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Chicken with Plum Chutney – plus a give away!

Chicken with Plum Chutney

Chicken with Plum Chutney

Do you like chicken? I like chicken. It seems to always be a good backup dinner. For example… not feeling spendy/fancy enough to buy fish? But don’t want something as carb-y as pasta? Answer: Chicken. You can do so many things with it! Cut it up and use it in a stir fry, smash it and coat it in Panko. Roast it in the oven with root vegetables. Make soup. The list goes on and on.

One of my personal favorite chicken recipes is this recipe for chicken with plum chutney from Martha Stewart. When I was in high school, we used to get Martha’s monthly everyday food magazines, and I would always go through them one by one and dog-ear all the recipes I wanted to make. This one has been by far the best recipe I have ever made from those things, and has stuck around the longest. It became a family favorite when I made it at my family reunion, and I it was included in the cookbook of family recipes that I gave my mom for her birthday last fall. It also is one of the few meals I’ve made for Jonah’s parents (this one even got the honor of being served on his dad’s birthday), so you know it’s good. It’s perfectly summery: fruity and tangy, but also sweet and a beautiful purple color.

Chicken with Plum Chutney

Ingredients

4 (6 to 8 ounces each) boneless skinless chicken breast halves
Salt and ground pepper
2 Tbl olive oil
1/2 medium red onion, chopped
1/2 jalapeno chile, (ribs and seeds removed for less heat, if you want), chopped
4 red plums, (about 1 pound), halved, pitted, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/3 cup packed light-brown sugar
2 Tbl cider vinegar
3/4 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp ground ginger

Instructions

Start by seasoning the chicken with salt and pepper. In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat. Put the chicken into the hot pan and cook until it’s opaque throughout, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer the cooked chicken to a plate and set aside for later use.

Now let’s make the chutney. Put the rest of the olive oil into the same skillet (No need to even rinse! Look at that, a one pot meal!), as well as the onion and jalapeno. Cook for about 3 minutes, or until softened. Increase the heat to medium-high and add the plums, sugar, vinegar, curry powder, ginger, and 1/4 cup of water. Now, I like to do a little less water so it isn’t quite as runny, but do it how you like. If you add too much water, you can always let it cook down a bit more (though everything in the chutney will get more cooked); On the other hand, if you add less to begin with, you can always add more later. Do whichever suits you. Bring the chutney to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cook until the plums are softened and the liquid is slightly thick – the recipe says 8 minutes, but I always find that this takes a bit longer.

When the chutney is ready, add the chicken and any juices from the plate back into the pan and simmer until the chicken is heated through. Season to taste with S&P and serve the chicken with loads of chutney spooned on top. In college, I liked to make large batches of this chutney and then freeze it, and then all I really needed to do was cook up some chicken and voila, dinner. Or you can put it over some plain pasta. Really, any vehicle you need to get this chutney into your mouth is fine. But chicken is best.

Ticket Give Away!

Now, speaking of chicken, I’ve got my very first give away on the blog! Kind of cool, right? It’s really only for Portlanders, though… sorry out-of-towners. Last week, while on vacation, I was contacted to see if I wanted to offer FREE tickets to the Foster Farms Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest. Exciting, no? At this point in the game, this is the regional finals at the Art Institute of Portland. The contest takes place on August 10th (in a week and a half!) at 9:30 am. You would be able to attend the event, watch the contest live, and sample the contestants’ dishes. You also will have a chance to see the professional kitchen at the Art Institute, which will be pretty cool, I bet.

Now, I can’t attend because, you know, I work two jobs, but I want anyone who reads this blog and wants to go to please leave a comment below with your full name! We’ve got 10 tickets to give away here folks, so get going! On Monday (or Tuesday), I’ll pick 10 people from the comment section to give tickets to. Want more information? Go here.

Using those roasted tomatoes…

Tomatoes
tomatoes

tomatoes

Remember those roasted tomatoes I made a while back? 2 things about them.

One is that I’m reading Molly Wizenburg’s book, called “A Homemade Life,” and it’s lovely. She’s a fabulous writer, and there are recipes! I can’t wait to try them. I already loved her, but then I got to the part where she talks about her own roasted tomatoes, and how great and easy they are, and now I feel like we may be soul mates. Oh my goodness. Read her blog Orangette and also the book mentioned above. She’s working on another book, and I can’t wait to read it. Her writing is really lovely, full of nostalgia and a clear love for detail. She notices the little things.

The second thing about those tomatoes: pasta sauce. They’d been sitting in the fridge for a little while, and I thought to myself, “I won’t let these go bad! I must use them!” So I decided to do something easy with them besides just eating them cold. I threw them in the food processor, heated them up, and put them over some sauteed mushrooms and onions to make a sauce. Scoop the sauce over some noodles of your choice, and sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan and voila! Dinner. You can find the original recipe for the tomatoes here.

Flinsen (Or Pflinzen)

Flinsen

In honor of Father’s Day, Jonah and I made flinsen. Whenever we see Jonah’s dad, Randy, he makes us flinsen. Randy will stand at the stove and make these pancakes, handing them out one at a time, hot off the stove, until everyone is full. Then he will sit down and eat. What a caring dad, right? I love Randy. (Another awesome thing about Randy is that he makes cheese, and good cheese at that!)

Flinsen

Ingredients

1 egg per person
1/2 cup flour per person
milk

Toppings for serving: yogurt, maple syrup, jam, sliced fruit, butter, and cinnamon sugar are all good options!

Instructions

Flinsen are easy. Put one egg per person that will be eating in a bowl and scramble them. Now add 1/2 cup flour per person. Now add milk until it’s the right consistency. “Wow, Annie,” you must be thinking, “That’s a great instruction.” I know, I know. You want it to be like really thin pancake batter. Think crepes.

Throw a slab of butter into a 10 inch fry pan over medium heat. Spread the melty butter around, and take about a 1/4 cup measure full of batter, and dump it into the pan. Here’s the tricky part. While you’re pouring the batter into the pan, you need to pick up the pan and swirl it around so the batter makes a thin layer over the whole pan. It may take a couple tries to get the hang of it, but you can do it! Pile them on a plate (or a pan and put them in a low oven to keep them warm).

Now comes filling time. You can put whatever you want inside, kind of like a crepe. Jonah’s got me hooked on greek yogurt and a drizzle of syrup. Jam is also good, sliced fruit is too, and even plain ol’ butter and cinnamon sugar. Enjoy!

Rhubarb Curd Shortbread

Rhubarb shortbread.
Rhubarb shortbread

Rhubarb shortbread

Ok you guys. It has been too long. Again. But I promise I have good reasons: 3 jobs, a show (The Sound of Music!), and sunlight. I’ve been nannying part time, working at the office part time, and doing social media an hour a day, then going to many many hours of rehearsal in a suburb or Portland. So no time for cooking OR blogging. But here I am, backstage at the show, and I decided, I HAVE to do this.

You’ll have to excuse the iPhone photos for the next couple of posts (or Instagram, whichever I had the energy to use). Along with leaving my 8×8 pan at the cabin in the woods (which it turns out I needed for this recipe), I also left my camera charger… so my camera was sitting, dead and useless, for quite a while. So I know the pictures aren’t as good of quality as usual, but just bear with me until I get my camera up and running again!

I found this recipe on Food52 while looking for shortbread recipes to eat with a fruit compote. I love rhubarb, and am always looking for different and unique recipes, so I thought this would be a fun one to try. Warning: it is labor intensive and dish heavy. Read through this recipe all the way before you start. Please. You’ve been warned. Here’s what you’ll need:

Rhubarb Curd Shortbread

Ingredients

Rhubarb Curd

3/4 lb rhubarb (about 6 stalks)
4 Tbl water
1/4 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup plus 1/8 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon zest
2 tsp lemon juice
3 Tbl butter, cut into chunks

Shortbread Crust

12 Tbl butter, cut into chunks
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground clove

Instructions

Rhubarb Curd

First, cut the rhubarb into one inch pieces. Heat the rhubarb, 1/4 cup of sugar, and water in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook it until the rhubarb is falling apart and there are no whole pieces left (you can help it along by mashing with your mixing tool, a wooden spoon works great). It you have an immersion blender or a regular blender, puree the mixture. If you don’t have either of those, push the mixture through a strainer. I advise one of the blender methods.

If you have a double boiler, put a couple inches of water in the pot of it and set it over medium heat. If you don’t have a double boiler, find two pots that are about the same diameter, so that one can be set atop the other without going into whatever is in the bottom pot. Put egg yolks, butter, remaining sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice in the top pot and set over the simmering bottom pot, and whisk to combine. When the sugar dissolves, add the rhubarb puree by the spoonful (to temper the eggs). When all the rhubarb is added, put the pot over the boil again. Stir for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is warm and slightly thickened, then remove from heat. Press the mixture through a strainer – this is an important step! It’ll give the curd a smooth texture.

Shortbread Crust

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees while you make the shortbread: blend all the ingredients for the shortbread in a stand mixer or food processor. Now, the recipe says to wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate it, but I didn’t and it was just fine. The recipe also says to roll it into an 8X8 square and put it into an 8X8 pan… but I just dumped the dough into a pie dish and pushed it outwards until it was spread out. Bake the shortbread for 30 minutes until golden brown. Set to cool on a rack.

Use a spatula to spread the curd evenly over the shortbread. Put it in the oven for another 10 minutes, remove, and allow to cool on a rack. Then refrigerate for another 20 minutes. It’ll be nice and firm enough to slice cleanly. Enjoy! (If you want to wait another couple minutes, you can dust with powdered sugar… I couldn’t wait.)