Herbed Chicken Parmigiana over Spagetti, with Garlic Bread

This is a dish that is simple enough to make and that can result in mouth-watering taste bud satisfying traditional comfort meals, however, it can also go terribly wrong and end up no better than an imposter at highway rest stop buffet table.

Hey, paison! I won't let you down and leave you with a gummy, greasy plate. What follows is my recipe for a great dish that is a delicious, no-fail take on the traditional plate that should immediately take you back to your grandmother's kitchen. You're not Italian, let alone have never had an Italian grandmother? I'm sure you have some sort of imagination; work it out. Just whatever you do, please don't think of those Olive Garden commercials, mmkay?

You'll need:
3-4 chicken breasts
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Salt and Pepper
Panko Bread Crumbs
Fresh Minced Parsley
Fresh Minced Basil
8oz Mozzarella
Grated Parmesan Cheese

There are a few important things to note that will come up as I outline the recipe. The first is that instead of using any old breadcrumb, get yourself Panko Breadcrumbs. These are lighter and airier, generally associated with Japanese cuisine. These are important to use because if you think back to all of the not-so-great chicken parm dishes, I bet you found it to be gummy and chewy. This was probably in part due to the breadcrumb selection. Buy some plain panko and I promise you won't regret it because you won't end up with a gummy cutlet.

In a bowl combine the breadcrumbs ( about 3/4 cup), parsley, basil (about 1 tablespoon of each) salt and pepper (about a 1/4 to 1 teaspoon of each) and about three tablespoons of parmesan cheese. It's all an approximation to what you like. While you're getting this ready and lightly tossing it with your fingers, get a skillet nice and hot on the stove. After dipping each breast in the eggs, dredge them through the breadcrumb mixture. On the skillet, brown each side of each breast, setting aside once done.

This is the second important detail to note. The breadcrumb-herb-parmesan mixture before browning is what I have found to be pretty key in the overall completeness of the dish. The chicken needs to be browned, clearly, but the crispy panko crumbs embedded with fresh herbs are sealed in with a crispy parmesan crust before being baked.

Once your chicken breasts are ready, place them in a dish and cover them with sauce, and the mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. Clearly a homemade Italian Sauce would be eccellente, but sometimes we don't always have the time on hand to create it. I suggest taking your favorite marinara - I actually prefer a Basil Marinara and an Arrabiata Sauce blended 1:1; this gives the dish the smooth marinara with a spicy kick.

Bake the dish uncovered at 375 degrees until the chicken is cooked through and the cheese is bubbling. At this point, get your garlic bread ready. Personally, I like to take two small loaves of baked ficelle and slice them down the middle. Slather on butter, generously sprinkle garlic bread seasoning from The Spice Terminal at Reading Terminal Market and top it with fresh grated parmesan cheese. Toss it in oven alongside your dish.

Allow the dish to sit and cool for about ten minutes before serving it on top of Spagetti along with that delicious fresh garlic bread, and Voila! un pasto perfetto!

Chicken Gorgonzola over Red Potatoes and Fire Roasted Vegetables

Trader Joe's has a frozen meal that is "chicken gorgonzola" but I'm not really a fan of the meal-in-a-box, so I decided to recreate the dish. I stuffed the chicken with some gorgonzola cheese and then melted down some gorgonzola with butter and lemon and poured that over the potatoes and fire roasted onions, green peppers, and red peppers. Once the chicken was ready to cook with the other components, I chopped fresh parsley and rosemary and sprinkled the herbs across the top along with a dash of salt.

The dish cooked for about forty five minutes at 350 degrees and came out incredibly well. The gorgonzola that I stuffed into the chicken melted and was absorbed by the breast to give it a lovely tenderness that complimented the rest of the dish.

Green Curry Chicken, Potatoes, and Onions over Brown Rice

We love us some curry, especially the Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce from Trader Joe's. Though the simmer sauce is delicious, it is just that - a sauce, so we tend to add a few touches here and there to make a hearty-quick-and delicious-perfect-for-a-weeknight meal. Yes, I know - it's from a jar! True. But sometimes you don't always have time to make a curry and you want something tasty, cost effective, time efficient, and healthy.

Chop two good sized potatoes with a small onion and sauteed these together with a bit of vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is thicker than olive oil, but you don't need much - just enough to moisten your pan, really. Toss rock salt, cumin, and fresh minced ginger into the mix, stirring every now and then. Setting aside the potatoes and onions, saute two diced chicken breasts until nearly done, adding one jar of Trader Joe's Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce and the potatoes and onions. Simmer until the chicken is cooked through, stirring occasionally. We like to serve it over brown rice, but jasmine rice is tasty too. Total time? About thirty minutes.

Kathy's Krazy Chicken

Guest Blogger Lawral the Librarian (aka My Librarian) introduced this and many other delicious "meal in a bowl" recipes to the kitchen. From time to time she might drop in with a recipe or two that won't disappoint. Enjoy! - CMolieri

This is a recipe that my mom made all the time when I was little. It is GREAT potluck fare, and having grown up Baptist, I know potlucks. The actual recipe appeared in a Blackfoot Baptist Church fundraiser cookbook, or maybe a Campfire Girls fundraiser cookbook. Whichever book my mom found it in, it is long gone now. Kathy, whoever and wherever you are, I am so glad you spilled Coke in your bbq and decided it was good!

Ingredients:

• 6 lbs chicken - I usually use boneless breasts; my mom used bone-in drums and thighs. Whatever you use, just make sure it's skinless
  
• 2 bottles of bbq sauce - I prefer a bottle of Kraft's regular or Mesquite with a bottle of Honey or Brown Sugar
• the "recipe" calls for 1/2 a can of Coke, I usually use the full can. I cannot stress to you how important it is to use regular Coke and not diet. I don't know why, but the diet makes this whole thing taste nast.
  

Directions:

• Throw everything in the crock pot or countertop skillet and cook it till it's done!

Now seriously, I use a full can of Coke to make everything a bit saucier and cook it in the crock pot on low for roughly 8 hours and then serve it over rice. Left in the crock pot that long all the chicken will fall apart and it will end up tasting as American as Apple Pie (and goes really well with it too) but will look like Indian food. I like my food this way; it fits better in the ice cream bowl I take most of my meals in.

My mom uses only half a can of Coke so that the sauce is more likely to cook down into something un-runny enough that you could actually eat it off a paper plate. She cooks it in the countertop skillet for about an hour at around 350. This way the chicken is still cooked all the way through but still in whole pieces which she pulls out of the sauce. If the chicken is actually going to a potluck, only a little bit of the sauce is kept to keep everything moist during transport and the rest gets chucked. If we're eating at home, Mom also serves this with rice, using the leftover sauce as a kind of rice gravy.

Now that we're getting to the colder months, I love cooking "outside" recipes like this so I can pretend it's warm enough to picnic (or potluck). I hope you all have fun putting Coke in your food!

Roast Chicken with a Rosemary-Orange Butter Rub, Sugar Snap Peas & Sweet Corn, Mashed Potatoes and Pan Sauce

The Rosemary-Orange Butter was a success and this is definitely something we plan on repeating.

Mix 3/4 of a stick of softened butter, 1 shallot, 4 teaspoons of minced rosemary and 1 tablespoon of zested orange peel. When zesting, rotate your orange often as you don't want to include the pith - that's the white skin between the peel and the fruit - with the peel.

Use your fingers well with the skin - you want to be careful not to break the skin apart, but insure that you are able to get the rub inside throughout the chicken across the breast, thighs, and wings. I seasoned the inside of the cavity with salt and pepper and stuffed it with peeled boiling onions and the two oranges, sliced, zested and their juices squeezed over the top of the chicken, along with the remainder of the butter rub. Figure that half will go under the skin, half across and over the chicken, again paying attention to the thighs and wings.

I almost didn't make the pan sauce from the giblets, but I decided that I couldn't really call myself a foodie chef and avoid touching organs. As it was, they were all nicely wrapped in butcher paper stuffed inside the chicken so really, I didn't have to touch them - I just dumped them into a saucepan. adding 3/4 cup of dry white wine and 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth, along with a chopped onion, 2 carrots, and 1 celery stalk.

When the chicken was nearly done, I steamed the sugar snap peas, started the sweet corn, and strained the potatoes to prepare for the mashing. As the chicken was setting, I mashed the potatoes and strained the sauce after adding the chicken roasted pan sauce. Total prep and cook time, from raw chicken to heaping plates was approximately an enjoyable 3 hours.

Pan Seared Chicken and Shiitake Mushrooms with Mashed Potatoes

Autumn truly is my favorite season. I find that the endings and beginnings of two seasons can be wonderful occassions to combine the resources of in-between seasonal produce into a meal. I knew I wanted something that was earthy and warm, but not too heavy. After reviewing some of the items I had picked up the previous day I got a few ideas, rolled up my sleeves and dove in.

Before searing or cooking anything in a large pan, I let the oil heat on low in the pan with the herbs and spices, allowing them to absorb the heat and bring out more of their natural flavors. In addition to some fresh minced garlic, I added crushed red pepper flakes, fresh thyme, chopped basil, black pepper and rock salt. For good measure, I tossed in a pinch of The Spice Corner's Olive Dipping Mix for good measure.

Turning up the heat, I pan seared the chicken first, and in the same pan, I brought the heat down just a bit and added the shiitake mushrooms from Oley Valley Mushrooms, left whole but for the stems which I removed. Sauteing both the chicken and mushrooms, I started to mash my potatoes, which had come to a boil.

Served with a salad of wild spicy arugula tossed with parmesan cheese from this post, the end result was a relatively simple, healthy dish which had the earthy tones of Autumn I was seeking.

The Garlic Plate: Baked Mashed Blue Potatoes with Parmesan and Mozzarella, Green Beans, and Chicken

I truly love my garlic press and cook with fresh garlic whenever possible. With this dish, I indulged my love of Allium sativum. I took a few locally produced blue potatoes and boiled them until tender. In a bowl I added milk, some parmesan and mozzarella, a dash of rosemary, a couple of tablespoons of butter and then, using a hand mixer, mashed them.

However, the mozzarella posed a bit of a problem with it's taffy like consistency so I decided to hand mash and then bake the potatoes at 375 degrees for about twenty minutes, sprinkling the top with some fresh grated parmesan. The result was an almost casserole like potato pie. The mozzarella softened and spread and the parmesan hardened and formed a nice crisp on top.

I sauteed the chicken breast in garlic, olive oil, italian herbs, rosemary, lemon and white wine while the fresh and local greens were sauteeing in olive oil and fresh garlic. Once plated, I tossed a dash of rock salt on the green beans and the chicken and Voila! My garlic glands were ready to be sated.

Sauteed Chicken, Pears. & Rainbow Chard in a Balsamic Lime Vinaigrette

This was definitely one of those recipes that start out well-planned but due to ingredients being not in the best condition, immediately turns experimental. Initially, we had planned a simple grilled chicken salad over rainbow chard, fresh strawberries and ricotta drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette. However, half the strawberries were bad (hence the great sale price) and the ricotta was not worth testing as we had been having some fridge issues.

We grilled the chicken in some balsamic and then added chopped rainbow chard, sauteing until tender. We cut up some pears, adding these with the juice from two fresh limes, and added a dash of rock salt and fresh ground pepper. We were pleasantly surprised by the dish, which took all of about twenty minutes start to finish. The chard's slightly bitter taste was complemented by the sweetness of the pear and the tangy balsamic and the lime really melded the two.

Lemon Herbed Cornish Hens, Roasted Potatoes, & Balsamic Carrots

The one ingredient that really made this dish pop was the lemon. I cut up a few potatoes, mixing with some pearl onions for taste, and layered the bottom of a 9x14 glass pan. After melting down a 1/2 stick of butter, I tossed the potatoes and onions with the butter, seasoned salt, ground pepper, and lemon juice and then placed the two cornish hens on top.

I stuffed two birdss with three pearl onions and a few wedges of lemon after squeezing the juice over the top of the birds, along with some olive oil. I sprinkled the birds with rock salt, ground pepper, rosemary, thyme, and some chicken seasoning that I got from The Spice Corner in the Italian Market.

While the hens roasted at approximately 350 degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour, I began on the Balsamic Carrots. I chose to peel the carrots before sauteing them in some melted butter (1/4 stick). Once they were tender I added some sugar (2 tablespoons) and the balsamic vinegar (1/4 cup). The carrots only took about 20 minutes and once it was all done it was mouthwatering.