Jasmine Chicken

You've got to eat something in December besides the Christmas feast right? I made this incredibly easy dish a few nights ago and the munchkins loved it. We had some friends over and they brought their very daring daughter with them. When she saw Trip dousing his food in Tabasco, she thought she should try Tabasco too. Her daddy put one tiny little drop on a bite of rice and her little face started turning red at her chin and the red went all the way up to her hair line! It was too cute! And I was glad that someone else at the table reacts the same way I do to Tabasco.

Incidentally, the name "Jasmine Chicken" has little to do with the dish. I stole this recipe from a girl at work. I'm a bit of an ass occasionally and I had a horrible time remembering her name. We started talking about our kids and how much her girls loved the movie Aladdin, and especially Jasmine, and my coworker became Jasmine.

Anyway, on to the recipe!

Ingredients:

2-4 chicken breasts, cut up into bite sized pieces (or whatever piece of chicken you have on hand)
1 can of peaches in heavy syrup
1 16 oz bottle of barbecue sauce
1 Tbsp chipotle chile powder

Heat the oven to 350F.

Put the chicken and peaches into a 9x13 dish.

Put the barbecue sauce into a bowl. Add in the chipotle powder and mix well. Pour the barbecue and chipotle sauce over the chicken.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Serve over rice.

And now, I have saved you from an assured 3 week starvation. Enjoy!

Stir Fried Beef

It's been forever since I posted a recipe and I thought I'd share one of my favorites. This recipe is very versatile and I usually chose the ingredients based on what looks good in the produce section. The most important tip I can share is that you DEFINITELY need to have everything chopped, sliced, and diced before you even think about turning on the stove. Ok, not diced. I never dice anything. You really want larger pieces in this dish.

And, thanks to the stats option of blogger, I just found out that someone from Russia has been visited my blog. How awesome is that?

Absolutely necessary ingredients:

2-3 Tbsp Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced (or a good spoonful from your jar of minced garlic)
1/2 lb steak or chicken, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 Tbsp garlic powder
2-4 Tbsp ginger powder (Yes, TABLESPOONS)
1/2 cup soy sauce, plus more to taste

Optional ingredients, but chose at least 3

1/2 head of cabbage, cut into 1 inch squares
1 bag of broccoli florets (Don't hate me. Buy the whole thing and chop it if you want.)
1-2 zucchini, cut in half longways and sliced (depending on size)
1-2 yellow squash, cut in half longways and sliced
1 pkg button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 lb green beans, trimmed


Heat your wok over medium heat. Get your wok hot before you ever put the olive oil in it. The instruction manual on your wok says to do this. Trust me. Pour in the olive oil. You want about 1/8 inch of olive oil in the bottom of the wok. Toss in the garlic and let it cook for about 30 seconds. Add in the steak or chicken. Add in the granulated garlic and the ginger powder. Stir the meat mixture to get it cooked on all sides, 3-5 minutes. Take the steak or chicken out of the wok and put it in a bowl. Add in the cabbage and/or broccoli. Stir to coat it with the spices still in the wok. Put the meat or chicken on top of the cabbage and/or broccoli. Pour in the soy sauce. If you're using cabbage, add in about 1/2 cup of water. Let this cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionlly. Once the cabbage and/or broccoli is softened, add in any of the other vegetables. Stir to combine. Add in more soy sauce, if needed. Let the whole mixture cook for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

If you're using steak, you don't need to add in any other sauces.

If you're using chicken, the dish is better with some kind of sauce. My favorite is peanut sauce. We also like plum sauce.

Enjoy!

Green Enchiladas!

These are the heavenly vegetables that make up one of the most delicious dishes I know how to make. I will be eternally grateful to my friend, Jeni, for teaching me how to make Green Enchiladas. I usually make these once every year, in the spring, and I always think of Jeni when I do.



Queso Fresco and Crema are the very necessary toppings. They can usually be found in the refrigerated cheese section of a grocery store.




Let the drooling commence!




I just wanted to add in a picture of my munchkin eating lettuce. Not many little munchkins eat like he does. Not many adults eat the way he does. He will eat almost anything!

On to the recipe!

Enchiladas Verdes or Green Enchiladas.

3 cooked chicken breasts (boiled, broiled, baked, pre-cooked from the deli, cooked any way you like)
2.5 - 3 lbs tomatillos
2 (or more) serrano peppers
2-3 garlic cloves
1 bunch of cilantro
1/4-1/2 tsp salt
30 corn tortillos
olive oil

Toppings:
1 chopped white onion
Queso Fresco
Lettuce, cut into strips
Crema

Shred the chicken in a food processor. Set aside.

Remove the papery husks from the tomatillos and rinse thoroughly. The tomatillos do not need to be hulled. Put the tomatillos, serrano peppers, and garlic in a dutch oven and fill with enough water to cover the tomatillos by about 2 inches. Heat over high heat, boiling about 10 minutes. The tomatillos will turn a less vibrant green and soften. Don't let the tomatillos boil so long they burst and fall apart.

Rinse the cilantro. Cut off most of the leaves and a small part of the stems and put them in a blender. Put the cooked tomatillos, garlic, and serrano peppers in the blender as well. Reserve the cooking water. Grind the mixture, taking care not to turn it into mush. You want a few small chunks of tomatillos left.

If your name is Amanda, let the plastic lid fall into the blender and grind the whole mixture a few more times. Realize what you've done. Throw out the whole thing because there are now chips of clear plastic hiding in your beautiful tomatillo salsa. Go to the grocery store and get more tomatillos, cilantro, and serrano peppers. Make the tomatillo salsa again. Decide while the vegetables are boiling that you need a glass of wine. Taste every open bottle in your refrigerator. Gag as you get a mouthful of vinegar with each taste. Open a new bottle of wine and pour a very large glass of wine for yourself.

Add about a cup of the tomatillo salsa into the reserved shredded chicken and stir to incorporate. It should be the consistency of a dry chicken salad.

Get out 2 pans and 2-3 baking dishes. Turn on the oven to 350 degrees F. In the first pan, heat 1/4-1/2 cup olive oil over medium heat. In the second pan, heat about 1/2 cup of the tomatillo salsa and thin it with about 1/4 cup of the reserved cooking water or chicken broth. Spread a thin layer of the tomatillo salsa in the first baking dish. (I used 13x9 baking dishes.) Now is the time to put munchkins who are old enough to be trusted in the kitchen to work, using an assembly line approach. Put a corn tortilla in the olive oil and then flip it over to coat both sides of the tortilla, then let it fry on one side for about 30 seconds. The olive oil will bubble around the edges and then the tortilla will bubble up in spots. (There is no need to fry the torilla on the other side.) Transfer the tortilla (with tongs!) to the next pan with the thinned tomatillo salsa. Transfer the tortilla to the baking dish. Fill the tortilla with about 1/4 cup of the chicken/salsa and roll into an enchilada. The tortilla will be very hot at this point. Be careful not to burn your fingers. Repeat until the chicken is all used.

Sprinkle the baking pans of enchiladas with some chopped white onion and 1-2 Tbsp of the Queso fresco. Bake the enchiladas for 15 minutes at 350 F. This is really just to warm the enchiladas through.

To serve, put desired number of enchiladas on a plate and top with the lettuce of your choice (I used green leaf lettuce), chopped onion, queso fresco, and crema, all to taste.

Garlic Chicken

When I married Ed, I knew nothing about cooking. Absolutely NOTHING!! The very first thing I cooked well was a chicken breast recipe I got from the internet. I may have cooked this dish three nights a week for the first couple of years that Ed and I were married. Ed may have insisted that I never cook ths dish again, for the rest of his life. But Ed is rehearsing for a play in our community theater right now, and our munchkins have given me no such proclamation. So, I can cook one of my old favorites! It's super easy and always yummy!

The lineup:

4 chicken breasts, trimmed of skin and fat
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup parmesan cheese (like Kraft)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves

Preheat your oven to 425F.

Mince the garlic and put it in a bowl with the olive oil. Microwave the olive oil/garlic mixture for 30 seconds. In a second bowl, combine the bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Plain bread crumbs in a jar will work just fine.

Dip the chicken in the olive oil coating both sides. Then dredge the chicken breasts through the bread crumb mixture, coating both sides of the chicken well. Place the chicken breasts in a glass dish and bake for 35 minutes.

This dish is easily multiplied or divided. And munchkins love this because it's basically chicken nuggets in a bigger form. Enjoy!

Chicken Sahara

I was clueless in the kitchen when I married my husband. The first dish I tackled was chicken. I called my mother to ask her how long to cook the chicken. She gave me the time and temperature for roasting a whole chicken. I smothered those poor chicken breasts in the gray gelatinous blob that is cream of mushroom soup. The logic behind the cream of blob soup was based on my mother-in-law telling me that if you covered meat in a sauce, it won't dry out. My in-laws came over for this momentous occasion. A full hour later, I pulled the shriveled chicken breasts out of the oven and found dried-up bags of sand. It was awful. My father-in-law promptly named the dish "Chicken Sahara" and every time since then that I've cooked chicken, it has jokingly been called Chicken Sahara.

After lots of practicing and reading lots of cookbooks, I finally learned how to cook a few things. Roasted chicken is a wonderfully simple dish once you know a few basic things about it. This is my go-to recipe for chicken breasts that will be used in another dish, such as a salad. When serving chicken breasts as the main course, I prefer more a more flavorful dish.

Ingredients

Chicken breasts
Olive oil
Lawry's salt and black pepper or
Mrs. Dash seasoning or
spices of your choice

For however many chicken breasts you are going to cook, the basic instructions are the same. Preheat the oven to 425. Trim the fat and skin off of the chicken breasts. Drizzle about 1 teaspoon of olive oil in the baking dish for each chicken breast. Season the chicken breasts with Lawry's salt and black pepper, or with Mrs. Dash, or lemon pepper, or whatever in your pantry looks appealing. Season the chicken on both sides and then place in the baking dish over a teaspoon of olive oil. Put it in the oven and bake for 35 minutes. Turn on the oven light and look through the oven door after about 25 minutes, pretending that you can tell how done the chicken is by looking at it.


Some things I've learned about this very easy dish over the years:
1. If you forget the olive oil, it won't matter. Store bought chicken breasts are pumped full with enough water that the chicken breasts won't stick to the bottom of the dish.
2. If you forget to season the chicken, it had better go into a dish that has alot of flavor, because unseasoned chicken is very, very bland.
3. You can use butter as the fat for cooking the dish, but it really doesn't add much to the chicken.

Enjoy!