I know that I tend to wax a little hyperbolic around these parts, but after I made this dinner these words came out of my mouth:

"I may never cook chicken any other way ever again."

OK, that's a little dramatic.

But I may never cook chicken breasts any other way ever again. Over the past few years, I've developed a real distaste for chicken breasts, mostly because the texture of your average grocery store offerings has just become dreadful—it tastes waterlogged and pumped full of ... something. It manages to somehow become both mealy and stringy at the same time, and so enormous as to make me uneasy and them impossible to cook to satisfaction. Dry on the outside, suspect on the inside; this is the new world of white meat chicken.

And the smaller, higher quality, more expensive organic chicken breasts don't get a pass, either—they often seem big and bland to me, too.

So what's a carnivore to do? I will continue to buy those better breasts, but instead I'll cook them like this: marinated in tenderizing citrus and jammed onto a skewer shwarma style, and then charred over a great big heat.

I have a healthy (I hope) fear of fire, so I will admit I use my sweet little outdoor Weber as a rain gauge. I cooked these inside, on a grill pan, but they would be wonderful with a nice charcoal smoke to them, too. I have convinced myself that the gas flame beneath my pan means it counts as grilling. Don't burst my bubble.

An hour in the marinade is just about perfect—any longer and that lemon will have a chance to overdo it. I used sour cream here, but you can substitute plain Greek yogurt. Just look for the lowest sugar content you can find, because you want the color on the chicken to develop slowly, without burning.

The flavor is bright and summery, which means it pairs beautifully with almost anything—lemony orzo, garlicky new potatoes, even just a simple tomato salad. I went with yellow squash, which I don't even like but thought would be pretty. And it turns out if you sauté that business in butter and toss in basil and cheese, you will like just about anything! I scarfed down those veggies faster than I ever thought I would.

Turns out I'm never making yellow squash any other way again, either.

I used a vegetable peeler to cut the squash into thin ribbons. That's required, but it does mean that it cooked in about 30 seconds. You want it to be tender but still crunchy, and not have a time to sweat out, which will give you kind of a watery mushiness. Just in the butter, toss, garlic salt, pepper, less than a minute, and off the heat to stir in the cheese and basil. It's light, delicious, and perfect for the season.

Enjoy!


Easy Grilled Chicken Skewers

1½ pounds chicken breasts, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons sour cream
Juice of ½ lemon
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon dry oregano

1. Thread chicken onto skewers, pressing pieces very close together. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil and remaining ingredients. Pour marinade over chicken skewers in a shallow dish, turning to coat; cover with plastic wrap, and chill 1 hour.

2. Heat a grill pan over medium-high heat until very hot. Grill skewers, turning occasionally, 20 minutes or until outside is well marked and chicken is cooked through. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Yellow Squash Ribbons with Feta and Basil

3 yellow squash
1 tablespoon butter
Garlic salt
Pepper
¼ cup feta cheese crumbles
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

1. Trim ends from squash, and peel into thin ribbons with a vegetable peeler.

2. Heat butter in a skillet until melted; add squash and garlic salt and pepper to taste, and cook, tossing constantly, 1 minute. Remove from heat, and stir in cheese and basil. Makes 4 servings.

 

I do believe I'll keep this one short. (You're welcome.)

After all, there isn't much to be said about a sandwich. (Other than the fact that it's the most genius idea anyone ever had for food architecture.)

I do, however, love a sandwich, always. (You can find other great ones here and here and here.) 

The fact that it was St. Patrick's Day was a terrific excuse for me to make this one, which is studded with green things. (Arugula, avocado, parsley ... and Irish cheese.)


You can say that seeded rye bread is not the best thing in the world, but you would be wrong wrong wrong. (There's a restaurant in town that serves an amazing patty melt on rye, and do not think for a minute that I don't have plans for the rest of this loaf.)

For lunches, turned this into a chicken salad made of the leftover chopped meat, avocado, onion, and sour cream dressing on a bed of arugula, and packed it up alongside an easy cheese sandwich with the rye, whole grain mustard, and Cheddar. (Because mama don't like no soggy bread.)

The dressing here is the real revelation. I bought vegenaise for the first time, because I am a person who loves mayonnaise, has hypertension, and is always curious about new things. This can absolutely be made with traditional mayo, but I was floored by how much I liked the vegenaise—it has a brightness and complexity that mayonnaise just cannot match.

Yes, I put a vegan product on my chicken and cheese.

I have a brightness and complexity, too.

Enjoy!


Parsley-marinated Chicken and Cheddar on Rye

½ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 garlic cloves, chopped
¼ cup lowfat sour cream
2 tablespoons vegenaise or mayonnaise
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Pinch of ground red pepper
Salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
2 large chicken breasts
1 tablespoon canola oil or vegetable oil
8 slices seeded rye bread, toasted
4 ounces aged Irish Cheddar, grated
Red onion slices
1 avocado
Arugula

1. Place first 7 ingredients in a blender; blend until smooth. (You can also use a tall vessel and an immersion blender, as I did.) Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour half of sour cream mixture over chicken breasts in a shallow dish, reserving remaining marinade. Cover chicken and marinade, and chill 1 hour.

2. Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat until very hot. Add chicken; cook 6 minutes, turn over, and cook 6 more minutes or until a thermometer inserted in thickest portion registers 160 degrees. Remove from skillet and set aside to cool slightly.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Top 4 bread slices evenly with cheese. Bake 4 minutes or until cheese is golden and bubbly.

4. Slice chicken. Top cheese with onion slices, avocado, arugula, and chicken. Spoon over reserved marinade, and top with remaining bread slices. Makes 4 servings.

 

Recently someone very dear to me challenged me to make an effort to do only one thing at a time. (I say "dear to me" because people who know me well know that the shortest distance between me and an idea I'm not particularly fond of is a challenge.) The idea is this:

When you're watching TV, watch TV (no computer, no phone, no hopping up every five seconds to wash a dish or get a snack or examine your eyebrows in the bathroom).

When you're driving the car, drive the car (no listening to the radio, no checking your text messages at red lights).

When you're writing, write.

When you're talking, talk.

When you're cooking, cook.

Simple, no?

No. This is tough stuff, friends! I make my living, as I suspect most people do, through a great deal of multitasking. So multitasking begins to mean productivity, and then productivity begins to determine just which column your day can fall into: How many things did I do today? 36 things! Good day. 32 things! Tsk, tsk. Do more!

It requires real effort to do less, I find. It is contradictory but true that there can be comfort in a restless mind. (And I miss my NPR, I do.)

But a person can learn a lot about herself in the ensuing quiet, and in the attempts—however futile—at stillness. Even if that thing is namely that she is not very good at being quiet and still.

It stands to reason that doing one thing at a time will mean that you genuinely do that thing—writing, driving, cooking—better than you would otherwise do it. There is no question that quality suffers at the hand of quantity.

And yet this dinner, prepared in the peaceful calm of just me, just my kitchen, no distractions, was a complete failure of most of the things that would normally fall under the heading of success, where recipes are concerned: I had none of the proper ingredients, I did everything in the wrong order, and I wound up with something altogether foreign to what this is supposed to be ... at 9 p.m.

LOOSELY* speaking (*so, so loosely), this was an attempt to re-create this.

I've never eaten at a New York halal cart, but I'd read enough about it on the World Wide Web to hope that it would approximate the late-night food of indeterminate Middle Eastern origin that I loved so much in college.

I was in trouble almost from the word go. Or from the word halal. For one thing, here's what halal means, according to Wikipedia:

Halal foods are foods that Muslims are allowed to eat or drink under Islamic Shariʻah. The criteria specify both what foods are allowed, and how the food must be prepared. The food must come from a supplier that uses halal practices. Specifically, the slaughter must be performed by a Muslim.

Yeah, I'm fairly certain that's not happening at my Winn-Dixie. So I'm loath to put the word halal anywhere near this dish, lest I offend people who genuinely eat according to religious strictures. This is not that, is what I'm saying.

Winn-Dixie caused further problems by selling no boneless, skinless chicken thighs. And the bony, skinny chicken thighs they had looked ... suspect. Sigh. Boness, skinless breasts it would have to be.

For the sauce, white vinegar! I have that at home.

No I don't. White wine vinegar it would have to be.

Iceberg lettuce? All I have is Romaine. Harissa? Nowhere to be found in my market. Pocketless pita bread? Oops, forgot that entirely.

Once I got home with my rag-tag bunch of ingredients-that-were-not-quite-the-right-ingredients, I embarked on a completely flawed effort to do things according to the recipe. It turns out that a) I am really very rusty when it comes to following instructions, and b) my reading comprehension needs work.

The finished product though, is a revelation. I may never cook another chicken breast without marinating it in this intoxicating (and so simple!) mixture. Lemon, coriander, garlic, oregano—this is piquant business.

The sauce? The sauce is so weird, y'all. I was absolutely convinced that it was inedible when I first stirred it together. I left out the sugar, because I really wasn't sure about stirring an entire tablespoon of the stuff into my mayo/yogurt mixture. But with those 2 aggressive teaspoons of black pepper, I actually sneezed when I tasted it. So I decided to give the sugar a try, and the whole thing tasted ... well, still odd. Still, as a last-ditch snatch at authenticity, I topped my chicken and rice with a few dollops. And guess what? Balance. It turns out that sometimes the route may be circuitous, but it still gets you to the finish line, which in my mind is deliciousness.

Full disclosure: I still think a little bit goes a long way with the white sauce, but it truly is the element here that elevates this to something beyond your typical (albeit yummy) chicken and rice dinner.

According to those in the know, halal cart chicken is always served with a lettuce-and-tomato salad, which pairs really nicely here—it adds both crunch and coolness against the spiciness of all that black pepper and the hot hot heat of what in my case turned out to be sriracha (the only hot sauce I had on hand).

In short, you should make this. Because it is wonderful. And because it is easy. And because I'm going to show you how to make it wonderful and easy in the recipe below. Which is to say, do as I say, not as I do.

In the stillness and quiet, I am still a cautionary tale.

Enjoy!


Not-At-All-Halal Chicken and Rice

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
½ teaspoon ground coriander
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 tablespoon canola oil
2 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
1½ cups basmati rice
2½ cups chicken broth
½ cup lowfat mayonnaise
½ cup fat-free plain Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 Romaine lettuce heart, chopped
1 large tomato, chopped
Hot sauce
Naan (optional)

1. Combine first 5 ingredients in a blender; blend until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Place chicken and half the lemon juice mixture, reserving remaining lemon juice mixture, in a large zip-top plastic bag; seal bag, turning to coat chicken in marinade. Marinate in refrigerator 1 hour, turning bag occasionally.

2. Remove chicken from marinade, and season with salt and (liberally) with pepper. Heat canola oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat until lightly smoking. Place chicken in pan, in a single layer, and cook without disturbing 4 minutes or until lightly browned. Turn chicken, and cook undisturbed 6 more minutes. Remove to a cutting board and let cool 5 minutes.

3. Chop chicken into roughly ¼- to ½-inch pieces. Transfer to a bowl, and toss with reserved marinade; cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

4. Melt butter over medium heat in a large saucepan; add turmeric and cumin, and cook 1 minute. Stir in rice and cook, stirring often, 4 minutes. Stir in chicken broth, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil over high heat; cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook 15 minutes. Remove from heat, and let rest 15 minutes.

5. Whisk together mayonnaise, yogurt, next 4 ingredients, and 2 teaspoons pepper in a small bowl. Season with salt to taste. Set aside.

6. Return same large, heavy-bottomed skillet to stovetop over medium-high heat; add chicken and marinade and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and heated through. Top rice with chicken; serve with lettuce, tomato, hot sauce, white sauce, and naan, if desired. Makes 6 servings. 

 

There's a Mexican restaurant in town that is fairly close to the apartment I used to live in, and about halfway between that apartment and work, which means I was there quite a bit. (You know, before I decided to branch out and eat at other ... Mexican restaurants.)

My people eat a lot of Mexican food.

It was just the right combination of cheap and trashy, but the margaritas were always on special, the salsa was jammed with cilantro, and the food gave the impression that someone in the kitchen really cared about what s/he was doing.

For a while the restaurant closed, when someone tried to turn the strip mall it's in into residences, but when that venture failed it miraculously returned! Unfortunately it's been a little fancified, replacing some of its lovable cheap trashiness with dimmer lighting and the rumbling cacophony of Other People's Children, and we haven't made it to the new incarnation with the same frequency. When the magic of sticky tables and puckery margarita mix and green carpet–covered floors has passed, it has passed.

Still, even in a town with a Mexican restaurant on nearly every corner (and Birmingham certainly applies as one of those cities), it can sometimes be difficult to find menu items outside of the box of the usual tacos, burritos, and nachos—also known as the holy trinity, amen.

I am not here to undermine the many, many wonderful attributes of tacos and burritos and nachos, but sometimes it is nice to break free of those flavor profiles. And the dish I always ordered at Mexico Lindo was the pollo adobo (which seems to have been renamed the pueblo lunch): "black beans topped with chicken in hot adobo, onions & queso fresco."

At Lindo they serve the dish in a wide, shallow bowl, lined with a flour tortilla to soak up the beans and the smoky broth, and topped with a light sprinkle of cheese and charred green onions.

There are a lot of alterations to that basic idea here—I am, as you can see, not a girl with a talent for light sprinkling where cheese is concerned. That's Monterey Jack, too, because my market didn't have any queso fresco. I also shredded the chicken, as opposed to crisping chunks of it on the flat top, the way it's served in the restaurant version. Because I'd gotten home from work pretty late this day, I picked up a rotisserie chicken and shredded it into the broth, but really any kind of protein you like would work here. (I have a dream that involves chargrilled shrimp.)

There's avocado here because I love it, and the signature grilled onions. I just placed mine in a dry grill pan until they developed some nice marks, the white ends got tender, and the green tips turned crispy.

I would add two chipotle peppers first, simmer, and then taste. If you like things a little smokier/spicier, feel free to add more! I dipped in about a teaspoon of extra adobo sauce at the end for a little kick. You can season as you go, too—I try to keep an eye on my salt intake when I'm cooking for myself, so I seasoned at the end so that I didn't layer too much on as I went. Start with 2 cups of water, and then add if you feel like things start to dry out. I started with 3 and found the results slightly soupier than I'd planned on.

I like to dip the green onions into the sauce and then eat them like Twizzlers, but for leftovers I simply chopped them up and stirred them in. They add just the right hit of mild, grassy crunch for the warm broth, creamy beans, hearty chicken, and smooth avocado.

¡Buen provecho!


Pollo Adobo (Smoky Jalapeño Chicken)

2 cans reduced sodium black beans, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ red onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
1 bay leaf
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, finely chopped
1 teaspoon adobo sauce
2 rotisserie chicken breasts, shredded
1 bunch green onions, trimmed
4 taco-size flour tortillas
Salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
1 avocado, sliced
4 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

1. Place half of beans in a food processor with about ¼ cup water; puree until smooth.

2. Heat oil in a stockpot over medium heat; add onion, and cook 5 minutes or until translucent. Stir in garlic, oregano, and bay leaf; cook 1 minute. Stir in chopped chipotle peppers and adobo sauce; cook 30 seconds. Stir in chicken, coating with sauce. Stir in whole beans, reserved bean purée, and 2 cups water; bring to a boil, cover, and simmer 20 minutes or until slightly thickened. (Stir in additional water if mixture becomes too thick.)
 
3. Meanwhile, heat grill pan over medium heat until hot. Grill green onions, turning occasionally, 8 minutes or until tender. Remove from heat, and set aside.

4. Season chicken mixture with salt and black pepper to taste; stir in additional adobo sauce or chipotle peppers, if desired. Remove bay leaves, and discard.

5. Heat tortillas in a microwave oven on HIGH 10 seconds. Line serving bowls with tortillas, and top with chicken mixture. Top evenly with cheese, avocado slices, and reserved grilled green onions. Makes 4 servings.

 

I had every intention of beginning this post with, "A few months ago, I pinned ... " And then I revisited my Pinterest yum board and realized I pinned this recipe a year ago. Which is just proof that I have no concept of time and good lord where did 2013 go?

When I pinned this recipe a year ago, I commented that it would be a great thing to try for my first attempt at slow cooking, should I ever procure a slow cooker.

And then I did procure a slow cooker, a Christmas gift from my dad and his husband, almost a year ago, and I developed an unhealthy fear of ... cooking things slowly.

Partly I think that's because I am not really familiar with slow cooker recipes, so I didn't know how to recognize a good one when I saw one, partly because I'm generally more a fan of recipes that have lots of fun but easy, therapeutic steps, and partly because I have a healthy fear of burning my house down.

Yes I know that you are statistically pretty unlikely to burn down your house with a Crock Pot, but I've always been a little ahead of the curve, accident-prone-wise.

This past Saturday's forecast called for a rainy half day and lots of people in my life who I count on to entertain me being busy or asleep, so I dragged my wilted Friday afternoon self to the grocery store and prepared for my maiden voyage.

Personally, I appreciated the prep work this dish required, even though I understand why the typical Crock Pot dump-and-cook approach is considered extremely valuable among the slow cooker set. What I enjoyed most about my first slow-cooking experience is that I got to do all of the things I like about being in the kitchen—chopping, whisking, mincing, peeling (well, not peeling so much; my knuckle was not the biggest fan of that part; see above re: accident prone)—but not doing the cooking myself made it feel a little bit like a magic trick. Insert ingredients, abracadabra, and presto! Dinner.

I made some adjustments to the original formula—I forgot the coconut milk, so I substituted what I had on hand, which was heavy cream. (Full disclosure: On my tombstone, it shall read, "Here lies K. She forgot one ingredient.) I also don't have access to quick-cooking tapioca, so I subbed cornstarch as a thickener.

I really liked the tenderness of the chicken and the hint of curry and peanut butter, but after five and a half hours of cooking, some of those the flavors needed a little brightness—the lime stands up beautifully (and only improves as leftovers), but a little sriracha and chopped roasted peanuts give the heat and salt a little boost. For color and life, cilantro comes in super handy.

So big thanks to Love at Home for being my inspiration! I made a big meal with very little effort, and I didn't burn down the house. Just right for a rainy couch-bound day spent testing my mental health by watching too many episodes in a row of The Newsroom.

Enjoy!



Slow Cooker Thai Chicken and Rice

2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1½ cups sliced peeled carrots (about 3 medium)
1 small red bell pepper, thinly sliced
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
¾ cup low-sodium, fat-free chicken broth
3 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
½ teaspoon lime zest
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
3 teaspoons red curry paste
4 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup heavy cream
1 cup frozen peas
Hot cooked jasmine rice
Garnishes: sriracha, chopped roasted peanuts, fresh cilantro leaves 


1. Place first 3 ingredients in a slow cooker; top with chicken. Whisk together chicken broth and next 8 ingredients in a medium bowl until smooth. Pour over chicken and vegetables.

2. Cover slow cooker, and cook on low 5&frac12 hours. Stir in cream and peas; let stand, covered, 5 minutes.

3. Serve chicken mixture over hot cooked rice. Garnish, if desired. Makes 8 servings.

 

Remember those panko-crusted cutlets I made yesterday? There were five of them, and Mama don't waste. (Well, technically Mama does waste, but Mama feels really pretty guilty about it.)

So Chicken week continues!

I really love cabbage for its freshness and crunch and that impression it gives of bearing healthful goodness. I also like that it is really hardy and long-lasting in the refrigerator, which means you can add it to all manner of things—toss sautéed cabbage into egg noodles and serve with Swedish meatballs, tumble it into stir-fries, or make a delicious slaw to top any number of sandwiches, from hot dogs and hamburgers to Reubens and Cubans—even though it comes as a head the size of your ... well, head, which means you'll be eating it in things for a while.

That's where the leftover makeover comes in handy.



The only cure for leftovers, I find, is to turn them into something completely different whenever possible.

Monday's flavors were sort of (sort of) a Southern American homage, so I swung the pendulum all the way around last night and made a stir fry. You may think it is MORE THAN A LITTLE strange to put cole slaw in a stir fry, but it helps to know that I prefer my cole slaw super lightly dressed. It's not as though this ended up being a typical slaw with just a little soy sauce stirred in. (Because that might be weird. Or good. I don't know!)


I did some Internet research on the best way to reheat fried chicken, and the Internet said ... don't. Pretty universally, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that if it's easy to screw up reheating fried chicken, and fried chicken tastes delicious cold, then what would be the point?

Still, I assumed that this cold chicken would be best with cold noodles, and because I wasn't attempting that, I gambled with 20 minutes at 325, and it was just right—heated through and re-crisped on the outside, but not dry on the inside.

I plucked a couple of jalapeños out of the slaw before heating it in the pan, just so they'd retain their crunch and heat. I also stirred in some sriracha to amp up the flavor it might have lost by being, well, leftovers.

Et voilà! A hot, delicious weeknight meal that didn't require another trip to the store, or a stop for convenience food, that didn't taste anything like the previous night's weeknight meal.

Enjoy!


Spicy Cabbage Stir Fry with Panko-crusted Chicken

¼ small head green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced
2 green onions, chopped
3 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
2 teaspoons yellow mustard
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
4 chicken cutlets or chicken breast fillets
All-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
Panko
1 cup jasmine rice
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons dried ginger or minced fresh ginger
¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
Sriracha, to taste
Garnish: chopped green onions

1. Combine first 3 ingredients in a small bowl. Whisk together mayonnaise and next 4 ingredients; add to cabbage mixture, and stir to combine. Chill until ready to serve.

2. Heat butter and 2 tablespoons oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat until butter melts. Meanwhile, sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper to taste. Dredge chicken in flour; dip in egg, and dredge in panko. Cook chicken in butter mixture 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove to paper towels to drain.

3. Bring 2 cups water to a boil in a saucepan; stir in rice. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 20 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat; add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, 1 minute or until fragrant. Stir in cole slaw, and cook until cabbage is tender.

5. Combine soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, and sriracha in a small bowl. Stir cooked rice into cabbage mixture until rice is dry and toasted; stir in soy sauce mixture.

6. Top stir fry with chicken, and garnish, if desired. Makes 4 servings.


 

Sometimes I think my brain is a little like a front-load washing machine—thoughts just kind of tumble around in there, and I never know which one is going to slam into the door like a red sock.

Which is to say that this was inspired by a lot of little things, something of a stream-of-consciousness dinner-planning process. (Scattered and nonsensical! Who, me?)

I don't cook with meat all that much on the Woodside, mostly because it's hard to use it all up before it goes bad if you're a party of one, and I have unhealthy levels of freezer fear. But occasionally I do have a craving, and I like to indulge it when there's something I know I really want. (In this case, chicken; the package I found at the store had five pieces in it, so look for this to be the week o' the bird.) I cooked it my favorite way, which is to say cutlets crusted in panko and pan-fried, a procedure I return to a lot because I find it to be foolproof.

And SPEAKING OF foolproof, I landed on making biscuits because I am a terrible baker and I know that I need practice/confidence, and I found this recipe over at Tracey's Culinary Adventure, and her biscuits are beautiful. Seriously, go look at them. I'll wait. (It's important to the narrative.)

Anything strike you as unusual, when you compare her biscuits to mine?

Yeah, I don't know what happened. I did follow the recipe to the letter, although when my biscuits neither rose nor browned, I thought maybe I'd just leave them in the oven a little longer.

Which was a mistake when I subsequently forgot they were in there and murdered them.

BUT these were a fail for me before I baked them into little hockey pucks, which returns me to my earlier assertion that I am just really very bad at baking.

Still, I live alone and I'm not made of money, so I shrugged off their density and dryness and soldiered on, with a green slaw (cabbage + green onion + jalapeños) and a nice, ripe tomato slice in honor of the shoulder season for Alabama tomatoes.

The slaw was delicious; I chopped up a second chicken breast and another tomato slice and stirred into the cabbage mixture for an at-work lunch today.


And this morning, before work, I layered a biscuit with Cheddar and tomato and fried egg and sopped up the yolk with the butter bomb and took a slightly strange-looking photo in the slightly strange-looking light of the Woodside kitchen. If you are a better baker than I (and you are, trust), give this one a go, and maybe tell me where you think I went wrong.

Enjoy!


Buttermilk Biscuit Chicken Sliders with Green Slaw

¼ small head green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced
2 green onions, chopped
3 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
2 teaspoons yellow mustard
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
9 oz (about 2 cups) all-purpose flour
2½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
¾ cup cold buttermilk
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
5 chicken cutlets or chicken breast fillets
All-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
Panko
1 tomato, sliced

1. Combine first 3 ingredients in a small bowl. Whisk together mayonnaise and next 4 ingredients; add to cabbage mixture, and stir to combine. Chill until ready to serve. 

2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add butter cubes, and use a pastry cutter (or your fingertips) to cut in the butter until the pieces are no bigger than peas. (The mixture should resemble coarse meal.) Place bowl in refrigerator; chill 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, whisk together the buttermilk and honey in a measuring cup. Add to flour mixture, and stir gently just until  dry ingredients are moistened.

5. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead gently 3 to 4 times to bring it together. (The dough may still be a little crumbly.) Roll dough into a 9- x 5-inch rectangle about ½ inch thick. Fold dough into thirds like a business letter. Roll dough again into a 9- x 5-inch rectangle about ½ inch thick, and again fold it into thirds like a letter. Roll dough out a third time to ¾ inch thick. Using a 1¾-inch round cutter, cut biscuits from dough, and place about 1 inch apart on prepared baking sheet.

6. Bake 11 to 12 minutes, or until biscuits rise and tops are golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

7. Heat butter and oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat until butter melts. Meanwhile, sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper to taste. Dredge chicken in flour; dip in egg, and dredge in panko. Cook chicken in butter mixture 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove to paper towels to drain.

8. Cut chicken cutlets in half crosswise. Slice biscuits in half horizontally, and layer with chicken, slaw, and tomato slices. Makes 6 to 8 servings. 

 

It's a brilliantly cool August Saturday in Alabama (what?), and I'm sitting on the couch watching Ina make grilled cheese sandwiches. "I've got just a very simple Pullman loaf ... Good bakery loaf—not, like, the stuff from the grocery store."

She's the most cheerful snob I know.

I have always loved my neighborhood Winn-Dixie grocery store, thank you very much, but I have to admit that when it underwent a floor-to-ceiling overhaul about a year ago, I wasn't terribly thrilled. I didn't want to lose the great Asian food stocks, my treasured self-checkout lanes (no human interaction! my favorite!), and my beloved solitude (a theme develops). I was quite often, at any time of day, absolutely the only person in there, which may tell you a little something about why the powers that be at the W-D decided the place needed a spruce-up in the first place. Everyone was flocking to Publix, that vast wasteland of crowded produce sections and employees too intensely fascinated with WHAT ARE YOU MAKING WITH THIS?, and that was A-OK by me. More quiet browsing for me around the corner. The Winn-Dixie aisles became my hallowed library halls.

But when the store decided it just had to bring itself into this decade, I was nervous. Our relationship was going so well; why did things have to change??

Like any good stubborn person, I found that the results were just (SNIFF!) as I expected. The parking lot began to fill, nobody ever stocked the fish sauce, and why in the world was the bread aisle now frozen-section-adjacent?

But over time, I've come around. (And it only took a year! Who's flexible and easygoing?) For one thing, the self-checkout remains, so I didn't have to entertain a deal breaker. For another, I've recently discovered the benefits of having access to an honest-to-god bakery. (Yes, Ina, in my grocery store.)

If there's one thing you should know about me, besides that I can write six or seven paragraphs in praise of supermarkets, it's that I am not a person who should keep bread in the house. If I have bread, and I have cheese, and (god forbid) I have mayonnaise, things can go pretty chubby pretty fast.

My people are from the Midwest. Bread and cheese run through my veins. (Probably literally.)

But the terrific thing about the Winn-Dixie having a bakery is that I can purchase only the amount of bread a normal person should eat in one sitting at a time. This here is a Portuguese roll, and it cost (no lie) 39 cents.

It's been a little light on the meat around the Woodside here lately, which is just fine with me—eating vegetarian, even sort of accidentally, is healthy and cheap, and I am just not a person who misses the meat when there are beans and eggs and cheese to be had.

But every once in a while I do hear my body say BIG DOSE OF PROTEIN, PLEASE and it's insistent that tofu or quinoa is not the proper vehicle. In this case I used ground chicken, mostly because I wanted that cooked-through texture. I really wanted to bite into something meaty. The tomato is a little bit of an affront to the state of Alabama, but I may have chosen it too hastily. It was certainly not the valedictorian of the 2013 summer semester.

The whole shebang, though, is mostly about that chunky avocado-tomatillo sauce. It soaks into the toasty bread (please please toast the bread next to the burger as it finishes) and makes an ordinary weeknight chicken burger something to look forward to.

I got off work the night I made this at 7:45 and spent a happy little decompressing half hour or so in the kitchen putting this together—there's no rocket science here, just a lovely sandwich dinner that will help you forget you worked until 7:45.

The citrus in the sauce is the wild card here—you want the avocado and cilantro to give it good balance, so it's good to get a nice, big, ripe avocado and add the lime juice a bit at a time, tasting until it's as tangy as you like—tomatillos can be unpredictable. I like it on the creamier side, so if your avocado isn't pulling its weight you can stir in a glug of sour cream or (ahem) ranch dressing. (I won't tell.)

Enjoy!


Chicken Burgers with Avocado-Tomatillo Sauce

1 pound ground chicken
1 teaspoon garlic salt
¾ teaspoon black pepper
4 Portuguese rolls, kaiser rolls, or hamburger buns, halved
4 tomato slices
4 red onion slices
Avocado-Tomatillo Sauce (recipe below)

1. Combine chicken, garlic salt, and black pepper in a medium bowl. Divide mixture into four equal portions, and form into thin patties.

2. Cook chicken patties in a greased grill pan over medium heat 6 to 8 minutes on each side or until completely cooked through. During last minute of cooking, place rolls, cut sides down, on grill pan to toast.

3. Top toasted rolls with tomato slices, onion slices, and Avocado-Tomatillo Sauce. Makes 4 servings.

Avocado-Tomatillo Sauce

5 medium tomatillos, husks removed and scrubbed
¼ small red onion, chopped
1 garlic clove
1 jalapeño, seeded and chopped
½ cup fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 large avocado, chopped
¾ teaspoon kosher salt

1. Chop tomatillos, and place in a food processor. Add red onion and next 4 ingredients; pulse until coarsely chopped.

2. Add avocado and salt; pulse until smooth. Makes 1½ cups.

 

There's no question in my mind that if I had limitless funds, energy, and time, I would blog every single day.

True confession time? Cooking burgers makes me nervous.

My darlings, I'm ever so sorry for the unintentional hiatus I inadvertently went on—I can't think what has been going on that would distract me from blogging ...

This one might seem a little insane (but I swear I'm not the first to try it; it's not an original idea!): the chicken tikka masala burrito.

OK, universe, I hear ya! It is not asparagus season any longer.

I am many things when I am in the kitchen: I am busy, I am focused, I am thrilled and open and curious and excited. The one thing I am not is calm. 

Or very good at estimating volume.

They're predicting my fair city to get somewhere between 3 and 4 inches of rain over the next couple of days, which makes this afternoon—with noisy drops falling on my windows and skies sagging and gloomy enough to belie the still-warm temperatures outside—a lovely time to revisit this happy bowl of heat.

What you see before you is slightly odd, which I know is not what you've come to expect on the Woodside. 

Ahem.

Once upon a time I wrote a lovely, sincerely self-deprecating post about my frustration with my photography lately and my ambivalence about (but commitment to!) my unfailingly arbitrary November Challenge. And then Blogger went and deleted it. Profanity after the jump.

Last night's dinner was mostly an exercise in focused distraction, so I don't think we'll be winning any food photography awards here. Also, I'm suddenly concerned that my oven rests on a steep decline—what's with all the tomato migration?

So, I know they're called "Yukon golds," but is that not the yellowest potato you've ever seen? 

That hasn't the slightest to do with any pats of butter in there, nuh uh no sir.

I'm trying to get on a schedule of posting at night, so I know this comes dangerously close to spammy blogging. Ergo, I shall keep this one short. Or as short as a chronically verbose person can be.