What I Really Eat: Quick Chicken Francese

"What I really eat" are my Iron Chef meals. My pantry meals. Shit, my fridge is empty meals. The things that come out of necessity and lack of time. The ingredient list will usually be small and the execution usually simple. Something that is less of a recipe and more of a guideline. If something exceptionally awesome comes out of my Sunday night scramble, it will get posted as a “What I Really Eat” and probably be accompanied with a not-my-best photo.

Realistically I’ll realize about an hour before we should eat dinner that I’ve never taken the pack of chicken out of the freezer that I wanted to use. It’s then a mad dash to thaw chicken totally improperly so I can start cooking with it. At some point I acknowledge that whatever grand semi-plans I had for dinner need to be completely abandoned because I’ve wasted an hour of valuable time waiting for the chicken to not be a solid block of ice.

So we wait a little bit longer for the chicken to thaw. I don’t know if you know this, but like the watched pot never boils, the chicken never thaws. Then we slice each breast in half (it still being a little icy actually makes this easier.) Pound it thin with a meat mallet. Even though they’re still stupid cold, they’ll be so thin they will fry up quickly after a dredging of starch and egg. Deglaze the pan with chicken broth and lemon juice, reduce it to thicken and make it silky with butter. Pour over chicken. Shower with parsley. Done.

This is all practically 15 minutes after slicing the first breast open.

The takeaway: defrost your chicken in time for dinner. Or like me: ditch the original plan and make a dinner that only takes 20 minutes.

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Quick Chicken Francese

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken cutlets, pounded thin

2 tablespoons tapioca starch or corn starch (can sub 1/4 cup flour to dredge instead, if desired)

1 egg

olive oil for sauteing

1 cup chicken broth

1 lemon, halved -- juice one half and thinly slice the other

1 tablespoon of butter

salt and pepper

2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

Directions:

Salt and pepper the cutlets. Dredge each in the tapioca starch and put aside on a plate. Beat the egg in a medium sized bowl.

Coat the bottom of a large saute pan with olive oil over medium heat. Once starting to smoke dredge the tapioca starched cutlets in the egg wash and place in the pan to brown. Let chicken cook on one side until golden brown. Flip and cook second side until browned and cooked through. Saute chicken in batches if needed. Set chicken aside.

Deglaze the pan with the chicken broth scraping up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the juice of half the lemon. Let this reduce down by half, about 5 minutes. In little pieces melt in the tablespoon of butter. Add the lemon slices to the sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Put chicken on a serving plate and then pour the pan sauce over. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Serves 4

Winter Chipotle Chicken Soup

Remember when you roasted that Cowboy Chicken? Did you roast that Cowboy Chicken? Well, you should have because then you would have Cowboy Chicken remains on hand for making the stock for this INSANE soup.

This is a winter soup if there ever was one. Spicy and warming, full of good for you bone broth and vegetables --- it’s chicken soup who made friends with some sassy smoked jalapeños. The chipotles warm the chilliest of souls and bones.

Pro tip: freeze everything.

When thinking about this soup, the immediate thought is to go straight to traditional mexican/latin vegetables and flavors. But as mentioned on Monday, my cooking is now much more controlled by the seasons. This meant --- no fresh peppers, no fresh tomatoes, no fresh corn. While it seems inhibitive, cooking with the seasons only makes me feel more creative. So I embraced the winter season and went with onions, carrots, delicata squash, and kale for my vegetables. 

I’m cheating a little bit with the avocado for garnish as it is for sure not local, but I’ve professed my undying love for them before, so you understand, yes?

As with most soups, it’s better the next day, surprisingly I found that the chipotle mellows out a bit. 

Lastly! I’ve realized that I’ve really only been posting chicken after chicken after chicken mains for months. About to get some variety up in here so soon!

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Winter Chipotle Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

1 delicata squash, cubed into 1-inch pieces (could also sub in sweet potato or butternut squash or acorn squash)

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 chipotles, minced

3 tablespoons tomato paste

2 to 3 tablespoons of chipotle sauce (in the can with the peppers) or to taste

6 cups chicken stock**

2 cups cooked chicken**

1 cup lacinato kale torn into 1-inch pieces

1 avocado, sliced (for garnish)

Directions:

Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of a large stock pot. Over medium heat, saute onions, carrots, and squash chunks. Cook until onions are translucent and beginning to get caramelized. Add in garlic and minced chipotles and saute just until garlic becomes fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add in the tomato paste and chipotle sauce, and stir into the vegetables. You want to begin to brown the tomato paste/sauce. Let it start to caramelize. Have your stock at the ready. It will start to brown and get stuck to the bottom of the pot. Don’t fret! Do this until you just can’t stand it anymore and then splash a smidge of chicken stock in and deglaze the pan. It will sizzle and cook off and while it does this take your wooden spoon and begin to scrape up all that browned goodness from the bottom of the pot. Deglaze a bit more as needed to scrape up all brown bits and then add in the full amount of stock.

Add in the chicken and bring soup to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer and then add in the kale. Simmer until the kale is tender to the bite, about 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and serve soup with sliced avocado on top. A squeeze of lime wouldn’t hurt if you had it. If you can stand cilantro, go for it. These pickled red onions would not be out of place. Um, sour cream? Cause why the hell not. You know?

Yield: about 8 cups

**Note: I made my own chicken stock and used the meat from the carcass. Here’s how I did it: Throw that sucker, roasted (or raw) chicken in a stock pot with some carrots, a halved onion, some smashed garlic cloves, whole peppercorns and a bay leaf, cover it all with cold water, bring to a boil, then simmer away for a couple hours. Strain the broth and set aside, pick off the meat that’s left on the carcass and set that aside to use for the soup. Ta-da! Stock!

New Year's Day Chicken Soup

I love everything about New Year’s Day (not to be mistaken with New Year’s Eve.) I am the quintessential cliche when it comes to making resolutions and seeing a bright shiny future.

I do happen to let loose many of my standards of health when it comes to the holidays. Things get overwhelmingly busy at work and in life so I truthfully eschew heading to the yoga mat as often, usually some sort of annual-right-on-schedule viral infection will throw me off course for a week (hello Christmas morning cold -- still fighting you off!) and of course, don’t get me started on the general holiday glutton. I do get a little carb happy. I mean I got four separate birthday cakes this year, FOUR! And then I made half baked blondies on top of that. And then there’s --- “Sleep? What’s that?”

I love the idea of clean slates, and starting fresh. Whether it’s metaphorical or not, the new year always gets me in the mindset of newness, a reset, improvement, evolution.

And as much research is out there that New Year’s resolutions tend to fall by the wayside and send everyone who made them into a downward spiral of defeat and failure about three weeks into January, it always sets me into the fast lane for realigning my goals for the coming year.

Having this blog has turned into a bit of a journal of sorts and I’m excited to check in again next year and see what I’ve accomplished. As far as 2014 goes, it was not my favorite year, but I did start this blog and I really like it. I’m looking forward to what 2015 has in store for me, I have a good feeling about it all...it’s bubbling at the surface. I can feel it in my fingertips.

For 2015:

start composting

take some classes at the Institute of Culinary Education

use up that gift certificate from LAST YEAR at Broadway Dance Center. I wanna be like dis girl. I’m sure three classes is enough to get me up to speed.

conquer both handstand and forearm stand in yoga

i have dreams of more visits to Austin

visit NOLA

visit San Fran

drink more water

cook more on weeknights (I’m more often than not a #putaneggonit type of girl)

read more books:

I’ve started a by accident tradition of making chicken soup on New Year’s. I just happen to run out of my freezer inventory around this time. I make a big batch and then dip into the freezer as needed throughout the year when the boy or I’m not feeling so hot.

It’s bit of a process, but it’s well worth the time for from scratch soup.

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New Year’s Day Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

1 whole roasting chicken, rinsed and giblets removed.

2 medium yellow onions

6 carrots

1 parsnip

5 celery stalks

half a bunch of parsley

1 tablespoon whole peppercorns

1 bay leaf (I had to use 2 small ones)

water (enough to submerge bird and vegetables)

salt and pepper to taste

Take 1 of the onions and quarter it. Take 3 of the carrots and roughly chunk them or quarter them into sticks. Cut the parsnip in half separating the fat top half and the skinnier end. Set skinny half aside. Quarter the fat half. Halve the celery stalks and set the halves with the leaves aside. Throw prepped vegetables into a large stock pot. Put chicken on top of the vegetables. Add half of the parsley on top of the chicken. Add the tablespoon of peppercorns and bay leaf. Add enough water to submerge the bird and vegetables.

Bring this all to a boil and then lower to a simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Skim gray scum off the top as needed. Stock is ready when golden brown and chickeny. You'll know what I mean.

Use the time the chicken stock is cooking to prep the remaining vegetables. Dice the onion, carrots, parsnip half, and celery. Finely dice the remaining parsley. Set aside.

When stock is ready, get a second large pot and a large strainer. Put the strainer into the second pot. If it makes things easier, carefully remove the chicken from the broth and set aside. Then take the stock pot and carefully pour the broth and vegetables into the second pot with the strainer in it. This strains out the mushy overcooked vegetables and leaves you with only broth in the second pot.

Now shred your chicken from the bones. If the chicken has been cooked long enough it should practically shred itself. Remove all the meat from the chicken carcass. 

Add the shredded chicken to the broth, along with newly prepped vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I also added an extra cup of water, do so if you think it's needed) Bring all to a boil and then simmer until vegetables are tender. About 20 minutes. Turn off heat and stir in the finely chopped parsley.

Makes about 8 cups

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

This casserole was the win of my weekend.

I had a blog-cooking-extravaganza a couple weekends ago in preparation for my time away. So after a lot of cooking and several recipe test fails, I was at my wit's end and about to call it quits. This was one of my final tests, and I had no clue if it was gonna work out and if it hadn’t, I’m not sure I would of handled it well. Even before that, this was a re-route from an original plan because as mentioned on Monday, cauliflower was no where to be found.

I mean seriously, at one point there was glass and coffeecake all over my kitchen floor.

I am now loaf pan-less and you are now coffeecake-less.

But. YES. YES. YES. This casserole worked. And it completely made up for those few fails that occurred.

That stain is never gonna come out.

I think that removing the eggplant skin is key and having a mandoline definitely makes things easier. I was able to get super thin slices of eggplant that truly resembled tortilla-like layers. The directions of course look excessive, but I promise it took me no longer than the thirty minutes it takes for the eggplants to sweat to get the other two components together, and assembling shouldn’t take more than five.

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Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Ingredients:

Casserole

1 large eggplant, skin removed and sliced thinly lengthwise (my mandoline made quick work of this --- the aim is to make these work like tortillas or lasagna sheets would), total of 12 big slices (you may have a few extra smaller slices, roast those babies up, if you please!)

salt (for sweating the eggplant)

Chicken filling (ingredient list below)

Enchilada Sauce (ingredient list below)

2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese

Chicken filling

splash of olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 small tomato, roughly chopped

1 sweet pepper, diced

1 jalapeno, minced

2 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon cayenne

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon paprika

salt and pepper to taste

Enchilada Sauce

splash of olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

4 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped, approximately 2 cups

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon paprika

¼ teaspoon oregano

¼ teaspoon cumin

¼ cup shredded cheddar cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

First things first, get your eggplant slices sweating by laying them on a flat surface and sprinkling them with a bit of salt and letting them rest for approximately 30 minutes.

While the eggplants sweat, get the olive oil heating in medium pan over medium heat. Add the onions, tomato, pepper, and jalapeno to the pan. Cook until onions and peppers are soft and tomato is wrinkly. Add the chicken to the pan and stir to combine the ingredients. Add in the spices and stir in to incorporate. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat.

For the enchilada sauce, get a splash of olive oil heating in a small sauce pan over a medium heat. Add in the onion, garlic, and tomatoes and cook until the onion is soft and translucent and the tomatoes are starting to break down. Add the chili powder, paprika, oregano, and cumin. Stir in spices well. Continue to cook until the tomatoes have broken down completely and it’s starting to resemble a sauce, approximately another 10 minutes. Stir in the cheddar cheese. Once the cheese has completely melted into the sauce, taste for seasoning and then remove from heat. Optional move: once it's cooled a little, blitz the sauce with a hand blender or regular blender for a super smooth sauce.

If you’re a real awesome pro, you can attempt to do the filling and sauce at the same time.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Using an 8x8 inch square baking dish, prepare to assemble the casserole.

With a paper towel, dab off the “sweat” from the eggplant slices.

Spread about a tablespoon or so of the enchilada sauce on the bottom of the baking dish. Next add the first layer of 3 eggplant slices, they can overlap slightly. Take about ⅓ of the chicken filling and spread it on top of the eggplant, then spoon on about ¼ of the enchilada sauce and lastly sprinkle on some of the cheese. Layer on 3 more eggplant, then start again with the chicken, the sauce and the cheese. You’ll do this for a third time, and then top with the last layer of eggplant, use the last of the sauce on top of the eggplant and sprinkle on the remaining cheese and then place in oven for about 40 minutes until the cheese is golden and bubbly and the eggplant is tender.

Serves 4 to 6