Adventures in Chicken 5 - Prosciutto-Wrapped Chicken

I have no great story here, I just wanted to try something new. So I searched some recipe sites and made this one up basically.

First I cut a slit in the side of a thick chicken breast and put in some garlic butter.




Then I wrapped it in a couple pieces of prosciutto, with the seams down, and put it into a bake-safe dish



Baked in the oven for about 20 min (would have liked the prosciutto to get crispier but, whatever), served with garlic sauteed crimini mushrooms, and boom dinner

Adventures in Chicken 4 - Slow-Roasted Chicken Wings

This is one of those absolutely insane ideas that I came up with that came out fine but I will never ever try again, HA. I love the way smoked chicken wings come out when my mom makes them on their electric smoker. And I don't have a smoker, but I was in the mood for this kind of tastiness, so I attempted to dry rub the wings and then slow-roast them over a pan of water. Utterly ridiculous. The only defense for this is that I was out of work at the time, beyond bored, and perhaps not in my right mind.

So first I rubbed the wings in something very similar to the chicken under a brick that I posted a few days ago.



This is where the craziness comes in. I lined a cake pan with foil and put some water in it, then I used my pizza screen and put the wings on it and roasted it at like 250 in the oven for about an hour. Ok yes the results were terrifically moist, but I don't think the whole ridiculous contraption was at all necessary LOL

Adventures in Chicken 3 - Fried Chicken with Ezekiel Breadcrumbs

One of my very most favoritest of all time ever recipes (yeah, it's that good.) is what we call in my house "fried chicken." in reality, my mom learned it from the Italian family she grew up next door to, and it's more like a typical italian "Milanesa" type dish. Anyway. Trying to cut out white bread meant no bread crumbs. So I got resourceful. I ground up some slices of Ezekiel bread (which has a really low Glycemic Index) and toasted them for a few minutes to make nice dried bread crumbs.



Then I made the typical breading with just the right amount (what's "just the right amount?" No clue!) of parmesan cheese, dried parsley, and fresh crushed garlic. Here you see my whole breading station, with the chunks of chicken breas in a slightly diluted egg wash and the breading:



Fry 'em up in grapeseed oil (makes fried stuff so nice and crispy!!!)....



and voila! A little darker perhaps than the original, but otherwise, very pleasantly close :D The little pieces are what my mom and I call the "babies" and they are my favorite :)


I always make a big batch, too, because this is one of the VERY few things I really like leftover, too!!!

Adventures in Chicken 2 - Chicken Under a Brick! (And once again, I stink)

Um, I can't believe I haven't updated this since September. I am ashamed. Thing is, I have no excuse. None. Yes, I am working full-time now (yay!) but I've been cooking a lot and have no excuse to not take the 15-20 min every few days to update with my latest experimentations. Blarg. So I will try to catch up. HA! I don't want to leave anything out, since I am documenting things for myself as much as anyone else (It's not like anyone reads this anyway ;)). So without further ado.... Chicken under a brick. Yeah, I made this in July and it's almost January. Whatever :p

Anyhoo, I took a bone-in, skin-on chicken breast and rubbed it with a variety of things: salt, chili powder, chipotle powder, garlic powder, cumin, paprika, dried parsley... and let it 'marinate' for a while:




Then I fired up the cast iron skillet super hot and put the chicken in skin down and weighted it with a heavy skillet topped with a couple cans, for maybe 5-10 minutes on pretty hot heat (I'm not gonna eat the skin anyway, yes yes I know, heresy).



Flipped it over, weighted it down for another few minutes, and finished it for a few minutes in the oven. And voila! A little spicy, a little crispy, and VERY VERY moist. :)

Man, I stink (and Chicken Adventures 1)

Well, some good job of updating I've done this past month. I've been cooking a lot, staying close to this Montignac plan as best I can, and overall doing not much in my unemployment-ness :p No excuses for not updating regularly but now I have so many pictures and posts floating around in my head, I have not much choice. So here we go.

First chicken adventure: Whole Grain fried chicken. I mixed whole wheat flour, flaxseed meal, and parmesean cheese for this breading. I wasn't thrilled with how it came out just b/c I like really crispy crunchy fried chicken.... but it wasn't bad, even if it doesn't really fit perfectly into the Montignac tenets b/c whole wheat flour has a glycemic index above 35.

So anyway, here's the breading:



And the chicken breaded:



And the finish product (ignore the brown rice, it didn't come out well ;))





Second chicken adventure: Garlic-y quinoa with grilled chicken. While looking for grains that have a glycemic index of below 35 that i can eat with meats, I decided to try quinoa. What I did here was saute it to toast it up, in a little garlic, then boil it per package directions.






I marinated the chicken in simple olive oil, a little red wine vinegar, lots of garlic, etc.:




finished meal (sorry for the blurriness, I suck):

"Diet" - Day 1

So let's see... Breakfast consisted of a hard-boiled egg (minus yolk, ick), a slice of the whole wheat bread, a good slathering of almond butter, and some freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice (combined with a little orange) diluted with water. I had it the same time I normally do, and normally I get hungry around 10-10:30am at work and I made it all the way almost til lunch before I craved anything (had a couple almonds around 11:30). All in all not bad :D

Lunch: turkey sandwich in half of a 100% whole wheat pita, two slices of super sharp Vermont cheddar, carrots, a tomato, and sugar snap peas. This is actually about the same lunch I typically bring to work - except for the whole wheat pita. Not bad, a very small change and the whole wheat pita from TJ's tastes fine.

Fruit: some grapes and cherries.

Afternoon snack: handful of raw almonds and some raw sunflower seed kernels

Dinner: Fried chicken! Yeah, you read that right. Fried chicken. chicken breast pieces breaded in a breading of whole wheat flour, flaxseed meal, and parmesean cheese. It was actually really quite tasty.





*note* it seems that I'm not understanding this Montignac method that well - apparently certain combinations of food is also part of the whole thing. So I need to read more closely this weekend and I put a couple more of his books on hold so maybe it will help steer me in a better direction. of course, not liking fish and some of the other "staples" in his method is sort of a problem so I may not really be able to follow it that closely, but we'll see.

"Sendoff" Dinner

I decided I would start this new 'diet' yesterday (Monday), so on Sunday I pretty much ate like crap all day ;) For dinner I decided to make chicken wings and a potato cake.

First I defrosted the wings in their ziploc bag they were frozen in and whizzed up a marinade consisting of extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, lots of garlic, a little fresh parsley and cilantro and half a canned chipotle pepper (I love the spicy smoky taste it imparts). I tried adding a pinch of flaxseed meal to thicken it up a bit. Zapped it in the mini-chopper and dumped it into the bag and smushed it around. I took the marinating in a plastic bag thing from my mom. I've seen Alton Brown and others do it on the food network now, but I think my mom was first ;) Anyway, I let it marinate in the fridge for a few hours and roasted in the oven for about 35 min at 400ish (my oven temp is kooky) or until nicely brown.


But the real YUM thing was the potato cake. I'll give credit where it was due, my parents and I saw it on the Food Network a few years ago and tried it that night and I've loved it ever since. It's a bit of a pain making it for one but as you can see the point is to shred up Yukon Gold Potatoes (yes it MUST be Yukon gold, I've tried it with both russets and red-skinned potatoes and it's just not right), squeeze out the extra water, mix in a little salt and pepper and like you see in the pan, flatten it out to be a cake. cook on fairly low heat with a little butter and oil in a nonstick pan for about 10 min per side or until dark brown. I like to drain it on paper towel for a sec to remove some of the oil.




As you see in the final picture, it looks like the potatoes might be burnt. I assure you they're not. The goal is to take the cake out in that perfect minute window right before the potatoes burn. It's fantastic. SO crispy on the outside and so soft and luscious on the inside - it's the way potatoes were meant to be. Oh how I will miss these potatoes over the next few weeks. :(

Passover

Passover was about a month ago. I made myself some chocolate-covered matzah. All I did was melt some odds and ends of really good chocolate (all above 50%) really slowly, dipped fresh pieces of matzah in it and scraped it down using tongs and a spatula and let cool on a plastic-lined cookie sheet. They're similar to chocolate-covered pretzels, but without the extra salt and with muuuuuuuch better chocolate ;)



I made a traditional Passover dinner - my family's recipe for "Jewish Roast Chicken" (which consists of bone-in chicken of your choice - for me, breast - marinated in a paste of canola oil, onion, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper pureed up and slathered on), roasted potatoes til nice and crispy, and homemade matzah ball soup. Not much else to say except yummy, and for me, quintessential comfort food.