Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Shells

If there are two kinds of food just about everyone loves, they would have to be buffalo chicken wings and stuffed shells.  I think this may even be a case where the final outcome is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 15 jumbo pasta shells
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 2 Tablespoons chopped chives
• 2 Tablespoons chopped parsley
• ¼  teaspoon each of salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder
• 5 Tablespoons butter
• 1 bottle of Cholula (5 fl. oz) (or whatever hot sauce you like)
• ¼  teaspoon each of salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder (yes, again)
• ¾ cup grated cheese

Before starting anything else, go ahead put a large pan of water on the hot burner so it can come to a boil.  Add lots of salt and your shells and follow the package instructions for cooking them.  You’ll probably want to add a couple extra shells in case any of them crack.  When they’re finished cooking, drain them and rinse them well with cool water.  Next, start on the sauce.  In a pan over medium heat, melt the butter with the hot sauce. 

Once it’s melted, go ahead and add ¼ teaspoon of each of the spices.

Stir and bring it just to a simmer, then remove it from the heat and set it aside.  It should look something like this:

Cut the chicken breasts into cubes. 

Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper and sauté over medium heat. 

Once it’s cooked through, use your spatula and chop it into smaller bits.  Could you use a knife?  Sure, but that would require dirtying a cutting board and knife, so I opted for this method.

You want them fairly small. 

Pour the hot chicken over the cream cheese. 

Stir them until they are thoroughly mixed together.  Add the herbs and spices and stir them in, as well.  As you know from my buffalo wings post, I like ranch dressing with my wings, rather than blue cheese, so these are the herbs and spices used to make ranch.  If you prefer blue cheese with your wings, you're weird, but feel free to experiment using a mixture of cream cheese and blue cheese. 

Open one of your cooked shells and fill it with the chicken and cheese mixture. 

Coat the bottom of a pan (8x8 was perfect) with a thin layer of the buffalo sauce and place your shell inside. 

Repeat with the rest of the shells and pour the remaining buffalo sauce over the top. 

Cover the pan with foil and bake at 350° for 25 minutes, then uncover and top with grated cheese. 

Back into the oven just long enough to make the cheese ooey, gooey, and delicious. (like 10 minutes) 

Hubby had a friend over that evening, and I warned him it was experiment night because I’d never made these before and, as usual, wasn’t using a recipe.  When we finished he asked when the next experiment night was, so I guess that means he approves.  Personally, I thought they were absolutely fabulous.  Next time I think I might use ground chicken because, well, I’m lazy, and that will make less work for me.  I’ll probably also double the recipe.  We didn’t have any leftover, but if we had, I’m sure they’d have reheated beautifully. 

What two dishes would you like to see combined into one?

Blue Corn Berry Muffins

Well, I had to do it. I had to make something else in the muffin tin to see if it was totally bitched.

And one of the small veggie places that seems to specialize in local and as-close-as-possible foods had giant vats of blueberries on sale. So of course, blueberry muffins. And blueberry smoothies. And blueberries with yogurt and granola...

Just the muffins in this post.

Now, those of you who've never seen me in meatspace propbably don't know that I have some issues with colour. For a lot of years I wore a lot of black because I'm just not good at matching things. Warm colours? Cool colours? Wut? Eventually I gave up and just started wearing green pants with a blue tshirt and red sneakers. Monochormatic outfits are my friend.

And so I decided to make blueberry muffins using blue masa. Monochromatic breakfasts.

Don't worry, Canada Customs didn't know what blue masa was either when I brought it back across the border.

Masa is nixtamalized cornmeal. It's cornmeal treated with an alkali in order to make the vitamins in the cornmeal available. It also make the proteins in corn usable by humans. And if you mix corn, squash, and beans in one dish, you end up with a perfectly complete source of protein.

Of course blue masa is just masa made from blue corn. If you've never had it, it's totally awesome. Tastes mostly the same, but dude! It's freaking blue!

Think about it... naturally occuring blue stuff is pretty rare. Even moreso is naturally occuring blue food.

Blue Corn Blue Berry Muffins

What You Need

• 2 c blue masa
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 c cream and or milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 c honey
• 1/2 c melted butter
• plus a bit more butter for greasing the muffin tin
• blueberries!

What you gotta do:

So, we're going to start this off by souring our cream and or milk. If you have buttermilk, use it, and skip this step. I never have buttermilk. For some reason the smallest container I can find of it is 1 litre, and I will never use 1 L of buttermilk before it manages to go bad. Hell, half the time I can't use a litre of regular milk before it sours.

You can sour your milk / cream by adding lemon juice to it.

Then, in your biggest bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and add the lemon zest.

The rest of this goes pretty quickly, so preheat your oven to 400 and melt some butter to grease your muffin tin (or line it with papers).

To your soured cream, add the vanilla and honey.

1/4 cup isn't a lot of honey, no. But you'll be loading these muffins with super sweet berries so you don't really need the sugar sweetness. You can add more if you'd like, but these work for me.

Plus, if you only use 1/4 cup in the batter you have an excuse to drizzle the muffins with honey when you eat them. ;)

Add the eggs and the melted butter. 

Beat this liquidy stuff all together and then pour it into the dry stuff.

Mix the two until they're just combined and then dump in the berries. At least 2 cups.

Fold the blueberries in gently and then fill your cups with them.

You should be able to generously fill all 12 spots with fabulously blue batter.

Bake them for about 20 minutes, but maybe start checking around 18. You don't want these overdone. Cornbread can seem really dry if it's overbaked.

Nothing a little butter and honey won't solve though.

Full of explodey blue goodness.

Let them cool a good 10 minutes in the pan before you try extracting them. If your pan is fine, you should have no problems.

Mine was not. They totally stuck to the sides and the bottom. Just as bad as the quiches did. Pan is bitched.

But, I'm damn good at getting stuck things out of pans, and with my trusty paring knife and spoon, I was able to do this.

Not pretty, but it's out.

These are best eaten the day they were made, as with all cornbread, but if you do package and freeze them, just remember to bring along some butter and honey to go with them.

I've got honey in my desk drawer at work.

What have you got stashed in your drawers at work?