Chicken Parmigiana

Chicken Parmigiana is one of the very first dishes I learned how to make because it's pretty basic. Toss some sauce and cheese on breaded chicken and throw it in the oven. In reality though, I end up with two pots, one pan, one strainer, one casserole dish, and two bowls in my sink. If you're not a clean as you go person, it can quickly trash your kitchen, but that's because I include the pasta in this meal. The pasta is always to blame. My kids always called this meal, "Chicken Pizza," and that's pretty much what it is.

Ingredients: 

• 1 package of boneless chicken (1-2 lbs)
• Italian Breadcrumbs
• 1 jar Spaghetti Sauce
• 4 oz shredded mozzarella or mozzarella slices
• 2 tbls Olive Oil
• Two cups of elbow or rotelle pasta 
• 1 egg 

Directions: 

Preheat oven to 350. Slice the chicken in half with a nice sharp knife so you get two thin pieces of chicken out of each breast. Dip each slice in the egg and then the breadcrumbs and fry it all over a med-high heat just until the chicken becomes a nice golden brown color.

 We're not trying to cook the chicken here, we're only sealing the breading on so that it doesn't decide to stick with the casserole dish later, but that little bit of frying really does enhance both the flavor and look of your chicken. Four minutes per side should do it. You will use pans. I use a griddle because I'm pro like that. (They only cost like $20. Hint hint.) 

                                                Lightly browned chicken. Like a boss.

Put a teeeeny bit of oil on a paper towel and coat the bottom of the casserole dish, and then fit your chicken on in there all nice and cozy. Coat each piece with about a tablespoon of spaghetti sauce. (Plain old marinara sauce works best I think.) Cover your casserole with foil and stick it in the oven for 20 minutes.

                                                       (Woot...we're going in an oven!)

About ten minutes before it's done, set up a half pot of water to boil for the pasta and the remaining sauce can go in its own little happy pan on medium/low, if you like, just so its slowly cooking while all that is going on. Go watch TV for a few minutes. 

Ding! (TV makes everything go faster.) Pull your chicken out, remove the foil, cover the top of the chicken with handfuls of Mozzarella cheese and stick it back in the oven, uncovered, for ten more minutes. Dump your pasta into the boiling water. Stir it. Stir it again. Go watch TV for a few minutes.

Provided nothing has gone wrong, ten minutes later you will have moist succulent chicken topped with bubbly cheese and perfect pasta ready for the strainer.

                                         (Moist succulent chicken topped with bubbly cheese!)

Shovel it out onto an plate and serve with pasta and sauce and a nice little crisp green salad on the side. Listen to everyone belly ache afterwards that they ate too much.

                                                                    (Chicken Pizza)

Hawaiian Style Meatballs

                                          (Yes, these are meatballs...not alien eggs...)

Today's scrumptious culinary treat is Hawaiian Style Meatballs! Simple to make. Easy to eat!

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs lean ground beef
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon onion and garlic powder 
• 1 cup apricot or peach preserves 
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (omg, keep a bottle of this in your kitchen always!) 

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 
2. Mix the ground beef, soy sauce, brown sugar, onion powder and garlic powder thoroughly in a large bowl. Form the mixture into 2 tablespoon-sized balls and place on a foil covered baking sheet. 
3. Bake in preheated oven until no longer pink in the center...about 15 minutes. Stir the preserves and the cider vinegar together and toss with meatballs in a clean bowl, then return to the baking sheet and bake for an additional 6 minutes. 

I normally serve these over white rice but tonight I made them with mashed potatoes and that worked too. :)

The first time I made this I wasn't thinking and added everything into the meatballs from the start, but they turned out great that way too. The preserves are the secret ingredient in this dish. I use peach, but you apricot folk do as you like. In all honesty, the best tasting preserves I've used has been the Harris Teeter store brand. (When we first moved to North Carolina, we drove past the Harris Teeter every day for a month to go food shopping, because we had no idea it was a supermarket. It sounds like a furniture store or something, doesn't it?) 

There wasn't much I could do with pictures for making meatballs, but I took some anyhow, and I have to say, they are epic. 

                                        A dramatic shot of meatballs waiting to go into the oven...

          A second dramatic shot because I decided the first shot wasn't enough drama all by itself, and meatballs like drama. They also like 400 degree ovens!  

Cooked meatballs slathering themselves in the sweet preserves! 

The tin foil making a dramatic meatball optical illusion. And...back into the oven they go! 

No..wait...a shocking surprise! ONE MORE dramatic meatball picture! 

Okay, so imagine these on top of some white rice and ya got a gourmet Hawaiian meal!
(well..maybe not gourmet...or authentically Hawaiian..but..come on...they're tasty meatballs!) 

Chicken Bacon Ranch Wraps

These can be eaten hot or cold. Make a bunch. 

Ingredients:

• Cooked boneless breast chicken - cubed. 
• Large flour Tortillas 
• Cooked crispy Bacon
• Green Bell pepper, chopped
• Red Onion, chopped
• Shredded Cheddar (or Mozzarella)
• Black Olives, sliced.
• Creamy Ranch dressing (or tasty dressing of your choice) 

First of all, yes, every other recipe here is wrapped in a Tortilla. Those things are amazing. I love them. I didn't put a quantity on my ingredients because you can adjust them according to your needs. I usually make 8 at a time, since you can snack on them all week long.  (And you will!)

So for starters, we're going to fry up a strip of bacon, one for each wrap. Here's a picture of the bacon frying because bacon is awesome. (By the way...if you don't have a griddle, you totally should buy one! I wish I had gotten mine twenty years ago. They make your life sooo much easier, and I swear they are easier to clean than a pan.)

While the bacon is frying, you can chop up your veggies and chicken. Put your entire stack of Tortillas on a paper towel and stick them in the microwave for one minute. You want them to be soft and pliable. Tortillas like to be soft and pliable. Gather all your ingredients together and be ready to make like an assembly line.

 

Draw a line of dressing across the middle of the Tortilla and top with a handful of chicken. Then pile on the rest of the ingredients according to taste. Obviously, if you don't like olives or onions, etc, you can omit those things, and add things you do like, because no one is going to question you. There is no wrap police. Yet. They are equally good with cheddar and mozzarella and they are equally good with Creamy Ranch, Caesar and Italian dressings, etc. You may be the master of your own culinary destiny!

For show purposes, I lined everything up for the photo, but normally, I just dump it all in one big row.

To fold a Tortilla for a wrap, you're going to fold the sides in first (barely an inch..just enough to keep stuff from falling out the sides. Then you fold the bottom half up and over your filling and you just scrunch it all inwards. The warm Tortilla will be malleable. If you hold it there a second, you can feel it conform. Fold the sides in again and roll it forward all the way. Again, hold it there a second and squeeze it gently. It's almost like playing with play dough. (I probably should have done these on something other than a white background as it's hard to see. Sorry!)

As you make each one, pop it in the microwave for 45 seconds while you make the next one. (Assuming you are going to eat it now. Otherwise, you can pile them into a big zip lock bag and refrigerate them just like this until you are ready to eat them.)

To be a true Killer Gourmet, slice them at a diagonal and serve with one half leaning against the other. Like so:

 Yay! It's yummy noms!

(For a healthier low fat version of these wraps, omit the bacon and choose a low fat cheese and dressing. They're almost as good. But of course, nothing is as awesome without bacon.)