Being lazy on a sunday we pretty much just watched the food channel all day. There was a show on how Guy Firedi and they showed one of his signature dishes and it looked so good. We started talking about dinner and I wanted to try something new. We both said this dish. (Theresa you owe me a coke) Cajun Chicken Alfredo is money, off the hook, and winner winner chicken dinner.

Theresa and I met at Papa John’s 13 years ago. I was a manager and she worked in store. We have made thousands of cheesestix in our lives. Since I have been doing the bread and making pizza crusts, I figured this would be easy. Made up a batch with homemade garlic butter and some liquid evil from Papa John’s.

So we trying to make some new meals. Have had some failures, but nailed it Friday night. Some folks suggested some good sites to find recipes. Epicurious seems like a favorite, but after scanning a bunch of recipes I was getting frustrated and decided to try an recreate dishes we would get if we went out. It has worked for us before and usually comes out pretty good. Theresa likes the voodoo chicken from Lazlo’s and I decided to try something like that.

Voodoo Chicken
Boneless breast blackened with Cajun spices, topped with a three-cheese sauce.

When it comes to blackening chicken I usually stick to just cayenne, salt, black pepper, and maybe some garlic salt. I checked out Alton Brown’s blackening for salmon and added some celery seed, onion powder, sage, paprika, and mistys seasoning. Spread lightly over the flattened breasts and sauted in olive oil and clarified butter.

I did not get good pics of this meal cuz I was a bit flustered.

I use a lot of cheese cloth. Clarifying butter, draining yogurt, filtering out stocks before separating out the fat, and other things. The $3 little packs from the grocery store are so lame because you get so little of it. I usually have 2 packs on hand. I figured I could find a big roll online and checked amazon. $18 plus shipping for 10 yards. Checked ebay and found the same person selling it for $3 more with no shipping. I have a ton of it now.

I wonder if joanne fabrics sells it?

Left is dinner rolls without any steam in the oven (forgot to put a cup of hot water in the preheated
broiler pan)
Right with steam, but still undercooked.

Been making bread and pizza shells every day for a week and took a couple days off. This dough recipe makes a dense crumb. I have tried diff amounts of letting it rise, but it is usually the same. It is really close to sourdough in so many ways, but not sour. When I get a good crust on it it is really good.

We got more books and I have gotten a bit of read on. Theresa got Alton’s one about baking. Gave up soda, but eat a lot of bread and butter now. I call it a draw.

Took some of the refrigerated dough yesterday and made a few pizza crusts. Roll out and place on hot stone for about 3 minutes to set the dough and kill the yeast. Today I made a pizza and put it on a hot stone just so I could know what that was like. My goal is to do these for lunch and I will not be able to get the stone h=hot for that, but they should do fine in the toaster oven.

We roast chickens often and normally make chicken noodle soup, but I thought a soup with rice in it might be good. Used the pressure cooker to make a stock from the chicken leavings with onion, carrots, celery, garlic, peppercorns, bay leafs, and water. An hour cooking made it very flavorful. Made the rice with canned chicken broth and it turned out pretty decent. The rice just sinks to the bottom though.

^ Before pressure cooking ^ Did not get an after, but it pretty much obliterates everything. Strain, rince to get all the god stuff, and remove the fat with a separator.

I have picked up a baking stone and made my third batch of dough. For tonight I made some dinner rolls and they were really good, but a bit small. I did some other cool stuff with the dough and will let you know after lunch Monday if it all works out.

Same dough, 2nd day of baking. Got a few more tips. Letting the oven go about 20 minutes after preheating will ensure the whole oven is at the temp you want and hold it better. This time I let the dough rise a bit more before I baked it. It came out better and still tastes really good, but it is still a bit dense. I want those huge holes like swiss cheese. In the pic below you can see how it looked from being sliced.

I am guessing not getting the first initial rise has hurt this first dough I made. So I have made another batch and will wait till it starts to fall before I put it in the fridge. Will post how that goes and then work on perfecting it.

Was planning on making Chicken Scallopine from Pioneer woman with zucchini instead of mushrooms. Theresa took one bite and almost spit it out. It was not overly lemony, but just tasted strange. I forgot the wine too.