Deeply flavorful mole sauce is what it's about for my latest Deal of the Day find. The sauce is studded with chunks of tender real chicken, and a side of tender Cilantro Rice fills out the meal. It is an impressive steal at 99.99 cents for this frozen entree from Herdez called Chicken Mole Bowl.
While not as refined as what a Oaxacan restaurant would serve, this mole a rich version. It tastes a little bit bitter and a little bit sweet; it's mild, but seasoned with chiles, spices, and nuts.
A typical mole is made of more than 20 ingredients, including: ancho and pasilla peppers, cocoa, peanuts, cinnamon, sesame seeds, cumin, cloves, garlic and more -- all ground into a pungent paste. The paste is added to liquid to form a gravy, that's then added to chicken or any favorite meat, to make a stew.
I could not detect any spicy heat, so this Deal of the Day is for everyone.
Click on any photo to see larger.
The chicken in this Deal of the Day is white and dark meat. Cheap frozen dinners usually just spare few meager tiny pieces of chicken that are most often than not cubed from a processed meat loaf. That is not the problem here; there are plenty of nice sized pieces from tender fillets. It's real chicken with real flaky texture.
You get a lot of mole sauce to sop up the Cilantro Rice. The rice is not mushy like most frozen fare and while there are specks of the green herb cilantro, it is subtle - I would have made the cilantro flavor more pronounced. It's a minor quibble though. There is also a small amount of tomato sauce flavor. Overall, I liked the way the rice was prepared and flavored.
So on the 99 Cent Chef's Cheap$kate Dining Scale of 1 to 9, 9 being best, I give Chicken Mole Bowl by Herdez a perfect 9! I don't know if this Deal of the Day will be back at my local 99c only Store, but in the meantime, I would actually pay full price for this frozen entree from any regular grocery store I find it in.
As far as year end lists go, this is one you can really sink your teeth into. And all of my top picks are deliciously cheap to make. Just click on any recipe name to see the original 2015 blogpost, or play any embedded video below. The ranking order is random and not by delectability, so go ahead and dig in!
First up is an oldie but goody, creamy Fettuccine Alfredo. While I first published this recipe in 2010, it has proved to be one of my most popular. So in 2015 I brought it back as a stop motion animated video. Enjoy.
I changed how I make omelets this year. 99 thank to local French born celebrity chef Ludo Lefebvre. You may now him from the NBC cooking show The Taste. My second Top 9 Recipe is for a Cheese Omelette made in the French manner.
American-style is to brown the outside and cook the eggs until solid all the way through, while Ludo's way is more slow and gentle, finishing with a moist interior. Basically a slow scramble until you gently roll the eggs into an omelet shape like this:
I've never got why recipes call for pounding meat into a thin wafer that's fried, baked or sauteed into dry shoe leather. I guess it's tradition at work. Well, for my third Top 9 Recipe I turn the tables and toss out that tainted technique. Here's how I do Chicken Parmesan in Marinara Sauce.
Just put on some Dean Martin tunes, grab a bottle of Chiante, and give this Italian crunchy-coated classic a spin:
We are in the shivering days of winter and for my forth Top 9 Recipe you will want to rustle up a bowl of bubbling Green Split Pea Soup with Ham. My version is comfort food for the soul. So put on a slow-cooking pot of it to get your kitchen toasty and aromatic.
I don't know about you, but I'm starting some today.
For years end it's a party! My fifth Top 9 Recipe will get the ball rolling for any gathering: Bacon Wrapped Brussels Sprouts.
It really is my cutest video recipe for the year. To make this appealing appetizer a little more light, I show you a turkey bacon version, too. Roasted porcine wrapped mini-cabbages are a flavor-bomb powerful enough to wage war on the most embedded taste buds.
I seldom cook with beef because it's just too darn expensive. But I made an exception with my sixth Top 9 Recipe ofPasta alla Genovese. This cut of cow is the right price for about $2 per
pound, called beef shank - not too bad. It's one tough cut of beef that I
wrestle into tenderness by slow braising it for hours in white wine with a pot
full of sliced onion.
While you need patience waiting for this Italian classic, your reward is a deeply beef flavored pasta sauce any Italian grandmother would approve of.
I make the seventh Top 9 Recipe more often than any other: Mexican Chicken Tinga.
This recipe is a 2fer. You can scoop it onto a plate of rice or just stuff it into a taco or burrito. Plus it's so cheap and easy to make, with very few ingredients to deal with, just a couple of canned items, onion, garlic and chicken. It's crock pot cuisine that freezes well -- I pack it into a container for office lunches. When you try it, I think it will be a favorite for you too.
Loco Moco, a Hawaiian bred entree, is my eighth Top 9 Recipe. If you are a calorie counter then scroll on, but if you break your fast from time to time then cheat with this decedent breakfast of sticky rice, a fat ground beef patty, gravy, and it's all topped with fried eggs - now that's a mouthful.
This recipe came about after a vacation trip last summer to the tropical island of Ohau, Hawaii. I spied locals, shirtless and in swimming trunks (possibly surfers on a late breakfast carb-loading break,) carrying piled plates to their tables. It looked like too much, but I eventually gave it a go and boy was it good. Substitute a low-fat ground chicken or turkey patty if it makes you feel better.
Finally my ninth Top 9 Recipe is my cheapest yet, a Black Pepper Stir Fry with chicken and celery. One of the least expensive veggies is a head of celery. I always end up throwing away a few stalks, so I decided to make a recipe before that happens next time, and this is the result of my fugalness.
Although I never eat at Panda Express, that doesn't mean I can't ripoff a recipe from there. I usually get mine from cheaper restaurant takeout stations in Chinatown for a lot less than what Panda Express charges. Just click here to see how fast and easy you can make it.
It has been a fruitfully abundant year of recipes here at the Cheap$kate Chateau. I did the heavy lifting for you, so now all you have to do is pick a recipe link and save yourself some hard earned cash by trying out any of the above.
And make sure to keep checking in here from time to time, while my tastes are cheap, my recipe flavors are top shelf!
That's the beauty of this recipe, there is no fixed ingredients list, so you use whatever is leftover from your abundant holiday meal (click here for some recipes.) After such a big cooking event, it's nice to have all the ingredients in one place and in one simple serving -- no fuss, no muss.
It's simple really, just layer on your holiday leftovers in a deep baking dish then cover it with a cheap store-bought pie crust. When it's done baking (topped with a golden brown crust) spoon out a serving with a side of cranberry sauce.
You might think that it all mixes together, but no, each bite is different according to what you put in. In my first bite I got a pocket of sausage stuffing topped with turkey and gravy, while in the next bite it was pie crust, veggies, and sweet potato.
For this recipe I used the remains from a turkey dinner. I always make too much stuffing and of course there is plenty of turkey left. We baked orange sweet potatoes, but you can use regular white mashed potatoes.
We chowed down all the veggies, so I added a cup each of cooked corn and sweet green peas. You can add any leftover veggie dish you made.
There was very little gravy left, so I made a fresh batch. I browned some leftover turkey skin and poured in a couple cups of water mixed with 2 tablespoons of flour - it's good enough. You can add more gravy so the recipe resembles a pot pie.
Feeling lazy?
My latest cheap$kate recipe is adaptable to whatever you have on hand. Just get a pre-made pie crust from your local market.
So, save a few leftovers from you holiday feast and check out my video below and make your own delish Thanksgiving & Christmas Leftovers Pie.
Ingredients 1 to 2 cups each of cooked: stuffing, turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and any veggies like corn, peas, green beans, Brussels sprouts and squash. Make this recipe your own and add or subtract the leftovers you have on hand.
1 pie crust - Use regular pie dough made with flour, not a graham cracker crust, as it will crumble apart and may burn easily. Also okay to use biscuit dough from the can, just stretch or roll-out enough of the biscuit dough to cover a baking dish or pan that's filled with leftovers.
Directions
I used a deep dish for baking. A pie pan may be too shallow for your ingredients and they may dry out. You could even half the pie dough and use a tall and narrow meat loaf or bread loaf pan.
If you only have a pie pan then check on baking and remove pie as soon as the crust is light brown, by then the filling should be hot enough.
Use any amounts you have leftover from your holiday meal, the above list is just a sample. Fill up the baking dish, but do stop about half an inch from the top - the liquid in your leftovers may overflow the dish. Just to be safe, you can place a cookie sheet underneath the baking dish or pan.
If you baked the stuffing in the bird, it may be mushy. I recommend
spreading it out in a baking dish and cook stuffing in the oven for
10-15 minutes at 350 degrees to dry it out, just a little. Of course, if
you like your dressing mushy then go right to assembling the Thanksgiving & Christmas Leftovers Pie.
As an example I put turkey in the middle and gravy on top. I liked the potatoes on the bottom layer.
Click on any photo to see larger.
We ran out of veggies, so I added some drained and cooked corn and peas. I also ran out of gravy -- that is the only thing I actually spend any
effort on. I used a little over a cup of gravy, next time I would add at
least 2 to 3 cups of gravy.
It's really up to you what ingredients make up a Thanksgiving & Christmas Leftovers Pie.
For the pie crust, I brought it to room temperature so the dough is easy to spread over the baking dish. Slice into the pie crust to let out steam from the ingredients below. For this recipe I kept it simple, but you could beat an egg, or egg yolk, to brush on the pie dough, to yield a shinny golden crust.
Once you have all the ingredients layered in a deep dish and covered with the pie dough, bake in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Check on the pie dough towards the end of baking and remove if it gets too brown.
Since all the ingredients are cooked, all you are doing is browning the pie dough and heating up the leftovers inside.
Serve Thanksgiving & Christmas Leftovers Pie with a side of cranberry sauce and extra gravy - yum!
Let's take care of business first. It's Christmastime and you are here looking for some holiday recipes, for sure. Well, I got your back! Just click right here to
see a Santa sleigh-full. It's a link to my holiday recipes from blog
posts past; everything from pies to luscious side dishes, and roast
turkey to party appetizers. Happy Holidays to you, thanks
for visiting, and read on.
Baked Turkey with Sage & Stuffing
What follows is my year in GIFs. It's a Christmas stocking stuffed with short animation clips I've made. A GIF is about a dozen photos,or a video clip a few seconds long, that I upload to a website to convert into a short video that lasts a few seconds. A GIF does not have sound and the clip keeps replaying.
Fettuccine Alfredo - based on one of my most popular recipes from years ago. I made a
video version at the beginning of this year. As good as Olive Garden's recipe?
I like to do time-lapse GIFs that show a recipe cooking from start to finish, so you can see the transformation, like for cheesy Chicken Parmesanand roast pork shoulder above, and a creamyBaked Artichoke Dip appetizer below.
Another Restaurant Nocturne of a new eatery located in Koreatown. The restaurant, Saint Martha, is named for the Catholic saint of cooks and maids.
