Thai chicken stuffed bell peppers

Well, in the dark and cold of winter I crave brightness in my food, when I am not eating my way through stews, soups, beans and well, the comfortable comfort of root vegetables.

Make this and you will say “Thai chicken stuffed bell peppers called and they want their top billing for brightening up your day in this dreary winter” ! The chicken stuffing of this dish is basically my chicken wrap stuffing sans carrots, but the sauce you add at the end adds some real decadence. You could adjust this recipe to be more Keto friendly by adjusting and not adding as much honey or Thai sweet chili sauce, or you could make as is and savor the perfect marriage of sweet and savory. I know some people are sensitive to bell peppers because of heartburn but I have not ever had heartburn or acid reflux except when I have had a very strong antibiotic (so twice, in my whole life) so I eat my peppers with relish and a spirit of righteous indignation.

This year my garden stubbornly refused to produce vegetables and while I have my theories about some mysteriously missing tomato blossoms, the end result was not having the satisfaction of cooking as much from my garden as I normally do. Sad face. In a year which seemed to bring so much sadness, it seemed like such a disappointment. Bell Peppers have always called my name and in times which were not so lean, I happily made my way through sliced crudite without a though to budget. Today I am thinking about my budget like many people and this recipe seemed all the more special when it was such a success.

Ingredients

Chicken filling

• lb of ground chicken

• medium onion (or so) diced

• ground ginger

• tbls of diced cilantro

• 2-3 cloves of garlic, diced

• 2 tbls of soy sauce

• tsp of ground garlic powder

• tsp of teriyaki sauce

• 2 tbls of Thai sweet chili sauce

• cilantro

2 - 3 medium bell peppers, cored and deseeded

Sauce

• 1/4 cup toasted sesame oil (I used olive oil because I don’t have sesame oil)

• 1/4 cup honey

• 2 tbsp Sriracha

• 1/2 tsp garlic powder

• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

• 2 tbsp soy sauce

• 2 tbsp rice vinegar

Plan of Attack

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Prepare the chicken filling: Cook the onion in your skillet and once aromatic, add the garlic and cook on medium low until aromatic. Mix the chicken seasoning mixture. Add the ground chicken to your pan, adding a little bit more oil if necessary and cook until it is not pink. Add the liquid and then cook until integrated, adding chopped cilantro a minute before removing from heat.

I adjusted from the guide recipe and filled these peppers as I had stuffed peppers before by filling the whole pepper and cutting little pieces off the bottoms so they stand up straight. Coat the papers in oil, salt and garlic powder. Put the peppers in the oven and cook for 18 -22 minutes.

While the peppers are cooking, make the sauce. Add the sauce ingredients to your saucepan and cook until it is syrupy and coats a spoon inserted in the mixture, Turn off the heat and set aside until your peppers are done cooking. Remove the peppers from the oven and generously drizzle the sauce over the chicken mixture of the peppers. Put them back in your oven for 5-6 more minutes. Serve hot and a smile which, in January, can only mean you’re remembering good summers.

Serving Suggestion: Garnish with cilantro (or green onions)

Sweet Potato Latkes

This recipe was savory, sweet, satisfying and lit up my nights, every night I made them! You could make them when it is not Hanukkah and call them something fancy, and they will still taste just as delicious. There’s something ancient and wise about making something with root vegetables in the dark of winter, almost on the darkest day, and I felt myself be nourished, body and soul, with this recipe. You could make this with vegetable oil if you’re thrown by the low smoking temp of olive oil, but I have funny healthy hangups, so I turned on the exhaust fan and crossed my fingers.

We all have had lived lives made rich by cultural traditions perhaps not shared with our parents, but shared with people we consider family for many reasons. Every year for the past few years I have tried to respect the holiday and cultural traditions of some of the people who have made my life rich, in addition to observing traditions which were part of my childhood home. Often this means cooking dishes I am not quite sure how to master, and I have burned latkes (or turned them into oily hashed browns), over salted collard greens and yes, even committed the sin of both under and over seasoning everything from pork to peaches.

There is something about holidays which have central themes of light which speak to my deep feeling soul, and this year at Hanukkah I cooked latkes as a nod to this holiday which is so important to so many people who are important to me, especially when they were children. While it is not popular to believe in miracles and it is even more not popular to believe in miracles which happen to inconvenient people or people who have experienced centuries of prejudice, I believe the oil lasted eight days as I believe in the miracle of our Lady of Guadalupe and the sacredness of Mary Magdalene and the mystery of the shroud of Tourin and the sanctity of the teachings of the Buddha and the divine insight about the poor written about in the Koran (Quaran) I believe because despite everything I have witnessed and experienced I ache to believe, not in fables but in truths which resonate with people from every corner of the globe. We who believe in miracles believe maybe because we need to, but often, for the wild souls who have seeker souls like mine, especially those who have seen certain disaster, we believe because there is no other way to explain why we are still sentient breathing creatures. I believe in miracles because I feel like I have witnessed them in my own life, in the extreme and humble, and the outpouring of selflessness which has ensured my survival can only be described as a modern day miracle. In this spirit of celebrating miracles and light, I cooked this dish..

This year Hannukkah seemed more important to me because I think so many of us are grappling with understanding where in our lives we can let light shine and perhaps harder to understand- how we can invite light in. Traditional latkes are cooked in oil but I am overly scared of having a fire in my house, especially since having a fire in my house which destroyed all of my possessions, so bake them I did. I have tried to fry them in the past but my anxiety got the best of me as I stubbornly kept trying to cook them in oil I would not let heat up sufficiently. I liked this recipe so much I made them two nights in a row and the second night I added some spice to the recipe, and both nights, man, they were awesome!

Ingredients

2 medium sweet potatoes

0.25 - 0.5 cup of flour

whisked egg

salt

pepper

onion, diced, cooked until aromatic and then cooled

powdered garlic

Optional additions: Cumin, Red Crushed pepper and even onion powder

Plan of Attack

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Dice and cook your onions until aromatic

Shred your potatoes using your hand grater

Garnish

cup of plain yogurt or sour cream

tsp of cayenne pepper

green onions, diced

apple sauce (optional, but not for me….I love me some saucy apples)

Combine all ingredients except olive oil in your medium mixing bowl and mix until completely integrated. I added cumin, because I love it and I always think of somebody, when my meal includes it, running in from the backyard (following the aroma of baking food) yelling “Hold on, don’t eat em alL, I’m cum-in”….Don’t be dirty, I am talking about a spice.

Coat your baking sheet with olive oil and put in the oven for 9-11 minutes. Remove and spoon 6 latke mounds onto the baking sheet. Being careful not to touch the pan. Flatten with your fork and Put the latkes in for 15 minutes, remove from the oven, flip over the latkes and put back in the oven for another 15 minutes.

Mix the yogurt and cayenne pepper, pour generously over the hot latkes, drizzle with diced green onions (called scallions by you fancy folk) and Add some applesauce on the side in something more generous than an actual sHmear…

Peanut Butter Blossom Turkey Cookies

Well, I come from families which are not always so great about saying what they mean and are better at doing, and in doing, they are saying how much they love you in their own love language. The most formative women in my life have valued feeding their families, either in by being careful about focusing on health, by putting effort into expanding their palates, or, in many cases, in baking their love into special occasion food with tired flour covered hands.

My Mamma’s Mamma, My Grandma , was her own expert cookie baker. In my earliest memories with this Grandma, of barbecues, of holidays, reunions, of vacations, of birthdays and even of funerals, big Tupperware containers of cookies featured prominently. A nurse for her entire working life, I am not sure exactly when she had time to make these mountains of. cookies but she did . She had an amazing collection of appliqué holiday sweatshirts and novelty earrings, and she was comfort personified. For the old people (I say old affectionately but I should more appropriately say elderly people) she cared for as nurse, I am sure she was the same. Some people can sit in a room with you and just by their presence, you suddenly feel flooded with a feeling everything might just be ok, after all. She accepted all people with a calm world weary understanding of people and she saw the best in everybody. She was this font of calm acceptance for me and on every holiday since she passed, I have missed her in way which some might deny because I don’t often speak of her. I miss her in a way I feel like other people might not necessarily deserve to know about because it seems like a deep pain I honor by keeping it private and celebrating her memory in how I live my life. Sometimes the losses we don’t speak about often are the losses we feel most deeply. My sibling, when she had her chance to ask for a piece of her jewelry asked for her holiday costume jewelry and since I don’t have the jewelry I chose, when I see Maura wear these earrings, on of course the appropriate holiday, it makes me smile in a private way because I feel like we might be, despite the mess, be doing her proud. My grandma was dignified and kind and hardworking and the best private parts of me, the parts of it were up to me I would share only with people who love me in an unselfish way and little children, are the best parts of her. She went to college, she had her own bank accounts, she knew very profound losses. but none of those things intefered with her sitting at her kitchen table coloring with her grandchildren in a way which, for most of my young childhood, made me believe she actually liked coloring books as much as she liked fishing and her dog. I made these cookies which I so profoundly associate with her because I miss her so much this year with all this ugliness and I made them because I think, in this, I am in such good company. We all miss people and we don’t always miss the people who are also missing the people we miss, but this holiday, I think many of us are digging deep into our roots to find meaning in what seems like senseless losses this year.

This recipe is my perfect marriage of two recipes - The NY Times Peanut Butter Blossom recipe and another recipe of another recipe blogger which adds some holiday whimsy to this crowd pleasing favorite. . The base is The NY Times recipe, and the vision is motivated by the other recipe. I decorated them in a few ways, in preparation for Thanksgiving and I did try chocolate chips as eyeballs, but making things this way seemed to make the cookies hard to transport. Traditional peanut butter blossoms have a Hershey kiss and the key to making them well is to slightly under cook them, and walking the perfect balance of timing, to know when you put your kisses in. I learned from The NY Times their recipe came from Pittsburgh with its tradition of cookie tables at weddings. This is fitting because I associate these cookies with my grandparents’ Pennsylvania, and if I had been married when my grandma was alive, she would have brought the traditional version as her contribution. In peanut butter blossoms and life, the key is to make your kisses count.. and to time them perfectly. This recipe uses Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (miniatures) and having made the original version before and having watched my Mamma make them so many times she could make them with her eyes closed, I have honed my ability to zero in on the perfect chocolate placing moment. Decorating is the fun part and it would be fun to do with children after the chocolate has set, which, fair warning, takes almost 6 hours at least. I want to publish this tonight and I injured my finger today cooking, so I am simplifying as much as I can by cutting and pasting from The NY Times and giving them credit for their copy. Complete disclosure, I will be editing later this week but I cannot publish a recipe with Turkey cookies, the day after it might actually be relevant…I mean, when else are Turkey Cookies relevant…except today?

INGREDIENTS

• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 4 ounces (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

• ½ cup smooth peanut butter (or other creamy nut butter)

• ½ cup granulated sugar, plus more for rolling

• ½ cup light brown sugar

• 1 large egg

• 1 tablespoon milk, half-and-half, oat milk or nut milk

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Nonstick spray or vegetable oil for cookie sheet (optional)

• 5 dozen (one 11-ounce package) Hershey’s Kisses, foil removed

• Can (or 2) of buttercream store-bought frosting

• tsp (or 2) creamy peanut butter

• either white chocolate chips or eyeball sprinkles…

Plan of Attack

“Sift together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. Leave your butter out until it is room temperature. Cream together butter, peanut butter, 1/2 cup granulated sugar and light brown sugar. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat until well blended. “ NY Times, Peanut Butter Blossoms

Add flour mixture, mixing thoroughly. If the dough is very soft, refrigerate for about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 373 Degrees

Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. Roll your cookies into balls and space evenly. *NY Times’s recipe recommends rolling them in sugar (which my grandma did) but I knew how decadent I was planning on making these so I skipped extra sugar. You can! Of course!

Either using a glass of your CLEAN AND WASHED HAND press them down. Cook for 6-9 minutes (keep checking them)…you’ll know they’re done when the edges are slightly browning…

Remove cookies from sheet pan and put on a cookie rack. Mine is from the dollar store, even though in these times luxuries seem like things we cannot afford, buy yourself a dollar store cookie rack. Your mind will be blown fellow cookie bakers. Roughly 2 minutes after removing from the pan, place your unwrapped miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at the bottom of your cookies.

Five to six minutes after place them in, place either your eyeball sprinkles or your white chocolate chips into the melty chocolate chips…GENTLY. You should just be able to just place them there, with not effort.

This is what the cookie looks like with chocolate chips and the benefit with white chocolate chips is you can adjust eyeball placement. The bad part is it adds an additional step because you have to apply eyeballs either with melted chocolate in a piping bag or frosting (if you’re careful).

This is what happens when bad melting happens to good chocolate ….a cookie with a wandering eye.

Yes, the chocolate chips as eyes are very endearing and I am no stranger to adding complexity to my recipes, but I was concerned about transporting them…

I decided on my “good version” to go with eyeball sprinkles….I let them sit honestly, more than over night, wrapped in Saran Wrap, and it made decorating them easier and didn't effect the taste!

Frosting (in this way) I added a tbs or so of peanut butter to my store bought Betty Crocker Frosting, to more than half of the frosting I added foOd coloring (red and yellow) to make orange. I frosted the whole cookie with this frosting base and dyed the remaining frosting red and Mustard yellow. I piped on the big red lines using a star burst tiP and the yellow beaks and yellow flourishes using an extremely fine tip point.