Spinach Stuffed Chicken Legs with Dubliner Cheese

I think it's pretty obvious by now that just about everyone is trying to cut back expense-wise. In all honesty it's about damn time - our country has become way too spoiled and wasteful.

On that cheery note, let's talk about how we can cut back on one of the many things that interests me - the grocery bill. Right now there are blogs-a-plenty offering recession-savvy dining tips on how to cut back on your dining excesses:

*Eat beans and rice, lentils, quinoa, etc.

*Stop buying all that processed garbage for your kids, they don't need to be eating it anyways.

*Drink water instead of the sodas and bottled drinks.

*Pay attention to what you're actually eating.

*Look for bargains at the grocery store.

It's that last one that seems to work the best for me. Mr. TA and I already eat plenty of beans, rice, quinoa and the occasional lentil. We rarely buy anything processed or from the freezer section (except fish and edamame), we keep only milk, fresh-brewed iced tea, orange juice, and coffee in the house for drinking, and I plan each week on a menu.

That really only leaves me with shopping the occasional sale at the grocery store to cut back anymore on cost. Of course, I'm sure many people out there are in the same boat.

However, when the item on sale is a whole chicken or chicken leg quarters, many people pass because they either don't like dark meat or are intimidated at the thought of trying to bone something. This is really unfortunate, because when times are as tough as these people need to pinch pennies everywhere they can. And buying a package of leg quarters at 60 cents per pound is exceedingly cheaper than boneless skinless thighs at $2.19 per pound - and don't even get me started on $5.99 per pound for boneless skinless breasts. Plus, if you do decide to bone the chicken you can save the bones in a bag in the freezer for making chicken stock. Win-win, baby.

So, dissecting the two main reasons for why people won't buy something as tasty as chicken leg quarters:

Don't like dark meat/Thigh and leg meat is more fattening than boneless skinless breasts - OK, fair enough, you don't like dark meat. Meh, I doubt you can taste the difference in soups, pot pies, pastas, etc. Stop being a big baby and save some money already. As for the fat content debate, it's true - dark meat has more fat than white meat. Just keep in mind that a thigh-leg portion weighs on average about 6 oz. I've seen many a chicken breast weigh over 14 oz. If you're allotting one chicken breast per family member not only are you wasting the meat by serving enormous portions that no one in their right mind should finish, but the health benefits of the low-fat breast are outweighed by the fact that you're scarfing down more than twice as much meat. Period.

Now for the second reason: intimidated by deboning? Easy-peasy. Let me show you how.

First, use a very, very sharp knife. It sounds backwards, but using a sharp knife is much safer than using a dull one. Now that you've got your sharpest knife in hand, don't shank yourself.

Don't worry, this is much easier than it appears. (Not the shanking, the boning.)

Start with your leg quarter:



Cut through the skin and tissue right at the end of the leg bone (the part you hold on to when eating a fried chicken leg). Slice all the way around the bone.

Use your knife to slit the skin on the underside of the leg. The skin will peel back nice and easy down the entire piece of meat, usually with just a little coaxing from the knife here and there to release the skin.



Peel all the skin off and release it around the edges with your knife. The end result will be this:



Next, flip the whole piece over and slice down the underside of the leg bone like so:



Open up the skin around the leg and slice down each side, freeing it from the bone:



Now, slip the tip of your knife behind the bone and run it down until you hit the joint, releasing the meat entirely from the leg bone:



Now, slice under the leg joint and locate the thigh bone with your finger tips. Run the tip of your knife down the length of the thigh bone towards the bottom of the piece, like this:



Keep sneaking around until you hit where the thigh bone connects to the rest of the body:



After that, lift up the leg bone, cut underneath the leg joint and along the bottom of the thigh bone until you come out clean on the other side:



Now you can pop all the bones out of the meat and slice any residual cartilage left on. Now is the time to trim all the excess fat off the meat too.



You'll be left with an underside that looks like you chewed it from the bone,



But the top will be nice and neat,



Ta da! You've just deboned a chicken leg quarter! That wasn't hard at all, was it?

I usually like to buy several package of the leg quarters when they go on sale, spend a half hour or so deboning them and then throw them in the freezer in packages appropriate for the sizes of meals I typically make.

Now you can use the meat for all sorts of things, soups, stews, quesadillas, pot pies, pastas, skewers - you name it, you can do it.

My favorite thing to do with chicken legs though is to stuff them. Gordon Ramsay has a delicious recipe I've tried out before, for Sausage Stuffed Chicken Legs . This time I took a slightly more healthful approach and stuffed the legs with pastrami, spinach, and KerryGold's Dubliner cheese.

It was delicious.

Let me show you how.

First, lay out a sheet of foil and season it with a little salt and pepper. Lay out your boned leg quarter.



Top it with a couple pieces of pastrami,



Next comes some spinach sauteed with a little shallot,



Now for the sticks of Dubliner,



Now start the rolling. Roll it onto itself like a jellyroll, then grab the foil to keep it tight:



Wrap it up into a tight little package and twist the ends real tight.



Now you're going to poach this in a pot of boiling water for twenty minutes.

Pull them out and let them cool off for a minute or so and peel off the foil.

Brown them in a hot skillet with a little melted butter and then slice on the diagonal to serve.

Whoever said eating cheap couldn't taste good?



Plus a thank-you to Foodbuzz for supplying me with plenty of KerryGold cheese to try out for St. Paddy's.

Update....

I took a brief break from my studies and meandered out to Death Valley with a friend for a few days.

While I was there I decided this mountain needed climbing.



If you look real hard you can find me.

I'll be returning shortly to making tasty treats and telling you about them.

Right after I finish the paper that's due on Friday...

Fresh Spring Rolls

Oh Fresh Spring Rolls, are you Thai? Are you Vietnamese? Are you some sort of creation thought up by crazy Americans and passed off as authentic Asian cuisine? Tell me your secrets!

Though I have no idea where these tasty treats hail from, and after at least three minutes of exhaustively googling them I came up with no conclusive evidence, I still love them. The first time I had them was on one of my first dates with Mr. TA before we got married. He really likes Asian cuisine, all kinds, and he took me to this really cute little Thai place in Washington. We had Phad Thai, Chicken Satay, Mangoes with Coconut Sticky Rice, and Fresh Spring Rolls. Everything was delicious and Mr. TA and I were well on our way to everlasting mushiness - or more typically driving each other as crazy as possible. We like to keep things fresh.

So, more importantly, fresh spring rolls are a rice paper wrapper filled with lettuce, an assortment of herbs, chicken, and shrimp. Many recipes also require the addition of other vegetables like carrots or cabbage and many times noodles are added. I prefer to stick to the style we first had on our date, so I use only lettuce, basil, cilantro, mint, chicken, and shrimp. Top it off with some out of this world peanut sauce and you're good to go.



Speaking of peanut sauce, talk about a crapshoot when you're looking for a good recipe, eh? I've made peanut sauce countless times, and I've never been quite satisfied with any of them. They're either too sweet, too peanutty, too spicy, or too oily. I like my peanut sauce to contain a myriad of flavors - heat, sweetness, spice, and of course the peanuts. It needs to blend effortlessly into a flavor that complements the dish it's adorning, not covering it up. Peanut sauce isn't really an Asian creation (invented by crazy Westerners), so it's little surprise it's now basically the Asian ketchup. We throw it on everything, and instead of adding an additional level of flavor, it masks everything else until all we can taste is the peanut sauce.

I'll pass.

That's why I attempted to create my own recipe completely from scratch. Usually when I attempt something like this it ends in an Epic FAIL. This time, it actually worked. It's the best peanut sauce I've ever had - restaurant or otherwise. It was one of those recipes that as I was mixing everything I knew that it was either going to be the most amazing thing I've ever created - or lump of goo not fit for the neighbor's cat that keeps pooping in my flower beds.

And believe me, at this point I'd feed that cat all sorts of weird crap. That's right, poop in your owners house - not my chrysanthemums.

I've heard that working with some Asian ingredients and techniques can be a little intimidating for some, so I've included some step-by-step photos to guide through the process. They're really so simple, I can't think of any reason for not trying them.

Fresh Spring Rolls

Makes 6

For the Rolls:

6 sheets rice spring roll wrapper (available at any Asian market)
6 leaves green or red leaf lettuce (romaine and iceberg are too firm, they may tear the wrapper)
1 cup cilantro leaves
1 cup mint leaves
1 cup basil leaves
12 shrimp (preferably 25-30 ct.), raw, shelled and deveined
10 oz chicken (1 medium boneless, skinless breast), cut into small strips about 1 oz each
4 tablespoons butter, divided

For the Peanut Sauce:

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1 teaspoon red curry paste
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon palm sugar, grated
1/2 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/3 cup coconut milk

In a heavy bottomed skillet over medium-high heat melt two tablespoons butter. Add the shrimp, season to taste with salt and cracked pepper. Cook until pink and opaque throughout. Remove from skillet and set aside to cool. Melt the remaining two tablespoons butter and add the chicken strips. Cook completely. Remove from skillet and set aside. Turn off the heat, but keep the pan on the burner (gas stoves may require lowest flame). Using the residual heat, melt the peanut butter for the peanut sauce, in effect deglazing the skillet with the peanut butter. Add remaining ingredients, combine thoroughly and let meld for at least two minutes - adjust to taste if necessary. Remove from skillet into a ramekin or other small dish and set aside.

For assembling the rolls:

Start with your rice wrappers



This is what they look like when they're dry, out of the package



In a wide, shallow dish ( I use a large pie plate) fill halfway with hot water (from the tap is fine). Soak the wrapper for about 45 seconds, lift it out of the water carefully and let excess water drip off. Now it will look like this:



A quick tip, dry to keep your work area as dry as possible. It needs to be moist, but if the area is soaking wet the wrapper will stay soaking wet too - and it needs to start to dry out a little as you're working or when you start the rolling it will be too slippery to stick to itself. Keep a kitchen towel handy and wipe down the surface after every roll.

Start the assembly by placing two cooked shrimp, side to side in the center of the wrapper.



On top of the shrimp, layer the herbs in equal amounts and top with a strip or two of the cooked chicken.



Top with a lettuce leaf. Now, start to roll it like a burrito. Flip the edge nearest you over the top of filling, pull taught, and fold in each side.



Now just keep rolling until it's sealed.



If you're awesome you end up with the shrimp showing through the top of the wrapper. However, I am not awesome, and after rolling all six of mine I still didn't get one to work properly - so they look all plain and boring like this:



Now you're all finished. You can serve them whole or cut on the diagonal.



Top with the peanut sauce, but not too much...



Now devour at will.