Red HOT Potato Chip Cookies

This is one of those recipes that sounds like it'd be pretty gross. Instead, it ends up being an unusual combination of flavors that turns out to be WONDERFUL! There are so few ingredients required and they are so easy to make but they get attention and are guaranteed to garner several recipe requests if you bring them to a party or holiday event.

These cookies are a marvelous combination of spicy, sweet, salty, crunchy and buttery.

You have a lot of options as to what ingredients you use. Pretty much any spicy potato chip would work- jalapeno, chipotle, etc. In my case, I used Pringles Frank's Red Hot potato chips. The same goes for the nuts- you can use just about any kind of nut but I went for what I consider to be a "neutral" nut and used raw pinenuts since I just wanted them to add texture but not a lot of flavor.

Red Hot Potato Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup crushed spicy potato chips 
1/2 cup chopped nuts 
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 
1/2 cup sugar 
1 cup (2 sticks) butter - softened 
1 tsp vanilla 
Powdered sugar and chili powder for dusting 

Directions:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets (you'll likely need two- or use the same one twice) with parchment paper. If you don't have parchment paper, just don't grease the cookie sheet.

Ready to bake

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric hand mixer. Once it's nice and fluffy (approximately 30 seconds on low speed) add in the nuts and potato chips and once those are incorporated, slowly add in the flour.

Make small 1-inch balls of dough and place on cookie sheet. Slightly flatten the cookies with the back of a fork and place in oven for 15-17 minutes or until just golden brown on the edges (I needed more like 18 minutes because my oven sucks.)

Sprinkle on some magic

Remove cookies from oven and allow to cool on baking sheet for a couple minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

While cookies are cooling, mix 1 Tbl chili powder in with 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Dust cookies with chili powder/powdered sugar mixture.

Yields approximately 40 cookies

Crock Pot Duck A L'Orange

Duck can be intimidating. I was talking to a chef friend about it recently, and he said there are two tricks to cooking perfect duck. First, your safest bet is to not attempt to cook the whole duck but rather sections- legs and thighs for one meal, breasts for another. The second trick had to do with cooking it in the oven so perhaps it's applicable in a future post. Don't want to get ahead of myself.

MOST IMPORTANT: This is a recipe that takes VERY little prep time and is very impressive looking when it's all done. .

INGREDIENTS:
- Two duck breasts – or – two legs and thighs
- Some salt
- Some pepper
- 2 oranges peeled and sectioned
- 1 apple cut in half
- 1 onion cut into eighths
- 1 6 oz can thawed frozen orange juice concentrate


INSTRUCTIONS:

Season duck with salt and pepper. Put all the fruit and onion in the crock pot and slap that ‘ole duck right on top. Pour the OJ all over and just run the crock pot on low for 8-10 hours. You can use the “sauce” left in the pot- just strain it and pour it over if you want. I prefer without (don’t like it TOO orangey) but that’s your choice.

FOR THE NERDS: I've done this recipe both with Muscovy and Peking duck and they both turned out well. Errr, more aptly, duckLING. Yes, they are young, tasty little ducks. Although, if we're being fair, the chickens we eat are for the most part quite young, too.

WHERE TO BUY: Costco has been carrying frozen duck lately. Takes about 48 hours in the fridge to thaw. But, if you can, try and source a local duck. When I can get my hands on one of our local Muscovy ducks it's always a little more special.