It is Tuesday and Debby's away. The girls have been bugging me to make stuffed chicken breasts.
Salad: Iceberg wedge salad with bacon and toasted pecan pieces
A perennial favorite. I've started toasting the nuts in the oven rather than on the stove top. Much less maintenance. For pecans, 350 degrees around eight minutes. Bleu cheese dressing (out of the bottle).
Side dish: Sautéed Celery Root
I love celery root. I am winging it tonight, meaning no recipe. I've been getting less reliant on recipes in a desperate attempt to prove Debby wrong. We were recently talking about cooking and she may have suggested that my best work comes when I'm following a recipe. Okay, that bothered me. There I admit it. But I'll show her she's wrong. I hope.
I used about a tablespoon of the bacon grease from the bacon I cooked for the salad. First I threw some shallots in the pan until soft. Then I added the diced celery root and cooked it covered over a medium fire until soft, maybe twelve minutes? I threw in some kosher salt and then put the finished side into a bowl and into the warmer.
If I weren't concerned with cleaning while I cook I could have timed the celery root to finish right when the chicken was coming out of the oven.
I should probably give a little background. Most nights when I cook I try to clean as I go along. As a result, I will often cook things earlier than necessary and use the warming drawer more than I'd like to. Being a fan of familial harmony, its a trade-off I'm more than happy to make.
Side dish two: Roasted Broccoli
Broccoli is a family favorite, dark green and healthy, I usually steam it. Some of the healthy aspects of it are somewhat negated by the addition of mock hollandaise sauce (butter, mayonnaise, lemon and more butter).
So when I saw a video on Cooks Illustrated talking about roasting broccoli I was intrigued and decided to give it a shot.
Cut the florets in half if they're small, quartered if they're large. Heat up a baking pan in a five-hundred degree oven. Drizzle olive oil, garlic a little salt, pepper and sugar on the broccoli and put cut side down on hot pan and back in oven for 10 to 12 minutes.
Main course: stuffed chicken breasts with roasted red pepper and roasted garlic and balsamic glaze
I roasted two heads of garlic and two red peppers. I also reduced some balsamic vinegar. I pounded the breasts down. Note I didn't have any parchment paper (my first choice when pounding breasts) or wax paper. So I improvised with Glad "press n' seal" which worked well.
After they were flattened, I put some of the diced roasted red pepper and roasted garlic in the middle and rolled them up securing them with tooth picks. I browned them in olive oil on the stove top and then put them in the oven for thirty minutes. In the last ten minutes I put the reduced balsamic on top of them.
I'll report back tomorrow night.
What I was listening to while I cooked:
Acoustic Mix
- I Wanna Be Sedated Joey Ramone In Their Own Words (Vol. 1)
- The Ghost In You Counting Crows August And Everything After (Disk 2)
- Let It Bleed The Rolling Stones Stripped (Disk 1)
- I Knew The Bride Nick Lowe The Basher Back At The BBC
- Blinded By The Light Bruce Springsteen VH1 Storytellers
- Romeo and Juliet Indigo Girls Rites of Passage
- Man On The Moon R.E.M. The Best Of R.E.M. In Time 1988-2003
- Reason To Believe Rod Stewart Unplugged and Seated
- In the Air Tonight Ray Wilson Live And Acoustic
- Ain't No Sunshine Paul McCartney Unplugged
- Watching The Wheels John Lennon Acoustic
- Everybody's Talkin' Willie Nelson I-10 Chronicles
- Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da The Beatles The Acoustic Submarine (Disc 2)
- After Midnight J.J. Cale Naturally
- American Tune Eva Cassidy American Tune
- Knockin' On Heaven's Door Jerry Garcia, David Grisman & Tony Rice The Pizza Tapes
- I Shall Be Released Nina Simone The very best of Nina Simone
- No Woman, No Cry Graham Parker The Bottom Line, Vol. 2
- Pinball Wizard Pete Townshend Another Scoop (Disc 1)
