Chicken Turnovers

This dish is really one of those honorary members of the "Zahnnie's High-Fallutin' Cooking" section because it takes 10 minutes of dedicated prep time, 20 minutes to bake in the oven, and tastes like you spent so much time slaving away in the kitchen. The trick is to prepare everything you can ahead of time, then time everything conveniently so you look super slick.

Ingredients:

Filling:

1 lb ground chicken

1.5 cups frozen peas

1.5 cups frozen corn

1.5 cups chopped carrots

1 small onion (chopped)

2 cups chicken broth

2-3 tbsp flour

1 tbsp oil

1-2 tbsp butter

2-3 cloves garlic (minced)

salt & pepper to taste

Pastry:

1 box frozen puff pastry sheets (defrosted)

As a full-service culinary experience, the Ghetto Gourmet not only includes step-by-step directions on preparation and assembly of this dish, it includes helpful additional tips on "How To Be That Slick" (noted by bold eye-talics and parentheses).

First, prepare the filling (For extra slickness, I recommend cooking up the batch of filling the night before and storing it in the fridge - it cuts down on immediate prep time immensely and lets you spend more time to do *ahem* other things before needing to make dinner). In a large nonstick pan, heat up the oil and brown the chicken with the garlic. Salt and pepper the chicken to taste as it is cooking. Once nicely browned and salmonella-free, remove the chicken from the pan and chuck in the hunk of butter. Melt the butter and fry up the chopped onion until it's fragrant and a little translucent. Toss in the carrots, frozen peas, and frozen corn and mix about until veggies are well-defrosted and partially cooked in the melted butter. Chuck in the flour, and coat the veggies. Start with 2 tbsp of flour and add more if it coats unevenly. Fry the flour-coated veggies in the butter for about a minute, then slop in the chicken broth. Make sure you stir the vegetables around constantly so that there are no flour lumps while the broth thickens into a sauce. Plop the ground chicken back into the pan and mix well. Voila, filling! You can now cool it down and store it, or proceed directly to the pastry assembly process below.

Roll out the puff pastry sheets that you've defrosted (Extra slickness tip: puff pastry takes 1 hour to defrost on your kitchen counter. Filling takes 1 hour to come to room temperature... so, you could be extra slick by remembering to take these two items out of your fridge right before attending to other pre-dinner activities that take about 1 hour, like... say... "welcoming" someone to Tucson). Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (If you're planning on using this dish as a display of your impressive culinary prowess, or just as a cutesy post-"welcoming"-bliss couple activity, this is a good place to really begin milking the "cooking" aspect, because assembly is kind of fun and so easy that you'll look like a pro while you're teaching someone how to do it, even if you're all thumbs). Cut each sheet into quarters. Place a generous tbsp, maybe 2, into the center of each puff pastry square. Fold each square on the diagonal to enclose the filling. Fudge in any fallout and close the leaks. Take a fork and crimp down the edges neatly so it looks like a cute little food triangle, then punch a few little vent holes in the top for steam. Transfer each pastry to a cookie sheet lined in tinfoil (The oven should be beeping just about now to indicate temperature at this point. Damn, you're so slick!). Bake pastries for approximately 20 minutes. Check at the end to see if desired puffiness/flakiness/crispiness has been achieved and add 5 minutes if more is desired (You could theoretically choose to use this time to either clean up, or assemble a nice mixed salad together if your sweetie is as much of a hippie as you are and into his vegetables). Bon (slick) appetit!