La Serena Chicken Soup

This is a soup made out of necessity. We were a bunch of hungry girls stuck in a desert that was experiencing record breaking rains. It was cold. What do you do when you are cold and wet? Make soup!

It’s sort of a cross between chicken and rice soup and tortilla soup, it was born of what left-over vegetables we had, plus a little supplemented chicken, and what we could find/utensils available to us in our hostel’s kitchen. It turned out better than any of us could have expected!

La Serena Chicken Soup
the brainchild of Erin Milliren

Ingredients
Bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces (2 thighs, 3 legs)
1 1/2 yellow onions
1 green pepper
2 carrots
3-4 medium tomatoes
2-3 cups uncooked rice (based on personal preference, we may have even used more)
1 chili pepper (anaheim, poblano, jalapeno, etc)
3 cloves garlic
Juice of 2 limes
Vegetable Oil
Water

Cilantro, avocado, and slice lime for garnish. You could also use sour cream or cheese, but we didn’t have any.

Method
Dice/slice all your veggies, but keep them separate. Leave as much of the chili pepper’s membrane and seeds in as you like (the more membrane and seeds the spicier the soup will be).

Heat some oil in a stock pot. Add minced garlic and 1/3 of the diced onion. Brown slightly. Add chicken pieces and brown those. When browned, add enough water to cover the chicken by about 1 inch (we also added some cilantro stems at this stage, I don’t know if it made a difference), boil until chicken is cooked, about 7-10 minutes after the water starts boiling. Remove chicken (and any cilantro stems you may have added), set aside to cool. Add rice, green and chili pepper, sliced carrots, and the juice of 2 limes to the stock pot, cook until rice is fully cooked, about 20 minutes.

At the same time as you add the rice to the stock pot: Heat a splash of oil in a separate pan. Once this oil is hot add the rest of the diced onion and the diced tomatoes (juices, seeds, and all). Simmer covered until tomatoes have disintegrated.

While these things are cooking, remove the skin and fork-shred the chicken.

Once the rice has cooked add the tomato/onion mixture and the shredded chicken to the rice/veggie/stock mixture. Bring back to a simmer. Serve with garnish as desired.

Apple Pie

The season is upon many of you now where apples are starting to become abundant and wonderful. Being currently trapped in Chile like I am I will have to proffer this effort from my past spring break. It was a delicious pie.

Apple Pie
This recipe comes from a recipe jotted in my notebook, so I am unsure of the source

Crust
2 1/2 cups AP flour
1 TBS salt
2 TBS sugar
20 TBS (2.5 sticks) unsalted butter, cute into 1/4 inch slices
1/2 cup cold water

Apple Innards for Said Pie
Apples (5 if they’re big, 7 if they’re small. Use what ever variety floats your boat, I like Granny Smith.)
1 TBS lemon juice
2 TBS flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice

Method
Process 1 1/2 cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined (about 2 1-second pulses). Add butter and process until dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps (about 15 seconds).

Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough around blade. Add remaining 1 cup flour and pulse until mixture is combined and mass of dough has broken up (about 4-6 quick pulses)

Empty mixture into medium bowl, sprinkle water over dough. Use a rubber spatula to fold until slightly tacky.

Divide dough into halves and flatten each into a 4-inch disk. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45-minutes.

After it has refrigerated for 45-minutes, remove one disk from the fridge and roll it between 2 pieces of plastic wrap until it has formed a 12-inch circle. Transfer this dough into a 9 1/2 inch round pie plate. Ease dough into pan’s corners (I know it’s circular, but you know what I mean, right?) and return to refrigerator draped in plastic wrap while you make the pie filling.

Preheat over to 500.

Peel, core, and slice apples into quarters and then into 1/4 inch slices (make these slices larger for a more rustic pie, but be prepared to bake it for longer). Toss slices with lemon juice. Mix try ingredients together and then mix the spice/flour mixture with the apples.

Dump apples into the pie crust (which you have intuitively removed from the refrigerator). Roll the second crust into a 12-inch circle and place over the filling. Trip top and bottom edges to a 1/2 inch beyond the pan lip. Tuck the rim of dough underneath itself to seal, use fork tines to press it securely into place.

Place pie on baking sheet, lower oven to 425 degrees, bake until crust is golden, about 25 minutes. If at any point you feel that your outer crust is getting to brown, feel free to tent it with tin foil.

After 25 minutes, reduce heat to 375 degrees, rotate pie, and cook an additional 35 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack for as long as you can bear before digging in! I strongly recommend serving this with either vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, and some caramel drizzle would not be amiss either, but if you’re a purist that’s good too.

Llama Kabobs

Yes, dear readers (not that there are many of you at this point), llama meat can in fact be eaten. I have not eaten many odd meats (I would do very poorly on the Omnivore’s 100), but the opportunity presented itself to try llama and I figured I might as well.

We were in the tiny desert town of Machuca, Chile, somewhere between San Pedro de Atacama and the Tatio Geysers and pretty much the only business in this town is the llama kabobs. Tour buses stop there, so there is a steady flow of people, and this town was the first place in the world I saw one of the $100 laptops in use.

The flavor of llama meat can’t really be compared to anything I had eaten before, it is a red meat so there were obviously some similarities to beef, but the flavor and texture were incredible. It wasn’t nearly as gamey as I was expecting and the flavor had some amazing, indescribable quality. Sorry I’m not being more descriptive here, I have a relatively untrained palate.

While I really enjoyed the whole experience, it was a little odd to be eating llama meat within view of live llamas. I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

Rosemary Olive Bread

Yum!

A delicious bread with a lot of character, it definitely holds it’s own against flavorful food. It also makes some of the most delicious toast I’ve ever eaten.

Rosemary Olive Bread
As seen on Baking Bites

Rosemary Olive Bread
3 cups bread flour (I used AP with no adverse effects)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
3/4 cup warm water
1 tbsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp coarsely chopped fresh rosemary (feel free to use more)
1/2-1 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and coarsley chopped (feel free to use more)

Combine yeast and warm water until yeast becomes creamy, about 10 minutes.

Add olive oil, salt, sugar, rosemary and olives into the yeast mixture and add flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing until dough comes away from the side of the bowl. Move dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes, until dough is smooth and elastic.

Place dough in a lightly greased bowl, turn to coat, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400F.

Shape dough gently into a ball. Place on a baking sheet and let rise, covered with a damp towel, for 30 minutes. Dust the bread ligtly with flour, slash the top and put into the oven.

Bake for 35-45 minutes, until bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Place on a wire rack to cool. Devour!

Julia Child’s French Bread

I attempted this recipe in the wake of the Daring Bakers. Mine was a dud, it had excellent flavor but it was really dense. I did lack a few instruments (like a bench scraper), but I did the best I could. Maybe I had sub-par yeast, but I’ll never know because it was an all day recipe that I don’t particularly feel like repeating.

Whole Wheat Pita Bread

This unidentifiable blob soon turned into some amazing whole wheat pita bread. I had a little difficulty getting it to ‘pop’ while baking, perhaps in future endeavors I will be able to figure out why. Any tips?

I originally found this recipe on The Kitchen Sink, where you can find more detailed step-by-step photos.

Whole Wheat Pita Bread
Gourmet

1 (1/4-oz) package active dry yeast (2 1/2 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/4 cups warm water (105-115°F)
2 cups bread flour or high-gluten flour, plus additional for kneading
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
Cornmeal for sprinkling baking sheets

Stir together yeast, honey, and 1/2 cup warm water in a large bowl, then let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (If mixture doesn’t foam, discard and start over with new yeast.)

While yeast mixture stands, stir together flours in another bowl. Whisk 1/2 cup flour mixture into yeast mixture until smooth, then cover with plastic wrap and let stand in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk and bubbly, about 45 minutes. Stir in oil, salt, remaining 3/4 cup warm water, and remaining 2 1/2 cups flour mixture until a dough forms.

Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead, working in just enough additional flour to keep dough from sticking, until dough is smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. Form dough into a ball and put in an oiled large bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough and cut into 8 pieces. Form each piece into a ball. Flatten 1 ball, then roll out into a 6 1/2- to 7-inch round on floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Transfer round to 1 of 2 baking sheets lightly sprinkled with cornmeal. Make 7 more rounds in same manner, arranging them on baking sheets. Loosely cover pitas with 2 clean kitchen towels (not terry cloth) and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Set oven rack in lower third of oven and remove other racks. Preheat oven to 500°F.

Transfer 4 pitas, 1 at a time, directly onto oven rack (you could also use a pizza stone if you have one, just make sure it preheats with the oven). Bake until just puffed and pale golden, about 2 minutes. Turn over with tongs and bake 1 minute more. Cool pitas on a cooling rack 2 minutes, then stack and wrap loosely in a kitchen towel to keep pitas warm. Bake remaining 4 pitas in same manner. Serve warm.