Chicken with Apricots

I couldn’t resist adding the apricots to this dish.  

Chicken with Apple Cider Sauce                                 adapted from Food Network

• Yield:  4 servings

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 1 pound)
•  black pepper
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup apple cider
• 1/2 cup low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1 tablespoon lemon  juice
• 1 teaspoon thyme leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
• 8 dried apricots, reconstituted and cut into halves or quarters

Method:

Preheat a medium to large skillet over medium-high heat, for about 1 minute or until the surface of the pan is hot.

Add the oil and heat until rippling on the surface.

 Pat the chicken breast dry and season with pepper.

 Place the chicken in the pan and cook until the meat is golden, about 4 minutes.

Turn the chicken breasts, lower the heat to medium .

Cook until firm to the touch and transfer to a plate.

 Add the vinegar to pan and deglaze over medium-high heat, scraping up any browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.

Add the cider and the broth.

 Bring to a boil and cook until it thickens to form a sauce, about 6 minutes. Whisk in  lemon juice. rosemary and thyme leaves.

Return the chicken to the pan, adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper, and serve.

Related articles

• Tandoori Chicken Burgers (bookcasefoodie.wordpress.com)
• Rania’s Recipes: Skillet Braised Chicken & Fried Polenta (pittsburgh.cbslocal.com)
• Mandarin Chicken With Almond Rice (theepochtimes.com)

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Tandoori Chicken Burgers

Since I have started blogging, my cooking vocabulary has grown, slowly but surely.  I have made some major mistakes because of my ignorance of a word but I have overcome that.  I have also stopped being embarrassed when I make one of those errors.  Learning is how we grow as individuals and learning often comes from making mistakes. 

It is all those times, that I have made bloopers that I have managed to improve myself, simply by not doing it again.  I have also smartened up, enough, to look up words when I am not sure of them or I am a complete blank.  That is why I found out something about “Tandoori” and that it is made in a tandoor, a special brick oven.  Wise Geek assures us that we can make this Indian dish, at home, although the flavor might be somewhat different.

I found the recipe, I used at Baked Bree, and it was for burgers.  I have no idea if one can authentically make a Tandoori Burger but she did and I did.  Since, we do not eat milk and meat together, at the same time, I did not make the yogurt sauce to go with this burger but the recipe can be found at Baked Bree.

Chicken burgers are a pure joy.  My husband grilled ours and he had the unique problem of not hearing it sizzle.  There was almost no fat in the ground chopped chicken breast, I made these from.  I did find, when finished making the recipe, that the chopped chicken would not hold its form so I added some ground potato chips and some gluten-free flour, just enough to be able to form a patty.  These were certainly tasty.

Tandoori Chicken Burgers (adapted from Baked Bree)

Ingredients

1  pound ground chicken breast
3 green onions
2 Tablespoons grated fresh ginger
 1 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 Tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons cumin
1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
8 drops of cayenne pepper sauce
salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons gluten-free flour

1 tablespoon ground potato chips

Instructions

1. Put the chicken and all of the spices in a bowl and mix well.   Add the chips and flour and mix gently but well.
2. Form into 3 patties..
3. Cook the Tandoori Chicken Burgers on a preheated grill over medium-medium high grill. About 4 minutes per side.

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Fit and Fabulous Fridays

Baked Potato Chip Chicken

I have been making up containers of different kinds of crumbs, potato chip crumbs, taco crumbs, corn chip crumbs and potato matzoh crumbs.  When I need breading or crumbs to top something, I select the one, I think will go best although, I doubt it matters.  They are all flavorful and work like panko.  For this recipe, I used some Passover potato chip crumbs from leftover potato chips.  I have no idea why but they worked better than the regular chips, I usually use.  I did mix it with some flour to give it more substance.  I also did not dip the chicken pieces in anything but water.  Whatever I did “right” produced a hearty chicken dinner.

Baked Potato Chip Chicken

Ingredients

3 chicken cutlet halves

1/2 cup potato chip crumbs

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon rosemary

Olive oil spray

Procedure

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Put potato chip crumbs and flour in a shallow dish.

Put water in a shallow bowl and wet the chicken pieces before rolling in the crumb mixture.

Roll chicken in crumb mixture until well coated, then place on aluminum foil on a cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes .

This is linked to Homemaker Monday      Seeya in the Gumbo 29

Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce – Nigella

I won Nigella Kitchen when it first came out and I was really excited about this particular prize.  Nigella inspires me and this book inspires me even more.  She has many helpful hints throughout the book and I find myself learning new techniques and better methods.  The recipes appeal to me and I see how I go back to many of them, over and over again.

I have a list of recipes, from Nigella Kitchen that I want to make and hopefully, I will be sharing them with you.  Right now, I am going to share her meatball recipe which I made, recently.

Fortunately, I found the recipe online so I am including it here. 

Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

For the sauce:

• 1 onion, peeled
• 1 celery stalk
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 2 x 14 ounce cans diced tomatoes 
• 3 1/3 cups (2 full cans) water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt 
• Pepper, to taste

For the meatballs:

• 1 pound ground turkey
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons potato chip crumbs
• 2 tablespoons of finely chopped onion and celery (from the tomato sauce ingredients above)
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

Directions

Put the peeled onion and celery into a processor and blitz to a mush. Or you can chop as finely as humanly possible by hand. Reserve 2 tablespoons for the meatball mixture.  (I chopped but I had to leave Nigella’s wording here.  Who says “blitz to a mush”?  Is that an English expression?  I love it.”

Warm the

 oil in a heavy saucepan or Dutch oven, add the onion and celery mixture, along with the thyme, and cook at moderate to low heat, stirring every now and again, for about 10 minutes.

Add the cans of tomato, filling up each empty can with water to add to the pan. Season with the sugar, salt and pepper, stir and then leave to come to a bubble, and then turn down to let it simmer gently while you get on with the meatballs.

Put all the ingredients for the meatballs, including the reserved chopped onion and celery, and salt according to preference, into a large bowl and mix together, gently, with your hands, wearing disposable vinyl gloves if you feel so inclined. Don’t over-mix, as that will make the meatballs dense-textured and heavy.

When all the meatball ingredients are not too officiously amalgamated, start rolling. The easiest way really to do this is to pinch out an amount about the size of a generously heaped teaspoon and roll into a bowl between the palms of your hands. Put the meatballs on a baking tray, lined with baking parchment or greaseproof paper, as you go. You should get about 50 little meatballs.

Drop these gently into the simmering sauce; I try to let these fall in concentric circles working around the pan from the outside edge inwards, in only the vaguest of fashions.

Let the meatballs cook for 30 minutes, until cooked through. Serve with rice or pasta or however you so please.

The above is almost word to word from her recipe.  I made minor changes but I wanted the wording to stay intact.  She is delightful and I love reading her recipes and the way she words her sentences. 

This is linked to Cookbook Sundays

Sweet Potato & Turkey Combo

I still have a lot of food, left over from Passover and we are attempting to eat it before, it is no longer safe to do so.  It makes for an interesting dinner, a little bit of this and a lot of that.  When we eat leftovers, I usually make something new, to give new meaning to the meal.  Leftovers may be delicious but they are still reheated food.

With a few slices of corned beef, mashed potatoes and zucchini, I made a combo dish of Sweet Potatoes and Turkey with Shallots and Onions.  I should have added some sliced apple or maybe cranberries.  It needed a little sweetness and I prefer to go the natural way, so a fruit hopefully will fill the recipe need.

I haven’t been using my cast iron pans, recently which is a big mistake.  They cook evenly and can go from stove to oven.  Their only drawback is that the larger ones are heavy.

Sweet Potato & Turkey Combo

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 shallots, minced
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 cup cooked turkey chunks
• 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
• 1/2 cup organic low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried sage
•  ground black pepper, to taste

                                                                                                                                                            DIRECTIONS

In a large cast iron pan or a skillet, add one tablespoon of olive oil. Cook onions and shallots until translucent.  Remove from pan.

Microwave the sweet potato for 4 minutes or whatever your microwave needs to bake the potato.  Of course, you can do this in the oven.  In the skillet cook the chunks to lightly brown. Add to onion mixture.

Add the sweet potato,  vegetable broth, thyme, black pepper,  sage to onion mixture and return to pan.  Cook for a few minutes until heated.

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Tons of Chicken Soup

Each year, when Passover arrives, I pull out my two biggest pots and make chicken soup, lots and lots of chicken soup.  I don’t use a recipe.  Rather, I look around and grab almost every vegetable in site.  I did that, this year, and once again, we had superb soup.  It always amazes me, how the same soup tastes better on Passover than the rest of the year.

I end up freezing containers of soup except for the soup, we use, in the immediate following two days.  I take these containers out of the freezer, as I need them and I always add fresh vegetable to the ready-made soup.  That gives the soup a wallop of flavor.  
Usually, I use nothing but fresh vegetables and chicken.  I experimented with each batch, this year and one of those I made a little bit Thai.  I added some soy sauce and cut up ginger and it took on a subtle flavor.  No rice on Passover, for us, so I made Pesach noodles out of egg, potato starch and water and we had mock noodles in our soup.

As you can see, I made this soup, plain, no vegetables, no chicken but yes kneidlach.

Chicken Soup with lots of Vegetables

I am going to give you the ingredients for only one pot.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken for each pot (In this case, I bought packages of bottoms and used from 4-6 in each huge pot.
• water 3/4 up the pots
• 3 stalks celery, cut into chunks
• 2 onions, cut into quarters (I used large onions)
• 1 sweet potato, cut into chunks
• 1 turnip, cut into chunks
• 3 parsnips, each cut into 3 pieces
• 5 carrots, cut into 3 pieces, each
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 2 turnips, cut into chunks

Directions

Place chicken in a large pot and cover with water.  Heat water and then lower to a simmer.  Cook 2 hours.

Put all the vegetables in the pot except the parsley.  Cook  for another 40 minutes, again simmering.

Add parsley and seasonings and cook for another 30 minutes.

Remove vegetables from pot.  If you want to serve with vegetables, put in new ones and cook until they are done, about 20  minutes.  Cut them into smaller pieces than the chunks.  You can chop them or make them slightly bigger.

Remove the chicken and break into small pieces and return to soup.

Put into bowls and enjoy this.

This is linked to Sunday Night-Soup Night

Passover Turkey Meatballs in Carrot Sauce

I copied this recipe from My Sweet and Savory.  I am fascinated by such a thing as carrot sauce and know I want to make it.  I wish, I had seen this before I made sweet and sour meatballs.

Cooking is marathon like, at this time of year.  I find myself, making up to 4 food dishes, at one time.  Brownies in the oven, soup on the stove, Mashed Potatoes being added to chopped beef for a Shepherd’s Pie and boiling eggs for the seder table.  As one dish is done, another starts so the kitchen is continually being utilized  It would make a good video, considering the mistakes I make and the challenges that pop up.

As an example, there was no hot water, when I first turned the faucet.  I have dirty dishes constantly that have to be handwashed and often are used, again.  I didn’t even ask myself, “what am I going to do?”   What about at least one shower before the holiday?”  Nope, I barely thought of that although it did cross my mind.  Instead, I plowed on, using cold water until my husband called.  He offered to come home from work early, considering how much had to be done, before Passover, but I was just fine and didn’t even consider his offer.

Why was I so calm?  It seems that every year , something happens before Passover and every year, we make it through.  My father died the week before and as you may or may not know, Jews sit at home for a week, never leaving the house for a week and people come to pay their condolences.  The week was over and Passover was staring me in the face.  Another year, we were blessed to have my daughter get married before the holiday.  If you have ever made a wedding, you know that it is a full time job and I already had one of those besides having a family to take care of and preparation for Passover.  We made it.

My stove broke a few days before and there is no way to cook festive meals without a stove and oven, at least for me.  I called a store to beg them to get me a stove, “yesterday” and the man, I spoke to, was a doll.  First, he was going to have it delivered, the following week—-no help there.  When I explained, he made some calls and was going to get it to me, in two days which would work with a lot of dedication on my family’s part.

Along came the delivery date and, in the morning, I got a call telling me that the company was out of stock, on the stove.  Panic was the name of the game.  This man came through again and got me a better stove for the same price and delivered it, as scheduled.  There are wonderful people in this world.

It seems that, at this time of the year, something happens and I have grown up some and accept that and go with it. So, this morning, when my hot water disappeared, I quietly continued.  My hot water also came back, not too much later.  We do not know the problem and expect to see another cold water phase but, we will deal with it. 

Turkey Meatballs in Carrot Sauce

Ingredients:

1 pound chopped turkey
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, shredded
1 egg
2/4 cup potato starch.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 -2 cups carrot soup found here
3 tablespoons prepared matbucha

Method:

Mix turkey, onion, egg, carrot and potato starch thoroughly. Form into balls about an inch in size.  If you like them bigger, double the size and increase cooking time.

In large, deep, fryin

Carrots (Photo credit: CLC Photography)

g pan, brown the meatballs in one tablespoon of olive oil.  Brown all sides.  When meatballs are browned, add carrot soup and matbucha.  Gently mix.  Cook for 20 minutes, gently mixing, every few minutes.

The liquid decreases as

it cooks so watch carefully.  Add more soup or water, if the pan is getting dry.

This freezes well.

Honey and Pecan Crusted Chicken – Passover

This is a recipe, from last year, one which everyone enjoyed.  The recipe comes from Passover by Design by Susie Fishbein.  She uses matzah meal in the recipes.  The celiac in the family caused me to use potato starch.  I love potato starch in coatings.  I use either ground/chopped nuts or potato starch and this year, I was thinking of using potato flakes.  A mixture is usually the best.

Honey and Pecan-crusted Chicken:

Ingredients

6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded flat to an even thickness

non stick cooking spray

½ cup honey

¼ teaspoon  ground black pepper

1teaspoon garlic powder

3/4 cup potato starch

¾ cup fine chopped nuts  (I think I used walnuts but pecans would be better, in my opinion.)

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly spray a shallow baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, combine the honey, salt and pepper. Whisk to combine.

In a shallow dish, combine the potato starch and ground pecans.

Brush the chicken cutlets with the honey mixture and then dredge in the pecan mixture.

 Place in a single layer in the prepared pan; spray the tops with cooking spray.

Bake for 20 – 30 minutes.

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Apricot Honey Chicken

When you need an easy recipe that does not take a great deal of time, Taste of Home, is the place to go.  I was looking through the April/May Simple and Delicious and found this chicken recipe.

With Passover coming, I am looking to get “regular” cooking out-of-the-way, so I can concentrate on the holiday.  Quick and easy is the way to go, when under pressure.  This recipe is easy and is out-of-the-way before you know it.  This is a pleasure and as far as flavor goes,this is yummy.

I am hoping, I will have time to share Passover recipes, in the next two weeks.  The holiday is actually 8 days long but in preparation for it, I add another week onto it, to do some of the preparation.  We mostly live on fresh food, for the two week, although over the years, I have begin purchasing some ready-made condiments that are specifically made for Passover.

I stock up on “tons” of vegetables and fruits.  We use 30 or more pounds of potatoes.  Eggs are bought by the tens of dozen.  Apples also is a staple.  I go to Costco and buy their large quantity vegetables.  What I can’t get there, I check out produce stores and grocery stores, for.  I pile up carrots, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and whatever is current, in the stores.  My kitchen is transformed into a produce store.

Usually, we buy out the butcher but now that we eat less meat, I am cutting back and saving money.  Chicken in different forms takes the lead.  I did get one roast and some chopped turkey.  Beef stew is on the menu, as well.

I can’t believe how many nuts, we use.  Price dictated, this year, which nuts, I bought.  Pecans were so expensive, I walked away.  Walnuts were not much better but I use those often, so I bought a small amount.  Almonds were actually on sale so guess who has lots of almonds.  I use ground nuts for baking since we do not use flour for Passover.  You would be amazed how much you can do with nuts.  Nuts and potato starch are the major players in recipes that normally use leavening.  I had better add another necessary ingredient for baking, eggs.   Some of the recipes use 10 eggs.  I don’t make these.  I don’t like them,  Actually, I have improved a few by cutting back, greatly, on the number of eggs in a recipe.  It doesn’t work for many recipes though so don’t think I am advocating changing recipes that have been made for years.

My husband only wants Passover blondies for the holiday and my grandchildren prefer the brownies.  I have phenomenal recipes for both Passover brownies and blondies and if I remember correctly, there is an apple “pie”, that is delicious.  Last year, I came up with a an almost real chocolate chip cookies.  Think about it………life can be complete with chocolate chip cookies, brownies and blondies and apple pie.

Stick with me and I will hopefully share the recipes.  For those who have celiac or grain allergies, this is the time of the year to shop.  There are all kinds of products in the stores that come in gluten-free varieties that you may not be able to get, during the year.

Apricot Honey Chicken (adapted from Simple and Delicious magazine)  4 sevings

Ingredients

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (5 ounces each)
• 1/3 cup honey mustard
• 3 tablespoons apricot preserves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• Dash each salt and pepper

Directions

• Flatten chicken to 1/4-in. thickness. 
• In a small bowl, combine the mustard, apricot preserves, ginger, salt and pepper. 
• Place the chicken on a greased foil-lined baking sheet. Spoon half of the mustard mixture over chicken.
• Bake for 14 minutes. 

Smoked Chicken Marinade

We have a smoker, we rarely use because it becomes a whole day production.  I think, when we learn how to use it properly, it will find  itself used more often.  We used maple chips and frankly, I think, the flavor we tasted was more from the chips than from the marinade. 

Usually, I get into exotic ingredients to marinade chicken but this pretty basic.

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/8 teaspoon parsley, chopped

1/4 teaspoon dried mustard

In a small bow, mix oil, wine vinegar, soy sauce, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce.

Stir in dry ingredients and mix together all the ingredients.

Marinate as long as possible.  (We only had a short time which is why this flavor did not dominate.)  If you can marinate overnight, I have a feeling, this would be awesome.  We were happy with the maple flavor from the chips.

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