Cook Along: Volume Four - Balsamic Chicken

It’s been awhile since our last Cook Along, so if you’re still here, thanks for sticking around!  Tonight’s Cook Along was Balsamic Chicken from Allrecipes.com.

Take One:

Before I start my review of the Balsamic Chicken, I have to make a note that my brother, Patrick, joined Josh and I for dinner tonight, and he ended up helping me make dinner (which marks the first time that we’ve ever cooked together before – weird!).  I also got him to stop at the store to pick up chicken breasts and a vegetable for dinner (I SO didn’t want to do it myself on the way home from work).  He showed up not only with chicken breasts, but several vegetables (don’t worry, I’ll tell you in a minute what they were), AND a Cyrus O’Leary’s turtle cheesecake pie.  Let me just say now that he can come over for dinner ANY time.

I’m actually typing this before dinner is completely made.  The chicken is simmering away in the sauce, and if the smell is any indication, it’s going to taste fantastic.  For our sides tonight, we’ve having steamed white rice, Caesar salad, tomato-cucumber-onion-in-Italian-salad-dressing-salad (we really need to come up with a better name than that), and garlic bread.  Let’s be honest here – if it had just been me stopping at the store, the vegetable would’ve been like, roasted asparagus or something else super easy, but that’s okay.

I already really like this recipe for several reasons.  First, it smells good.  Second, other than having to get chicken breasts, everything that this recipe called for was in my pantry and in my spice cabinet.  Third, I love, love, love balsamic vinegar, and I don’t think there are enough recipes that call for it.

For right now, dinner is just about ready, so I’m going to go finish getting the last of dinner ready and then eat.  It smells amazing in here, and I can’t wait to go eat.

Okay…an hour later, I’m back to finish this up.  The results are: yum!  Patrick said that the chicken was “kickin’,” although we all agreed that it was a little bit dry (but I think it was just cooked a little too long while we were waiting for the garlic bread to finish up).  I definitely think this recipe will be made again.  It was easy and didn’t take too long to make, which is perfect for weeknight cooking.

I couldn’t get a good enough picture of the chicken by itself, so here’s a picture of the whole dinner (minus the Caesar salad because it wouldn’t fit into the frame).   And yes, it was as delicious as it looks.

A.V.

Take Two:

           I liked the sound of this recipe from the start, since the ingredient list was short, and I like anything that offers something new for chicken breasts.  This came together really quickly, although I did cook my chicken based on something I heard in a really interesting segment on The Splendid table recently about not cooking meat in liquid (stock, water, wine, etc) that is more than a bare simmer.  Apparently, the boiling action of the liquid literally squeezes the cells like a sponge, wringing out all the moisture.  So you think that you are fine because your chicken breast is cooking in stock, but it still comes out dry, because the stock was boiling.  So I cooked the chicken breasts by searing them to get some color on them, then in the sauce on a low temp, so it was barely simmering until cooked through.  It took slightly longer, but the chicken was really juicy. I took the meat out of the skillet once they were done, and put them on the cutting board under a metal bowl to stay warm while the sauce reduced.   Once it was the consistency of running barbecue sauce, I sliced the chicken and spooned the sauce over the chicken.  We had our Balsamic chicken with a side of corn on the cob and my new favorite thing to make, potato galette.   Potato galette cooks primarily in the oven, and corn on the cob is all prep work, so the chicken recipe was a great fit.  Also, we have one chicken breast left, which I am dreaming about using on a salad for lunch tomorrow.  Some nice lettuce, a juicy tomato, maybe some red onion and the remaining chicken with the leftover sauce slightly warm over top.    Or maybe as dinner during Leftover Lotto. 
 
This is a definite keeper, and I would go so far as to say, my favorite of the recipes so far, great for summer, especially now during the height of grilling season.  This would be amazing on the grill, just put the sauce in a small pan on the back of the grill, use it to baste the chicken, or let it reduce to serve alongside.  You could do kebabs, with zucchini, tomatoes, onion.  Or how about with some tomato and mozarella on a grilled sandwich.   

On a side note, let me also recommend the potato galette.   There is a recipe if you want one, but it is just thinly sliced potatoes laid in an oven proof skillet, you melt a little butter in a hot skillet, and then layer the potatoes with salt and pepper and tiny bit of rosemary (I only put this on the first layer, salt and pepper on all layers).  After the initial layer, you can brush a bit of olive oil over each layer, but use it sparingly to avoid the finished galette getting greasy.  Now, traditionally, this is an all butter dish, so feel free to go that way, too.  At any rate, you just keep layering.  The more people you need to feed, the more layers you add, and adjust your cook time accordingly.  This does great at about 350 degrees, half an hour for only a couple layers, maybe 45 minutes if you do half a dozen layers.  But if you've got something else in the oven, just put it in and keep an eye on it, it's potatoes, you can't mess this up.  Try it, you'll like it.


Let us know if you try this one, I'd love to hear what you did with the leftovers. 


A.H.

Brilliant Revelation re: Zucchini Orzo from this week's Cook Along

Tonight we had Leftover Lotto for dinner, which is basically my attempt at jazzing up boring old leftovers.  I opted for the leftover orzo from the other night's cookalong with. . . . . . . . . wait for it. . . . . . . . . . it's worth the wait. . . . . a poached egg on top!

I heated up the orzo in a non stick skillet with a pat of butter, added an extra splash of lemon juice, and a handful of parmesan cheese, and then I poached an egg and plopped it on top of my bowl of pasta.  After mixing up the egg with all the pasta and cheese, I was left with a bowl of pasta and zucchini in a light but luscious sauce.  Enough protein from the egg to call it dinner, and a mighty satisfying one at that!

AH

PS - A little cooked pancetta, ham or bacon with this would propel it into the realm of the truly stellar.

Cook Along: Volume Three - Zucchini Orzo

Since the first two Cook Alongs were main dishes, we decided for this one that we should do a side dish.  At first, we were going to do potatoes, but do you know how hard it is to find a non-salad, non-baked potato dish that doesn’t take an hour to make?  Anyway, we quickly changed it and decided to try our hand at Zucchini Orzo from AllRecipes.com (which, by the way, is an all-around awesome website…you should really check it out).

And now, on to the reviews!

Take One:

We eat a lot of zucchini and yellow squash in our house, but always cooked the same way, sauted with garlic in a pan, so I was psyched about doing something new.  I almost always have zucchini and squash in the house, so the only thing I had to buy was the pasta.  This recipe was super easy, just saute the veggies, stir in cooked pasta, add lemon juice and bingo, bango, boingo - dinner.   I kind of (blatantly) broke the rules because I couldn't stop my self from adding a sprinkle of parmesan cheese on top as I served it, but I say that parmesan was a garnish, so it doesn't count.  (That caviar is a GARNISH!  Quick, name that movie!).    This came together really easily, and the reviews were positive.  Andrew liked it and Max was stuffing into his mouth by the handful, so I assume he liked it.  It was a nice summery side dish, and I'll definitely be making it again.  The only thing I would change is that I would chop up some garlic to add in when I cooked the onions, and I would use less pasta and more zucchini and squash.  Also, how delicious would this be for fall with some butternut squash in place of the zucchini, et al, and some nutmeg/allspice/cinnamon?  Yummmmmmmm.


This time I served it with a mustard and herb marinated round steak, which did not come out as well as I would have liked, but I think it would be fantastic with a parmesan crusted chicken breast, so that might be my next try.  This one gets two thumbs up all around and you should defnitely try it.  The only advice I have is be careful straining the orzo, a bunch of mine slid right through the holes in my strainer and ended up in the sink.  I'd probably put a piece of paper towel in the bottom of the strainer to prevent that.


AH

Take Two:

I love zucchini.  I love it sautéed, baked, in bread, and therefore, I love that Tuesday was the first day of summer, which means that it’s Zucchini Time!  I’m glad we decided to do this dish, and I think it turned out really, really well (to be made next time with just a couple of minor adjustments).

First though, I have to be honest with you all.  I did break a teeny tiny (okay, okay, the Cardinal) rule of the Cook Along and (only slightly!) altered the recipe.  And by “altered,” I mean that I just changed the amount of the veggies that were in it.  Even though I LOVE sautéed onions, Josh really hates onions of any kind and tries his hardest to avoid them at all possible costs.  He tolerates them to a degree as long as they’re sautéed to death, which I didn’t totally want to do, so I used only half the amount of onion that the recipe called for.  On a similar note, my grocery store only had pretty small zucchini, so I got two instead of one.  No biggie.

There’s not really a whole lot to say about the preparation of this dish.  It was cooking pasta (easy) and chopping vegetables (which I love to do!).  No rocket science involved.  The ONLY drawback to this recipe was the fact that orzo pasta is really difficult to strain.  It’s little and rice-like, so I ended up with a bunch of pasta at the bottom of my sink (not that big of a deal, but to someone that doesn’t have garbage disposal, it was kind of a pain to clean up).  Also, we had this with beer-braised pork chops (okay – shameless plug for one of my favorite ways to cook pork chops: go here), and they were awesome, too.

The verdict?  Like I said above, this turned out really well.  It was fresh and summery and delicious!  The only two (tiny) things I’d do differently are add some garlic to the veggie sauté and a little bit of fresh parmesan at the end.  Other than that, I think this recipe is great!  Josh wasn’t wild about the onions, but he picked around them and ate everything else.  He agreed that a little garlic and fresh parmesan would be good additions to this recipe.

I like close-up pictures of food, so that’s what you get of my finished product tonight.  Enjoy!

A.V.

Cook Along: Volume Two - Chicken Fingers and Dipping Sauce

Tonight marks the second appearance of our Cook Along feature.  A brief recap of the rules, we both cook an agreed upon recipe, on the same night, exactly as it's written.  No changing the recipe, no discussing it until after the cook along is done, and NO LEMON BARS!

Tonight is actually a two-fer, Easy Chicken Tenders from Pioneer Woman, and Chicken Finger Dipping Sauce.   The ingredients are all basic pantry staples, which is always nice.  No Glamour Shots of the ingredients tonight, as neither one of us remembered to take a picture, so you'll have to imagine what raw chicken and flour looks like for yourself.

Now, on to the reviews.

Take One:

Okay, confession time.  I picked tonight's recipe because when Andrew and I lived in Baton Rouge, one of our favorite restaurants was Raising Cane's.  They only serve chicken fingers, and they give you this fabulous dipping sauce that is unlike anything else I've ever had.  So when I found the recipe online to make the sauce, I knew I had to try it.  As was mentioned above, the recipe is pretty simple, all items I had on hand.

I used boneless chicken breasts I already had in the freezer, just cut into strips.  I actually forgot to take them out of the freezer until like ten minutes before I wanted to start dinner, but luckily, I'd read this article the other day about how you can safely defrost things in hot water without risking food born illness, so I tried it and it worked like a charm.

Since Pioneer Woman says to just use whatever you have on hand to season the flour, and because I NEVER use season salt, I used chile powder, salt, white pepper, oregano and garlic powder.  The end result was nicely seasoned, and I'm glad I didn't buy season salt specially for this recipe.

I had a little trouble getting the right consistency when I added the milk to the flour, but I ended up mushing it between my fingers like if I were making pastry dough,and it came out pretty well.  The final coating was a good thickness, and there were plenty of little crunchy bits.  I'm glad to have that technique in my repertoire for future. 

I ended up with way more chicken fingers than I needed to serve two adults and one toddler who barely eats meat anyway, so I took Pioneer Woman's suggestion and flash froze half of them.  I'll report back later how that works out.

So, I have to tell you my deep, dark kitchen secret.  Ready?  Come closer. . . . *whispers* I'm afraid of frying things in oil of any depth.

Yeah. I know.  I consider myself a better than average home cook.  I'm not intimidated by much in the kitchen.  I'll try anything once, custard, souffle, candy making, whatever.  But anytime a recipe requires more than the barest puddle of oil in the bottom of a skillet, I start to get nervous.  I have a splatter screen, and I have a fire extinguisher, but I have to tell you that in the fifteen minutes it took me to cook the chicken I'm pretty sure my blood pressure went up at least 20 points.

But we got through it, and they turned out nicely golden brown and crispy.  The dipping sauce was pretty much spot on like Raising Cane's, and went nicely with a side of mashed potatoes and coleslaw.  Andrew's only critique was that they were "too crispy", but I'm not sure how to respond to that, so, oh well.

My final verdict?  Honestly, pretty good.  Easy recipe, good finished product, but at the end of the day, a lot of prep work and dirty dishes.  I hate to say this, but next time I want chicken fingers (once I've cooked the ones in the freezer)  I'm more inclined to just pick up a five pack of chicken selects at McDonald's.  GASP!  Yeah, I know.  But I just don't want chicken fingers that often, and I really like those, especially since they don't come with a side of dirty dishes.

So, if you're set on making chicken fingers, this is a great way to go.  If you're looking for an easy week night meal, I might just keep looking.

AH

Take Two:

For these chicken strips, I bought chicken breasts that were already cut into tenders (why take the extra step of cutting chicken breasts into strips if someone’s already done it for me, right?).  The recipe calls for Lawry’s seasoning salt, which I didn’t have already in my spice cabinet, but I actually had a random coupon for it, so I got that, too.

I started off dinner by getting my side dishes going, since they were going to take longer than the chicken strips.  We had roasted asparagus with garlic (yes, again, but that’s a favorite in our house, and my mother-in-law bought me some asparagus and garlic at our local farmer’s market last Saturday and I needed to use them up) and roasted red potatoes with French onion dip seasoning (another favorite).  Once those were in the oven, I got to work on my chicken strips.

The first thing I noticed was that when I poured the buttermilk into the flour/Lawry’s mixture, it didn’t ball up into nice little clumps like the recipe suggested it would.  It clumped up into big goobies that didn’t really evenly cover the chicken tenders.  I ended up with kind of a gluey mess, but I made it work.  The next thing was that it took much longer for my chicken strips to cook than just the minute and a half per side that was listed in the recipe.  The third group of chicken strips turned out really nice and crispy and definitely were the best ones (the first group wasn’t bad, but it since those were the first ones, they were really more like practice).

Positives: Once I got the hang of frying the chicken, it turned out really crispy and good.  The dipping sauce was really tangy on its own, but it was absolutely perfect with the finished chicken strips.  They were definitely better than frozen, store-bought chicken strips, and the Lawry’s added a nice kick of flavor to the batter.  My asparagus and potatoes were also delicious (but then again, they rarely fail me).  Josh really liked this dish, and he really, really (REALLY) liked the dipping sauce.

Negatives: Honestly, as good as this recipe is, it isn’t something that I plan on making on a regular basis.  Ignoring the fact that I burned my finger pretty badly on the pan that I was using to fry in, my kitchen now smells like a grocery store deli.  Now, I spent a summer working in a grocery store deli, and it was my Least Favorite Job EVER.  To this day (and it’s been 10 years since that summer), when I walk into a grocery store, I can tell if their deli needs to change the oil in their deep fryers, and it makes me nauseous and I usually leave (seriously).  The fact that my kitchen now smells like this is really gross and I’ve got like three candles burning and several windows open to try to get the smell out.  Also, there were a LOT of dirty dishes involved in this, which isn’t my idea of a good time, and overall, this took way longer than I thought it would.

Even though I’m not super excited about the scent that the chicken strips left in my house, I’m really glad that we decided to do this recipe.  I’ve never actually fried anything before, so I’m glad that I tried it.

Here’s a look at my finished product.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go run more cold water on my burned finger.

A.V.



Post Script:  The Chicken Fingers that went in The Freezer

The chicken fingers have been languishing in my freezer since this cook along, and I pulled them out tonight as a last minute dinner option when I knew I needed something that everybody would eat for dinner tonight, with out complaint.


They were thawed to refrigerator temp in about 90 minutes, and went straight into the pan from there.  They were slightly drier tonight, but we preferred their texture this time around.  I'd say they were as good or better than the first night.  Unfortunately, Despite fully half the prep work being done, I still have an awful lot of dirty dishes.  And hot cooking oil to deal with.  Well, shit.   I probably won't be repeating this in future.


AH

Cook Along: Volume One - Marinated Baked Pork Chops

Welcome to our inaugural "Cook Along" recipe review.  In case you missed it, the rules of cook along are simple:  both halves of the brain make the same recipe on the same day and review it with out consulting the other half.  No changes to the recipe, no talking about the recipe until after we've written our reviews, and absolutely NO LEMON BARS.

We chose Marinated Baked Pork Chops from allrecipes.com.  And now, onto the reviews!

Take One:

The recipe is pretty straightforward, and the ingredients list is manageable.  Aren't they pretty?

Okay, first off, can we discuss the fact that while the recipe is called "Baked, Marinated Porkchops", there is no actual marinating taking place.  I'm not sure that they need it, I just like truth in advertising.  

I used pork loin chops since that was the best deal at the supermarket this week, but they were on the thin side for pork chops, not quite 3/4 inch thick.  They turned out fine, but in future I would probably use a thicker chop, and maybe a sirloin chop or something that would really benefit from being braised for an hour in the oven.  Also, I would probably turn the heat up on the oven for the last twenty minutes to thicken up the sauce a little bit.  I will admit that I was initially surprised not to see salt on the ingredients list, but with Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce in the mix, it didn't need it.  All in all, a good recipe, and a tasty finished product.  

I served them with a side of mashed potatoes and sauted squash.  Everybody here enjoyed them and with a few minor tweaks they will definitely make it into the recipe rotation.  I'm sorry not to have a picture of the finished product, but we were too busy shoveling food into our gaping maws to get out the camera.  So, enjoy your pork chops and let us know what you thought.

AH

Take Two:

My Cook Along involved not just my husband, but it ended up being a test for my mom and dad to participate in too, as they came over for dinner tonight.  I was excited to try this recipe mainly because of the ingredient list.  There are only seven ingredients involved, and best of all, they were all (except the pork chops) things that I have in my kitchen all the time.

I bought the pork loin chops at the grocery store (they were the cheapest), and they worked out just fine, but I think that next time I make this (and there will be a next time!), I think I’ll get something a little thicker.  The loin chops were good, but they would’ve been even better if they were thicker.  Because my chops were so thin, I cooked them for a half hour on the first side, but then only 15 minutes on the second.  They actually came out really nicely, and they weren’t dried out at all.

One thing I did think was a little strange was that there really wasn’t a lot of sauce for the amount of chops.  I mean, even in the actual recipe, the author wrote that they often double the sauce to have enough to put over rice, but I don’t even think doubling it would be enough.  As it is, there’s only eight tablespoons of sauce here.  It definitely covered the chops that were there, but it just wasn’t enough.  Side note: I LOVE oven drippings, and I really like having plenty of drippings to spoon extra on top of whatever it was I made in the first place (and yes, admittedly, even sampling a spoonful or two of just the drippings themselves).

My side dishes for this dinner were garlic mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus (two favorite things in my house).  There was NO food left at the end of dinner.  Luckily, I managed to take a picture of the plate of pork chops before we started devouring them.  My husband has declared that this recipe is a keeper and that I should feel free to make it again.

A.V.