While we wait for vanilla pods - Kaiser Rolls and Dill Pickle Soup

 I took an inventory of what I had for making vanilla, and it turns out I didnt have near enough vodka nor vanilla pods, even when the bottles do arrive. 

So I purchased more of both - I sure hope this works - and need to wait until everything is delivered. Sadly the pods wont arrive for another two weeks. They claim holiday shipping for the delay but it was ordered after Christmas but what can you do?

Meantime, I tried a few new things over the weekend: City Chicken was one of them. 
It's not actually chicken at all. The name comes from a dish cooks made during the depression era using meat scraps and a skewer to fashion a sort of chicken drum stick. The meat is actually pork and veal. In my case I can't get veal right now. 

(Interesting side note: if you look up veal in the kroger.com app, you find only ground veal, cuts of beef, bison, and even lamb, but no veal scallops or chops. Try it. Also dont ask me what veal has to do with bison and lamb, I have no idea. Not even the same animals.  )

So you put these chunks of pork on a skewer, add seasoned egg, flour with baking powder, and then bread crumbs on it. Then you fry in oil and the bake with a sauce made from cream of mushroom soup. I didnt have that either, so I used sour cream, paprika, chicken stock, salt, pepper, garlic, and onion. Kind of what you use for a beef stroganoff. It worked fine. 

Meanwhile I wanted to have some other Polish things so I heated up some sauerkraut and kielbasa from the freezer, and attempted dill pickle soup. 

If you have never had this but you like salt and vinegar chips, I am positive you will like this soup. It's pretty amazing. 

You peel and cut up potatoes into little thin chunks, add grated carrot and chicken stock. Then once water is boiling add finely chopped dill pickle. The potato needs to get soft then you add a mix of sour cream and flour to thicken the soup, whisking and breaking up the potatoes even more. Once you do that you can add the two cups of pickle brine, which seems like a lot, but really isnt. It makes the soup. With all that sour cream it will cut the brine's saltiness. You just need to be careful how much additional salt you add, but the potatoes help with that too. Then I recommend just cooking it on low while the potatoes kind of mush up. 

City Chicken, Sauerkraut and Polish Sausage, Dill Pickle Soup

Today I needed kaiser rolls for my sausage pepper onion sandwiches. This one, like the recipe for the city chicken, seems like they didnt test for the amount of time it would take and I over cooked the bottoms of the rolls. Need a better recipe, maybe a lower temp. You need to cut a star pattern at the top as shown. 

Star pattern on the dough

Cooling but burnt bottoms, sad.

Decided to use them anyway. Bon Apetit!

Just use this as your takeaway- use the timing given to you as a guide but check after about halfway. Had to learn that twice this weekend.