Chinese Chicken Salad with Crispy Wonton Skins

I'm pretty into her "Salads" section of the book and had some trouble deciding on which one I would make next. This has three sections of ingredients and I wasn't really feeling it when I chose it, but the fact that it calls for shredded rotisserie chicken won me over. I absolutely love recipes that call for rotisserie chicken because it's so easy. You just grab the chicken, shred that shit and you're good to go.

It was a breeze finding everything for this (most of it I already had) but it took me a while to find the napa cabbage and I stood there in the produce section like a doof for like 5 minutes before I found it. The last time I looked for cabbage that long was when I was trying to determine which one would be the best one for my boobs. Confused by that? Google it. I won't ruin appetites on this blog. Anyway, there was no price, but I thought "How expensive could it be? It's cabbage" and stuck it in the cart. Uhm, that shit was like $5 close to $6. So be prepared for that.

That being said, I think napa cabbage will be added to my future salads. It's got the crunch of romaine, without being leafy, and I personally found it was worth the money. Who would have thought?

This baby is a chop and dump kind of salad. It took me no time at all and Calvin helped me make the dressing. The wontons were easy peasy and dinner was ready in 30.

I am forever grateful that this salad exists. I can't even believe how good this was. I went back for seconds and made it my lunch tomorrow - if it lasts that long. That's another thing. She tells you this serves 2 as a main course. I got 2 helpings for myself, Calvin ate, and I was able to pack one big lunch for Collin and one regular lunch for me out of it. So, if you're planning on not making this your main course, you might want to half it.

Good Lord. I think I might have to pack something else for lunch tomorrow because I already want more.

Look at it. Look at it in all its beauty.

Charred and Garlicky Broccoli and Cauliflower mash with Roasted Garlic and Ricotta

The length of these recipe names really cracks me up. That's only 2 recipe names up there. These two recipes I made as the side dish for the Brick Chicken from earlier. I stepped on the scale the other day and realized the few pounds I had managed to lose had returned and I have a feeling it has something to do with this book... and my sheer love for carbs as of late. This would be a (almost, but come on - does it really count?) carb free dinner and I could get down for that.

Let's start with the broccoli. Charred broccoli doesn't sound like fun to me. Actually, charred anything doesn't exactly make my mouth water...but I like broccoli so I went for it. I prepped this baby early in the day because within this recipe lies 2 other recipes that you need to make first. Roasted garlic and roasted garlic oil and cheesy garlic bread crumbs (the 'does it really count?' carb). Both were easy, but I'm glad I prepped early in the day because that would have been a nightmare come dinner time.

I have to say, once this was done, this is the best broccoli I've ever eaten. Disclaimer: this recipe contains whole cloves of garlic, so once the cheese and bread crumbs are in there it's easy to get a mouthful of straight garlic because they are hidden. If you're not one for whole garlic, like me, this is important to remember. Otherwise, this was fantastic.

This was before I forgot to add the cheese and bread crumbs

After the cheese and crumbs *drool*

The cauliflower mash was a last minute decision. I enjoy substituting cauliflower for carbs so I figured this one was a no brainer. I did not have fresh cauliflower, but I did have frozen, so I went with that since she has you boil it anyway. 

Here is where I think I had my problem: she tells you to drain the cauliflower and get it as dry as possible. I'm not sure how easy this would have been with fresh cauliflower, but it was a goddamn nightmare. I used so many paper towels before the cheap-o in me said "fuck it" and tossed the damp cauliflower in the food processor. That being said. I did not like this. The texture was more of a mousse texture and it was hard for me to get past that and eat it. I don't think the addition of the ricotta helped matters at all, as I think it contributed to the mushy feel. I mixed this with some broccoli and now that was good. All in all, I may try the cauliflower again - with fresh cauliflower...but probably not anytime soon.

Update: I was letting my brother's girlfriend Chelsea try this meal and my brother walked in and took a bite of the cauliflower mash. He loved it. Granted, he did think it was grits - but he wolfed it down like a rabid dog and then went to town on the brick chicken. He didn't touch the broccoli because he's strange...but Collin's friend was over and had some and told me he'd be asking for the broccoli and chicken again. I was loving the feedback last night! 

Cauliflower mousse 

John's Tuscan Brick Chicken with Charred Lemons

I decided to make a thing of it and do 3 recipes at once for dinner tonight. To spare you a never ending post and a ridiculously long title, I'll be posting these recipes separately.

This recipe requires a trip to Home Depot or, for me, my backyard. When we bought this house the previous owners left a nice pile of bricks behind. There was nothing brick at all anywhere that would have explained why they were there...they were just there. They also thought they'd be nice and leave a random tire in our backyard as well. Anyway, I grabbed two bricks from the pile, took them inside and washed them off. I noticed these were going to be a bit too big for my skillet, so I waited until the baby went down for a nap, headed to the garage, put on my husband's rubber boots and went in search of something to break these suckers in half. I grabbed a hammer and Calvin and I went to town. A few seconds later, I had pan sized bricks.

I'm glad I read this recipe beforehand, because it requires preparation and several hours of hanging out in the fridge. (The chicken, not me) The rub for this smells amazing and I will keep it in handy for other chicken recipes - particularly baked chicken. Once the rub is on the chicken, you're left with only 2 ingredients to use before this recipe is done. I like this because it's easy cleanup.

Alright. So. This started out seemly like a slam dunk recipe. Then I put my chickens in the pan. I must have bought some monster chickens because they barely fit.

All bricked up

Another thing I found was once these babies are in the pan, it's Snap, Crackle and Pop time. These things will pop you worse than bacon, so be careful. Flipping them over was a ticking time bomb. So. Because I had monster chickens, the cook time was off. So off, in fact, that I added about 5-8 minutes on top of the usual cook time, which was fine. No big deal. I started to get irritated though, and this is why I loathe cooking chicken quarters, when I saw the vein. As soon as you cut into it there was blood running everywhere. I prefer to bake chicken quarters because this doesn't happen. At that point, this had taken longer than I had hoped to cook, and I still had two more chickens to make, so I stick the freaking thing in the microwave just to cook it the rest of the way. Note: I did not use this chicken to base my taste on. 

This tasted like chicken. Nothing special at all. I'm not sure what I was expecting because when I realized it tasted like regular, nothing special freaking chicken, my irritation soared. I spent all that time and got grease popped on me for regular tasting chicken. I couldn't even taste the rub and I think it stuck mostly to the bottom of the pan. Save yourself the trouble and just bake the freaking chicken. 

Update: Check out the Charred Broccoli and Cauliflower Mash post for positive feedback on this chicken. 

Look at how big that freakin chicken is.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Yesterday was the 4th of July and I did a massive carb overload. I had vegetables for breakfast in preparation of the massive amounts of food I was going to be eating and they were the only vegetables I had all day long. I had a hot dog, two hamburgers, some sausage 3 or 4 pieces of pie (I don't remember how many I actually had) and some delicious cheesy cauliflower thing my mother in law made that had so much cheese and butter in it that it couldn't even be considered a vegetable anymore. She grilled vegetables, but I didn't even touch those. I had that shit for breakfast.

So today I decided I didn't need to be eating any carbs, and if I was really being truthful to myself I wouldn't eat them for the rest of the week. *sips beer* I originally had avocado chicken on wheat rolls and salad for dinner, but switched that over to these lettuce wraps real quick. I usually use this lettuce wrap sauce you get in a little pouch in the Asian aisle of the grocery store, and that's usually pretty good but I thought what the hell, I'll make it from scratch tonight.

This was more chopping and preparation than my carb filled ass would have liked, but it really wasn't too bad considering it was on the table in less than an hour.

No carbs here

I loaded mine up and found out the hard way that I needed 2 lettuce leaves to bear the load of the meat. As soon as I finished mine Collin was getting seconds and I have to admit I got up for more, too. I think we both understood that because this is healthy, we could have ridiculous portions. All in all, this was very good. I would probably still reach for the already made sauce packet for the sake of time, but if I wanted to impress company I'd reach for this recipe for sure. 

I have to add in that since I've been doing this, my pantry/fridge have been filled with random oils, vinegars, sauces, etc. that I'm going to have to put to another use somehow. I love the new diversity and skills that I'm getting though, which is one of the reasons I wanted to cook through this book. Ugh, I need to go roll myself to the couch now.

Prosciutto-Wrapped Stuffed Chicken Breasts and Thyme Roasted Carrots

I just want to start out by saying that I had this fabulous fancy dinner planned and when dinner time rolled around, all I wanted was a freaking hot dog. I had no hot dogs in the house and I'd rather stab myself in the foot than go to the grocery store on Fourth of July weekend, so I stuck to the plan and made this. I would also like to note that, because the oven temperatures were different, I made the carrots first and reheated them later.

That being said, I was thrilled about this one because it let me use my cast iron skillet in the oven, which I've never done and been dying to do. Oh, the things adults get excited about. Another reason is because it calls for goat cheese, which I've never in my life felt the need to try or purchase. In case you didn't know, goat cheese isn't exactly the cheapest of the cheeses and it honestly hurt my feelings a little to buy this. But, I'm determined to expand my cooking horizons so I bought the damn cheese in hopes it would be worth it.

This lovely dinner was made in the midst of, not one, but two crying, fussy kids and one husband who may or may not have been able to sleep through it all. Of course, my pounding the chicken out with a mallet may have had something to do with both sides of that...Regardless, dinner needed to be made and even though the names are all fancy dancy the prep work took no time at all. The majority of the time was spent in the oven for both recipes, which was fine with me because I think Andrew is cutting more teeth - hence the crying. The bigger kid wanted ice in his cup and clearly that's more than enough reason for a meltdown.

After all was said and done, this is what I pulled out of the oven:

It's beautiful.

She has you toss tomatoes around the chicken in the skillet and I did it for the recipe, but I didn't really think it was something I would do if I ever made this again. Uhm, those tomatoes tasted freaking ah-mazing. I absolutely would toss them in there again. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. So this recipe, hands down, is 100% the best thing I have ever made in my life. When I took a bite, I moaned. I know that sounds a bit after hours, but it really is that good. I'm also pretty sure that goat cheese just became my new favorite chicken cheese.

Ok, now. The Thyme Roasted Carrots. These were re-heated and you need to keep that in mind before you look at the picture. These were also phenomenal, for a roasted carrot. My carrots were smaller than what she suggests and I did not think to adjust the cook time to reflect the size of these carrots. My fault, but understand that they still tasted delicious even though they aren't the prettiest. Also, I very clearly have no idea how to plate anything and make it look pretty. I must have moved things around and taken 12 pictures and this was the winner. So. There's your background on that.

Anyway, make this chicken.

This plate is sad and embarrassing.

Zucchini Fries

I needed something to do with Calvin today since Collin is on nights and will sleep all day. Our kitchen is on the opposite side of the house as our bedroom, so I figured making these would be perfect and we wouldn't make too much noise. Of course, now that it's over and I'm writing this post I can hear a ridiculous amount of noise coming from the living room and I'm sure Collin is swearing in his sleep right now. Hey, at least I tried.

For starters, doing anything that is hands on with a 3 year old is bound to be a big fat mess...and once you add flour to that equation it becomes something much bigger than just a mess. Even though I knew this, I let him toss the zucchini into the flour bowl and cover them with flour. I just felt like I would prefer cleaning up spilled flour over spilled egg. Plus I just dust him off afterwards and then I don't have to change his clothes. Win-Win.

Anyway. I love that this requires cheese in the breading. And not only does it require cheese, but it requires more cheese than the Panko. Which, I mean, come on. That's a great start right there. This recipe is pretty standard in terms of breading something but, and she does warn you about this, the damn peel on the zucchini is a bit of a bitch about letting anything stick to it. I had to get a little rough...but managed to make it stick ok. You bread them all, stick them on a baking sheet, pop them in the oven and Voila! Zucchini fries.

I ate a lot more than four...

They did not all turn out as "pretty" as the picture. I picked the 4 best looking ones and went with those. Some were a bit patchy, some had super coating on one half and not so much on the other half...very homemade indeed. She tells you to dip them in either Honey Mustard Ranch or her Caesar dressing (both in the book) but they both include mayo and I really wanted to enjoy these so I went with Ranch out of a bottle (yes, I know how ridiculous I am). 

And enjoy them I did. These were my lunch. I had about 8 or 9. And I don't even care because there's a vegetable in there so really I had vegetables for lunch. 

Mmm. Vegetables.

Pad Grapow Chicken (Basil Chicken)

Am I the only one who reads this as Pad Gra-POW chicken? No clue how it is really pronounced but that's how it sounds in my head.

I came home from work today feeling very overwhelmed and the last thing I wanted to do was cook an extravagant meal, but the chicken was already thawed and I had to use it. So, I got together the ingredients and tromped my way over to my basil plant and stripped it of pretty much every basil leaf it had in order to get the amount needed for this recipe. It's been looking pretty sad lately, so maybe now it will do better.

I got to cooking at 5:06 pm and my butt was sitting in a chair, eating, at 5:33 pm. This is my idea of a great weeknight meal. The flavor was awesome, this is filling, but not too heavy and the whole thing was done before Andrew could even think about getting fussy. Calvin ate this in record time and for the first time in a while, dinner went quickly and smoothly. Oh, and cleanup? What cleanup?? Like, 2 pans and a tablespoon. I'll be keeping this one around and will probably make it so much that Collin starts to group it with spaghetti. My only "issue" is the lack of vegetables, but that's what your imagination is for.

I tried to recreate the picture from the book. Yeah. Didn't work. 

So Collin saw me struggling to get a good picture and I was complaining about the shitty light, so he ran to the garage to get a flashlight to hold while I took a picture. I did not use those photos because the light the flashlight gave off made this dish look a little too "sexy". Anyway, that's real love right there.