Midnight Pasta with Prosciutto

Take a little bit more time, don't be so rushed and calm down and actually enjoy the cooking.  Pay attention a bit and it comes out a lot better.  Yes, this was quite a bit better then the way that it turned out last week, and even though it was better, last week was still pretty good.  Certainly a quick, savory meal.

Midnight Pasta with Prosciutto

Pork and Lemongrass Meatballs in Lettuce Cups

So I made the mini lamb burgers first, and I thought hey, I still have these mini buns, why not, since I couldn't find a lettuce I wanted to use for the cups, it made sense.  So they mixed up right, they tasted pretty good, and we passed the dipping bowl back and forth.  It was pretty tasty and a nice little change.

Pork and Lemongrass Burgers

Pork and Lemongrass Burgersdipping sauce for the pork and lemongrass burgers

Ham and Eggs

The first time around we did some ham, and duck egg sandwiches.  They were good, second time around I did some scrambled eggs with ham in them.  Both were good and pretty quick.  I do have to say that this is the very last of my Eden Farms Berkshire Pork ham.  It makes me sad.

Black Chicken Soup (I'm thinking ginger, lemongrass, red onions, small noodles and spices maybe an egg?)

So what do we do here.  I was convinced by Tai at Foxhollow to buy a Black Chicken (though I may have gotten in trouble for showing Shannon how cute they are).  So in looking for uses for it, it generally comes down to a soup.  Ginger?  I can do that, Wolfberries? and a bunch of other stuff I've never heard of and don't even know where to start looking for.  So I figure I can make a nice mixture of items to get a nice balanced flavor.  So here's the recipe as I remember it.

• 1 Whole Black Chicken
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 red onion diced
• 1 white onion diced
• 1-2 teaspoon(s) of 5 spice powder
• 1/3rd cup ginger diced
• 2 serrano peppers diced
• 4 cups low sodium chicken broth
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1-2 tablespoon(s) red wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons secret ingredient (mildly spicy Japanese sauce/paste)
• 6 oz Chow Mien noodles

Cut up the chicken into pieces.  Add oil to large pot and heat until just starting to smoke.  Sauté the chicken in the pot. (6 minutes per side), set them aside to rest.

Add the diced onions and sauté on medium low.  Add the 5 spice powder.  After 5 minutes add the ginger, another few minutes add the ginger, another few minutes the serrano (can you tell I was cutting them then adding them).  Add the chicken broth and water and deglaze the pot.  Add the fish sauce, vinegar, and the paste.  Add the chicken back in and bring to a simmer and let it simmer for an hour.

Pull out the chicken.  Let it rest until you can handle it and piece off as much chicken as you can.  Add the chicken back to the pot

Add the noodles (they'll cook very quickly) and shortly serve.

It turned out pretty well, a nice tasty soup.  It may be justified to switch up the noodles with rice.

Black Chicken Soup

The Whole Process:

This turned out really well.  How do you ask could I mess this up.  Well lets just put it this way.  I had a good sampling of whiskey before I started, while I was cooking...it had been a pretty bad week and a particularly bad day.  So What do I do?  I was thinking, I've been having problems with the tomato sauce being a little too liquidy, so to account for this I added, what I thought was mozzarella, but it turned out to be the parmesan.  So I decided I can't exactly scrape cheese off of pizza dough, so I added the 8oz of mozzarella.  I also cleared out the leftover tomato paste and added it to the sauce (making it a bit too think).  So then I added the normal toppings and went from there. With Butcher Crick tomatoes, Crooked Gap Bacon and Reichert's Dairy's Basil Feta, the mess that it could have been, turned into this very good pizza.  I did, however, get in trouble for not saving some leftovers for Shannon when she got home from work.

Tomato, Basil Feta and Bacon Pizza

Lamb Burgers

I saw these buns at Hy-Vee, and I thought hey, they're cute.  So with the onions, cheese, tomato and lamb burgers, it all turned out very well.  A delicious combination.  I added a little spicy mustard to finish mine up.

Mini Lamb Burgers