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Posts Tagged ‘chicken’

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Lemon Cous Cous, Blackened Chicken

In Recipe's & How To on March 20, 2012 at 1:44 pm

My favorite thing about going back to Oxford is that I always get to cook for my friends, and since we all live broke the majority of the time- I have to find ways to do it fairly cheap. Since the New Year, I’ve been on this crazy health kick. I have almost completely cut out bread and pasta, and I don’t drink any coke products anymore. If I want more substance than just protein- I’ll make a salad, and if I’m craving a sandwich- I’ll make a wrap. Soda water and lime do just fine instead of syrup-stricken cokes.

While enjoying one of the most fun, Bloody Mary Sundays ever, we brainstormed some great ideas for dinner- keeping it healthy, light, delicious, and a little different.

Grocery List:
Hummus (pre-made IS that much cheaper if you aren’t going to make it all the time)
Pita Bread – 1 pack
Chicken Breasts – 3 (if you like dark meat more get some thighs, but I’m trying to somewhat stay healthy
Cous Cous – 1 box
Spinach – 1 bag
Olives – 1 can, sliced (a small can is only $0.58!!)
Lemons – 3 whole
Diced Tomato – 1/2 cup
Red Onion – 1/2 onion, small chopped
Feta Cheese – 8 ounces
Chicken Stock (optional)

First, you always want to have an appetizer or snack waiting if guests are coming over. If you do, it doesn’t leave them wondering when you are going to start cooking, and it’s a good ice breaker (so is alcohol- it’s the lubricant for social anxiety).

We started with a three olive hummus. What easier way to spruce up hummus than with a little drizzle of olive oil on top? Nothing is, and if you have it, a dash of cayenne wouldn’t hurt! Take your pita bread, cut it down the middle, then slice each side into either 3 or 4 individual pieces. Remember, less looks like more, and the less you have before dinner, the better dinner will be.

Put your pita on a cookie sheet and lightly drizzle olive oil on them. Bake at 350 until they’ve gotten slightly golden brown and they’re ready!

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When cooking for other people, there are two important things to remember: 1) make sure what you’re cooking smells out of this world and 2) don’t serve something cold that is supposed to be warm.

Any time I am cooking with chicken or beef, I always, always, always marinate it. The point of marinating something is to use the ingredients in the marinade to break down the protein to make it more tender and not so “tough.” Also, chicken and pork are very easy to dry out and a nice marinade keeps them juicier and holds more flavor in.

Some great, household, already-in-your-fridge products that can be used to make your own marinades at home are the following:
– any vinaigrette dressing (basalmic, Italian, citrus)
– oil
– salt, pepper, and any spice in your spice cabinet that follows your flavor genre
– soy sauce (GREAT substitute for salt!)
– jalapeño juice or pepperoncini juice
– hot sauce
– lemon or lime juice
One day I’ll write down different marinades I use for different proteins and separate them based on their ethnicity- Italian, Asian, Greek, New American, etc.

Marinate your chicken in juices and spices of your choice, and give them about 30-45 minutes in the fridge. While the chicken marinates, it’s time to get your mis en place in order. Mis en place means “putting in place” and it’s a word used in many kitchens to give their establishment a more professional atmosphere. Some people use it to sound over educated and it’s quite annoying, but it’s a phrase every foodie should know.

Set aside your 1/2 cup diced tomatoes, 1/2 cup small diced red onions, spinach, olives, and feta. Get a sauté pan and put a few teaspoons of oil, or butter, and turn the heat to medium. When the butter melts or the oil is sliding loosely over the pan, throw in the red onions and turn down the heat to just above medium-low. Sautéing was not necessarily meant to be a speedy procedure. The longer and slower it cooks, with more patience, the more flavor is extracted and the better the onions caramelize.

While the onions cook down, pull your chicken from the marinade and place in an empty casserole dish. Now, as much as I’d love to write out how to make your own blackening seasoning- it’s cheaper to buy it- trust me. The two brands that I trust for blackening seasoning are Zatarain’s and Paul Prudhomme’s. They really are the best! So cover each side in blackening seasoning while another skillet is heating (on medium-high) a few teaspoons of oil. We aren’t looking to fully cook the chicken on this skillet; we just want to give it a nice blackened color! After a few minutes on each side, move the chicken to a casserole dish and put in the oven at 350 for about 13 minutes. Each piece of chicken will cook differently, so be sure to learn how it feels when it’s close to being done, and if you aren’t sure, cut it and find out!

When you throw the chicken in the oven, you should have plenty of time to cook your Cous Cous. (Meanwhile, don’t forget to be stirring and not burning your red onions!). 1 box of Cous Cous should be enough for 4-5 people. The box will call for maybe two cups of water. My suggestion- use chicken stock instead, and squeeze two lemons into the stock as well (the other lemon I used in my marinade). Bring the water to a boil and pour in the Cous Cous. Remove from the heat and cover for 5 minutes.

The onions should be nice and caramelized by now, so add the tomatoes and stir. Once the Cous Cous is finished, fluff it with a fork and add your tomato/red onion mix, olives, and the spinach. Spinach takes very little heat to wilt, so adding it to the Cous Cous while it’s hot, has enough heat to make it wilt. Re-cover your Cous Cous to make sure it stays warm, and pull your chicken from the oven.

The chicken should be ready. Take it out of the oven and slice it on a bias about 1/4″ thick. Plating and presentation is EASY. Scoop a pile of Cous Cous on your plate and arrange the sliced chicken on top. Sprinkle feta cheese over the top and serve. It will be delicious.

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You’re Welcome,
Coleman

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This Bloody Mary Sunday was made possible with the help of Alex Key McLelland, Juliette Lawrence, Allyson Cartwright, and Nick Keeling. If only it could happen every Sunday.

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Sushi, American-made

In Uncategorized on January 13, 2012 at 3:22 pm

I’m seriously on an Asian kick this week. I had Vegetable & Shrimp Tempura for dinner one night, Fancy Q’s Sushi Bar & Grill (which I don’t recommend) for lunch, and now homemade Sushi for lunch. The good part is sushi is a lot easier to make than you think, novice or not, and it’s pretty cheap. Remember, you can fill a roll of sushi with anything you want, but we went with something simple. The recipe here makes four rolls of sushi for two people.

Ingredients:
1 cucumber
1 block cream cheese
1 carrot
1 grilled chicken breast (or other protein of your choice)
1 pack of Nori (dried seaweed, you can find it in the oriental isle at any grocery store)
1 bag of Japanese rice, you can use any rice, it will just need to be over cooked to make it sticky
Soy Sauce & Wasabi (for obvious reasons)

If you have actual Japanese sushi rice, it takes a second to prepare. First, put it in a colander it won’t go through and rinse the mess out of it. I mean, rinse it until the water isn’t cloudy white anymore, takes a few more times than you think, and after let it sit in a colander for 30 minutes before steaming. The ratio of water to rice when steaming Japanese rice is also different. With most white rice the ratio is 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water, but Japanese rice is 3 cups of rice to 3 1/4 cups of water. Let the rice boil, then steam for about 15 minutes – or just buy a rice cooker and then you don’t even have to worry about it.

The main thing you need in using white or long grain rice, is just to make sure it’s sticky. The Japanese rice will be sticky, but if you just over-cook some white rice, it will be just as sticky. There is no real trick from keeping the rice sticking to your fingers, maybe a little vinegar, but it’s going to stick either way.

Alright, while the rice is cooking, cut your ingredients. The best part about cutting for sushi, is everything just needs to be in long strips. Like this:

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Yes, I know it’s on a neon green plate decorated with sandals – thank SaltwaterChef for the plate ware! She also cooked the rice and cut the vegetables!

Notice, we aren’t using a sushi mat (because we lost it) but aluminum foil worked just fine, and the rice didn’t stick to it. Now there are two ways to start your sushi – do you want the rice on the inside or the outside? Either way, spread it comfortably over one side of your Nori. There are two different sides of the Nori, a matted side and a glossy side. Use the matted side if you want rice on the inside of your sushi (solely for appearance purposes), but if you want the rice on the outside, it doesn’t really matter.

The one tricky party to rolling sushi is not over stuffing the inside. If the veggies and (or shrimp!) are about 1/4 an inch thick, it should work out just fine. Lay all your ingredients in the middle and roll one end to the other. Use the aluminum foil and squeeze the ends nice and tight so the ends adhere to each other.

How do you make all the pieces of sushi the same size? Cut your roll in half, then cut those two halves in half – giving you 4 pieces per role. If you want, before you cut it, batter it in some tempura mix and fry it first!

Your final product might look similar to this!

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Feed yourself,
Coleman

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Don’t Diss on Anchovies

In Uncategorized on November 13, 2011 at 3:41 pm

Monday nights are always the best to make dinner. Most people detest the first day of the week, but I normally get to enjoy it. Two of our three roommates are off work and we get to spend the day planning dinner – after taking the dogs to the park and spending time on the beautiful @Golden_Isles.

SaltwaterChef has been composing a book of very interesting food ideas and recipes from different books and magazines, so we thought we’d try one out. For dinner, she decided to make Roasted Chicken with an Anchovy Pan Sauce. Yes, anchovies- that tiny, smelly, salty fish that people love to make bad faces about. Don’t diss on anchovies. Just in case you didn’t know, they’re all up in every caesar dressing you’ve ever tasted.

Roasted Chicken with Anchovy Pan Sauce
Ingredients:
3 Chicken Breasts (really any boneless chicken you prefer)
1 can anchovies
1 small bag of spinach
1 small pint of cherry tomatoes
1 bottle Ken’s Steakhouse Italian Basil Romano
Granulated Garlic
Lemon Pepper seasoning
Angel Hair Pasta
White Wine

First, the chicken marinated in Ken’s Italian Dressing, granulated garlic, and lemon pepper for about thirty minutes. Heat a sauté pan with a few tablespoons of vegetable oil. If you use too much oil, you won’t get a nice brown sear on the chicken. Also, vegetable oil has a higher burning temperature than olive oil and butter, so it’s harder to burn. Once the oil is nice and hot, sear both sides of the chicken until you get a nice golden-brown sear. Finish them off in the oven at 300 degrees for about 10 minutes to keep them nice and moist. Over cooking chicken leads to dry chicken, which is not acceptable. If you half the cherry tomatoes and throw them in to finish with the chicken, they get a really nice roasted flavor to throw on top at the end.

Next, SaltwaterChef used the pan she cooked the chicken in (layers of flavor, is one of the absolute keys to good cooking), added half a stick of butter and threw about 10 of the anchovies, wrapped around capers, in to sizzle for a minute. After the flavors started to cook, she deglazed the pan with a few shots of white wine. To finish the meal, she tossed in the angel hair (we had enough for three people) with the small bag of spinach and it made a great coating and color for the pasta. All that’s left, is slicing the chicken and putting it on the pasta!

We had a great, cheap pasta meal – accompanied with left over wine suggested from A Girl and Her Vino, Cavatina Pinot Grigio.

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Lettuce Wraps, Made Easy

In Recipe's & How To on October 25, 2011 at 6:05 pm

I’m not a fan of using recipes. I like to experiment, guess, and see what works out the best; but, I found my tastes were becoming narrow and generic. So I bought a cookbook. Buying a cookbook involves a lot of particulars for me – it needs a lot of recipes that I know I will cook and not just fillers to take up space. So I sit and flip through the entire thing before I make my decision. I will probably never buy a crockpot cookbook, if you know what I mean. I’m a huge fan of Asian food and in Culinary School I did really well in the class, so that narrowed my decision down easily, I got the Williams-Sonoma Asian Cookbook.

The Asian Cookbook, containing 40 vibrant recipes and photos, reminded me how many different ingredients and methods are used in Asian cooking. Sometimes I forget Asian isn’t only Japanese food or Chinese food but also Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian food, just to name a few.

I wanted to start out with something simple and delicious, seemingly healthy but not, and filling. So I turned to the recipe for Minced Chicken in Lettuce Cups. I’ll give the list of ingredients they asked for, but I’m also including small changes or additions I made by noting them with an asterisk (*).

Ingredients:
1 head Iceberg
6 dried Chinese black mushrooms (I used 8-10 because I like them*)
2 Tbs Oyster Sauce
1 Tbs dark and light Soy Sauce
1 Tsp sesame oil
1/2 Tsp sugar (2 Tsp honey*)
1/2 Tsp cornstarch
1/8 Tsp ground white pepper
1 Lg Egg, beaten
2 Tbs Canola oil
1 Tbs ginger, peeled and minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 lb chicken, minced
1/4 lb pork, minced
1/2 cup bamboo shoots, minced
6 water chestnuts, minced
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
3 green onions (1 leek*)
2 Tbs pine nuts
1 Serrano chile, seeded and minced*
1/2 lemon, juiced*

I know it seems like a lot of ingredients, but they’re all small, and once purchased- you have plenty left over to cook with later. Think about it like you’re buying an Asian spice rack. It seems a little expensive at first, but this is how they flavor their food.

I went ahead and made the sauce first, since the grocery store was out of green onions, I bought a leek instead. Leeks are basically really big, layered green onions. If you’ve never cooked with leeks before, make sure you only you the part about 1/2 inch above the root, and an inch below where they start to petal out. It may seem like a lot of waste, but you have plenty to work with, I promise. Take your hoisin sauce and mix it with 2-3 tablespoons* of warm water. The recipe calls for 1 Tbs, but I thought the sauce was still to thick. Since I didn’t have green onions, I cut the leek in half and thinly sliced it and added them to the hoisin. Hoisin has a certain ting to it, it’s almost sharp, so I cut it down by adding juice from half of a lemon. The acidity in the lemon juice helped soften the leeks and balance out the flavor. Put the sauce in the fridge until it’s time to eat!

Put on a small pot of water, and go ahead and turn the heat on high so it’s boiling by the end of the next step. Cut out the core of the head of iceberg, using a spoon is easiest, going in a circle around and popping it out. Separate about 20 leaves and soak them in ice water in the fridge for about 30 minutes. They should be ready by the time you’re finished cooking.

Take your dried mushrooms, and throw them in the now boiling pot of water. Cut the heat down to low so it’s still simmering and cover with a lid, letting the mushrooms rehydrate for about 10 minutes.

In a small bowl, mix oyster sauce, dark and light soy, sesame oil, honey*, cornstarch, white pepper, and egg until well mixed and set aside.

In a wok, or if you don’t have one a sauté pan will do, but Wok’s are awesome to cook with, heat the canola oil. Add the ginger and garlic and let it stir-fry for 15-20. Don’t let the garlic burn! You can’t reverse the flavor of burnt garlic! Next, add the minced chicken and pork and cook for about 5-7 minutes. Make sure any pink is gone and discard any juice that may have cooked out. You don’t want to over cook the meat because it will become chewy, so if it’s a little under – the rest of the cooking process will finish cooking your meat to stay moist. While the meat is cooking, trim the stems and mince the Chinese mushrooms.

After discarding any excess liquid, return the pan to heat and add the bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, Serrano, and mushrooms until the water from them is evaporated and they’ve softened up, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in the oyster sauce mixture and stir fry until the sauce thickens (the egg doesn’t cook sepearelty, it acts as a catalyst for the thickening process), about 5 more minutes.

When you’re finished thickening the sauce, pull out your lettuce! If the process takes you longer than 30 minutes, drain the ice water off and leave them in the fridge to keep them crisp until you’re ready for them. Spoon a heaping amount of your chicken/pork mixture on the lettuce and drizzle the top with your hoisin sauce, and enjoy.

These are how mine turned out!

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Feed you soon,
Coleman

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