Chicken (or Turkey!) Croquettes

Happy Black Friday, everyone! I trust you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving... we sure did! I had to work at the hospital last night, but fortunately I was able to sacrifice a little sleep to spend a few hours with my family over wonderful food and even better conversation.

We have so much to be thankful for this year, too. 2011 has been a huge year on so many levels... graduation with my AS in Respiratory Care in May, a full-time job for me, our amazing wedding and honeymoon in August, graduation with my BS in Respiratory Care coming up in a few weeks... and now a house! Dane and I will be closing on our first home next week and moving next weekend! We are ridiculously excited, as you can imagine, and immensely grateful for the opportunity to own our own home. Especially in today's economy, we are fully aware of what a great blessing this is, and we feel so lucky and very thankful. This has been a very blessed Thanksgiving indeed!

But enough mushy stuff. Who wants food?

I made these chicken croquettes a couple of weeks ago from some leftover roasted chicken, and the whole time I kept thinking, "These would be perfect black Friday food!" These irresistible little croquettes make perfect use of those Thanksgiving leftovers, and are way tastier than any day-after turkey sandwich I've ever eaten. They look - and taste! - like they take hours to prepare, but are really, really easy to throw together. And if you tend to hoard hard Italian cheeses like I do, you'll probably even have all the ingredients in your kitchen right now! And if not, well... they're totally worth the trip to the store to pick up a little Romano.

So here it is, guys... the answer to your day-after-Thanksgiving, what-do-I-do-with-all-these-leftovers-questions. Totally pop-able, completely irresistible, amazingly easy croquettes. Do it.

Or, if you prefer the more traditional leftovers answer, try my mom's turkey and homemade egg noodles!

Happy eating!

Fall's Best Hot Ham & Cheese

So here they are... the first food photos to come from my new camera! What do you guys think? So far I'm pretty impressed with the quality of photos my new baby takes, but I'm still playing around with editing.

Lucky for me I had great subject material for my first shoot, because these sandwiches look almost as good as they taste. These guys bring together the best of fall's fresh flavors, in a way that allows each ingredient to shine... no element is overpowering, but each is complementary. I started with a succulent honey ham - this week's late night cook-ahead - and sliced it thick to make these sandwiches good and hearty. Then I layered on crisp, sour green apple, sharp cheddar, and a light slathering of Dijon mustard for extra flavor. Talk about delicious! Served alongside a few potato chips and a sour pickle spear, these were a fantastic meal that satisfied without weighing down. These were such a huge hit, and so easy that I'll definitely be making them all through apple season!

Spinach-Stuffed Shells

Is it weird that I'm a 22 year-old food-lover, who has a blog that's almost a year old, and I have never until this week tried stuffed shells? It's not that I haven't wanted to... this recipe (in one form or another) has been on my mind for years. I've seen countless recipes, countless mouth-watering photos, countless claims of heavenly flavor and consistency... why oh why has it taken me so long to try this dish?

Well let's just say, friends... I think I have a new favorite meal.

I've always been a big fan of lasagna. Starchy pasta, creamy cheese, gratuitous amounts of tomato-y, basil-y, galric-y marinara... what's not to love? And, after perusing the ingredients lists on most of the recipes I found, I wondered how much different stuffed shells could be from lasagna. Not that it really needed to be different. After all, I do love me some lasagna.

But somehow these are different. In the same way that calzones and pizza are comprised of essentially the same things but somehow totally crave-able in completely different ways. But, most importantly, stuffed shells are different from lasagna in an amazing, I-could-eat-this-every-night-of-the-week kind of way. Not kidding folks... new favorite meal, right here. :)

Sweet & Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

I live with a veritable grilled cheese master. It's kind of Dane's signature dish, if you will... always his first suggestion when he's in charge of lunch or dinner and the thing I jokingly tell him he's best at making. (While I am still teaching the boy to cook he does make many things very well... but it is true, he does also make a mean grilled cheese.) So imagine my nerves when I decided to tackle this recipe. I had no doubt it would be easy and delicious... but would it live up to the boy's high standards of a great grilled cheese?

The easy answer? Of course it did.

These sandwiches are every bit as yummy as their name makes them sound. The simple yet genius combination of flavors make these anything but your everyday ordinary grilled cheese. Slightly caramelizing the onions brings out an amazing sweetness that, when paired with the summer's sweetest, ripest tomato, lends an almost candy-like quality to the sandwich. Then the sharp flavors of the full-bodied cheddar and spicy pepper jack kick in, and suddenly you're on a whole new level of delicious. Serve it with the Summer Corn & Vegetable Soup I shared earlier this week, and you've got yourself a healthy, flavorful meal fit for even the busiest night in your week.

Chicken Enchiladas

I have been on the hunt for a good enchilada recipe for a very long time. Enchiladas have always been a favorite item to order at Mexican restaurants and I've always wanted to make them at home, but I've never found a sauce recipe I could stand. Fillings are easy. You can really fill enchiladas with whatever you want... chicken, shredded beef, cheese, beans... anything you want to your liking. But the sauce - yes, the perfect sauce always eluded me. Until now.

None of the sauces I tried before were ever quite right. They were always too spicy, too smokey, too... weird. But this one totally fit the bill. The flavor is out of this world. Don't worry when you see that the sauce calls for two whole onions, it's not a typo. It's totally on purpose, because that's where all the awesome flavor comes from. The onion adds a hearty, body-ful flavor to the sauce, that none of the other sauces have ever achieved. And, as if blending the sauce didn't make give it a creamy-enough texture all by itself, the last minute addition of just a little sour cream makes it rich without making it heavy. I like this sauce so much I think I might make extra next time and freeze some to have on hand.

But the one thing I was not prepared for was how BIG these enchiladas are. I'm used to wimpy enchiladas made with little corn tortillas, small enough that I usually need to eat two to get full. So when I saw that this recipe only made six enchiladas I was a bit worried. But don't fret guys... as you can see from the photos, these are monster enchiladas. I'm almost tempted to call them smothered burritos instead, because that's essentially what they are. But an enchilada by any other name tastes just as delicious. So call them what you will. But promise me you'll make them? You'll be very glad you did.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

Chicken Cordon Bleu. Sounds pretty fancy, doesn't it? I mean, anything with a fancy French "bleu" on the end of its name has to be fancy, right?

Sadly, this is not always true. I've ordered chicken cordon bleu in restaurants that was nothing more than a dry grilled piece of chicken with a slab of ham and a slice of Swiss cheese apathetically thrown on top. Talk about blah.

My version is so much better.

My version of chicken cordon bleu is fit for Napolean himself. Fit to be served on fancy French china with fancy French wine and finished off with a fancy French dessert.

Or served on a bed of greens, if that's the kind of thing you're into.

True, it's basically fried in butter. But that's what makes it good. This is the kind of fried-in-butter food that makes you want to quote Julie Powell and claim that the day there is a meteorite rushing toward the Earth and we have thirty days to live that you are going to spend it eating butter.

Well maybe not butter itself so much as things fried in butter. But that's just me.

But the point, my friends, is that you need to make this. Stat. With salty, smokey prosciutto and creamy Swiss cheese that melts all over the pan and gets brown and crispy and makes you just want to spend every day browning cheese in butter and eating that all by itself... this recipe will you make you forget you ever tried that lame, flavorless chicken cordon bleu. Now go and make it. Thank me later.