The Colorful Cookie Conundrum...

As you probably know, artificial dyes have had quite a place in the news lately for a few of their more common side effects, most notably increasing hyperactivity in children.  Even before all the latest findings I avoided artificial stuff, but now they are officially banned in my house.  Well, with Easter coming up and spring in the air, I want some fun colored goodies.  Sounds like it’s time for a little experiment.  Using nothing but things created by Mother Nature, herself, I set off to create a recipe for beautiful, and tasty, cookies. 

First things first, we have to get the juicing out of the way.  I’ve chosen to use red beet, yellow beet, carrot, and spinach. 

No, this is not my attempt to make healthy cookies.  I promise they won’t taste like vegetables by the time we’ve finished.

Ok, juicing… I happen to have a really awesome juicer, which definitely helps for this process.  In goes veggies, out comes very brightly colored juice. 

Chop your vegetables so they’ll fit through the chute.  Notice I’m using my ugly, old, black cutting board?  That’s because these things will stain.  Be careful not to get them on your clothes, especially.  Unfortunately, you will have to wash the juicer between each to prevent a mixture of colors, but it’s worth it. 

See how pretty?

Now, set those aside and we’ll start on the cookie dough.  Since you can’t divide an egg into four equal parts very easily, I think it best to make a cookie dough ‘starter’, if you will, and then divide that.  Here’s what you’ll need for the cookie dough. 

1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 ⅓ cups sugar
1 Egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon distilled vinegar
2 ⅔ - 3 cups all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
(If this recipe looks familiar, it’s because I used the same dough for my Valentine’s Day Cookies.) 

In a mixing bowl, whip your butter until it’s soft and fluffy.

Add the sugar and whip for another minute or so. 

Mix in the vanilla, salt, and vinegar, followed by the baking powder and soda.  Finally, add the egg and mix until completely incorporated.

Separate the batter into four ½ cup portions, and return one of them to the mixing bowl. 

Here’s where you have to get a bit creative.  I decided that I would not only add different colors to each portion, but different flavors as well.  Now is when you’ll want to add those as well.  This is how it went for me:

Green – 1 ½ teaspoons spinach juice and ½ teaspoon almond flavor

Yellow – 3 teaspoons yellow beet juice, ½ teaspoon lemon flavor, and 1 teaspoon lemon zest

Orange – 3 teaspoons carrot juice, ½ teaspoon flavor, and 1 teaspoon orange zest

Pink/purple – 1 teaspoon red beet juice and ½ teaspoon vanilla (oops, no vanilla picture)

Yes, I am aware that they sell natural food coloring, similar to the flavorings I’m using there, but what fun would that be? 

Now, add your desired color and flavor combination to the mixing bowl. 

When it’s mixed in, it should look something like this.

Not sure why I didn’t take two pictures with the same color, but you get the idea. 

Next comes the flour.  Start by stirring in ⅔ of a cup.  That should get you pretty close, but in the yellow and the orange, I had to add another tablespoon.  You’re going for a soft, play dough like consistency.  If it’s still sticky, add flour, one tablespoon at a time until it just loses that stickiness.  When you’ve finished with all your different colors, it’ll even look like you’re playing with play dough.  How cute is that?

Here’s a good place to preheat your oven to 350°. 

Now, roll the dough into balls about the size of a quarter and drop them into a little bowl of sugar. 

Shake them around until they’re coated all the way around and then place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet, leaving about two inches between them. (I had to put mine closer together for the picture.  Leave more space than this) 

Bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges just start to brown. 

Not sure why the top right one went a little wonky.  I did mention this was an experiment, didn't I?  The ones that came after these were all perfectly beautiful. 

Cool them for a minute or two on the pan, and then remove to a cooling rack.  When they’re all baked and cooled, taste one of each flavor (yes, I just told you to eat four cookies) and marvel at how good they are!  Then take a picture of the results of all your hard work and show all your friends how talented you are and brag about how you only used vegetable juice to make such beautiful, fun cookies.  (I may or may not have done this) 

Last, but not least, pack the majority of them into a container and send them to work with your husband so you don’t sit around and eat every last one. 

Now, I realize not everyone has a juicer on hand, and I don’t really expect a large number of people to follow this recipe to the letter.  My intent, rather, is to get your creative ‘juices’ flowing, to get you to think outside of the box and look for a more natural alternative to artificial dyes.  I've shown you the things I used in mine, but if you don’t have a juicer, you could probably try blood oranges, or even bottled juice like pomegranate or carrot.  Have fun with it!  That’s what baking is supposed to be about.  

Chicken Picatta

Of course, when I made this, I didn't measure anything. Unless I'm baking, I rarely actually measure, and even then I play fast and loose with teaspoons and quarter cups. So, I'm basing  the proportions in this recipe on the pictures. And I'm promising to write shit down from now on. I will. Totally will. If I remember.

Chicken Piccata

What you need:

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/4 c flour
• 1 tbsp lemon zest
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 c parsley, chopped and packed into the measuring cup^
• 1/4 - 1/2 c white wine (or white grape juice, stock, or other liquid of your choice)
• 1 1/2 c chicken stock
• 1 tbsp capers
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1/4 c grated romano or parmesan cheese
• about 1/2 lb of pasta

Recipe Guy made this but used basil instead of parsley and highly recommends it as a substitute.

What you gotta do:

If you're working with one cutting board, and aiming to use only one, you're going to want to chop all the fresh stuff first, and then deal with the chicken later. Since one board used is only one board to wash, that's what I'm going to say I did. It's the most probable sequence of events.

** Put water on to boil for the pasta. **

Chop the parsley. Zest the lemon and finely mince the zest. (mince it finer than this pic).

Cut the lemon in half and juice both halves.

This is a little more like what the zest should look like. And yes, it's a gratuitious extreme closeup.

Okay, that's it for the fresh stuff. Fast and easy.

Now the bird. If you've never "butterflied" a chicken breast before, now's your chance. It sounds fancy but really, it's just a way to get the chicken thin enough to cook really fast, and go a lot further. Yes, you could pound the shit out of it with a wine bottle, but when you do that, you actually break the flesh apart; it will crumble in the pan much the way ground beef does. Not the goal here. You're going to have to find some other means of venting your frustrations.

So, to "butterfly" a chicken breast, you want to lay it flat on the cutting board and hold it in place with the palm of your hand. Hold it! You don't want it flying away on you.

With the knife parallel to the cutting board and your hand, start at the top of the breast and draw the blade, still flat (you tilt, you bleed; keep it flat) toward you.

When you get to the end of the knife, check your progress. Since you're being careful and going slowly, you're probably only half way through. Reinsert the knife where the flesh is still joined, and repeat until you make it just about through to the other side.

Now, if you were aiming for a real "butterfly" this is where you'd stop. Me I want a bunch of small thin peices of chicken, so I kept going and cut it into two pieces. Actually, because the breasts were a little thick, I re-butterflied them. I cut each breast into thirds. Doing this can make two chicken breasts go a long way.

Yes, that is only two boneless skinless chicken breasts. No they were not mutants. Those pieces are very thin. You'll see just how thin as they're cooking.

Wait, that's a different cutting board. Apparently I had to wash two.

Before the chicken get into the pan though, it needs to be dredged. Fancy schmancy food word for "coat in flour". So a few recipes I checked before I started (no, I wasn't totally winging it as I cooked, I'm just winging it as I tell you what I did) suggested adding either cheese or zest to the flour. I added both.

It was a total waste of cheese and zest. Neither actually stuck to the chicken. Don't bother. Just use flour, with a little salt and pepper if you'd like.

Before you start dredging though (you know, when I worked at the sawmill, dredge had a whole different meaning) you want to get your pan heating. Medium high, olive oil in it.

Once the pan is warm, dredge a tiny piece of chicken in the seasoned (but not cheesey or zesty) flour, and check the temperature. It should bubble around the edges and start to look cooked almost instantly.

No, that's not as much oil as it looks like, it's just a tiny piece of chicken.

So, since the oil is hot, start dipping your thin slices of chicken into the flour. Coat them all over, shake off the excess,

and lay them in the pan. Do the biggest peices first because they'll need the longest to cook.

 Even still, they'll be looking pretty cooked by the time you get the last pieces in the pan.

Once everybody is in, you're probably going to need to start flipping. These, I flipped a little early, they aren't quite golden enough, and I had to turn them a second time to finish the browning.

Ideally what you want is something that looks a little more like this second extreme food close up:

Golden brown and delicious. Now you see why the pan and oil had to be so hot. You want to get this browning in just a few minutes because those are some thin pieces of bird.

Once everybody is nicely tanned, take them out of the pan, and keep them warm somewhere.

If you aren't using wine, you can use an extra 1/4 c of stock, white grape juice, or a combination of lemon juice and stock in this step.

Pour 1/4 c of your chosen liquid into the hot pan. It's going to bubble and fiz and that's good.

That bubbling is lifting all the yummy golden bits of chicken and flour off the pan and into your sauce. Stir to encourage them off the bottom and into the liquid.

It's going to thicken pretty quick as you lose water to evaporation, so add the lemon juice to keep it liquidy.

Bring that to a boil and slowly add the stock. You want to keep this sauce hot and reducing in volume.

We're not aiming to be able to coat pounds of pasta with the sauce, but more to create a hot "dressing" for it and the chicken.

Once you've added all the stock, and it's simmering nicely, toss in the zest and the capers.

Now, you can turn the heat down to medium low. You've cooked your chicken, deglazed the pan, reduced your sauce and added the seasonings. The final step to finishing the sauce is ... butter.

Oh yes, butter.

This is the French influence on what appears to be an otherwise Itanlian dish. Finishing a sauce with butter gives it a certain smoothness and gloss. It softens the sharpness of the lemon, and sweetens the salt of the briney capers.

And, well, it's butter.

But you don't want to boil it, just melt it, that's why you've turned your heat down.

Yeah, looks a lot richer than it did a few minutes ago, doesn't it?

Once you've melted all the butter into the sauce, you can return the chicken to the pan. You just want it in there long enough to get coated. Now is also the time for parsley.

*goes back and edits earlier part of post to remind you to boil water and pasta*

Now that your chicken is done, and your pasta is cooked...

see, it is:

Put it all together on a plate.

Top with a sprinkle of cheese, and serve with a glass of whatever wine you used in the sauce.

Want a bite?

I really did have a few recipes handy as I was making this, I just didn't make a note of the changes I made to them. I do that kind of thing a lot. Sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes, like with this, it does. Unfortunately, because I forgot to write it down as I was cooking, it looks like I'm pantsing my butt off here, when really, it was a perfectly plotted meal.

What do you make by winging it?