Chicken pot pie ice cream

This is not a joke. 

I made chicken pot pie ice cream. 

Through Blogher, I entered a recipe contest using a new product from Knoll: chicken stock concentrate. It's like chicken stock jelly, in a good way. The contest was to create an original recipe with the concentrate. Now, I must have been watching too many Iron Chefs or something because I thought, "That jelly-o-chicken would melt perfectly into an ice cream custard." 

So off I went to make chicken ice cream.

I make plenty of ice cream in my KitchenAid attachment ice cream maker, so I knew the basics. I figured I'd wing the rest. 

Here are the ingredients. Half & Half, a little butter and the tub-o-chicken-jelly. 

I used four eggs. 

I heated the half & half, butter, chicken jelly and some fresh thyme from our garden in a pot. 

Then, I tempered the eggs and cooked the now-custard mixture until thick. Next, I strained it and  completely chilled it in the refrigerator. Then it could be processed through the ice cream machine. Then it stayed in the freezer overnight. 

To make this chicken ice cream, chicken pot pie ice cream, I baked off a square of puff pastry. 

And topped it with a scoop of the chicken ice cream. 

Chris and I each took a bit of this one. It definitely tasted like chicken, and you really needed the puff pastry to cut the chicken-y flavor. I'm not sure I'll ever make this again; however, it was a fun process to create something so unique. 

I'll let you know if I win the recipe contest. Who knows? Maybe they are looking for the perfect chicken pot pie ice cream recipe!

Veggie night

We have been lucky enough to attend several parties the past few days. A wedding and a surprise birthday party. They were both amazing and had delicious food. But, you know the thing with party food? Even with a fruit tray, party food usually isn't the healthiest. So, Chris and I wanted a veggie night. 

Here you'll see my finished product. 

A veggie-infused, organic pasta with pesto that I made from our fresh basil. I added asparagus, green bell peppers and onions and yellow squash from the farm. 

So delicious, and we felt revived with our veggies! 

Farm food: Rump roast

In my continued series on our farm food, the next on my list was a rump roast. 

Say hello to our grass-fed rump roast.

I made a dry spice rub of a chili con carne spice mix, red pepper and ground mustard. I combined them to make probably 2 tablespoons of rub. I could probably have used a little more. 

I rubbed the roast with the spices, and put it in our slow cooker.

I set it on low for 10 hours. Because our meat is so lean, it actually didn't need all this time. I took it out around 9 hours, and it probably only needed 7-8. Also, next time, I'll put a little beef stock in the bottom of the cooker to get the juices started. Again, since our meat is lean, it didn't produce a ton of au jus. I could always use more!

I threw together a salad with lettuce and cucumbers from the farm. I made a red wine vinegar dressing that my grandfather recommended, and it was delicious!

The meat was tender and delicious. 

Underneath the roast was a bed of red new potatoes that I boiled and smashed. They were perfect with the au jus drizzled over them. Another healthy and delicious meal from the farm!

Migas my way

I forgot to mention in my farm food post that we also got eggs from our pretty chickens!

Usually I make frittatas, but I got us a little burned out on them. Instead of frittatas, I made migas my way. Traditional migas contain scrambled eggs into which you crumble tortilla chips into. Yum. But, I wanted to kick it up a notch. 

Here, you see a bell pepper from the farm sauteing, a bag of already-cooked sausage, tortilla chips and eggs. 

Looks how pretty our eggs are. You won't see that kind of color in a store-bought, corn-fed chicken egg.

The next step is to throw it all together and cook through. Top with salsa, and you're good to go!

Farm Food

We spent the Fourth of July weekend at the farm. And, instead of showing you more photos of alpacas, llamas and dogs, I'm going to show you food!

Right after I show you one photo of a dog. 

And a photo of a sad, trapped down. 

A dog who chooses to trap himself by the fan by squeezing through the fence. 

Now, back to the food. 

This is the bounty of food we brought back from the farm. 

Lots of lettuces, onions and cherry tomatoes.

Yellow squash, green bell peppers and cucumbers. 

And meat! The best part about having an all grass-fed black angus cattle ranch is the beef. Let's just be honest. Pretty cuts of beef. 

Ground beef too!

So, what am I to do with all of this fresh food? Here's what I did Monday night when we got home.  I had two chicken breasts that were already grilled. I chose these veggies and chopped them up. 

Then I threw them in a skillet with some cumin, chili powder and cayenne for fajitas!

Stay tuned for my next dish with my farm food!