heat.  Add the flour, whisking until golden and bubbly, about    2-3 minutes.

3.  Slowly whisk the broth into the flour mixture.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 5 minutes.

4.  Stir in the sour cream, cumin, salt, garlic powder and pepper, whisking if necessary to remove any lumps.

5.  Remove from heat and transfer mixture to a blender or food processor.  Add avocados, cilantro and lime juice and pulse until smooth and well-blended.  (Be very careful blending hot liquids – the heat will expand!  So be sure to remove the lid occasionally so that the heat can escape.)

6.  Season with additional salt or pepper if needed.

7.  In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat.  Add onion, poblano and jalapeno, and saute for 5-6 minutes until the onions are cooked and translucent.

8.  Remove from heat.

9.  To assemble the enchiladas, place a tortilla on a flat surface.

10.  Spread a tablespoon or two of the avocado sauce down the middle of the tortilla.  Then layer on some of the vegetable mixture, shredded chicken and cheese.

11.  Carefully roll the tortilla and place it seam side down in the baking dish.

12.  Repeat with the remaining tortillas.

13.  Drizzle the top with about half of the remaining avocado cream sauce, then cover the dish with foil and bake for about 20 minutes, or until tortillas are heated through and begin to harden.

14.  Remove from the oven, then serve individual enchiladas, drizzled with the remainder of the avocado cream sauce.  You can also garnish with additional cilantro, cheese, and/or sour cream.

Chicken Pillows

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     This is one of our all-time favorite go-to recipes. My hubby loves it, my kids love it, and anything with ‘pillow’ in the name is delightful. It is very easy to put together and freezes well. It is very warm and comfort-foody. When I ask my kids what they want for dinner, this is one that always comes up.

Chicken Pillows

Ingredients:

About 2 cups cooked, shredded chicken
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
4 Tbsp butter, softened
3-4 green onions, finely chopped
3 tubes refrigerated crescent rolls
1 box chicken or turkey stuffing
Melted butter, for dipping

Gravy:

1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
1 can evaporated milk

Directions:
     Heat oven to 325 degrees. For filling: cream together cream cheese and butter. Add in chicken and green onions. I use a hand mixer to mix it all together, which shreds the chicken nicely.
     Open roll dough. Separate each roll. You will have triangle shapes. With a rolling pin, slightly widen and flatten the wide end of the triangle to make more room to put your filling in. Put about 1 Tbsp of filling in center of wide end. Roll toward point as you would a regular crescent roll. Take open side ends and fold toward center and pinch down so you have a nice little pillow.
     Crush stuffing mix a little bit until it is as fine as you would like, I leave mine a little coarse. (Make sure the seasoning and bread crumbs are mixed together) and put in a bowl. Dip chicken pillows in melted butter, then stuffing mix. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.
     Meanwhile, for gravy, heat soup thinned with milk to desired consistency over medium heat in a saucepan.  Serve over hot rolls.

Source: College Roomate 🙂
    

Penzey’s Chicken Pot Pie

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Makes enough to fill a large glass pan

Preheat oven to 450 degrees


Single Crust Pastry:
2 sticks butter​2 pinches of salt​6 Tbls milk (at the end of mixing)
2 cups flour​2 pinches of sugar
To prepare the crust, cut each stick into fourths; it doesn’t have to be cold, but it should not be warm to the point of melting.  Add the flour, salt, and sugar to the butter—use the multi-bladed pastry knife with the handle to mix and break up the butter into small pieces (push down and twist at the same time to create a lot of floured chunks of butter.)  Put the milk in at this stage and continue mixing until it doesn’t seem like you are making any more progress.  Then use your hand(s) to squeeze everything together into a ball of dough.  Form into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and chill until it can be easily handled—at least half an hour.  While it is chilling, prepare the filling.
Filling:  In a Medium Sauce pan, add:
2 cups diced raw carrots (very thinly sliced carrots also work well)
1 stock of diced celery (optional)
3 Tbls dried white onion flakes
2 4-oz cans of mushrooms; pour everything into the pan including the approximately
½  cup of water in each can or 1 cup thinly sliced fresh mushrooms
Pour the water from the quart of cooked chicken into the pan (it will be about 1 cup’s worth) then add another 3 cups of water, bring to a boil and let simmer for 20 minutes.
Using a strainer and bowl, pour what has been cooking into the strainer inside the bowl, return the vegetables to the pot, put 4 cups of the drained liquid back into the pot.  If you need more, just add water from the tap to make up the 4 cups of liquid. Put the pot on medium heat and Add:
2 cups frozen baby peas
3 tsp Chicken (or turkey) soup base (Penzey’s paste)
In a small cup combine 6 Tbls of cornstarch with 6 Tbls of cold water and slowly add the white liquid mixture to the pot while stirring.  Stir pot constantly over medium heat until it starts to boil.  Let boil for 1 minute before adding:
4 cups cooked diced chicken (or turkey) (we use the drained quart of bottled chicken)
1 tsp Pensey’s poultry seasoning or rubbed sage(optional)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground pepper
Stir just enough to break up the chunks of meat and equally distribute everything before pouring into the oil-sprayed pan.
Roll out the pastry on a flour-covered table into the shape and size of the pan.  Place the pastry on top of the filled dish and cut slits to vent.  Bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes.  Check after 20 minutes.  If the crust is getting really brown, place a piece of aluminum foil loosely over the top.  Or, if it is not browning quickly enough, turn on the broiler from above to hasten the browning process.   Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.  Because of the temperature, it will stay hot in the bowls for quite some time while eating.

Source: Penzey’s Spices Catalog http://www.penzeys.com/

Chicken and Gnocchi Soup (Olive Garden style)

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     Thank you so much for inviting me to post on this wonderful blog! I love to cook and try new things, so I am looking forward to being here very much. 

    For my first post, I will share a wonderful soup we tried a few weeks ago. If you have ever tried Olive Garden’s Chicken and Gnocchi soup, you will be as excited to try this as I was. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy this was to put together. We all loved it (kids included)! It is hearty, silky, and satisfying. And let’s be honest, Gnocchi is just fun to say.

Chicken and Gnocchi Soup (Olive Garden Style)

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon EVOO
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 4 tablespoons flour
  • 1 quart half and half
  • 1/2 cup celery, finely diced
  • 1 cup onion, finely diced
  • 2 minced garlic cloves
  • 1 or 2-14 ounce cans of chicken broth (adjust to desired level of thickness)
  • 1 cup carrots, finely grated
  • 1 cup chicken breasts, cooked and diced
  • 1 package gnocchi, cooked  (usually in the pasta or prepared food sections of the store)
  • 1 cup of fresh spinach coarsely chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon parsley
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (optional, but you should use it!)

Instructions

Saute the onion, celery, and garlic in the butter and olive oil over medium heat until the onion becomes translucent. Cook gnocchi according to directions. Stir in flour to make a roux and cook out the raw flavor of the flour for about one minute. Add half and half. Add in the carrots and chicken. Once the mixture becomes thick, add the chicken broth. Stir until the mixture thickens again, add the cooked gnocchi, spinach, and seasoning. Simmer until soup is heated through. May season with additional salt to taste.

Notes: I used home canned chicken for speed and it was delicious. You could also use a Rotisserie chicken, which would give it an added flavor boost.

For those of you who don’t know, Gnocchi is Italian for potato dumplings. 

Source: Copykat.com

Baked Halibut Cakes

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Hi all. My name is Becca and I am new to the Mormon Mavens in the Kitchen! I am so excited to be a part of this blog. 
The first recipe I am sharing is a twist on my mom’s Halibut Cakes. I lived in Alaska growing up and we had a lot of fresh fish. One of my favorite dishes was my mom’s halibut cakes. Lately my husband and I have been working on losing weight and so I wanted to try and lighten up the halibut cakes by baking them instead of frying them. To make sure they had a nice crisp crust, I used Panko breadcrumbs instead of the original breading of crushed saltine crackers.

Halibut Cakes

1 lb. halibut or other mild fish chopped into small chunks
2 large celery stalks-diced
1 small onion-diced
3 slices white bread-cubed
1 egg-beaten
2 Tbsp. mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. salt
1-2 tsp. old bay seasoning

For breading:
1 1/2 C. panko crumbs
S&P to taste
Old bay seasoning

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Or you can set it to broil on low.
2. Saute onion and celery until tender.
3. Mix chopped fish, bread, mayo, parsley, lemon juice, egg, sauteed veggies and seasonings. Shape into patties.
4. Coat patties in breadcrumbs, place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Broil/bake about 3-4 minutes per side, or until the crumbs are golden and patties are cooked through.
Serve with tartar sauce and lemon wedges.

Chicken with Tropical Barbecue Sauce

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It was late in the day on Sunday and I really just wanted to throw something in the slow cooker for even later.  What did I have on hand?  First I checked my trusty Fix-It and Forget-It  Cookbook and right there on page 176 was the answer.  Thank you Lois Stoltzfus from Honey Brook, PA.  It was just a simple, no fuss meal but I was grateful to have it cooking away as I watched the afternoon session of our Church’s world-wide conference.  Love my slow cooker.  Seriously.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup molasses
2 T. cider vinegar
2 T. Worcestershire Sauce
2 t. prepared mustard
1/8-1/4 hot pepper sauce (I used about a teaspoon of Sriracha sauce, but that wasn’t spicy enough)
2 T. orange juice
3 whole chicken breasts, halved ( I used about 5 boneless, skinless breasts)

1.  Combine molasses, vinegar, Worcestershire Sauce, and orange juice.  Brush over chicken.
2.  Place chicken in slow cooker (I poured the rest of the sauce mixture over the chicken).
3.  Cover.  Cook on Low 7-9 hours, or Hight 3-4 hours.

I served this with rice and some canned tropical fruit, chilled.  Yummmm….

Source:  Lois Stoltzfus, Fix-It and Forget-It, p. 176.

Food Storage Chili

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I always have the supplies for this on hand!  It is a great throw together meal, people like it, and it feeds a lot of people!

Add the following to a large pot (you can add straight from the can or drain some of the cans whichever you prefer, I usually add straight from the can).

2 cans chili
2 cans sweet corn
2 cans pinto beans
2 cans black beans
2 cans red kidney beans
2 cans green chilies
2 quarts diced tomatoes
1 Tbl. dried onions
Taco seasoning to taste or cumin and chili powder to taste.

Cook on medium heat until heated through (stir often) then simmer for 30 min.  Top with grated cheese, sour cream etc.  It tastes great with corn bread or biscuits.  Enjoy!

Recipe Source: My amazing mother, Sheryl Lewis.

Six Layer Casserole

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This is one of the recipes that I got from my Mom years ago and I pulled it out of my family cookbook the other day to fix sometime soon.  Sometime soon is today, but we will be eating a late supper.  This has to cook an hour and a half. I really like it because it is simple, good food.  I also took this as an opportunity to use some of my food storage items–the celery and the bell pepper.  I have both of these in my pantry in dehydrated form, so after re-hydrating according to the package directions, I was able to use them in my casserole.  I substituted Mixed Bell Peppers for the minced green pepper.  I will just give you the basic ingredient list so that you can make this the first time from fresh vegetables.



Ingredients:
2 cups sliced raw potatoes (I used red potatoes, unpeeled, to save time)
2 cups chopped celery 
1 lb. lean ground beef, browned
1/2 cup sliced onion
1 cup minced green pepper
2 cups cooked tomatoes, drained
2 tsp. salt
  pepper, to taste




1.  Grease a 2 quart casserole dish.
2.  Layer potatoes, celery, beef, onion, and green pepper.
3.  Combine tomatoes, salt, and pepper and spoon over top.
4.  Cover and bake about 1 1/2 hours at 350 F.

Source: Pat Brew, Greenville, NC.