Tag Archives: chicken

Slow-Cooker Chicken Mole with Cilantro-Lime Rice

13 Jun

I have long been intrigued by chicken mole, that Mexican dish with the secret ingredients of cocoa and/or chocolate. But since I keep kosher, I have never been able to enjoy it at a restaurant. Not too long ago I saw this recipe in the Detroit Free Press, which seemed easy enough, despite the long list of ingredients, so I decided to give it a try.

A can of chipotle peppers contains about two-and-a-half or three peppers. I didn’t know what I would do with the rest so I threw in the whole can. Don’t do this unless you really like spice, which luckily I do! It tasted great, but it was up there on the heat level.

I went out and bought a great big bar of Trader Joe’s 70% cacao dark chocolate, which I love, only to realize at the last minute that it was certified as “dairy” for kashrut purposes, even though it didn’t contain milk other than possible “traces” (I’m guessing it was made on the same equipment as milk chocolate). So I substituted an ounce of parve (non-milk) semi-sweet chocolate chips, and that seemed to work fine.

Aside from having to measure lots of ingredients, this dish was easy to make, and it was a hit at the company dinner where I served it, in spite of the heat.

I was also serving brisket, so I made regular rice instead of the cilantro-lime rice. I’ll have to try that another time!

Ingredients:

1 cup chopped onion
½ cup raisins
1 canned chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
3 Tbs. peanut butter, divided
1 can (15 oz.) crushed tomatoes
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cumin
3 Tbs. cocoa powder
20 oz. skinless, boneless chicken breast
1 Tbs, cider vinegar
1 oz. dark chocolate (70-85% cacao)
½ tsp. salt
3 cups cooked brown rice
2 tsp. lime zest
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
6 lime wedges

Directions:

Place onion, raisins, chipotle pepper, garlic, 2 Tbs. peanut butter, crushed tomatoes, cinnamon, cumin and cocoa powder in slow cooker.

Add chicken breasts. Cover and cook on low setting for 7 hours. Turn off slow cooker.

Using two forks, pull chicken apart into shreds, then stir the chicken back into the sauce.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining 1 Tbs. peanut butter and vinegar and pour over the chicken. Add the chocolate and salt. Cover and allow chocolate to melt, 3 or 4 minutes. Stir to combine.

Prepare rice according to package directions, omitting salt. When rice is cooked, stir in cilantro and lime zest.

Put ½ cup of rice and ¾ cup of chicken on each plate, and garnish with a lime wedge.

Serves 6

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Chicken Cacciatore

11 May

For many years, The Joy of Cooking was my go-to cooking Bible. It was the first real cookbook I owned. Nowadays, I don’t refer to it too often but it’s where I go when I want to make chicken cacciatore, a real Italian comfort dish. It’s a lovely stew of chicken with tomatoes, wine and mushrooms. Serve it with fresh pasta. It’s great left over too. I’ve edited the recipe only slightly. True confession: I forgot to take a photo the last time I made it. This one, by Dan Gritzer via Flickr Creative Commons, looks pretty close to my version.

Ingredients:

4 lb. chicken pieces
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbs. chopped shallots (or onion)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tsp. salt (less if using kosher chicken)
3/4 cup chicken stock
1/2 bay leaf
1/8 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1/8 tsp. dried marjoram
1/2 to 1 cup sliced mushrooms

Directions:

Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour, and shake off excess.

In a large skillet or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and saute the chicken with the shallots or onions until golden brown.

Add the remaining ingredients and simmer, covered, for about an hour or until tender.

Serves 6 

 

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Miso chicken

7 Feb

chicken-miso

Here’s a nice and easy recipe that’s been in my “gotta try this” folder forever. I had a container of miso in my fridge forever as well, so it seemed like a good idea. I had yellow miso, not white, but I don’t think it makes a big difference. If you don’t have it, you can find it at an Asian grocery or online.

The recipe calls for chicken thighs, but I used a whole cut-up chicken. (Actually, I used only half a cut-up chicken, because there are only two of us, and halved the rest of the ingredients.)

These particular chicken pieces didn’t have a lot of fat, so I had to add a little water to the pan after about 20 or 30 minutes because the miso-margarine mixture was starting to burn.

The finished dish was very tasty. The miso and honey produced a an interesting and pleasant flavor — but it wasn’t too strong, so don’t be put off by the idea.

Ingredients:

4 Tbs. margarine, softened
½ cup white miso
2 Tbs. honey
1Tbs. rice vinegar (not seasoned)
Black pepper to taste
8 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs, approx.. 2½ to 3 lb., or a whole chicken cut in eighths

Directions:

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

Combine margarine, honey, rice vinegar and black pepper in a large bowl and mix with a spatula or spoon until well combined.

Add the chicken to the bowl and massage the miso mixture all over it.

Place the chicken in a single layer in a roasting pan. Roast for 35 to 45 minutes, turning the chicken pieces over once or twice until the skin in golden brown and crisp. (You may need to add a little water to the pan if necessary part way through.)

Serves 4

 

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Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry

29 Nov

img_3951

This is modified slightly from a very old recipe from the Detroit Free Press, created by the Heart Smart people at Henry Ford Health System, which I finally pulled out of my manila folder of recipes I’m waiting to try. The cinnamon, sherry and raisins combine with the Indian spices to create a more complex flavor. I bet this would work well with leftover Thanksgiving turkey too. Instead of the chicken, add 12 to 16 oz. of cooked, cubed turkey meat at the same time you add the sweet potato cubes.

Ingredients:

3 cups hot cooked brown rice
1 Tbs. canola oil
2 tsp. curry powder
1 Tbs. turmeric
½ tsp. cumin
2 cups vertically sliced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into strips
2 cups peeled and cubed sweet potato
1½ cups chicken broth
½ cup dry sherry
½ cup golden raisins
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. ground ginger
1½ Tbs. cornstarch
2½ Tbs. cold water
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Prepare rice according to package directions.

In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the curry powder, turmeric and cumin and heat for 30 seconds, stirring continuously.

Add the garlic and onion and continue to cook 3 to 5 minutes. Add the chicken and cook until it is no longer pink.

Add the sweet potato, broth, sherry, raising, cinnamon and ginger and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook about 20 minutes until sweet potato is tender.

In a small bowl combine the cornstarch and water and stir until smool. Add the mixture to the saucepan and cook 1 minute until the sauce thickens. Remove from heat, add salt and pepper to taste and serve over hot rice.

Serves 6

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Apricot-Ginger Chicken

15 Jun

chicken apricot ginger

This is a nice recipe that will impress guests at a dinner party. It’s similar to Chicken Marbella but with different flavors. It can easily be halved if you want to make just one chicken. It takes a bit of planning, because it’s best if the chicken marinates overnight — but it’s worth it!

Ingredients:

2 chickens, cut in eight pieces each
½ cup light brown sugar
½ cup dry white wine

Marinade:

12 cloves garlic, peeled and minced (or use 1 Tbs. bottled crushed garlic)
½-inch piece of fresh ginger, grated (or 1 tsp. from a jar)
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 Tbs. dried thyme leaves
⅓ cup red wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbs. oil
3 bay leaves
1 cup dried apricots, plumped in ½ cup orange juice
Ground pepper to taste

Directions:

Mix ingredients for marinade, and marinate chicken overnight in the refrigerator (gallon size freezer bags are good for this).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drain the chicken and reserve the marinade. Arrange the chicken in a single layer on 2 large, foil-covered pans. Spoon the reserved marinade over the chicken. Sprinkle the chicken with the brown sugar and pour the white wine over it.

Bake for 45 minutes, basting a few times. The chicken should be nicely browned. Remove from the oven and drain the juices. Skim off the fat. Serve the sauce on the side, if you like.

Serves 8

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Spanish-style chicken with mamaliga

19 Apr

chicken before passover

Planning meals right before Passover is a challenge. We do our best to use up all our chametz — stuff that is forbidden during Passover — which leaves us with little to chow down on just before the holiday starts.

We usually get our kitchen squared away for Passover on the weekend, though now that we’re retired it’s more out of habit than necessity. But here we were, with a kosher-for-Passover kitchen on Monday and very little that is not kosher-for-Passover in the pantry. Hmm, no pasta or noodles allowed, not even matzo before the holiday starts, and we hadn’t done our big fruit-and-veg shopping and so I didn’t have any potatoes. What could I serve with chicken breast?

Then I had a bright idea. Why not eat kitniyot? This is a word that refers generally to rice, beans and seeds — things that are not forbidden on Passover by law but have become taboo among Ashkenazi Jews (from central and eastern Europe) by custom.

The powers that be in Conservative Judaism, of which I am a member, recently ruled that it’s OK to eat kitniyot at Passover. But my daughter and her family follow stricter kashrut standards and won’t accept that ruling, so we’ll go by our long-standing tradition and abstain during the holiday.

BUT…kitniyot are not the forbidden chametz, and so cooking with them will not invalidate the kosher-ness of my Passover pots and dishes. And since it’s not Passover yet, why not eat kitniyot until Friday night, when the festival begins?

Our custom has always been to open fresh packages of foodstuffs for Passover, and I didn’t have any unopened packages of rice, so that was out. But I did have a nice big bag of stoneground cornmeal from the Livesay Grist Mill at Fiddlers Grove in Lebanon, Tennesee, a sourvenir from the Wilson County Fair where my musician son played last August. I hadn’t opened it yet because I was waiting to use up the box of Quaker cornmeal I had just bought before he presented me with this gift — and how often do we use cornmeal?

All this is prelude to tell you why I came up with this dish that we had for dinner last night. And I made enough to have once again before Passover. Since we’re in Jewish mode, I’m calling it mamaliga, which is a Rumanian-origin cornmeal mush similar to polenta, but without any cheese added.

Ingredients:

3 cups water
1-1/2 tsp. salt
1-1/2 cups cornmeal
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 red or yellow bell pepper, chopped (I used two mini-peppers)
1 stalk celery, sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 large chicken breast halves, cut in half horizontally to make thin, flat pieces (about 1 lb. total)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp. dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

For the mamaliga:

Bring the water with the salt to a full boil. Slowly add the cornmeal while stirring briskly with a wooden spoon to avoid lumps.

Lower the heat and continue cooking, stirring frequently, for 10 to 20 minutes until the cornmeal is thick and pulls away from the side of the pan. Keep on very low heat until ready to serve.

For the chicken:

Heat the oil in a large skillet over  medium heat and saute the onions  for about 3 minutes.

Add the pepper, celery and garlic and continue to saute for another 3 minutes or so until the vegetables are soft.

Shove the vegetables aside and add the chicken slices to the pan. Cook 3 to 4 minutes on each side, until no longer pink.  Add the tomatoes and heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Divide the mamaliga among four plates (or make two plates and save the rest for another meal). Top each serving with one of the chicken slices and a generous amount of vegetables.

Serves 4

 

 

 

 

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Crunchy onion chicken

11 Nov

crunchy onion chickenI got this recipe from my friend Mandy Garver, who said she got it from a French’s fried onions can. I couldn’t believe how easy it was!

Ingredients:

2 cups (4 oz.) canned French fried onions (e.g. French’s)
2 Tbs. flour
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 egg, beaten

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Crush French fried onions with flour in a zip-lock bag.
Dip the chicken pieces in egg.  Coat with onion crumbs and press firmly to adhere.
Place the chicken pieces in a greased baking pan.
Bake 20 minutes.

Serves 4

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Grilled Caribbean Chicken Breasts

5 Aug

Chicken Breasts Grilled CaribbeanThis simple, summery barbecue recipe came from the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. I made a mistake and used 1 Tbs. of orange zest instead of 1 tsp., so feel free to use more than 1 tsp. if you like. It’s very tasty!

Be aware that you need to marinate the chicken overnight or at least eight hours so it can absorb the fruity flavors.

Ingredients:

¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tsp. orange zest (or more!)
1 Tbs. olive oil
1Tbs. lime juice
1 tsp. grated ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
¼ tsp. Tabasco sauce
½ tsp. minced fresh thyme, or a dash of dried thyme leaves
1½  lb. skinless, boneless  chicken breasts

Directions:

Combine all ingredients except chicken in a large bowl.

Add the chicken and turn to coat. Cover and place in the refrigerator overnight (or at least 8 hours).

Remove the chicken from the marinade and discard the marinade.

Prepare an outdoor grill with a rack 6 inches from the heat source. Coat the grill rack with cooking spray.

Grill the chicken over medium-high heat for 6 minutes per side or until cooked through.

Serves 4

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Sesame Encrusted Chicken with Raspberry Sauce

27 May

Chicken with Raspberry SauceI adapted this from a recipe that appeared in the Detroit Free Press. It was originally sent by Robert Harrison of Swartz Creek, Mich. If you make only two chicken breasts, you don’t need to add any water to the egg. I used panko bread crumbs, which I think adds a little extra crunch. The recipe is a little long and involved, but not difficult.

We used the frozen Empire chicken breasts from Costco, which are quite large, and so we had one left over after the meal (but we used all the raspberry sauce). The next day I sliced it in half vertically and we had lovely cold chicken sub sandwiches for supper.

Ingredients:

⅓ cup flour
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup water
½ cup sesame seeds
½ cup breadcrumbs
½ tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. ground ginger
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, washed and patted dry
2 Tbs. olive oil or vegetable oil

Raspberry Sauce:

¼ cup seedless raspberry preserves
2 Tbs. white or cider vinegar
1 Tbs. sugar
½ tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. ground ginger

Directions:

Put the flour, salt and pepper in a plastic bag. Add the chicken breasts and shake until the breasts are coated.

Put the beaten egg in a shallow dish, and in another shallow dish, combine the sesame seeds, breadcrumbs, garlic powder and ground ginger.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Shake off any excess flour from the chicken pieces, then dip each one in beaten egg and then in the breadcrumb mixture, pressing down so that the breadcrumbs and sesame seeds stick to the chicken. Set aside until all are done.

Heat the oil in a large skillet, and sauté the chicken breasts over medium-high heat about 2 minutes on each side until they are browned. Don’t crowd them in the skillet, but do in two batches if necessary. Remove to a baking sheet.

Bake for about 15 minutes (more or less depending on size and thickness of the pieces) until chicken is fork-tender and cooked throughout.

While chicken is baking, combine the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan or microwave-safe bowl. Heat to boiling and boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and cool for a few minutes before serving.

Arrange the chicken on a platter or individual plates and drizzle the raspberry sauce over the top.

Serves 4

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Chicken with Artichokes and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

6 May

Chicken with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoesThis comes from Cooking Light magazine. The recipe says it serves two, but I made it with large chicken breasts and it was ample for four. I served it with spaghetti. You could use fettucine or another long pasta, rice, couscous or barley — anything that will sop up the tasty sauce.

Ingredients:

2 boneless skinless chicken breast halves.
¼ tsp. coarse salt (not needed if using kosher chicken)
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
¾ cup chicken broth
¼ cup slivered sun-dried tomatoes (not oil-packed)
¼ tsp. dried oregano
1 cup canned artichoke hearts, drained and quartered|
2 Tbs. chopped fresh parsley

Directions:

Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat and cook chicken 8 to 10 minutes or until no longer pink in the center, turning once (if your chicken breasts are large, it will take longer than this). Remove chicken to a serving plate and cover loosely with foil.

Add garlic to skillet and cook over medium-high heat 30 seconds until fragrant. Add broth, sun-dried tomatoes and oregano, and simmer about 3 minutes until tomatoes are softened and broth has been reduced by half. (The recipe says three minutes; it might take a little longer to reduce the liquid.)

Stir in the artichokes and cook for a minute more. Spoon the vegetables and sauce over the chicken, and sprinkle with parsley.

Serves two to four

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