Reinventing Yesterday: Frozen and Pre-Prepped Leftovers Become the Pride of my Kitchen

I’ve made some great dishes this year. I wish I had managed to get a blog written about them. Keeping with popular culture, I have gone coco-NUTS with the rest of you. Now that school is out, I am determined to get down at least one blog-worthy recipe. About 10 o’clock the other night, I found myself remembering some extra chocolate sauce, followed by a strong hankering for fried pie. Also, I had just purchased some coconut flour and some almond meal, so I was excited to try them in fried pie. Since coconut oil has exploded in popularity recently, and I especially love Asian food flavors during the winter… Two days of random food building culminated in a new favorite.

Night 1:

Dough for fried Chocolate pies, if fried chocolate pies could have failed, these would have, the heat required to cook the pied burned the dough and left the centers too cold. Good, even addictive cherry chocolate fried pies were consumed but not quite loved. I added the turmeric and cumin the next day for a baked chicken pie. I will do something like this for savory baked pies… next time.

Savory Pie Dough: Leave out the cumin, coriander and turmeric if you want them to fill them with sweet stuff. You can add ginger if its not chocolate filling. (That is just my opinion)

1 cup coconut oil

1 tsp salt

1 ½ tsp baking powder (or more, I like my dough’s to fluff!)

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbs turmeric

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp cumin

1 egg beaten

1 egg yolk beaten

½ cup cream

½ cup half and half

1 tbs vinegar

1 tsp orange extract

1 tbs vanilla extract

2 tbs agave syrup

1/3 cup coconut flour

¼ cup almond flour

2 cups white flour

Mix the dry goods together in a separate bowl; work in coconut oil as for biscuits, it will have a crumbly texture when it is ready. Beat eggs in another bowl. Add cream and other liquids and syrups to the eggs and beat some more. Make well in middle of dry mix and poor in liquid, mix with spoon and then kneed. Add milk or flour as needed for until you get a nice firm dough ball. Refrigerate for at least ½ an hour, even overnight.

Night 2:

So, I had more than ½ of the original cinnamon dough left over and decided to make savory baked pies, hoping the dough would do better when it was baked. I decided to add cumin and turmeric to add another dimension to the dough. I mixed up another ¼ cup of flour with turmeric and cumin and worked it into my dough from the night before. The leftover meat from a recent whole chicken was in my freezer, just waiting on its new life. And so…

Chicken filling:

Heat Olive Oil

Caramelize Onions and Red Bell Peppers and Tiny Diced Jalapeño (I had fresh jalapeño shatta, but that is a rarely on hand)

Throw in shredded/ diced Chicken

Add a little more oil and fresh garlic, let garlic cook for a quick minute, deglaze with lemon and/or other juice. (I had peach, agave, coconut water from Naked).  

Add diced Dried Mango (add fresh mango with garlic if that is what you have)

Add 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp coriander, 1 tsp ground ginger

Add ½ cup frozen Peas and a tiny bit of water if needed

Simmer down to a glazed chicken filling.

Add fresh chopped mint.

Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut rounds with glass  or cup or cookie cutter of the size you want. Place a blob of chicken mix in center, fold over and press with fork on edges. Flour counter before and as you roll. Don't overfill, this is a delicate dough. (See my patchwork pies below) Grease your pan. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Best Crust Ever. Flaky and delicious. Somewhat difficult to make the pies pretty. But totally doable.

Then this happened....

Sauce Needed!

Had some rhubarb cherry jelly around. (I like weird jelly)

Squeeze of horseradish mayo

Spoon of rhubarb and cherry jelly

Spoon of jalapeño shatta

Splash of lemon juice

Garlic clove

Splash of olive oil

WTH is jalapeño shatta?

The Jordanian family I worked for in a restaurant made fresh hot sauce, they apparently found jalapeño was the right pepper for the family sauce once they got to the US. The sauce is just pureed jalapeño with mint, olive oil and lemon. Don't deseed the Japs! Just slice off the stems and add a bunch of lemon and mint. I use an emersion blender to puree. It lasts about a week and is so damn good! It is nice to have around, but you can get the right flavors by adding the ingredients separately.