Chicken Bread Cups

Here’s one that you can quickly assemble when you have unexpected guests at your doorstep. Better yet, make some for your evening cravings.
  

    
I made these bread cups a little before lunch, so I could serve them as a starter. The kids slowly nibbled through quite a few, while the grownups popped them right in.
   

Chicken Bread Cups

Ingredients:

Bread – 12 slices

Butter - as required

Chicken - 1 cup, boiled and minced

White sauce – ½ cup

Tomato ketchup – to garnish

Method:

1. Slice off the crust of all the slices, and butter both sides.
2. Arrange the buttered slices of bread in the muffin tray to form cup-like shapes.
3. In an oven preheated to 400°F/200°C/Gas 6, bake the bread for 10 minutes or till golden brown.
4. Cool on a wire rack in the muffin tray for about 5 minutes. The bread cups are ready.
5. To make the filling, combine the minced chicken and white sauce. Season as required.
6. Place a spoonful of the filling on each bread cup.
7. Garnish with a swirl of ketchup. Serve warm.

Words of Wisdom

Tip #1: I used stale bread for the bread cups. Silly mistake. Turns out they aren't as pliable as I'd imagined.  I call it the stale bread debacle.So, it would be quicker, easier, and less messier to use fresh bread.

Tip #2: I shredded my chicken into long strands and ended up with the filling coming off the cup with each bite. You need to mince or shred the chicken real small.

Tip #3: For the more calorie conscious, I say skip the butter and lightly dip the slices in beaten egg whites before arranging them in the muffin tray.

   

Now, this is not one of those dishes I found on the Internet. I took it straight out of a Vanitha Paachakam from my mom’s collection, something I resort to during my no-Internet days in Kerala.
    

I made a few with a crumbled liver filling 

PS: Normally, I wouldn't label these bread cups as fusion food, but I had to fuse the broken pieces of bread with beaten egg. Hence the label.

The beauty of these bread cups is that you can add all sorts of toppings. Next time, I'm going to try a fruit-based filling.

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie. ~ Jim Davis

A Meen Pie

What caught my attention in this article that I found while scouring for Kerala-style fish dishes was the tempting, refreshing picture. I bookmarked the page right away. I knew I’d recreate that pie at least once.
   

My Sunday Fish Pie

Sundays in my house normally mean indulgence – sleep, food, mall-hopping. Today's theme was food. After a sumptuous lunch and a few hours of non-stop chattering, I knew that I needed to stimulate my slumbering self. So, I got some Bluefin Trevally (Vatta in Malayalam; Hammaam in Arabic) from my fish monger and got started with my version of the fish pie.
  

I did not depart much from the original recipe. I omitted the peas and parsley (nobody wants to eat greens on Sundays). I added a little garam masala as suggested in the article. I did not add the eggs because I did not have any. The best part of this dish is that I got an excuse to make my mashed potatoes...Yum!

Fish Pie

Ingredients:

Any big fish – ¼ kg (cooked in a little water, turmeric, and salt)

Onion – 1, finely chopped

Ginger-garlic paste – 1 tsp

Paprika – ½ tsp

Chili powder – ½ tsp

Ground pepper – ½ tsp

Oil – 2 tsp

Spring onions – ½ cup, chopped +1 tbsp for garnishing, finely chopped

White sauce – 1 cup, thickened

Mashed potatoes – about 12-15 ice cream scoops (here's the recipe)

Method:

1. Flake the cooked fish.
2. Saute the onions in a little oil.
3. Add the ginger-garlic paste when the onions turn translucent.
4. Once the raw smell of the ginger and garlic disappears, add the powders. Saute for about 30 seconds.
5. Add the fish and spring onions, and saute for about a minute.
6. Add the white sauce, and combine well.

Assembling the pie:

1. Grease a baking dish, and spread the fish mixture evenly over the base of the baking dish.
2. Layer the mash over the fish. You can scoop the mashed potato over the fish for even layering and added effect. 
3. Bake the fish pie at 375°F/190°C/Gas 5 till the potato starts turning brown.
4. Garnish with spring onions. Serve hot.

The fish pie was out of the oven around dinner time. The only delay in digging in was the time I spent clicking these pictures, sub-standard as they are.
I also managed to click a picture during the dinner dash. Since there are many fish lovers in the family and even more mash fans, the pie disappeared within minutes. It kind of reminded me of a cartoon where Jerry wipes out an entire table full of food.

Life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks. ~ Marilyn Wann

Mini Shepherd’s Pie

Here's a post that I'd started a couple of weeks ago, read on.
I came across this dish a few days back, and ever since I’d been thinking of trying something like that myself. Today, I was already doing a lot of the usual cooking and I thought, “Why not dabble in some pie?” I’ve also had making Shepherd’s Pie in my mental to-do list for a while now. I had some spare shredded chicken to make the filling, so a few online recipes and lots of tips later, I got 8 medium potatoes boiling for mashed potatoes.  

Mini Shepherd's Pie with Chicken Filling

The basic ingredients for mashed potatoes: boiled potatoes, salt, pepper, a generous amount of butter and a few splashes of cream. Yes, I am trying real hard to inch past that border-line cholesterol of mine. The secret to good mashed potatoes, one that is not pasty, is to eliminate water. That includes steam from the boiled potatoes. After mashing the potatoes with a potato ricer or a fork, season the potatoes and add a few tablespoons of butter. Finally, add the cream. You need to make sure not to overmix the mash, otherwise you end up with a gooey mess instead of fluffy mash. My mashed potatoes turned out pretty good, so good that my kid who’s a fussy eater kept on tasting forkfuls from the bowl.

  

With the mash out of the way, I was about to make an Indianized chicken filling. That’s when it hit me that if I were to make mini Shepherd’s pie, I’d need something edible to line my trusted, versatile muffin tray. I couldn't that the easy way out as there was no bread in stock. So my dabbling changed to downright experimenting as I started making a shortcrust pastry for the pie. Yikes! This takes me back a few years when I tried a hand at making quiche from scratch! Not only was I uninformed about the art of pastry-making, but I also did the blunder of not following a recipe – I was doing it Jamie Oliver-style, without the skill. Talk about experiments blowing up in your face.

   

Anyway, a few years and a couple of grey hair past, I learned my lesson. Today, I really wanted to succeed and that meant more online research. I followed this recipe to the T. I think I did pretty good, well almost (read on and you’ll know why). 

Mini Shepherd’s Pie

For the mashed potatoes:

• Potatoes  – 8 medium
• Butter  – ½ cup (feel free to indulge yourself with more)
• Cream – ¼ cup
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste 

1. Boil the potatoes till cooked. Make sure not to overcook them. 
2. Peel the potatoes and mash them with the back of a fork. Use a wide bowl to help the steam escape. 
3. Add salt and pepper, and mix with the fork. Next, incorporate the butter and cream while taking care not to overmix.

There's more mashed potatoes than necessary for the pie. It helps to make the mash first - that way you and your family can have forkfuls every now and then till the mini pies are ready.

For the filling:

• Shredded Chicken – 2 cups (cooked with salt, pepper and green chilies for spicing up the filling)
• Onion – ½ medium, finely minced  
• Garlic – 4 cloves, finely minced
• Garam masala – ½ tsp
• Coriander powder – ¼ tsp
• Coriander leaf – 4 tbsp, finely chopped
• Oil – 1 tbsp

1. Sauté onion and garlic in oil till the onions become soft and translucent.
2. Add coriander powder and coriander leaf and sauté for about 20 seconds.
3. Add the shredded chicken and garam masala, and sauté for 2-3 minutes till the coriander leaf is soft.

For the pastry case:

1. Make a batch of pastry dough according to this recipe. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate it for 30 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5.
3. Roll out the chilled shortcrust pastry to about the thickness of a five rupee coin. Cut out circles big enough to cover the base and sides of your muffin mold. Keep in mind that the pastry shrinks when baked. So, you may have to cut out slightly bigger circles.
4. Grease the muffin tray with butter. Gently place the pastry in the muffin molds and press down lightly so that the pastry takes the shape of the mold. Prick the pastry lightly with a fork. Cover the muffin tray with cling film and rest it in the fridge for 15 minutes.
5. Next, cover the molds with foil or butter paper, and fill them with dried beans. Bake the pastry for 10 minutes. When the top edges of the pastry start turning brown, remove the beans and the foil. Bake the pastry for another 3-5 minutes so that the base dries out. While the beans and the pricking stop the pastry from rising while cooking, blind baking gives you a crisp pastry case.
6. Allow the pie crust to cool down completely before adding the filling. Otherwise, the crust becomes soggy.

Important: Never take the shortcut of not blind baking the pastry – a mistake that I made. The pastry takes ages to cook, drying out the filling in the process. Moreover, you end up with a soggy crust. My other mistake was that I rolled out the pastry quite thick.
   

   Assembling the pies:

1. Fill each pastry mold with the chicken filling.
2. Cover the pie with a generous layer of mashed potatoes. You can also pipe the mash over the filling for enhanced visual appeal.
3. Sprinkle some chopped coriander on top.
4. Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 190°C/375°F/Gas 5 until the potato turns golden brown.

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. ~ Luciano Pavarotti