Chicken & Vegetables in White Wine Sauce

Here's another easy and tasty recipe that's sure to please. As is often the case with my recipes, feel free to change the ingredients to suit your taste.

Before you get started, there's an important tip about cooking with wine. In the grocery store you can find what's called cooking wine. DO NOT BUY IT! Any chef will tell you this simple rule: If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it. That does not mean you have to be a wine connoisseur. Just use what you like. If you're not a wine drinker, just ask a friend or someone at the store. I used Barefoot Chardonnay with this. And of course, if you use a wine you like to drink, it makes it very easy to find the right wine to pair with the meal!

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 pound chicken cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped onions
2 gloves garlic chopped
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 cup white wine
2 cups cooked rice (I used Jasmine rice, which adds a nice aromatic flavor, but use whatever you have/like)

Directions
Cook rice according to directions.

In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Brown chicken until almost done. Add carrots, onions and garlic and cook until veggies start to soften. Add mushrooms and cook another minute or two. Slowly add wine and scrape bits off bottom of pan. Stir in onion soup mix. Bring to boil, reduce heat to low and simmer 5-10 minutes. Serve over rice.

As you can see, I served it with a side of broccoli to add a little more color to the dish. The kids should love it, too!

Gold Medal Meals: El Cubano

 Earlier this week I told you how my German Pork Roast was a set up for another dish. That dish was tonight's dinner.

I guess I fell in love with the Cuban Pork Sandwich when I lived in Florida. They were pretty common fare down there, and usually pretty good. Since then I've figured they're a great way to use leftover pork, too. And they're easy to make.

Ingredients
1 loaf soft, crusty bread (If you can find a Cuban loaf, go with that, as that's the traditional bread. I found what I think the local grocery store called a French loaf, which was long, wide and not very high. You can certainly scale this down. I went with the big loaf, because I was making it as a family dinner with leftovers for lunch)
Roasted pork sliced (I used one of the two I made with the German Roast Pork)
Ham
Swiss cheese
Mustard (I used deli mustard)
Pickles

Directions
Slice the bread in half and spread the mustard on the top half. Layer the bottom with the slices of pork. Top with a layer of sliced deli ham, Swiss cheese and plenty of pickles. Top with the other half of the loaf.

Of course, the key to a Cuban sandwich is heating and pressing it. Traditionally, it's done with hot bricks. Seriously. But if you're like me, you probably don't have a lot of hot bricks sitting around. I do, though, have a George Foreman Grill that also doubles as a sandwich (panini) press. So I heated that up, cut the sandwich in half so it would fit and grilled each half for several minutes. You want to add some pressure to flatten it as much as possible, and may even need to rotate the sandwich along the way to get it even. It's done when the bread is nice and toasty and the cheese inside is good and melted. That's it! This sandwich will not disappoint.

To add to the Cuban flavor, I served it with black beans, (Spanish) rice and, of course, fried plantains. Unfortunately, I learned the trick to plantains too late. Turns out you need really (over)ripe ones. A lot of the stuff I read said the blacker the better, as you want a high sugar content, so buy them several days ahead and put them in a paper bag to try to ripen them. At any rate, peel the plantains and cut them into 3/4-inch pieces. In 350-degree oil, fry them for about three minutes on each side. Drain on paper towels. Standing the pieces on their end, smash them flat with a spatula. Put them back in the hot oil for a minute or so until they are golden brown. Remove, drain and sprinkle with salt.

 

I'm gonna take a few days break in posting recipes. We're having Chicken Lombardi tomorrow for a taste of Italy. Then we're going out of town for a few days for a wedding. I promise more recipes next week. If you have any ideas, feel free to share!

Gold Medal Meals: Teriyaki Bowls

Last week I mentioned to my wife that for dinner Friday night, in honor of the Olympics, we should have something British. Unfortunately, I didn't find a recipe in time that I liked, so we wound up having Chicken Tacos. That led to another idea, though. I decided for the duration of the Olympics, we would have a dish inspired by a different country each night. Check off Mexico.

Of course, there is no shortage of international cuisine to choose from, but the theme of this blog is to focus on stuff that's not crazy hard to make. So for night No. 2, I thought long and hard. Finally I decided on something Japanese: Teriyaki Bowls. This is something I fell in love with when I lived in California near a restaurant called Yoshinoya. Basically, it was a bowl of steamed rice with Teriyaki chicken (or beef) and steamed veggies. When I moved to Gainesville, FL, there was a place called Maui Teriyaki that served something similar. All in all, it's a tasty dish that's pretty healthy.

Ingredients
2 cups rice (Whatever kind you like. I used brown rice to make it a little healthier)
1 bottle Teriyaki sauce (I used low sodium)
2 chicken breasts sliced into thin strips
1 bag frozen cauliflower, carrot, broccoli mix (the store here calls it California mix)
1/2 an onion sliced thin
1/2 a head of cabbage sliced thin

Directions
-Cook rice according to its directions.
-In a medium saucepan, bring one cup of water to a boil. Add the frozen veggies. Return to boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Drain, reserving liquid.
-In a large saucepan, heat the Teriyaki sauce and onions over medium-high heat. When it starts to boil add the chicken. Put the California mix veggies on top of the chicken and the sliced cabbage on top of the veggies. Pour some of the hot water from the veggies over the cabbage. Cover with a lid.
-When the sauce starts to boil, reduce heat to medium, and let cook for 10-15 minutes, or until chicken is cooked and all the veggies, especially the cabbage, are tender.
-Put rice in a bowl and top with cabbage, veggies and chicken. Add more sauce if desired. (I remember extra sauce being one of the best parts at Maui Teriyaki)

That's it. Like I said. It's pretty simply, and really yummy. I like to add some hot Chinese mustard to mine.

So two nights down, and a couple more weeks to go. It looks like a sudden strong thunderstorm kept my wife from getting to the grocery store, so we'll honor Team USA with some authentic American southern BBQ (take out).

Shrimp and Pineapple with Yellow Curry Sauce

In honor of the Final Four, I'll give you an opening night double-header. This is another restaurant favorite we've adapted at home. It comes from Indochine, an awesome Thai/Vietnamese place in Wilmington.

I've made this with several different bases. The bottom line is that you need a curry sauce/soup with coconut milk. I've made it by just getting a can of coconut milk and mixing in curry powder, but I've found the simplest way is to get a pre-made sauce you can find in the ethnic food aisle of many grocery stores. There are a couple of brands I've tried, including Patak's and Sharwood's. When I made this the other night, I used Sharwood's Pinapple & Coconut Cooking Sauce, and it turned out really well.

OK, here's what you need:
1 green bell pepper sliced into strips
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped or crushed
1-2 eighths of an onion, layers separated
.5-1 lb shrimp
2 cups pineapple chunks
1-2 Roma tomatoes quartered
Curry sauce
Milk
Curry powder
Ground ginger
Ground turmeric
Olive oil
3-4 cups Jasmine rice (prepared)

I use a rice cooker to do the rice so I don't have to worry about it while I cook everything else.

Heat up a wok and pour some olive oil around the sides. Throw in the green bell pepper strips and onion slices, then after a minute or so, add in the garlic. Let the veggies soften a bit. Add shrimp and stir until shrimp begins to pink up. Add sauce, pineapple and tomatoes, bring to a boil. I like to put a little milk into the empty jar, put the lid back on and shake to get the excess off the sides, then add that in with a little curry powder to taste. You can also add some turmeric and ginger to taste if you want.

Once the sauce comes to a boil, turn the heat down to medium and simmer long enough to let everything meld together, soften up the tomatoes and let the pineapple soak in the sauce. Don't let the peppers get too soft, though. Serve over Jasmine rice.

At the restaurant it's actually saucy enough that it can be eaten like a soup/stew with a spoon. Just depends on how you like it.

Now if I can just replicate Indochine's cabbage salad...