Chicken and Gravy with noodles

Happy valentine's day!
This isn't exactly a valentine's day cooking post. I don't think I'll be cooking anything special for valentine's day. This is just something I happened to make last week, and while making it was lovely and dare I say, romantic, it's not a spectacular dinner like one would expect on valentine's day. It's just dinner.
So, for those of you that would rather just ignore this day altogether, here's your chance. This is NOT a themed blog post.

See, my boyfriend makes this gravy. (Victoria calls it sauce, but whatever. It looks and tastes like gravy.)
Fabulous Gravy:
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can water
1 package French Onion soup mix
Mix, heat, devour.

Once, I made this gravy and put it on instant box stuffing. It was amazing. But not as amazing as when you throw some one top of noodles that have about 3 tablespoons of butter mixed into them first.
Which is what I did.

But first, we grilled 3 chicken breasts for a little while, and then stuck them in a casserole dish with the gravy and baked them for what seemed like an ETERNITY but was probably about an hour and a half.

Plate, noodles, chicken, gravy on everything. Try not to shovel it all in at once.

xxixlovexdumplingsx14xx

It's been horribly, bitterly cold here in Indiana. And with so much ice! I have never before actually fallen on my ass trying to walk to class, but this winter it has happened no less than four times. All of those times, there were people watching.
So, how to survive? Since hibernation isn't an option (I wish), the only alternative seems to be to make warm food and drink alcohol. Drinking warm alcohol is also a plus.
I did just that last night. I had been eyeing a recipe on Bread and Honey for chicken and dumplings. I kept putting it off, because I didn't want to buy a carton of heavy cream and then waste half of it, but since I had to get the cream for the vodka cream sauce, I decided to go ahead and make it.
My friend Victoria was feeling sick. That was another good reason to make it.

Chicken and Dumplings, via Bread and Honey:
6 or so cups of broth (we made our own chicken broth last night.)
2 large carrots, diced
2 stalks of celery (oh my god, try not to freak out about how LONG IT TAKES TO CHOP IT), diced
1 med-large yellow onion, diced
handful of minced garlic
2 chicken breasts, chopped into bite sized pieces
Oil, butter, flour
about 1/3 cup (or like, a glug) of heavy cream

Saute vegetables in a good sized hunk of butter and a drizzle of olive oil (starting with onions & garlic) for a few minutes until they begin to soften. Throw in a handful of flour and stir in quickly to make a roux. Toast for a moment, then add stock. Stir rapidly until liquid begins to boil, then drop to a simmer. Add the chicken breast, and a glug of heavy cream. Toss in a bay leaf, and let simmer for a few minutes.

In a mixing bowl, prep your dumplings:

2 cups of flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
generous dash of salt
1 to 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
fresh thyme leaves
lemon zest

Mix together dry ingredients, then add cream until "desired consistency" is reached. Jason didn't tell me what the 'desired' consistency is, but I'm guessing something thick enough to spoon into the hot soup that will keep its shape. Cook's Illustrated describes is as "very thick and shaggy." I like describing dough as "shaggy."

Spoon dumplings into the soup pot, covering the entire surface of the soup. Put a lid on the pot and let simmer for 20-30 minutes until dumplings puff up.

{End.}

Well, I didn't use celery. But not because I thought it would take too long to chop it, I just didn't have any and didn't want to make my boyfriend buy it at the store, although I did send him to get broth. I didn't make my own broth either.
When I started making the dumplings, the dough was way too thick, so I ended up adding milk, which did the trick. I didn't have enough cream left from the vodka sauce to make it entirely out of cream and flour, but I think that's perfectly all right, because my GOD they were rich. I finished my bowl, but didn't go back for seconds. Now, I am craving the leftovers like none other. I decided to try to brave saving the leftovers, because they were so good I didn't have the heart to throw it out.
As far as the drinks, there was a bottle of red wine, a six pack of Heineken dark lager (which I think tastes a little like soy sauce), a Bailey's and milk on the rocks, a good portion of limoncello and a good portion of Chartreuse. A post on Chartreuse is yet to come, because it really deserves its own.
I highly recommend that you make dumplings. I had never had real homemade dumplings before, only the canned kind or the kind you get at Cracker Barrel, or the kind in Campbell's soup. This completely blew them out of the water. But I might suggest using a little bit less cream, at least in the broth. Because it was incredibly rich.

Crazy chicken marinade and fabulous, sticky risotto

Food blogs. I love them. Smitten Kitchen, the French Revolution, Bread and Honey. I want to be them. I want to be able to cook like them.
I don't know if I cook enough to write about food. I have been trying, because I hear that letting your boyfriend pay for dinner at a restaurant every night is bad on several levels. Also, I've always wanted to learn to cook.
So, I collect recipes. I buy ingredients. I try not to forget the baking powder. But it doesn't always work out. If it doesn't, I'll still blog about it. You know why? Because some of us are kind of crappy in the kitchen sometimes, whether it's due to human error, or a lack of expensive kitchen items such as...nonstick saucepans.
I'm in college. I'm poor. Sometimes I can't afford basic stuff. One day I will get my revenge.
So, this Saturday. Saturdays usually end up being my cooking days, because my boyfriend decides to be an overachiever and work on his lesson plans for the week. And I decide to give myself the day off, and cook instead.

This Saturday, I kind of outdid myself as far as making an entire meal as opposed to just one (usually dessert) item. I can't resist the desserts.
I ended up making tomato and arugula salad, grilled chicken marinated in a crazy mix of liquids and herbs that I made up (which was really good) and onion and feta risotto. Earlier in the day, I made something called World Peace Cookies that I found on Smitten Kitchen.
I'm only going to talk about the chicken and risotto, because the other two dishes are things that I plan to make again and improve upon.
(Side note: I know that it's approaching the sacrilegious to propose making changes to the recipe for World Peace Cookies. Just hear me out in my blog post after I make it. I promise to think up a new name for them.)

So first, for the chicken.
I defrosted 2 chicken breasts that I had in my freezer.
Last week, I bought a bag of like 15 frozen chicken breasts for $5.99 at Meijer, and being a college student, this is like buying a bag of gold for $5.99. I digress.
To defrost the chicken, I filled my sink with hot water and stuck the chicken breasts in the sink in a medium-sized but sturdy ziplog bag. I then stuck a large mixing bowl on top of it to keep it submerged. That lasted for about 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, I took the bag out of the water, and looked around my kitchen to see what I could make into a marinade.
I decided on this:
(Just so we're clear, this was very haphazard so there were no precise measurements. I just filled the bag enough to mostly cover the chicken breasts.)

Katie's insane chicken marinade:
Lots of lemon juice
A medium amount of olive oil (about 4 "glugs" of the bottle)
Equal (or more) amount warm water as olive oil
A spoonful of salt
4 large drops of vanilla (as my mom said, "Ew!" But you really couldn't taste it)
Too much dried rosemary
Teaspoon (I guess) of coriander
Few shakes of dried cilantro shaker
Few shakes of cayenne pepper (My definition of "few" is probably larger than yours, when it comes to cayenne)
6 tiny pieces of minced garlic
8 grinds of black pepper grinder

The chicken was very good on my trusty world's tiniest George Foreman grill. If I were to make it again, I'd take out the vanilla, half the rosemary, and all the cilantro. I'd use more coriander and more garlic and add basil, I suppose. But again, that's just a guess.

Now the risotto was a much more precise recipe, because I found it online. (Cooking Light, via MyRecipes.com) My notes are in blue.

Vidalia Onion Risotto with Feta Cheese

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil (Olive.)
  
• 2 cups chopped Vidalia or other sweet onion (Couldn't find any vidalia, used red onion instead. It was fine.)
  
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 1/2 cups uncooked Arborio or other short-grain rice (I just used plain old white rice.)
  
• 2 (14 1/2-ounce) cans vegetable broth
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled feta cheese, divided
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (I used curly parsley, because it's what I have.)
  
• 1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated Parmesan cheese
• Freshly ground pepper
  

Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
Add onion and garlic; sauté 1 minute. (I did this for way longer than 1 minute, but no longer than 5. I resisted the impulse to saute them in beer.)
Stir in rice.
Add 1/2 cup broth; cook until liquid is nearly absorbed, stirring constantly. Add remaining broth, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly until each portion of broth is nearly absorbed before adding the next portion of broth. (As usual, I ignored this "gradual" part and just added all the liquid at once.)

Remove from heat; stir in 1/4 cup feta cheese, parsley, and Parmesan cheese. Spoon rice mixture into a serving bowl; top with 1/4 cup feta cheese and pepper.

{End.}

I used chicken broth instead of vegetable, because I didn't have any vegetable. It seemed to taste better with the crazy grilled chicken anyway. Also, I only used 1 can of broth because I only had one can of broth. I used 1 can of water instead, and added extra salt to compensate. At the end, the rice wasn't cooked (probably due to my ignoring of the directions) and I had to add probably another cup and a half of water, and half a cup of whole milk to the mixture. The milk was an impulse that struck me at the last second, but it didn't seem to do any harm, if it did anything at all.
I also added probably more feta than was necessary, and way more parmesan than was necessary. The parmesan wasn't my idea - I forgot to tell my boyfriend to stop grating the cheese at a certain point and so our risotto was extra cheesy. Oh well - the more cheese, the better, I say. Except in the case of a certain stromboli from Sbarro. Yuck.

I've got to tell you, this feta I bought was the best $4 I've spent in a long time. I got a whole pound of fresh feta from the Meijer deli for only $4. Yum.

Anyway, the risotto turned out to be quite excellent, and a great accompaniment to the crazy chicken. It wasn't bad as leftovers either. My only regret is that I didn't make more of it. And that I don't have a teflon-lined saucepan, because everything sticks to the bottom of my glass ones. Including a lot of my precious risotto.