Italian Fantasy Chili or Fantasy Italian Chili

OK, this isn't exactly chili and it isn't really Italian but it's the best description I could come up with because Spicy Stew of Sausage, Chicken, Peppers and Onions with Cannellini Beans is way too long. It's kind of like chili and it's kind of Italian in flavor. And admittedly, I made this up as I went based on ingredients that sounded good together. But all that aside, this is delicious, savory and hearty. A great dinner on a cold wet Fall day or a frigid snowy Winter Saturday. Gotta have some good crusty country bread or ciabatta to have with it too along with a beer or wine.

Ingredients

2 Hot Italian sausage links cut into 1" pieces

1 Skinless Boneless Chicken Breasts roughly cut into 1" pieces

3 cans Cannellini Beans drained

1 medium sweet onion cut into thin half moons

2 Yellow or Orange sweet bell peppers cut into strips

12 - 15 grape tomatoes left whole

5 cloves of Garlic roughly chopped

1 tsp Herbes de Provance or Italian seasoning

1 tablespoon Cumin

1 Big Handful of fresh chopped Flat Leaf Parsley

5 Tutto Calabria Hot Peppers in oil cut in half lengthwise or generic red pepper flakes to taste

Water as needed to make the consistency to your liking

1/2 Lemon seeded and roughly chopped

Juice from one Lime 

3 Tablespoons Olive Oil divided

Salt and pepper to taste
Bread and beer or wine

How to do it - 

In a heavy Dutch oven add about a tablespoon or so of olive oil and brown the sausage pieces. Then add the peppers including the hot Calabria peppers, onions and garlic. Cook until the peppers are soft and the onion is translucent - about 5 -8 minutes. Remove to a bowl and set aside but keep the juices in the pot. Deglaze if necessary with water or a little white wine.

Add the chicken to the pot and cook until browned add salt and pepper and the herbes de provance. Then the grape tomatoes

Add back the sausages, onions and peppers along with the parsley and lemon pieces. Add the juice from the lime. Add enough water to come almost up to the top of the ingredients. Cover and simmer on low for an hour

After an hour add the cannellini beans. Cover and cook for a half hour. The chili should look like this -

ENJOY!!!

Red Pot Roasted Chicken and Vegetables

You will love this! It's one of our favorite go-to comfort meals. Hearty enough for a cold Sunday in January but light enough for a Saturday in June. We call it "Red Pot" chicken for no other reason than we originally made it in a red porcelain Dutch oven and the name seemed appropriate. (We made this one in a Calphalon pot).

As you can see from the ingredient list there is a good variety of garden vegetables that all play well together and cook down with the herbs, chicken juices and seasonings to produce a delicious sauce that must be sopped up with good crusty bread. The chicken is moist and tender but develops a wonderful crisp skin and the meat falls off the bone .

Ingredients:

2 - 3 Bone in, skin on, chicken breasts

Soft herb and garlic cheese like Alouette or Rondele 

3 medium zucchini

2 yellow or orange bell peppers

1 lb fresh Roma tomatoes

3 celery stalks - use the top leaves too

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion - roughly chopped

3 Garlic cloves crushed

8 Sun dried tomatoes in olive oil drained and cut in half
11 Kalamata olives pitted and cut in half

1 teaspoon dried oregano or 1 tablespoon chopped fresh (which we used)

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon paprika

Salt and fresh ground pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 F

Loosen the skin on each chicken breast without removing it, making a pocket. Push the soft herb garlic cheese under the skin of each breast, spreading it in an even layer.

Cut the zucchini into 1 inch thick rounds
Cut the bell peppers into 1 inch wide strips. 
Quarter the tomatoes lengthwise
Cut the celery stalks on a bias into 2 inch long pieces.

Heat the olive oil in the casserole. Add the onions and garlic. Sauté stirring frequently for about 5 minutes.

Add the zucchini, peppers and celery. Cook for about 5 more minutes.

Stir in the Roma tomatoes, the sun dried tomatoes, olives, oregano and balsamic vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Stir it all together.

Put the chicken breasts on top of the vegetables, drizzle with the rest of the olive oil, season with salt and sprinkle with the paprika.

Bake for 1 hour covered then remove the lid and cook for a half hour more or until the chicken is golden, cooked through and tender.

Serve with ciabatta or other good crusty bread.  ENJOY!

Chicken Piccata

This is another one of those dishes that looks classy and sophisticated on the plate but is simple and easy to prepare. 

Chicken or veal piccata, like chicken or veal Marsala and chicken or veal Francese are staples in Italian-American restaurants. The basic preparation for all of them is the same - thinly sliced and pounded meat that is dusted in flour then sauteed in olive oil and butter with wine. The difference is the flavor ingredients. For chicken piccata the flavor ingredients are capers, parsley, lemon juice and a dry white wine. I used Pinot Gigio.

 Ingredients (for two people)

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into cutlets and pounded about 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick 

• 3/4 cup homemade chicken stock or low-sodium store-bought broth
• 1 1/4 cups dry white wine 
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• About 1 cup all-purpose flour for dredging
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more if needed
• 3 tbsp capers
• 1/2 cup Minced fresh parsley

Directions - 

Chicken Marsala

Chicken Marsala (and it's "cousin", Veal Marsala), is a staple in every Italian-American restaurant. Sophisticated as it seems and delicious as it is, it is a simple dish to prepare, made with just a few ingredients - chicken cutlets, sliced mushrooms, minced shallots, thyme and parsley and it's namesake - Marsala wine. At its heart, though, it's just a basic chicken-with-pan-sauce dish.The key, though, is paying attention to what you are doing because things come together quickly.

First a little interesting background. The British deserve at least partial credit for the creation of chicken Marsala, even if that might make more than a few Italians cringe. The dish, which has its roots in Sicily, cannot be made without Marsala wine, which is a wine produced specifically around the city of Marsala in Sicily. And that's where the British influence comes in - they were instrumental in spreading fortified wines like Port and Marsala around the world to their various colonial outposts. Because of its higher alcohol content (thanks to a good dose of hard liquor), fortified wine was able to withstand, and to even be improved by, weeks and months on the open sea. In the case of Marsala specifically, an Englishman named John Woodhouse was responsible for deciding to sell a fortified version of the local Sicilian wine abroad. Eventually that wine found its way into the kitchen, and chicken Marsala was born. 

Start by preparing the chicken cutlets and browning them well. Most supermarkets and butchers sell cutlets already prepared, but you can easily make your own from skinless, boneless chicken breasts by slicing the breasts in half horizontally. 

.

Here is some advice from a recipe I found on line that is helpful - 
"In most chicken Marsala dishes, it's also customary to lightly dredge the cutlets in flour before browning them. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing this: The flour can help act subtly to thicken the final pan sauce, but it can also slightly dull the sauce's flavor. The flour also speeds browning by providing a drier (and therefore more browning-prone) surface than the chicken itself, but it's the flour that's browning, not the chicken. That's a mixed blessing. Faster browning is good, since chicken cutlets are thin and cook through rapidly—the quicker you can brown the exterior and get them out of the pan, the better. But since the flour is browning more than the chicken itself, your sauce won't be as flavorful as it would be if it was just the plain chicken protein making contact with the pan.That being said, I still prefer the flour step. If the cutlet is dredged lightly, the flour doesn't affect the sauce's flavor enough to sacrifice the insurance it gives against overcooking, especially with a lean protein like chicken breast, which can quickly take on the consistency of cardboard. On top of that, the flour coating changes the texture of the cutlets themselves, giving them a silkier exterior. To me, that silky exterior is an essential quality of chicken Marsala."

Right after browning the chicken and removing it from the pan, it's time to brown the mushrooms. Mushrooms do not brown quickly. They're loaded with moisture and have to dump it first before any real browning can begin. Being patient and waiting until all that mushroom liquid has cooked off and the slices turn a deeper chestnut color is essential to getting a good, rich flavor in the final dish. Otherwise, it'll taste like steamed mushrooms, and that's not a good thing. As soon as the mushrooms are browned, I add minced shallots and cook them just until translucent.

Now it's time to add the Marsala. While you can certainly drop plenty of cash on a top-notch Marsala, it's easy to find bottles that are good enough to drink and still cost a song. DO NOT USE super market Marsala cooking wine!!! I bought mine - a very drinkable Marsala - for five bucks. About a cup or a little more to the mushrooms and shallots will do the job.

 Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups Marsala wine 
• 3/4 cup homemade chicken stock or low-sodium store-bought broth
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into cutlets and pounded about 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick 
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• About 1 cup all-purpose flour for dredging
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more if needed
• 8 ounces cremini (baby bella) mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 medium shallot, minced
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme leaves
• 3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• Minced fresh parsley, for garnish

Directions

1. 1.
   Combine Marsala and stock in a mixing bowl or large measuring cup. Set aside.
2. 2.
   Season chicken cutlets all over with salt and pepper. Pour a roughly 1/2-inch layer of flour into a wide, shallow bowl. Dredge each cutlet in flour, tap off excess, and transfer to clean plate.
3. 3.
   Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Working in batches if necessary, add chicken and cook, turning once, until browned on both sides, about 3 minutes per side. Using a slotted spatula, transfer to paper towels to drain.
4. 4.
   Add the sliced mushrooms and shallots to the skillet along with the thyme (do not drain remaining oil) and cook, stirring frequently, until mushrooms have released their juices and browned well, about 10 minutes. Add more oil if pan seems too dry at any point.
5. 5.
   Pour Marsala mixture into pan. Bring to a boil, whisking and scraping up any browned bits from bottom of pan, until liquids are reduced by about three-quarters. Add butter and whisk constantly until emulsified and sauce takes on the consistency of heavy cream. Season with salt and pepper. Taste sauce and adjust as needed.
6. 6.
   Return chicken cutlets to pan, swirling to bathe them in the sauce and warm them through. Transfer to a warmed serving plate, spooning sauce and mushrooms all over chicken. Garnish with parsley and serve.

Thyme, parsley, shallot

with a side of pasta, or better yet, polenta

Chicken Kiev - Yes, You Can

Chicken Kiev is one of those special occasion dishes that sounds both elegant and a little exotic. It also makes a great impression on the plate when cut open and that rich herby buttery center runs out. Sure, you can get them already made in the frozen food section of most supermarkets, which we have done - yes we do sometimes buy pre-prepared food... but we decided that we needed  to make these things ourselves from scratch. We figured they can't be that difficult, and they really aren't. Like most culturally based dishes, there are variations but there are several key common components - chicken breast, of course, butter and tarragon. The tarragon infused butter is key to the correct flavor. 

This recipe is for two people (think Valentine's Day, Anniversaries) but the ingredients can easily be increased. for more.

Ingredients

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tablespoon fresh parsley minced
1 tablespoon fresh tarragon minced
2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
1 large whole eggs, beaten with 1 teaspoon water
1 cup panko bread crumbs
Vegetable oil, for frying
Salt and pepper

Directions

Combine butter, parsley, tarragon, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper in a bowl and mix together well. Place mixture on plastic wrap or waxed paper and roll into small log; place in freezer.

Place chicken breasts, 1 at a time, between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Squirt chicken lightly with water and squirt the top of the plastic wrap as well. Pound to no less than 1/8-inch thickness. Season each piece of chicken with salt and pepper.

Lay 1 chicken breast on a new piece of plastic wrap and place 1/4 of the compound butter and 1 tablespoon bread crumbs in the center of each breast. Using the plastic wrap to assist, fold in ends of breast and roll breast into a log, completely enclosing the butter; roll very tightly. Repeat with each breast. Place chicken in refrigerator for 2 hours, or up to overnight.

Place egg and water mixture in 1 pie pan and 2 cups bread crumbs in a different pie pan.

Heat 1/2-inch of vegetable oil in a 12-inch saute pan over medium-high heat until oil reaches 375 degrees F.

Dip each breast in the egg mixture and then roll in the bread crumbs. Gently place each breast in oil, sealed-side down, and cook until golden brown, approximately 4 to 5 minutes on each side, until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F. Remove to a cooling rack set in sheet pan and allow to drain for 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

Rice and roasted Brussels sprouts make good sides.

Mediterranean Chicken with Tagliatelle

"Beautifully juicy chicken basted in a thyme and basil oil and layered over fresh pasta in a roasted tomato and garlic sauce. Simple ingredients that are bursting with flavor", is how Jamie Oliver describes this wonderful dish. I watched his video below and knew at once we had to make it and share with you all. The video may sound a little complicated at first look, but after thinking it through and watching it again, it's not that difficult and I'll give you some tips that will make this easier without affecting the end result and I will list out the ingredients and amounts. This is so worth making. 

Tip #1 - It would be great if you can find cherry tomatoes on the vine, but don't worry about that. If you can't get them/find them, use off the vine cherry tomatoes. 

Tip # 2 - If you don't have the time or inclination to make homemade pasta, use a good brand of dried - DeCecco brand is very good and you can use their linguine or fettucine.

Tip #3 - Use fresh herbs, just like in in video. Don't use dried herbs. We are fortunate in that we grow a lot of different cooking herbs in our garden. 

Chicken and Chorizo Tacos

Took a tip from my daughter-in-law Miranda in preparing the chicken for these tacos. She made chicken tacos for my granddaughter Evie's birthday party last weekend. She cooked skinless, boneless chicken breasts in a crock pot with chicken broth, taco seasoning and salsa. When done, the chicken breasts are taken out and the meat shredded. They were very good and I liked the idea of cooking the chicken in a crock pot but changed the seasonings up a little. Instead of taco seasoning and salsa, I cooked the chicken breasts in the crock pot with chorizo sausage out of its casing. The chorizo has good bold flavor and as it cooked down, the juices soaked into the chicken, it giving the chicken a wonderful taste. We get our chorizo from a Mexican market here that makes their own fresh chorizo. We had the tacos with mashed pinto beans and guacamole. Recipes for all are below.

For the Chicken Tacos - makes 10 -12 tacos

Ingredients:

2 Skinless, boneless chicken breasts

1/4 - 1/2 lb fresh chorizo sausage

1/2 cup chicken stock

1 Calabrese or Serrano pepper (optional)

1 sweet onion cut in thin half moons

2 green or colored bell pepper cut in strips - we used the last of the green bells from our garden

Cilantro

Sour cream

Shredded colby jack cheese

Small flour tortillas

Directions:

Cut each chicken breast into a couple big chunks and put into the crock pot.

Take the chorizo out of the casing and add to the chicken, breaking up the chorizo with a spoon.

If using, slice the pepper lengthwise and add to the chicken and chorizo

Add the chicken stock

Set the crock pot to high

Cook for 3 - 4 hours

Take the chicken pieces out and shred with a fork

Put the shredded chicken back in the crock pot and turn it off.

Saute the peppers and onions until soft

Heat the flour tortillas and spoon on the chicken & chorizo, the peppers, onions, guacamole, sour cream, cheese and cilantro.

For the Mashed Pinto Beans

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon cumin
2 (15-ounce) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 - 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth, plus more if needed

Squirt of lime juice
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Shredded colby jack cheese

Directions:

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in the garlic and chili powder and cook for 1 minute more. Stir in the beans and chicken broth and cook until the beans are warmed through, about 5 minutes. Mash the beans coarsely with a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon, adding more chicken broth to moisten, if needed. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Stir in the cilantro. 

For the Guacamole

Ingredients:

2 ripe avocados, pulp scooped out
1 lime, juiced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 medium onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1 Roma tomato, seeded and diced
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

Directions:

Place the scooped avocado pulp in a bowl and add the lime juice, toss to coat.., add the salt, cumin, and cayenne.

Using a potato masher or a fork mash the pulp and seasonings together.

Meanwhile saute the onion and garlic in a frying pan until soft

Fold in the sauteed onion and garlic along with the jalapeno, tomatoes and cilantro into the seasoned avocado pulp.

Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour and then serve on the tacos or use as a dip with corn chips.