Tortellini Chicken

I had a senior moment a few days ago. I could have sworn I shared this recipe here before. I wanted to print off the recipe for a friend and it wasn't there. Sometimes I wonder about my noggin. Tortellini Chicken is one of my families favorites and one that I share with others quite often, because even the pickiest eaters seems to love it. It has large chunks in it so it's a casserole that is easy to separate out if someone doesn't want the mushrooms they can just push them aside.

Here's the play by play, if you want to skip right to the printable it's at the end.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

2 cups Monterey Jack Cheese grated, or pre shredded from your grocer works super too!

Clean a 4 ounce package of White Button Mushrooms and set aside. If you are a mushroom lover, feel free to add more.

Boil and drain one 20 ounce package fresh Cheese Tortellini. I find it next to the cream cheese in my grocery store. If your family is apposed to the multi colored pasta, well then trade them in for a new more adventurous family! Or just buy the plain all white cheese tortellini, that would probably be easier.

Cut 3 chicken breasts into bite sized cubes.

Season 1/3 cup flour with 1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt.

Unless you have a very large frying pan, you will have to brown the chicken in shifts, so start by melting 2 tablespoons of butter. Dredge chicken pieces in flour and brown in butter.

Remove cooked pieces to a plate.....

Or if you are efficient, unlike myself, you can place the browned meat directly into your casserole dish. Add the additional 2 tablespoons of butter as needed and continue browning chicken pieces until finished.

Cover chicken with drained pasta and sprinkle 1 cup of shredded cheese over the top. Honestly you could put the tortellini in first and then the chicken and sprinkle the cheese in there somewhere. There is no wrong way to do it. Just make sure everything is spread out evenly, so when you serve it up each spoonful has a little bit of everything.

Now it's time to make the sauce:

With out cleaning the pan add 3/4 cup chopped sweet onion to the pan. The moisture from the onions will help loosen all the browned goodness from the chicken. Using a spatula, saute onions and loosen browned bits, when onions start to look translucent.....

add the can of chicken broth, bouillon, and sugar. Cook for 2 minutes at a low boil.

Add mushrooms, let cook for an additional 2 minutes.

Turn temperature to low. Sprinkle in the remaining Monterey Jack Cheese, and stir until melted and combined.

Remove pan from heat and stir in 1/2 cup sour cream.

It may take a minute or two to get sauce to become smooth. I use a slotted spoon, you could get out the big guns and use your whisk if you want.

Pour sauce over chicken, and pasta. Try to distribute the mushrooms evenly over the casserole.

Cover tightly with tin foil, and pop in your oven for 45 minutes.

Serve with Texas Toast or a crusty loaf!

If I share this meal with someone, I usually bring them a green salad with lots of veggie's too, but most of the time the work of a salad is taken for granted by my family so I don't even bother fixing a salad for them anymore......that's the truth the whole truth Pthhthththt!

Chicken Tortellini

printable recipe

4 tablespoons Butter

1 20 ounce package, fresh Cheese Tortellini

3 Chicken Breasts, boneless cut into bite sized cubes

1/3 cup Flour

1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt

3/4 cup Onion, chopped

1 tablespoon Chicken Bouillon granules (or 2 bouillon cubes)

1 8 ounce can Chicken Broth

1 teaspoon Sugar

2 cups Monterey Jack Cheese, shredded

4 ounces fresh white button Mushrooms (more if you like)

1/2 cup Sour Cream

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

1. Boil water in large pot, add tortellini, cook for 5 minutes. Drain and place tortellini’s in bottom of a lightly buttered 9x13 baking dish. Sprinkle half of the Monterey Jack cheese over tortellini’s.

2. Toss chicken pieces in flour. Melt butter in large fry pan add floured chicken to sizzling butter. Lightly brown chicken in butter. Do chicken in shifts if needed. Removing chicken to a plate then adding more. Then transfer chicken pieces to baking dish. Evenly distributing them over noodles.

3. Add chopped onions to the same pan, cook until transparent. Add bouillon, chicken broth, sugar, cook for 2 minutes then add mushrooms to pan, and cook for 2 minutes more.

4. Add remaining cheese to to sauce, lightly stir with spatula until cheese is melted. Remove pan from heat and add sour cream and blend until smooth and creamy. Pour mushroom sauce over chicken and tortellini.

5. Cover dish with foil, bake for 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Sausage Breakfast Strata perfect for Easter Breakfast

Everyone is all a buzz about what they are serving for Easter dinner. I feel like a loser. Because I am not lifting a finger this Easter. Last week I made reservations for our whole family, plus house guests to go out for dinner. Thursday and Friday I will be shoulder deep in making cinnamon rolls for a fundraiser for The Friends of Portage Lake Cookbook. Also our much anticipated house guests will be arriving Friday night before Easter, so I want to be able to enjoy them and not be in the kitchen the whole weekend.

I himm'd I hawd, I waxed I wained, I picked the phone up, I put it down. Mothers Day is one thing....but there is just something ingrained in me that says you don't go out to dinner on Easter. Not that I am judging anyone...I am most definitely not! It's just the way I was raised...it's in my blood to fix ginormous, explode your stomach meals on holidays.

But this year I said, "I CAINT DO IT!"

I think it's good to know your limits. Good for you and good for your fam-ba-lie!

And your house guests that you don't want to make Whacko the instant they arrive. We still have cookies to bake and eggs to decorate, for heavens sakes!

In fact I might just have to make this Breakfast Strata so we have something to tide us over until our dinner buffet of ham, roast beast, and leg-O-lamb, plus pasta station, omelet station, and a hot chocolate bar...uh HUH...that's what I'm talkin' bout! I may never make Easter Dinner again!

This Sausage Breakfast Strata is my boys favorite! The best thing about this strata is that you put it together the night before, and then pop it in your oven in the morning and Voila! You have a cheesy, hearty breakfast fit for a king! Literally on Easter this would be fit for the King of Kings!

What you will need for:

Sausage Breakfast Strata

printable recipe

1 pound Breakfast Sausage

12 eggs

2 cups milk

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

3 cups shredded Cheddar Cheese

12 slices of white bread

4 tablespoons of butter, softened

Brown the Breakfast Sausage in a skillet and set aside.

Crack all 12 eggs into a bowl, add milk, salt, and pepper.

Give that a good whisking.

Use the softened butter to butter one side of 6 of the slices of bread, then lay them butter side down into the 9x13 dish.

Sprinkle half of the sausage over first bread layer.

Sprinkle half the cheese...this is a hard one people I know, sprinkling takes a skilled hand, but the more you sprinkle the easier it gets. I assure you.

Place the last six slices of bread on top of the sausage and cheese layer. I used Texas toast, regular white bread slices work just as good. If you do use the Texas cut, press it down. Give it a little squish. Then repeat with the sausage and cheese sprinkling, use all the cheese and sausage up.

Now you can return to the whisked eggs. Pour eggs evenly over the Strata...did you know strata means layers? Yes-sir-ee. Strata..."Struh-tah". If you say it like that it sounds real fancy.

Let the eggs, bubble down through the layers.

Now tightly cover with plastic wrap place it in your refrigerator over night.

When you are ready to bake it, you will need 1 hour, so leave yourself time. Remove from fridge, remove plastic wrap (I figure you know these simple steps, but I have had people ask, so I am just giving it to you step by step, taking nothing for granted here Folks.) preheat oven to 350 degrees, when up to heat place Strata in and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. My experience has been closer to the 1 hour mark, especially if you use the thicker bread.

Easy! Simple! Hearty! Hey maybe you can pull this one out on Fathers Day if you don't use it this Sunday.

I've found are some great Easter Treats and Ideas, I thought I'd share with you. Go check these creative and talented ladies out, they have no idea I am sending you their way, so take a minute and say Howdy, leave them some love in their comments......but please come back to the slacker blog.

The Italian Dish ~ Easter Bread beware it's gorgeous!

Quit Eating Out ~ Easter treats with meaning for your kiddos!

The Reluctant Entertainer, Sandy has all sorts of good Eastery stuff on her site.

Kitchen Belleicious ~ OK these look amazing!

Red Letter Words ~ Many beautiful things here to inspire.

Ezra Pound Cake ~ Cute, easy chocolate goodies.

a Holy experience ~ Ann Voskamp has beautiful poetry, insights, and a recipe for lamb.

I LUV ya! More than my Cadbury Mini Eggs...and that's ALOT!

Prize winning Burgundy Mushroom Beef Stew

Since the wind is whipping 80 miles an hour and they were predicting possible snow flurries yesterday. Which became reality!! SERIOUSLY...when is Spring going to arrive?! It's Stew weather in April!

A few months ago I was gushing over my friend Ree's Burgundy Mushrooms, and another good friend mentioned she aways wondered what those catastrophically delicious mushrooms would be like if they were in a stew.

Ree I love you, but if I had to choose between you and your mushrooms...well um er rHmmm...lets just say it would be hard to pick.

So I salivated all over my keyboard for a little while thinking about how I might make the Burgundy Mushroom recipe into a Beef Stew recipe. Then I decided to consult Hyacinth since she started the whole thing! She is trouble that one! We went back and forth on the details of the recipe.....carrots or no carrots, the order in which to cook the meat...yadayadayada.

As luck would have it my church was doing a Stew and Soup Cook Off! Hot-diggity-dog I had an audience!!!! Thankfully God has blessed me with a church full of foodies.

It looks like a fair amount of ingredients to gather up, but most likely you have it all in your pantry. Nothing too fancy here. But oh it tastes fancy!

If you prefer you can buy Stew Meat already cut up for you or if you'd rather you can buy 4-5 pounds of Top Round Roast and cut it into bite sized pieces, about and 1 1/2 inches each..

I cut the roast up put it in a Zip-loc bag, doused (1 teaspoon) it with Lawry's Season Salt and set it aside while I cleaned the mushrooms. You could do this step a day ahead of time.

Heat 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil in a 6-8quart dutch oven. Dredge the meat in flour, brown in oil.

This step will need to be done in shifts, don't over crowd the pan. Brown then remove to a dish as you add more meat. Add more oil as needed. Turning pieces with a fork or tongs to get all sides nice and brown.

Continue until all the meat has been browned. The meat doesn't have to be completely cooked.

All the meat is browned and set aside and now you have all these beautiful bits of flavor left in your pan. LEAVE THEM THERE. Do not wash the pan or wipe it out or anything crazy like that.

Skip to the wine...I mean skip ahead to the wine in the recipe...you don't need to skip to go get your bottle of wine although I do on occasion. Now that you have your bottle of red wine opened, any dry red wine will do, pour yourself a little sip. Taste. Now proceed with your cooking.

Add the cleaned mushrooms, bag of onions, butter, and the whole bottle of red wine (minus a sip or two) to the pot. Turn up the heat to medium and bring it to a boil.

I had a helper. She unwrapped to pesky bouillon cubes for me. Those little foil wrappers are like nails on a chalk board for me....I know I have some weird hang ups. I could tell you I'm working on them, but I'm not. So get used to it.

Add the remaining ingredients, except the roasted taters, and the browned meat.

Cook on stove top for 20-30 minutes. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

It's extremely hard to get an appetizing picture of half cooked meat.

Add the browned meat back into the pot. Give it a stir so it can get friendly with all those luscious mushrooms. I think they became more than friends actually.......

Now cover your pan and pop it in the 300 degree preheated oven and go watch West Side Story or Fiddler on the Roof, a movie that will make you sing. Or how about Mama Mia? That will make you dance too, which you might want, so you can burn off the calories from this stew. Bake for 2-3 hours, leave it alone, you don't need to check it or stir it, just go relax.

After your movie is done, then you can roast your potatoes. 5-6 Idaho potatoes or Redskin Potatoes would be good too. Preheat oven to 425. Clean and cut potatoes into chunks, lay on baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and lightly season with salt and pepper. You can use a heavier hand with the pepper if you like, but be careful with the salt you wouldn't want your Stew to be too salty.

Roast potatoes for 30 minutes, using a spatula to turn once or twice. So they become browned on all sides.

When you remove your stew from the oven, remove the lid and add the roasted potatoes. Serve with a crusty loaf of bread to sop up the gravy. This is comfort food at its finest.

I did just so happen to win the prize for Best Stew! My prize was a ladle with a ribbon....I will cherish for all my life.

Burgundy Mushroom Beef Stew with Roasted Potatoes

Serves 10-12

printable recipe

4 1/2 pounds Top Round Roast or Stew Meat, cut into bite sized pieces

1 cup Flour

4 tablespoons Olive Oil

48 ounces White Button Mushrooms, cleaned, and if large cut in half

1 pound bag frozen White Pearl Onions

2 sticks of Butter

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

1 bottle Burgundy Wine, Zinfandel or a Merlot will work also.

1 teaspoon ground Pepper

4 Chicken Bouillon cubes

4 Beef bouillon cubes

1 tablespoon, heaping of fresh Dill chopped fine or you can use the freeze dried dill

1 teaspoon Garlic Powder

2 cups boiling Water

5 or 6 Idaho Potatoes, cleaned, cut into 1 inch cubes + salt, pepper, and olive oil for roasting.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

1. Cut roast into bite sized cubes of meat.

2. Clean mushrooms and cut large mushrooms in half.

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in large pot (6-8 quart), dredge meat in flour and brown meat in oil. do not over crowd pan with meat while browning. You will have to do this in shifts removing meat to a dish as it browns. Add more oil to pan as needed.

4. After all meat is browned and removed from pan ad mushrooms and remaining ingredients to pan except potatoes or the browned meat. Do not clean pan, leave all the browned goodness from the meat. Bring to a boil, and cook over medium heat for 20 minutes. Add meat back into the pan. cover pan with lid and put in preheated oven for 2-3 hours. Checking and stirring occasionally.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees to roast potatoes.

5. wash potatoes, cut into chunks, spread on baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, bake in oven for 30 minutes. Turning occasionally with a spatula so potatoes brown on all sides.

6. Remove Stew from oven and add hot roasted potatoes to the stew, fold them in.

Serve with a Crusty Loaf!

I hope where ever you are you can't see your breath outside and the wind is not whipping your car door open and slamming it into the car parked next to you. Mostly I hope it's not snowing.

Hope you enjoy this Stew as much as my church family did....they ate it so fast I couldn't get a end picture of it. If you are a visual person, sorry you will have to use your imagination, or make it for yourself and send me a photo!

Enjoy!