My dear wife, Mrs. Grail, is a great cook in her own right.  And her chicken and dumplings is one her greatest meals.  I love this recipe.  If she made it once a week I wouldn’t complain.  She’s made it with smoked chicken and without and, of course, I think the smoked chicken version is better, but if you’d rather just used a roasted chicken then go right ahead.

Mrs. Grail’s Chicken & Dirty Dumplings

Ingredients:

• 1 large roasting chicken, about five pounds
• 1 large sweet onion, rough chopped
• 8 cups water
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 1/2 tsp salt

Dumpling Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/3 cup minced fresh herbs/green onion tops
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup + 3 tablespoons milk

Sauce Ingredients:

• 7 tablespoons butter
• 10 tablespoons flour
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 2 teaspoons Todd’s Bayou Dirt (or other cajun seasoning)
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
• 3 ribs celery, cut into 1/2″ pieces
• 4 carrots, cut into 1/2″ pieces
• 1 large onion cut into 1″ pieces
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 cut frozen peas, thawed
• Salt & Pepper to taste

If you’re going to use smoked chicken you want to make sure you get a the smoked flavor and the seasonings through out the bird.  The best way, in my opinion, to do this is with a spatchcock chicken.

After cutting your chicken season well with your seasoning of choice.  Mrs. Grail’s recipe calls for Bayou Dirt, but if you can’t get your hands on this great seasoning, any cajun type seasoning will work.  Make sure you season both sides of the chicken.  And using your hands get some seasoning up under the skin too!

When the chicken has finished cooking let it cool.  Once cool pull all the meat off the bones.  Get as much as you can, because once you load up the sauce, having a little extra chicken for a sandwich is a good, good thing.

Place the chicken bones and water in a large stock pot and bring to a boil.  When water has boiled reduce heat, cover and simmer for 1 hour.  Strain out all the bones and other pieces of chicken carcass.  Return the liquid to the pot and add the onions, bay leaves and salt.  Bring back to a simmer and cook for an hour or so.

While the chicken stock is cooking you can prepare the dumplings.  In a medium bowl mix flour, herbs, baking powder and salt together.

Set flour mixture aside.  In a small saucepan bring butter and milk to a simmer, over low heat. Add liquid to flour mixture, stirring with a fork until mixture just starts to come together.

Drop by the spoonful onto a baking sheet covered with plastic wrap or parchment paper.  Refrigerate until read to use.

For the sauce, melt the butter in a dutch oven over medium heat.  Whisk in the flour and cook, stirring constantly until a golden-brown, about 4 minutes.  Whisk in the wine and chicken stock, Bayou Dirt and thyme.  Cook until thickened.  Add celery, onions and carrots and cook until tender-crisp, about 15 minutes.  Add chicken meat, heavy cream, peas.  Season to taste with salt & pepper.

Place dumplings on top of chicken sauce mixture, cover and simmer until dumplings are cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Serve!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

Sometimes called “sweet potato squash” or “Bohemian squash,” delicata squash is one of the tastier winter squashes, with creamy pulp that tastes a bit like sweet potatoes.

The delicata squash is actually an heirloom variety, and is a fairly recent reentry into the culinary world. It was originally introduced by the Peter Henderson Company of New York City in 1894 and was popular through the 1920’s. Then it fell into obscurity for about 75 years, due to poor yields, disease susceptibility and because its thinner, more tender skin, isn’t well suited to transportation over thousands of miles and storage for months. Delicata squash will keep well at room temperature for only 4 to 6 weeks.

Delicata is particularly suited to simple preparation. Simply slice the seeded squash into 1/3-inch thick rings and sauté in hot olive oil over medium heat until richly colored on the bottom, about 6 minutes. Turn and cook on the second side until tender. Season with your favorite herbs or a pesto of parsley, garlic and salt.  –Green Earth Institute

The preparation was indeed very simple.  Cut the the squash in half lengthwise.  Remove seeds and pulp.  I seasoned the squash with some salt and Todd’s Cajun Dirt.  Pour 1 tablespoon of honey into each of the cavities in the halves. Smoke the squash for about an hour (or until tender) at 300 degrees.  Every 10 minutes use a brush to baste the squash all over with the honey you poured intot he cavity.  The moisture from the squash will mix with the honey and provde a nice glaze all over the squash.  Unlike other winter squashes the skin is edible so brush a little honey on the outside too.

Remove the squash from the smoker and let it rest for a couple of minutes before serving.  There’s a reason it’s called a “sweet potato squash” the color, texture and flavor are a little like a sweet potato.  This is a great squash and I’m going to figure out some other ways to prepare it.

After the Great Habanero Disaster of 2010 I had to redeem myself.  I purchased a beautiful pasture raised pork loin from the “Whole Paycheck Store” and set out to come up with something special for Sunday Dinner.  I think I did a good job.  The pork loin roast with the brine and seasoning was a perfect match with the mushroom cream sauce.  I also ventured into a new arena for me with fresh pasta instead of dried.  That added a completely different flavor and texture that what I was expecting.

I recently got a resupply of “Dirt” products from Todd’s Dirt and figured it would be a good opportunity give at least two of them a try.  I also smoke roasted some Delicato squash with Dirt.  The recipe and pictures for the squash will post tomorrow.

Dirty Brined Pork Loin

Ingredients:

• 5 cups of bottled/filtered water
• 4 tablespoons Morton’s Kosher Salt
• 4 tablespoons Dark Brown Sugar
• 2 tablespoons Todd’s Original Dirt

Directions:

Bring half the water to a boil in a medium saucepan.  Reduce heat and add salt and brown sugar.  Stir until dissolved.  Add remaining water (the colder the better) and the Todd’s Dirt.  Let cool completely.

Place 3 pound pork loin in a bowl or zip lock bag and add brine.  Cover or seal and place in refrigerator for 24 hours.  Make sure entire pork loin is covered with brine.

After 24 hours remove from brine and rinse well.  Rinse more than you think you need to.  Once well rinsed dry completely.  

Season with additional Todd’s Original Dirt and smoke at 275 to 300 degrees until it reaches 145 degrees internal.  Do not overcook.  Remove from smoker and double wrap in foil.  Wrap in a large towel and allow to rest for 30 minutes.  Carve and serve.

Dirty Portabello Mushroom Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 pound Portabello mushroom caps, cleaned and gills removed and chopped into large chunks
• 1 tablespoon Todd’s Cajun Dirt
• 1 large shallot, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• Salt & Pepper
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 3 cups heavy cream (or milk thickened with flour)

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a large, heavy bottomed pan.  Add butter and melt.  Saute mushrooms in olive oil/butter until just starting to sweat.  About 10 minutes.  Stir in Todd’s Cajun Dirt, garlic and shallots. Cook until the garlic and shallots are tender.  Stir in chicken stock and cream.  Heat until mixture starts to bubble.  Reduce heat and simmer until thickened.

Serve with pasta and slices of pork loin.

When I send out the email each month asking random participants for random ingredients I never know what’s going to come back.  For the first two months the ingredients matched much more readily.  This month though it got a lot more difficult coming up with flavor profiles that would match.

The broccoli and pomegranate  were the two ingredients that gave me the biggest pause.  I’ve eaten a lot of broccoli over the years, most of the time it’s as a more traditional veggie side dish so coming up with something  different that would go with shrimp was hard.  I mean, really, broccoli and shrimp.  Tough, tough ingredient.

My only experience with pomegranate was picking them off a neighbor’s tree and throwing them at each other.  All I knew about pomegranates was that they were full of juicy seed casings (known as arils) and the juice stained liked crazy.  Without any idea of what the juice taste like I was a little concerned about how it would match.

I decided to go with pomegranate juice from POM instead of purchasing a bunch of individual pomegranates.  After getting the bottle of juice home and tasting it I was able to start thinking about how to put all these ingredients into a meal that made sense.

A light and fresh meal was what I was hoping to come up with.  I knew I wanted to grill the shrimp seasoned with Todd’s Crabby Dirt so the broccoli and pomegranate problem still was the stumbling block.

Light and fresh, to me, means salad.  But it had to be a salad that would go with shrimp.  Since I had to use broccoli it had to be a broccoli salad.  I purchased a bag of shredded broccoli and came up with a pomegranate vinaigrette to make a nice vinegar based slaw that ended up matching well with the shrimp.

Broccoli Slaw with Cilantro Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup POM Pomegranate Juice
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• 1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1/2 cup Olive Oil
• 1 tablespoons Cilantro, finely chopped
• Zest of 1 Lemon
• 2 packages Broccoli Slaw
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:

In a small sauce pan warm pomegranate juice.  Add sugar and remove from heat.  Stir until sugar is fully dissolved.   Let cool to room temperature.

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor.  Mix until completely combined.  Refrigerate until cold.

Place Broccoli Slaw in a bowl, pour vinaigrette over slaw and mix.  Chill for at least two hours.  Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

One of the ingredients was fococcia and whenever I need something baked for a blog post I turn to my favorite baker, Mrs. Grail (Celeste).  She came up with some fantastic  onion and rosemary fococcia that matched the flavors in the shrimp seasoning perfectly.  The olive oil bread dough was moist and so flavorful.  I couldn’t help but start to think of some other foods that we could grill up in the future to eat with this bread.

The shrimp was done very simply.  I skewered the shrimp, drizzled it with olive oil and seasoned with Todd’s Crabby Dirt.  The flavors in the seasoning matched the rosemary and onion in the fococcia very nicely.

Shrimp cook very quickly on a hot grill, so a great deal of care needs to be paid to them.  This is one protein you can’t put over the fire and walk away from.  A couple of minutes on each side is all you need.  By using skewers you’re able to turn them over quickly and have much less of a chance of turning them to overcooked rubber.

Another important factor in getting properly cooked shrimp is making sure your grill is not too hot.  You want a medium/hot grill with well oiled grates.  One thing you might want to consider is oiling or spraying with non-stick spray right on the shrimp.  This should help eliminate the hated shrimp stuck the grill grate problem.

We plated everything very simply.  Nothing fancy with the bread, just a nice plate of broccoli slaw with some beautifully grilled shrimp.

Additional participants in this month’s Ingredient Challenge include:

I did learn to love zucchini bread and I could power down a plate of of breaded and fried zucchini when it was available.  But eating squash on a dinner plate just didn’t happen much.  Over the years, with my wife’s help, I have learned to cook and eat a variety of squashes.  You know the “soft” or summer squashes.  But the rock hard  winter squash just wasn’t something I was willing to try.  Last night I may have changed my squash eating habits for good with some grilled acorn squash.

Give yourself yourself plenty of time to cook acorn squash, at least an hour of actual time on the grill. 

Cut your acorn squash in half and remove the seeds and pulp

Brush the squash with mixture. Set your grill up for "indirect" heat with about 3/4 of a chimney of lit charcoal. I used my 22.5 inch Weber Kettle for this recipe. If using a gas grill make sure you can set up your grill for indirect cooking. Most gas grills today allow you turn onside off while have the other side still lit.

30 minutes (about half way) I brushed on another coating of the mixture and sprinkled some additional "Todd's Dirt" on the squash.

Sprinkle the Asiago Cheese over the squash. The asiago cheese will compliment the nutty flavor of the acorn squash and give it a nice little crunch as it browns.

Continue to grill the acorn squash until it's done. It's done when a knife or fork can easily be inserted into the flesh of the squash.

Grilled Acorn Squash Recipe

• 3 Acorn Squash, halved with seeds and pulp removed
• 1/2 cup grated Asiago Cheese
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar (dark if you’ve got it)
• 1 teaspoon “Todd’s Dirt Seasoning” *
• 1 teaspoon maple syrup

Mix all ingredients, except Asiago Cheese, in a small sauce pan until melted and evenly mixed.  Brush this mixture on your acorn squash.

*I prefer “Todd’s Dirt Seasoning” but you can substitute any other herb you want.  Sage works very well with this recipe.

The planks from Maine Grilling Woods are different from others I’ve seen.  According to the their website “competitors’ grilling planks are just like boards from a lumber yard cut to fit the grill. The grill surface is the long grain of the wood. Our Organic Natural Ovals are much different. The trunk of a tree is made up of long tubular cells that go from the roots to the branches carrying water and nutrients to all parts of the tree. The distinctive flavors of each wood species are contained in these cells. Our oval planks slice across these cells and the result is a slow releasing of the wood flavors into your steak, etc. as it cooks on the grill or broils in the oven. It is incredible…You will love our planks and our prices, too!.”

I was excited to try these out for a family dinner on the shore of Lake Goodwin.  The planks come in a variety of usual and unusal types of woods.  I selected Black Cherry and Sugar Maple for the salmon.

You can see just how different these planks are from the normal “cedar” type planks you’re used to.  The first step is the soak the planks in water for about an hour.  This is a critical step and don’t short cut it.  After the soaking and rub down with olive oil the planks are ready for the salmon.

I seasoned the salmon with some of the best salmon seasoning on earth, “Todd’s Dirt.” 

The salmon came out fantastic.  You could taste the added flavor from the wood planks.  The only option available for cooking was an older gas grill with very little control over the flame.  I’m looking forward to giving the planks another try using an indirect cooking method over coals. 

All and all Maine Grilling Woods are a great product.  They provide you with a unique way to add additional flavor to your grilling and being able to service the grilled meats and fish directly on the grilling planks provides an interesting presentation opportunity. 

Maine Grilling woods are available online at www.rockytrail.com.