Tag Archives: chicken

May 1, 2013

Southwestern grilled chicken

Southwest Grilled Chicken

Yippee! Grilling season is here. Actually, any season is grilling season but it’s so much more fun when you don’t have to carve a path to the grill through the snow.

This is going to be a slight commercial, but it’s my blog and I never do this. I also blog for Char-Broil and I have two of their TRU-Infrared grills on the deck at the moment. I just love these things. I also have a Big Green Egg, which will be buried with me because I love it so, but on a typical weeknight when time is at a premium, I always head towards the Char-Broil TRU-Infrared. It heats up more quickly than a conventional gas grill, locks in the juices of whatever you’re grilling, uses less propane and it practically cleans itself.

The nice people of Char-Broil have offered a 25 percent off discount to any of my blog readers who are in need of a nifty new affordable TRU-Infrared Grill. To go get you one, click here and browse around to find the grill you like that’s available directly from the Char-Broil site.  Then use this discount code when you’re checking out: C13CM25.

I have two 2-burners right now because King Daddy and I are essentially empty nesters. But there’s a 4-burner available, too.

The Southwestern grilled chicken is a slightly spicy recipe that’s great straight off the grill or almost even better the next day, sliced cold and set atop a beautiful salad. Whether you’re using a brandy new TRU-Infrared or your granddaddy’s old clunker, this is a great recipe for easy grilling all summer long.

Southwestern grilled chicken

For the spice mix:

¼ cup chipotle chili powder

1/8 cup ground cumin

1 tablespoon ground coriander

Toast the spices in a hot pan for one minute. Reserve.

For the chicken:

2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup lemon juice

¼ cup spice mix

Combine the garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and spice mix in a large container. Add the chicken and marinate it at least one hour, preferably overnight.

Preheat your grill to medium high. Add the chicken pieces and cook about seven minutes on one side. Flip and insert a digital thermometer in the thickest part of the breast. Continue to grill until the internal temperature reaches 160. Let the chicken rest for 10 -15 minutes before serving.

Leave a Comment

Filed under chicken, Uncategorized

Tagged as chicken, chili powder, coriander, cumin, grilled chicken, grilling, southwestern food

February 7, 2013

Casseroles and good Christian women

Like every church, I am sure, St. Paul’s Episcopal has a list of people in need of casseroles. It’s not called that. It’s the list of people who’ve just had babies, major surgery or are facing some other challenge requiring outside intervention at suppertime. For the Women of St. Paul’s, it’s like hitting a gong next to our heads when these calls for assistance go out.  We will practically break down your door to bring you a casserole. All we need to hear is that you’ve suffered a sprained thumb and we are on it.

St. Paul’s uses an internet meal planner called Meal Baby to coordinate our offerings to those in need. In the olden days, it was entirely possible for someone who’d just had knee replacement surgery to receive five or six identical casseroles. I mean, really, you can only be so grateful for five pans of Chicken Divan. But with Meal Baby, you log on to find the list of parishioners needing meals and sign up for a date, listing what you will bring. And the genius of this  is the calendar also lists everyone else and what they’re bringing.

This, of course, has its downside. You are thinking chili and cornbread, and then you click on the date just before you and find out the offering is Steak Diane and Scalloped Potatoes.  Ouch.

For my money, casseroles are always the way to go. Why? You know this one. They reheat beautifully! So, today, I dropped off a pan of Poppy Seed Chicken to a parishioner in need. It’s a Southern thing. Someone way back when decided to think up an actual use for poppy seeds. Now, you can barely find your table at the tea room without getting Poppy Seed Chicken plopped at your place. It usually comes with frozen congealed salad with a dollop of mayonnaise on top but I’m not good at congealed salads.

I’ve posted this before, but you may have forgotten. So here you go.

Poppy Seed Chicken

1 supermarket rotisserie chicken

2 tablespoons butter

8 ounces sliced fresh mushrooms

2 cans cream of chicken soup

16 ounces sour cream

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

1 sleeve Ritz crackers

1/3 cup butter melted

Remove the chicken from the bones and shred it. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and cook the mushrooms until they have released all their juice and they are well browned. Reserve. In a large bowl, mix the chicken soup, sour cream, and poppy seeds. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the mushrooms and the chicken.

Pour chicken mixture into a 9-by-13 dish. Crush the crackers and mix with the melted butter. Sprinkle over the top of the chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

2 Comments

Filed under casseroles, chicken, Uncategorized

Tagged as butter, casseroles, chicken, mushrooms, poppy seed chicken, ritz crackers, southern cooking

January 5, 2013

Don’t do this: Mistakes in the kitchen

Chicken and dumplings freshly made - not the prettiest thing in the world but tasty

So I’m posting this on a Saturday night because I know ya’ll are out to supper or seeing a movie and not bothering checking in here with me. Hopefully, nobody will read this. But I feel obligated, when they occur, to tell you about my mistakes in the kitchen.

I made chicken and dumplings awhile back. Good, they were. Nice tender chicken and tight, toothsome dumplings. But I made too much. And I scoured the Internet to see if I could find any advice on freezing the leftovers. Oh, yes, some people said. You can most definitely freeze the chicken and dumplings. NO YOU CAN NOT.

"Chicken and dumplings" from the freezer - BAD. Don't do this.

Poor Mark. Yesterday, I was recovering from a bad cold I had just given to him and I thawed out the chicken and dumplings. Oh, my. What a mess. He attempted to put the best face on a bad situation. “Well, they don’t look very good, but they still taste fine.” He was lying through his gritted teeth. The chicken was fine, but the dumplings were mushy and sad and not very good to eat. They were like cat food that the cat had eaten, regurgitated, eaten again and then thrown up one more time.

Tonight, I made him some Thai Chicken Curry to cut through the gunk in his head and I pulled out the leftover, leftover chicken and dumplings I’d stashed in the fridge just in case the night before was a bad dream.  “I think I’m just going to put these down the disposal,” I said. He did not object.

Here’s the recipe for the chicken and dumplings. They’re very good the first time out. Just don’t freeze them. Ever. You’ve been warned.

 

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under chicken

Tagged as chicken, chicken and dumplings, kitchen mistakes, southern cooking, thai chicken curry

October 18, 2012

Chicken and dumplings

It seems I am a security risk. Or my website is under some kind of attack. From me. For the past week, I am only person on the Planet Earth who cannot get into my own damn website.

I have traveled cyperspace from my IT professional in Seattle to my web host in Deer Park, Texas, to the Starbucks in Brentwood, from which I am presently speaking to you. My web host tells me that my computer believes I am a menace to myself at home. I am about to be a menace to my irritating neighbors at Starbucks.

I have come to the Starbucks in an attempt to write. I will get to the chicken and dumplings in a moment.

The Starbucks is unbelievably noisy. Why do people conduct business in a Starbucks where everyone can hear what they’re saying? The man next to me has a retirement account with $250,000 and he is seeking advice from a bald financial advisor. Why would financial advisors meet their clients in a coffee shop? I would back away quickly, but the man is now signing some sort of agreement. The threesome at the next table is talking about tax deductions. I would like to deduct them from my view.

I am here to write. I need quiet. I need a drink.

Chicken and dumplings. Every Southern cook needs a recipe for chicken and dumplings in his or her arsenal. The quintessential comfort food isn’t so pretty on a plate, but it’s a snap to make. Don’t let the homemade dumpling dough get your panties in a wad. It’s just flour, salt and water. If you could make mud pies as a child, you can make dumplings as an adult.

Chicken and dumplings

Chicken:

1 (2 1/2-pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces

1 cup baby carrots

1 large onion, chopped

2 bay leaves

2 chicken bouillon cubes

Milk and cornstarch to thicken the broth

Dumplings:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

Ice water

To start the chicken: Place the chicken, carrots, onion, bay leaves and bouillon in a large pot. Cover the chicken with water and and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer the chicken until it is tender, about two hours. Remove the chicken from the pot and, when it is cool enough to handle, remove the skin and separate the meat from the bones. Return the chicken meat to the pot.

To prepare the dumplings: Mix the flour with the salt and make a hole in the center of the mixing bowl. Drizzle a small amount of ice water into the hole and begin incorporating the flour with your fingers. Gradually, mix in about ¾ cup of ice water until a stiff dough forms and all the flour is used up. Knead the dough and form it into a ball.

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour onto a clean work surface. Roll out the dough, working from the center to 1/8-inch thick. Let the dough rest for several minutes.

Cut the dough into 1-inch pieces. Drop the pieces into the simmering soup. Do not stir the chicken once the dumplings have been added. Gently move the pot in a circular motion so the dumplings become submerged and cook evenly. Cook until the dumplings float and are no longer doughy, 3 to 4 minutes.

Thicken the stock with a mixture of 2 tablespoons of cornstarch mixed with 2 tablespoons of whole milk to form a creamy mixture. Keep adding more of the cornstarch mixture until the stock turns to a gravy.

4 Comments

Filed under chicken, Uncategorized

Tagged as chicken, chicken and dumplings, southern food, Starbucks

September 19, 2012

Chicken Satay Salad

Mark and I have good days and bad days.

No, our marriage is not in trouble. I’m talking about food. The good days are full of salads, Asian food and grilled chicken. The bad days are, oh, let’s see. Krystal? Why, yes! Fried chicken and mashed potatoes laced with sour cream? Seconds! So we try hard to space out the bad days between the good ones lest we return to the early days of our married life in Reno when blissful happiness and a lack of attention to dietary detail led us each to gain about 30 pounds. I am not kidding.

Last night was one of the good nights. We had a stunningly delicious salad created by Food Network Magazine. It involves lots of fresh veggies and chicken sauteed in Thai peanut sauce, which you can find in the Asian section of most supermarkets. This incredibly healthy salad allowed us room for…you’ll be disappointed in me…the Bacon Crumble Apple Pie that I made for Bacon Wednesday at the Community Resource Center. Oh, yes. You’ll get the recipe for that soon enough. Now eat your salad.

Here’s the recipe for the salad or just hop on over to the Food Network site and read it there.

Chicken Satay Salad (From Food Network Magazine) 

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (about 1 pound)

7 tablespoons (about 1/2 cup) Thai peanut sauce

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 head romaine lettuce, sliced

1/2 English cucumber or 2 Persian cucumbers, cut into matchsticks

1 medium carrot, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced

1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro, plus more for topping

3 tablespoons chopped roasted salted peanuts

Preheat a grill or grill pan to medium high. Slice the chicken breasts 1/2 inch thick and toss with 2 tablespoons peanut sauce, 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste in a bowl. Grill the chicken until just cooked through, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate.

Whisk the remaining 5 tablespoons peanut sauce and 2 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil, the lime juice and 2 tablespoons water in a large bowl. Add the lettuce, cucumber, carrot, bell pepper and cilantro and toss. Season with salt and pepper and divide among bowls. Top with the chicken, peanuts and more cilantro.

(Note: I added a few splashes of fish sauce and one diced serrano chile to the dressing and it jazzed it up quite a bit.)

Leave a Comment

Filed under chicken, salads

Tagged as chicken, food network magazine, peanuts, satay, Thai food

August 14, 2012

The Chicken Curry Event

Alrighty, then. Let’s take a poll. How many of you know anything about Sarah Childress Polk?

Anyone? Anyone?

Well, I didn’t either until I visited the James K. Polk Ancestral Home in Columbia, Tennessee. First off, let’s just talk about James for a second. This is the guy you want to be president. He expanded the borders of the United States to the Pacific Ocean, added three states to the Union, started the Naval Academy, the Washington Monument and issued the first postage stamp. And then, because he had promised to serve only one term, he went home. No partisan politics here. I think both sides of the aisle could benefit from this example.

Sarah was a firecracker. She and James never had children, which meant that she had a lot of time to do some back-room dealing during his presidency. She was so popular that during the Civil War, both sides liked her. Sadly, James did not last long after leaving the White House. He died of cholera just three months later. His last words were, “I love you, Sarah, for all eternity, I love you.”

Well, this obviously made a huge impression on Sarah because for the next 40 years she wore Widows Weeds. There are portraits in their home of her in plain black dress and then, after a suitable period, black dress with a white lace collar.

Happily for me, I came into the possession of Provisions and Politics, Recipes Honoring First Lady Sarah Childress Polk recently. I don’t think Sarah did much to move the culinary needle at the White House. For her first state dinner, she served steak and potatoes. And she banned alcohol, which surely put a damper on after-dinner conversation. But the cookbook brings together the best of community recipes from Polk fans.

This one is called The Chicken Curry Event. How whimsical! It’s not a recipe. It’s an event! This is super easy and super flavorful. If you’ve never used coconut milk, dive in. It’s a great addition to the sauce and the taste is more of cream than coconut.

The Chicken Curry Event

½ cup flour

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

6 boneless chicken breasts

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 onion, sliced

2 green bell peppers, sliced

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 tablespoons curry powder

1 15-ounce can stewed tomatoes

1 15-ounce can coconut milk

Tabasco sauce to taste

Worcestershire sauce to taste

1 cup currants or raisins

Mix the flour with the salt and pepper in a gallon bag. Coat the chicken with the seasoned flour mixture. Brown the chicken lightly on both sides in 3 tablespoons of the butter in a skillet. Remove the chicken to a baking dish, reserving the pan drippings.

Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of the unsalted butter with the pan drippings. Saute the onion and bell peppers until the onion is tender. Add the garlic and sauté another minute. Stir in the curry powder and cook for one minute, stirring frequently. Add the undrained tomatoes and the coconut milk.

Bring to a simmer and add the Tabasco and Worcestershire. Stir in the currants or raisins. Spoon the curry mixture over the chicken and bake, covered in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. Serve over rice.

 

 

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under chicken, Uncategorized

Tagged as chicken, coconut milk, curry, james k. polk, sarah polk, southern cooking

May 22, 2012

Mushroom lemon chicken

Ask me what one of my top five essential ingredients in the kitchen is and lemons will come up every time. You know when you have something wonderful and you wonder why it’s so wonderful? A lot of times it’s lemon juice. It just brightens everything up. Use it to make a simple pasta sauce with olive oil, salt, pepper and some chopped fresh parsley. Use it in a vinaigrette. Use a spritz of lemon juice on roasted vegetables. And always, always use it in a cream sauce. This is a simple recipe that takes about 20 minutes to cook and tastes like a million bucks. All with the addition of a simple lemon.

Mushroom lemon chicken

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 small chicken breasts

Salt and pepper to taste

8 ounces whole mushrooms, quartered

2 tablespoons butter

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup heavy cream

Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium heat. Salt and pepper the chicken and add it to the pan, sauteing until the chicken is cooked through (Poke it – if it’s firm it’s cooked through). Remove the chicken and add the mushrooms and butter. Saute them until they have released all their juice and are well browned. Add the lemon juice and chicken stock. Cook over medium high heat until the mixture has reduced by half. Add the cream and continue reducing until the sauce has thickened. Add the chicken breasts to the pan and turn down the heat to medium low until the chicken breasts have reheated. Serve over rice or angel hair pasta.

 

5 Comments

Filed under chicken, Uncategorized

Tagged as casseroles, chicken, chicken stock, cream, lemons, mushrooms, southern cooking

March 7, 2012

Chicken and stuffing casserole

Sometimes you just need easy. You need not feel guilty about pulling out a box of cornbread stuffing (O.K., Stove Top), looking on the back of the box and just letting her rip. I have embellished the time honored recipe of chicken and stuffing casserole on the back of the box. I am sure mine is superior.

And so I will feel better about presenting this, yes, pitifully easy recipe I will give you a couple of tips. First off, almost anything you make except cornflakes and milk is improved upon by adding lemon juice. Lemon juice brightens up vegetables (yes, kale haters, even kale). It gives punch to any pan sauce. It adds dimension to dips. Don’t waste the rind. Grate down to the white part (no white part – bitter!) and add the grated lemon zest to almost anything (not cornflakes).

My second tip is about mushrooms, which are improperly prepared too much of the time. About 90 percent of the constitution of a mushroom is water. And when you put them in a pan over medium heat they will produce that water right in the pan. Do not despair. Work through the pain. Crank the heat up and continue sauteing until all the water is gone and the mushrooms have turned a deep golden brown.

And I have to tell you one of the things I love about my sad, unimaginative chicken and stuffing casserole is that you don’t need to cook the chicken first. The thing I hate about casseroles is that they take so much effort on the front end, prepping all the ingredients, that when you’re done you just want to shoot yourself. This is pitifully easy and it tastes really yummy.

Chicken and Stuffing Casserole

1 box cornbread stuffing

2 chicken breasts

1 can cream of mushroom soup

½ cup sour cream

Juice of ½ lemon

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

2 tablespoons butter

8 ounces mushrooms

8 ounces frozen green beans, thawed

Prepare the stuffing according to the package directions. Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and mix with the soup, sour cream, lemon juice and smoked paprika.  Melt the butter in a skillet and sauté the mushrooms until they have given up their liquid and are nicely browned. Mix the mushrooms and green beans with the chicken and put it in the bottom of a 2-quart casserole dish. Top with the stuffing.

Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until casserole is bubbly and chicken is cooked through.

2 Comments

Filed under casseroles, chicken

Tagged as chicken, cornbread stuffing, cream of mushroom soup, green beans, mushrooms, sour cream, southern cooking

February 20, 2012

Comfort food

Canned Tamales, Cold Pork & Beans, Mashed Potatoes. Photo courtesy of Kim Council

My friend, Kim, got some great news last week. Her sister’s Hepatitis C, which she has lived with for 30 years, is now undetectable. Which led to this bizarre meal her mother used to make: canned tamales, cold pork and beans, and mashed potatoes. Kim says it’s her English mother’s tribute to Mexican food. And for Kim this is comfort food and what her sister, Gloria, requested as a celebration meal.

Comfort food. Really more like memory food. Those odd combinations that are just so right, so indelibly linked to our past. Usually created by mothers, who had no idea at the time that their spur-of-the-moment thrown together creations would endure and, yes, comfort.

"Flat" chicken

For me, it’s a peanut butter and butter sandwich. I still eat them when I’m feeling a little blue. My mother probably just ran out of jelly and made the sandwich out of desperation to feed a five-year-old. For Mark, it’s blackberry cobbler. He can still see himself in his mind’s eye picking the blackberries with his Granny Belle. For Noah, it will probably be “flat” chicken and green noodles. Definitely a thrown-together meal with thin chicken cutlets dredged in seasoned bread crumbs and fried in oil and lemon juice, plus spaghetti with pesto sauce from the supermarket.

There is actually scientific evidence that proves that comfort food makes you feel better. Researchers at the University of Buffalo found that not only does eating comfort food elevate your mood, but just thinking about it is restorative. So here’s my other comfort food that I’m thinking about right now. Liverwurst. Yes, liverwurst. I’d tag along with my dad when he went to the butcher, who always gave me a slice of liverwurst as a treat. My mother never made liver so I didn’t know it was supposed to be yucky. All the Mayhews still love a good liverwurst sandwich: mayonnaise (lots of it, Duke’s naturally), thin sliced liverwurst and sliced white onion. We are prohibited from attending social events after eating these.

I’m thinking about a good stinking liverwurst sandwich right now and feeling pretty happy about it.

4 Comments

Filed under chicken, snacks, Uncategorized, veggies

Tagged as chicken, comfort food, liverwurst, pasta, peanut butter, pesto, southern cooking

November 5, 2011

My food addiction

What is wrong with me? Seriously. I left the house this morning with three things on my shopping list: cheese slices, a chunk of Swiss and two onions.

This is what I came back with.

What is my problem? I’ll tell you what my problem is. I am a food shopping addict. I haven’t darkened the door at Macy’s in four years, but if I miss a single Saturday at the farmer’s market and beyond, I fall into an uneasy depression.

So, here’s how my thought process went this morning. Arrive at farmer’s market looking for onions. Pass James Gardner’s stand and realize I’m running low on eggs (as in, I only have a dozen left). Must buy eggs. Oh, and some darling tiny white radishes that are whispering to me. Two stalls down is Ralph Cole from West Wind Farms and he’s giving me this “come hither” look. Actually, I am imaging this because Ralph is quite shy. It’s his bacon that is calling to me. I respond and buy a package of stew beef as well because the nights are getting colder and we might just starve.

Next to Whole Foods, because I need the cheese. Apples. I could use some apples. And carrots. I’m out of carrots. On to the meat department because on the spur of the moment I’ve decided to make chicken with the onion gratin I needed the two onions for in the first place. Moral dilemma. Whole Foods grades the humane treatment of its meat. No. 2 is kind of humane. Chickens get to look outside a window. No. 3 better. They actually get to go outside. No. 4 they are permanent guests at a day spa. No. 4 is $22. No. 2 is $9. Sorry, Ms. Peep. I hope you have a nice view.

Cheese. Remember the cheese. Slices and Swiss ONLY. Oh, dear. What is that cunning block of pepper jack saying to me? Take me home. “Hello, Mrs. Mayhew,” says the Wensleydale Cheddar with cranberries. “I am only $17.99 a pound, but look how fetching I am!” I fetch a block. Salami. Salami would be very good with the cheese. How can I resist a Virginia-made applewood smoked salami with Sangiovese wine? I cannot.

I attempt to move toward the cash register when I notice the free samples of hummus. That’s mighty good. Into the cart along with a bag of salted fried tortilla chips for dipping. Ben and Jerry’s. I’m out of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia Ice Cream. Never mind I have three other flavors of ice cream in the freezer. I don’t have that one.

It goes this way every week. If Armageddon came, assuming no loss of electrical power, Mark and I could easily subsist quite nicely on what is in my freezer, refrigerator and pantry for at least two years. By the way, here’s what I had for a snack when I got home: the Wensleydale, some salami and a few of those cunning white radishes dipped in sea salt. Delicious!

I know I have a problem, but it tastes so good.

5 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as chicken, farmers market, south, southern cooking, west wind farms, whole foods