Easy Chicken Parmigiana

We don't eat much fancy stuff here. We have a few dishes that we like, and we just have them all the time. But the other day I felt like something different, and since we had chicken out, we had a look for chicken recipes.

Hubby got Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food cookbook for Christmas, and theres a recipe in there for "Crispy Chicken" that hubby decided looked good, so we settled on that. Then I had a hankering for cheese, so we decided to modify it a little to get Chicken Parmigiana.

It was delicious. It will now be one of our semi-regular dishes. (Only semi, because Critter is allergic to chicken and eggs, so we tend to have chicken only when we have leftovers that he really loves, like Shepherd's Pie, or sausages.)


Chicken Parmigiana

• boneless skinless chicken breast
• bread
• lemon
• butter
• salt & pepper
• parsley
• egg
  
• flour
• pizza sauce
• cheese
  

Turn your oven on as high as it will go. Grease a baking tray. Set aside.

Sprinkle 2tablespoons of flour on a plate. Beat an egg in a large bowl. Set aside.

Chicken breast - however many your family will eat. We tend to cook one breast each, but will leave some for lunch the next day if they're massive. Place in a bag/between cling film, and pound flattish with a frypan. A mallet would probably work too, but the frypan is more satisfying.

Breadcrumbs - per breast: 2 slices of bread, slightly toasted; 1/2 tablespoon butter; zest 1/4 lemon; salt, pepper, dried parsley to taste. Stick it in a food processor until the crumbs are nice and small. Taste. Adjust as needed. Tip onto a plate and spread out evenly-ish.

Crumbing the chicken - coat the chicken in the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs. Make sure it is well coated. Any excess will just fall off back onto the plate when you lift it, so don't be afraid to be generous.

Put the chicken on the baking tray and whack it in the oven for about 10-15 minutes, depending on how flat you pounded it. Once the time is up, pour some pizza sauce on the chicken. (We used a thick pizza sauce, but if yours is thin, add some tomato paste and extra herbs and mix it up - this is what we do with pizza and it works very well.) Top with cheese - mozzarella preferably, but if you hate it, use something else. We also added parmesan because we loooooooooooove parmesan.

Stick it back in the oven for a minute or two, until the cheese is melty and/or browned slightly, depending on the cheese you used and how you like it. Basically, you just don't want the sauce or cheese to still be cold.

Serve with side of your choice. In this case, raw carrots and Greek Potatoes.

Greek Potatoes

Recipe from a cypriot friend. Possibly the easiest recipe I know.

No picture because they just look like boiled potatoes.


WARNING: VERY TASTY. Do not be tempted to make extra to keep for later, because you'll just eat it all.


Greek Potatoes

• potatoes (small works best)
• olive oil
• salt
• lemon

Cut your potatoes into bite sized chunks. This is, for me, about 1/4 for smallish potatoes. Your mileage may vary. Place in a pot with some salt, and cover with water. Turn on your hot plate to high, and set your timer for 15 minutes. When it goes off, check your potatoes - poke them with a sharp knife. You want them cooked, but not soft enough for mash. You probably need to cook them for at least 5 more minutes, depending on how big you cut them.

Once they're cooked, drain them and then put them back in the pot, but NOT ON THE HOT PLATE. Turn it off. You're done with that.

Add enough olive oil to coat the potatoes, add salt and lemon to taste (you could also add some finely chopped herbs here for taste or looks value, but I dont bother), shake the pot a little till all the potatoes are well coated (which is why you don't want them mash worthy), and thats it. They're ready to serve.

nesting kicks in

hubby cutting home-made pizza, with the kidlet looking on in the background

baby-time is getting closer and closer. 2-6 weeks till i get to meet the sprog. and im nesting.

its kicking in in interesting ways. cleaning mostly, and the urge to paint... (which im not going to do because paint fumes make me feel ill even when im not pregnant.) but also the cooking. we had pizza for dinner tonight. i use a recipe found here, modified a little. (i love this recipe. its quick, its tasty, and it doesnt involve hours of rising time. mix and go!) i like my pizza thin, hubby likes his thick, but not as thick as one recipe of this, so i make one and a bit recipes and split it off-centre. also take a little bit off to make a mini-pizza for the kid, since he likes to have his own.

actually, critterbug is very helpful. he enjoys kneading dough, so i let him knead his own pizza, and he helps me roll them out. sometimes he even puts his own toppings on.

the nesting instinct kicked in while i was preparing the dough. once the dough is made, the pizza really doesnt take that long to make. chuck stuff on top, bake for 16 minutes. but MAKING the dough can take a while.

so i made extra. i baked it for about 7 minutes, till it juuuuuuuuuuust started to look cooked-ish, and when it had cooled down, i wrapped it in cling-film and stuck it in the freezer. next time we want pizza, all we have to do is take it out, add toppings, and bake. start with a cold oven so it thaws as it goes.

what im figuring however is NOT to use this next time. next time we have pizza ill make a double batch again, and freeze the extra again. it really doesnt take much extra time, and when we need something quick after the baby's born, tada!!

nesting instincts for the win.

cheeeeeeeeeeesecake

my husband brags about my cooking at work. he enjoys making the other men drool, i think*. it sounds like their wives either: arent good cooks; have no time to cook; hate cooking, because they all started salivating at the idea of home-baked bread, or a roast in the middle of the week for no reason other that 'i felt like cooking a roast', rather than on the weekend, because roasts happen on weekends. or coming home to the smell of cookies just finishing in the oven.

anyway, he's told them about the cheesecake i make, and they all said how good it sounded, so i made one last night for him to take in today. apparently everyone loved it. theres none left, at least. he even gave a piece to a customer who was there when they cut it, and he wolfed it down.

yay.

thing about the cheesecake is, im a bit curious about the recipe.

my mum got me a 3 year subscription to better homes and gardens magazine a couple christmases ago, and i watch it nearly every week, and thats where i got the recipe from. but they keep changing it. the recipe i use, which i either got from the magazine, or wrote down from the tv show - cant remember now - has 3 tubs of cream cheese and 8 eggs (there is nooooooooo way my kid is going near this cake. not until someone proves hes not allergic to eggs anymore), but the recipe on the website has 14 eggs. and i saw it somewhere else BHG related, with 4 tubs of cream cheese, and 8 eggs. i dont understand why though. all the other ingredients are exactly the same.

i always make it with 3 tubs, and 8 eggs. it comes out great, although i have to turn up the heat in the oven and cook it for longer than it says. so i dont understand the recipe change. why sometimes an extra 6 eggs? why sometimes a third more cheese?

maybe one day i'll understand... or maybe i'll just keep making it my way and putting a grin on my husband's face.






*there is also a girl in her early 20s who works there and called me a slave when hubby mentioned me making bread. i dont like her much. i ENJOY cooking, i ENJOY making my husband happy, and i prefer the taste of my bread to storebought. what about that makes me a slave?

i dont get it

my mother makes the most delicious brownies. the recipe is from supercook (which i cant find decent links to online, but as far as i can tell, it was put out as magazines, wth binders to hold it all. 8 volumes, each about 300pages. this is HUGE people) and my mother is the only person i know who can make them.

you think im joking.

mum's best friend has the recipe. she doesnt make them, because she can't. they fail. mum makes a batch every time we go over to their house and we leave most of them, because otherwise they never get to eat brownies.

my sister occasionally makes them. they dont taste anywhere near the same.

ive made them twice. yesterday, they failed. they taste great, but really, you should not have to scoop them out of the pan with a spoon, and still eat them one crumb at a time. i think they might have been overcookes... im not sure. the other time, i dont even remember what happened, but they didnt work.

various other people ahve tried and failed.

my mother is the only person i know who can make them. its ridiculous.

I WANT TO MAKE DECENT BROWNIES!!!!!!!!!

stir fry

i made stir fry for dinner tonight, because its easy.

but as i was making it, i started wondering how easy it REALLY is.

• defrost the meat, get hubby to cut it up (i CANNOT handle raw meat/chicken unless its through a bag, and even then i get queasy. this is not a pregnancy thing, this is just me).
• cut up the veg
• add sauces and spices to the electric fry pan until it smells right, add some of the veg.
• add the same stuff to the normal fry pan, and cook the meat.
• add the rest of the veg to the electric.
• add the meat to the electric.
• add a bag of hokkien noodles to the electric.
• hope nothing burns.

granted, its not as involved as, for example, red meat (where you need a million ingredients to make the sauce, and let it cook for 20 minutes before adding it to the cooked meat, and adding partially cooked green beans), but its not as easy as lamb chops on a lazy day - stick the chops in the grill, put the rice on, cook a veg.

but in my head its still easy. and theres not much washing up, which is good. 2 pans, 2 chopping boards, 2 knives, spatula.

i wonder what else is embedded in our heads as 'easy', even when it really isnt so much?



tereyaki stir fry (which really isnt, i guess, because i add so much water)
feeds my family of 3 with a serve or two left over. can easily feed more with the adition of more veg/more noodles. meat is really an accent in this dish, and has on occasion been left out. any veg is doable, and the noodles can easily be left out to serve with rice.

in an electric fry pan:
a good drizzle of olive oil
as much again of each: red wine; tereyaki sauce
teaspoon or so of cinnamon powder
teaspoon or so of ginger (fresh, powdered, or can of minced, any is fine)
turn heat to about half way, add about a cup of water

chop a head of broccoli and add to the fry pan
also 2 cans of baby corn
(keep adding water whenever it starts looking dry, and tereyaki if it starts looking pale)

in a separate fry pan on the stove, add same amounts of oil, wine, tereyaki, ginger, and cinnamon. NO WATER.
turn heat to half, and add meat (3 cheap boneless steaks from the butcher, cut up small).

when the corn and broccoli are starting to colour, and the meat needs to be turned, add one large carrot, and about as much mushroom to the electric fry pan, with more cinnamon, and more water/tereyaki if needed. and obviously, turn the meat over.

stir the veg every now and then to make sure all sides cook.

when the meat is well browned, add to electric fry pan, along will all juices. doesnt matter if its cooked through yet.

cook everything in the electric until there is minimal liquid left, then add hokkien noodles, stir until all mixed and all liquid is gone.

tada.

bread addendum

so bread.. i lost my recipe card and jumped on here to get the recipe (KNEW there was a reaon for posting everything!) and realsie i messed up. i put the water on twice. fixed now.