Chicken Tortilla Bake

My mom adapted this recipe from one she found in a magazine years and years ago.  This dish is like a chicken pot pie with tortilla shells as lasagna layers.  It's creamy and cheesy and really yummy.  It was a little chilly today and this was a nice fall meal to warm you up and satisfy.
The nice thing about this recipe is that you can adapt it however you like.  My mom used to make it with broccoli, but now we make it with peas.  Put anything you like in here to make it your own.

I learned something about myself recently: I have a compulsion for buying tortillas every time I'm at the grocery store.  This is what is currently in my fridge.  Notice I buy a different kind each time.  I think I need some kind of therapy...


I also learned that I'm not very good at keeping up with this blog.  Hopefully I can improve on that in the near future.

Ingredients:
Boneless Chicken
Flour Tortillas
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 small onion
1-2 cups cheddar cheese
1 cup peas/broccoli or any other frozen or canned veggie

Here's how it all comes together:

Cut chicken into small chunks and brown in some olive oil (and splatter it all over you stove).  Use whatever seasoning you like.  I used seasoning salt, but you can just use salt and pepper or anything you like.  Towards the end of the chicken browning, add the 1/2 onion diced to soften it and mellow the flavor a bit.

Combine the cooked chicken/onions, soup, broth, and peas in a bowl.

 Ignore the blurriness of this photo.  Line the bottom of a pan with tortillas (cut to fit).  Spread 1/2 of the chicken/soup mixture over the tortillas.

Top the layer of chicken/soup mixture with 1/2 the cheese.  You can make this as cheesy as you'd like.  

 Add another layer of tortillas over the cheese.

 Repeat the layers again, ending with cheese on top.

 Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

 The result is a delicious, creamy, cheesy, hearty dish.

The Verdict:

Mr. Picky Pants didn't remember having this before, but he ate it willingly and enjoyed it.  He wasn't the biggest fan of the tortillas, but he never is.  He said it would taste better over biscuits so we may give that a try next time.  Overall, this was a hit and he agreed it was good and he would eat it again.  That's a win in my book.

Herbed Cheese & Chicken Pockets

I've determined that Mr. Picky Pants will do just about anything for crescent rolls.  I have to keep them on the other side of the table when I make them and only allow him to have one when he eats some of the protein or vegetable on his plate.  He can eat an entire tube of crescent rounds all by himself.  It's frightening.  His love of crescents got me thinking about putting the "healthy" food inside the crescents so I don't have to be the crescent roll gatekeeper.  This idea was so simple and obvious I was surprised I didn't make it sooner.

Ingredients (just 3):

• 2 boneless chicken breasts (mine were frozen and thawed in the fridge) or 1 large breast butterflied                                                  

• Crescent Rolls (any variety works, but the crescent sheets work the best since there are no seams)                                                   

• Any kind of garlic or herbed cheese (Rondele and Aloutte are the ones I've used) or you can season up your own cream cheese to use   

Here's how it all comes together:

Trim all the fat off the chicken breasts and season with salt and pepper or seasoned salt (whatever you like).

Pan cook the breasts in oil or butter (I chose butter for flavor).  You could use grilled chicken also.  As long as it's fully cooked before it goes in the crescent dough, it doesn't matter how it's prepared.

Roll out the crescent dough.  The crescent sheets work best because there are no seams, but if you use regular crescents, just press the seams together to make sure they don't come apart.  Spread the garlic cheese on the dough leaving about a 1/2 inch border.

Place the cooked chicken breast in the middle of the dough.  I found it's easier if you let the chicken cool a little so it doesn't melt the cheese and the crescent dough.  Things get very sticky if they get too hot.

Put another sheet of crescent dough over the top, or roll the edges over to cover the chicken.  I'm still working on the technique here so they aren't the prettiest.

Bake for about 10-14 minutes (or whatever the package says).  Check to make sure the tops aren't getting too brown.  You're just cooking the dough since everything else is cooked, so don't go overboard.

Serve with some side dishes and you have a fun homemade hot pocket.  I served them with Roasted Ranch Potatoes and the flavors tied together beautifully.

The Verdict:

Mr. Picky Pants thought these were delicious.  Pan cooking the chicken made it really moist so there were no complaints about dryness.  A couple weeks later I made bite-sized versions for us to snack on and these were awesome also.  They were slightly time-consuming to make, but not overly.  I was just happy that Mr. Picky Pants will eat this with little complaint and without me having to cut him off from the rolls.  He requests this often and as long as I have chicken thawed, I'm happy to make it.  You can wrap anything you want in these crescents - sloppy joes, ham and cheese, turkey and swiss, the possibilities are endless.  Why buy Hot Pockets at the grocery store when you can make your own using ingredients you trust for not a lot of money?

Chicken Florentine

Last week, Mr. Picky Pants had a special guest for dinner so I made Chicken Florentine.  The original recipe was one I saw when watching Paula Deen on Food Network.  There were a number of things I didn't like about the original recipe, so I changed it quite a bit.  The nice thing about this dish is that it comes together really quickly using ingredients that are in the fridge and tastes awesome.

The Recipe:

1 Rotisserie Chicken
1 10 oz package frozen, chopped spinach
1 10 3/4 oz. condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/4 cup chicken broth
1-1 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/2 8 oz box of medium shell pasta, cooked and drained
1 sleeve butter crackers, crumbled

I use a Rotisserie chicken rather than roast my own chicken for this recipe.  Take all the meat off the chicken and discard the skin and bones.  Make sure to shred the chicken and break it into bite size pieces.

Thaw and squeeze all the water out of the spinach.  Add to the chicken.

Combine the mayonnaise, sour cream, garlic powder,  salt and pepper, chicken broth and 1 cup of the cheese in a bowl.

Add to the chicken and spinach mixture.

Add the cooked and drained pasta to the chicken, spinach, and sauce mixture.

Stir it all up to combine it really well (you'll need a BIG bowl for this).

Put mixture in a large dish that has been buttered or sprayed with cooking spray.

Crumble one sleeve of butter crackers and spread over the top.

Add the remaining cheese to the top of the casserole.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until the cheese is melty and browned and the casserole is bubbly.

The Verdict:

Mr. Picky Pants really loves this dish and his special friend really liked it too.  The flavors all go well together and it's a really comforting dish.  It's also really amazing as leftovers.  This casserole will feed 4 hungry adults easily and can be doubled without much additional effort.  It's great for potlucks or to serve to people that you really don't know what they like to eat.  The hardest part of the whole recipe is remembering to buy the rotisserie chicken and shredding the meat.  This is a super satisfying one-dish dinner that everyone is sure to like.  It's also a great way to get spinach into your picky eater.

Chicken Slop

Sounds appetizing, doesn't it?  The real name is chicken and stuffing casserole, but Mr. Picky Pants started calling it "chicken slop" years ago and it stuck.  Even though this is actually really easy to make, I don't make it that often.  When I do, it's a real treat for Mr. Picky Pants since it's his FAVORITE meal.  Everything else I make is ranked compared to chicken slop. 

The Recipe:

Boneless Chicken Breast (how much is up to you)
Butter or Margarine
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
2/3 cup of milk
Stuffing (any kind you like)

Cut up the chicken into bite size pieces.  You can really use as much or as little chicken as you'd like and this is a great way to stretch chicken to feed a bunch of people.  I can make 1 chicken breast feed both Mr. Picky Pants and I using this recipe. The original recipe calls for whole chicken breasts, but the pieces are much better.

Brown the chicken in butter and sprinkle with seasoning salt or just salt and pepper.

I know this looks disgusting, but this is the slop part of the recipe.  Combine both cans of soup and the milk in a bowl.  The original recipe calls for only 1 can of soup (either mushroom or chicken) and only 1/3 cup of milk, but it always seems to come out too dry so I double the slop portion.

Add the chicken to a baking dish (whatever size you prefer) making sure to include all the buttery goodness in the bottom of the pan.

Add the slop mixture on top.

Make up any kind of stuffing you like.  I use Stove-Top, but my grandmother always made her own homemade.  It's really up to your tastes and preferences.  Just make sure it's totally prepared before adding it to the top of the casserole.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes or until it's browned on top and bubbly.  Everything is cooked so you're just heating the slop mixture and crisping up the stuffing.

This is a sad picture.  The casserole really isn't much to look at, but it's quite yummy.

The Verdict

As mentioned before, this is Mr. Picky Pants' favorite meal.  Of course it is "Mr. Picky Pants Approved".  The awesome thing about this dish is that you can make a lot of it in a relatively short period of time and it stores well in the fridge.  My mom used to make this for pot-lucks since it's so easy and versatile.

You can add vegetables to this or mushrooms or other seasonings.  Mr. Picky Pants likes it pretty bland, but I think it would be fun to play around with different ideas.  It's a very basic dish that pleases the palettes of even the most picky eaters.  Give it a try tonight!