Pretty Easy Baked Chicken Wings

If you don't happen to be in an area experiencing chicken wing shortages this week, try this recipe on for size:

Start with 3-4 pounds of THAWED wings. This was a bag of all drumettes from my local Super Walmart. Yes, I do sometimes I go all out with gourmet food sources.

Add some garlic powder and hot sauce, and marinade overnight.

Then preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Put a few pats of butter in a large pan, and melt them in the oven:

Drain off the marinade.

In a one gallon ziplock bag, make a breading mixture of 2 cups Bisquick, paprika, fresh pepper, garlic salt, and onion salt. Then, add the drummettes about five at a time and SHAKE IT UP BABY!

Bake for about twenty minutes, then turn and bake for another fifteen-twenty:

If you like, toss the baked wings with buffallo sauce. But in all honesty, next time I would probably just increase the heat in the breading, instead DRIZZLE the wings with hot sauce. Either way, pretty tasty. Either way, pretty messy as well.

As is tradition, serve with celery, carrot sticks and blue cheese dressing.

Chicken Corn Chowder

Chop one large onion and sautee:

Use microwave to thaw frozen corn:

Chop onions. To make a large dice, first cut off the ends and remove seeds, and then cut in two:

Force the two halves to lay flat:


Cut into strips:

Cut the strips into squares (sorry for the blurry picture)

Add the peppers (I used a mixture of green and red for visual interest) to the pot, along with chicken stock or canned chicken broth. I added cumin, cilantro, salt, pepper, and ancho chili powder. If you're not trying to be careful of the heat level, you can add hot sauce as well.

Add the chicken in the last two minutes, so it doesn't dry out. I added half of this chicken meat - so the meat of one chicken.




Serve with salsa or hot sauce for anyone who wants to add more heat.

101: how to pick a roast chicken

"picking" a chicken just means removing the meat from the bones and tearing or chopping the meat - just what you need for soup, chicken salad or casseroles. While you're at it, separate the larger bones for chicken stock.

This is just an exercise in patience - it doesn't take special tools or skill.

I normally use a plastic bag to catch the refuse - the chicken skin, the small bones, and cartlidge.

The large bones go in the crockpot to make stock. (more on that later this week)

The meat, both light and dark, get ripped into small bits.

101: Roast Chicken

Roasting a chicken is a good basic skill for any home cook. Roast chicken is inexpensive yet very tasty. And once you get past the first one, really pretty easy. The leftovers are great for soup, chicken salad, casseroles ...

Preheat oven to 500.

First - place your roasting pan next to the sink. Open the package of chicken in your sink. Remove the plastic bag of ... ummm ... chicken innards. I normally discard these. The days I'm feeling more ambitious I roast them, and use them for making gravy.

Place the chicken, breast side up, in the pan. I normally cook two at once because it is only 10% more work to make two at a time.

Liberally sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place one or more of the following aromatics in and around the chicken: quartered onion, peeled garlic cloves, celery stalks, quartered lemon, peeled shallots, sprigs or rosemary, fresh sage leaves ...

Put the chicken in the oven. After about 30 minutes (after the top skin starts to brown) turn the oven down - to 350 if you're pretty hungry, or 250 if you need to leave the house for a little bit. Roast to an internal temperature of 160. When you take the chicken out of the oven and let it rest it will continue to to rise in temperature in the middle enough to reach the government specified 165.

Allow the chickens to rest at least fifteen minutes before serving. If you're making the chicken specifically for something else, allow the chicken to rest for at least an hour before "picking" so you don't burn your fingers.

Nasi Goreng

This evening I was speaking to a good friend who LIVED IN JAPAN for about six months, and was surprised that she had never made or heard of Nasi Goreng.

We were first introduced to this wonderful, economical dish by friends in South Carolina. They had been raised in the Dutch Reform community in Canada, and therefore had deep cultural ties with the Indonesian culture, and had been raised eating Nasi Goreng.

Like most fried rice dishes, this one is very flexible, and a great way to use up the bits of this and that in your refrigerator. You need already cooked cold rice to make this dish - so make this the day after you have Chinese take-out to use up that last big container of white rice.

Ingredients:

cold cooked rice, preferably jasmine rice

onion

garlic

bits of vegetables (zucchini, peas, snow peas, carrots, peppers, tomato ....)

bits of meat or seafood (chicken, shrimp, beef, ham, pork)

3 or more eggs

a packet of Nasi Goreng seasoning (from Asian grocery store), or chili powder, corriander, curry powder, salt, pepper

sweet soy sauce (again, from the Asian grocery store)

First:

Chop an onion or two, and sautee until translucent, and then add some chopped garlic.

Meanwhile, crack and beat a few eggs. Add the eggs to the pan, and scramble them so they are in little bits.

At this point you can add the rice, and either add the seasoning packet or add the individual seasonings (I've always used the packets, but one of the recipes I found online said a teaspoon of curry powder, 1/2 tsp each of corriander and chili powder, and 2 tsps soy sauce)

Add in the (already cooked) bits of meat or seafood, mix it all in and let it sit for a few minutes.

Serve with sweet soy sauce on top. YUMMY!

sweet soy sauce really makes this dish - and is also a quick addition to many other asian or pan-asian dishes. The bottle you see to the right is the one I buy. I find it at a Vietnamese run store in Philadelphia - but I was also able to find it when I lived in South Carolina. If you can't find it nearby, you can always order it online.

... and here are some people who probably know more than this American cook of Irish-English-German-French-Swedish descent. (Notice that none of my ancestors used chopsticks very often - though I did have a Japanese Great Aunt by marriage):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasi_goreng

http://www.indochef.com/indo_23.shtml

http://www.melroseflowers.com/mkic/indo_recipes/rice/indonesian_fried_rice.html

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/NASI-GORENG-INDONESIAN-FRIED-RICE-15397

Chicken w/ creamed spinach, artichoke and peppers

Last night's dinner (this is a rather inprecise recipe, but I don't think the exact quanitities will matter much):

~ 1.5 pounds boneless chicken breasts
~ 12 oz fresh spinach
~ one slightly mushy green pepper, bad bits removed (if you only have a fresh one, I suppose it will do)
~ 1.5 cups chopped artichoke (frozen, fresh or from a jar)
~ one large onion, chopped
~ garlic - fresh minced, from a jar, or frozen minced cubes from Trader Joes
~ 8oz. block cream cheese
~ a few tablespoons of pesto, homemade or from a jar
~ olive oil
~ salt & pepper
~ romano, parmesan or a similar flavorful hard cheese

Sautee spinach in a bit of olive oil until fully wilted - turn a few times while cooking:


















Set aside the surprisingly small quantity of spinach which results. In the same pan, sautee the onion, and when that is almost cooked (translucent) add the chopped pepper and garlic. Once the vegetables are soft, turn the heat down to medium, and add the cream cheese. WATCH THIS CAREFULLY, stirring frequently until completely melted. Add a few tablespoons of pesto, and some romano cheese. Stir the wilted spinach back in, as well as the artichoke hearts. Turn to low, stirring occasionally.

















Meanwhile, cut the boneless chicken breast into quarter size pieces. Cook in a separate pan in a bit of olive oil. Add salt and pepper.

Once the chicken is cooked, pour the contents of the pan into the vegetable mixture, including the (cooked) juice from the chicken.

Serve with french bread to be able to eat all the yummy sauce!

The Southern Resident specifically told me to tell all of you that this was VERY good - that's a first!

Lime-jalapeno grilled chicken wraps

Marinate chicken breasts in lime juice with canned jalapenos overnight. Drain the juice off, and grill the chicken. Allow to cool, or else you'll burn your fingers shredding the chicken.

Shred the chicken with your fingers (not aiming for perfection here). Mix in one pound of frozen corn - preferably frozen ROASTED corn from Trader Joes. Mix in one jar of your favorite salsa verde. Add the juice of a couple limes, some garlic powder or chopped garlic, some ground Ancho or ground chili pepper, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper to taste. Microwave sliced bell peppers (multiple colors is GREAT!) and mix them in as well.

We ate this all last week. I made nachos with it (sprinkle mixture over corn chips, add some shredded cheddar, broil for a few minutes then finish the presentation with a scoop each of guacamole and sour cream), wraps (serve warm, with cheese in a tortilla), and ate it cold on salad. The resident Southerner was well pleased. He topped every variation with hot sauce and/or hot salsa.