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-JT
Can someone ping me with a way to kick up a Cuban Sandwich with some good cheese selections? Other than the original, we have added, at times, bacon, spicy mustard, Southwest mustard and used different breads. Still looking for a better cheese or ?? Thanks
“I believe that anyone who has become seriously interested in food and the art of cooking has had a moment like that: the one meal that made you realize that there was a LOT more to eating and cooking than you had previously known”
Absolutely! For me it was gyros at a restaurant in (I think) Clearwater, FL. Twenty three years ago, I was 18 and amazed that food could taste that good...sorry Mom! Cooking is one of my favorite things to do and though I have yet to make anything as good as those gyros, I love when people enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Any thing I can learn about cooking chicken dishes will please my wife to no end!
I think I kind of over cook chicken especially in a tomato sauce and it ends up really dried out. Any advice?
One of our favorite restaurants served a dish called Pasta Putantesca. AKA; pasta as offered by the ladies of the evening.
We ordered it over and over until we figured out (and the cook confessed) what was in it.
It's a family favorite today.
One of the problems today is the depreciation in quality of basic ingredients. Chicken tastes like something from a factory and vegetables no longer have the zing they had when farmland contained more nutrients than today.
Here's a similar recipe that uses butter along with the olive oil:
Also, try using fresh oregano instead of dry, and an equal amount of basil, and a range chicken - leave the skin on.
This post of mine has nothing to do with chicken. I have ordered two slow cooker cookbooks with recipes designed to feed two people with a bit of leftovers. Have ordered a three quart oval slow cooker. The recipe quantities are to fit in this smaller cooker.
Since we are not feeding a three/four/or more family, just the two of us, we don’t need a 5/6/7 qt. cooker anymore. I did some reading about new cookers and they are different in the way they are heated and way they cook, than the ones we bought years ago. As a consequence, food will cooker faster in these modern ones.
When I get the cookbooks and cooker, I’ll let all you know if it is helpful to feed us without messing up pans and bowls and standing over the stove, and if the recipes are actually good.
I know the topic is chicken, but I made the best Irish stew ever this week.
Step one - cut 3 lbs of stew beef into bite-sized 1” chunks as I didn’t want to cook this too long. In a gallon sized bag (measurements approximate) 1/4 cup of flour, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 teaspoon of course salt, and 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper. Throw the cut up meat in the bag and toss to coat.
Cut 4 slices of bacon into a 1/2 dice and cook over medium-high heat in an oven friendly dutch oven until the fat is rendered. Remove bacon and set it aside. If not enough fat, add small amounts of veggie oil as needed. Brown the flour-coated meat in the hot oil in small batches to give it a nice seared brown coating. Add more small amounts of oil between batches as need. Put cooked beef with bacon after it has seared.
Reduce the heat on the pan to medium-low. To the oil remaining in the pan add 3 peeled onions, cut into big chunks (I cut mine into 1/8ths). Add a bit of water to pan if needed. Cook for a few minutes till the onions start to sweat. Add 5 carrots and 5 parsnips, peeled and cut 1/2” on the diagonal, with a bit more water, if needed. Cook for a few minutes to infuse with flavor and coat with browned pan bits. Remove veggies from pan and set aside with the bacon and stew beef.
Add one TBS of tomato paste and 1/2 tsp of dried thyme to pan. Cook for 1-2 minutes to let flavors bloom. Add one can of Guinness Stout and turn heat up to high, scraping browned bits up from the bottom of the pan. When the Stout comes to a boil, add back to the pan the bacon, seared beef, and all the vegetables, Add 14 oz can of beef broth. Give one good stir, cover, and put in a 325 degree oven for one hour.
After one hour, take the pan out of the oven, remove the lid, give everything a good stir, and add 3/4 of pound of potatoes cut into 1 inch chunks. I used some small Yukon Golds cut into 1/4’s. Put the cover back on the pan and put back in the oven for 45 minutes.
Take the pan out of the oven, add 1 cup of frozen peas and give another good stir. Put back in the oven, without the lid, for 15 minutes. This will thicken the stew a surprising amount.
After 15 minutes, take out of oven, let sit a few minutes (if you can wait), give a final stir, add salt and/or pepper if needed, and devour. I had a tomatoes and roasted beet salad over lettuce before the stew and ciabatta bread on the side.
It was so good, Irish or not!!
I have been using this chicken recipe for years and is sort of a “go to” recipe for company. It is an old Graham Kerr recipe.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cottelet-di-pollo-recipe.html
“My folks used to make the garlic bread with the garlic “butter” that was sold in glass jars; but I haven’t seen that available in many years. It was probably some kind of margarine, anyway; so that can be improved upon.)”
Land O’ Lakes has some really good butter blends these days. I use the butter/olive oil blend regularly. They have a Garlic/Herb one that is great for garlic bread and a lot of other things!!
A chicken dinner I made this week
Boneless skinless (and yes, somewhat lacking in flavor), chicken breasts on sale this week. Bought a package of 6. Took four of them, trimmed them, carefully butterflied them and pounded them flat.
Made a stuffing out breakfast sausage removed from the casing (it was what I had, Italian sausage or ground pork would work too)browned with one small onion diced sauteed until it sweating. Then I dumped in one of those plastic containers of greens (baby spinach, kale, and chard) and cooked just until the greens wilted.
Put the stuffing in the chicken breasts, carefully closed the chicken breasts over the stuffing, then wrapped the breasts in bacon. Had a pan (not glass) heating in a 425 degree oven. Carefully put the breasts on the pan and roasted for 25 minutes until the chicken was cooked. Then finished under the broiler to get the bacon nice and crispy.
I let the chicken rest while I steamed some broccoli and made some broiled cheesy matoes - core and cut tomatoes on the equator, put on a foil lines baking sheet, cut side up, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and oregano. Broil until the tomatoes are soft and beginning to brown. Then, if you want, sprinkle with cheese, mozzarella, parmesan, cheddar, what ever you have, and pop back under the broiler till the cheese melts.
Sliced the breasts up. Served the tomatoes, broccoli and a loaf of ciabatta bread that son #4 had baked the day before (he’s learning to cook). Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
The two remaining chicken breasts were cooked last night. This was taken from a sesame shrimp recipe I played with (Recipes are for ideas or starting points, not written in stone IMHO)
Trimmed the two boneless, skinless breasts and cut into 3/4”-1” pieces. Took two egg whites (made the yokes into mayo now that I finally have a good stick blender), beat the whites till they were frothy. Mixed in 1/4 cup of arrowroot power (or cornstarch) and 1/4 cup sesame seeds and then tossed the chicken piece in the batter.
Heated a 1/4” or so of oil in a big frying pan (I don’t have a good wok) and fired up the battered chicken in small batches making sure to get it nice and crispy on all sides. Put the chicken on paper towel to drain as it was finished frying and adding more oil as needed.
When the chicken was done, I tossed in a few handfuls of trimmed sugar snap peas, but many other veggies would work here to. After the snap peas were cooked, I to them out of the pan and to the remaining oil and browned bits added one cup of orange juice, 2 Tablespoons of soy sauce, and one Tablespoon of honey (sugar would work too) I cooked the sauce over a medium high heat, scrapping up the browned bits, until the sauce reduced and thickened a bit.
Then tossed the chicken and snap peas back in, just long enough to coat them and heat them back up. Sprinkled some sliced scallions (3 - it was all I had) on top and served it up. Rice would go well, but as we’re avoiding grains, I roasted up some chopped cauliflower. Can’t wait to go eat the leftovers for breakfast :-)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3256809/posts
“A new study reveals that the material of your cutlery affects your food” taste. This might be why you can’t get the chicken recipe tasting right. What type fork did granny have?
Actually found the info with dill pickles to sweet picklesin a few easy steps. This is the site, which also gives a number of other good tips as well
http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2013/09/a-pickle-predicament-39-ways-to-use-leftover-pickle-juice.html
Company coming for dinner Saturday and one is no gluten and I found this:
Gluten-Free Mini Caramel Pecan Tarts
I think it's because I used more salt than called for but for whatever reason I ended up with the best caramel I've ever tasted.
Which is better than my usual caramel burning routine. But these are good and would be good with most any nut.
A few sites for crock pot/slow cooker recipes
CROCKIN GIRLS
http://crockingirls.com/
CROCKPOT EASY RECIPES
http://www.crockpoteasyrecipes.com/
CROCKPOT LADIES
http://crockpotladies.com/
Going to make the Mrs. a special dinner tonight. I'm in the mood to do salmon, just need some good ideas of what to put with it. Going to finish with home-made angle food cake, strawberries, and whipped cream. The salmon is going to be either lemon-thyme or honey-garlic, not sure which way I'm going to prepare it yet.
I don’t remember any one incident. My maternal grandmother owned a restaurant and loved to cook. Fried Chicken and BBQ Ribs were some of my favorites. Loved her biscuits, cornbread, and pinto beans.
Her cook taught me how to make pies, when I was a teenager. I started working for Granny as a waitress, and also filled in as a short - order cook and doing the prep work for the next day’s breakfast and lunch.
My parents also owned a restaurant and Dad made all the pies. I started cooking at about age six - flipping burgers on the grill. Dad’s pumpkin pie was my favorite.
My paternal grandmother baked bread every week - not store bought stuff for her! I got to help even when quite young. When the dough was ready to put into the pan, she used pie pans, and placed three balls in each pan. I got to make smaller loaves in a smaller pie pan.
We greased our hands good with bacon grease, and made sure each dough ball was coated with it. After the loaves cooled, they were wrapped in flour sack towels, and placed in the blue granite ware water bath canner. Kept it fresh all week, and we sliced it off as needed.
My favorite snack of all time was to take some home-made butter(we used a mixer and I watched it till it was ready) and mix it with sorghum molasses and spread it on a slice of that bread. Washed it down with a glass of raw milk from their small dairy herd. As soon as I was old enough, I learned to milk cows too.
They had chickens, and raised hogs, and had a garden. Wild grapes and blackberries she used to make wonderful jelly. Home made biscuits every morning with that jelly, oatmeal cookies, waffles for supper with bacon, and the list goes on.
I basically just go in the kitchen, and see what I have and cook something. Often with no recipe. Even with a recipe I usually do something different with it.
I am currently experimenting with no sugar added, low fat, low sodium, low carb, calcium restricted recipes. So far, nothing spectacular has been created. I have discovered Couscous, and Jiff crunchy Almond Butter.
The couscous makes a good quick alternative for use with stir fry. It is low sodium, low fat, but the big plus is easy and fast: Bring 4 oz of water, or broth to a boil in Microwave(put spices in if you want), add 1/3 cup of couscous and cover. Let sit for 5 minutes and fluff with a fork.
One teaspoon of Almond Butter keeps turns off the appetite.
My taste buds are adjusting. Even a slice of bread tastes salty to me.
Chicken MarsalaPrep Time: 15 Minutes
Cook Time: 20 Minutes
Ready In: 35 Minutes
Servings: 4INGREDIENTS:
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano OR Italian seasoning
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
1 sliced med onion
Pinch minced garlic
3/4 cup Marsala wine
Splash heavy whipping cream and cooking sherryDIRECTIONS:
-----Pound/tenderize chicken to ½ in thickness
1. In a medium bowl (OR zip lock bag), stir together the flour, garlic salt, pepper, and oregano. Dredge chicken in the mixture to lightly coat.
2. Heat olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Fry the chicken in the skillet for 2 minutes, or until lightly browned on both side. Set chicken aside.
Add mushrooms, onions, minced garlic. Sauté/sweat veggies. Stir mushrooms so that they cook evenly. Place chicken in pan
3. Mix Marsala, sherry wines with a splash of heavy whipping cream and pour over the chicken. Cover skillet, and reduce heat to low; simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear Serve over basil fettuccini OR long grain wild rice OR roasted red potatoesHint / Options:
• Add golden cream of mushroom soup to the Marsala wine mix thoroughly
• added a bit of chicken broth to the wine and it did make a difference
• serve with French bread