A Brand New Year

I can't believe that it has been so long since my last post.
Looking back on this past year has been full of many wonderful moments to reflect on.
There have also been some very emotional raw moments that have taken the wind out of my sails on some days.
I've let my sails flap a little too long without direction.
It's time for me to make a move so to speak and take charge, so, I'm back!
I may not post every day, but I would like to make a commitment to post a recipe at least once a week. Hopefully, for those of you who haven't given up on me you will look forward to seeing my posts come every Monday.

As always I love to hear from you. If you would like me to post a recipe that you have seen me post a picture of on pinterest or facebook, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to share the recipe with you!

Rosemary Lemon Chicken with Artichoke Hearts

8 Chicken Thighs on the bone with skin on

salt and pepper

rosemary 

2 lemons, juiced

2 tsp capers 

4 cloves garlic, smashed

5 cups baby spinach leaves

1 can of artichoke hearts, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup liquid (water or chicken stock)

1/2 cup white wine * optional

In a pan that is large enough to cook all the chicken heat up enough vegetable oil to coat the bottom of the pan.  I cook the chicken on a medium heat level.

Season each piece of chicken with salt, pepper and rosemary leaves.

Place the chicken skin side down in the pan and let the chicken skin get nice and crispy. Let it cook. Do not try to turn it right away.  After about 10 minutes, when it is ready, the chicken will kind of release itself. The skin should be nice and crispy and you should have a beautiful golden brown color on each piece of chicken. Turn each piece of chicken over and continue to cook. Add the smashed garlic to the pan.  Add the juice from the 2 lemons, scraping the bottom of the pan to help it deglaze. Add a little bit of water at this time if needed. Add the capers, wine and artichoke hearts and continue to cook until chicken is cooked through. Depending on the size of the chicken thighs, usually about another 15 minutes.  If you need more liquid add some chicken stock or some water. 

You don't want the chicken to be covered with the liquid, you just want there to be some liquid in the pan.

When the chicken is done, (clear juices runs by the bone) spoon the chicken and it's juices over the spinach. The spinach will wilt, and you will have a delicious tasting dish. It's so easy to make and everyone will enjoy it. 

If you would like to use chicken breasts rather than thighs please adjust the cooking time accordingly.

Buon Appetito

xoxoxo

Lorraine

Avgolemono Soup

I know it's not Monday, but man o man a good pot of soup is needed over here in the food crawl kitchen.
My husband is still recovering from his knee replacement surgery and today, my son, The Producer had 4 wisdom teeth pulled. Do you know how funny it is to get a text at 7 am wondering if there was any pastina in the house? Ahhh, Pastina, the ultimate "this will make you feel better soup" ,  sorry, but,  I'm not making that! lol
I haven't made Avgolemono Soup in awhile. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Avgolemono is a  delicious Greek Soup made like a chicken soup with lemon and eggs added to the broth. All you need is one spoonful of this soup and it warms your soul, and brings a smile to your heart.
Whenever we eat out in a Greek restaurant we always order a bowl of Avgolemono. It's always a good gage for us because if the soup is good and homemade we know that the rest of the meal is going to be really good!
This soup is a little tricky to make. If you don't do it right the broth will curdle. I think the secret is adding the hot liquid to the eggs very slowly while the blender is going, and once that is well blended adding that slowly back to the big pot.

The recipe that was given to me calls for 5 large eggs. I have scaled that back to 3 eggs.

1 whole chicken
1 small onion, peeled
2 carrots, whole
1 bay leaf
1 celery stalk, whole
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
1/2 cup of long grain rice or orzo pasta
5 large eggs
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon flour

Make the chicken stock by cooking the whole chicken in the water with the onion, carrots, celery and bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper.
Cover and cook until the chicken is tender.
Remove the chicken from the pot
let cool and debone, shred or cut into pieces
Discard onion and bay leaf.
Place carrots and celery in a blender with a little broth.  Blend until smooth. Add back into the stock
Reserve one cup of broth for the next step!
Bring broth to a boil and add rice or orzo, cover the pan and simmer over low heat until your pasta or rice is tender.
Add chicken pieces back to the stock
Beat the eggs in a blender until frothy.
Pour in the lemon juice and flour and blend thoroughly.
With the blender running, slowly add 1 cup of the hot broth into the egg mixture. Gradually return the egg mixture to the stock, stirring constantly and cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
Do not allow the soup to come to a boil or the soup will curdle.

Serve this soup with some fresh sliced lemon and some crusty bread.
You're going to enjoy serving this. Your family and guests are going to enjoy eating this. After their first spoon full they might even think you're Greek!

Buon Appetito
Καλή όρεξη
Να τρώτε καλά
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Father's Day BBQ

I'm posting this a little early without pictures, just in case you need or want an easy recipe for BBQ sauce. After all, what would Father's Day be without the grill going with a great BBQ?
Today's Food Crawl is all about the BBQ sauce. I know that there are a ton of them out there. But for some reason, this one is very special.
Growing up, my mother made this all the time. Our neighbors loved it, and it was frequently requested at all picnics and neighborhood events.
I don't know about the rest of you, but my husband loves a BBQ. So while he's on the golf course I am at home lovingly preparing him a BBQ for his Father's Day Dinner.  I have mentioned before that my "boys" love the gooey, goopy, stuff that some people call BBQ sauce.  I am so not into it...however, I just love this BBQ sauce that my mother used to make!  I have to say that my mother used to make the best BBQ sauce, and she used it on her chicken. This sauce is spectacular! I have no idea where she got the recipe, for all I know it could be out of a Betty Crocker cook book, or a magazine!  It's really soooo good. The recipe that follows makes a very small batch. I would suggest that you at least triple this. It stays good refrigerated for at least a week, if not more.  Once you try it, you will want to use it on anything that goes on the grill!
I'm going to slather this all over my chicken and ribs this Sunday. What will you be making?

Mom's BBQ Sauce
2 Tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons vinegar
1/2 teaspoon tabasco
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon mustard, we used Gulden's  (use whatever you have in the frig)
1/4 cup water
that's the recipe... it says...
 bring it all to a boil! lol
So go ahead, and do it. You won't believe how delicious this sauce is! Yum! Yum! Yum!

Enjoy your day!
Happy Father's Day!

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Chicken Soup and Chimichurri Sauce

If it's Monday in my house it means that we are having soup for dinner.  You can turn a very simple Chicken Soup into something very different by serving it up with a sauce on the side. Tonight that sauce is a Chimichurri Sauce.
When ever I make Chicken soup I use a whole chicken in the pot, covered with water and seasoned with salt and pepper and a bay leaf. I add celery, onion and carrots to the pot and let the chicken gently simmer until the chicken is done.  From this simple stock you can go in many directions just by adding some additional ingredients. Add some ginger, garlic, green onions and some sherry and you have the wonderful beginning of a broth for Wonton Soup. Add some egg yolks and lemon juice and you're absolutely going to love the flavors that develop into an Avgolemono Soup. Feel like something Mexican? Try adding some cilantro, chopped green peppers and scallions to your stock and you're on your way to making a delicious Chicken Tortilla soup. You'll be amazed at all the delicious stocks that you can make.

The stock is delicious, and my family loves the stock with the vegetables cut up and cooked with a small shaped pasta, such as Ditalini.  The problem I have is getting anyone to eat the plain, boiled chicken. It's funny how history repeats itself. When my mother would make boiled chicken we wouldn't eat it either, until she made this fabulous sauce to accompany the boiled chicken. We didn't know that we were eating Chimichurri Sauce. She just called it a Green Sauce or Salsa Verde!  There are so many sauces that my mom used to make that we now know have culinary names.  I'll be sharing some of these sauces as I go along and who knows, I may even learn the proper culinary names for the sauces, instead of calling them brown sauce and green sauce! Are you along for the crawl?

Chimichurri
One bunch of fresh parsley chopped fine
3 - 4 cloves of fresh garlic, chopped fine
a pinch of oregano
a pinch of salt and pepper
a pinch of red pepper flakes
3 - 4 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Chop everything and mix it all together in a bowl adding olive oil.

I took the chicken off the bone, the dark meat went into the soup pot and the white meat was arranged on a platter and topped with the Chimichurri Sauce.

and for those who love Balsamic....
drizzled with some glaze

What can be better than a nourishing cup of soup with a delicious chicken chimichurri?

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo

Lorraine

Chicken Piccata

I love Chicken Piccata!
The term Piccata simply means "sharp" referring to the capers and lemons used to make this simple, and  delicious dish.  Originally this dish was made with veal,  but with the price of veal cutlets, this dish is made on a regular basis in my house with chicken. Hey, almost everyone loves chicken cutlets!
Some people use flour in this dish. I choose not to. I get a nice sear on the chicken without using any flour. Just let your pan get hot and leave them alone so they get color!

Let's get going.
For this dish you will need
8 - 10 chicken cutlets (boneless chicken breasts)
2- 4 Tablespoons of sweet unsalted butter
2 - 4 Tablespoons of olive oil
white wine (sorry I never measure this one!)
 fresh parsley, chopped  - a few tablespoons
2 - 3 Tablespoons capers or more to your taste
2 Lemons, juice and the zest from one
salt and pepper to taste
 2 - 3 anchovy fillets*

Heat up your frying pan. Get it nice and hot. While it is heating up, season your boneless chicken breasts with salt and pepper.

Add the oil to your pan and start to cook your chicken on a medium/high heat. Try to get a nice sear on the chicken. I think 4 minutes on each side will do it. Try not to crowd the chicken in the pan, they will get a nicer color if you don't crowd them.  My picture is a good example of crowding! I rushed it...we were hungry! lol

When all the chicken is cooked on both sides, remove the chicken from the pan, leaving any juices from the chicken in the pan and add your butter, and the anchovy fillets at this time. (The anchovy's are totally optional...I just love the extra zing they give to this dish)  I used a fork to mash the anchovy fillets.

Add your chicken breasts back to the pan and add your wine, lemon juice and zest,  parsley and capers. Let the chicken cook in the liquids for a few minutes until the alcohol burns off from the wine. You will see that the sauce starts to thicken a little.

I like to serve this dish with rice and a vegetable. Tonight that vegetable is zucchini!
Visit The Food Crawl on Facebook, and give me a thumbs up!

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Chicken Scarpariello

Chicken Scarpiello... I'm sure that there are many ways to make this and each of us has their own version of ingredients for this dish. Isn't that what cooking is all about? Individual interpretation? And isn't that the beauty of cooking, adding ingredients or omitting them depending on what your taste buds are desiring? It's all subjective, what you like, don't like and what others like and don't like. Google Chicken Scarpariello and hundreds of recipes will come up and while they may all be very similar, there will be a little tiny difference, an ingredient in one recipe that really appeals to you, and changes the taste. My sister Marlene says she doesn't like rosemary, and makes a funny face when I say I'm going to put it in something. She's usually packing the leftovers for her lunch, rosemary and all!  So play a little, taste as you go and make this your own!

Here's what you will need...

Chicken, on the bone cut up into pieces

Italian sausage

olive oil

butter

garlic

hot cherry peppers

lemon juice

salt and pepper

rosemary

oregano

dry white wine

chicken stock

I'm making lots of chicken today. I cut up 4 whole chickens, and each chicken was cut into 12 pieces.  (the breast, thigh and leg were all cut in half through the bone) I removed the backs and the wings and put them in a pot to make some chicken stock.  Here's my chicken cut up and seasoned with salt and pepper, and rosemary.

Heat your pan and get it hot then add some oil to the pan and brown the chicken, skin side down. Don't keep moving it around, if you let the pan and the oil get hot enough the chicken won't stick!  Let the chicken get some color!

While the chicken is cooking in the frying pans, put your sausage into the oven. I baked mine at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes, turning them halfway so they were browned on both sides.  This is the sausage going into the oven...

When all your chicken is browned, it's time to make the sauce. Deglaze the pan with some white wine, scraping the brown bits with a wooden spoon. Add smashed, chopped garlic, and your cherry peppers. Taste it...you want more garlic, add it! You want it with more of a kick?  Add some more cherry peppers!  

 Add some chicken stock, start with a cup. Turn up the heat a little and let the wine cook off.  Squeeze in some lemon juice, add a little butter or not. I added some of the brine from the hot cherry peppers. It really gives the dish a nice kick and adds some "heat".  At this time add any additional seasoning. I used just a pinch of oregano, and another pinch of rosemary. Usually, at this time I would add the chicken and sausage back to the pan and finish cooking with the sauce, but because I had more chicken than my pans could handle, I had to finish everything in the oven.

 Spoon all your sauce over the chicken and sausage and at 375 degrees bake in the oven until the chicken is cooked through.

 If you have any questions, please let me know. I'd love some feedback!

Buon Appetito
xoxoxo
Lorraine

Southern Fried Chicken

Southern Fried Chicken...Italian Style!

I have an Aunt Rose and when she would make this dish we would all cheer. It is something special. We'd ask her what this dish was called and she would say it was Fried Chicken. Her Italian heritage is from Southern Italy. So from that point, I've affectionately called this Aunt Rose's Southern Fried Chicken.
 I can remember my mother, who was a fabulous cook, lick her fingers clean, and if she could have, she would have licked the dish clean! (She probably did when we weren't looking!)
Aunt Rose always made this with chicken on the bone. I have made this with boneless chicken breasts and while it is still delicious it's just not the same. We all know that meat is always sweeter on the bone!
This is not a weight watchers dish. If you are afraid of pan frying and butter you don't have to look any further, this dish is not for you! Get the Italian Bread ready, you are going to want to dunk!
I would like to also tell you that this is not exactly how my Aunt Rose made it. She never wrote down the recipe for me, so if I've omitted something or added something a little extra to the recipe, I apologize.  It's still delicious! And whenever it's made we always think of Aunt Rose!

Recipe:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Chicken pieces on the bone
oil for pan frying
eggs
breadcrumbs
flour
salt and pepper to taste
garlic cloves, the more the better
fresh lemons
butter, at least one stick

Beat a few eggs in a bowl and season with your salt and pepper. In another bowl combine some seasoned breadcrumbs with a little flour. Dip the chicken in the egg wash and then lightly bread the chicken pieces.

In a large frying pan or skillet add vegetable oil and pan fry your chicken just so they get some color on both sides. You don't have to cook these through, they are going to go into the oven to finish.

After all your chicken has been pan fried layer the chicken in a baking pan. My lasagna pan is the perfect size when making this dish for my family. Plenty of room for plenty of chicken.  Add some crushed garlic. I used about 8 cloves and crushed them with the wide end of the blade on my chef knife. Add juice from 2 lemons and season with some salt and pepper.  Cut up a stick of butter, and put it all around the chicken. Cover with foil and bake the chicken for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the chicken falls off the bones.

Take out of the oven. Serve this with plenty of bread. Rice is good with this dish too! Your going to love the taste of this!

Bon Appetite!
xoxoxo
Lorraine