Chicken with a Kick

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I will say this was awesome and is my new favorite marinade!
I have
been terribly distracted, and hope to get back to the blog…however the other night we had our CSA chicken and I decided to marinate the old gal. This had a kick to it, but if you are not a lover of spice use less sriracha.

Marinade:

½ c. Ponzu sauce
½ c. rice wine vinegar
1/8 c (depending on like of spice I probably did between 1/8 c. -¼c) Sriracha sauce

Mix together in bag, throw chicken in and marinate for 2 hours.

Italian Chicken

Okay this isn’t fancy or exciting folks, but it was good. My mother-in-law got Joel and I some Omaha Steak things for Christmas. In there was chicken. I wanted to keep it simple and see if these really were any different than plain Jane store chicken.

4 4oz chicken breasts
6 tbs of parmesan (I use Locatelli)
2 tbs Italian seasoning
1 tsp salt
1 clove of garlic
1 tbs olive oil

Mix parmesan, Italian seasoning, a nd salt together. Set aside
Heat oil in a skillet and add garlic and turn heat up to medium high.
Dredge chicken in the cheese-herb mixture and lay in pan with oil and garlic.
Cook each side for 1 minute. Reduce heat to medium low.
Cook each side for an additional 4 minutes.
Remove from heat and let set for about 5 minutes.
Serve.

I do have to say, these were particularly good chicken breast, nice and juicy and supple. Worth the price…not so much. We had this with just plan old frozen spinach that I cooked in some oil (about 1 tsp) and a clove of garlic. I added about ½ cup of chickpeas to 2 cups of spinach, and 2 tbs of Greek yogurt, a pinch of crushed red pepper and salt….good. My husband asked for a repeat performance tonight with our salmon.

Mushroom Chicken

2 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
1 onion sliced
3 large chicken breast bone in skin on (3.5 lb)
4 tbs of flour
4 c. chicken broth
2 c. of quartered mushrooms
1 c. dry white wine
2 tbs marjoram
1 Turkish bay leaf
½ c Greek yogurt or sour cream

I could not have been more pleased with the way this came out. It was creamy and earthy and wonderful (if I do say so myself!) I, have a love affair with Greek yogurt. It allows me to have all the yummy goodness of sour cream with ¼ of the fat and calories. My husband, who I can’t get to eat anything that is adjacent to light and healthy loves it and told me I could stop buying sour cream. For those of you that hate mushrooms (and I know you odd things are out there) you could omit them and substitute peppers or potatoes. I used bone in/skin on chicken. I think keeping the skin on made this a very rich and wonderful dish, but I think you could easily (and I did) take the skin off the chicken and eat the meat without it, I just recommend cooking with it.

Add butter and olive oil to stock pot or Dutch-oven and melt butter.
Add the onion and sauté over medium heat for about 10 minutes.
Salt and pepper chicken (I also used a little onion salt) and lay on bottom of pot.
Sprinkle with 4 tbs of flour then add 4 cup of chicken broth and bring to a boil.
Once boiling reduce to simmer and simmer for 20 minutes. Add 1 cup of dry white wine, mushrooms, bay leaf and 2 tablespoons of marjoram and simmer for 40 minutes.
Take about ½-1 cup of hot liquid and add to your yogurt or sour cream, stir, and then put the mixture back into the pot. Doing this keeps the milk from curdling.
Heat for 5 more minutes and serve.

For those of you doing weight watchers this would be about 9 points per breast the best I can tell (they don’t give you a raw, bone in skin on choice??) . I served this with mashed potatoes that I put skim milk and about 3 tbs of greek yogurt in and it was great and about 1.5 per ½ c. serving.

Chicken Cacciatore Pasta

1.5 lb pasta
1-1.5 green pepper depending on size, sliced
2 small yellow onions halved and sliced
2lbs chicken cut up into small pieces
1 large can of crushed tomato
1 large can of petite diced tomato
3 TBS olive oil
3 TBS Italian Seasoning
Pinch of sugar
1 tbs garlic
Salt and pepper
Add olive oil to stock pot and turn burner to medium. Add onion and sauté in pot for 2 minutes. Add both can of tomatoes and Italian Seasoning, pinch of sugar and garlic. Bring to a boil. Add the chicken, reduce heat and simmer on low for 1 hours or until the chicken is very tender. Add green peppers and simmer another hour. Adjust salt and pepper.
Meanwhile put pasta on. Once pasta is done, add on ladle of pasta water to pasta sauce . Drain pasta, take sauce off heat, toss and serve.

Feta Artichoke Stuffed Chicken

Ahhh, the stuffed chicken breast, this was to my family what pizza or maybe taco night was to others. It was the in a pinch or I have leftovers but not quite enough for a whole meal, meal. You can really stuff it with anything, cold cuts (hence chicken cordon blue----doesn’t seem so fancy now huh!) try some Chinese leftovers, a little moo-shoo or a little fried rice and some sesame oil. Yummm. Heck I bet, even some leftover chilli topped with some cheddar cheese and sour cream would be Jim Dandy. Season the chicken or it can suck the flavor away from anything you put in there.

1.5-2 lbs bonless skinless chicken breasts filleted open and pounded out
½ C. marinated artichoke chopped up
1 tsp garlic
¼ C. feta
1TBS olive
Salt and pepper


In a pan heat oil. Mix the artichoke, feta and garlic up and spread a fair amount on one side of chicken. Roll and secure with toothpicks or poultry string. Cook until done. This would also be good with the addition of roasted peppers, or olives or both!

Lemon Chicken Pasta

½ C panko bread crumbs
½ C grated parmesan cheese
1 lb chicken
½ lb pasta
2 TBS capers
½ C oil
¼ C lemon
1 egg
1 TBS water
Combine egg and water and wisk. Pound out chicken breasts unil thin (you may need to cut chicken breast to half thickness). Season well with salt and pepper. Combine bread crumbs and parmesan. Dip chicken in egg and then crumb mixture. Fry in oil. While cooking chicken, cook pasta and set aside. When chicken done, add lemon to pan with oil and drippings and stir, add capers, and poor over pasta and chicken. Serve immediately.

Creamy Chicken with Apple and Portobello

2 tbs Butter
½ Onion
1 c. vermouth
1Carrot
1 c. Portobello
1 apple
1 lb chicken breasts
1 c cream




In skillet melt butter and sauté onions for a minute. Add vermouth, carrots, apple and mushrooms, let cook until vermouth reduces to half. Add chicken and cream. Cook until done.

Truffled Chicken

2 large shallots
½ cup wine
1 C. cream or half and half
1 tsp garlic (pre-minced)
3-4 chicken breast filleted and pounded out and seasoned
Asiago cheese
Truffle oil
Olive oil

Sautee chopped shallot in 1 tsp of oil for 1 minute. Add wine. Reduce to half. Add cream and salt, pepper, and garlic. Reduce to half. Line one side of chicken with cheese. Spoon 1TBS of sauce on top of cheese. Do this for each breast and roll. Set aside unused cream sauce. Secure with toothpick. Add TBS oil to pan and sautee breasts. About 7 minutes each side. Spoon remaining cream sauce over. Drizzle with truffle oil.

This would also be good with prosciutto and asparagus or substitute the asiago with gruyere.

Roasted Chicken with Root Vegetables

1 whole chickens innards removed
1 rutabaga cut into medium chucks
2 sweet potatoes cut into medium chucks
4 large carrots cut into medium chucks
1 onion cut into medium chucks
3 cups of dry white (preferably not a Chardonnay)
2 TBS flour
3 chicken bullion
Marjoram
salt
pepper


Preheat oven to 450. Cut up vegetables and layer the bottom of a roasting pan. Sprinkle with the 2 TBS of flour. Pour wine over and add bullion. Sprinkle with about 1 TBS of Marjoram. Roast vegetables for 30 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350. Sprinkle chicken with Salt, pepper and Marjoram. Place chicken breast down in vegetables and broth. Cover and cook until chicken is done (depends on size).

You can use any root vegetable. Parsnips and plain white potatoes would be good as would any winter squash.