Another Chicken Recipe

Apparently my family really likes chicken - it seems I'm always finding a new CHICKEN recipe to try...

Here's another one that they really liked. My darling husband says this one goes on the "make this again sometime" list. It doesn't really have a name yet, so if you have any suggestions I'm open.

unnamed baked chicken thing

Lightly grease/spray 9x13 pan
Place 4 or 5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts in pan
Top with a bag of frozen broccoli
In a saucepan, mix 1 container of Boursin "garlic and fine herbs" or "onion and shallot" cheese (I used chive and onion cream cheese, and it was excellent) and 1/3 cup milk until creamy. (*note*: you could use the LITE cheese and skim milk, too, and lighten the dish up quite a bit)
Pour half the cheese sauce over the broccoli.
Top with thin slices of ham, then the rest of the cheese sauce.
Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of Italian breadcrumbs and 3 T of Parmesan cheese.
Cover and bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Uncover and bake another 20 minutes or until the chicken is done.

I doubled the sauce recipe and served this with egg noodles. Even my younger son thought it was pretty good - and that doesn't happen very often!

Making Caramels

Apparently, for some unknown reason, the month of February has been "let's make caramels" month at our house. We've made three different recipes and tried different methods of cooking and timing and temperature. Here's the best and easiest one. I'm not saying it's the BEST caramel recipe out there, but it has to be close.

Memorize this - impress the heck out of your friends!

Mix together in a saucepan:
1 cup sugar (white is best, but you can use brown,a mixture, whatever you have handy)
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream (evaporated milk, 1/2-n-1/2, sweetened condensed milk - they all work)
1/4 cup butter (that's 1/2 stick)
1 dash of salt (that's about a shake from the salt shaker)

Stir well over medium/low and bring to a boil. Watch the heat and keep cooking, stirring often and watching so it doesn't boil over. Cook to somewhere between 245 and 250 degrees - lower is more like apple dip, higher is pretty hard. I like about 248. My candy thermometer says that's "firm ball."

Remove from heat and add 1 tsp vanilla (that's about a capfull from the bottle). Stir and pour into greased/buttered pan - 9x9 square or a pie pan will work great.

Let cool, cut, and eat (or just dip cut apples into it while it's still warm).

This takes about a minute to throw together and about 30-40 minutes to cook. If it's too soft you can throw it back into the saucepan and cook it again - just watch the temperature because it heats back up pretty quickly.

You could also get fancy - add pecans, make turtle candies, cook it to a higher temp and make toffee instead (note: I didn't actually try this, but it seems like it would work)... Be brave! Have fun! Enjoy -- that's what cooking is all about!

Baking Bread

I’ve recently started baking bread. Not the “knead and rise and knead and rise” kind. I like to say I’m “ too ADD” for anything that takes that long for a result. This is the no-knead artisan bread. It’s easy to mix, easy to make, and it has an earthy, natural feel to it.

The basic recipe is, to make it easy to remember, 6-3-3-13. That’s 6 cups warm water, 3 tablespoons yeast, 3 tablespoons kosher salt, and 13 cups flour. You can cut that or increase it if necessary, but that’s the recipe. Mix the ingredients in a large bowl with a wooden spoon, cover loosely, and let it rise until it flattens on top. That’s it – REALLY! From there you can either cut off a lump (about the size of a grapefruit) and make bread or put it into the refrigerator for up to two weeks and make bread whenever the urge strikes.

So far, just from that basic recipe I’ve made bread, rolls, breakfast pull-aparts (twice), a baguette, and a loaf of “sandwich” bread. The rolls were just all right, and the dough isn’t quite sweet enough for the pull-aparts (I think more experimentation is required), but the basic bread is heavenly! It’s got a gentle, cracker-y crust and a slightly cakey crumb in the center. Warm out of the oven it’s nearly gone before I finish closing the oven door. In fact, I’d better get another loaf started right now – yummy!!

The great blizzard of ‘07

This winter was almost perfect. We have had, at most, 2” of snow in any one storm. Our weather has been warm for most of the winter, too, so there wasn’t anything left on the ground. The sleds and skates and skis were sitting, alone and unused, next to the shovels. Our crocuses were even starting to peak out of the ground. All was ready for springtime!!

Until today. When you live in Minnesota, nothing weather-related is ever a sure thing. Today we’re getting, as the song says, “sno-o-o-o-w o-o-o-n snow.” (In the Bleak Midwinter – look it up)

Apparently when the weather turns frightful I turn domestic. I don’t mean the normal, time-to-dust domestic, either. I, apparently, lose my mind. Early this afternoon we AGAIN cleaned the younger son’s bedroom. It was much easier this time, since we spent an entire day doing the same thing not three months ago. Today we mostly just tidied things up and moved furniture around. It only took 2 ½ hours, and it looks pretty nice, so I guess it was a good idea.

When that was done, as I walked downstairs, I thought, “DONUTS!” For some reason I decided that THAT was the moment I’d been waiting for to make donuts. You need to know that I’ve never made donuts before, and that the last time I even ate homemade donuts I was probably pre-teen. Still, something somewhere inside said “donuts” so donuts it was. I found my grandmother’s recipe in our family cookbook. I found a pan that was deep enough. I found the oil and the candy thermometer. I started to look for the donut cutter (you know, the one with the hole in the middle so they look like donuts) and found, instead, a donut press! I didn’t know we HAD a donut press! Apparently I’m not the only one who thought, in a moment of madness, that donuts sounded like a good idea. The donut press was still in its original box and still sealed – never used (I guess the person who bought it had second thoughts). Price: $1.66 (current price on E-bay is $10) – does that give you any idea how long ago somebody else thought it might be fun to make donuts? I guess they decided not to make them after all… but it was nice of them to have the one thing we needed so I could make them and we could eat them on a snowy day.

Sometimes winter is really fun!