Tag: chicken

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.

Chicken Tacos with Cayenne and Avocado Salsa

Chicken Tacos

Again, it’s been a little while. But you guys, I have so much food to share with you! There has been much eating lately. And good eating too. YUM. This first recipe is a super easy recipe from Martha that was adapted into chicken tacos. Originally it was just the cayenne-rubbed chicken with avocado salsa, but everything is better in a tortilla (and sprinkled with cholula), am I right? So chicken tacos it is. This meal was so simple because we had everything except the chicken and the avocado. I love quick and easy trips to the grocery store that don’t require you to buy too much stuff for a meal.

Chicken Tacos with Cayenne and Avocado Salsa

Ingredients

salt and ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (you can use breast too, but we like dark meat a little better, plus it’s cheaper)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium red onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 Hass avocado, pitted and cut into chunks
tortillas of your choosing (the little taco ones are good for this)
other condiments (think sour cream, cholula, salsa if you want, cheese…)

Instructions

In a small bowl, combine 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and cayenne, mix to combine. Rub this spice mixture all over the chicken. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the chicken and cook until cooked through and browned on the outside. Shouldn’t take too long (think 10-15 minutes). My trick with chicken is to cook it with a lid on the pan to get it cooked through, and then once it’s cooked through, take of the lid and turn up the heat a little bit to get the nice browned outside.

While the chicken is cooking, put the onion and lime juice in a bowl, and cut up the avocado. You can also heat up your tortillas now, which I did by throwing ours in a lightly greased pan, flipping them, and then storing them between two plates so they stayed warm. Just before serving, fold the avocado pieces into the onion mixture and season with salt and pepper. Serve and enjoy!

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Pot Pie
Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Pot Pie

I will tell you that while I write this, we are at Jonah’s office recording a cover of The Counting Crows’ “St. Robinson in his Cadillac Dream.” I discovered today that the band is holding a cover contest and if you place in the top three you win 1) a signed guitar, 2) $600 to Guitar Center, and 3) a spot on an EP that they’re distributing to fans, etc. By the time this is published, we will be long finished, but for now, we’re working away. We discovered the contest about 24 hours before the deadline, so we’ve recruited our singer/musician friend Jon to help us create an a cappella infused cover. It’s currently just after 1 am, and one of us (me or Jonah) has to wake up at quarter to 7 tomorrow morning to drive the kids to school, and then we both have to go on our couch-to-5k run… We may have bitten off more than we can chew, but by golly we’re gonna get something in for this contest!

Now onto the food. Yesterday I wanted to make dinner. I wanted to make a dinner that was delicious and wintery, not too difficult, but a little bit impressive. After browsing a few recipes, I settled on Chicken Pot Pie. Relatively easy, but impressive because, you know, it’s a pie. I didn’t use a particular recipe, and also instead of making it in a pie dish, I made it in two little ramekins, so Jonah and I each had our own little servings. Which was cute. So I’m gonna give you the measurements I used, but I suggest doubling it if you’re looking to feed more than 2 people (though we did have leftovers).

Chicken Pot Pie

Makes 2 personal pies

Ingredients

Pie Dough

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold butter
1/2 cup cold shortening
3-5 Tbl of ice water

Chicken Filling

1 boneless skinless chicken breast
1 cup chicken broth
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 small onion, chopped fine
2 carrots, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 stalks of celery, washed and sliced 1/4 inch thick
salt and pepper
2 Tbl butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed

Instructions

Pie Dough

Start by making the pie dough, which you can find a recipe for here.

Chicken Filling

Start by putting the chicken and broth in a saucepan and bringing it to a nice simmer. Cook it until the chicken is tender and cooked through. Transfer the chicken to a mixing bowl, and strain the broth into a measuring cup or some other vessel. Don’t bother washing the pot, you’ll reuse it a bunch of times. Heat your oven to 400 degrees.

Heat the oil in the pot and when it’s nice and hot add the onion, carrots, celery, and about 1/8 tsp each of salt and pepper. Cook the veggies till they’re mostly softened (covering them while they cook helps with this by adding some steam). While the veggies cook, take a couple forks or a fork and knife and shred the chicken into bite-size pieces. When the vegetables are done cooking, add them to the bowl with the chicken.

Remove your pie dough from the fridge so it can start warming up. In that same dang pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Then add the flour and stir it up. You’ll have some clumps, but don’t worry about it. After cooking your clumps for a little bit, throw in most of the reserved chicken broth (I probably did about half of it, maybe 3/4), the milk, and the thyme. Whisk it up so the clumps dissolve, and cook it until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat, and stir in the chicken/veggie mixture, the peas, and season it with salt and pepper to taste.

Now you can roll out your dough. Because we were doing the little ramekins, I split each disc of pie two in two and rolled each half out, laying it gently in the dish and making sure there were no pockets of air in the sides or bottom. Once both had their bottom crust in, I split the filling between the two dishes. Then roll out the second disc (again split in two) and cover the pies, trim the excess dough, and form an edge. Put the ramekins on a baking sheet (foil lined if you so wish), and put them in the oven for 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.

Allow them to cool for at least 10 minutes before digging in and enjoying!

Panko Chicken Tenders with Aioli

Panko Chicken TendersPanko Chicken Tenders

Pinterest is kind of a dangerous place. It’s great because there are tons of recipes, DIYs, fashion tips, art, etc. It’s less great because it’s hard to tell which ones, among hundreds of recipes, are good. There are like 500 recipes for muffins… how do I know which one will taste good? So it can be a little bit of a crap shoot when you decide to actually make a recipe you found on Pinterest.

But that’s what I did. I actually found the blog Love and Olive Oil because of a Meyer Lemon and Olive Oil chiffon cake that was going around Pinterest like wildfire. So I clicked. But I found a whole bunch of other lovely looking recipes, including one for Baked Panko Chicken Tenders with Aioli. Sounds delicious to me, and even more so when you actually read the ingredients. We replaced the garlic powder for fresh garlic.

This dinner was wonderfully simple and tasted so good. Both the chicken and aioli had a nice bite to them (but not too spicy, mind you) because of the cayenne, paprika, and garlic. Enjoy!

Panko Chicken Tenders with Aioli

Ingredients

Panko Chicken Tenders

1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
oil

Aioli

1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
a squeeze of lemon juice
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

Panko Chicken Tenders

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Oil a baking sheet and set aside. In a shallow bowl, combine the flour with a little pinch of salt and pepper. In another shallow bowl, beat the eggs. In a third shallow bowl, mix the panko with the basil, garlic, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper.

Now for the thinning of the chicken. Put your chicken between 2 layers of plastic wrap or just put it on a cutting board and cover it in the paper it came in from the grocery store. Pound it with either a meat pounder (is that what those things are actually called?) or a rolling pin. You want them to be about 1/2 an inch thick. Slice it into strips.

Now, coat each chicken strip, one at a time, in the flour mixture (shaking off any excess flour), then dip in the egg, and then the panko mixture. Arrange the chicken strips on the oiled baking sheet, and put them in the oven for 12-15 minutes, flipping halfway through. You want the breadcrumb coating to be nicely golden brown.

Aioli

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and stir, and then season to taste with salt and pepper. Not so hard, right?