Tag Archives: chicken

Gluten-Free, Grain-Free Chicken Pad Thai

4 Apr


It’s somewhat surprising, but Pad Thai, despite being one of Thailand’s national dishes, is from Vietnam. Originally influenced by Chinese cuisine, the dish was relatively unknown in Thailand until the 20th century. It actually was part of a Thai government campaign in the 1940s to create a national dish that both reflected the Thai spirit and also increased rice noodle production to help propel their economy. There’s a really interesting history of the dish to be read here.

This recipe is a long time coming, and something we’ve been cooking for years. For a while I was content with pre-made sauces like Mae Ploy’s, but I was never happy with its high sugar content and the fact that it has MSG in it. So I decided to work out how to make it from scratch, and I couldn’t be happier with the resulting product. This is the real deal.

And to make things even more interesting, for this particular photo session I thought it would be neat to try out Cappello’s gluten-free, grain-free fettuccine noodles instead of our usual rice noodles, and I was surprised by how well they worked! Instructions on how to make them with traditional rice noodles and zucchini noodles are included as well.

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Chicken Francesca

26 Feb


While researching some Italian pasta-based chicken dishes, I came across a dish called Chicken Francesca more than once. I loved the name, and all it implies: the Italian word Francesca literally means “from France”, so to me the name Chicken Francesca means it’s an Italian dish that is cooked using French culinary methods. The problem is that the recipes I found that carried the name were vastly different from my initial impression: some were baked using breadcrumbs and cream, others were mushroom-intensive and served over rice, and still more were linked to a restaurant in Boston known for breasts sautéed in a skillet with artichokes and parsley.

So I decided to take my favorite elements of some of those recipes to make something even more unique: an Italian pasta dish that borrows heavily from French culinary methods! Namely, I focused on creating a heavily-browned skillet in order to deglaze it to serve as the base for my pasta sauce. I also used a milder shallot instead of the traditional onion found in many Italian pasta dishes, and added fresh parsley right at the end of the dish, which is so often found in French cuisine.

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Chicken Marbella

19 Feb


Chicken Marbella is a dish first introduced in The Silver Palate Cookbook in 1982. Its unique combination of prunes, capers, and green olives quickly captured the hearts of home chefs and remains a family favorite in many households throughout the United States today. So when a friend requested that I make an adaptation of the recipe, I was happy to give it a shot and see what I could do.

And truth be told, I didn’t make many changes from the original recipe, because it’s already delicious and uses whole ingredients. However, I only used dark meat (instead of a quartered whole bird) to make sure all of the pieces cooked evenly. I also made some minor ingredient changes, like adding half an onion and using a butter and honey glaze instead of a brown sugar coating typically used in this recipe. Altogether, it all adds up to a slightly magical experience: a gourmet-tasting dish that’s dead simple to make!

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Gluten, Grain, and Garbage-Free Chick-fil-A Nuggets

27 Dec


Over the past few weeks we’ve spent a fair amount of time out in town, shopping for gifts, and we have often found ourselves away from the house with no lunch plans. Chipotle is our emergency standby, but sometimes we’re tempted to grab Chick-fil-A since they’re everywhere (there are 30 of them within 20 miles of our house!). But as Melissa at Hunt.Gather.Love. points out, regardless of how you feel about Chick-fil-A’s stance on current social issues, the quality of their food alone should be enough to boycott the restaurant chain. For example, let’s take a look at the ingredients list for their nuggets:

100% natural whole breast filet, seasoning (salt, monosodium glutamate, sugar, spices, paprika), seasoned coater (enriched bleached flour [bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid], sugar, salt, monosodium glutamate, nonfat milk, leavening [baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate], spice, soybean oil, color [paprika]), milk wash (water, egg, nonfat milk), peanut oil (fully refined peanut oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness and Dimethylpolysiloxane an anti-foaming agent added).

So I set out to recreate these chicken nuggets, and most importantly, reduce the ingredients list of this dish from 30+ ingredients down to 10 with minimal compromise on taste.

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Simple Cornish Hen

13 Nov


The Cornish hen, often referred to as a Cornish game hen or Rock Cornish hen, is a hybrid chicken first developed in the United States in the 1950s. Besides being much smaller than its predecessor (the Cornish-Rock chicken, which is the common “broiler” chicken worldwide), it also generally has a higher white-to-dark meat ratio than its big brothers. Some other interesting tidbits include the fact that the Cornish “game” hen is not a game bird at all, it can be either male or female, and it reaches maturity within 30 days.

I love cooking these little bird because they’re the perfect single-person meal. You get the best of everything! Both drumsticks, both wings, and both oysters. I also find cooking Cornish hens easy and stress-free, and they can be ready in much less time than a full-sized bird.

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Mimi’s Sticky Chicken

28 Aug


One of my readers recently turned me onto a dish called “Mimi’s Sticky Chicken“, and I was immediately intrigued by its foolproof technique and the mid-1990s feel of Mimi’s website. So I gave it a try, and I liked the recipe enough to share.

This recipe is unique in that it only needs one dish (I used a cast iron skillet), and it uses a relatively low cooking temperature of 250 degrees. Sure, it takes four to five hours to cook the bird, but it’s worth the wait.

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Chicken Panang Curry

8 Aug


Like I had mentioned in my Panang curry paste recipe, Panang (also spelled พะแนง, Penang and Phanaeng) curry is a mild Thai curry that gets its name from the Malaysian island of Penang. It is similar to Thai red curry but is richer and creamier, and typically uses crushed peanuts as a major part of the dish (I personally use cashews). It is often served with beef, pork, chicken or shrimp in Thai restaurants in the United States, although beef is the traditional meat used in this dish. We love to make this curry with all of these meats, but typically we use chicken for its taste and texture.

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Simple Grilled Chicken Drumsticks

26 Jun


Drumsticks are a great cut of chicken. My three-year-old son loves them, since they come with “handles” and he gets to eat with his hands. To celebrate these little legs I decided to write up a quick, foolproof recipe for grilling drumsticks.

They are also one of the easiest and most rewarding pieces of chicken to grill, because it’s hard to mess them up. Chicken breasts are great, but they have a very small window of juiciness, and will dry up quicker than a jackrabbit in a thunderstorm. Whole chickens are also fun to grill, but are best when brined, which can take some time and planning. Thighs are another good option, but let’s be honest here – they’re just not as fun as drumsticks.

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Gluten-Free Southern Fried Chicken

15 May


We don’t eat fried foods that often, but every once in a while I get a craving for something crispy and crunchy. So I set out to make a gluten-free, Paleo-friendly southern fried chicken. Bear in mind that this isn’t a smart choice for your everyday meals, but it’s a great way to change things up every once in a while.

The creation of southern fried chicken is the result of several different influences: fried chicken was a West African delicacy brought over to the US by slaves, the mass-production of pork in the South made lard readily available, and the popularity of cast iron cookware in the 19th century created the fried chicken we now associate with the South. I kept my recipe true to those historical precedents, including the use of buttermilk as a marinade.

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Gluten-Free Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo

10 May


And here it is, one of my most treasured and well-known recipes (at least to my family and friends). I’ve been making Fettuccine Alfredo in this same manner since I first learned how to make it nearly fifteen years ago.

While pasta dishes tossed with butter and cheese have been around for a long time, the term “Fettuccine Alfredo” is based on the signature dish of Alfredo Di Lelio’s restaurant (aptly named “Alfredo”) which opened in Rome, Italy in 1914. American tourists grew to love the dish and bring it back here to the US; while we Americans often add ingredients like chicken, shrimp, mushrooms, or broccoli to the dish, it’s commonly served without add-ins elsewhere in the world.

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