La Comida de Mi Vida (My Life in Food)

If you like your Cookies a little more dense and not to flatten out so much try using less butter.  Butter gives the cookies a great buttery flavor and a crispy texture, but they tend to be more flat.  Last night I made a double batch of these cookies and I ran out of butter so I used just a 1/2 cup of butter and one cup of shortening.  The cookies stayed a little more rounded and had a better mouthfeel because it held the flour together better.

Another technique I tried that I hadn’t before is freezing the dough and baking the cookies from frozen.  I found that it works perfectly, as if they had never been frozen.  I just lined a cookie sheet with wax paper and placed rounded tablespoonfuls of dough on the sheet close together.  I covered the whole sheet with plastic wrap and stuck it in the deep freeze over night.  This morning I removed them from the freezer and preheated the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  I placed 12 on one cookie sheet and the rest I placed in plastic freezer bags in a single layer and popped them back in the freezer.  The cookies went in the oven for 8 minutes and came out crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside and very delicious.

This recipe is one that I adapted from the Food Network show Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentis.  I made it so that it was a bit quicker to put together, but still had all the depth of flavor of the original.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 large carrot, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

1 small onion, diced

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1/8 tsp. salt

1/8 tsp. black pepper

1/4 tsp. leaf thyme

2 bay leaves

2 oz. basil, coarsely chopped

2 – 14 oz. cans of chicken stock/broth

1 – 15 oz. can diced tomatoes

1 tbsp. tomato paste

10 oz. canned chicken (usually come in 5 oz cans)

1 – 15 oz. can kidney beans

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a stock pot over medium high heat.  Dice the onion, carrot and celery and add to the pot to sweat together, stirring constantly,  to make your sofrito.  Once onions are translucent add your minced garlic stirring just to warm through.  Add the salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaves, basil, chicken broth, diced tomatoes and tomato paste  and allow to come to a low boil, about 10 minutes.  Then add the diced cooked chicken (juices and all) and return to a boil (about 5 minutes).  In the meantime rinse the kidney beans; once the stew has returned to a boil add the kidney beans and cook for an additional 10 minutes.   Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly and also remove the bay leaves before serving.  Makes 4 hearty servings.

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My adaptation using canned chicken instead of bone in chicken breast as the original recipe calls for cuts the cooking time almost in half.  If you want this stew to be a little thicker just cook it for an additional 10 minutes before adding the chicken and beans.  If you like it more soupy like me then add another can of chicken broth.  This is delicious served with some crusty Italian bread and some fresh parmesan cheese grated on top.