Black Pepper Molasses Pulled Chicken Sandwiches

These sandwiches are great when you feel like pulled pork but it's Monday night and that isn't going to happen. I didn't quite believe these sandwiches were going to work the first time I tried the recipe. I've never cooked with boneless, skinless chicken thighs before and I was a bit suspect that they would cook in 20 minutes. But cook they did, and cook well. The meat is moist, tender and made all the more flavourful by a sweet/spicy sauce that all of my boys enjoyed. I served these on little slider buns (because then I could have two) but obviously you can use regular-sized buns if you like. 

Comfort Food

Chocolate chip cookies. Scalloped potatoes. Lasagna. Tomato soup. Some of my favourite comfort foods. Fried egg sandwiches are another comfort food that I find myself craving every once in a while. My dad taught me how to make fried egg sandwiches. And I've made plenty in my day, many during my tenure as a sort-of fry cook in a small-town diner. The first few times I offered David a fried egg sandwich he turned up his nose. Then he saw me eating one and remarked how good it looked. All it took was one bite and he was hooked.

Here's how this works. Heat up a frying pan over medium heat and melt a small pat of butter. Crack an egg into the pan and cook to your liking. (I like my egg a bit runny but David prefers the yolk hard.) Grate some cheddar cheese and slice some tomato. Toast two pieces of sourdough bread and spread with some mayonnaise. Top the egg with the grated cheddar. Put the tomato on the bread and the egg on the tomato. Top with the other slice of bread. Serve with a cold Coke. Because it is impossible to eat a fried egg sandwich without a cold Coke. And really, why would you want to?

Saturday Sandwich

I took another look at my New Year's (Food) Resolutions and see that I am progressing quite nicely through my original list. To date I can cross 3 out of 10 dishes off of my list:

1. I made Yukon Potato Stack, a Walt Disney World recipe, with my new mandoline.
2. I made Chinese Orange Beef as part of a Chinese New Year menu.
5. I made Pudding Chomeur for our recent Quebecois potluck.

And now, thanks to today's sandwich effort, I can also cross off 'make something with a fresh avocado' (3).

Homecoming, a new toy, school lunches and pudding

As is pretty typical around here it has been a jam-packed weekend. D. and I attended a Homecoming event at Western Libraries for donors on Saturday morning. It was a cheese tasting led by Louise McNally from Saputo Canada and it was *amazing*. We tasted cheeses from Ontario, France, Quebec and Italy. News flash - buffalo mozzarella cheese is indeed made from the milk of the mighty buffalo. Milking a buffalo? Add that to the list of jobs I would never want to try. The cheese was great. All of it, even the stinky, strong stuff.

Last week the kids were super bummed to discover that a package delivered after school was not their promised Halloween costumes but a new toy for the kitchen:

I. Know. Up til now I've dabbled in sandwiches in a very amateur way. With my Breville Ikon Removeable Plate Grill I can up my game considerably. We're going grilled, baby. I haven't had time to even open the box yet but I figure after Thanksgiving the fun will start. Any leftover turkey chez Robinson is going straight into a panini sandwich. Likely with bacon, maybe with cranberry sauce, possibly with both. I had mentally added this to my Christmas list and then last week D. discovered he had won an award at work which consisted of gift certificates from his choice of a ton of stores. D. scanned the list, saw nothing related to hockey and gave me control of the keyboard. So it's a win-win situation as he will certainly benefit, I hope, from whatever I manage to produce using my new grill. Last weekend I made a roast beef sandwich with grilled pineapple, melted jarlsberg cheese and A1 sauce on ciabatta bread that made D. swoon (albeit slightly). If it had been grilled who knows how he might have reacted? Full swoon?

I hate packing school lunches. There are only so many foods that my kids will eat and many of them don't do well packed into a lunch. So every Sunday I find myself in the kitchen trying to figure out what I can make that is halfway nutritious and will actually get consumed instead of suffering the ignoble defeat of coming back home untouched. This September my go-to was muffins. Banana muffins, apple muffins and this week, to start off October, cranberry oatmeal muffins.

P. won't touch muffins with what he calls 'jam' in them. He doesn't like raisins, nuts, or any sort of chunked fruit cluttering up his muffins. Plain banana suits him just fine. My older son D. is actually a little more adventurous with muffins and I have discovered he quite likes cranberries (fresh, not dried). These cranberry oat muffins are from a recipe in hungry for comfort: the pleasures of home cooking by Rose Murray. This is one of my favourite cookbooks. Rose Murray is a food writer from Southwestern Ontario and I've bought/consulted several of her recipe books over the years. Three words to describe her food/recipes: simple, reliable, delicious. These muffins are amazing hot out of the oven and I know will get consumed by one hungry little boy at lunch time this week. (For the record, I also made banana for P.) I'll round out his lunch with cereal mix, fresh fruit and a sugary treat like a granola bar or wagon wheel. I also, without fail, put carrot sticks in his lunch box which some weeks come back untouched and other weeks get gobbled up.

Tonight we had lasagna for dinner which suited, since it has been a cold and rainy weekend. For dessert we had chocolate pudding, since P. specifically requested at the beginning of the week that I make chocolate pudding for sunday dinner this week. I think chocolate pudding is one of those things you should have a go-to recipe for...it's a classic and nearly everyone loves chocolate pudding. So here is a quick and easy recipe for chocolate pudding, which I have dubbed Patrick's pudding for obvious reasons -

Patrick's Pudding

2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 tbsp flour
1/8 tsp salt
3 cups 1% milk
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine first five ingredients in a saucepan; stir. Gradually add milk, stirring with a wire whisk until well blended. Bring to a boil over medium heat; cook, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.

Spoon pudding into six individual dessert dishes. Cover with plastic wrap; cool to room temperature. Chill at least three hours.

Sandwiches. Again.

I think I've talked about my obsession with sandwiches before. It continues. I borrowed this book from the Library a few weeks ago:


Basically both mom and daughter cook, but they have different styles. Mom is a little more traditional with what I would call 'fussier' dishes. Daughter makes food that is simple and perhaps more 'modern'. Whatever that means. Both are blond and thin and stylish. So 'dishes' is a kind of double entendre, right? Right. Anyhoo.

I copied a bunch of recipes from this book with a few selections from both mother and daughter. Last Saturday I tried the Mona Lisa sandwich (courtesy Devin) and it was very, very good. I'm always amazed at how often simple recipes become my favourite recipes. And not because they are simple - because the results are just so good.

The Mona Lisa is a chicken sandwich. I loved how the chicken for this 'wich was cooked because it used on-hand ingredients and it was fast. Egg white, bread crumbs, chicken fillet. Dip in egg, dip in bread crumbs. Cook in 400 degree oven for 12 minutes. I did this the other night and ended up cutting up the second chicken fillet for my kids, who enjoyed their Mona Lisa chicken but were less than satisfied with the name. They know the Mona Lisa is a painting of a woman, not a chicken. So what gives mum?

Once you have cooked the chicken all that is left to do to make the Mona Lisa sandwich is melt some mozzarella on top of your fillet, which you accomplish while also toasting your bun. I used ciabatta buns picked up from a local bakery. You spread a mixture of pesto and mayonnaise on the toasted bun and top with a nice slice of tomato (just bought some at the local outdoor market - so much better than plastic tomatoes from the supermarket) and fresh basil leaves.

Both my husband and I loved this sandwich. Which is why I enjoyed it both on Saturday and again mid-way through the week. But once again, no picture. I seriously remember thinking I should take a picture but I didn't want to stop eating. Seriously. That good.