Dennis, Nikki, Nick, Adrienne and David its about you!

I spend considerable amounts of time at my job every week at Chappy's Deli. I often get asked how it is I can work all week in a demanding food service job and enjoy cooking on my time off. The answer is "love". We all speak a different "love" language and mine is food. It thrills my heart to see those I love enjoying what I have made for them. Cooking for cooking sake is a job. Cooking to please others is a joy for both the giver and the receiver. I have had the awesome pleasure of cooking for some amazing friends. So I just want to say to the world and my friends, Dennis, Nikki, Nick, his wife Adrienne and my boss David I do what I do for you.

Chicken Salad Part Two

Every kitchen should be equipped with some key pieces of equipment. One such piece is a good stock pot, which is essential to boiling our chicken. In our fast paced world everyone is taking short cuts, that can be necassary, but it comes at a price. When cooking it is often flavor that is given up for the sake of speed. When making chicken salad, I know many who use boneless and skinless cut chicken pieces to make theirs. Again that's fine, it is faster, but you lose flavor. It is in the bones and skin of the bird that most of the flavor comes from. So I make chicken salad from whole birds. First rinse your chicken well, then salt and pepper the cavity. Then place into the cavity a whole peeled onion and three or four cloves of garlic. Set the bird into the stock pot and place around the bird stalks of celery and carrot. I like to add bay leaves, thyme, parsley and a pinch of nutmeg to the pot and then pour in water. The water should come up over the chicken by about an inch. Bring it to the boil. Then lower the heat and simmer for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. From this will you not only get some great tasting meat for your salad, but some of the most delicious stock as well. In my third post about Chicken Salad I will talk about smoking and baking together, but most importantly the recipes.

Chicken Salad Part Three

Now let's talk about smoking chicken. It's really quite easy, the problem is few of us have a smoker at home. If you are passionate about your food you can buy one at any home supply place for about 70 dollars. Just follow the simple instructions for your model. In about three hours you'll a have great tasting smokey flavor. Be adventurous and try different types of wood chips when you do smoke your birds. Smoked chicken gives great flavor to almost any recipe you have, the problem is many find the smoke flavor over powering. So you will have to just experiment! Baked chicken is my least favorite method of making chicken for any salad, but it is easy. Just remember to season the bird well and for goodness sake don't over cook it. Over cooked chicken demands amazing amounts of mayonnaise to make chicken salad. Now with mayonnaise being the most common of ingredients in any salad recipe. Even recipes for pesto use some mayo. I thought I would spend the next post talking about good mayonnaise. I cant help it, but there is just so much to say about making good chicken salad. So I appoligise for this dragging on a bit longer than I planned.

Chicken Salad Part One

With spring in the air, I found myself drifting into slightly lighter fair. One thing I find popular this time of the year is Chicken Salad. A quick search of recipes on any food site and you will find hundreds of variations. I have been working in the food service industry for near 20 years now and have made my fair share of chicken salad. While the ingredients you add to the chicken are important, the real key is the chicken itself. Start with quality chicken. This is your family you are feeding. Don't by factory raised, hormone fed birds. Spend more for the better quality and better tasting free range and hormone free chickens. Buy local birds, if possible, and get to know the source. I have often heard people say "Oh, it will just be wasted on my kids. Why waste the money." It's because of your kids that you should. . Give your children the purest food you can! OK, now that you have bought your birds, how to cook them becomes the next step.You can boil, smoke or bake your chicken, all good methods and each has a different result. My personal choice is boiling. Smoking is good, but I feel it limits my applications. Baking is fine but the chicken can lack flavor or even dry. By boiling I can add flavor to the chicken, it tends to be more moist and you have the by product of a quality stock. Another area of debate is white meat vs dark meat. All white meat chicken salad is good, but the flavor is really more about the ingredients you add not the chicken. By adding dark meat chicken you are getting a true chicken flavor, therefore, needing less ingredients to give it taste. On the next post we will explore how to boil that chicken. It may suprise you, but there is more to it than you think.

I have a great fondness for bread. Bread of all kinds. I don't care how much food is laid out before me, I can not help but be disappointed when I don't see any bread. Yeast breads are wonderful, but lets face it they are time consuming. There is a wide world of quick breads out there to explore. It is just a matter of finding the one that works for you. I found an old two book set on bread and pasta at a flee market. In it I found a recipe for Irish Soda Bread. What I loved about the recipe was its simplicity. I could turn out a nice loaf start to finish in about 1 hour. After a few modifications I had a base that could adapt to a number of variations. I agree with most of the comments that baking is a very precise processes, but I have found that some variables do apply. The quantity of buttermilk depends on the flour. Things like the storage and age of the flour can all affect the amount of buttermilk in this recipe. So where the quantity of buttermilk is listed you will see a range of amount.

What I have listed here is my base recipe, but be adventurous. So here is Breaking "Irish" Bread with Christopher.

1cup Whole Wheat flour

3cups All Purpose Unbleached flour

1teaspoon Baking Powder

1tablespoon Salt

Mix together in a large bowl

In a separate bowl dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk and then add the oil

2-2 1/2cups Buttermilk

1teaspoon Baking Soda

1/4cup canola oil

Pour the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix just enough to combine. Turn out onto a floured surface and kneed the bread into a 9" round shape. Slide the loaf onto a lightly oiled baking sheet. Then score the top with a very sharp knife. Bake in a hot oven at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Venison Pie

I happen to have a good bit of venison in my freezer at the moment, that is why I am giving you yet another venison recipe. I love venison! Most people complain the game flavor is to strong and it can be. This depends a great deal on how you are preparing it. Marinades and the method of cooking can mellow out that flavor. Farm raised venison is naturally a bit milder than wild, but the expense is outrages. Here in Alabama it is quite easy to find someone with a freezer full of venison they are very willing to share. For the recipe I am sharing with you today, I used about 2lbs of what the package said was round steaks. After trimming a way the bands of muscle tissue, which I have heard Clarissa (Two Fat Ladies) call "nicker elastic" I had 1 1/2lbs of meat. Now to begin.First you want to make some stock from the trimmings. Throw them into a pot with onion,carrot,parsley,salt,pepper,bay leaves and 1 quart of water. Bring to a boil then simmer for about an hour. While the stock is working chop on whole onion into small pieces, but not minced. Slice 8oz of mushrooms or you can buy the already sliced ones. Mince 3 cloves of garlic. Heat a good sized frying pan with 2oz of butter in it and two tablespoons olive oil. Saute the onions, garlic and mushrooms together till the onions are soft. Once the vegetables are soft you want to add salt,pepper,2 tablespoons of whole grain mustard and a 1/4 cup Madeira or Sherry. Set the mixture to the side and let it cool. Once cool add 4oz of sour cream.
Now to the venison. In a large zip lock bag make up some seasoned flour. Add to the bag the venison pieces and shake till coated well. Fry the pieces in batches only a few minutes, 3-4 at the most. You just want to sear the outside, leaving the meat still very rare. You want there to be blood, you are going to cook it some more after all. Once you have all the meat done add it to the cooled mushroom mixture. With this done you now want to prepare a deep dish pie plate to receive the mixture. Buy a good pie crust, it is way to much fiddle faddle to make a crust from scratch. Place the bottom crust into the pie plate and fill with the mixture. Place the top on and be sure to seal the two crusts together. Bake till the crust is golden brown all over, about 50 minutes at 400. Enjoy!!