Chicken and Dumplings

"Winter is coming." Well screw you Ned Stark. I say winter doesn't need to be a cold barren wasteland of ice, snow and family gatherings. It can be so much better and warmer with Chicken and Dumplings, which is basically like a hug in a bowl. Just remember even if there's no one to keep you warm this winter at least there's this soup to keep you warm, and hell you can even bring it to your office's Holiday party! But don't let Tim hog all the dumplings.

I had never made Chicken and Dumplings until someone on the Cooking with B.S. Facebook page suggested I make it. I'm glad I did, because this is one delicious dish and perfect for any winter day. So I before I made this dish I did a little research on the dish. It turns out that this dish originated from the Chinese province of Hunan when a village came together one freezing winter day, each farmer giving up a piece of that year's crop to the soup that would feed the village and give the soldiers stationed at the village to fight off the invading Mongols. 

Well it turns out I was on the Sweet and Sour Chicken Wikipedia page and this dish actually originates from, I dunno the South? Maybe some place in Europe? If you really want to know, you're at a computer look it up yourself! I have a recipe to write! 

Big news coming from Grub NorthWest and their line of salts. We'll keep you posted!

Chicken and Dumplings

• 3 Chicken Breasts
• 1 cup Flour
• 1/2 cup Buttermilk
• 1 Egg beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon Paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
• Salt & Pepper
• 3 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 1 Leek sliced
• 1 Carrot stick sliced
• 3 stalks Celery chopped 
• 1/2 medium Onion diced
• 4 Chanterelle Mushrooms chopped
• 52 oz. Chicken Stock
• 3 Bay Leaves
• 1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon Cumin
• 1 cup water

Dumplings

• 1 cup Buttermilk
• 1/2 cup Butter
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 1/2 cup Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1. Get out your Dutch oven, and no I don't mean that dutch oven. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the Dutch oven over medium heat. 
2. In two separate pie pans, create a buttermilk and egg bath, and a flour mixture of well flour, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper. 
3. Coat the chicken in the buttermilk bath then coat it in the flour and place in the dutch oven. Evenly cook all three breasts until the middle of each is fully cooked. Should take 10-15 minutes. 
4. Remove the chicken from the pan. DO NOT GET RID OF THE DRIPPIN's! 
5. Let the chicken cool enough to handle.
6. Add the onions, carrots, mushrooms, celery and leek to the pan. Sautee for a good 7 minutes. 
7. Then add the chicken stock, bay leaves, and other seasonings to the pot. Tear apart the chicken breast into small pieces, and dump into the pot. Continue cooking while you prepare the dumplings.
8. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt into a large mixing bowl. 
9. Melt the butter in a microwaveable safe bowl. Let the bowl cool down a skoch. Stir the buttermilk into the butter, which will solidify the butter. 
10. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture to create a dumpling mixture. Let's take a moment to thank this week's sponsor's mixtures.
11. Using two soup spoons make little dolops of dumpling mixtures, and drop them right into the soup! Be sure to spread them out in the pot as to avoid clumping. Make as many dumplings as possible with the dumpling mixture. 
12. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cover with the lid until you're ready to serve it up! Enjoy!

So, go start a fire and curl up with some chicken and dumplings this winter and you'll fight off the cold at least for awhile.

All phantastic photos by Katy Weaver. Give her a Like would ya!

Bacon Granny Smith Apple Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Everyone loves a good grilled cheese sandwich. It doesn't matter if you're young or old, sometimes a grilled cheese sandwich is the perfect lunch. Yes, even lactose intolerant people love grilled cheeses, though their colons don't. So get out your holy cheese and pray to Cheezus Crust, and make this divine grilled cheese sandwich or are you a naan believer?

In the words of Buster Bluth, "I was told there would be grilled cheese." This isn't any old grilled cheese though, it's a grilled cheese that puts all others to shame. Sure, you could go with something simple and safe, but what's the fun in that? I personally don't understand people who take the safe route; life is for living, so add some apple and bacon to that sandwich! Some people will say apples don't belong on a sandwich, but let them talk and have their wrong opinion. They don't know the joy of something weird and different, so they can enjoy their meal of quiet judgement while you eat one of the best grilled cheese sandwiches of your life.

Bacon Granny Smith Apple Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Yields one sandwich

• 2 slices of Sourdough Bread
• 2 tablespoons Butter
• 3 oz. Tillamook Cheddar Cheese grated 
• 2 oz. Gruyere cheese grated
• 1.5 Bacon Slices cooked
• 1 Granny Smith Apples thinly sliced 
• 1 teaspoon Dijon Mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon Black Pepper freshly ground

1. Heat up two CLEAN skillets over medium heat. That's right two. 
2. Butter one side of each slice of yo' bread. 
3. Add the mustard and pepper to one slice of bread (on the non-butter side, but you're clever so you probably figured that out on your own). 
4. Pile on the cheeses. Stack 2 apple slices and the bacon strips to the pre-sandwich. Top it off with the other slice of bread, butter side up.
5. Place in one of the hot skillets. Let cook for 30 seconds. Take the other hot skillet and place on top of the sandwich and press down. This will help melt the cheese and make it easier to flip. After a minute or so, flip the sandwich over and continue cooking until both sides are golden brown. 
6. Serve with a little salad or some tomato or  butternut squash soup. 

It's that easy to mix up the everyday routine and make something different and delicious. Don't be afraid of people judging your fruity sandwich. Go ahead and make this great sandwich, because if you don't I'll be judging you.

Say cheese, all photos by Katy Weaver 

Pork Apple Barrel Spending Burger

Pork burger with beet and goat cheese salad

Before I start this post I just want to let you guys know about our new sponsor, The Employment Branch, which is a temp agency for recently out-of-work non-essential government employees. That's right, The Employment Branch, "Yes, you actually HAVE to work to get paid."

Pork burger with beet and goat cheese salad

I've been wanting to make this burger and put it up on the blog for a long time and we all know once you've built something up in your mind for such a long time, it always lives up to your expectations. Before I continue to ramble on about how perfect this burger is for an autumn weekend dinner, I want to explain the name of the burger. No I'm not going to explain the joke to you and why it works, but I do want to say that I took a page out of Bob's Burgers book and

made a burger of the day

. If you don't watch

Bob's Burgers

then you probably should. Why? Because you're reading this blog and you obviously have some brain functionality and like to laugh.

fall produce

I'm not going to keep talking about a burger. It's a pork burger with apple chutney, goat cheese, and onion rings served with a beet and goat cheese "salad". That's all you need to know, enjoy.

fall produce

Hello, W orld!

pork burger

Pork Burgers

yields 5 burgers

• 1 lbs. Ground Pork
• 1/4 cup Oats
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 teaspoon Garlic Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon Pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon Sage dried

1. Mix everything together in a large mixing bowl with your hands.
2. Make patties, should yield about 5. 
3. In a large skilled or if you have a grill, coat with a touch of oil. Turn the heat up to 11! Actually no, don't do that, just turn it up to like medium high. Cook each side for about 2 minutes or until it's golden brown.
4. Top your burger with the apple chutney, onion rings, and some goat cheese.

I like adding oats to my burgers, because it makes the meat go a bit further. And we all love meat that keeps on coming.

Apple Chutney

• 4 Apples quartered and seeded
• 2 Fiji
• 2 Gala
• 1/2 Red Onion sliced
• 2 teaspoons Olive Oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
• 3 tablespoons packed Dark Brown Sugar
• 1 tablespoon Molasses
• 1/2 teaspoon Cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon Curry Powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Garlic Salt
• 1/4 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon Paprika

1. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat while you turn the onion and apples into pebble sized pieces with a food processor.
2. Stir the apples and onion into the hot oil. Stir all the other ingredients and let simmer for about 1 hour 30 minutes, be sure to stir occasionally. 

baked onion rings

Baked Onion Rings

• 1/2 Red Onion thickly sliced
• 2 Eggs
• 1/3 cup Milk
• 1/2 cup Flour
• 1 cup Bread Crumbs
• Oil
• Salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375°. 
2. Get small-ish mixing bowls. Put the flour in one, eggs and milk (whisked together) in another and the bread crumbs, salt and pepper in the last one. Lightly coat a baking pan with some oil. 
3. Coat the sliced onion rings in flour. Then dip in the egg and milk mixture and finally the breadcrumbs. Place in the baking pan and cook for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Flip halfway through cooking.

beets

Baked Beet and Goat Cheese "Salad"

• 3 Beets
• 3 Golden Beets
• 2 tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar
• 5 oz. Goat Cheese
• Micro Greens

1. Prepare the beets for baking (cutting off the tail and the green stuff). Preheat the oven to 350. Place the beets in a baking pan and cover with tin foil.
2. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours. Take out of oven and let cool. The beets can be prepared the evening before. 
3. Remove the skin from the beets. Slice vertically to make beet discs, which also happens to be what I call records. 
4. Stack the beets and goat cheese together and top with micro greens.

Pork burger with beet and goat cheese salad

Just because it's fall that doesn't mean you need to drench everything in pumpkin spice. Now go out there and make something delicious and avoid Starbuck's pumpkin spice latte, it causes gourding.

All photos taken by

Katy Weaver

pork burger and beet salad

Fig Dessert Pizza and Maple Coffee

fig dessert pizza

Here at Cooking with B.S. Corp. we like to pride ourselves on knowing what recipes our followers want. You've spoken up and we've listened to your pleas for more fig recipes. I would also like to point out this is the No. 1 fig based blog outside of the Middle East and would like to use this title to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but first coffee.

maple whipped cream coffee

Autumn came ushering in this year like a car swerving off the highway due to the first autumn rains. Instead of going outside and enjoying the crisp fall air, why not stay in drinking a hot cup of coffee with some maple whipped cream to top it off? And while you're enjoying your ideal fall drink, read through some of your favorite Cooking with B.S. posts and click on an ad or three. 

maple coffee

I fully endorse coffee with dessert and from what I've seen it's only my grandparents and their friends that partake in this post-dinner ritual. I wish more people my age would join in, but wishful thinking never solved anything except turning Pinocchio into a real boy.

figs

Kona coffee

maple whipped cream

Maple Whipped Cream Coffee

• 1/2 cup Heavy Whipping Cream
• 1 tablespoon Maple Syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1. Add everything to a mixing bowl and whisk until it's all whippy. 
2. Add the delicious whipped cream to a cup of coffee.
3. Petition Starbucks to buy this recipe from me to replace the Pumpkin Spiced Latte as "The Fall Coffee Drink".

pizza dough

Fig and Goat Cheese Dessert Pizza

• 2 Figs quartered
• 3 oz. Goat Cheese crumbled
• 1 tablespoon Honey
• 1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
• Pizza dough

1. Once again I used America's Test Kitchen's pizza dough recipe for this one. You can buy their new book, Cooking School Cookbook here!
2. Preheat the oven to 475°
3. Drizzle the honey over the stretched out pizza dough. Crumble on the goat cheese. Add the figs and sprinkle the cinnamon over the pizza.
4. Bake on a pizza baking stone for about 10 minutes or until the edges are crispy.
5. NOTE: the figs will make this pizza a little juicy so let the sugars cool and solidify before cutting into the dessert pizza.

dessert pizza

Things can change at a moment's notice; the weather, the season, the ripeness of figs, but instead of worrying about what's coming next, take time out of your busy schedule to enjoy something sweet and the post-dinner buzz of the world's favorite bean.  Enjoy!

All photos by THE

Katy Weaver

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This whipped cream looks like a grumpy old man.

maple whipped cream coffee