Chicken Parmigiana

I will admit that I've never been a real fan of the chicken parmigiana. In restaurants it's always oily and has too much cheese, plus they throw it on top of chips/fries, which go soggy! Not my idea of a good meal.

Andrew, my husband, however - loves it. So I thought I'd give it a go.
We had enough for 3 dinner serves, plus some leftovers for Andrew for work tomorrow. Probably if you want enough for 4 full dinner serves, use a bit extra chicken.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts
4 slices bread
garlic
1 onion, diced
2 cans diced tomatoes
italian herbs - fresh or dried
sugar or ketchup
jar of plain tomato pasta sauce (eg dolmio)
vegies to serve with
pasta/spaghetti
cheese
2 eggs


Slice the chicken thinly into 2 or 3 slices. Even is good, but no matter if they aren't. Whiz up your bread in the blender to make breadcrumbs and add a bit of garlic at the end. You can also add some parmesan cheese, but I couldn't find mine! Throw your eggs in a bowl and beat them up so they are nicely mixed with a fork.
Dip your chicken into the egg and then into the breadcrumbs. Coat them well.

Put them aside - in the fridge is good here.


In a saucepan, fry up the onion and some garlic. Then add your cans of tomatoes. I also added half a jar of dolmio tomato pasta sauce. This isn't necessary but helped give it a nice round flavour. Let it simmer for a while, and add some mixed Italian herbs. Also add a squirt of ketchup or a teaspoon of sugar. This will help the sauce not be too bitter as it can get from lots of tomatoes.

Once your sauce is cooked and has simmered for a while, get a frying pan and coat it with a decent amount of oil. I used olive oil but vegetable oil is fine. Get it to a good heat so you can shallow fry the chicken. Not too hot so as to burn them though!
Fry the chicken pieces for a few minutes each side. If they aren't fully cooked, that's ok as they will be going in the oven. Place each cooked piece on an oven tray lined with baking paper. Drizzle some sauce and a sprinkling of cheese on each one. I used a tiny bit each of parmesan (yeah, I managed to find it), regular cheese and mozzerella. Don't use too much cheese you don't want it oily and icky.

Whack that in the oven at 180C for 15 mins or so.
Cook your spaghetti according to packet directions, which usually takes around 10 mins. Drain it and stir the sauce through.

Serve on a plate with a nice amount of pasta, with the chicken on top and some greens around the side. I used green beans and carrots tonight.

Sorry I forgot to take a photo, but it was delicious!!!!!!!

Then we had chocolate pudding for dessert with fudge sauce and that was awesome!!!

Warm Chicken Pasta Salad

Found this recipe on taste.com.au and changed it quite a bit.
Here tis!

Cook 375g pasta (spirals, shells, bow ties etc) according to packet and drain.

Chop up 4 spring onions (scallions) and 1 red capsicum (bell pepper).

Lightly fry onions in a bit of olive oil - add 2 cloves minced garlic, and then the capsicum.

Fry for 5 mins till all are tender. Add 1 punnet of sliced grape tomatoes (I sliced each tomato into 4) and 1/2tsp minced red chilli. Cook another 2 mins or so. Add 300ml thickened cream and let it simmer for 3 mins until slightly thickened. Stir occasionally.

Place cooked pasta in a big bowl and add 1/2 a diced bbq chicken (alternatively pan fry 2 chicken breasts and then slice up thinly) and a few cups of baby english spinach, roughly chopped.

Pour cream and onion mixture over the top of the pasta and mix together.

Serve warm.
Serves 4-6 as a main meal.

Easy chicken casserole

I got this recipe from an old friend and have slightly changed it to suit me!

Anyways, you need:
1kg chicken thighs
4 sticks celery
3 carrots, peeled
1 leek, or 1 onion
1 parsnip
1 zucchini
button mushrooms
1 tin of corn
2 tins tomatoes, diced
1 packet french onion soup mix
1 packet chicken noodle soup mix

Trim the fat off the chicken and cut each thigh into 2. Place into a casserole dish that has a lid. Then chop up the vegies to a size you'd like - chunky dicedish.
Add the vegies to the pot and pour the soup mixes and the tomatoes over it. Give it a little mix around, and then you might want to add a cup of water or so.

Put it in a medium oven - about 170C or so for 2 hours.

If you want to use frozen corn, add it in the last half hour.

For a slightly different version, add some macaroni and a little more water in the last half hour too.

spicy cous cous and chicken pieces.

this is the cous cous i served with the moroccan chicken, but also a really yummy spicy chicken recipe too.

chicken:
combine
2tsp curry powder
2tsp coriander (dried)
2tsp cumin
1/4tsp cayenne pepper
1 clove garlic
2tsp orange zest
2tsp dried ginger

slice chicken breasts into 1inch cubes or so and put in a bag with the spices and get it all mixed together so the chicken is coated.

heat some olive oil in a frying pan so it's about 1/2cm deep. shallow fry the chicken pieces until cooked, but don't let them burn, so turn them regularly. place on paper towel to dry the oil off them. set aside.

cous cous:
in a bowl, put 1 1/2cups cous cous and 2 cups of hot water. stir with a fork and put a lid on and let it sit for 5 mins. fluff it with a fork after this and break up any chunks.

then combine:
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil (good oil as this is for a dressing)
1 1/2tsp cumin
3/4tsp paprika
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
salt
1/2 cup toasted pinenuts (heat in a frying pan with a tiny bit of olive oil until browned, stirring)
1/2 cup currants (or more if you really like em!)
1/2 a small red onion, finely chopped (i like to quickly fry this up for 1-2 mins to just take off that raw flavour as red onion is pretty strong)
1/2 red capsicum (red bell pepper)

mix the oil, lemon juice and spices together and pour into the cous cous and mix together. then add the rest of the ingredients and stir together!

easy!!!!


cous cous

moroccan chicken tagine

now i tried this recipe because it said tagine... and i have a tagine but have never used it. but my recipe ended up being too big so i cooked it in the dutch oven!
i got this recipe from here but i did change some of the ingredients etc.
so this is my version:

1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp ground black pepper
1.5 tbsp paprika
1.5 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp turmeric
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 whole chicken (butterflied) or 10 chicken thighs
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions finely diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tins chopped tomatoes
200g dried apricots, halved
100g dates, halved
100g currants
1 tsp strands saffron, soaked in cold water
600ml chicken stock
1 tbsp honey


mix the spices in a bowl. using half of the spices, coat the chicken and place in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

fry up the onions and garlic with the olive oil, then add the rest of the
spices - it will become quite pasty so i added some extra oil.

get the chicken and lightly brown each side for a few minutes in a griddle pan or frying pan, then place in a casserole dish. dutch oven or tagine
with a lid.
pour the onion mix over the top, along with the currants, apricots, dates, saffron (and water), chicken stock, honey and
tomatoes. give it a bit of a mix.

bake in the oven with a lid for an hour or so until the chicken is well cooked.


i did both a whole chicken plus some thighs, and took out the whole chook, cut it into 4 and grilled it just to brown it on top.
i put the thighs in a lasagne dish, and simmered the sauce to get rid of some of the juice as it was quite watery by then.
then i poured the sauce over the thighs and placed the chicken pieces on the top to serve.

this was served with spicy cous cous.

Lemon Chicken Disaster

I had high hopes of blogging tonight with a great recipe. But it turned out not so great.

I made lemon chicken with fried rice.

The chicken was great! Chop chicken breasts into pieces however you like, coat in cornflour, egg and cornflour again. Then deep fry (I did it in the electric wok) until cooked through. I did batches of 4 pieces for approx 15 mins each? I let them drain and then placed them in the oven on 100C to keep warm.

I then made a super easy fried rice: diced carrots, capsicum, frozen peas and corn fried up in the frypan. Add some teriyaki marinade and some cooked rice (I have a rice cooker) and stirred it up. I also added the leftover meat from our roast on Friday night. There was a little bit of beef left so I diced that up with it. The rice turned out not too badly. Normally I'd put more ingredients in it, but for a simple dish, it was OK.

The disaster was using a jar of Kantong lemon chicken sauce. GROSS! Not nice at all! Totally destroyed my yummy dinner, and I barely ate any. I was so disappointed. Next time I'll go with my instincts and make the sauce from scratch - there are so many online, why didn't I do that?

Anyway... a picture?

Honey Soy Chicken Drumsticks

Well tonight I went to the shops to get ingredients for the Sang Choy Bow but they had no pork mince. So I decided to grab some chicken drumsticks out of the freezer instead.
A friend of mine told me how he likes to do honey soy marinade, and I really liked the way it turned out, so it's how I always do it now! I used to just use plain honey and soy sauce, but this makes it just that bit nicer.

You will need:
chicken drumsticks (2-3 per person depending on size)
honey
soy sauce
ginger
garlic
sweet chilli sauce

It really depends how much you want to make, for the 8 drumsticks tonight I used about 1/2cup honey, a big slosh of soy sauce, 1/2tsp of minced ginger, 1tsp minced garlic and a small squirt of sweet chilli sauce.
Mix together till all ingredients are combined.
Remove skin from drumsticks (unless you like the skin, but I find it's not that nice done this way) and place in casserole or lasagne dish or similar.
Pour honey soy mix over the drumsticks and place in oven on about 170C for 30 mins. Take out of oven and turn them over, coating them again in the sauce and return to oven for another 15-20 mins at 200C until they look nice and cooked and a bit crispy on the edges.
Alternatively you can let the drumsticks marinade in the sauce in the fridge for an hour up to a day, depending on how organised you are.

With the sauce at the bottom, a bit of this with some cornflour stirred in and heated through on the stove will make a lovely pouring sauce too.

We served this with a chicken flavoured rice mix and some frozen veg for a super easy dinner.