Leek, Chicken, Mushroom, and Comte Cheese Bake in Hazelnut Crust with Bacon Topping

I know the title is kind of long but when i make up recipes i don't know what to call it and i just go with "as descriptive as possible."

We have been rotisserie-chicken-obsessed forever with the garlic herb ones from previously known as Henry's but now known as Sprouts because they are super moist and flavorful and, if i don't eat an entire one in a single sitting, they can be used for lots of things.  Some things like a chicken and green onion scramble with hot sauce, or this amazing recipe for dill and yogurt chicken salad (which is fantastic on celery sticks!), or i just make stuff up with it usually, like today.

In our veggie shipment from Farm Fresh To You we got several leeks and i love leeks!  They remind me of fancy french food and they are great in a soup or awesome caramelized with goat cheese etc. I wanted to try something different with them than what i normally do which is saute them up and put them in omelettes or soup or on burgers so i googled leeks and browsed some of the recipes.  There were several variations of a leek and cheese pie but i wanted to make it amazing so i took that idea and another flavor combo of toasted hazelnuts and bacon with leeks and mashed them together in my head.  I came up with the thing below and thankfully i had the foresight to measure and jot down the stuff i put in it:

Leek, Chicken, Mushroom, and Comte Cheese Bake in Hazelnut Crust with Bacon Topping 

Crust -
2 oz hazelnut meal/flour (or food processor 2 oz hazelnuts just enough to make it mealy but not too much to make hazelnut butter.  i got my meal from nuts.com)
1 Tblsp softened butter
couple pinches salt 

Middle -
1 Tblsp butter
2 medium leeks, light green and white parts, sliced in half-moons
5 oz mushrooms, diced/chopped small to medium pieces (there were white button mushrooms on sale so i used those but baby bellas would work too!)
2 Tblsp minced garlic/onion/shallot mix (this is from trader joes and i just had it to use up but just garlic would work well if you don't have this)
a few generous pinches of salt (sorry, i need to work on measuring this)
2 generous pinches of dried herbs de provence (just dried thyme could work also)
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
1 large egg
2 Tblsp half and half or cream or milk
5 oz shredded/chopped cooked chicken
4 oz shredded comte cheese (gruyere or swiss can be subbed in)
2-3 slices of cooked bacon, crumbled 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and dump the crust ingredients into an 8x8 glass baking dish.  Mash it all together with your hands until it is well mixed and just sticks together enough to press it to the bottom only of the dish.  Bake it on the center rack of your oven for about ten minutes or until golden.  Take it out and set aside until you're done making the middle. Leave the oven on. 

For the middle - on medium heat, melt the butter in at least a 10" nonstick pan, i just used an omelette pan.  When it's heated add the leek slices and saute until very tender and starting to brown, stirring often.  The crust will probably be done for a while before the leeks are tender.  Add the salt and the mushrooms and cook a few minutes, until the mushrooms begin to become tender, then add the garlic(/shallot/onion mix).  Cook, stirring occasionally until everything is nice and soft and then stir in the herbs de provence and remove from the heat.  Stir in the chopped chicken and let cool while you mix the cheese base. 

In a medium bowl blend the ricotta cheese, egg, and half and half together until well mixed.  You can toss some freshly ground pepper in here if you want.  Stir in about half of the shredded comte, reserving the other half for later.  Add the somewhat cooled chicken/leek/mushroom mix to the cheese base and stir it all up and then spoon it into your prepared hazelnut crust, patting it down and making it even.  It's going to be thick, not pourable.  You could always add extra eggs for more of a breakfasty bake, if you like.  Once it's spread into the crust, top with remaining comte shreds and if you plan to eat it right away you can sprinkle the bacon on top before you put it in the oven.  I put in on top afterwards because i knew there would be leftovers and i didn't want rubbery bacon should we microwave it so it's up to you. 

Bake on center rack at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, until the cheese on top is fully melted and browning along the edges.  Wait for it to stop being scalding before you stick your face in it.

I cut it into 9 pieces and figured out the stats for that. Based on my general estimates the entire dish (sans bacon, because ours are 90 cals per thick slice and some people get that skinny bacon that is like 50 cals per slice) is 1935 calories which makes each slice 215 cals.  You can always adjust whatever lightness you want, for instance use reduced fat ricotta instead of the mega-amazing fresh full-fat ricotta that i used, and two egg whites instead of an egg to save a measly 50 cals per entire dish etc, it's a pretty flexible dish.

The crust was more like a toasty, nutty, soft breading than a crunchy one you might expect from a nut crust, fyi.  Comte cheese has a nutty, slightly sweet taste if you haven't had it before.  I got mine at trader joes.  About .3 lbs is enough for the recipe in case where you buy it isn't by the ounce.

The only thing that could have made this dish better was to pair it with a nice white wine!

Chicken and olive crockpot stew

I have been cooking up a storm lately, i just haven't been posting about it.  Since that is sort of the whole point of a food blog i suppose i should start posting!

Last week i made something from my binder (my binder is a bunch of printed-out, scribbled-down, or torn-out pages of magazine recipe collection.  it is a mix of things i have made before and things i want to make) that was in my "want to make" section.  I modified it to fit our dietary needs right now but i have confidence that if i made it as originally directed it would still be fabulous and possibly even moreso!

You may have noticed i am on a crockpot kick lately?  Normally i do not break this thing out even once a year but i thought about all the times that i have been too lazy or stressed to cook a proper dinner and we've ended up with In N Out or Zpizza, or like ten days' worth of Big Chopsticks delivery.  So when i ordered a cookbook called The Everyday Low-Carb Slow Cooker Cookbook i was inspired to actually use my crockpot.  The funny thing is though that i while i have made maybe five things in my crockpot in the last month, none of it was a recipe from that book.  Someday, someday.

I don't even need to really post the recipe because here is what i did:  Sprayed the crockpot with nonstick spray.  Put several cut-in-half boneless skinless chicken breasts from my freezer in the bottom.  Dumped a regular sized can of fire roasted tomatoes (with garlic because i love extra garlic) on top.  Sprinkled onion powder, a teaspoon of ground cumin, a teaspoon of ground coriander, half a teaspoon of ancho chile powder, a little less than half a teaspoon of cayenne, some salt, and a few cloves of garlic-pressed garlic on top.  Then i dumped a drained jar of pimento stuffed manzanilla olives on top.  Covered the crockpot, set it on low, and checked back on it in 6 hours.  If you want the real recipe you can find it here. (Sunset Magazine)

I am not sure why this is sideways and I don't know how to fix it, but you can see this is a magazine page recipe from my binder.  It's originally known as Chicken, quinoa, and green-olive stew.  It even has a beer to pair with it.

I shredded it after it was cooked and the chicken sort of soaked up more of the tomato-olive juice.  This whole dish took me less than ten minutes to put together and it was excellent with cheddar cheese or manchego, and some sour cream, or just by itself.  It was the perfect amount of brininess and acidity and spice!

I also ended up making corned beef in the crockpot and while it came out fine i realized i don't like corned beef so now david has quite a bit to eat up.  I think i will make a hash for him with shredded brussel sprouts and onions or something because i feel bad he is just eating it straight up with mustard.