Chicken Piccata

One of my favorite dishes from my youth.  My mother didn't, nor did anyone else in my family, cook anything piccata but one of the jobs I had for a couple years in high school was as a waiter and they had veal piccata on the menu.  I used to get it quite regularly and as I've gotten older I've done fish piccata every so often when I get the craving for that butter fat, lemon, white wine tanginess.

The dish is pretty simple and versatile so, as I stated before, you can use pork, veal, chicken, or fish for this recipe as piccata refers to a style of preparation as opposed to a specific protein or sauce.  Pounded, breaded, fried, and served in sauce.  I generally use snapper or sole when I do fish and have done pounded out pork tenderloin steaks as well so mix it up if you like.

And to accompany this delicious dish I went with a classic song from a classic punk group who I'm shocked to say, has not yet been featured in a recipe of ours.  These guys are also a flashback from my youth because it was my high school days when I first heard Agnostic Front and it may very well have been this song, "Gotta Go".  I know it was one of the first that I'd heard from them so it's fitting that I go all the way back to sophomore or junior year. - justin

CHICKEN PICCATA
Time: 40 minutes
Difficulty: medium
Servings: 3-4

• 3-4 chicken thighs, deboned, skin removed, cut in half
• 1cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup panko bread crumbs
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp butter divided into 2 tbsp halves
• 1 cup onions, minced
• 2 tbsp capers
• 1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
• 1/2 cup white wine

Preheat oven to 350.

Pat your thighs dry with some paper towels.  Toss your flour and panko in a gallon zip lock bag, along with some salt & pepper to season it up.  Beat your egg and water together to make a little egg wash.  Dredge your half thighs in the egg wash and toss inthe flour and bread crumbs to coat.  Set aside until all are done.  allow them to sit while you heat a large skillet to medium high heat and add your olive oil and 2 tbsp of the butter.

Brown the chicken on both sides until the breading starts to crisp up.  Place the thighs on a sheet pan in the oven for 10 minutes to finish them up.

While the chicken is in the oven, toss the onions in the skillet with all the drippings from the chicken.  After 5 minutes or so, when the onions should be translucent, add the lemon juice, the white wine, and the capers.  Simmer for about five minutes and when the chicken is done add the last 2 tbsp of butter to the sauce and stir it in as it melts.  When the butter is all incorporated, serve the chicken and drizzle the sauce all over the servings.

Chicken Pot Pie Soup

I like my creamy soups real thick... like a gravy!  Justin, however, prefers his a bit thinner, and that's how we usually make them.  This time around, I decided I was in the mood for a thick-ass soup.  Really, this could simply be used as a chicken pot pie filling if you wanted, because that's pretty much what it is.  Ohhhh... but it was so good!  I think I need to heat up some leftovers while I type this up.

You'll note that I used frozen peas & carrots in the recipe, when everything else is fresh.  I purposefully did this simply because the frozen peas and carrots ALWAYS make me think about pot pies... that 1950s retro thing, I dunno.  I also wanted to be really productive and bake some pie crust to sprinkle on top, but I got lazy (and intoxicated) and went with crumbled crackers instead.   And lastly, it seemed like a pain to write this in the recipe, but it calls for 1 cup + 2 tbsp butter.  Well, I actually used the chicken fat from baking chicken for those last 2 tablespoons instead of butter, to help lend a little extra chicken awesomeness to it.

NOFX's "Mattersville" came to mind as I was thinking of how homey this soup was.  I haven't thought about this song in a little while, it makes me laugh.   -jen

CHICKEN POT PIE SOUP
Time:  45 minutes
Difficulty:  Medium
Yields:  About 12 cups

Bonus pic!  Deformed bell pepper with alien pods bursting
open inside of it!

• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 large orange bell pepper, minced (about 1 cup)
• 1 medium yellow onion, minced (about 2 cups)
• 3 stalks celery, finely diced (about 1 cup)
• 8 oz package of mushrooms, diced
• 1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 cup frozen peas & carrots mixed
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
• 2 teaspoons rubbed sage
• 1 teaspoon savory (it's an herb, for those of you not familiar - it's optional)
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons flour
• 4 cups whole milk
• 4 cups chicken broth (homemade preferable for super chicken flavour!)
• 2 cups cooked chicken, cubed
• Add salt to taste (some broths are saltier than others)

In a large stockpot, melt butter over medium-high heat.  Add bell pepper, onion, celery, mushrooms, garlic, peas & carrots.  Cook until tender (about 10 minutes with that many veggies).  Add thyme, sage, savory, paprika, white pepper, cayenne pepper and lemon juice.  Stir in flour, coating all the veggies, and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes.  (It will be paste-like.)  Add the milk and broth all at once and whisk until the roux (flour/butter paste) is fully broken down and there are no flour lumps.  Continue stirring until the soup just begins to boil, then turn heat to low and add chicken.  Taste soup at this point and add more salt if necessary.  Remove from heat and serve with crumbled crackers on top.

Blackened Chicken Alfredo

So this is an older recipe from five or six years back that we decided to resurrect and revitalize.  My brother, Drew, always raved about this one since it's creamy, cheesy, pasta goodness with some awesomely spiced chicken so this remake is for him.  I used some penne that I had around the house but you could use some fettuccine or whatever you prefer.  Also, the mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes are optional and can be added in quantities to your liking or not at all if that's what you prefer.

For musical accompaniment, The Vandals with Urban Struggle.  Cause it's the Vandals, that's why. - justin

BLACKENED CHICKEN ALFREDO
Prep time: 20min
Cook time: 25 min
Difficulty: Medium
Serves: 4-6

•  Enough water to boil 1 lb of noodles
• 1lb of noodles
• 1 lb boneless skinless chicken cut into 1 inch cubes or thin strips
• 1 tbs blackened seasoning
• 4 tbsp butter
• 1 cup chopped mushrooms
• 1 cup diced yellow or white onion
• 1/4 cup diced sun-dried tomatoes 
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 cup white wine (I used a pino grigio)
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 tsp grated lemon zest
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 2 tsp Kosher salt
• 2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 cup shaved or shredded Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 chopped green onions

Toss the chicken and the blackened seasoning together in a gallon ziplock and set in the fridge.  This can actually be done as early as the day before cooking if you really want to get those flavors in there.

Salt your pasta water generously and bring it to a rolling boil and add your pasta of choice.  Bring it back up to a boil and drop it to a low boil for 10 min, or until al dente.  Drain and set aside.

When you drop the noodles in the water, bring a cast iron pan up to heat over a medium burner and add 2 tbsp of the butter and let it melt.  Add your chicken that had been sitting in the blackened seasoning and let it blacken.  The milk solids in the butter, along with the spices in the seasoning, will turn dark and blacken as the chicken cooks.  Try not to move it around too much before the surface touching the skillet has time to caramelize a bit.  If it doesn't blacken completely, don't fret.  You're going to smother it in alfredo later anyway and it's going to taste awesome so no worries.

When your chicken has cooked, remove and set aside.  Return the pan to the heat and add the mushrooms, onions, and sun-dried tomatoes.  Saute for 3 minutes or until onions become translucent.  Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute more.  Add the wine, lemon juice, and lemon zest and simmer for 5 minutes, using a spatula or wooden spoon to scrape up all the brown bits from the bottom of the skillet.  Add the chicken that was set aside, the heavy cream, kosher salt, and ground black pepper and bring the heat up till the cream is at a low boil.  Allow it to reduce by 1/3.

After the cream sauce has reduced and thickened, kill the heat, stir in the butter, Parmesan and the pasta.  Mix well and allow the pasta to absorb some of that sauce.  Serve it up with the chopped green onions served on top and with a couple of slices of the sun dried tomato if you like!

Peanut Butter & Pecan Cheesecake Bars

This is the only new recipe I made for Thanksgiving this year.  It was a weird, rare holiday for us... we stayed home and just had dinner for two.  Usually we spend it with family, or we host it at our house for friends.   But we were invited to dessert and partyin' at a friend's house afterwards, so we told her we'd bring dessert.  I was inclined to make something pumpkin-based, but she said her roommate was making a pumpkin dessert.  So in a panic, I looked through my pantry and decided to go with peanut butter, pecans and cream cheese because that's what I had.  Admittedly, I got a little inspiration from a well-known indulgent southern cook... but I changed up her boring recipe, and it came out awesome.  (Plus, her cooking times were jacked up and anyone who would have used her recipe would have been eating her "cookies" with a spoon.)  Mine is like a peanut butter cup crossed with cheesecake.  WAY easy, too!

I'm not sure why, but I decided to go with some Gimmes for this recipe.  Peanut butter is always "fun" for me, and so are the Gimmes.  It was so hard to choose which song I wanted to use!  But what says peanut butter more than sailing?  Duh.  Me First and the Gimme Gimmes playing their live cover of "Sloop John B".  -jen

 

PEANUT BUTTER & PECAN CHEESECAKE BARS
Prep Time:  20-25 minutes
Cook Time: 40-45 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Serves: 12-15 

Crust:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup pecans, chopped
• 1/2 cup butter, melted (1 stick)

 Filling:

• 2 packages (8oz each) cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup peanut butter (chunky or creamy) 
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Prepare a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.  In a medium bowl, combine all of the crust ingredients.  Press dough into the pan, making sure it covers the entire bottom evenly and goes up the sides just a little.  Bake for 15 minutes until lightly browned and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla, beating until smooth with an electric mixer.  Incorporate eggs one at a time.  Fold in by hand 1 cup pecans and chocolate chips and spoon over partially baked crust, smoothing it out until it's even.  Bake for 40-45 minutes until edges begin to brown and the center doesn't look wet and jiggly.  Let cool completely before cutting and serving.

Ha!  I tried to make it fancy... but it looks pretty globby.  I'm still working on the pictures, man!  I only have a point-and-click camera and some shitty kitchen lighting!

Creamy Roasted Garlic Soup

We love garlic in our house even more than we love bacon.  Massive quantities of garlic go into just about everything we cook.  I've been meaning to make some more soup recently because we had several containers of vegetable broth in the freezer as well as bags full of frozen veggies to make more stock, so I knew I had to use some up.  Roasted garlic soup is something neither of us had tried, but we've seen it on a few cooking shows and wanted to try it!  Lots of the recipes I saw online were for a completely smooth, creamy soup, but I wanted a little bit of chunky vegetable bite in mine.  Man, this soup came out great... we'll be making this one again soon, no doubt!

If you're not real familiar with the qualities of roasted garlic, I think it's important to explain that as the garlic roasts, it loses it's sharp, pungent taste and becomes much more mild and sweet.  So if you're not as into garlic as we are, don't let the 4+ heads of garlic in this recipe scare you away!  It's really got a pleasant, smooth flavour to it.

Thought I'd go with some F-Minus for this recipe... we'd just finished watching the movie/documentary "Give 'Em the Boot" again the other night, and I was thinking how I don't have many female singers posted on the blog here.  So F-Minus, performing "Light At the End".  -jen






CREAMY ROASTED GARLIC SOUP

Prep Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Cook Time:  45 minutes
Difficulty:  Easy
Serves:  4-6 

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 3/4 cup finely diced onion (or 1 small onion)
• 3/4 cup finely diced red bell pepper (or 1 small pepper)
• 3/4 cup finely diced carrot (about 2 medium carrots)
• 1 and 3/4 cup finely diced Yukon Gold potato (or 1 medium potato)
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 3 tablespoons flour (or 1/4 cup for a thicker soup)
• 1 quart vegetable or chicken broth
• 4 bulbs of roasted garlic (see roasting instructions below, takes an hour to roast)
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon sherry
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 cup heavy cream
• black pepper to taste
• shredded Parmesan cheese and lemon wedges for serving

To Roast Garlic:  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Chop the tops of the garlic heads off.  Peel away the outer skins (leaving the clove skins in tact).  Place on aluminum foil.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper.  Fold foil up around garlic heads and seal.  Place foil packet in oven, directly on rack, and bake for 1 hour.  Remove from oven, carefully open foil, and allow to cool.  To remove garlic from the garlic paper, just squeeze the whole head and the garlic will deliciously ooze out... just be careful not to mix any of the garlic paper in.
** For this soup recipe, I took about 1/2 a cup of the broth and the roasted garlic and blended it until smooth.  I highly suggest doing this.

In a stock pot, heat butter over medium-high heat.  Add diced onion, bell pepper, carrot, potato and minced garlic.  Cook until onion and pepper are tender, 5-7 minutes.  Stir in flour to coat vegetables and cook another 3-5 minutes.  Add stock and roasted garlic all at once and whisk so that the flour doesn't clump.  Add Worcestershire, sherry and thyme.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 25 minutes.  Stir in cream and let simmer an additional 10 minutes.

To serve, place Parmesan cheese in bottom of bowl, ladle soup over the cheese, and squeeze the juice of 1-2 lemons into soup.

Red Kuri Squash-Leek Soup

We should have carved our traditional pumpkins last night because it was Halloween, but instead, I ended up carving up a Red Kuri squash.  Actually, I didn't carve it up, because I couldn't get my damn knife through the thing!  So I had to wait for Justin to get home from work to cut it for me.  There was intoxication involved and I figured I should give up while I was ahead and still had all my fingers.  Those suckers are thick (the squash, not my fingers... or maybe my fingers too)!

Thoughts on Red Kuri squash: my favourite squash we've tried so far!  I had to taste it after roasting it for the soup, and with just some olive oil, salt and pepper, it had this rich, delicious, buttery flavour.  Not as sweet as some squash is, and I knew it was going to be perfect in soup. 

Exploring different types of squash this fall has been a lot of fun, and this Red Kuri's been sitting on our table, waiting to be used.  Squash-leek soup sounded great, but I didn't really want the thickness of traditional squash soup, I wanted a thinner, brothy soup.  I just happened to have the other veggies in the fridge and they needed to get used up, but they were a really great addition, I liked having something to chew instead of a smooth soup and I would definitely recommend them (though you could easily leave them out if you chose).  If you're looking for a thicker soup, you could very easily just cut the chicken broth back by half (or more, depending on the consistency you're looking for).  The soup was quick and basic, but perfect for the cold, wet night we had.  I wanted it to have just a little heat in it, so I used some white pepper and cayenne pepper, but if you're not into heat, you can leave them out.

I've been on an Against Me! kick for the last two weeks, and I had several of their albums thrown on my playlist on repeat while making this... so it was a no brainer for music!  This is one of mine and Justin's all-time favourites, "What We Worked For".  -jen

RED KURI SQUASH-LEEK SOUP
Prep Time:  1 hr, 15 minutes
Cook Time:  5-10 minutes

Difficulty:  Medium

• 1 Red Kuri squash
• olive oil
• salt & black pepper
• 8-oz crimini mushrooms, diced
• 1 orange bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup very small broccoli florets
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 3 large leeks, greens removed and whites diced
• 2 quarts chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you prefer)
• 1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Quarter the squash and remove seeds and membrane.  Rub enough olive oil over the exposed flesh to coat, and then generously salt and pepper them.  Bake at 425 degrees for one hour.  Set aside.  Remove skin when squash has cooled enough to handle.

In a stock pot, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat.  Add mushrooms, bell pepper, broccoli and minced garlic.  Saute until softened, 5-7 minutes.  Remove from pan and set aside.

Heat 2 more tablespoons of olive oil in same stock pot, over medium-high heat.  Add leeks and saute until tender, 10-12 minutes.  Puree leeks, squash and broth together.  (If you have an immersion blender, you can add squash and broth to pot and blend.  If not, remove leeks from pan and place in a blender with the squash and enough broth to puree, then pour back into stock pot with any remaining broth.)  Add the sauteed mushrooms, pepper and broccoli.  Stir in sage, white pepper and cayenne pepper.  Heat to serve.

Seasoned Pumpkin Seeds

This is a recipe I came up with a few years ago and I think it's time to whip it out for the blog!  We always had roasted pumpkin seeds after carving Jack-O-Lanterns when I was growing up, but they were only salted and I never dug them all that much.  A few years of toying with seasonings and this is what resulted... now we roast them every year!  Sometimes we even go back for more pumpkins, just for the seeds!  And we've got our pumpkins picked out, ready to carve next weekend... so we'll be making these again to munch on.

Went with "Code Blue" by TSOL... it seemed like it was in the spirit of Halloween (or necrophilia, whichever).  -jen

SEASONED PUMPKIN SEEDS
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hr 20 minutes
Difficulty:  Easy

• seeds of 4 pumpkins (about 3 cups)
• heaping tablespoon of garlic powder
• heaping tablespoon of onion powder
• heaping tablespoon of bacon salt (or seasoning salt)
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon coriander
• 1 tablespoon Caldo de Pollo (or powdered chicken bullion)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• couple dashes of cayenne pepper
• couple dashes of black pepper
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 2-3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.

Combine all dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl until well combined.

Rinse pumpkins seeds to get all the pumpkin guts off.  Spread out onto paper towels and pat dry.  Pour dried seeds into a large mixing bowl.  Pour melted butter and Worcestershire over seeds and mix.  Sprinkle about 1/2 of the seasoning onto the buttered seeds and mix... then add more seasoning if desired - some people like them slightly seasoned, some like them heavily seasoned.  (I used about 3/4 of the mix and saved the rest to season some meat for tacos).

Spread the seasoned seeds out in a single layer on a cookie sheet and roast for 1 hour and 20 minutes, stirring the seeds up every 15-20 minutes.