0 Favorite Recipe of March

I enjoy doing the favorite recipe poll because it gives me a good idea of what type of recipes I should try to come up with, along with what types of recipes y'all enjoy. This month the favorite was (barely) my Orange Blackberry Chicken. Thank you everyone for continuing to participate, and be sure to check the Recipe of the Month page for all of the top recipes so far! Also, I got a few comments and suggestions through the Contact Us page, and I'll be incorporating some ideas over the next month.

Here's a distribution of what your favorite recipes were:


Also, congrats to EA Stewart on randomly being picked as the one to receive the pizza crusts from The Gluten Free Bistro!

Happy weekend everyone!

0 Gluten Free Lemon and Arugula Chicken Pasta

With spring (eventually) coming, I wanted to post a dinner recipe that was relatively healthy and light. I use butter in this recipe, but it can always be substituted with olive oil or margarine. I like adding arugula to the pasta for the color, and for the taste that it adds to the pasta.

This recipe is a good one to make after a long day of work because it can take under 30 minutes if you use leftover or store-bought chicken (I like to buy the rotisserie chicken for these kind of quick recipes). I hope you enjoy!

Cook time: 30 minutes
Servings: 1-2

Ingredients
6 oz penne rice pasta
1 lemon, juiced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1 handful baby arugula, plus a few leaves for garnish
Breast of one chicken

Steps:
1. Boil water for the pasta, then add the pasta and let boil for 1 to 2 minutes. Cover and remove from heat, let cook for about 18 minutes.
2. While the pasta cooks, shred the chicken mean by hand.
3. In a small saucepan over medium, add the oil and butter. Once the butter has melted, add the garlic and sautee for a few minutes.
4. Remove the oil from the heat, then add the herbs and the arugula to the oil so that it wilts. Once the pasta is done, drain and add to the oil. Toss the pasta and oil with the chicken and lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Tightly roll 2 arugula leaves, and slice into shreds to garnish the pasta.

0 Choose March's Recipe of the Month

Somehow it's already the end of March, so its that time to pick your favorite recipe again! For me it's a tough choice, but I'd love to hear your opinions! I appreciate the feedback that you guys give me through these polls, it helps me figure out what types of food you guys enjoy reading about. Also, please feel free to continue sharing your opinions or ideas through either comments in posts or via our Contact Us page.

Also this month, if you either include your email address in the poll (I promise not to share it), or share this link through Facebook or Twitter (please mention @trcrumbley, makes it easier to track), I'll randomly select one or two, and you'll have the chance to try The Gluten Free Bistro's gluten free pizza crust. I absolutely love their crust, and am sadly on my last crust in the freezer. You have until Friday, so please, participate and always let me know if there's anything I can do to make the site better! Thanks!

3 Quick and Easy: Blackberry Chocolate Truffles

My last post I described some of my trip to Hill Top Winery, and how I was inspired by their Blackberry Delight Wine to create a dinner and dessert centered around it. During the tasting they described a recipe of replacing water in brownie mix with the Blackberry Wine, and here's my twist on that dessert! This is an extremely easy truffle to make, which only consists of 4 ingredients (5 if you include the sugar topping). I use a mix of semi-sweet and dark chocolate in this recipe to balance the sweetness of the Blackberry Delight Wine. If you can't get Hill Top, substitute with any other Blackberry Wine. If the wine you use is a dry wine, increase the semi-sweet to dark chocolate ratio to 3:1. I hope you enjoy this incredibly easy, yet succulent and fragrant dessert!

Active Prep Time: 5 minutes

Active Cooking Time: 5 minutes

Inactive Prep Time: 1-3 hours

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb semisweet chocolate
• 1/2 lb dark chocolate (60-70% cocoa)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 tbsp Hill Top Blackberry Delight Wine
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar for topping (optional)

Steps

1. Chop all the chocolate into small pieces that are easier for melting, and place into a medium bowl.

2. In a medium saucepan, add the heavy cream and wine. Cook at medium heat until boiling.

3. Stir the chocolate and cream until creamy and smooth. Pour into either silicone mini-muffin pans (as a mold) or into a shallow baking dish. Refrigerate in the fridge for 1-3 hours or until set.

4. Either remove the chocolate from the mold, or use small spoons to scoop out of the pan and roll into balls. Top with sugar if desired. 

5. Enjoy with a glass of wine or milk.

Chopped chocolate ready to melt

Cream and wine being heated

I could eat with from the bowl...

0 Gluten Free Orange Blackberry Chicken with Mixed Rice

This past weekend I went wine tasting around the Charlottesville area. One of the wineries I went to was Hill Top Berry Farm and Winery. Hill Top is one of my favorite wineries in Virginia because of their atmosphere (a true family owned winery that makes you feel like a member of the family), interesting range of flavors, and spectacular mead. All of their wines and meads are "True to the Fruit", which to me means that each of their wines and meads capture the flavor and essence of a particular berry. They also bottle several varieties of mead, and each sip of their mead is like a taste of heaven. Seriously.

When I last tasted at Hill Top, they described how each wine or mead could be paired with a meal, or how you could cook with them. One that stuck out to me was the Blackberry Delight Wine, which pairs wonderfully with chocolate. They described one recipe, which involved substituting water in brownie mix with the wine. This inspired me to come up with a meal centered around this wine that consisted of a savory dish and a dessert dish. 

The blackberry wine has a distinct sweetness to it, combined with the tartness that you would expect from eating a blackberry. I thought this would pair wonderfully with the acidity and sweetness of oranges, and decided to use chicken because I love the combination of citrus and chicken. The result is a sweet yet tangy chicken with a little bit of a kick from the ginger. I hope you enjoy!

Servings: Dinner for two

Cooking Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients: 

• 2 Chicken Breasts, butterflied
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• Juice of 2 cara cara oranges (~1/3 cup orange juice)
• 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp Hill Top Blackberry Delight Wine (substitute with another Blackberry Wine...if you have to...)
• salt and pepper
• Reese Brown and Wild Rice

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Place the chicken onto a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, and season with salt and pepper. Bake the chicken for approximately 20 minutes.
2. While the oven is preheating and the the chicken is cooking, boil the recommended amount of water for the rice, and add a tablespoon of butter. Once boiling, add rice, cover, and simmer at medium heat for the recommended amount of time on the rice container.

Cara Cara Oranges are pink like grapefruit, and milder than traditional navel oranges.

3. In a small bowl, stir the juices, ginger, and wine.
4. Preheat a small saucepan on medium heat. Add the butter and garlic, and sautee for a minute to two. Pour the juice mix into the pan and stir occasionally. Reduce the juice into a sauce, which will take about  10 minutes. Season with a dash of salt and pepper.You want a color that is darker than it was originally (due to caramelized sugary goodness), but a texture that is still liquid and not thick like a syrup. Easiest way to remember is that a sauce is liquidy, while glaze (such as teriyaki or barbeque) is thick and sticky. 

5. After the chicken has been cooking for about 20 minutes, drizzle some of the sauce onto the chicken, and bake for another 5-10 minutes depending on thickness until there is no more pink in the chicken. Remove from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes.

6. Once all components are done, fluff the rice onto a plate. Slice the chicken and fan on top of the rice. Then drizzle the orange blackberry sauce on top of the chicken and rice. Serve with the blackberry wine, chilled. 

I hope you enjoy this meal, and I fully recommend anyone living in the Virginia area to go try the wines at Hill Top Winery, you'll really enjoy the experience. For those outside of Virginia, call the winery and see if they deliver to where you live.