Tag Archive for: Chicken

Another “Tastes Like Chicken” Blog

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Nothing gives me greater joy than seeing a brand, spanking-new grocery store opening up in the area. Here in our town, we’ve got two rather old and not so great stores to choose from: one offers great prices but not too much in the way of innovation while the other is a little newer, a little more upscale, but infinitely more expensive. (I have heard about the shopping Mecca referred to as Wegman’s and pray that someday they will move downstate so I can experience the wonder of this store. So far, nothing doing. ) So, as I drove home from a work visit the other day and saw a Stop and Shop with streamers wafting away from its brand new storefront, I nearly drove off the road. I was armed with a new recipe and decided that the time was right—despite the fact that the store had only opened seconds earlier—to give it a try.

I love food, think about food, eat a lot of food. And Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I and my Stiletto gals have been talking about food in our emails back and forth to each other. (I still have to make Southern Evelyn’s apple cake, but promise I will!) I tend to stay toward healthy things and am constantly trying to amaze my family with my culinary prowess. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that that is a challenge. I’ve got one picky eater, one vegetarian, and one who only likes a few vegetables and nothing really of the root variety, which I love to roast with olive oil, salt, pepper, and some herbs. But while drinking my coffee the other day—and with a great big thank you to Rachael Ray who published this recipe in my hometown newspaper—I seem to have hit on something that everyone loves (with the exception of the vegetarian who I have now turned onto breaded flounder, which can be picked up in the freezer case of the new Stop and Shop just inside the front doors of the building). Let me give you this one roaster, easy-as-pie chicken dinner that will take all of the guess work out of “Mom! What’s for dinner!?”

You will need:

To preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

One (1) whole cut-up chicken in a package. Take out all of the chicken, rinse and dry. I also cut the breasts in half so that they were more of the same size as the other pieces of meat. The chicken I bought cost about $9.00 and fed the family for three nights.

Get a bunch of fingerlings, red potatoes, purple potatoes, or any other kind of small potatoes that you like and wish to use. Cut them in quarters.

Strip the leaves of three stalks of rosemary and coarsely chop.

Crush eight garlic cloves.

Put the chicken on the bottom of the roaster, throw in the potatoes, the rosemary, the garlic, and cover the whole thing with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Oh, and don’t forget some sea salt and pepper to taste.

Stick in the oven for about 35-45 minutes or when the juices run clear from the chicken. You will have a one-roaster chicken dinner that everyone (sans the vegetarian) will enjoy. I also picked up one of my new favorite pre-packaged items: microwavable, steamable French beans. Served with the chicken and potatoes, you really have a winner. Tonight, we’re having the exact same dinner because I’ve never served a meal in which every morsel, down to the coarsely-chopped rosemary, was consumed. We may just eat this every night until Thanksgiving when I’ll probably break down and buy a couple of hamburgers so we don’t go on poultry overload.

I’m going to experiment a little tonight and roast some squash alongside the chicken even though I was admonished by the family not to change a thing. I figured I can doctor this up a few hundred ways and everyone will still enjoy.

Next week: a treat. We at the Stiletto Gang will be sharing additional recipes and ideas for the holidays and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what the rest of my ladies have up their sleeves. Happy eating!

Maggie Barbieri

Tastes Like Chicken

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I make every attempt to get my family to eat healthy. This is not an easy task because I have a son who likes virtually nothing, except for (inexplicably) pepperoni. He claims not to eat meat, but will partake of a steak dinner if it is offered (and/or if I threaten him with a six-thirty p.m. bedtime). My daughter is a bit better because she significantly older than he is, but vegetables and fruits are not high on her list. One night, in a fit of pique, I told the two of them that they were going to get scurvy, just like the pirates of the seventeenth (?) century, because they don’t eat any citrus products. They just looked at me, bored, and returned to finishing off a bag of pretzel rods and a box of Teddy Grahams.

I’ve bought organic and local; shopped the farmers’ market when it is in season; picked my own eggplant from an orchard in the vicinity; and tried to bring more wheats, grains, and fiber into the nightly dinner offerings. But I’m exhausted, because every night is a whine-fest, a litany of each child’s likes and dislikes, how I’m failing them in the culinary sense. I know I can’t be the only one out there who has this problem, and while my children are delightful in every other sense, when it comes to food, they’re difficult.

I give up. Even though I make one meal, and one meal only every night, the disappointment and despair written on their faces is enough to make me commit hara-kiri with my not-so-sharp kitchen knives.

I ate everything as a child. I remember my Irish grandmother—the one with a taste for ethnic Jewish food, easily purchased because we lived so close to Flatbush Avenue—bringing home an entire smoked whitefish for us to pick on as I did my homework. And there were garlic pickles, corned beef, rye bread, kosher hot dogs and a host of other culinary wonders that my children would most definitely turn their noses up at. So I don’t understand how a basic dish of rice pilaf, roasted chicken, and glazed carrots could make them run for the hills. When you’ve attempted to do your times tables with a dead whitefish staring up at you, a roasted chicken would be a welcome distraction, no?

So, I’ve started to lie. As a friend of mine would say, “Is that bad?” I have discovered that they like fried chicken cutlets and would eat them every night if I let them. So, I went to the local gourmet store, where tilapia was on sale, and bought several filets. Before the kids entered the kitchen to do their nightly reconnaissance, I floured, egged, and breaded them (the filets, not the kids), throwing them into an oil-coated frying pan as I heard their footsteps approaching. “What are we having for dinner?” they asked, warily eyeing the oil popping in the frying pan. “Chicken cutlets,” I said, not turning around. (I am a terrible liar.)

There was much rejoicing. We sat down at the table, and with “chicken cutlets” piled high on everyone’s plates, we set about to eating. Conversation was lively, fun, and not fraught with complaints about who didn’t like what or questions about why something was prepared a certain way. My eight-year-old was close to clearing his plate—a rare occurrence—when he looked over at me and said, “Are these different from the cutlets you usually make?”

I looked down. “No. I tried a new recipe.” (Did I mention that I’m a terrible liar?)

My daughter, who was in the kitchen refilling her water glass, shrieked, slumping against the counter in a swoon, almost brought to her knees by what she had just discovered. “That’s because it isn’t chicken cutlet!” she said, waving the empty tilapia package above her head. “It’s something else…it’s…” she said, holding the package close to her nose. “It’s fish,” she said, almost in a whisper.

My son turned to me, wide-eyed. “You made us fish?” he asked incredulously. I waited for the accusations and recriminations. I waited for the proclamation that I was the worst mother in the world and clearly, the worst cook. I waited for the tears when the realization that he had just ingested fish—FISH!—set in. But he stared at me a few more minutes, wide blue saucer eyes framed by inky black eyelashes. I held his gaze. Finally, he smiled, and offered a little shrug. “Tastes just like chicken.”

Maggie Barbieri