Recipe: 30 minute dinner rolls and Crockpot Buffalo Chicken Sliders

Who doesn't like homemade dinner rolls? Fresh out of the oven, warm, with a slab of butter in between. I mean - YUM right?

The problem is they take forever to make. You have to make the dough, let it rest, knead it again, let it rest some more - depending on the recipe the resting could last as long as overnight!

This weekend I was craving buffalo chicken wings, but I didn't want to order from the local American restaurant (Warsaw friends - Bert and I have tried every place for wings during football season. Jeff's is the only place that has decent wings!). I had chicken breasts, dry ranch dressing, and Frank's wing sauce (yes - you CAN get Frank's here at the international store. Sure it's probably $10 bucks for a small container of it - but sometimes, you just gotta pay the money!) and I just knew I could make a decent chicken buffalo slider from that, as long as I had rolls.

Rolls are impossible to come by here in Warsaw. I have yet to find the frozen kind you can just pop into the oven. Convinces like frozen rolls or clothes dryers (don't even get me started on clothes dryers) just don't exist in Europe. So I have to make them myself. So far, in the year that I've lived in Poland, I have attempted dinner rolls 3 times. Once, during football season, when I decided to make sliders. Once during Thanksgiving, and Saturday. Each time I used a different recipe,and each time they turned out incredibly dense except for this last time.

Granted - they weren't perfect. According to my good friend Joy who is a professional pastry chef and all around bad ass expat wife, I was using the wrong type of flour. (You can check out her amazing award winning food/travel blog here: My Traveling Joys). In Poland they categorize their flour based on a number. The amount gluten in the flour dictates the number on the flour. I am not a baker (not much of a carb fan), so I didn't think it really mattered. But it totally does. Here in Poland I need to use a flour that is over 500. Then apparently I will have the fluffiest rolls imaginable!

This recipe is awesome though, because it takes 30 minutes to make them - from start to finish. It is an easy recipe too! Perfect if you decide last minute you want homemade dinner rolls (or in my case - buns for sliders!). Sunday morning I also used them as biscuits (because they were a bit dense from the wrong use of flour) and were AMAZING.


 30-Minute Dinner Rolls

Picture credit: Kitchenmeetsgirl.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water
• 1/3 cup oil
• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
  
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 3 1/2 cups flour (either bread flour or all-purpose will work)

 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the warm water, oil, yeast, and sugar. Allow the mixture to rest for 15 minutes.
3. Mix 2 cups of the flour, the salt, and the egg into the yeast mixture using a dough hook. Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup at a time.
4. Shape dough into 12 balls and place in a 9x13 pan. Let dough rest for 10 minutes.
5. Bake for 10 minutes or until tops are just golden brown.

Crockpot Buffalo Chicken Sliders

Ingedients:

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 bottle of franks hot sauce (I used 1/2 a bottle because my husband is not a spicy food fan)
• 1 package of dry ranch mix
• 1/2 stick of butter

Put all ingredients into a crockpot and cook on low for 6 hours. Shred the chicken in the crock pot before serving.

Recipe: Chicken Spaghetti

Recipe: Chicken Spaghetti

 When I was in college my roommate, Andrea, would make the best chicken spaghetti I've ever had in my life. It was cheesy, delicious, and it always made enough to last us for a couple of days. Being college students, we were always broke, but this chicken spaghetti recipe was also really inexpensive. 

I haven't had it in at least a year, probably longer, and I woke up yesterday morning craving it. I messaged Andrea on FB and she was happy to give me the recipe. The only problem is that it required some ingredients that I could not get here in Poland - mainly velveta, condensed cream of chicken, and condensed cream of mushroom.

Luckily I had smuggled some velveta across the border (we aren't supposed to bring cheese into Poland - but lets be honest, velveta can hardly be considered cheese) so that was not going to be an issue for me, but I did not have the cream of chicken or mushroom needed for the recipe so I had to make that from scratch.

This is pretty much the Velveeta situation for expats in Poland.

Turns out - made from scratch cream of chicken and mushroom soups are incredibly easy to make! It look me less than 5 minutes, and I had condensed soups without all of the chemicals!

So, for this blog post I am not only going to give you the Chicken spaghetti recipe, but also the condensed soup recipes I found. It's a three for one today - or we could call it a threesome if you want to get dirty with it. ;)

If you live in another country and do not have Velveeta, I have found a homemade Velveeta recipe here.  I have not tried it yet, as I still have a good bit of my Velveeta stash left, so I can't vouch for it. But it's probably good (and definitely better for you than the "real" stuff!)

Condensed Cream of Chicken

Photo credit: A Pinch of Yum

Ingredients:

• 2½ cups chicken broth (I used 2 cans)
  
• 1½ cups milk
• ¾ cup flour
• 1 tablespoon seasoning mix (or on your own, ½ tsp. onion powder, ½ tsp. garlic powder, ½ tsp. black pepper, 1 tsp. salt, ½ tsp. parsley, etc)

Directions:

1. Combine the chicken broth and ½ cup of the milk in a large saucepan. Bring to a low boil.
2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the flour and seasonings into the remaining 1 cup milk until a smooth, thick mixture forms.
3. Pour the flour and milk mixture into the saucepan with the broth mixture over low heat and stir continuously, whisking as the mixture simmers. Continue to simmer and stir/whisk until the mixture is smooth and thick, 5-10 minutes. The mixture will thicken a bit as it cools.

Condensed Cream of Mushroom

Photo credit: Simply Scratch

Ingrediants:

3 tablespoons Unsalted Butter
1 small Shallot, minced {about a quarter cup}
1/2 cup minced Crimini Mushroom
2-1/2 tablespoons All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup Vegetable Broth
1/2 cup Whole Milk
1 pinch Kosher Salt {go easy so you don't over salt when adding to the recipe}
2 pinches Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Directions:
In a 10 inch skillet melt the three tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Once melted add in the minced shallot, stir to coat in the butter and sauté until just about soft {3-5 minutes}.
Add in the minced crimini mushrooms, stir and cook for 2-3 minutes.
Sprinkle with the 2-1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour and let the flour cook for a minute or two. Whisk in the whole milk and vegetable broth until smooth.
Bring to a simmer and cook until it has thickened {about 5-8 minutes}.


Chicken Spaghetti 

Ingredients: 

3-4 Chicken breasts

1 pkg. spaghetti

1 lb (half a box) of Velveeta cheese cut into small pieces.

1 can of cream of chicken soup (10 oz)

1 can of cream of mushroom soup (10 oz)

1/4 cup of Milk

Salt and Pepper

2 cloves garlic minced

1 small onion diced

6 mushroom caps diced

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Fill large pot with water and add 1 teaspoon salt.
Add chicken breasts to water and cook over high heat. Bring to boil stirring chicken about every 10 minutes. Cook for 25-30 minutes (I cut my chicken up into small pieces before boiling to reduce time. I boiled for about 15 minutes). Remove chicken from pot.
Add 1 package (12 oz) of spaghetti to water you cooked the chicken in.
Cook according to directions on package (11-13 minutes) stirring occasionally.
Drain spaghetti.
Shred chicken. Put both spaghetti and chicken to the side.

In a separate skillet, saute 1 small white onion and 2 cloves of garlic minced with a teaspoon of butter.
Once the onion and garlic is soft and translucent, add diced mushrooms and cook until soft (about 5 minutes).
Slowly add the Velveeta to this mixture,  letting it melt and mix in with the mushrooms, garlic, and onion.
Add the milk.
Add the cream of chicken and cream of mushroom and mix well until a thick sauce is formed.

Combine spaghetti, chicken, and melted mixture into a large bowl and mix.

Pour into a casserole dish and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Serve and enjoy! 



Also - check out Andrea's website http://www.agphotographix.com/ She is a wonderful photographer out of Houston, Texas.

Crock Pot Leg of Lamb

One of the most surprising things about living in Warsaw is their lack of lamb available. It was especially hard for my husband who had just come from working in the middle east and pretty much the only thing they eat there is lamb! So if we want to have lamb for dinner - it has to be a special occasion AND it has to be delicious since we are paying so much for it.

This week my husband asked to have it - and since we haven't had it in about 4 months I agreed to make it. I was scheduled to make it today - but last night was the International Womens Group of Warsaw's end of the year cocktail party.

Yeah - I really don't feel like cooking today.

So I looked up recipes for "crock pot Leg of Lamb". I was sure that there had to be a way to cook this type of meat in the crock pot. Of course, there is. I found a slew of recipes, but none of them really caught my attention until I found this one. I adjusted it a little bit, and came up with a pretty amazing recipe. So here you guys go! Let me know how it turns out for you!


Crockpot Leg of Lamb 

Credit: http://crockpot365.blogspot.ca/2

Rub recipe:
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

--1/2 cup of water

The Directions.

 -- Take a skillet and put it on medium high heat and grease

-- Take your leg of lamb and a knife. Stab the leg of lamb multiple times and put garlic slices in the slits. Make sure you do this EVERYWHERE - it makes the meat so delicious after cooking!

-- Rub the seasoning all over the meat

-- Sear the meat in the skillet all over. This will help keep the juices in once it starts cooking

-- Plop that bad boy in the crockpot

--add a half cup of water

--cover and cook on low for 7-9 hours.

Cucumber Tomato and Feta Salad

I am not a salad lover by any means.

Every time I go out with my girlfriends and we end up at a salad restaurant my soul just dies a little bit. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with salads. They are just boring. And please, don't give me the speech that salads aren't boring - because to me they are. Even if  you put a thousand different dressings and fruit combos in them, I'm still not going to be impressed.

I want to like salads. It's almost the same feeling of how I wish I liked science so I could have grown up to be a rich doctor. But facts are facts and I just don't (on both accounts). I like meat. If I were a dinosaur I would definitely be a T-Rex because all I want to do is eat meat. The fattier, the better (although I do try to not JUST eat bad for you fatty foods - it's just what I want).

Okay I lied - I'm totally an Omnomnomnivore

                                            

With that said - a few weeks ago I came across a salad recipe that I didn't hate! It was if the clouds parted, the sun beamed down on me, and God said "Let you eat healthy and like it!"And I did. I SO did.

So without further ado:

Cucumber, Tomato, and Feta Salad 

2 cucumbers - peeled, thinly sliced

1/2 small red onions, thinly sliced

2 cups of cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 cup of feta cheese

Sweet & Tangy Vinaigrette recipe

1/2 pound of cooked pasta (optional - not pictured)

Combine all ingredients together and toss with vinaigrette.  Best when marinates for 1 hour in the refrigerator before serving, if possible

Classic Sweet & Tangy Vinaigarette

1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of white wine vinegar
1/4 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of dried italian seasoning
1 teaspoon of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

Stir all of the ingredients together. Let sit in refrigerator for one hour if possible.