Food Therapy: Pan-Fried Breaded Chicken Cutlets

Let me just start this post by saying one thing:

I hate frying.

It stresses me out, I can never get the temperature of the oil just right, and I usually end up cursing, crying, getting popped with oil or a combination of all three. The problem? Well, I love fried food. I love frying my own taco shells or making my own pork wontons. The solution? Let Jim do it!

He doesn't mind frying food, so when we make it, he takes over (thank God). I already have two scars on my hand from frying something two years ago. I don't need any more.

I've had a terrible day that involved a forgotten calculator and not understanding the shape of a dam for a conversion problem on a chemistry test. I knew nothing could fix my day like some good old fashioned food therapy! Pan-fried breaded chicken cutlets are familiar and comforting, and when served with roasted potatoes and vegetable gravy it's also refined.

Pan-Fried Breaded Chicken Cutlets

Cutlets:

4 chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper

Flour

2 eggs

2 T. water

Bread crumbs

1/2 sprig rosemary

Place one chicken breast in a gallon Ziploc bag. With the flat side of a meat tenderizing mallet, pound out the breast until it is about a 1/2 inch thick. Repeat with all breasts.

Fill a dinner plate or pie dish with flour. In another dinner plate or pie dish, mix together 2 eggs and 4 t. water (2 t. for each egg). Add enough bread crumbs to another pie dish and mix in rosemary.

Dredge one chicken breast in the flour. Shake off excess flour and place breast in the egg mixture. Let excess egg mixture fall back into the pie dish. Place the breast in the bread crumb mixture and coat until bread crumbs cover the whole breast. Repeat with remaining breasts. Let the breasts rest on a plate or pan for 20-30 minutes.

Add enough oil to a heavy 10-12 inch skillet (cast iron if you've got it) to come a little less than halfway up the side of the chicken, about 1/4 of an inch. And it's important that you don't use olive oil here and instead use another oil like canola, which is still very healthy, because olive oil has too low of a smoke point for the temperature you want to aim for with this dish.

Now that you've got the right kind and amount of oil, heat the oil until it reaches 350 degrees (you have a candy/frying thermometer right?).

Once the oil is good and hot put one of the cutlets into the pan and cook evenly on each side until the internal temperature reads 165 degrees (you have a digital instant-read thermometer right?). Once done, remove the cutlet from the pan and place on a cooling rack with paper towels underneath to catch the excess oil.

If the oil has dropped below 330 degrees, wait until it reaches 350 degrees to begin cooking the next chicken cutlet.

Serve with vegetables and gravy on top.

Vegetables and Gravy

1/2 red onion, diced

1/2 zucchini, sliced

1 large carrot, sliced

Around 15 stalks of asparagus, bottoms cut off and cut into small pieces

1 T. butter

2 T. flour

1/2 c. chicken stock

While the chicken cutlets are resting before getting cooked, heat a large skillet over high heat. When pan is very hot, coat bottom of the pan with olive oil. Add the carrot and onion and let cook, stirring the whole time, for about 1-2 minutes, or until onion starts to become translucent.

Add 1 T. butter and lower heat to medium. Add the asparagus and zucchini and cook for about 1-2 minutes. Add the flour and mix together.

Add the chicken stock and deglaze the bottom of the pan. Let simmer until chicken is done. Salt and pepper to taste.

Sometimes Mistakes are Good

Classes are now in full-swing and are keeping me quite busy. I will, of course, try to update the blog as much as possible, but between classes and writing some pieces for the Tribune, I'm quite busy.

So maybe it wasn't such a bad thing I forgot the ricotta cheese in my lasagna--it made wonderful cheesecake!

If you're looking for a light dessert, try this. It's not as dense as cheesecake made with cream cheese, but it's still very good. For added elegance? Make a honey balsamic glaze reduction to drizzle over the cheesecake.

Ricotta Cheesecake

2 lbs ricotta cheese

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup all purpose flour

6 eggs

2 oranges, zested

1 t. almond extract

2 tsps vanilla extract

1/8 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 320 degrees. Set rack in the middle of the oven.

Butter and flour a 9 1/2 inch spring form pan and tap out excess flour. Place the ricotta, zest in a large mixing bowl, and beat it until smooth. Add the sugar and the flour and continue mixing until blended. Beat in the eggs at low speed, one at a time. Add the vanilla and almond extract. Add salt.

Pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the center of the oven for about 1 hour, until a light golden color. Make sure the center is fairly firm, and the point of a sharp knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. It will sink slightly as it cools. Cover, and chill until serving time.

Honey Balsamic Glaze Reduction

¼ cup balsamic vinegar


1 T. honey

Bring vinegar and honey to a boil then turn down the heat and let it simmer until it’s been reduced to half the original amount, about 10 minutes. It should stick to the back of a wooden spoon and will thicken as it cools.

Don't Forget the Ricotta

After spending close to six or seven hours making lasagna, we were ready to eat it. The table was set, food was on the plates and we were hungry. I cut a piece with my fork excited to finally taste what Jim and I had worked so hard on.

Then it dawned on me. We didn't put the ricotta in the lasagna. Three full tubs of ricotta were sitting our refrigerator, completely unopened, because we forgot it. It seems simple enough, right? Open the tub, spoon some on each layer and you're good. That's why we forgot it.

Let me start at the beginning. Our goal was to make homemade lasagna. All of it homemade--the sauce, the pasta, fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese. The only thing that didn't require some form of work? You guessed it. The ricotta. And that's why it's STILL sitting in my fridge and not layered in my beautiful lasagna.

Good news? The lasagna still tastes amazing. The fresh mozzarella was definitely worth it, the sauce made my apartment smell like heaven for a day and a half AND tasted delicious and making the pasta was quite an experience.

If you're in the mood for a cooking endeavor that takes some time, try making homemade lasagna. You know you'll love it and it tastes so much better after you spend all of that time on it.

Just don't forget the ricotta.

Bolognese Sauce

2 1/2 lbs. ground sirloin/beef

1 large carrot, finely chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1/2 large onion, finely chopped

4/2 14.5 oz. cans of peeled, seeded, and diced tomatoes, drained

1 1/4 c. full-bodied red wine

1/4 c. red wine vinegar

5 sprigs thyme

4 sage leaves

3 bay leaves

4-5 leaves basil

Begin by cooking the beef over medium high heat in a large pot or stock pot. Because there's a lot, you'll probably want to cook it in batches. Remove the meat once cooked and keep in a separate container.

When meat is cooked, start cooking the vegetables in the same pot. You can keep some of the fat from the meat or use olive oil instead to sweat the vegetables, which will take about 10 minutes. Add 1/4 c. of the red wine to the pot and deglaze the pan (scrape up all of the little bits of meat and veggies that are stuck to the pot).

Return the meat to the pot after deglazing. Add the rest of the wine (1 cup) and red wine vinegar. Add the tomatoes. Stir everything together. It will look very thick and like it isn't a sauce at all. Don't worry, though. The juices from the tomatoes will come out when it starts to cook.

Wrap the thyme, sage and bay leaves in the basil leaves. This is called a bouqet garni. Tie it together with kitchen twine or dental floss. Drop this into the pot.

Let sauce simmer, uncovered, for 3 hours. Ideally, refrigerate it overnight. If you do this, reheat it for 30 minutes before using in lasagna.

Homemade Pasta

5-6 eggs

4 c. flour

2 T olive oil

Pasta Machine

Form flour into a ring with a well in the center. Crack 5 eggs into the well and add olive oil.

Stir eggs around with fingers, breaking up the eggs and destroying the wall of flour. Drag more flour from the walls into the eggs.

Continue to pull flour from the walls until dough forms.

Use a sharp edge like the back of a knife to pull up the dough and work it together. If there is still loose flour, add one more egg YOLK and then the white if the dough is still too dry.

Work into a ball. (I ended up using 6 eggs total, but the dough ended up too sticky. Next time I'll use 5.)

Divide the dough into fourths. Set the rollers at the widest setting on the pasta machine. Work a portion through the rollers. Fold the dough over in half and work through the machine again. Fold and roll through again. Continue to do this until the dough feels smooth, like suede or leather.

Adjust the knob to the next smallest setting and pass the dough through. Continue to roll the dough through the machine, decreasing the width on the rollers each time. If it gets to be too long, cut in half. Place finished layers of pasta on wax paper to prevent from sticking.

To cook the pasta, bring a large pot of water to boil. Add salt and some olive oil to prevent from sticking. Place pasta in water. We boiled 1-2 strips at a time to make it less stressful. After 30 seconds, check the pasta. It should be al dente with a bit of a bite to it still.

Hint: We made this whole recipe, and didn't need all of it. For the lasagna, you'll need two strips per layer of lasagna. In the end, we used about 6-8 strips of lasagna pasta. You can store the pasta in the refrigerator for a couple days, or you can dry the pasta for a later date. Or you can just cut this recipe in half.

Lasagna

Cooked lasagna strips

3-15 oz. containers of ricotta cheese

1 1/2 lbs of fresh mozzarella, sliced

Quick Tip: Put the mozzarella in the freezer 15-20 minutes before you want to slice it. It helps firm the cheese and makes it much easier to cut it.

Bolognese sauce

1 lb Parmesan cheese, finely grated

Grease a 10 x 14 baking dish. Place 2-3 strips of the pasta in the bottom of the pan. Layer the first noodles with one third of each of the ricotta, mozzarella, sauce and parmesan cheese. Repeat for second and third layers.

Finish the lasagna with a layer of sauce, mozzarella and parmesan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let it cool for 10-15 minutes.

Sunday Dinner

Boy did my tiny kitchen get hot yesterday. Corn chowder AND tomato and bacon jam? Whew. I had to kick up my AC, that's for sure.

As a college student living on a very tight budget, I've been missing Sunday dinner. Growing up, my family always had dinner on Sunday evening after church. We would have pot roast or homemade chicken pot pie--you know, the usual delicious home cooking. I missed being in the kitchen for the better part of the day and then enjoying what you make in the evening. Working full time doesn't really allow for much of that.

That's why I decided yesterday that I was going to make a Sunday dinner, and I would do it cheaply. I found a great recipe in my hometown newspaper for tomato and bacon jam. It sounded quite tasty, so I gave it a shot. It only called for one relatively expensive thing: bacon. It wouldn't be expensive if I found a recipe for Sunday dinner that called for bacon too, so I tried to find one. There was a recipe for corn chowder in the newspaper and well, I had to. Let me just say how much I love soup. I love soup. There. Now you know how much I love soup.

I thought a corn chowder would be a good compromise for soup in the summer. It would still be soup, but the corn would help make it taste summery. It was an easy recipe, but I changed it quite a bit. I added potatoes and chicken, and I used more chicken stock then it called for. The only hassle was frying bacon (which I hate doing). When I made the bacon for the jam, I just went ahead and fried up the bacon for the chowder too and got both starting at the same time. Hence the air conditioning.

The corn chowder was delicious, hearty, and everything a Sunday dinner is supposed to be. The brownies I made while dinner was cooking didn't hurt!

When I was done eating dinner, I poured the cooled jam into little jars and stuck them in the fridge. This morning, I made a whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and spread some of the jam on top. It was pure heaven.

Sunday dinner and an awesome Monday morning breakfast? This week HAS to be good!

Tomato and Bacon Jam (recipe originally printed in The Columbia Daily Tribune on July 22, 2009)

2 lbs very ripe tomatoes, chopped and cored
1/2 lb bacon
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 T. cider vinegar
Salt and pepper.

In a large skillet over medium-high, cook the bacon until crispy, about five minutes. Transfer the bacon to paper towels to drain excess fat, blotting it dry with additional towels as needed.

In a large saucepan, combine the tomatoes, onion, sugar, cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, stirring often, then reduce heat to medium. Crumble the bacon into the tomato mixture.

Simmer until very thick, about one hour. Season with salt and pepper, as needed.

Let the jam cool, then ladle into jars. Can be refrigerated for three to four days, or frozen for as long as two months. If freezing, divide the jam among several small jars. When ready to use, let a jar thaw overnight in the refrigerator.

Corn Chowder

6 strips crispy bacon
1 small onion, chopped
1 diced red bell pepper
1 diced green bell pepper
6-7 small red potatoes, chopped
2 chicken breasts or 4 chicken breast tenderloins, cooked and cut into small chunks
1 T. ground cumin
1/2 T. cayenne pepper
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2-2 1/2 cups chicken stock (use for desired consistency)
1 cup milk (do not use low-fat or nonfat)
1 16- to 17-ounce can whole-kernel corn, drained, liquid reserved
Salt and pepper to taste

In stockpot, fry up the bacon. Remove the bacon and leave the fat. Sauté onion, peppers, potatoes, cumin and cayenne until veggies are soft. Add in the flour and cook for about a minute, stirring the whole time. Stir in chicken stock, milk, and reserved corn liquid. Let mixture come to a boil and whisk until smooth. Stir in corn and chicken chunks. Let simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When ready to serve, crumble bacon into chowder. Serve with shredded cheese on top if desired.

Goats Hopping on the Roof

A month or two ago, I was reading the Food and Wine section of The New York Times. I tend to do that a lot when I am bored, in case you haven't noticed. There was a pretty interesting article on goat meat that convinced me I had to try it. The article touted numerous benefits--more protein than beef and less fat than lamb. And wouldn't it be stupid not to try the source of meat that most of the world actually eats on a regular basis? Of course it would.

But when I was little, my mom used to tell me about a pet goat she had growing up. Apparently this goat climbed the barn's roof and ignited quite some anger within my grandpa. Curses were cast. Expletives were muttered under his frustrated breath. And this quirky, lovable portrait of goats was all I really had to go off of when I thought of goats.

At the farmer's market a week or so ago, though, one of the farmers was selling goat meat. Because I'd made Jim read the article, he too was swayed to give it a try. So we went for it and bought four goat chops for $10, which was a little bit pricey given the size of the chops (which were a lot tinier than I'd expected). Adventure in cooking, however, has no price.

And finally, on Sunday, we cooked them. Jim's brother gave us a recipe for Goat Curry that would take about 4 hours, which is exactly what's needed to make the meat as tender as possible. Our apartment smelled delicious for the better part of the day. Nothing like smelling something all day to make you crave it.

Or so I thought. The entire time Jim was making the curry, I kept thinking about a cute and friendly goat hopping all over a roof. I knew that the curry would be amazing, but I was nervous to try it. When Jim pulled a chop out of the curry to check its tenderness, he pulled a little piece off for me to try. I went to take the piece, then changed my mind and squealed. "A goat??? I'm going to eat goat?" I thought. But it looked and smelled great, so I ate it. And it was great. It tasted just like spicy pot roast, honestly.

The added effect of imagining a goat climbing up a barn only made it taste better!

Goat Curry

4 goat chops
3 large yellow onions
2-3 tablespoons oriental curry
1 tablespoon chili powder
2-3 potatoes
2 carrots
2 tablespoons Canola oil

Chop up onions very finely. If you have a food processor, put them in there to make a paste. Heat the oil in a stock pot. When oil is hot, put onions in pot. Cook until they are golden brown and smell slightly nutty. Add the curry and chili powder to the onions and stir.

Salt and pepper the goat chops. In a separate skillet, sear the goat chops until brown crust develops. Put seared chops in with the onions. Add water until the chops are covered. Cover the stock pot and let simmer for three hours, stirring occasionally.

After three hours, cut up potatoes and carrots and put in the pot. While vegetables cook, make rice and serve curry over the rice. When vegetables are cooked, you can take the chops out to pull the meat off of the bone and put back in the pot.

Note: When eating the curry, watch out for bones. Because goat meat isn't very popular, they don't butcher it very well. We found a couple bones in the curry even after we took the meat off the bones. If you'd rather, and what I'll do next time, is to take the meat off of the bones before I sear the meat.

Reclaiming my Passion for Food

For about four years straight now, I have been the sous chef. Yeah, sometimes I take the lead if we are baking. And sometimes, if it's been a hectic day, I'll make the standby chicken and rice casserole. But I rarely get the opportunity to take the lead and experiment in the kitchen.

It all started about four years ago. I've always had an interest in food. My step mother made everything homemade. Bread, pie, casserole, every dinner--all from scratch. She taught me a lot, and I've always remembered it, but it seems that every time I am in a relationship and I introduce the other person to the wonders of food, they take over. Before Jim, the person I dated fell in love with food and has now been accepted to the Culinary Institute of America. I remember every time we tried to make dinner, that person would find the recipe, go grocery shopping, and then proceed to make the entire thing, barking orders in my direction the whole time.

Then I started dating Jim. While gentler, it's been about the same. We started cooking together. I would make the food and find the recipes at the beginning, vowing what had happened with my first relationship would not happen again. But then he wanted to get better at cooking, learning everything there was to know about anything he could get his hands on, so I took a step back, because he really enjoyed it and I was glad he found something that made him happy. In the process though, my love for cooking took the back seat. I found myself cutting veggies while he did everything else, and then eventually when he was practicing knife skills, I wasn't even doing that.

I'd pretty much given up, conceding in this fight to be head chef. Whenever I did attempt to try and make something I knew how to make, he would just watch, and then next time, he knew how to make it and he took over. Or whenever I was making dinner, he would comment on everything I was doing wrong and how the way he did it was much better. "You really didn't the get the oil in the pan hot enough." So I grimaced and turned the heat up. "You should really try cutting it like this." So I stepped out of the way while he showed me how to cut the damn peppers in perfect julienne strips, all the while finishing the whole dish. Let me say just this: I hate perfectly cut vegetables. Yes, I know. It cooks evenly. But it feels so pretentious and anal. I like rustic, simple looking food, and that means rustic cuts.

At that point, I knew it was hopeless. I would just enjoy being cooked for instead. But every time he would cook, I always wanted to be in the kitchen, trying it out for myself. I should have said something, and I tried several times, but he never really got the message.

For Christmas, my dad got me a cookbook. It's a great cookbook. It's Ina Garten's "Back to Basics". The recipes are so elegant and simple and I spent several days studying all of the recipes and photos before I realized that this was my very first cookbook. For four years, I watched both of my significant others receive cookbooks and kitchen tools and gadgets as gifts, wondering why no one ever thought I liked cooking as much as they did. Well, I'm done with that.

World, I love cooking. I love cookbooks. I love recipes. I know how to cook just as well as the people I've dated. I just cook differently. And with this new cookbook, I intend to let everyone know.

Besides, neither of them could ever pull off my amazing roast chicken. : )