Saturday's Dinner? 20th Sept

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creative

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I had an unusual, odd combo.

Got a beautiful large globe artichoke (green, no mottling and leaves opened out) which I steamed and had with melted garlic butter with lemon juice.

Then had some goose rillette (very savoury and divine) with toasted sourdough bread.
 
I'm making pacanis' garlic parmesan wings tonight. That's two nights in a row for pacanis recommended recipes! :ohmy: Some (fresh) sliced cucumber will serve as the vegetal component of the meal and a cold Sam Adams will wash it all down.
 
I just got back from Walmart and bought a 1.5 qt. Corningware oval casserole dish with glass lid. I am going to try making Hawaiian chicken again (Letscook's recipe). I finally found some chicken breasts that aren't huge half split chickens. I originally tried this recipe with 2 lbs. boneless chicken breasts cooked in a 2.5 qt Corningware. I bought the little sister of that today. The 2.5 was a bit too large for me. This one is just right sized. I'm going to try and get the sauce thicker before I coat the chicken and oven it. I also thought there wasn't enough to this dish so I bought lots of extra peppers, and I'm adding carrots and onions so the chicken won't feel so alone.

Anyway, I'm in no hurry and everything's ready to go. I'm just relaxing at the moment but will cook it up tonight sometime. I wonder that because I'm adding all the extra veggies, if 45 minutes covered plus 15 minutes uncovered will be enough cooking time. I'm sure it will be. Fingers crossed. I really like the smaller size covered casserole dish I bought today. $17. The chicken breast is still a wee bit larger than what I would like, but whata ya gonna do? The others I saw for sale were half split chickens and much larger.

hawaiian_chicken.jpg
 
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if your'e gonna do a quick cook, you'll need to add something by technique rather than ingredient for flavour.

be sure to heavily season then really brown the breats first, then sweat the veggies, then deglaze.


btw, that looks like 1 big breast to me. looks pretty normal. i'm not sure what bigeer ones of which you have referred?
 
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Andy, you could count that Sam Adams as a serving of grains, right?


Himself is still feeling punky, so I made a pot of Jewish Penicillin, AKA Chicken Noodle soup. Actually, it was more of a riff on Bob Evans Restaurant's "Chicken-n-Noodles", a definite sick-day purchase when we're back home.
 

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if your'e gonna do a quick cook, you'll need to add something by technique rather than ingredient for flavour.

be sure to heavily season then really brown the breats first, then sweat the veggies, then deglaze.


btw, that looks like 1 big breast to me. looks pretty normal. i'm not sure what bigeer ones of which you have referred?

This recipe (not fancy) has me browning the breast in too much oil to deglaze, but I would consider lessening the oil maybe. The veggies will be cooking for an hour at 350F, so no worry about being undercooked I should think. In fact, the last attempt there were so few bell peppers in the dish, they were almost OVER cooked. Rather limp and dull colored.

That chicken breast was the smallest I could find without going to an Asian butcher (still haven't pursued that). The picture makes it look a bit bigger than it is, in comparison to the casserole dish. It's not that thick. Again, somewhat camera distorted. I am still going to try and hunt down smaller sized chicken breasts bone-in, skin-on. I bought a 4 pak of these, so I want to use them up.

I'll snap another photo with the breast and everything in the dish and ready to go into the oven. I'll brown it good like you suggested too, flour coated salt and pepper mix.
 
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We had a new item from Trader Joe's tonight, and they were excellent with sides of salad and leftover green Mexican rice from last night. I'll definitely be buying these pies again.
img_1388850_0_db5987bc51bf3207ed25878b77f4fdad.jpg
 
if your'e gonna do a quick cook, you'll need to add something by technique rather than ingredient for flavour.

be sure to heavily season then really brown the breats first, then sweat the veggies, then deglaze.


btw, that looks like 1 big breast to me. looks pretty normal. i'm not sure what bigeer ones of which you have referred?

Ok, it's in the oven at 350F for 45 min, then 15 minutes uncovered. One thing missing from my last attempt was the lack of vegetables to sit on the bed of rice along with the chicken breast. As you can see, I really made sure there's other than just chicken and pineapple this time. Also, when I made the sauce to pour over the chicken, I made it much thicker this time so it doesn't drain thru the rice on the plate. I made sure the veggies got coated with the sauce too.

oven1.jpg
 
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Caslon, dinner looks good through the glass lid. Hope it turns out yummy.





Ooo Kayelle, those look definitely like a must-try. I wonder if the location nearest to us stocks them. Hmm, I have something to return (the multi-grain pita chips were thick as a brick - yuck) and see a TJ's road trip in my near future.
 
I'm gonna visit my local Trader Joes, check their meat department for bone-in, skin on chicken breasts, haha! Another store that you wouldn't think of when it comes to food is Smart 'N Final. Not as good as Trader Joes , but they're expanding their food section like you wouldn't believe. Unique food items like what Trader Joes has.

By the way, Smart 'N Final was started by two guys with last names of Smart and Final.

My Hawaiian chicken is thru cooking. Again, with all those pineapple chunks and veggies, it added a lot of moisture to the sauce. I'm going to drain that out into a sauce pan, heat it up and thicken it with arrowroot.

Also, next time...I'm going to use the lid and compress the pineapple chunks can and get as much juice out as I can.
A bit too much moisture in this dish still.

I'm going to set the casserole dish as is , in the fridge and correct the runny sauce for tomorrow nights dinner. The veggies are nicely done with still a bit of crunch to them. Runny sauce tho. This in turn seemed to have almost boiled the chicken.
 
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I took a taste test of the chicken while letting it cool to put in the fridge and it tastes delicious. It got nicely infused with flavor. I'm getting there with this recipe. Next try, I'm going to take into account how much moisture is added to cooking with the pineapple chunks and veggies. Probably not so much with the veggies as the juicy pineapple chunks. I'm gonna squeeze as much juice out of them as is possible next try. Put them chunks thru a grape wine press, ha.

EDIT: What I did just now was use a colander over a sauce pan, poured the entire contents of the casserole, chicken and all into it and now its draining into the saucepan.

I'll heat up the liquid, thicken it with arrowroot, return everything to the casserole dish and store if in the fridge and reheat it in the oven tomorrow night. The veggies are crisp and bright and flavorful. It smells wonderful and I learned a lot.

In fact, I may do this procedure as part of making this dish (draining the liquid and thickening it).
 
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the more you boil the liquid, the more it'll concentrate the flavour.

up to a point. when it smokes, you've gone too far.
 
the more you boil the liquid, the more it'll concentrate the flavour.

up to a point. when it smokes, you've gone too far.

Didn't go too far. What I did notice is that when the sauce was originally being made, adding the arrowroot during that process went fine, it thickened up nicely, no little white bits of arrowroot. However, when I went to thicken the sauce afterwards, just pouring the powdered arrowroot into the pan with heat caused it to not thicken as well as when I was making the sauce originally. Then I remembered that when thickening a sauce with arrowroot, you're supposed to make a paste out of it with a bit of cold water, THEN add it in. I did that and it thickened up nicely. If anything tho, it didn't concentrate the flavor, but dulled it a little. So, I must remember that when thickening a sauce after its cooked, you need to do the cold water paste thing with arrowroot to get success. It has to do with changes at the molecular level.

Anyways, the sweet and sour sauce is just a tad bit dulled, but I poured it back over the dish and it's going to be a delicious Sunday night dinner. Served over rice. What I'm pleased about is how bright and crisp the veggies are. When I made this dish originally with just a few pieces of green bell pepper, they cooked up dull colored and limp. The dish looks delicious now. I can't wait to enjoy it tomorrow evening.
 
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We were going to have stuffed peppers, but got distracted by a movie and didn't get around to cooking dinner until 9, at this point it was too late. We had (packaged) pumpkin and ricotta ravioli with sage and butter.
 
I took a taste test of the chicken while letting it cool to put in the fridge and it tastes delicious. It got nicely infused with flavor. I'm getting there with this recipe. Next try, I'm going to take into account how much moisture is added to cooking with the pineapple chunks and veggies. Probably not so much with the veggies as the juicy pineapple chunks. I'm gonna squeeze as much juice out of them as is possible next try. Put them chunks thru a grape wine press, ha.

EDIT: What I did just now was use a colander over a sauce pan, poured the entire contents of the casserole, chicken and all into it and now its draining into the saucepan.

I'll heat up the liquid, thicken it with arrowroot, return everything to the casserole dish and store if in the fridge and reheat it in the oven tomorrow night. The veggies are crisp and bright and flavorful. It smells wonderful and I learned a lot.

In fact, I may do this procedure as part of making this dish (draining the liquid and thickening it).

Something else you could do is remove the lid sooner, or even try cooking it without the lid. This will allow the sauce to reduce while it's cooking. I would also make sure the breast is on top of the veggies so the skin will be exposed to the heat and crisp as it cooks. And veggies do release a lot of liquid as they cook.
 
Something else you could do is remove the lid sooner, or even try cooking it without the lid. This will allow the sauce to reduce while it's cooking. I would also make sure the breast is on top of the veggies so the skin will be exposed to the heat and crisp as it cooks. And veggies do release a lot of liquid as they cook.

Both ideas make sense. I might go half the time covered and half open. I'll put the chicken up top too next time. Thanks.
 
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