kitchen project

so I write a scathing indictment of people who don't vote and I can hear the crickets chirping. Pictures of the dog get oodles of comments. go figure. Here's a diversion from the usual political stuff that seems to be overwhelming us all of late.

Last fall, I spent a couple of months as a cook at a funky little restaurant in Bar Harbor. The Cafe Bluefish is known worldwide for its lobster strudel, and it is divine. While I was there, I learned how to make the lobster strudel, and the seafood strudel and the spinach strudel. I am NOT going to post those recipes here. I was entrusted with them, and that's that.

However, I have created a variation on a theme of the strudel thing. See, the original recipe calls for cooking sherry, and I don't use alcohol in my kitchen. It also uses soybean oil and soy products, and a family member has a life-threatening allergy to soy, so I don't use it here. Also, L has a life-threatening allergy to crustaceans (not mollusks, just crustaceans) so I do not use lobster or crab or shrimp.

So that doesn't leave a lot of the original stuff for me to work with. Except the method. So I took the method I learned and applied it to ingredients that won't kill me or my family, and came up with a chicken and spinach four-cheese strudel that seems to work.

Again, in order to protect anything that might be construed as proprietary information, I am only going to describe the basics of what I included. If you are really determined, I imagine you can fiddle around and find some kind of proportions that work for you, but let me tell you, making these things is an all-day project that dirties every pot, pan, bowl and cutting surface in the kitchen. I cannot imagine doing this multiple times to tweak a recipe into something perfect.

Here are the basics:

Chicken breasts, boiled, skin and bones removed, diced (10, I think)
Lots of feta
Lots of swiss
Lots of cream cheese
Lots of leftover partial bags of not terribly freezer-burned mozzarella
Five huge bags of frozen chopped spinach
five pounds of onions, cut up and caramelized

phyllo dough
unsalted butter

So I mixed the top stuff together in the biggest bowl I own and it barely held it all. I brushed the butter on the phyllo, stacked them nicely, and wrapped the dough around a scoop (about 2/3 to 3/4 cup) of the filling.

This recipe cost me about $80 in groceries and made around 40 of these things, 36 of which went straight into the freezer. The ones in this picture were a little over-sized and made in the au gratin gizmos for our supper last night, but they look like elongated versions of the typical round strudels served at the restaurant. I have some filling left over, too, that I think I might put in a pie crust for supper tonight. (I ran out of phyllo before I ran out of filling.) The total estimated cost of these things is about two bucks a piece, plus my labor. Even if I charged $100 for labor (eight hours at $12.50), that still only brings the price per entree-sized portion up to something less than $6 each. Not bad. But I'm not selling them. These will be on hand all winter to be dinner when we need them. The marvelous thing is that we can take out as many as we need for a meal, so if we suddenly have guests, no problem, we can expand the menu without having to go shopping. Just thaw a little, and pop in the oven on a cookie sheet. Fabulous.

The nice thing about the project is that I won't have to make them again this winter. And that is a very, very, good thing. My kitchen is now wrecked. It will take a couple of days for me to recover completely.

More politics later this week. For now we are enjoying the crispy phyllo and cheesy goodness of the strudels.

In other news Sunday

I taught myself how to make Baklava. Honestly, the most difficult part was getting the sheets of phyllo apart. The recipe was pretty easy - not a lot of technical stuff or weird ingredients. For a pastry brush, I use a three-inch wooden-handled paintbrush I got for 69 cents at the hardware store. It works fine.

Wicked Easy Baklava
1 16-ounce package of phyllo dough (the sheets are usually about 9 by 13 inches - imagine that!)
1 cup butter, unsalted (that's two sticks)

1 16-ounce bag walnuts, chopped pretty fine
dash or two of cinnamon


1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup honey
splash of vanilla

Preheat oven to 350

Make sure they phyllo is completely thawed and unroll both packages that come in the box. Cover them with a damp, lint-free towel or cloth in between using sheets. It's fussy stuff. If it gets too wet, it'll stick together. If it gets dry, it will get brittle and break apart in a million pieces. (Place a piece of paper on top of the bottom six sheets so you will know when you are getting near the end.)

Chop the nuts and toss with the cinnamon. (I used quite a bit of cinnamon - maybe two tablespoons or so.)

Put the water and sugar in a saucepan and place over low heat. You don't want it to boil just yet - just melt the sugar.

butter the bottom and sides of a 9 by 13 baking pan.
Lay in two sheets of the phyllo and brush the top with butter. Don't soak it, but make sure you get it all. Put in two more sheets, brush with butter, two more sheets, and repeat until you've got a base of about 8 sheets.

Sprinkle about 1/8 cup of the nuts over the phyllo.

Two more sheets, brush with butter, sprinkle more nuts, and keep going like this until you hit that paper marker you put in the pile when you started.

By then you should be about out of nuts. If not, use 'em up.

use up the last six pieces of dough like you have been - two pieces, butter, two pieces, butter, etc. until you get to the end of the sheets. I used a little exra butter on the top to make it nice and crispy.

Make four cuts lengthwise in the pan, then make cuts the short way to make squares. Now make cuts on the diagonal from corner to corner so that you end up with a bunch of triangles.

Try not to cut all the way through to the bottom or the syrup won't fill in the upper layers later. You'll see, trust me.

Bake for about 50 minutes or until top is golden brown.

While that's in the oven, take another look at the pot of syrup. Bring it to a boil, add the honey and vanilla, and let it boil gently for about 20 minutes. Then turn the heat off, but you can leave it on the stove and it will be fine.

When the pan comes out of the oven, spoon the syrup over the pieces. It will make the coolest sizzle sound as it hits the hot metal and bubbles into the layers of dough. Try to get it over all the pieces as evenly as you can.

After it cools about 20 minutes, use a sharp knife to cut the rest of the way through the bottom layers of dough so the pieces will separate later.

Don't try to eat it until you can pick up the pan and put your bare hand flat on the bottom without discomfort. The syrup can burn like hell.

Sunday was not spent in a complete depression. Sometimes cooking can be therapy for me. This was one of those days.