Claude's Chicken Nachos

A few years ago, we had some dear friends that lived across the street from us.  We had the kind of friendship where we didn't wait for an invitation.  On any given night, one or the other of us would see if someone were home across the street, grab a bottle of wine (or three), and march on over (and stumble back a few hours later).

Then they moved and ripped our hearts out.

But I've gotten over that.

Mostly.

Another good thing about Claude and Aurora was that they could cook, and liked to eat good food.  On one of our impromptu soirees, Claude disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared with fabulous chicken nachos.  Problem was, he couldn't recall the next day how he had made them. He made a couple half-hearted attempts at replicating them, but never achieved the level of greatness (although, I must note, he never again tried to replicate them three bottles of wine into the evening).

After a few failed attempts myself, I think that I may have come pretty close to replicating the original.  In homage to our friends, I present you

Claude's Chicken Nachos

What You Need

12-16 oz chicken, ground (use a food processor)
2 serranos (finely chopped, not deseeded)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 red onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
1/3 cup sour cream (I used light sour cream)
1-2 oz yellow cheese, shredded
8-10 cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/8 cup cilantro, finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt
Black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
2 limes
Tortilla chips
Salsa


What To Do With It

Preheat an over to 400.

Sautee the onions in 1/2 tbsp olive oil.

Put the rest of the oil in the same pan, and brown the chicken along with the serranos, garlic, salt, some pepper, and juice of 1 1/2 limes.

Place your chips on a baking sheet, then add your sour cream, chicken, salsa, tomatoes and onions.   Bake for 10 minutes.  When you take them out, sprinkle on the cilantro and the juice of the other half lime.

Enjoy!

Roasted Cornish Game Hens

Sometimes, we get a wild hare up our you-know-whats and feel a sudden, inexplicable need to cook an involved dinner. This happened to us Friday on the way home from work, so we called some friends and invited them to dinner Saturday.

The thing that was burning a hole in our ovens was a package of cornish game hens we had bought stupid cheap a few weeks earlier. Interesting thing about cornish game hens: they're not game birds, and they're not necessarily hens, either. It's a breed of chicken, developed in Connecticut in the 1950s, that is ready for processing in 2/3 the time of a normal chicken. It is similar to a poussin, except that it must be from a "cornish chicken or the progeny of a cornish chicken," or at least so says the USDA.

So, in chicken terms, it's a teenager from back east. As good a reason as any to kill it and eat it, I suppose.

Before you begin, a couple of safety tips: First, taking the birds out of the freezer and leaving them on the counter for 9 hours may not be sufficient time for them to thaw. If they're not thawed, run warm water over and through them until the meat is room temperature. Secondly, soup is hot, and I do not recommend coating your hand in it.

Roasted Cornish Game Hens

What You Need

2 birds

2 slices of lemon

1/2 cup of Beaujolais (not the nouveau variety)

1/8 tsp minced rosemary

2 cloves minced garlic

Salt

Pepper

What To Do with It

Preheat your oven to 475 degrees.

Kosher the birds. Well, not a full-on kosher, but rub some kosher salt on the skins and set them aside. This will remove some of the moisture from the skins and help them brown up.

Combine the other ingredients in a roasting pan. You want enough wine to just barely cover the bottom (1/8" or so). Squeeze in the lemon slices. Add a bit of salt and pepper. Taste, and adjust seasoning.

Wipe off the salt from the birds using first a paper towel, and then your hands. This probably goes without saying, but since the object is to dry out the skins, don't use water in this process. Rub each bird with olive oil (about 2 tsp each).

Truss the birds: tie the legs together in the back, and tie a string around the bodies to keep the wings in tight. Place the birds in your roasting pan. I did mine breast side down because I didn't want to baste them to keep the meat moist. Cooking them breast up will give you crispy skin over the breast, but you'll need to baste the birds about every 15 minutes.

Cook at 475 for 15 minutes, then lower temperature to 325 for about 45 minutes. Cook until they're 180 degrees on the inside. If they don't get quite brown enough, you can bump up your temperature at the end for a couple of minutes, and then pass the hens under a broiler for about 2 minutes.

Remove the hens and let them rest for 10 minutes. Empty the remaining liquid into a flat-bottomed pan and reduce to about 1/3 volume for a sauce. Cut each bird in half (just press down with a chef's knife in the middle of the back), plate and serve.

We drank the wine we cooked with, and served with white asparagus with a beurre blanc sauce, wild rice, and a very thick and hot potato leek soup.

Mai Tais: All My Drinking Friends Have a Sailing Problem

Two of our best friends, JD and Susan, have a J122 that they keep on Lake Texoma. For about half the year, we race. The other half, JD and Susan are happy to have us up for a night or a weekend.

The only cost of admission is (i) food and (ii) drink. I really think that Susan was the inspiration for the Finding Nemo fish, Dory ("Fish are friends, not food"). And JD, unfortunately, shares my philosophy regarding alcohol: "Life is too short for cheap booze." So, we don't do fish on the boat, but we do drink well.

Next week, they're going to be gracious enough to take us and our nephew out for a sail. Because it's almost sailing season again, I suspect all the pots and pans will be off the boat. And although JD and I would both be content with just a bottle of Anniversario rum, Jenn and Susan don't think that straight rum is acceptable.

Therefore, I think that we'll make laab gai spring rolls and mai tais: easy to eat, tasty to drink.

Laab Gai (with props to Beth, who gave me the recipe originally)

What you need:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1-2 jalapenos (or serranos, or similar peppers), minced
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1/8 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 tsp ginger root, minced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 tbsp fish sauce (to taste)
1-2 tbsp soy sauce (again, to taste)
1 tbsp rice cooking wine
1/4 cup lime juice
salt
Napa cabbage, thinly sliced
cucumber and carrot, julienned
Spring roll wrappers

What to do with it:

Chop up your chicken in a food processor. Basically, you're going to be making ground chicken. Boil it until it's cooked, then drain.

Put it in a bowl, add everything else except the cabbage, and mix. Once you have the flavor balance you want, refrigerate for an hour or so.

Prep a spring roll wrapper (place in warm water for about 8 seconds, removing before you think it's ready). Drop in a little cabbage, a couple tablespoons of laab gai, roll and enjoy.

Mai Tais

What you need:

1 ounce gold rum (I use Cruzan)
1 ounce spiced rum (meet my friend, Sailor Jerry)
1/2 ounce amaretto
juice of 1/2 key lime
3 drops Angostura bitters
small pinch allspice
2 1/2 ounces pineapple juice

What to do with it:

Mix it.

Pour it over ice.

Drink it.

Dijon Swiss Chicken Sammich--You Can Dress Up Chicken

We're on a diet chez nous.

Which is to say, "I'm being supportive of my wife's efforts."

Or to put it another way, "Thomas is always hungry."

One thing about my wife. In college, she spent an entire summer eating cereal for breakfast and quesedillas for dinner. She would be content to eat the same thing every day. I, on the other hand, need some variety.

So lately, I'm on a mission to figure out as many interesting way to cook chicken as I can. I feel like Bubba on Forrest Gump. You remember, "Anyway, like I was saying, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sautee it. There's um shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan-fried, deap-fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burgers, shrimp sandwich. That's, that's about it"

With that in mind, I present you tonight's essay: Dijon Swiss Chicken Sammich:

Dijon Swich Chicken Sammich:

What you need:

I'm assuming that you may be cooking for more than one, so this recipe is based on a one-person serving. Adjust accordingly.
One chicken breast
1/2 scallion (green onion)
1/4 lemon
1 slice swiss cheese
1 mushroom
Olive oil
Salt, pepper, dijon mustard, kaiser roll (or other bread)

What to do with it:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Spread a bit of olive oil on a baking sheet.
Drizzle a bit of olive oil (1 tsp or less) on top of the chicken, along with the lemon.
Thinly slice your mushroom and place on top of your chicken. Do the same with the scallion.
Sprinkle a bit of salt on top, place a slice of swiss cheese on top of the chicken.
Bake until it's done (time will depend on the type of oven you have, but generally 15-20 minutes, depending on thickness--add more time for more pieces: about 5 minutes each).
While your chicken's cooking, if you can, toast your bread.
When you're finished, add a little pepper to the chicken, put the mustard on your bread and serve.

Passing the Smell Test--Grilled Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken and Basil Tomato Marinara on Cinnamon Rice

I made a mistake recently. I asked some friends coming over for dinner if they had any requests. Normally, unless there's an allergy at issue, I don't pay attention to whether someone does or doesn't like a particular ingredient. This a point of contention in my house. My wife says we are supposed to care about our guests' enjoyment, whereas I like to look at them as guinea pigs.

But, I asked. So I was looking at either chicken or beef. I don't normally like to cook chicken for company because I think of it as a bland food that needs a lot of dressing up. But we'd just had the family over for steaks the night before. Chicken it would be. I decided to adapt a recipe I'd made up for shrimp one evening a while ago. The problem was that the shrimp recipe occurred after we'd all had a few glasses of wine. I remembered that it had cinnamon rice, some sort of marinara, and goat cheese. Beyond that, I had no idea. I was going to have to find the right spice combination...again.

For the novice cook, spices are scary. Once we get past salt, pepper, and maybe oregano, most of us are afraid to venture deep into the spice cabinet. How do we know what will taste good together, and what will be a bust?

The answer is simple: your spices and ingredients have to pass the smell test. If you smell two ingredients, and they "battle each other," then your food is going to have conflicting taste. If one of your spices overpowers the other in your nose, it will in your mouth, as well.

When I'm trying something new, the first thing I do is to smell the various spices and ingredients I plan on using. If I like the way they combine in my nose, then I'm pretty certain that I'll like the way they all fit together as a meal. This way, even though I may use some exotic ingredients, or ingredients that don't normally go together, I rarely end up with food that just flat out tastes weird.

If you try this recipe, prep all the ingredients before you mix anything together. Then sniff one ingredient after another in quick succession. I'll bet you'll like what you smell.

Grilled Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken and Basil Tomato Marinara on Cinnamon Rice

What you need:

3 chicken breasts
8 roma tomatoes
3 ounces of goat cheese
1/8 cup olive oil
1 large clove of garlic
1 serrano pepper
3 large fresh basil leaves
1 1/2 tsp ground cardamon
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4-1/2 tsp lime juice
sea salt

What to do with it:

Get some charcoal going on the grill.

We're going to start with the marinara. Start by peeling, seeding, and chopping the tomatoes. Chop the basil and place in a sauce pan with the tomatoes, olive oil, cardamon and about 1 1/2 tsp sea salt. Start cooking on medium low heat, stirring occasionally. You're going to keep cooking this for a while, until the tomatoes are almost all liquid.

Mince the garlic and serrano (don't seed it), and mix them and the lime juice into the goat cheese. Use a fork. Add about 1 tsp salt as you go.

Put some water on to boil for your rice.

Cut your chicken in half laterally so that you have two sides each about 1/2" thick. Don't quite cut them all the way through (you want a "hinge" on one side). Microwave the goat cheese mixture about 15 seconds so that it is a bit softer, and spread it on one half of each chicken breast. Now fold the two halves back together. Use a couple of tooth picks, and cooking twine if you've got it, to keep the halves of the chicken together.

Measure out your rice, and add the cinnamon to it.

At this point, your water should be boiling and your coals ready for cooking. Put the rice on. Check the tomatoes: if they've cooked down, turn down the heat to low. If not, keep going. Put your chicken on the grill. You're going to cook it about 8 minutes per side, depending on your grill.

Once the chicken is done, slice it into strips about 1/4 inch wide. Plate the rice, top with marinara, and put the chicken on top. Serve with a buttery chardonnay, such as J. Lohr.

Everybody Likes Italian, Right? Ravioli Primavera with Chicken

Most of us aren't familiar with actual Italian food. Most of us are familar with "Italianesque." Think about anything you eat at Macaroni Grill. It's like eating at Cantina Laredo and saying you've had Mexican food.

Of course, Cantina Laredo has its place, and so does Italianesque. The nice thing about Italianesque is that (i) it's easy and (ii) it tastes good. The problem with it is that a lot of people stop at spaghetti with bottled sauce. The difference between spaghetti with Classico pasta sauce, and something that's worth eating, is about five minutes. But how many times have we all opted for spaghetti from a box and sauce from a jar?

Somewhere in there is a metaphor for life.

So, here's a little something for those of you that want more out of your quick food. Total cooking and prep time: about 15 minutes. It's not Italian, but it tastes good. And since it only takes about 5 minutes longer than cooking spaghetti...well, as I said, somewhere there's a metaphor lurking about...

Ravioli Primavera with Chicken

Ingredients:

Start with some fresh, firm vegetables. I like to use a leek, a carrot, about 1/2 a bell pepper, and some celery.
1 chicken breast
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 tbsp. sour cream
Basil (fresh leaves if you've got 'em, flakes if not)
1 clove garlic
1 tsp. butter
corn starch
Cheese Ravioli (refrigerated, or home made, if you own a pasta press)

What to do with it:

Cut the chicken into about 3/4 inch pieces, and the vegetables about half that size. Mince the garlic and shred the basil if you've got it.

Sautee the chicken in olive oil with the garlic. Add some salt. Your water should be on and heating at this time for the pasta.

Once the chicken is about 3/4 cooked, add the basil, wine and vegetables, and keep your stove on medium. (If your pasta isn't in the pot by now, it should be.) Continue cooking until the chicken is done. Now, add the sour cream, and mix it up into the vegetables. Keep cooking on medium heat until your vegetables are just about to the firmness you want.

Add the butter and cook the chicken and veggies until you've cooked away about 1/2 of your your liquid. Throw in some more salt and some pepper to taste. Now it's time for the corn starch.
If you haven't played with corn starch before, the purpose is to thicken whatever liquid you've got. Right now, your sauce should be pretty thin. Add about a tablespoon of corn starch to 1/8 cup cold water and stir until the starch is completely dissolved. Now, slowly add the starch to your chicken and veggies while stirring. Keep an eye on the thickness--this is purely a matter of personal prefernce. Once you've got your sauce to a thickness you want, add the pasta and toss.

The butter adds just enough fat that, when combined with the thickening of the corn starch, makes this taste significantly more rich than it actually is.

You can easily substitute shrimp for chicken but cook the shrimp after your vegetables. Other veggies work as well, but pay attention to how quickly they will cook: if you're going to add mushrooms, for instance, you'll want to add them after the rest of your vegetables.