Chicken Dinner

A few days ago I got a couple of organic 1/2 chicken breasts and froze them. They thawed yesterday and were good to go today so I changed my breading order. I have some very grainy, think very large grains of sand, Panko crumbs. I omitted the milk from the four-step process so I could season them.

Normal “French” breading technique is milk, flour, egg, bread crumbs. I pounded the chicken to about 1/2 inch thick, seasoned the breasts and dredged them in seasoned flour, seasoned eggs with milk, then rough Panko crumbs mixed with finely grated parmesan (microplane) and pepper. Then I laid them in a skillet with 1/2 butter, 1/2 extra-virgin olive oil. I heated the oven and finished cooking on a sheet pan and it was fantastic.

While this was all going I have some native fingerling potatoes, red, white and blue, that I washed and boiled with a huge clove of garlic. They made great and somewhat healthy mashed potatoes. I tried to use more 2% milk and chicken broth (sorry, I borrowed it from the dog’s frig stash*) than butter. They were great.

I served some raw sugar snap peas I needed to use up from the frig and Jim didn’t lick the plate but came darned close. No real recipes here but I know you can feel your way through it. I had to get two utensils I haven’t had for a few months because they’re in storage. A potato masher (courtesy of Nanny) and a usable chicken pounder we picked up last weekend. My good one is in storage. Sometimes you go a few months without your “stuff” because it’s a temporary arrangement and in the end, you have to improvise or buy a second one because we really wanted pounded chicken and mashed potatoes.

Last week my music teacher was telling me about sounds and I compared it to sense memories we have from smells and tastes of our childhood or later on in life. Think about coming in from the back yard and smelling your mother’s apple pie in the oven, or your grandmother’s brownies. Or grandpa’s spaghetti Bolognese.

My mother always did the turkey, and in inventive ways (thanks Gourmet) and a traditional English supper for Christmas with prime rib, gravy, and Yorkshire pudding. I was lucky enough to create and implement many of the sides for these meals over the years. At age fifty, I’ve never made a prime rib and would like to do so this year. Yorkshire pudding, of course, gravy, mashed root vegetables with garlic, spinach, glazed carrots. We always had cookies, mincemeat tarts and German lebkuchen for dessert. What a feast!

This year, I look forward to entertaining guests and enjoying time over… well, the table is my office right now so we’ll have to just to move some things around! Cheers, Dee