Tag: chicken

Balsamic Chicken

~ Dad's Turn To Cook ~ Leave a comment

Wow.  Who knew having two people working full time would cut into the opportunity to cook some new and fun things?  Me.  I did.  I’m still trying to do some digging and find time for new recipes though.  Hence today’s winner.  Pan-Fried Balsamic Chicken!

I was making some roast potatoes and onion in the oven, and needed to find a way to make the protein (that I forgot to thaw before work).  Pan fry it is!  A little bit of quick digging and I discovered this recipe…

Pan Seared Chicken With Balsamic Reduction

Guys.  Straight up.  This one is tasty, incredibly easy, and will make you look like a fancy white poofy hatted Chef.  As you can see by clicking the recipe link above, you toss some garlic and onion powder (along with some salt and pepper) on a couple chicken breasts, put them in a hot oiled pan to fry, flip once, and fry the other side.  Easy!  A little bit of liquid goes in the pan, boil it then simmer it for a bit, and voila!  This is a very rustic and hearty tasting way to eat chicken and it paired fantastic with the roast potatoes.  A bit of gristle, a bit of char just makes the flavours pop that much more.  A dish you can burn and make it seem like you meant to!  This one will be going into the rotation.  The only ‘not necessarily in your kitchen’ ingredients are some chicken broth (you can buy a can of Campbell’s or your ‘no-name’ equivalent) and some Balsamic Vinegar…which, after tasting this chicken, I will be sure to have in stock at all times.

Oh!  As for the roast potatoes?  Chop them up into little cubes, toss on a pan, drizzle on some olive oil, crank on some salt and pepper, and bake anywhere between 400 and 425 for about an hour.  I chopped up a small onion as well.  It gets a little charred and blackened and pops the potatoes a bit.  Again, it’s quick to prep, pretty mindless to make, and tastes great!

-g

Chinese 5 Spice Ginger Chicken

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I tell ya, after a big Thanksgiving re-cap week on the blog, it’s time for something a little less ‘North American’ on the blog here, and you can’t get much farther away from here than China!

While doing some surfing I found the following recipe and it just so happened to call for a number of ingredients that I still had on hand in the veggie crisper, and more importantly, called for a protein that wasn’t turkey!  (I love you turkey, we’re just on a break for a while…)

Chinese Five Spice Ginger Chicken

This one was very quick and easy.  The most time consuming element here was the rice.  That’s a pretty hands-free thing to go about making, it just takes time – roughly 45 minutes from start to finish for that to properly cook.  Everything else here went pretty fast.  Warm up a pan with some oil, chop up on onion that you saute down before you start adding the other ingredients.  I picked up a bottle of Chinese 5 Spice the other week and hadn’t quite figured out what to do with it yet.  This works.  All told, the kids all enjoyed it.  My “picky eater” even said they enjoyed it although in her words “I’ve had chinese food before, and it’s better at the chinese restaurant”.  Yup.  I should hope so!  If there ever comes a day one of my dishes bests that of a paid chef or line cook at a restaurant?  Well, I guess that’s the day I can start selling ads on this blog or something.  Haha.

For the recipe, I followed the link pretty closely.  Chinese/Asian cooking isn’t something that’s really in my wheelhouse or that I’ve had much experience with so I still need some more practical hands-on time with the flavours before I start experimenting.  My one notable adjustment…I didn’t have fish oil on hand.  From the sounds of it it’s a very salty/briny flavour, so I subbed in a spoonful of the brine/juice from the feta cheese in the fridge and just a little dash of lemon juice for good measure.  It worked.  I also was missing a dried red chili, so a very small pinch of dried chili pepper flakes went in early on to add just a minor touch of heat.

Other than that, I followed along the recipe as written.  It’s a pretty flavourful dish, you’ll want to salt/pepper to taste.  I found it didn’t need too much of that.  I could have gone for a bit more sweetness overall.  I was wondering about some brown sugar into the mix to accomplish that, or perhaps just a bit more honey?  My only real complaint is there isn’t a lot of ‘extra’ sauce when it’s all said and done.  I’m a big fan of drenching my rice in sauce, you might be the same.

Budget wise?

Chicken – $4.50 for a pound of boneless skinless (on sale and frozen)
Onion – $0.70
Green Onion – $0.50
Rice – $0.50
Peas – $1.00

The rest was honey, soy sauce and some spices I’d say it would be about $1.00 worth, if that.  At the least, we’re looking at $7, at the most, about $8.  Fed 4 of us at dinner with a decent portion of leftovers for the fridge.

Maybe it’s this cold that I’m fighting off, but I’ve been really enjoying dishes with ginger infused as of late.  Watch for some more of those in the future!

-g

Chicken Cacciatore

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A bit of an aside before we begin.  I am a HUGE fan of a really bold and fresh tomato flavour.  When the tomato POPS, I am a happy camper.  This recipe pulls that off in spades.

So…after making pizza’s the other night I had an abundance of half chopped veggies kicking around in the fridge.  After a bit of searching, I found a dish that seemed to cover off the bases when it comes to flavour and also burn through some of those veg in the chill box.

Chicken Cacciatore

  • 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts (basically 2 full chicken breasts – cubed)
  • 1 tbs vegetable oil (canola / olive…really doesn’t matter)
  • 1 sliced medium onion (you want this to be a bit of a ‘chunky’ cut)
  • 1/2 sliced green pepper (again with the chunky cut)
  • 1/2 sliced red pepper (…ditto with the choppin’)
  • 2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (if you like them.  I don’t, so….hard pass)
  • 1 tsp minced garlic
  • 1 big can of crushed tomatoes (796ml/28fl oz)
  • 2 tbs chopped fresh parsley (I used a few solid shakes of dry…)
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp italian seasoning (I went with oregano which I had on hand)
  • 1 tsp dried basil
  • parmesan cheese (to sprinkle on at the table
  • 1 package of egg noodles (I went with fusili – I had some on hand)

This one is pretty easy to pull off.  Put the oil in a deep pan and cook the cubed chicken over medium heat.  Once you’re done with that, remove the chicken, toss in all of the dry veggies and basically stir fry them until the onion has become translucent.  Once that happens, toss the chicken back in.  Add the crushed tomato and spices, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or so.  Done.

In a separate pot, boil the water, cook your noodles.  Drain.

Scoop some noodles onto plate, put a big hearty scoop of the chicken/veg mix on top, and then shake on some parmesan to finish (I usually grind a bit of pepper on top for the fun of it).

This one is a winner.  It tastes fresh, it has pasta, there’s all sorts of veggies in there.

Budget wise?  You’re looking at…

2 chicken breasts… ~$5
can of tomato… $1 if you catch a deal, $2 if you don’t
onion/peppers…$2.50
noodles…$2.50
mushrooms…$2.00
spices…negligable

All in all, you’re looking at about $14.  We had company over so this one fed 4 adults, 3 kids and we still had some leftovers.  I ripped up a couple heads of romaine on the side like I usually do when serving a pasta.  So that was a couple bucks more.  All in all?  It’s going on the list!  Bellissima!

 

Butter Chicken and Naan

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I tried making butter chicken sauce once.  It took most of the day in the slow-cooker and turned out….alright.  With that said, we will typically pick up a jar of pre-fab butter chicken sauce at Costco. The bottles are a bit bigger than the usual VH sized ones at your grocery store and we really enjoy the sauce.  I’ll stretch it a bit more by adding a 1/2 cup of yogurt or sour cream when it’s simmering.

So the bulk of the meal looks like this…

Chicken – 2 chicken breasts cubed, seasoned with paprika, pepper, curry.  Fry in a touch of olive oil in a pan.  Once done, drain any juice if you want, add the butter chicken sauce and simmer.  Add a 1/2 cup of yogurt (mango flavoured is amazing in this).

Rice.  4 cups water, 2 cups rice.  Cover, bring to boil.  Once boiling, turn down to about 30% heat for a slow boil, stir, cover, then leave it alone for about 40 minutes.

NOW…here is where I play and have fun with this meal.  The Naan.   Fresh made bread is hard to beat.  Here’s the recipe I’ve used that works amazingly well.

Naan

I usually just use vanilla yogurt instead of greek yogurt.  Sour cream works good too.  Basically you just need a high fat content dairy in there.  I avoid the melted ghee and cilantro for garnish and instead add some powdered garlic, tumeric and fennugreek.  (I saw that combination at a bakery once, and it tastes pretty good in this spice universe).  I never really measure the spice I put it, more of an eyeball thing, but if I had to guess I’d say about 1 tablespoon of each.  If you think you’ve put too much in, you’re probably right where you need to be flavour wise.  Heads up that tumeric can and will stain just about anything (my plastic mixing bowl is now a permanent shade of yellow in places), but it’ll usually come off your countertop if you get at it right away.  I’ve resorted to a Lysol disinfectant wipe on occasion if it’s being particularly ornery.

I’ve discovered through trial and error that you need to really roll the dough pretty thin for it to bubble and puff up.  I burn these a bit on purpose on the griddle and skip the ‘hold over open flame’ as described in the recipe.  I’m sure that would work great, I just don’t have a gas range handy to pull that off.

We have a couple picky eaters in our house, but this one is a 5 star win across the board and that surprised us.  There’s a bit of spice, but again, if you thin it out a bit with yogurt or sour cream that will take some of that heat off.

I usually serve with a side of peas.  Want to go vegetarian?  Swap out the chicken for paneer (if you can find it).  It’s a hard style of cheese that gets used in Indian cooking a fair bit.  Not all grocery stores carry it.  My best success in Saskatchewan has been at the Independent chain of stores, which probably means you’ll find it at Superstore as well.

There!  I think tomorrow we’ll delve into one of the all-time favourites around our place.  Nana’s Meatloaf!

-g