Chicken Parisienne

This recipe is the 2nd out of our try to use our cookbooks and comes to us from our “Historic Lexington Cooks – Rockbridge Regional Recipes” Book. This recipe was picked because it’s listed as “..One of the area’s favorite Chicken Dishes.” and the recipe had been submitted by no less than seven different people. Without further ado, here we go.

We start off with 2 nice big slices of center-cut country ham. If you’ve never dealt with this stuff before, be prepared. It smells like death. Normally when I’m cooking, the kitty hangs around and likes to stick her nose in everything. I took the ham out of the package, and she jumped off of the counter and ran into the bedroom.

So, you want to cut the ham up into manageable sized pieces, and cook it quickly in a pan. Just about a minute to a minute and a half on each side will do it. Meanwhile, you can start getting the liquids all ready. The liquid portion is rather easy: 1/2 a pint of Sour Cream (AKA 1 Cup), 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, and 1/4 Cup of Sherry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is all mixed up. Simple ain’t it? So, while your finishing up cooking the ham, grease a 8x12 pan. For this, I used good old fashioned butter. Then, put the ham down as the bottom layer of the pan.

Place Chicken breasts (boned, skinned, trimmed, etc) on top of the ham. The recipe calls for 8 pieces, but I think I could only cram six half breasts into the pan. Maybe chicken breasts are a bit bigger these days compared to when this recipe was made. Sprinkle the chicken with some Paprika, and then cover in the liquid mixture.

Now, it’s ready to go into the oven which has been preheated to 275. It’ll live in the oven for about 3 hours, so get comfortable, watch a movie, whatever. Just don’t try to start making this at 5PM unless you don’t want to eat until 8PM.

Top picture is about 2 hours into the cooking. The level of liquid has dropped considerably. I think it all went into the chicken. The next 2 pics show the chicken after it’s done. I stuck the fork into a piece to move it, and it just fell apart on the fork.

I plated the chicken on top of a piece of the country ham, and it was a juicy, salty, flavorful piece of wonderful. Virginia cooked up some potatoes to go along with the chicken, so now I’m sitting here stuffed.

For next time, I think we might try to pull the chicken out of the oven just a little earlier… the chicken fell apart, but it was just a tad dry. Also, I think it would be lovely served on a bed of rice… I might take some of the leftovers and make chicken salad with it though…

Pizza Casserole

This recipe isn’t our typical type of meal, but I decided that I didn’t want to be one of those people that had a dozen cookbooks lying around that never got used. So, we picked up a few cookbooks, and grabbed a few recipes out of each. This recipe comes to us from our “Oxford’s Divine Offerings” cookbook, which is from a Church back in the Lexington, VA area. Now, disclaimer up front: This recipe creates a metric ton of food, and while it’s tasty, it’s most likely more suitable towards kids. So, if you’re a parent, and hosting a bunch of kids for a birthday party, sleepover, etc, this would be a good one for you.

Ingredients:

1-lb Hamburger  

1 Large Onion, Chopped

1 Med Green Pepper

1 Cup Fresh Mushrooms (Recipe calls for canned… but… Gross!)

1 24oz Can of Tomato Sauce (For this recipe… get a can. High dollar sauce would honestly be a bit of a waste)

2 Cloves Fresh Minced Garlic.

12oz Pepperoni

1 1/2 Cup Shredded Mozzarella

8oz Macaroni, Cooked and Drained

Cut up your fresh veggies

After everything is cleaned and chopped, the onions and green peppers go into a pan with the ground beef, and all of that gets browned up together.

After everything is browned and happy, drain off the fat and add the mushrooms, sauce, garlic, 6oz of pepperoni, 1 cup of cheese, and the cooked pasta.

Stir everything together, and get it nice and hot and melty. Then, everything in the pot gets dumped into your greased casserole dish, where it will soon go into an oven that’s been preheated to 350.

Above, you see it put into the pan, then layered with pepperoni. You cover it with foil, cook it at 350 for 30 minutes, then remove it from the oven, get rid of the foil, cover the top with remaining cheese (ok, I added a little extra) and then it goes back into the oven for another 10-15 minutes until the cheese on top is melted evenly.

Above is the final result in the pan. Let it sit for about 10 minutes, and then serve it up into some bowls.

Notes:

• As said before, this makes a LOT of food.
• By no means is this gourmet. Serve it to kids.
• Pepperoni will stick together, giving you some rather large chunks of pepperoni on the inside. Perhaps you could chop the pepperoni and dust lightly with cornstarch to keep it from sticking.

Thai Shrimp with Mushrooms and Peanut Sauce

This recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, 30 Minute Thai from Paragon Publishing. Of course, I did make a few tweaks since the original recipe calls for tofu, mushrooms, and peanut oil – none of which Aaron really likes. He was willing to compromise on the mushrooms, but we substitute shrimp for the tofu and sesame oil for the peanut oil.

If you are not already using sesame oil, you definitely need to try it. It adds a really nice, rich flavor to stir-fry. If you don’t usually cook Thai food, you may also need to invest in fish sauce and rice wine vinegar, but once you have those two elements and some basic soy sauce you can make a whole range of dishes. I also like to use rice noodles with my Thai, but I’m sure the meal would also be tasty over rice or regular noodles if you don’t have rice noodles.

Ok, on to the photos:

First peel your shrimp. Or prepare your chicken or tofu. Pretty much any basic meal or protein will work.

The recipe only calls for garlic, shallots and mushrooms, but I like to add some extra veggies. Whatever you have handy.

Aaron chopped everything beautifully. Meanwhile, I made the sauce.

It’s really easy. 1 TBS each of soy sauce, rice vinegar, fish sauce, and peanut butter. Then add about 1 tsp of hot sauce or chili sauce (to taste). I actually like to double the sauce recipe so you have an extra saucy concoction.

Then get your water boiling because things will start happening fast.

To make the rice noodles you just add the noodles to boiling water, then remove from heat and let sit for 8 to 10 minutes.

Start by sautéing the garlic and shallots in the sesame oil. Add the shrimp and cook through.

Then, I removed the shrimp so they wouldn’t get over cooked while I stir fried my delicious vegetables.

And here’s the finished product with sauce and shrimp all mixed in together.

Bon appetit!

Our favorite macaroni and cheese

Well… it was… then we had to go and mess with it.

Here is the original recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Mac-and-Two-Cheeses-with-Caramelized-Shallots-350762

Allow me to say… don’t deviate from it. That said, I’ll take you through what we did, and tell you where we messed things up.

So, we took the above recipe… and thought… you know what would make this better? Meat. Lots of meat. So, in the past, we’ve made it with bacon anyhow, so that was nothing new. But, we figured… ya know, add some ground beef into the works as well… and it’ll be like bacon cheeseburger mac and cheese; and how awesome is that?

For pictures… I’m just going to include the pictures of what you *should* do.

Cook up some bacon. Just about 4-6 strips will do it.

Use fresh shallots. The recipe calls for 3 cups… someone is insane. 1 cup is plenty. 3 Cups would be a shallot casserole with a side dish of macaroni noodles.

So, either using the leftover bacon grease, or the 3TBSP of butter specified in the recipe, cook the shallots until they turn a lovely golden brown. If they get a little crispy… that’s fine. They’re still amazingly tasty.

Meanwhile, get your 1/2 & 1/2 and cheese/flour mixture ready, your noodles boiling, your casserole pan buttered, and your oven preheated to 400 degrees. After 5-6 minutes on medium heat, the shallots will be done. Wash the pan out and add the half & half and hot sauce. Get that mixture hot and simmering, then add the cheese/flour mixture. Wisk all of that together until this:

Becomes this:

By this time, your macaroni should be done. Drain it and add it to the cheesy goodness. Fold and mix that in until everything is evenly spread and coated. After everything is happily coated, dump the cheesy noodles into the casserole dish and top with the bacon, shallots and goat cheese.

Then, it’s all into the oven for about 15 minutes.

We made ours tonight with a pound of beef, and used feta cheese instead of goat cheese. While it wasn’t bad… it was NOWHERE near the wonderfulness that the original recipe produces. (Original recipe that is… except for the 3 cups of shallots.)

Experimenting and trying new things is a rather important part of cooking… but in this case it didn’t work out as well as we would have liked. It was still rather tasty… but in more of a casserole way than savory mac and cheese way. … Try the original recipe… it is by far the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had.

Nothing says love… Like steak

So, we decided to have our Valentine’s dinner a little early. Tomorrow, we’re doing a wine / chocolate tour… and Virginia has a meeting on Sunday evening, so we had to enjoy our special meal tonight. Just so happens, today is also our 5 month anniversary, so it worked out well.

So for the blog followers, we have a special treat… one of my favorite main courses, but I rarely get to cook it.

Like all good things… it all starts with butter. Take a good sized pan, and put it on a large burner at high heat. After it’s heated rather nicely, drop about 1 TBSP of butter into the hot pan ad let it melt from edge to edge.

Here’s the main attraction, seasoned with salt and pepper and ready to go into the buttery pan. The meat of choice is 1-1/2” thick Filet Mignon. These are organic pieces of moo-cow, bought at our local Earthfare Grocery. But of course, any high quality PRIME Filet will do. Choice ≠ prime. You can see the marbling on the meat, just enough fat that everything will be juicy and wonderful. Be prepared to pay a little more for a good cut of meat. The lesser quality is good for making stew… or hamburgers… but for a good steak, spend a few bucks. The end cost will be less than you’d spend in a restaurant for a crappy steak.

So, the pan is HOT, the butter is melted. Drop the steaks in, and sear the meat on each side.

You see above, the meat is seared. The point is to lock all of the natural magical juices in. So, you want about 1/8 of an inch of the meat cooked on each side. As soon as you hit 1/8” on each side, REMOVE THE PAN FROM THE BURNER. Turn the burner down to medium-low and do not put the pan back onto the burner until the burner has cooled down to medium low.

Now, back on the burner, cover the pan and let the steaks go on medium low for 3-5 minutes on each side. Meanwhile, get any side-dishes ready, pour yourself a nice glass of wine (our wine tonight was a Zinfandel we brought back from Napa, CA … awesome compliment to the meal)

 

 

 

 

 

Voila. This is after a few minutes on each side. Next, let the meat rest for 3-4 minutes on a plate before cutting. By letting it rest, you’re allowing the juices to soak back into the meat instead of flowing out of the meat the second you cut into it. … You know what I’m talking about… you’ve cut into a steak, and next thing you know, you plate is covered in juices from the steak… Your thoughts are” Wow… what a juicy steak”… well, yeah, it was… before you let all of the juices out.

We paired our steaks with some lovely fresh broccoli that Virginia steamed, and some Macaroni and cheese from earlier.

This is the result. Brown on the outside, a deep pink on the inside. Go ahead. Look at it. Imagine it. You know you want it.

 

Happy Valentine’s to everyone. May you enjoy it as much as we will!