Rotisserie chicken - the solo cook's friend

I just finished making a batch of my curried chicken "pate" and am letting it sit to absorb the flavors. I made it with left-over rotisserie chicken and even though I've posted about it before I thought I'd post what I've done with this most recent chicken. First, by the time I got it home I was famished partly from smelling it all the way home from the store.  So my first meal from it was basically standing in the kitchen and cutting off a thigh and drumstick and eating it while it was still hot.  Not a pretty picture but juicy good!

Next I made a chicken pot pie (recipe here) and the crust wasn't too attractive but it still makes a very tasty, comfort food dinner.

Now today as I said, I've made a batch of the curried chicken pate (recipe here) which will be enough for two lunches.

And I still have a whole leg and some breast meat left. That will be more than enough to make a curried chicken tikka masala type dinner. No recipe here--I use a bottled sauce and always add a little milk or cream to it, some frozen peas and lots of times some chunks of tomato which I add right at the end just to heat them up. I serve that with the naan bread I buy at the grocery store which is very good.

So no pictures this time. Just a reminder that those rotisserie chickens are a wonderful boon for the solo cook. Bring one home, enjoy your first meal that evening while it's still hot, then after it cools take the meat off the carcass (I left the meat on the thigh and drumstick), put it in the fridge and come up with your own ideas for other meals - in a pasta sauce or a noodle casserole, a delicious salad (the kind with nuts and grapes), whatever floats your boat.

For my $4.99 bird I will have had 3 dinners and two lunches and that's hard to beat.

Having fun with little pizzas

and thinking maybe I should open a pizza-for-one parlor!  Not really, but since I made that first eggplant one, I've made three more that I remember - probably so far that's it.  But I've enjoyed each one and so far, no matter what I put on them, they are very tasty.  I took pictures of two of them:

First is a chili pizza!  I had made my chili and decided rather than just keep eating bowl after bowl, I'd (for some strange reason) try using it for a pizza.  Baked it on naan bread like the others and it was really good!  I also some onion and red & green peppers and sprinkled them around. (I might have some minced garlic in there too - can't remember).  Then I used grated cheddar for the topping, popped it in my toaster oven for 8 minutes and was really delighted with the result.  I think I was so tickled with it when I took it out of the oven I didn't remember to take another picture to show it finished.

I also think one reason I'm finding these so tasty is because of the bread.  It's just the right thickness and when it gets brown and crusty it has such a good toasty flavor - very different from a standard pizza crust but very tasty.


So, this next one didn't turn out too great because I used a regular sized tomato and cut the slices too thick.  I had meant for them to kind of shrivel up a little like they do when they're baked but the pizza doesn't bake long enough to give the thick slices time to do that.  However, I liked the flavor mix so I made another one later and used my Campari tomatoes - they're smaller than a regular tomato but bigger than a cherry tomato.  And I managed to get them sliced more thinly.

The picture on the left always makes me think I'm looking at fish for some reason.  I spread a couple teaspoons of crushed tomatoes on the bread, then added some of the sautéed onion/pepper mix and finished off with some Feta cheese.  It was tasty but ugly and very difficult to eat with those great slabs of tomato.  Wish I had taken a picture of the second one I made which was delicious!


So I think these little pizzas will be something I go to fairly regularly.  I was thinking since I'm using naan bread I should probably try a curry one sometime.  I'll ponder that for a bit.

Meanwhile, I tried another recipe a week or two before all this pizza baking.  It was from the Food & Wine cookbook and so was a recipe to serve four.  I cut it down either to a half or quarter.  It was Polenta with Eggplant, Onion and Tomato and was also very good although I think it would be just about as good and easier to just serve it on pasta.  I love polenta but it takes quite a while to get cooked and requires not necessarily constant stirring but frequent stirring.  

Here's the cooking part and below is the eating part. :)

And that's my cooking report.  I've also made a lentil recipe twice now - once with quite old lentils and when that wasn't wildly successful but was tasty I bought new lentils and made it again.  I'm going to be posting that one in My Recipes and will probably also add these pizza ideas to the pizza "recipe" I've already posted.  If anyone ever tries this idea (and you could always use those packaged individual pizza crusts although I prefer the naan) and comes up with other combinations, I would love to hear about them and post them.

Bon appetit!

A New "for one" Recipe and Bread Diary Part II

Well, I always seem to announce in my posts that I'm going to do this, that or the other and then often times never get around to it. This time I thought I remembered posting my latest "I'm going to" and went through my last two posts and nope, I didn't. And this time, I've been doing it!!! 

Ah, the vagaries of life...

Anyway, my vow was to go through most all my "cooking for one" cookbooks, select recipes that sounded good and easily doable,
make up shopping lists for each one and start trying them. And I've been doing that. So far, I've made SIX! And out of all those, the one I made last night is my favorite and I took a picture of it and have posted the recipe on my RECIPES page (tab above). It is Eggplant-Hummus Pizza for One and I hope you don't let the eggplant turn you off. I really enjoyed it plus which I think it would be just as good with veggies other than eggplant.

On my lists there are two that I pencilled in a big NO! after trying them - one was way too much trouble for a mediocre dish and the other one I can't remember why it got a thumbs down.  It's interesting that they were both from the same book and also that it was the only book that wasn't geared towards solo cooking.  All of its recipes served four.  I cut the ingredients of the ones I tried in half but that shouldn't have made them turn out bad.

I haven't put the other recipes on here yet.  There was another really strange sounding one but if you like cooked cabbage and pasta I bet you'd like it cause that's what it is.  Real simple and real tasty.  So I'll probably get around to posting that one too.  There was also a chicken and bread soup recipe I tried and it got a "not bad" and I will probably try it again and do a little tinkering.

My bread diary may turn out to be a long, long project.  I haven't made any for a while now.  After that first Julia Child, incredibly-salty-but-acting-like-French-bread session , I've made three more attempts.  Turns out that another of my solo cookbooks is called "Small Batch Baking" and there were two recipes I tried.  The first one was a total fiasco and went straight from the mixing bowl to the trash.  It would never have risen.

Here's a picture of the second one...it was all right I guess but not very hole-y.  In fact maybe this is a picture of my old French bread recipe I tried back in July before I tried the Julia Child one.

 And this is the last try I did - it was from the "Small Batch Baking" book and was a new-fangled method where you don't actually knead the dough - you mash it around for a while in the mixing bowl and then leave it to rise.  It actually worked and rose beautifully but it was a much softer and less sturdy dough than Julia's and so it came out pretty darned flat.

So I think I will go back to Julia's recipe, cut down on the salt and also make the entire recipe.  That will be way more dough that I could make use of in one baking so my experiment this time will be to divide the dough into thirds, make a loaf from one third and freeze the other two separately.  I have no idea if that will work or not but I think it might.  I imagine I can find some tips on freezing and thawing unrisen dough.  Maybe I'll get a good loaf of bread yet. :)

Eggplant-Hummus Pizza

from:   "Serves One" by Toni Lydecker (w/one addition by me)

INGREDIENTS:  (*'d ones are explained in directions)

1 small Italian or Japanese eggplant (~ 4 oz.)
Olive oil
Salt
*Pepper
*1/3c hummus
*small amount of crushed tomatoes in puree
*1 Naan bread
2-3 Tbs crumbled Feta cheese

Preheat oven (I used my toaster oven - much less heat in the apartment!).  Slice the eggplant crosswise in 1/4" slices.  Arrange them in a single layer that you have brushed with olive oil and then brush the tops with olive oil.  Turn them all over and brush the tops again and sprinkle with salt and pepper (I used a seasoned salt - has rosemary, sage, pepper and I think that's all).

Roast until lightly browned on both sides, about 10 minutes total, turing them at about 5 minutes.  Meanwhile spread the hummus onto the naan and top with the tomatoes.  *Tomatoes - he recipe used only the hummus, eggplant and cheese.  I thought the hummus would get too dry so I decided to use just a couple of teaspoons per naan and I really liked it (more than I would have without the tomatoes, I think).  *Hummus - I always use hummus on my lunch sandwiches and right now I'm using a white bean one that has some garlic and herbs - very tasty.  *Naan - my store always sold largish naan which when I made a curry I would slice and use one half of that.  Now they've started selling a pack that has three small, roundish ones and I say thanks for thinking of us solo cooks!  So I used two this first time and cooked them one at a time (after getting both ready).  That way I had two hot pizzas.

When roasted, arrange the eggplant slices on top (since I was using the small roundish naan, I ended up slicing the slices in half because most of them were probably 1-1/2" or so in diameter.

Bake in the oven until the naan is crisp and the topping is heated through - about 10 minutes - but keep an eye on it from about 7 or 8 minutes on.

NOTES:  I really liked this idea.  It was easy, quick and really very tasty.  And I think it could be made with most anything that appeals to the cook, really.  I'm thinking about some quite small cuts of broccoli florets roasted first.  And I bet red bell peppers would be delicious.  The Feta cheese was a good topping but I think I'll also try some fontina cheese on one.  I had another recipe that called for fontina and looked up substitutes before I found some at La Famiglia restaurant here in town.  Had they not had any, the substitutes suggested were Gouda, guyere, and provolone.  All of those (including the fontina) are milder than Feta so that might be a good one to use red peppers with - they have a nice zing to them.

If anyone out there tries this and makes variations, I'd love to hear about them. :)