Oven Fake Fried Chicken

Oh LORDY, this is great, easy chicken--all the crunch and savoriness of fried chicken, but baked!

Giving credit where credit is due, this is adapted from a Paula Deen recipe.  That woman is a treasure.

INGREDIENTS:
-2 cups panko bread crumbs
-1 cup grated Parmesan
-4 tbsp olive oil
-2 tbsp rosemary (I used rosemary instead of the recommended thyme)
-salt and pepper
-1/4 cup dijon mustard
-2 tbsp water
-2 1/2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breast

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a shallow dish, combine bread crumbs, cheese, 2 tbsp olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper to taste.
In a separate shallow dish, combine mustard, water, salt and pepper to taste and remaining olive oil (2 tbsp).
Coat each chicken breast with mustard mixture, dredge each in bread crumb mixture.
Place in an oil coated baking dish.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until chicken is golden brown.

NOTES:
I highly recommend using rosemary, as it's such a nice bold herb.  And make sure to get a block of good quality parm and grate it yourself, DON'T SKIMP!  And I dribbled some leftover bread crumbs on top of the already-breaded chicken...that meant there were little extra crispy bits in the dish after cooking...

Lamb Shoulder

I think my cooking has come a long way, but I'm still not ready to trust myself with a really fine, expensive piece of meat.  When it comes to lamb, so far I've stuck to ground or, for this post, shoulder.  That link is more walkthrough than specific formula, but here's what I've done:

The Recipe

lamb shoulder chops
onion, chopped
baby carrots, chopped
mushrooms, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup red wine
1 can crushed tomatoes

Season your chops with salt and pepper, and brown over high in a skillet.  Set aside; lower heat, then cook up your vegetables in the same skillet.  Once they're cooked and soft, add the red wine.  Reduce a bit, then add the tomatoes and plop the lamb (and juices) back in.  Cover and simmer for about 45 minutes, until the meat is tender.  Once the meat is done, set aside again and reduce the sauce down.

Notes

This recipe does involve some serious chopping (onion, carrot and garlic; think we've added some mushrooms too) and takes a while to stew (I used red wine; not sure why you'd use white with lamb and tomatoes).  But it seems pretty hard to mess up, and done anywhere close to right both the chops and the sauce come out so rich at the end.  Like the walkthrough explains, it's good on its own or over pasta.

Not my best photographic work, but I swear the taste was all there!  Doesn't the sauce at least look awesome:

Sesame Chicken

I was always a bigger fan of ol' General Tso, but when I came across something vaguely similar that looked well doable here via here, I decided to give it a shot.  I followed the recipe from the first link, with the second's addition of a chopped jalapeno for that extra kick.  To sum up:

Recipe

1+ lbs boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 1 inch chunks
2 onions, thinly sliced
5 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
5 tsp honey
2 tbsp oil
1 tbsp grated ginger
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
4 tsp cornstarch
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp chili paste
2 tbsp sesame seeds

Start with a big bowl; whisk together 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp sesame oil, and 2 tsp honey.  Add in your chicken, coat in the sauce and marinate for 20-30 minutes.

Next up is your large skillet.  Heat 2 tsp oil and cook your chicken until browned, in two batches if necessary.  Set aside.

Put 2 more tsps oil in the skillet and cook up the onions, ginger, and garlic.  Meanwhile whisk together the broth with the cornstarch, vinegar, chili paste, and remaining soy sauce (2 tbsp) and honey (3 tsp).  When the onions are to your liking, add in this sauce and cook a few minutes until it thickens.  Then stir in the last tsp of the sesame oil. 

Pour the sauce over the chicken, garnish with sesame seeds, and serve.  Rice and broccoli optional...

Notes

This one requires a lot of ingredients, lots of chopping, etc., so it's worth making it a group project.  Scaling up did seem to make it more difficult to create that thick sauce, though...  (Maybe doesn't help that I ignored the cornstarch ingredient - do I really have to buy a whole package just to use a few tsps?)  Either way, very tasty!

Don't forget to sprinkle the sesame seed garnish on top!  Even if you do, there's plenty of sesame flavor from the oil, but still...

The worst part of Chinese takeout is clearly the bland steamed broccoli.  I came close to first cooking this dish without greens at all, but luckily Google turned up the perfect compromise: fried broccoli, now in my mind a necessary element to this meal.  Keeping with my spicy tastes, I didn't skimp on the crushed red pepper...

Lamb Meatballs

Recipe

Thanks Natalie for the Best Meat Recipes cookbook a few Christmases back!  Unfortunately, most of the recipes involve equipment beyond what my humble NYC kitchen supports (e.g., grilling) or premium cuts of meat you just can't get at Morton Williams.  This one took two tries on the latter point, but was well worth the effort.

1 lb ground lamb
1 tsp cumin
1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
3 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1 cup + 3 tbsp yogurt
1 slice of bread, crumbled
1 clove garlic, minced
oil
fixin's (pita, pasta, rice, greens, etc.)

Combine the lamb, cumin, cayenne, 2 tbsp cilatro, 3 tbsp yogurt and bread crumbs in a large bowl - get in there up to your elbows to mix it up.  Then gently roll into meatballs of about an inch.  Freeze for a few minutes.  Heat oil in a pan (medium-high), in go the balls.  Brown about two minutes, flip, lower heat (medium), cook another six minutes; couldn't help rolling them around a little to make sure they cook through.  Combine the yogurt, garlic, remaining cilatro and a bit of cayenne and salt as a sauce.

Outcome

Technically I did this recipe with about .88 lb of meat and didn't hold back too much on the cayenne, so it came out very flavorful.  I ended up with about a dozen meatballs, enough for two with some pasta and spinach to go with.  Most were cooked about right - little to no pink, with a nice brown crust.  Fun and not too difficult to put together!

Baked Tilapia

It's not the fanciest fish, but it's super easy and quick to make, and you can spice it up with whatever you feel like or have on hand.

The basics, courtesy of this handy video (which I don't think I've ever watched past 0:57 - why mess with success?):

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, lightly oil a baking dish, add a bed of spinach, lay the tilapia (defrosted) on top, season however you like, cook 10-15 minutes.  Some ideas I've tried:

• Italian: garlic, rosemary, salt & pepper; optional cherry tomatoes, red pepper, Parmesan cheese or pepperoni
• Southwestern: diced jalapenos, a sprinkle of cumin, salt & pepper (below left)
• Asian: soy sauce, grated ginger, sesame seeds, pepper (below right)
• Country(?): mustard, thyme, salt & pepper

Cider-Brined Pork & Gravy

Notes
This is apparently some sort of award-winning pork dish from Food52.com.  As such, it's probably most appropriate for special occasions - it requires some fancy liquor ingredients and a day's advance preparation.  But you can't very well promise it to guests without giving it a run though first, can you?

So what actually is/are calvados?  Some fancy kind of Spanish or Portuguese brandy?  Are there any non-fancy brandies?  In any case, it's not something I have lying around, or would invest $40 (as per recipe comments) in for one cooking experiment.  So I gave it a shot (heh) with some spiced rum instead.  Similarly, I replaced the various mustard/mustard elements with spoonfuls of good old Gulden's from my fridge.  I also used milk instead of cream, which in general seems not to not effect the texture too adversely in small portions.  Otherwise, the ingredients were surprisingly simple and mostly on hand.

Recipe

Pork
2 thick bone-in pork chops

Brine
2 cups apple cider
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp peppercorns
2 tsp mustard seeds
3 sprigs thyme

Sauce
1/4 cup calvados
1 shallot, minced
1 tbsp thyme, minced
1/3 cup apple cider
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp mustard

Day 1
Combine brine ingredients in a saucepan and simmer until dissolved.  Remove from heat and let cool.  Put your chops in a single layer in a pan, pour in the brine, cover, and let sit overnight.

Day 2
Rinse and dry the chops and season with a little salt & pepper.  Heat up 1-2 tbsp oil in a skillet and saute your pork until cooked through, 4-5 minutes a side.  Set aside your chops, pour out excess oil, and deglaze the pan with the calvados, scraping up bits.  Add 2 tbsp butter, then the shallots and thyme.  Saute a couple minutes, then add the cider and cream, and boil to thicken.  Then stir in the mustard and serve over the pork.

Outcome

This was dear-God good.  Yes, a lot of it came from the straightforward salt part of the brine.  It was hard to pick out the distinct components of the sauce, let alone the brine, but overall it was a very rich combination.  Shallots and thyme are very solid, flavorful ingredients.  And despite the whole cooking process spanning over 24 hours, no one part of it was too time-intensive.  The process left me time to cook dinner the night before, and could leave time for side dishes the day of, although I just served it (to myself) with some greens and carrots, extra sauce poured over the top, of course

One tip: I went pretty quickly from heating the brine to pouring it over the meat, which looked like it actually mildly started cooking the outside edges of the chops.  I'd probably let it cool first next time.

Blackened Salmon

This recipe comes from (paleo-friendly) Health-Bent.  The couple of different parts (requiring their own dishes) are all necessary, but it doesn't use many out-of-the-ordinary ingredients.  It's a good one for when you have some time for a more elaborate, hands-on salmon preparation.

Recipe

4 salmon fillets

Seasoning
3 tsp paprika
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper

Gravy
4-6 slices bacon, diced
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (14.5 oz) crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup stock
1/2 lemon, juiced (optional)

Start with the gravy.  Cook up the bacon, then the onion and garlic; you can either add in the second set of ingredients if you're confident, or set aside the bacon while the onion and garlic go.  Then everything goes in with the stock and tomatoes.

While that's simmering, skin the salmon and rub the spice mixture into both sides.  Get some oil hot in a skillet and cook the salmon maybe five minutes each side.

Outcome

For once, I basically played this one as written with no real substitutions: salmon skinned and coated with paprika, cayenne, thyme, etc., with a bacon tomato sauce.  Cooking for myself, I about halved the salmon portion but left the sauce the same except for adding zucchini for some summer-seasonal veggies.

I was skeptical even after the first couple of tentative bites from the outside of the filets.  Could the salmon really have been cooked through without burning the outside?  In short, yes.  Doneness is tricky to judge, but the spiced outside is almost a crispy, tangy crust, while the inside of the thicker filet especially was nicely rich and juicy.  The tomato sauce is pretty simple, but a necessary element to bring some extra moisture.

The one minor disappointment was the spice mix, which was a little bit underwhelming.  Maybe in the future I'd use smoked paprika, or more cayenne pepper for an extra kick?