I improvised the crap out of this recipe!

Cafe Society
1

There was a recent thread that exposed most Dopers as not so good at sticking to recipes. We’re a bunch of experimenters and inspiration-seekers. I was making dinner the other night and thinking of you guys.

My husband handed me this Rachael Ray linguine and arugula recipe and requested I make it with bacon so’s he could get some meat with dinner. By the end the only things that remained exactly the same from the original recipe was the garlic and cheese. Not for lack of respect for the original recipe but because you have to work with what you have.

1 box  (13.25 ox.) whole grain linguine
5 tablespoons butter
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1 can  (15.5 oz.) chickpeas, rinsed
2 lemons, zested
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Salt
3 ounces grated parmesan
8 ounces arugula (about 5 cups), trimmed and sliced into ribbons

No whole grain linguine but regular spaghetti. Since I was frying bacon anyway, I used the grease instead of the butter. No bell peppers at all. There’s usually bell peppers somewhere in my fridge but no amount of searching revealed any. But I did have dried anchos. Soak them in hot water and dice 'em. No canned chick peas but dried chick peas aplenty!. What! No lemons?! Time to go shopping it seems. Oh well, skip that. Are crushed red pepper is that the same as red pepper flakes? If they are then they are the same as the recipe. No arugula but how 'bout baby spinach?
Turned out very good. The only thing I would do different next time is add more spinach.

Now you! Please show me the recipe, what you did to it and how it turned out.

2

Based on that, is it fair to post something made out of whole cloth, but planned rather than improvised?

On Wednesday, I was driving around and somehow my thoughts turned to chicken wings and then burgers, and then how I’ve never had a good Buffalo chicken sandwich. The few times I’ve had them, they’ve been uninspired slabs of chicken drowned in Frank’s, topped with lettuce and tomato, and on a rather stiff bakery roll.

So, I set out to make a Better Buffalo (chicken) Burger. For me, the joy of a chicken wing is that crispy skin, and the ratio of the skin to meat. It’s fatty, it’s flavorful, it is the essence of chicken taste. With this idea in mind, I bought some ground chicken, along with a whole chicken, from which I excised a few large choice pieces of chicken skin.

I fried the chicken skin to a crisp (basically, making gribenes) and set them aside. Formed the ground chicken into thin 1/6-1/5 pound patties, and fried them up. On the side, I had some Frank’s and margarine heating up in a saucepan, as well I made a slaw of shredded celery, carrots, and blue cheese dressing (made with gorgonzola, yogurt, pepper, and mayo.) I also toasted some soft kaiser buns from the local bakery.

To assemble, I put down the bun, chicken patty, then dipped the chicken skin into the Frank’s-margarine mixture, topped it off with a light drizzle of additional sauce (maybe 1/2 teaspoon), celery slaw, and bun. And you know what? It tasted like the essence of a chicken wing made into a burger. That crispy chicken skin really did the trick, and not drowning the thing in Frank’s kept the acidity in balance. I’m definitely going to need to try this on a wider audience.

3

You sure it was Rachael Ray, and not Cooking with Poo? :cool:

4

That sounds delicious puly. How much skin did you use on how many burgers? What I mean is-- how many burgers can you make with the skin of a whole chicken? What did you do with the chicken when you were done?

5

Chicken skin shrinks quite a bit. I found that the skin from a whole breast (both sides if split) and two thighs was enough for two burgers. Basically, I was just looking for a single layer of skin to cover the whole burger. Were I doing this again, I’d probably just go to the butcher counter and ask if they could save and sell some skins to me. Not everyone will accomodate that request, but I’m fairly confident I can find a meat department in my neighborhood that will.

The rest of the chicken I’ll just save for another day, probably a stir-fry.

Here’s a cellphone picture of the burger. Not the greatest photo, but I wanted to eat, not set up a photo shoot. :slight_smile:

6

And not Parmigiano-Reggiano? I’ll say you improvised the crap out of a Rachael Ray recipe. Who’s going to hoot and scream for plain old parmesan?

7

Ya know what else works suprisingly good? Jusr go to a good fried chicken joint and rip the meat, skin, and coating off a breast or a few thighs and slap it on a bun. I swear it’s really good once you douse it with hot sauce and blue cheese crumbles.