Chicken Pinwheels! Whee!

Chicken pinwheels are named as such because they are rolled up and cut to look like a pinwheel, like a jelly roll, or like a Buche de Noel cake. It was a concoction that left me wanting more of the deliciousness when I was a little fatty boy. They were so good that they have stuck with me over years. A slightly crispy outside and a soft bready inside, indeed, and filled with a chicken mixture. Pair that with mashed potatoes and gravy. I do not know the ingredients in the chicken mixture the lunchladies used. I wish I did. I also wish I had a few of those old green lunch trays we used. Of course, like my mother used to tell me, “Wish in one hand and do something in the other and see which one fills up fastest.”

Well, I thought about the pinwheels and figured I'd try my hand at making them, but first I had to travel to the grocer for some mushers and onions. I found some baby portobellos, two containers for five dollars, already sliced by the kind folks at H-T. These I sauted with my mirepoix and a bit of wine for a short time. I added this mixture to the food processor we received for a wedding gift (I forget who bought it for us, but thank you again) along with some diced chicken, S & P, and some sour cream. A few days earlier, the H-T had little fryer chickens on sale, and I bought three of them for about seven bucks. That's a bargain, and that's where my diced chicken came from.

Anyway, I made some dough earlier from a trusty dough recipe that never fails me. I rolled the dough and spread the chicken mixture over it. I tried to toss the dough into the air like you see the professionals do, but my dough is always oblong and certainly not symmetrical so it does not work very well for me. Regardless, I always try it for s and g. Then I rolled that up and baked it until it was done. My filling was not quite the same as the lunchladies' of South Side Elementary School, but it had its own distinct flavor. The mixture's texture was very similar to chicken salad, and I did eat some of it on a few butter crackers later last evening. I was not disappointed, and the wife took a sandwich filled with the stuff for her lunch today.

The texture of the finished pinwheel was quite like the ones I remembered. As I said, pinwheels should be a little bit crispy on the outside and soft and delicious within. Yes, they were still steaming as I cracked open the first pinwheel, a couple minutes out of the oven. I don't know about the potatoes, though. Having finished cooking them earlier, I left them to sit in their hot water which imparted to them a watery taste. Imagine that. Gravy was okay, but I wished that I hadn't frozen all of the chicken stock that I had left so I could've used it to add some depth to that gravy.

Though these pinwheels tasted just fine, I was not excited enough about the end result to consider making them again any time soon. I am happy to have leftover dough, though, so tonight is pizza night, which would be every other night of the week if I had my druthers.