Stuffed Chicken and Chicken Salad

Wherein Mr. Ullman discusses the limitations of a whole fowl and Mr Broman draws a zombie chicken.

Fowl lends itself well to stuffing.  If you doubt this I suggest you
think about Thanksgiving.  While I do cook myself the occasional
Cornish hen this usually means a chicken breast.

The problem with a full bird is that it is very difficult not to waste a lot of it.  While you can use it both for dinner and lunch you have to devote your week to it. I rarely want to do this  so a chicken
breast it is-- two actually since I got a good deal and purchased four.  The second two were about to get freezer burn so you get a recipe and half here – the half being lunch over the next couple of
days.

Like two weeks ago this recipe includes Italian parsley.  I really cannot get enough of this stuff. It does not include kale which might be something of a relief to my six readers (Carl, my sister, maybe my
brother's wife, two unsuccessful spammers from the EU and myself.
There is a good reason why you don't see ads here.).

Ok, lets work the veggies and greens.  I took a half of tomato, a
goodly amount of the Italian parsley leaves and a shallot clove.
Roughly chop them all individually.  Put them all in the center of
your cutting board.  Vigorously chop them into finer bits so that they
mix up well.

Take the chicken breast you are going to eat tonight and slice it
through the center as described in my first post (a la chicken book).
Sprinkle some apple cider vinegar onto both sides. Put as much of the chopped veggies into the chicken as possible.  Close the book.

Take a  Pryex dish of suitable size and put some oil (dull vegetable
oil is fine here ) on the bottom of the dish.   Add a bit more of the
cider vinegar to the oil.  Note the word bit here.  If I were a
professional I would say “to taste” and it would still be a cop out.

Put the oven on broil and let it heat up.  Put both breasts into the
Pryex and use half whatever is leftover from the stuffing and put it
on the chicken breast you didn't stuff.  Cook for 15 minutes.

When the timer calls flip the chicken breasts over sprinkle a bit more
of the cider vinegar on the top (put the rest of the leftover stuffing
on the unstuffed breast).  Cook for ten more minutes and reduce the
heat to 350 while you spend five minutes steaming the asparagus and
making the salad (at 48 roughage isn't as amusing as it was when in
college).   Serve to yourself until you learn how to properly handle
apple cider vinegar.

By the way, the residue oil, chicken broth and cider can be used for a
great gravy but we will deal with this later.

So what to do with the second chicken breast?  Chicken salad for sandwiches!

Cut the chicken breast into strips and pull it apart.  It is usually a
good idea to do this the next day after the chicken has been cooked so
it has had time dry a bit in the frig.    Get a couple kosher dills
(vlasic stackers are my favorite) and chop to a desired thickness.
Cut up so celery and carrots!  Maybe a bit of fresh shredded garlic!
Hell, throw in a some of raisins!  Put this all into a mixing bowl,
add a squirt of a mild horseradish sauce and spoon in a tasty mild
mayo and fold, stir and worry until you have the desired consistency.
If you over do it add some cabbage to bring it back.

Place in the frig at least overnight, put on bread with a bit of
lettuce.  Make fun of your co-workers who went to Subway by noting
that anyone can be a foodie at lunch.  Lunch isn't something that you
share for Christ's sake.  It is simply about making something you
like.  How hard is that?  Be smug.  Share a bite if necessary.

More then you need to know about Pryex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex  I offer this simply to prove that
Corning Glass was once as interesting at 3M was in the 1960's.

Btw, Every time I get a box of veggies I search for how to properly store them. I am thinking about starting a page devoted to links to proper storage.

First Post: Some Random Noise and a Chicken Recipe.

Iwas drunk when I signed up for this blog in 2009. That explains the name. If I remember correctly I was pissed at the S-57 navigation standard and was going to do something about it. I didn't.

I had forgotten about it until my niece started a food blog Eli's Food Project. When I commented on a post I was surprised to learn I was a blogger. What the hell, maybe I should do something about it. Hence this.

The plan at the moment is to post a recipe once a week or so. While this isn't overly groundbreaking I do have niche. I am a single man barking at my 50s who is currently without anyone in a regular sense and have been so for about a year and a half. However, I do enjoy good food and enjoy cooking. So this is going to be a blog about cooking for myself, occasionally for friends and maybe for possible lovers.

It is fairly easy to cook well for yourself. For the most part it is a matter of looking at recipes written for four or more servings and figuring out how to cook it for yourself. It isn't a matter of simply reducing the ingredients, that never works. You should look at the recipes and figure out what to do with the ingredients. If something written for four servings calls for 2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary you will have a hard time reducing this for something you are making it for yourself. Be prepared for such measurements such as “a bit”. This should be defined as a amount that, through experience, tastes good to you. 

There are also a number of recipes that that will work well over a couple of days. There is a dill sauce I make that lasts for a number of days if the left overs are stored in the fridge. It is great on fish and chicken. Quite surprisingly, it also tastes great occasionally on the quick and easy have-to-use-up-stuff-before-it-goes-bad stir-fry and wasn't bad, much more surprisingly, in a non-repeatable but not that bad sausage mac and cheese.

Every other week I get a box of organic veggies from Full Circle Farms. This is fun because it includes veggies that I would not think to buy at the local grocery and, frankly, it tastes better (organic rainbow carrots are something that the gods snack on when they are watching game shows). I have no clue if this stuff will taste as good using regular veggies.

The major point of all this is not so much to present recipes to follow but rather to start you folks on the path to tasty combinations. Two-thirds of the stuff I eat are things that are somewhat unplanned. I buy something not because it is on my list but rather because it is something that might be cool with something else I found. That is the joy of the organic box I get, I have a bunch of stuff I might not be all that confident with using. I look up recipes to see how to use it and then figure out how to make it work when I go to the grocery.

A stuffed Chicken breast.

Let's start with a dish Popeye might fix if he and Olive Oil were going through a rough patch. A boneless chicken breast stuffed with spinach, Chioggia beets, shallots and goat cheese. The only spice you need is dried dill. Very simple and tasty.

The first step might be a bit hard to describe. Take a knife and slice the chicken breast lengthwise along its thin side. Don't cut all the way through, you basically want to be able to open it like a (very short) book.

Take the beet and use a veggie peeler to skin it. Once you get the outer skin off continue to peel it creating some thin slices. You want to have enough to cover the chicken.

Take the spinach and just rip it with your hands. Again, you want these bits small enough to stick inside the chicken. Usually you would only need one or maybe two leaves. Don't use the stem.

Chop the shallot finely.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Let it heat up while you prep the chicken.

Open the chicken breast like the book noted above. First, lay the beet slices in. Then next add the spinach and finally sprinkle the shallot pieces on top. Close the chicken book.

Get a Pyrex baking dish, one large enough to hold the chicken breast. Cover the bottom with olive oil. Place the chicken in the dish and sprinkle dried dill lightly on top. (This is one of those experience things.)

Bake the chicken breast for fifteen minutes. Take it out of the oven, reopen the book and LIGHTLY sprinkle some goat cheese (remember that?) over the top of the shallots. Goat cheese is really rich so less is better. 

Flip the chicken over, sprinkle dill on this side and bake for ten more minutes.

And that's it. I eat it with a salad (usually a spinach salad since I have it around for the recipe) and boiled potatoes seasoned with a mild horseradish sauce.

By the way, Olive Oil's father was named Cole Oil. Her mother was Nina Oil but if that was ever a pun it isn't any more.