Grilled Herbed Chicken

One of my favorite summer meal staples is Grilled Herbed Chicken from San Francisco Encore. I LOVE that I can use the herbs right out of my herb garden. All the other ingredients are basic staples in my home, so it's always an easy choice when I'm wondering what to cook.

I can't imagine making it with dried herbs. I'll admit to substituting one dried herb in the mix of all the other fresh ones, but I wouldn't do any more than that. The flavor from this dish relies on the fresh herbs.

To capture the summer flavors, I made several batches of this to freeze. It was my first time freezing this marinade with the chicken, and it turned out great! The vacuum packed baggies thaw quickly in a cold water bath, making them easy to prepare on a busy weeknight when no thought has been given to dinner!

Grilled Herbed Chicken (San Francisco Encore)

8 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

Marinade:
½ C olive oil
½ C lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 C chopped fresh parsley
1 TB rosemary, fresh & chopped
1 TB tarragon, fresh & chopped
1 TB sage, fresh & chopped
1 TB oregano, fresh & chopped
1 TB chives, fresh & chopped

Marinate at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight. While grilling, brush frequently with the marinade.

I often serve this with rice, pouring the leftover marinade (boiled to kill all the ickies....) on the chicken/rice.

Chicken Parmigiana w/Linguini

So, this week was my turn to cook for our meal exchange group. For the first time in a long time I really didn't know what I would be making. The beginning of November kind of caught me by surprise! Thinking* my favorite hand-trimmed chicken breasts were on sale at Albertsons this week, I chose to make Chicken Parmigiana.

I love the recipe I have from San Francisco Encore. It's pretty straightforward, and just plain ol' yummy!

Over the years I've made it in different pans with different cooking tools, and I think I've finally found the perfect combo for breading/sauteeing chicken pieces: the 7 qt. Calphalon One Sauteuse (not the non-stick one) pan, and a stiff beveled turner from Pampered Chef. This particular turner wedges its way under the pieces, and the pan (seasoned with a little butter & oil) browns the chicken nicely, but also allows for a release that keeps the breading ON the chicken! Getting this step down is truly the key in making this dish.

Seasoning the pan with butter & oil....this was a tip I picked up from my Cook's Illustrated magazines. The oil helps with the stickiness, and the butter allows for better browning. Good to know!!

Now that you know how to cook the dish, here is the recipe:

Chicken Parmigiana (San Francisco Encore)

Preheat the oven to 325º.

Pound to a thickness of 1/4":
6 half boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I slice these so they are half the thickness, and then do a little pounding.)

Combine in a shallow bowl:
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper

Mix in a separate bowl:
½ C dry plain bread crumbs
½ C Parmesan cheese

Dip the chicken into the eggs and then into the bread crumbs.

Heat oil (and butter...my addition!) in a heavy skillet. Quickly brown the chicken on both sides. Remove to a shallow baking dish.

Our off any oil remaining in the pan. Add and saute briefly:
1 clove garlic, minced

Stir into the pan, and bring to a boil:
2 C tomato sauce**
1/4 tsp dried basil
salt to taste
pepper to taste


Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Stir in:
1 TB butter

Spoon the sauce over the chicken.
Sprinkle over the chicken:
½ C Parmesan cheese

Cover and bake for 30 minutes.

Uncover, and arrange over the chicken:
8 oz. mozzarella cheese slices

Return to the oven and continue baking until the cheese melts.

To serve it to the three other families, I placed the chicken pieces on a bed of cooked linguini. It was a much better presentation than just putting the chicken right in the pan. Next time I'd add a little more sauce for the linguini.

My daughter (a vegetarian for 18 mos. now) used to call this Pizza Chicken and would devour it! Now, to make it for, I will bread and sautee some pieces of extra firm tofu. Works just fine!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one!!


*Uh, no...they weren't on sale. I discovered this on cooking day, and by that time there was no going back. Dang it!!

**We used to make this dish regularly, but for some reason hadn't made it for many years. When I started canning a few years ago, I made waaaaaaay too much tomato sauce! So I purposely looked for recipes that needed tomato sauce. Since that time, I've been making this dish for company, to bring to families, and for our own dinners.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds!

Recently we took Katie and 7 other girls out to Heiser Farms to go through their corn maze, pick & carve pumpkins, and eat pizza. As the girls de-gutted their pumpkins, I sorted through the gunk to get at all the seeds. I was at my friend Nikki's home when I tasted her roasted pumpkin seeds. They were much better than any I'd ever made. She told me the trick was to soak them in salt water overnight. So I tried it!

Yesterday when my friend, Tara, was visiting, she tried some of the seeds I'd made. She said something along the lines of, "Ooooooooo....these are really good. Much better than mine." (OK...I really don't remember her exact words, but it was pretty much the same thing I'd said to Nikki...) So I told her the trick!

And now...so everyone knows the trick.....soak your seeds in a saltwater bath. I think it plumps them up so they're not so flat and chewy.

Next I spread them out in a jelly roll pan, & poured a little extra virgin olive oil over them. I made two batches, seasoning them differently. For the first, I simply sprinkled garlic salt over them. These are a little too salty for my taste. The others were with some Dry BBQ Rub from my favorite Southern barbecue place, Sticky Fingers (just make sure you go to stickyfingersONLINE.com, as opposed to just plain ol' stickyfingers....you've been warned....).

The final step was simply roasting them in the oven over a low heat for 4-5 hours. I did mine at 200 degrees, and stirred the seeds occasionally.

They were nice and crisp!

October was a bust!

In September I went back to work for the first time in 11 years. (What does this have to do with food or gardening???.....hang on....I'm gettin' there.....) I started substitute teaching in the local elementary schools. I started working the second week of school, and have been working more and more as the school year progresses. So I haven't had time to do much cooking. My "cooking" has been more along the lines of reheating something from the freezer. Thank God for all the batch cooking I did over the summer!! (I really could go another couple months, serving dinners from my freezer stash.)

The garden too, has needed some TLC. The dead sunflowers are starting to fall over. Thankfully we've had a series of dry, sunny days, which was good for the seeds. On Sunday I collected a brown lunch bag full of sunflower seeds. There's a lot of other guck in there too, but there's really no reason to clear it out. It will all just get planted in the spring, along with the actual seeds. Some of the sunflower heads were starting to get moldy, so I made sure to check before collecting!

And, all the little grass starts are spreading near the lawn. They're a bugger to keep under control during the wet fall/winter! I don't like to use Round-up, so I'm constantly pulling and filling bags by hand. Sadly, I haven't pulled a thing in the past month!

My roses are so tall (at least 6') that I worry they'll tip over and uproot themselves like they did last year. Around here you're not supposed to prune them back until mid-February. Cutting back encourages growth, and right now is definitely not their growing season! There are still a few random blossoms on them. It's so tempting to pick them for a vase in November!! Also doing EXTREMELY well are some fuschias that are tucked into a protected raised bed on the side of the house. And the volunteer cosmos in back that sprouted in late summer is really doing well. (I'll have to remember to plant some cosmos in the summertime, so there's more in bloom at this time of year.)

So, back to the work thing...I am soooooo tired when I get home! There's still the housework, the rides to/from practice, homework help, church activities, and family life! I truly have no idea how women manage full time careers and motherhood.

Anyway, the good news is that I *do* have a few recipes/pics to share! Just give me a few minutes to get it all loaded, and see what I can spiff up in photoshop (some of the pics are just so-so....but it's either try to work some PS magic, or wait until I make that same dish again...). So hang tight...there are some recipes coming!!

Salsa Party!

My "Taste of Salsa" party was Saturday night. We had a few friends over to sample the salsas I made. My friend, Heidi, brought the salsa that she's been telling me about for a year. I was so glad to finally get to taste it!

Before my friends arrived, I poured a little of each salsa into a mini canning jar (half the size of jelly jars). I put a sticker on the bottom to identify each one. Then I set them out randomly (I didn't peek!!) along my counter, with a couple bowls of tortilla chips. I asked my friends to try them, making notes, and rating them from 1-5, with 5 being their favorite. I made sure to tell them not to hold back on their comments, that my feelings wouldn't be hurt, as even *I* didn't like them all! I also told them that I didn't make them all, as I snuck two store bought salsas in the mix: Herdez Salsa Casera & Safeway Select's Salsa Verde.

In the end it was fascinating (to me, at least) to see what people liked/didn't like. If you read my salsa notes from last month, I was not a fan of the sweet salsas. There were a couple sweet salsa recipes I found on the internet, from sites where people were raving about them. Thankfully, a couple of my friends ranked these as their top picks! COOL....I now had a good home for my sweet canned salsa!

Not surprisingly, my top tomato based salsa picks were Herdez Salsa Casera, & a Pico de Gallo that I made that day. Heidi's salsa was a close second for canned (not fresh) salsa. (Another friend, Margy, makes a lime salsa that is extremely good as well. I wish I'd had time to make it for the tasting. I know it would have received a high score from me!)

My favorite tomatillo based salsa was the one from Safeway, with San Francisco Encore's Tomatillo Sauce (scroll down for the recipe) running neck and neck with Safeway. Mixed together they were the perfect topping for the chicken enchiladas (scroll down a bit) I made for that dinner!

In the end I learned that we all have very different ideas of what a "good" salsa is. It was fun to talk about the flavors; what we liked and didn't. I also learned that after all the work that canning salsa involves, I'm probably going to stick to the store-bought jars! I will make an exception for a fresh Pico de Gallo...it was very quick and simple to make. The only two canning recipes I'm going to attempt again, are the ones from Margy and Heidi, as I really liked the flavors in their salsas.

Unfortunately we were so busy I forgot to snap some pictures of the salsa tasting or the enchiladas! Next time, I promise....

In the meantime, here is the Pico de Gallo recipe I made:

Pico de Gallo

Recipe from: Emeril Lagasse
Servings: About 2 cups

1 ½ cups Seeded, diced tomatoes
¼ cup Diced red onion
1 tablespoon Diced jalapenos
1 tablespoon Minced garlic
Juice of 2 limes
2 tablespoons cilantro
Salt, to taste
Freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

In a bowl combine the first six ingredients. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Yikes! Two Weeks!!

I just realized that two weeks have gone by since my last post. Yikes! I'm not surprised though, as the timing coincides with 1) the rainy season....meaning the garden is looking kinda' blah, 2) I went back to work for the first time in 11 years!!, which leads to 3) We've been eating out of our freezer stash, which means I haven't been cooking much.

I will be keeping up this blog, so do check back! One of my goals is to record and photograph all of our favorite family meals. That alone will take me at least a year to do!

Potato Cheese Soup

Continuing the comfort food posts this week...

When I worked in the mall during college, my favorite lunch was when Marie Callender's had their potato cheese soup available. Oh, it was good! Years later, after living away from Marie Callender's for many years, Google comes along, and lo and behold...there is a knock-off version of this recipe available. Now, is it really their recipe? Probably not, but it sure is tasty & is near the top of my comfort food list.

Marie Callender's Potato Cheese Soup

On medium low heat in a 3 quart sauce pan sauté:
4 TB Butter
½ C Finely Diced Yellow Onion
½ C Finely Diced Celery

Add:
2 Cans Chicken Broth (14.5 oz)
1/4 C.Water
4 C Finely Sliced and Diced Potatoes (peeled)
Place on medium low heat and cook until potatoes are very soft and tender.

When potatoes are done add:
4 Chicken Bouillon Cubes
Cook until cubes have been dissolved.
Mash the potatoes slightly, leaving most of them in chunks.

Reduce heat and add:
2 + 1/4 C. Half and Half *
4 TB cornstarch (more if still runny)*

Stir mixture, and add:
8 oz Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese**
Stir until cheese is completely melted and dissolved into mixture.

Sprinkle:
1/2 tsp. Sugar*** 1/4 tsp. White Pepper

Let soup simmer very slowly for 20 - 30 minutes taking care not to let soup scorch. When ready to serve, garnish with shredded cheese and maybe a little parsley.

Can be doubled and frozen.

* Try using 2 C Half & Half, and less cornstarch. I find the consistency is a little better. Also, I recommend whisking the cornstarch with a little bit of the half & half (like 1/4 C of it) and then adding that smooth mixture to the pot. It won't get clumpy. I use Land O' Lakes fat free half & half.

** I added a bit more cheese, just because it was leftover from the block.

*** I skip the sugar.

I also add chunks of ham to this recipe. At Easter time I always have a lot of cooked ham leftover. I chop it up, and vacuum seal it, adding it to dishes like this later in the year.

Anyway, if you try making it, let me know what you think!

Added on 10/6/07: Last night I got out one of the frozen bags of soup. It thawed very quickly (about 20 minutes) in a sink of hot tap water. I poured the soup into microwave proof bowls, and heated it up. I was a wee bit worried that it might have a grainier texture after freezing. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the just-made batch and the frozen batch. So, I'll be making more of this one.