Recipe Experiment - Balsamic Chicken with Tomatoes

So it's been a while since I posted, but I finally made a recipe that I've been considering for a while. Balsamic Chicken. It turned out great, so I thought I'd share what I ended up with.

I started on All Recipes, where I found two possibilities: Braised Balsamic Chicken and Roasted Balsamic Chicken with Baby Tomatoes. I liked the ingredients for the first, but I preferred the cooking style of the second, so I combined them.

I marinaded it overnight, and it was a little frozen still when I cooked it, but not horribly. Turned out sweet and juicy, and was perfect.

Here's the recipe I ended up using:

Balsamic Chicken and Tomatoes

1/2 cup Balsamic Vinegrette
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
2 tablespoons Garlic
-- (I like it strong. I think the original called for one clove, so adjust accordingly depending on how much you like.)
2 teaspoons Oregano
-- (again, I love Oregano. If you prefer one of the other basic Italian seasonings, double that instead. Or just do 3 teaspoons of the general Italian seasonings.)
2 teaspoons Italian Seasonings
2 Chicken breasts (the recipe calls for 4 to 6, so if you use less, use half or a third of the can instead)
1 14.5 oz can of Tomatoes (I used one with garlic and seasonings in, but any chunked tomatoes will do)

Mix together vinegrette, oil, and spices. Place chicken in a container and pour over the mix, then store it in the fridge for at least four hours. Overnight is better.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put chicken in a high-lipped pan. (I poured in the juice from the bag as well, and braised the chicken once during the cooking process.)

Cook chicken for 30 minutes, braising once if you wish.

Add canned tomatoes over the top of the chicken. (The can I used was definitely too much for two, but probably would have been just about right for three.)

Cook for 10 more minutes.

Let cool and serve.

I had it with potatoes, but I think it would also work with rice or similar.

New recipe - Tropical Island Chicken

*waves* Hi! I am still alive. Been busy with Christmas and a few less-fun things, but I'm doing a recipe, so I thought I'd share it today.

I started with this recipe at Food.com for Tropical Island Chicken.

My changes:
I always use breasts, as I'm not a fan of dark meat the way most people are.
Instead of onion powder, I used flakes, and instead of garlic salt I used garlic powder. There was plenty of other salt in the recipe, so I didn't bother to replace it.
I also had to replace the crushed pineapple because I realized I had none, so I used half of a citrus-flavoured Sobe, though hopefully if I like this, I'll be trying it again with actual pineapple. I also cut the amounts of the sauce recipe in half because of that, and I still worry that I ended up with too much.
Instead of the 30 minutes after saucing, I'm going to check it at 10, and another 10 after that, just to see how it looks. I might add more sauce then, too.

Should be interesting. We'll see if it works. Smells great in here right now. :) I'll let you know how it turns out.

ETA: Well, post-eating, it wasn't rich enough, and cooked a bit too long. I definitely think it would be much better with actual pineapple, so I might try it again. We'll see.

Recipe Experiments - Cheesy Bacon Breasts

Tried something new tonight. Turned out quite good.

I started with this base recipe: Kelsey's Cheesy Bacon Breasts.

My changes:
I'm not fond of mustard, and one of the comments below the main recipe suggested marinading the chicken in vinegar, so I decided to start by taking the oil and a teaspoon of mustard powder and adding it to about a half cup of apple cider vinegar, then putting that and the chicken in a baggie and setting it in the fridge for an hour.

Once I was done marinading it, I discarded the marinade and put the chicken in a pan in the oven and cooked it for ten minutes, flipped it, and cooked for ten more, then put barbeque sauce and bacon bits (instead of real bacon) on it and cooked for five more minutes before adding the cheese, and finished with another five minutes.

Was absolutely delicious and very filling. I definitely recommend it. Would be great with some asparagus or broccoli.

Peruvian Grilled Chicken Redux

So I took the rest of the chicken from last night, grilled it on our countertop grill, then cut it up, and made myself chicken tacos tonight. Good, if a bit dry. Might have been better with a bit of salsa, perhaps. I think if I try it for tacos again, I'll probably stew a bunch of it in my crock pot and try it that way, so that it's a bit juicier on its own. Maybe with a bit of tomato sauce on it.

Overall, the two breasts made enough for about three or four servings, depending on what was eaten with it. Definitely worth playing with a bit.

More food experiments - Peruvian Grilled Chicken

Made a new recipe tonight--well, actually yesterday, and it marinaded for 24 hours.

Peruvian Grilled Chicken from the Epicurious website.

I did the recipe as on the website, though I used dried garlic as I had no fresh, and I used chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken. Mixed up the marinade, and it smelled absolutely delicious. Put the breasts in a ziplock bag, poured in the marinade, then rolled it up and put it in the fridge.

Tonight, instead of grilling it (I do have access to one, but I don't feel comfortable using it for a couple of reasons), I put it in the oven at 350 for 40 minutes. Came out perfect. Just slightly zippy and earthy and absolutely delicious.

I think I'll grill second breast on our countertop grill, cut it up, then make a chicken taco out of it. It's got just the right flavour for it.

I'll definitely be using this one again.

Food experiment--Casear Salad Chicken Wrap

So we went to the store last night and I got a whole bunch of a lot more fresh ingredients than I usually buy. I've got a post I'm going to try to put together about the recipe sites I've been using, but this one came right off the top of my head. I based it on something mom and grandma and I used to get at the Cucina Fresco near Grandma's old nursing home.

I got one of those packs of pre-cooked chicken strips, put half of the package (a small handful or quarter cup) in a bowl, then added half a plum tomato (my favorite tomato), 1/5 of a yellow pepper (any colour would work), a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, a small handful of shredded Italian cheese (I get this mixed, but this could be real shredded Parmesan or mozzarella, or any of your favorite Italian cheese, shredded or crumbled small), then I added a quarter cup of Caesar dressing to the bowl, mixed it all up, then added three large handfuls of romaine lettuce (though any crisp lettuce would work well in this), and mixed again. I put all this in a pre-heated burrito-sized tortilla, then did my best to roll it up (though it didn't work too well, as I'd overfilled it). nice and crispy and very tasty, if I do say so myself. The amount I made would feed two people nicely with some soup.

Follow Friday and more

I- Follow Friday

For Follow Friday today I've only added one more blog, Olive Tree Genealogy. It's a lovely blog that I'm very much enjoying so far.

II- Genealogy

Oh, Spuch post for the week is the second part of my Visual Family Tree, this time focusing on the Hansen side of the family tree. Includes 4 generations of Hansens, reaching back before 1900.

Comparing the photos of my great-grandparents' siblings was rather interesting. One of my Danish friends mentioned that my great-grandfather's family looked rather well-off, given how they're dressed, though that could have more to do with the fact that Holger's family were near a city, while Oline's family was in the country. Something to look into, at least.

It was also mentioned that the naming in my great-grandfather's family was a bit odd. Holger had two brothers named Hans--Hans Jorgen and Hans Knudsen. Jorgen is less unusual, but Knudsen is distinctly a surname, in this case being used as a middle name. In looking into it further, it seems that one brother was named for one grandfather (Hans Knudsen, hence the Hansen name for the entire family), and one for the other (Jorgen Larsen). Definitely made me think I've a lot of interesting things when it comes to surnames used in odd ways in my family--I'll definitely have to work on a blog-post about that.

A few weeks back I made myself a research log using Excel and making tabs for each of my four major families to keep them separate for now, and so that I don't duplicate too much research. Then, in an effort to focus on the people I need the most information about, I went through my direct ancestors and made a new list of people who fit that bill. So now I have five tabs, and I'm considering making a sixth, just focusing on the dead-end brides in my tree.

No other discoveries today, big or small, though I did learn that ukendt kvinde means "unknown woman" in Danish... :)

III- Cooking

Cooked my chicken today. It's okay, but I don't think I'll be making it again. The sweet and earthy didn't quite mix right for my taste buds.

I'm thinking I'll make something with paprika, yogurt, and lemon juice next time. Now I just have to find a recipe that works.

Did make myself some garlic bread with the sourdough round. That was nice, though I don't think I cooked it quite long enough. The garlic was a bit sweet.

Food Experiment II

Found another chicken recipe to try, which looks interesting to me because it goes outside my usual comfort zone when it comes to marinades and uses paprika. I've made a slight change to the recipe, taking out the curry and adding garlic, but otherwise going with the basic recipe for Honey Chicken at allrecipes.com.

All mixed up now, and I'll be marinading it overnight, so I'll have to report back on how it worked tomorrow. I ended up with too much, and probably could have marinaded double the amount of chicken, but at least I know it'll all be well covered.

I considered using jarred garlic--I don't use it fresh enough to get cloves, as I always use about 4-10 cloves, and the rest ends up sprouting on me, so this is my way of dealing with that--but decided since everything else was powdered, I might as well do that with the garlic, too.

I do have the makings for garlic bread, though--a lovely sourdough round, fresh(-ish) garlic and butter--so I might make that tomorrow as well.

Experiments in food

I don't cook enough.

I grew up in a household where my mother made most of our meals from scratch, but for some reason, it never caught with me. Likely because I didn't help her cook enough. But I'm slowly but surely trying to remedy that.

I generally only cook for myself, as my husband has a very specific diet and prefers to make his own meals. Which means when I do cook, most times, I have leftovers, so if I find I don't like something...that's food wasted. It takes a lot for me to get past that, unfortunately. But I'm trying.

First step: Finding recipes I like that I will use again.

So today, I'm marinading some chicken breast. Wings and breasts are about the only cuts of chicken I tend to eat. I got a pre-prepared pair of boneless, skinless chicken breasts from the store, and then looked up a recipe to use on allrecipes.com, which is one of my two main places to find recipes.

The recipe I'm converting is this Barbeque Chicken recipe.

I used the converter to change the ingredient amounts to 2 servings, which worked out to:
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 tablespoons vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)
1 teaspoon oregano
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
2 chicken breasts

And when I cook it, I'll put it in the oven for 40 minutes to an hour (depending on how it looks), and add salt to taste when it's done.

Pretty basic, but I'll let you know how it tastes once I've finished.