Archive for the ‘Poultry’ Category

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Basic but Brand New

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Hey, it’s Valerie again after a long absence.  Jenny, I hope you don’t mind this surprise post.

I wasn’t in the mood tonight for any of my tried-and-true recipes.  But I also wasn’t in the mood to buy expensive ingredients or make anything too involved.  Which means it was the perfect time to look through my 1970’s Betty Crocker cookbook.  I found a recipe called “Tomato-Pepper Chicken” which was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to make.

Chicken ready to simmer in tomato sauce

Chicken ready to simmer in tomato sauce

Basically, you bread the chicken, brown it in shortening (so 70’s!),  cook up the peppers and onions, add tomatoes, mushrooms, and tomato sauce, then simmer the chicken until it’s cooked.  It turned out great, but here are some changes I’ll make next time.  1) Use less shortening. Maybe even replace it with olive oil. 2) Use chicken thigh fillets instead of leg pieces to cut down on the fat from the skin, and to make it easier to eat.

Dinner is served! Mixed greens and fresh mozzarella on the side.

Dinner is served! Mixed greens and fresh mozzarella on the side.

While I was making this and while I ate it, I listened to Ella Fitzgerald on Spotify.  It was a pretty perfect night!

Posted in Comfort Food, Poultry, Recipes | No Comments »

Happy New Year!

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

Remember that time I made taquitos?  Oh, well I did.

Taquitos and other stuff

Taquitos and other stuff

I made them for new years.  It was pretty awesome.  But… I changed them up a bit, I did.  I took the ideas behind some of my other recipes, and made them ten times more awesome.  I made them more like that pasta I made once.

Sneaky Vegetables Pasta

Sneaky Vegetables Pasta

And a little more like that soup I made on Halloween.

Cauliflower soup

Cauliflower soup

And even more like those empanadas.  Remember the empanadas?  Mm… empanadas.

Empanadas

Empanadas

So how’d I do it?

I took the zucchini, shredded in my Lola, and dumped it in with the chicken.  It went something like this:

  • 1 cup chicken, shredded
  • 2 zucchinis, grated
  • 1/2 onion, sliced
  • 1 small can enchilada sauce
  • 2 cups cheese
  • ~25 corn tortillas

Cook the zucchini and onion in a bit of olive oil until onion is translucent.  Mix with chicken, enchilada sauce, and cheese.  Set aside.

Fry corn tortillas briefly on each side.  Just enough to make tender.  Place on paper towel lined plate to cool enough to work with.  As tortillas cool, place a smidgen of the filling in them.  Roll those babies up.  Then place in a greased baking dish.  When you’re finished rolling, bake the taquitos at 350 until crispy and golden brown.

Posted in Appetizers, Comfort Food, Gluten Free, Health, Mexican, Poultry, Recipes, Veggies | 1 Comment »

Gobble ’til you wobble

Friday, November 26th, 2010

You know I did.  There are going to be a lot of posts about individual dishes that happened this year.  All in all, the meal was a success.  But let’s start with the turkey.

This baby was 12.7 lbs. of tasty goodness.  I’ve heard a lot about how to cook it, some advice more helpful than others.  The most interesting was about how you can flip the bird upside down so that the juices drip down into the “pretty breast skin”.  That phrase was literally used.  In my office.  By a man.  I felt so uncomfortable.

Upside down is the way to go!

Upside down is the way to go!

I mentioned this to my mother.  Leaving out the word “pretty”, to be sure.  And I might have just called it “white meat” instead of using words that typically make boys in grade school giggle uncontrollably.  My mom had heard something similar, but what she had read suggested that you flip it right side up for the last hour so that it still looks nice in the end.  We did this with amazing success.

Look at my beautiful turkey!

Look at my beautiful turkey!

Cooked for 5ish hours at 300 in a convection oven.  Stuffed with my cornbread stuffing.  Topped with gravy.  So let’s talk about these two.

The stuffing went like this:

  • 1 recipe of cornbread (12 corn muffins), recipe to follow
  • 1 small onion
  • 3 stalks celery
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 lb. sage sausage
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups chicken broth

Saute the veggies with salt and pepper to taste.  Remove from pan and transfer to large bowl (really large, trust me).  Now use the same pan to cook the sausage.  Brown that beautiful sausage.  Meanwhile, crumble the cornbread into the veggies.  Add the sausage to the cornbread/veg mixture.  Add eggs and chicken broth.  Don’t be a wimp.  Mix with your hands.  Then stuff it into that beautiful bird you’ve got waiting for you.

Now for the gravy:

  • 2 Tablespoons of the turkey drippings
  • 3 Tablespoons flour
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 1/2 teaspoon sage
  • salt and pepper to taste

Over medium heat, mix the drippings and the flour until smooth.  Whisk in the broth.  Add the seasoning.  Stir carefully until the gravy thickens.

So what about that cornbread?

I got this recipe from my mother, who got it from her grandmother.  I cannot claim it, nor can I tell you its original source.

  • 1 cup flour (if you wanted to go gluten free or just a heartier cornbread, you can replace this with cornmeal)
  • 1 cup cornmeal
  • 3 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup sugar (we like sweet cornbread, but feel free to skimp, if you’d rather)
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup oil
  • 1 cup milk

Mix the dry with the wet, then pour into a greased baking dish (or muffin tins).  Bake at 350 for approximately 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

So let’s talk about stuffing vs. dressing.  Dressing being the stuff that doesn’t get stuffed, while stuffing is, by very definition, stuffed in something.  So this is my first year with real, actual stuffing.  It’s no joke.  Stuff that bird.  There’s no reason not to.  And every reason to.  The stuffing gets all that yummy bird fat flavor throughout.  I had no idea what I was missing.

Posted in Breads, Comfort Food, Gluten Free, Poultry, Recipes, Veggies | 2 Comments »

Bringin Home the Bacon

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Let’s face it, when you’re bringin’ home the bacon, weeknight cooking isn’t the easiest thing in the world.  I can hear stay at home moms everywhere saying that it’s not easy regardless, but I’m not them, so I can’t say for sure.  But for me… an 8 hour day wears me out.  I don’t have the time or energy to put into making a real meal on a weeknight.  … but when you think about food as much as I do, good meals can’t always wait for the weekend.

So what’s a girl to do when she’s dreaming up grilled chicken with mango salsa?  Two things.  1) Talk your roommate into grilling the chicken.  Working inside and outside all at once is just not worth it.  Get some help!  2) Also, buy the mango canned.

The first is pretty self-explanatory.  If you don’t get it, I’m not explaining.

The second is a really important lesson.  Canned mango makes mango a feasible option for weeknights as it cuts out all the nasty pealing and pitting you have to do with fresh mango.  No, it does not taste as good.  How could it?  But it tastes delicious.  Trust me.

I like to put it on quesadillas, in salsas, etc.  See?

Photo by Nathan Clendenin

Photo by Nathan Clendenin

I promise you.  This meal couldn’t be easier.  Or more impressive if you were, say, trying to impress a boy you had over for dinner.  Hypothetically speaking.

The chicken was thrown into some store-bought marinade.  Then grilled half an hour later by the same Nathan Clendenin.  The beans?  Opened can, dumped in bowl, microwaved until warm.  The guacamole and mango salsa were essentially the same with a different base.  Avocados + red onion + jalepeno + cilantro + lime.  Mango + red onion + jalepeno + cilantro + lime.  Rice… dumped in rice cooker with chicken broth.  Delicious!

Posted in Gluten Free, Mexican, Poultry, Recipes, Rice, Grains, and Beans | 4 Comments »

What came first?

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

<unrelated> “What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” – High Fidelity

You should listen to Grace Potter & The Nocturnals while reading the remainder of this post.  Why?  Because it’s so very good.</unrelated>

I’ve hated birthday cards pretty much my entire life.  The mushy ones aren’t mushy the way I want them to be.  The funny ones aren’t funny.  And the ones in between have no personality at all.  I tend to write birthday notes instead, but I feel lame using plain stationary for such a momentous occasion.  … so when dearest, loveliest Elizabeth’s birthday rolled around, I got her a card with style.  So what if it didn’t say happy birthday?

For those of you who don’t know me, this is exactly my sense of humor.  And although few people really understand my humor, Elizabeth has always been a kindred in this way.  Naturally, then, when Nate pointed me to his friend’s blog, I enjoyed it immensely.  In particular, her stir-fry recipe caught my eye.

I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed by life lately, and by Thursday of this past week, I had begun canceling plans.  After 6 days of non-stop “fun”, I couldn’t take it anymore, and the thought of getting drinks with friends that night was more than I could handle.  So I just didn’t.  Saturday rolled around, and I didn’t go canoeing with coworkers but opted for a quiet lunch with my mom and sister instead.  I spent the rest of the day napping, watching Monarch of the Glen, reading The Catcher in the Rye, and cooking.  The day was rainy, and it reminded me of the snowy weekend we enjoyed this past winter, where everything was necessarily canceled, and I watched tv and cooked all weekend.

Maybe the time indoors made me want stir fry.  Maybe it was the stay-at-home babe.  I don’t know.  … but I was hesitant to make her recipe when I’ve had such good reviews on my own.  So I stuck to the classic.  “You know, it sounds boring, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t spectacular either. It was just good. But really good.*”

Photo by Nathan Clendenin

Photo by Nathan Clendenin

My recipe goes something like this…

  • 1-2 lbs. chicken (I used drumsticks because they were on sale)
  • Broccoli crowns
  • Mushrooms, sliced
  • Bell pepper, sliced
  • Carrots, sliced
  • Onion, cut in half and sliced
  • 1/2 c. soy sauce
  • 1/2 c. sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon corn starch
  • 1 Tablespoon sesame oil (optional, but encouraged)
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
  • dash of red pepper flakes
  • minced garlic (or I use garlic powder far too often)

Brown the chicken in a couple tablespoons of oil.  Bake at 350 until cooked through (varies based on cut of chicken).  Throw the veggies in the frying pan with the leftover oil.  Saute.  Whisk together remaining ingredients.  Pour over veggies.  Add cooked chicken.  Serve with noodles or rice.  We did rice the first time, noodles with the leftovers.  Delish!

* High Fidelity, which was on hulu awhile back, thus the multiple quotes.  Interestingly, hulu also has a bunch of Grace Potter & The Nocturnals clips which you should check out as well.  Only slightly related is the fact that this band always makes me think of Courtney Potter, which makes me smile for multiple reasons.

P.S.  I feel like a name-dropped a lot in this post.  For that, I apologize.  Except not really.  Because all of the names that were dropped were so totally deserving.

Posted in Gluten Free, Poultry, Recipes, Veggies | 1 Comment »

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