Tortillas and Oranges » chicken

Cooking School: Impressive Dinner

admin — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 17:04:41 +0000

Chicken Tenders/Roasted Potatoes/Simple Green Salad

You have before you all of the instructions you need to make a nice dinner for your family. The recipe below is adjustable according the amount of people you will feed. You will need 12 different ingredients (well, 13 if you want to count salt and pepper as two different ingredients). Follow the steps below and you will impressive even the naughtiest person in your family.

What you need to make an impressive dinner for your family:
(If you are at the grocery store, this is what you need!)

1. Chicken Cutlets (or chicken tenders, 1-2 per person)
2. 1 egg
3. milk (just a splash)
4. bread crumbs
5. Spring greens salad (you need about one small handful of leaves per person)
6. olive oil
7. red wine vinegar
8. honey (just one squirt)
9. shallot (2 cloves, also known as “pink garlic”)
10. baby potatoes (3-4 potatoes per person)
11. herbs de provence
12. salt and pepper

Follow these steps in order:

Preheat the oven to 375 (for your chicken and potatoes).

1. THE POTATOES
Place your baby potatoes in a colander and wash them thoroughly. Dry those little babies, then spread them out on a cookie sheet (make sure they don’t sit on top of each other. You want one layer of potatoes). Pour 4 Tablespoons olive oil on your potatoes. With your hands, move those potatoes all around and make sure they are covered in oil. Add 2 Tablespoons of Herbes de Provence. (Herbes de Provence is a mix of dried herbs that is yummy on roasted vegetables, soups, eggs, and lots of other things. You can buy it any any grocery store.)

Put the pan of potatoes on the UPPER rack in the oven immediately, even if the oven isn’t finished preheating. The longer those potatoes have, the better! Set the timer for 15 minutes. Now, the potatoes probably won’t be done in 15 minutes, especially if the oven is still preheating. But, the timer will remind you to check on them.

(turn this page over for the chicken and the salad)

2. THE CHICKEN
Unwrap your chicken tenders, rinse them off in a colander, and pat them dry.

Pound your chicken tenders until they are nice and thin. Put all of them in a flat ziplock bag and pound them down with any can of food you can find. Just pound them until they are a little flatter than they came, but not too flat! If you pound them until they are too flat, the chicken will fall apart. Gross.

Make your egg wash. Crack your egg in a bowl, add a splash of milk, and mix together with a fork until it is well combined..

Put breadcrumbs and a dash of salt and pepper in a ziplock bag. You need about ¼ cup of breadcrumbs per chicken tender.

Bread your chicken tenders by bathing them in the egg wash, then shaking them in the bag of crumbs.

Lay chicken tenders on a baking sheet and place the sheet on the LOWER rack in the oven (because the potatoes are already on the upper rack). Set the timer for 15 minutes. Bake those tenders until they are golden brown.

While your potatoes and chicken are cooking, make your salad.

3. THE SALAD
Peel 3 cloves of shallot and thinly slice them, set aside.

Make the vinaigrette. In a tall glass, combine 2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar, 5 Tablespoons olive oil, dash of salt, a quick squirt of honey, and sliced shallots. Stir around, quickly, with a fork. Set this aside (The shallots will soak up the mixture and people will think you are very fancy pants.)

Place the leaves in a colander and wash them thoroughly. Lightly dry them with a paper towel.

Place the leaves in a pretty bowl but don’t add the dressing yet!

Pull the potatoes out of the oven when they are easily pierced with a fork.

Pull the chicken out of the oven when you can cut through a tender and see NO pink.

Put the potatoes in a pretty bowl. Put the chicken tenders on a serving plate.

Right before everyone sits down, pour your dressing all over the salad and toss the leaves with two forks.

EAT YOUR DINNER!

Dinner: Sesame Ginger Thai Chicken

admin — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:30:20 +0000

I love to think that I am really great about sharing recipes; that my treasure trove belongs not only to me, but to all of my friends. And while that is mostly true, sometimes I dread giving a recipe out because I love it so much. I find this all ironic because the recipes I hate to share were shared with me by others, usually dear friends. Are you following me? This is one of those recipes. Sesame Ginger Chicken is just cool (my friend JM, once again, gifted me this gem). I fix this once in a while, when friends are coming over and don’t know what to expect. It is easy, refreshing, and different. It is also addictive. While I do make it for company, I never offer to send home the leftovers. Like I said, some things are easy to share; some things aren’t.

Sesame Ginger Thai Chicken

1 head iceberg or romaine lettuce (you will be using this as a “tortilla” of sorts to hold a chicken mixture so I recommend romaine–it’s just easier to fold.)

1/3 cup boneless, skinless chicken breasts, finely chopped (That’s right. Chop the raw meat before you grill it up)
1 cup red bell pepper, finely chopped
½ Tablesp. Sugar
½ Tablesp. Salt

Sautee above ingredients in 3 Tablesp. Oil, then add

2 ½ Tablesp. Minced ginger
1 ½ Tablesp. Soy sauce
3 Tablesp. Water
1 Tablesp. Lemon juice
½ cup cashews

Cook for one more minute.

Dipping sauce:

½ cup rice wine vinegar
1 ½ Tablesp. Soy sauce
1 t. sesame oil

Serve chicken mixture wrapped in lettuce leaves, accompanied by dipping sauce.

Dinner: Chicken Chile

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:26 +0000

So. Here’s how it goes at our house: Sundays are insane. We wake up early. We go to church. We have meetings (before and after church). We play our instruments. We have people dropping by to say “Hi!”. We eat a serious amount of comfort food. We collapse on the couch. Because of the intense schedule, Sunday food is simple (read into this: not creative, not very interesting. Both Danny and I can make either of the following menus with our eyes closed. Option #1: Mexican Food (taquitos, cheese crisps, bean dip, salsa); Option#3: American Food (shredded bbq chicken, rolls, salad).

Because of option #2, I often have a large leftover container of shredded bbq chicken on Mondays. Over the years, I’ve discovered a lot of great ways to recreate the leftover chicken. But tonight I discovered the very best way. Chicken Chile. Recipe follows.

Chicken Chile
(adapted from allrecipes.com)

3 cups chopped onion
1 1/2 cups chopped green pepper
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 1/2-inch cubes**
(OR Any leftover shredded bbq chicken you may have in your fridge)
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 (14.5 ounce) cans diced tomatoes, with liquid
2 (10.5 ounce) cans condensed chicken broth
2 cups water
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
1 bay leaf
2 (15 ounce) cans garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

**At this stage in the game, I simply dump Sunday’s leftover shredded chicken.

In a 5-qt. Dutch oven, cook onion, green pepper and garlic in oil over medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until onion is tender. Add chicken; cook and stir constantly for 4 minutes or until browned. Add the next 10 ingredients; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 40 minutes. Add beans; cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove bay leaf.

Dinner: Penne with Peppers, Lemon, and Chicken

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:04:00 +0000

I often experiment at dinner time. At 5:53pm, I’ll look at my watch and think, “Oh boy. What am I going to do for dinner? I have absolutely no idea. No plan.” After years of this routine I know that I need a few key ingredients to save the day. Do you know what I mean by a few key ingredients? When you get to the grocery store and think, “I forgot to make a list. What should I buy to get us through the week?” For me, these few ingredients include black beans, butternut squash, broccoli, and bell peppers. Without fail, if I have a bell pepper or two in the kitchen (preferably red), I can pull off something interesting.

Last night I pulled out my trusty bell pepper and knocked the ball out of the park. Here is what I created.

Penne Pasta with Peppers, Lemon, and Chicken

2 Tblsp. olive oil
2 Tblsp. butter
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup white wine (cooking wine is fine)
cooked chicken breast (I used a breast off of a rotisserie chicken)
1 large red bell pepper, 2 inch long thin strips, seeds removed
1/2 cup heavy cream
peel and juice of 1 lemon
1 pound penne pasta (bowtie or rigatoni would also work
parmesan or pecoreno romano cheese

Start water boiling for pasta. In large saute pan heat olive oil and butter. Add garlic and onion and saute for a few minutes until soft. Add red pepper and white wine and continue sauteing. If your chicken is precooked add it here (I had a rotisserie chicken in the fridge and added one shredded breast).
If your chicken is raw, cut raw breasts into chunks and add before garlic and onion, toss in heat until cooked through then add garlic, onion, bell pepper and proceed.

Boil penne pasta until al dente (I always boil my pasta for 1 minute less than the box says, and it comes out perfectly al dente).

Grate lemon rind and add to chicken and peppers. Add juice from lemon. Finally, add cream and heat through. The cream you add should not turn the chicken and peppers into a sauce, but rather bind everything together in a creamy sort of way. Does that make any sense?

Toss cooked pasta with 2 Tblsp. olive oil. Place on platter. Add chicken, lemon, and peppers to pasta platter. Grate parmesan cheese over dish. Enjoy.