Chicken Crescents

This recipe has evolved over time from an old college recipe made on the cheap to what it is today. Originally the ingredients were cream cheese, canned chicken, Pillsbury crescent rolls, butter and milk. The recipe I use today calls for grilled or baked chicken breasts, garlic, black pepper, chives, cream cheese, oregano, a little butter and Pillsbury crescent rolls. The updated recipe is MUCH better and more flavorful!

So here's how I made them:

I baked two larger boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I brought the butter and cream cheese to room temperature. Then I diced up the chives, crushed the garlic and gathered the other spices.

To make the filling dice up the chicken. You'll want to have about 2 cups of chicken once it's diced. Place that in a bowl. Add two cloves garlic, pepper and oregano to taste and two T. of chives. Then add 2T softened cream cheese and 1t softened butter. Mix all of this together by hand. Layout the crescent rolls on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Like this: 

Put about 1/2C of the chicken mixture in the center of each rectangle. You will then take one corner and meet it up with the corner opposite of it. Once all four corners have been pulled up to the top seal along the edges so that the crescents look like a little purse.

Once they were put together, I baked them at 375 degrees for 13-15 minutes. They should be golden brown when they are done.

This is the finished product. I highly recommend for an evening when you don't have time to really cook something from scratch! They are yummy and easy to assemble.

No knead sourdough bread on the Big Green Egg

We were planning on having our niece Taryn over for pizza the following day, so I whipped up a couple batches of pizza dough.  I've been wanting to try this recipe for bread baked in a dutch oven I saw on Alton Brown's Good Eats.  Since I had the flour out and the kitchen was already a mess I decided to give it a shot.  Okay, this probably isn't technically sourdough bread since I didn't use a sourdough starter.  It did sit for over 19 hrs and ended up with a little of a sourdough taste.  Nothing overwhelming but still enough that I'm comfortable with calling it such. 

First off I just threw together 17 1/2 oz (by weight) bread flour, 2 1/2 tsp kosher salt, 1/4 tsp active dry yeast and 12 fl oz filtered water.  Mixed it together by hand and was sure I messed up, because it didn't seem like it had enough water.  Very clumpy and weird.  I figured there was no reason to throw it away, covered it with plastic wrap and set the timer for 19 hrs.  (total time invested: 7 minutes) 

When 19 hrs were up it got a quick punch down, another 15 minute rest, then into a cornmeal dusted tea towel for a 2 hour bench proof.

Meanwhile I fired up the green egg grill for indirect cooking, threw on the dutch oven and stabilized the temperature at 450 degrees.

I threw the dough (corn meal and all) into the hot dutch oven and put the lid on for 30 minutes. Of course I closed the lid to the egg and kept monitoring temp to keep it around 450.

 
When the 30 minutes were up, I pulled off the lid and baked uncovered for another 15 minutes.
 

Time is up and the bread is done. I would have preferred the top to be a little darker. Might have to pull the lid off a little earlier next time.

 
Cooling and just waiting to be sliced!