Chicken with Walnuts, Raisins, and Cream

Tags

chicken breast, cooking, home cooking, raisins, walnuts

Last night I made this up with ingredients that were in the house. I’m writing it down here so that I can make it again. It’s not a formally structured recipe, but it’s close. It was pretty nomlicious. I’m sharing this publicly so that my friends who are more experienced cooks than I am can maybe make suggestions on how to improve it.

You’ll need:

about a cup of Kalamanta olive brine
a couple of cloves of garlic, minced
small amount of olive oil
3 boneless chicken breasts
one tablespoon each mustard seed, celery seed, and paprika
salt & pepper
handful each of walnuts & raisins
about a cup of half & half

Marinate chicken breasts in olive brine for no less than an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit.

Heat olive oil on the stove eye in a skillet that you can also put in the oven safely.

Cook minced garlic in the olive oil until it’s brownish.

Pat boneless chicken breasts dry, then season with mustard seed, celery seed, paprika, salt and pepper.

Brown chicken breasts on both sides, quickly, in the skillet.

Cover chicken breasts with a handful of walnuts and a handful of raisins.

Put skillet in oven for about 15 or 20 minutes, or until internal temp of chicken breasts is where you want it to be (I go for 145 degrees).

Take chicken out of the skillet and set aside, leaving walnuts & raisins in the skillet. Put skillet on stove eye & turn up to “high.”

Deglaze pan with half & half; cream will thicken. This happens quickly. Soon as the half & half gets bubbly, take it off the eye (don’t just turn the eye off) and pour cream, walnuts and raisins over chicken breasts. May want to add salt to sauce.

Turkey Pot Pie Recipe for my Mom

Tags

leftovers, pot pie, recipe, thanksgiving, turkey

This is a “recipe” I made up for Thanksgiving leftovers, improvising as I cooked. My mom asked me to write down what I did for her, because she liked it. So here goes. It’s not the most formally-structured recipe you’ll ever come across.

What you need:

Half-stick of butter (or margarine)
Half cup of all-purpose flour
Some heavy whipping cream
Some chicken stock
A chopped-up onion
A chopped-up stick of celery
A chopped-up carrot or two
Handful of frozen peas
Leftover turkey
(optional) mustard seed, rosemary, sage, cayenne.
Two refrigerated pie crusts

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Onion, celery, and carrots go in a frying pan with some olive oil, black pepper, and salt. Cook on medium about eight minutes until soft and kind of browny. Add the frozen peas after the eight minutes is up.

During the eight minutes you’re cooking the vegetables:

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Slowly add the flour, whisking the whole time. When the flour starts to clump, go ahead and dump the rest of it in and start slowly adding heavy whipping cream, whisking the whole time, until the mixture is no longer clumpy — then switch to the chicken stock, and keep adding chicken stock until it looks like you’ve got about three or four inches of liquid from the bottom of the pan to the top of the liquid. I don’t know how much precisely. Maybe two cups? Should be the consistency of eggnog or a thick melted milkshake at this point.

For seasoning, you can put whatever you want in the sauce. I put tiny amount of fresh rosemary — like the top inch of one of the sprigs — a couple of small sage leaves, chopped up, a pinch of dried mustard seed, and a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper. Lots of black pepper. There’s all kinds of spices you could use. I’ve used curry powder (instead of all the above) before, too, and that was pretty good. Salt to taste. Simmer until it thickens more. It should be the consistency of melted caramel or whatever. If it gets too thick, add more chicken stock. I think this is called “veloute” sauce, but maybe it’s not — I’m not sure if veloute formally actually has the cream in it, or if that makes it something else. Probably makes it something else. I call it “homemade cream of chicken soup.”

Lay the bottom crust into your pie pan, and empty the vegetables into it. Then add your turkey meat. Then pour the sauce on top of that. Put the top crust on, and bake in the oven until the crust is golden brown, which takes 30 minutes, give or take.

Wish these instructions were more specific! I don’t measure when I’m making stuff up in the kitchen! Let me know how it turns out.

Rough Draft of a Recipe: Roasted Szechuan Peppercorn Chicken

Tags

asian, chicken, roasted

I made this meal up by grabbing stuff in the kitchen and throwing it all together. I’m not good at remembering or documenting specific amounts of things or well-versed in the language of recipe writing. It turned out so good, though, and I made it up so completely out of nothing, I’m writing down what I think I did so I can do it again. Maybe someone who is more experienced at writing recipes can come in and tidy this up and turn it into something more easily understood by people who aren’t me. I would appreciate it. I’m also wondering if there are ways I can make it better. There are probably things I did that are silly and unnecessary to the final result, too — maybe one of you can point those out.

But mostly I loved this meal and will be making it again.

Ingredients

Chicken:
1 roaster
3 bulbs of garlic

Marinade:
1 cup of Chinese rice wine
1/2 cup of dark sesame oil

Rub:
2 tablespoons of Szechuan peppercorns, ground fine
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon Lawry’s seasoned salt (we were out of real salt)
1/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

Rice:
5 cups water
2 cups rice

Preheat oven to 425.

Take the giblets out of the bird, remove any paper or plastic wrapping, and place in saucepan with water. Turn on medium heat.

Place chicken in a large mixing bowl. Pour rice wine onto it and into the cavity. Let sit for 30 minutes. Pat dry. Pour sesame oil on chicken and spread evenly.

Put the 3 bulbs of garlic in the chicken cavity, whole.

Mix the rub ingredients together, except for the sesame seeds.

Put the rub on the skin of the chicken! Naturally! After rub is evenly distributed, sprinkle sesame seeds onto the top of the bird, especially over breast, wings, and legs.

Cook until thermometer placed in center of thickest part of breast reads 165. Take out and let sit for 20 minutes. Do not take out the thermometer until the temperature stops rising!

While the chicken is resting, take the giblets out of the water, throw them away (or keep them if you want). There should be about four cups of very rich chicken broth in here. Skim the white foam off the top. Turn the temperature up until it boils, and then make your rice in this broth. Rice takes 20 minutes — the same amount of time you want the chicken to rest!

While the rice is making: cut the broccoli into small pieces.

Put the bottom part of the roaster pan, with the drippings from the chicken, on the stove. Turn up to medium heat. Once hot, deglaze with a little of the rice wine. Stir fry the broccoli in this sauce along with some dried red chili peppers. Turn the heat down to “simmer” and put the lid of a large saucepan over the broccoli. When the rice is done, the broccoli will be tender but not mushy.

So here are my thoughts and questions:

1. Not sure if the garlic is really needed in the cavity. I thought it would make the flavor of garlic come through the whole bird — but eh. Not so much. Maybe next time I will use a lime or an onion or both.

2. Not sure if the rice wine bath for the bird accomplishes anything.

3. The broccoli is the best part! Just FYI!

4. I think maybe I will add sliced almonds to the broccoli next time, though.