Slow Cooker Chicken Marrakesh (or Madras, or Matsumoto)

It's winter, so it's slow cooker season again.  (And it's winter break, so I finally have time to think about cooking again.  I swear I don't mean to let this project die!)  This is a recipe from allrecipes.com, modified according to what we had on hand, and it came out so well I wouldn't change a thing.

Ingredients:
1 large white onion
1 large or two medium sweet potatoes (preferably satsumaimo)
2 large carrots (or half a bag of baby carrots)
2 cloves garlic
2 large boneless chicken breasts
15-oz can garbanzo beans
14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried parsley

1. Cut the chicken into chunks and place in one layer on bottom of slow cooker.

2. Peel the sweet potato(es) and cut into large chunks.  Place on top of chicken, near outside wall of slow cooker.

3. Cut carrot and onion into chunks, place in slow cooker.

4. Mince garlic and add to slow cooker.

5. Drain and rinse garbanzos and add to slow cooker. 

6. In small bowl mix together garam masala, parsley, and salt, then sprinkle over what's in the cooker.

7. Add tomatoes and stir.

8. Cook on high for 5 hours.  Stir near end.

9. Serve with couscous.

Lately supermarkets here have been stocking satsuma-imo, the Japanese sweet potatoes that are purple on the outside and yellow-white on the inside.  That's what we used, and they were perfect.  I'm sure yams or other Western sweet potatoes would be good too, but satsumaimo have a lighter, almost parsnip-like sweetness that really worked well;  plus, they get flaky and fluffy like a regular potato when you cook them, rather than soft and squishy like a yam. 

The original recipe called for 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp black pepper instead of the garam masala, but we didn't have all those things while we did have garam masala (which includes those things and more), so we used it, and it was awesome.  So this is the recipe. 

It went perfectly with couscous.

Chicken-Corn Chowder

Chicken-Corn Chowder 

In 1979, while living in Yakima, Washington, our ward Relief Society ladies compiled a small cookbook (more of a pamphlet) of favorite recipes turned in by their children.  This was the one Cherilyn wanted included.  We sent a copy to Grandma Munroe (my mother) and wrote the date inside so that's how I know what year it was done.  Dad and I love any kind of corn chowder.

3/4 cup sliced celery

3/4 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup butter or margarine

1  3/4 cup milk

2 cans cream of chicken soup (I didn't list adding the water in the original recipe but must have done!)

1 can whole kernel corn or cream-style corn (Perhaps, add the liquid if using whole kernel corn!)

1/2 tsp. basil

1/2 tsp. salt

dash of pepper

Sauté celery and onion in margarine until tender.  Add milk, soup, corn and seasoning.  Heat, stirring occasionally until chowder is hot but not boiling.  Serves 4 to 6


* Sorry for not knowing about the liquid used. . .1979 was a long time ago!  Experiment!

Oven-Fried Chicken

OVEN-FRIED CHICKEN

This is the way that I cooked chicken when you children were growing up, instead of cooking it on the stove-top.  I'm sure you must have healthier recipes now but, after all, one request was that I post family recipes that we used.  Perhaps, you can modify them if you're interested in doing so.

1/4 cup shortening

1/4 cup butter or margarine (1/2 stick)

1/2 cup Bisquick baking mix  (this is a Bisquick recipe)

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. paprika

1/4 tsp. pepper

2 1/2 - to 3-lb. broiler-fryer chicken, cut up

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

1. Melt shortening and butter in oven in oblong pan, 13x9x2 inches.  Blend 1/2 cup baking mix, the salt, paprika and pepper; coat chicken pieces.  Place chicken skin side down in shortening mixture.  (For an easy way to coat chicken, shake several pieces at a time with the Bisquick mixture in a plastic or paper bag.)
2. Bake uncovered 35 minutes.  Turn chicken and bake 15 minutes longer or until it's done.  (After cooking, I usually drained the chicken pieces on paper towel to absorb some of the oil.  Sometimes, I used pan drippings to make gravy for mashed potatoes.)

  

Crock-Pot Chicken

"Chicken In A Pot"

 

 

Joannarequested a recipe for the Crock-Pot chicken that Dad and I used tomake as you children were growing up, so here it is.

2 carrots, sliced

2 onions sliced

2 celery stalks with leaves, cut in 1-inch pieces

3 pound broiler/fryer chicken

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon course black pepper

½ cup water or chicken broth

½teaspoon basil

Putcarrots, onion and celery in bottom of Crock-Pot. Add whole chicken. Top with salt, pepper, liquid. Sprinkle basil over top. Cover,cook on Low 8 to 10 hours (High: 3 ½ to 5 hours, using 1 cup water). Remove chicken and vegetables with spatula. 4 servings

Cal:252 Fat: 13 g. Carb: 8 g.

I'msure the “4 servings” refers to adult portions. This recipe wasin the little booklet that came with our first Crock-Pot, a 2 or 3quart one that we bought while living in Yakima. Therefore, in ourfamily, it dates back to Joanna's early childhood. As you mayremember, we served it with rice, putting the broth from cooking overthe rice and sometimes even thickening the broth to make it more likea gravy, thereby feeding the entire family with this one recipe.

• Over the years, we bought a larger Crock-Pot and added more vegetables to feed our growing family. We experimented with various herbs and seasonings, usually paired up with our home-canned tomatoes. After moving to Maryland, I no longer home-canned tomatoes because case-lot goods (Costco was in business by then.) were so readily available and less expensive. Also, Dad no longer grew a big garden. With a smaller back yard, we grew kids instead!
• We replaced the home-canned tomatoes with store-bought stewed tomatoes. Nowadays, we can buy canned tomatoes that are seasoned in a variety of ways and enjoy using those. Since we have a plentiful supply of rosemary growing in our back yard, Dad often uses that in cooking.
• Another variation that Dad does is pouring a bottle of sweet barbeque sauce over the chicken for the cooking liquid.

Thereyou have it! The name of the game is “Experiment to suit your owntaste and family size.”

Bread and Stuff

Hello, everyone! Being a student-teacher means I am away from home a lot and it is a little hard to make myself cook good food. Recently however, the change in the weather has been somewhat inspiring and I have been using the oven a lot. I baked bread (which is a new hobby of mine since the spring) and made my first apple pie. I also have been doing some cool things with vegetables. I will include my favorite bread recipe in the near future but seeing as it is somewhat detailed and I am at school right now without my bread cookbook, I am going to stick with the veg for the time being:

Impromptu Roasted Vegetables:

1/2 bag pre-chopped mirepoix or equal parts chopped onion, celery, and carrots

A generous amount of fresh cauliflower (how much depends on how much you like it!)

1 zucchini sliced into 1/2" thick chunks or whatever really

1 yellow squash - make it match your zuch

A big handful of cherry or grape tomatoes cut in half

A big pinch of dried thyme

A drizzle of oil (olive or other kind of cooking oil)

Salt

Throw all of your stuff into a glass or ceramic baking dish and chuck your salt and thyme on it. Drizzle the whole mess with some oil and toss it all together with a spoon. Don't stress about this part, just try to get a little flavor and salt on everything. Roast in a 350 degree oven for about half an hour ti 45 min. depending on how dark you want the stuff. Eat. This works really nicely over some rice cooked with bullion or even spaghetti with parm and a bit of garlic. I got a pre-cut bag of mirepoix at wegman's because it was ten thousand percent easier for me than to actually cut the stuff because I am rather crunched for time these days :) Pre-cut or not, it was shocking the amount of flavor the carrots, onions, and celery contributed so don't skip them.

Suffed Peppers:

I made stuffed peppers for the first time about two weeks ago and I liked how they turned out so I thought I'd share what I did. I took them in a tex-mex sort of direction and that was nice.

3 bell peppers cleaned, tops removed, seeds and ribs removed

1.5 cups rice (cooked. I used leftovers)

1 tray ground chicken

1 can diced tomatoes with green chilies

1 generous pinch of chipotle powder

pinch of garlic powder

salt to taste

cilantro - I used the stuff that comes pureed in a tube. I like to keep it on hand.

1 packed Sazon de Goya (i used the kind with saffron: con azafran!)

Brown your chicken with the packet of Goya seasoning. Microwave your rice if it was refrigerated so that it isn't glued together in one big mass because you have to mix it with stuff. Drain your can of tomatoes (this part is sad because the juice is good but it's just too much liquid for this particular recipe) and mix them into your rice. Throw your chicken in there with some salt, some garlic, and however much chipotle you think you can handle, chuck some cilantro in there too. Stir it until you think you have a fairly well integrated mixture and spoon it generously into your pepper shells. I had them sitting in a glass baking dish. If they don't stand up on their own, slice a little off the bottom of eat pepper to make a flat surface. Bake in a 350 degree oven until the tops look nice and brown. The baking is really to your liking since everything is pre-cooked or edible raw. I just went with my gut and took them out after about 45 min. Enjoy :)

Chicken Tropicale

Another from our crock-pot cookbook, which worked without major modification.

Ingredients:
2 large sweet potatoes
1 parsnip
1 can (8 oz) sliced water chestnuts
1 cup golden raisins
1 20-oz can pineapple tidbits in juice, drained, with juice reserved
2 to 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (depending on size of breasts, size of cooker, number of people)
4 tsp Jamaican jerk seasoning
1/4 cup dried onion flakes
3 tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp grated lime peel
1tsp cumin seed, crushed
wild rice

1. Cut your sweet potatoes into 1 to 2 inch cubes and put in slow cooker.

2. Peel your parsnip and cut into 1 inch cubes or rounds and put in slow cooker.

3. Drain the water chestnuts and add to slow cooker.

4. Add raisins and pineapple tidbits (without juice). Stir.

5. Sprinkle jerk seasoning on chicken. Lay chicken breasts on top of potato-parsnip-fruit mixture. Do not submerge.

6. In a bowl, combine pineapple juice, onion flakes, ginger, W sauce, lime peel, and cumin. Pour this mixture over the chicken. The liquid should filter down to the potatoes, while the ginger, onion flakes, lime peel, and crushed cumin should sit on top of the chicken breasts, to mix with the jerk seasoning.

7. Cover and cook on low 7-9 hours or high 3-4 hours, until everything's tender.

8. Serve with wild rice.

The result should be a nicely seasoned and tender potato-parsnip-water chestnut-pineapple stew, and chicken breasts that are basically roasted rather than simmered, with the ginger-lime peel- cumin mixture turning into almost a crust on top of them. Real, real good, especially with the wild rice. The water chestnuts, by the way, are the surprise ingredient that really makes the dish, to my mind.

Tomato and Sweet Potato Stew

Made a new recipe out of the crock pot cookbook that Akiko got me last year. It came out really well, so here it is, with only the minorest of modifications.

Assumes a 5-qt slow cooker. Makes enough for 2 people to eat for two or three days, or more people to eat for fewer days. YMMV.

Ingredients:
2 large or 3 small chicken breasts
2 large sweet potatoes
2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes
1 carrot
1 parsnip
1 28-oz can whole stewed tomatoes
1 tspn salt
1 tspn paprika
1 tspn celery seeds
1/2 tspn black pepper
1/8 tspn ground cinnamon
1/8 tspn ground nutmeg
1 cup chicken broth
basil to taste

1. Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and put in the crock pot.

2. Peel the potatoes and sweet potatoes and cut into large chunks. Put in crock pot.

3. Peel carrot and parsnip and cut into smaller chunks than the potatoes. Put in crock pot.

4. Add the tomatoes with liquid.

5. Add spices EXCEPT basil.

6. Add chicken broth and stir.

7. Cook on high for 5 hours.

8. Serve. Sprinkle basil on to taste.

Couldn't be easier to make, and the result was heavenly. The sweetness of the sweet potatoes and the parsnip seep into the broth and blend perfectly with the heat of the paprika and the aromatic flavor of the celery seeds, and the cinnamon and nutmeg supply a nice richness. The basil adds the perfect finishing touch. (I used dried from a bottle. The recipe calls for fresh, but I have a feeling that might overpower it.)

It's edible after 4 hours, but the extra hour made the veggies nice and tender.

Roast chicken and cherry tomatoes

We had a bunch of cherry tomatoes and I wanted to know what to do with them besides eat them raw. Actually I do a lot of things with them besides eat them raw, but I wanted a new idea... And I found this recipe. I found it here, but the blog post in question says she didn't follow the recipe exactly, and I guess neither did I. What follows is my modification. As usual, it's so simple that it hardly qualifies as cooking, but it tastes good.

Ingredients (serves 2 people generously):
two boneless chicken breasts, large
2 cups or so cherry tomatoes (basically a whole plastic pac from the supermarket, or blue cardboard carton from the farmer's market)
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp or so fresh marjoram
crushed dried chipotle pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
salt
pepper

Directions:
1. Remove any stems from the cherry tomatoes, wash, put in a big bowl.

2. Drizzle the olive oil over the tomatoes.

3. Chop the marjoram and sprinkle half over the tomatoes; reserve the other half for later.

4. Crush the garlic cloves and sprinkle over the tomatoes.

5. Sprinkle 1/2 tbsp or so of crushed dried chipotle pepper over the tomatoes; more or less to taste. Mix until tomatoes are thoroughly oiled and spiced.

6. Cut the chicken breasts into large chunks, 2 or 3 per breast depending on how big they are.

7. Put the chicken in a glass baking dish. Pour the tomatoes over and arrange them so that they're in a single layer around the chicken. Make sure the oil and spice mix drizzles over the chicken. Grind salt and pepper over the top liberally.

8. Roast at 450 degrees for 35 minutes or so.

9. Serve with the rest of the chopped marjoram sprinkled on as a garnish.

The recipe describes crispy chicken and caramelized tomatoes; what I got was really juicy chicken (but not crispy) and tomatoes that were shriveled but not yet caramelized. That was better, I think: they were juicy in a really concentrated way that really made the dish.

Careful with the chipotle pepper: I only added a little, probably less than what I describe above, and it came out nice and spicy. Next time I'll try it with the rosemary variation the blogger mentions, but I really liked the marjoram effect: it didn't counteract the spiciness of the pepper, but added a kind of aromatic halo to it.

We had this dish with corn on the cob on the side, and it was real good.

Chicken and Dumplings

Tis the season for comfort food. This recipe for Chicken and Dumplings isn't some great culinary masterpiece but it's delicious and cheap. Like six servings for about $15 cheap. It'll also leave you with a decent amount of broth, so if you line up something that requires chicken broth for the next night, you'll save yourself a couple bucks and end up with superior broth to boot. It takes a lot of time but it isn't particularly labor intensive. Have a book or magazine handy.

Chicken Marsala

Hey everyone! I am sorry that I haven't been doing anything on here in a while. I haven't been cooking much lately with school and stuff. I know everyone knows about this recipe but I have never made it before so I decided to take a little time for myself away from homework today to make a real meal.

This recipe is originally from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I had to make some changes and I included those.

1lb chicken breasts (I bought purdue ones that were already really really thin so I didn't have to pound them myself)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. dry marjoram
salt to taste
pepper
2 cups sliced mushrooms (I used a carton of sliced baby bellas from the store)
2 small spring onions chopped finely
butter/margarine/cooking oil (this is where I had issues)
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup Marsala wine

Mix flour, marjoram, some pepper, and a little salt on a plate. Dredge your flattened chicken breasts and set aside. In a non-stick pan melt (med/low heat) about 2 tbs butter/margarine and add a tiny bit of cooking oil (The cookbook called for so much less and left me with sticking sad mushrooms until i added more lipids!!). Sautee your onion and mushrooms until the mushrooms are tender and browned. Remove the mushrooms/onions from the pan. DON'T RINSE/WASH/WIPE the pan - you need the good browned stuff on the bottom for later. Add more butter and oil (the same amount) and brown your chickens over high heat. This should go really quickly (about 4 minutes to cook a breast). Turn them over as they cook to ensure they brown on both sides. Remove from pan and set aside when they're done. Put your mushroom stuff back in the pan (low heat now) and add your chicken stock and Marsala. Add a pinch of salt to taste here (not much, the sauce is nice a little sweet in my opinion). Turn up the heat and proceed to deglaze the pan while reducing the sauce. This is where all the crusty junk from the bottom of the pan becomes magical :) All that stuff = Flava! But I digress. When your sauce is at a consistency you approve of, pour the sauce and mushrooms over the chicken breast. Enjoy. This serves 4 technically. I say 3 without a side dish if you are lazy like me.

Taco soup

We just got a slow cooker the other day (Crock-Pot, 5-quart: is that good? I dunno: it's just what BB&B had), and this was the first thing we tried. I got the recipe here, but modified it, partially according to the comments on the recipe, and partially according to what we had.

Taco Soup

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
1 orange bell pepper, chopped
1 can chili beans (15 oz), with liquid
1 can black beans (15 oz), with liquid
1 can whole kernel corn (15 oz), drained
1 can tomato sauce (8 oz) (update 2/13/11: 8-oz can tomato paste works better)
12 oz or so chicken broth
2 cans diced tomatoes with green chilies (14.5 oz), with liquid
2 tbsp or so of taco or similar seasoning (we had a bottle of Paul Prudhomme's Fajita Magic, so that's what I used)
3 skinless boneless chicken breasts, whole
shredded Mexican cheese blend
sour cream
tortilla chips (we like blue corn, Garden of Eatin' brand, unsalted)

1. Open all the cans and pour them into the cooker. Chop the onion and pepper (not too fine) and put them in. Stir in the seasoning. Put the chicken breasts in and press them down so they're just barely covered by the other things.

2. Cover, turn slow cooker on "low," and cook for 5 hours.

3. Remove chicken breasts and shred them with knife and fork. Return the chicken to the soup, cover, and cook for another 2 hours.

4. Serve topped with sour cream, cheese, and/or crumbled tortilla chips to taste.

Next time I might increase the amount of corn, and maybe even use two onions and/or peppers: more veggies might be good. As for the ways our version diverged from what's on allrecipes: we used more diced tomatoes because our market only had 14.5-oz cans, instead of the 10-oz cans the recipe called for, so it was either have a half a can left over or use it all. We also took a commenter's advice and substituted chicken broth (storebought) for the bottle of beer the recipe originally called for. Also I threw in 1/2 a can of chopped olives because we had an open can in the fridge - but to tell the truth I didn't notice them at all in the finished dish, so next time I'll either skip them or use more or maybe use sliced olives instead of chopped.

We loved this. A perfect hot spicy meal for a cold and wet autumn evening, easy to make, and really convinced us that the slow cooker was worth it. The chicken got incredibly tender. And it made way more than enough for two people: we're looking forward to leftovers tomorrow night.

I'm sure this would be just as good without the chicken and with veggie broth instead of chicken broth. In that case, maybe it wouldn't even need to be made in the slow cooker, just done on the stove in much less time.

Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Stuffed Chicken Breast

I just finished reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, so I'm in a rare mood for cooking. Lorien does an admirable job for us of managing every night, without fail, for the past three or four years, of putting something together for us that is tasty, healthy, and minimally fattening. But since cooking is rare for me and thus less of a chore and more of a treat, I decided to focus just on tasty.

I found this recipe on the food network site by searching for "chicken breast" (because we had some in the freezer). I was surprised it was from Guy Fieri because I didn't know he cooked--I only know him from Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

Anyway, here's the recipe. It was delicious. I didn't change anything. We served it with some brown rice with rosemary and parsley. I liked it just as well two days later for lunch, so I recommend cooking all four servings and enjoying the leftovers.

yay Trader Joe's

So I got some exciting things at Trader Joe's last week and I used two of those exciting things in my dinner last night. I got a bag of tiny tiny tiny potatoes (each one is like half a ping-pong ball) with thin skins and a package of fully cooked andouille style chicken sausages. SO this is what I did

1 bag tiny potatoes
2 chicken sausages
extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
fresh rosemary leaves (off the stems)
salt
garlic powder (I used a salt/garlic/pepper seasoning thing)

throw your potatoes into a baking dish (small enough to have them all touching and layered and stuff) and slice your sausage into rounds over top. Drizzle the oil. Sprinkle the seasonings and the rosemary and stir it all a little folding the sausage in with the potatoes. Cover it with tin foil and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until the potatoes are the desired tenderness.

You could totally use some small-chunked larger potatoes like red skins or some other kind that you don't have to peel. The best part about this dinner is that it took about 5 minutes to throwq together and then I just did homework while I waited and then got to enjoy a nice hearty dinner :)

Hey, wait...that's just shake'n'bake

So I figure I'd better contribute something besides questions. Here's something new I made last night. Don't laugh. Basically out of a Betty Crocker cookbook, slightly tweaked. It's not very sophisticated, and I'm sure it could be improved upon, but I'd never done it before - like I say, I'm in a five-dish rut lately. And Sister Momonjii liked it, too.

Parmesan-Dijon Chicken:

boneless chicken breasts
1/2 stick butter
3/4 cup panko
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated (best if you grate it yourself)
2 tbsp Dijon mustard (we used Maille)
Herb de Provence to taste

1. Melt the butter and mix it together with the mustard in a wide flat dish.

2. Mix the parm, panko, and Herb de Provence together in a ziploc bag - can you see where this is going?

3. Roll a chicken breast in the butter/mustard mix until thoroughly gooey.

4. Pop the chicken breast into the bag o' dry stuff, seal, and shake until enough of the dry stuff sticks to the goo.

5. Put the chicken breast into a glass baking pan.

6. Repeat until you're out of chicken breasts and/or dry stuff.

7. Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes, turning once.

Like I say, real simple. And suspiciously like something we used to eat as kids that came in a box. But pretty good - the chicken came out very juicy, and the parm/panko/herb mix was very flavorful.