50 NEW Recipes Challenge- #7 Garlic Crusted Chicken from Jamie Oliver's

I pretty much stink at keeping up with my little challenges.  Nearly a year ago, I became convinced that I could cook and blog about fifty (50) NEW recipes.  I've always loved to cook, but my skills were mainly confined to El Ortega Taco kits and short order cook extroardinaire (I cook some mean hamburgers or grilled chicken.) 
  My love for cooking stems from time with one of the GREAT cooks I knew, my grandma  Russell. Well, as with other challenges I did not do so well in keeping up with the challenge. I DID cook a number of new recipes, but I did not keep up with my blog. 
  Fall 2010, with the hectic nature of my schedule, saw a slump in home cooking.  Now that my schedule is slightly slowing down, I'm hoping to be more in the kitchen. Last night I returned with a Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cook book. 

It was an "interesting" experience.

The recipe called for a coating mixed up in my NINJA food processor.... unsalted crackers, garlic cloves, lemon rind, parsley, and butter.  The lemon rind was my first challenge because I have never done anything with lemon rind.  I actually had to google what this lemon rind thing was all about. Using a potato peeler, I peeled the yellow "rind" part off the lemon. 

  After processing the coating for the chicken,  I had to pummel the chicken breat filets with my "cooking hammer". I was suppose to (and usually) put the chicken into a plastic bag, but wanting to keep moving, I just whacked the heck out of that chicken with bits and pieces flying around the room.
  After the chicken was prepped, the "fun" began.  The chicken is suppose to take a "voyage" from a plate of flour (being entirely covered) to a bowl of beaten eggs to a plate with the parsley/garlic/crackers mixture.

I NEVER do well with coating chicken.  By the time the flour and egg are "coating" the chicken I already have a huge mess on me, the floor, the counter.  Then, I'm suppose to COAT THE CHICKEN WITH THIS GREEN, CRACKER, BUTTERY mix?!?!?  BUTTERY MIX on top of EGG COVERED RAW CHICKEN?!?  Somehow , I managed to somewhat "cake" the green mixture onto the chicken breast. 
  From there I lobbed, the chicken into a frying pan coated with a few dribbles of olive oil. 

  I was nervous how all this would taste (and had a battle with cooking without burning the chicken).  Surprisingly, the chicken turned out very good....more parsley tasting than garlic but still very good.

  When Logan discovered the breading was greenish (from the parsley ), after finishing off a bowl of salad WITH the chicken in it, he was done. Still, Amber and I, and the kids for the most part, enjoyed this new dish.

50 NEW Recipes In 2010- #6 Olive Garden's Homemade Alfredo Sauce with Chicken

My Grandma Russell always did an odd thing when went to restaurants of a "finer dining". Usually, and I cannot recall at this moment exactly where, these restaurants would feature a little bit of parsley next to the entree.  While conventional approaches to this garnish would be to simply admire its "decor" on the plate, my Grandma would snatch up everyone's parsley, wrap it in a napkin, and place it in her purse.  I don't recall totally why.  It may have been simply to provide a garnish on her own plate. 

Tonight, I returned to my cookbook, America's Most Wanted Recipes, and found myself cutting up that one green garnish my grandma loved to snatch off the table...Parsley.  The parsley mattered very little in the grander scheme of things because my past experiences with sauces that involve melting cheese into them has not always been great.  I've made a few nacho cheese sauces and sauces for homemade Macaroni and Cheese that were more reminiscent of sawdust gravy than anything remotely I was attempting. 
   And tonight's cheese ingredients were not in the usual McCulloch family dining budget.  Last night, while my wife was perusing the bread at Meijer's, I snuck in a a little bar of Romano cheese.  Romano is NOT a cheese that sits next to the American cheese slices that we use for grilled cheese sandwiches.  I found the Romano in the "expensive cheese section" near the deli.  This little wedge of Romano cost me $6.24.  For the McCulloch budget, this is expensive.  The alfredo sauce also included Romano, Parmesan, heavy cream (my first time working with "HEAVY" cream), milk, egg yolk, garlic powder. 

   I didn't double check the amount of cheese to be put in, so instead of putting a 1/2 cup EACH of Parmesan and Romano, I put in a FULL cup EACH.  So the kids and Amber got to have a little "cheesier" version of the sauce.
   One of the BEST parts of making dinner tonight was getting help from my "little chef" Logan.  Usually, Scout is the only one that I can tempt into the kitchen to help me.  She LOVE helping me, and surprisingly, she never surfaced the whole time Logan helped me.  Logan grated cheese, turned over the grilled chicken. mixed ingredients, used the colander to strain the angel hair noodles, and peeled the potatoes.  It was a great time just having him there to help, and he was very, very eager to be my assistant (Of course, he has my dominant personality.)  I loved it.
  So recipe #6 I'm reporting on was a HUGE success and enjoyed by everyone....Homemade Alfredo Sauce over Angel Hair noodles with breaded chicken...yummmmmm!

50 NEW Recipes In 2010- #4 Applebee's Chicken Grande Quesadilla and #5 Chili's Salsa

Again, catching up here....last Tuesday (March 9), I began cooking out of a new little cookbook I bought from Barnes and Nobles, America's Most Wanted Recipes: Delicious Recipes from Your Family's Favorite Restaurants.  In this book, you can find "copycat" recipes that claim to have broken the sacred, secret codes of famous recipes from national food chains, like Chilis, Outback, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Applebees. There are countless books out there that cover this topic, and it occurred to me tonight that I have actually gotten many of these types of recipes from online sources.  I could have saved myself a little bit of money.
   Having been out of the kitchen for nearly two weeks due to Tech Week rehearsals at the East China PAC for TO  KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, I went a little crazy in the kitchen that night.  Not only did I help my little daughter, Scout, make cupcakes for her First grade class, but I also made three new entrees.  Two of those are featured in this blog (#4 and #5 for my yearly challenge), and the third will be in the next one.
     Having not a great deal of time to round up supplies from our local Krogers, I was limited in what I could take on for my first slew of recipes.  Also, I did not want to make anything that would have long prep times.  We usually eat between 4:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. due to the fact that our children usually go to bed by 7:30 p.m.  With all of this into consideration, I decided to tackle Applebee's Chicken Grande Quesadilla and Chili's Salsa.  I am a huge fan of Chili's salsa, and I discovered that it probably has more to do with how fresh their chips are when eating their salsa than just the salsa.  The salsa has a great deal of canned tomatoes that are pureed.  Also, I got to add "cumin" to the salsa as well as diced jalepenos (which were a suprising part of the supposed recipe).  I fired up my Ninja food processor I received this past Christmas, and I was very happy with how the salsa came out and seems to be very much like the original Chili's salsa (except without the awesome, salty, deep-fried chips).
    I have made quesadillas many times before.  They are a quick dinner at the McCulloch ranch, but I have never followed such an extensive recipe.  Diced tomatoes, jalepenos, bacon (which I cooked and crumbled fresh for this dish), grilled chicken, and then came the interesting ingredient (among others)....chipotle sauce. Once again I found how much I wished I was closer to a Meijers or even Super Walmart, as finding a bottle of Chipotle sauce became a quest of its own at Krogers.  I DID find some, but I'm not sure if it is ACTUALLY authentic chipotle sauce. The bottle claims to have something to do with buffalo wing sauce, but much of the wordage on the bottle is in Spanish.  I assumed I found what I needed.  The chipotle (buffalo?) sauce coats the flour tortilla. 
   It was very cool making and eating both new additions to the McCulloch canon of recipes.  My kids stuck with the simple chicken and cheese jalepenos, while Amber and I struggled to put down the monstrous (due to the fact that you use 12" shells filled with a ton of ingredient) quesadillas.  Very, very yummy.  I'm anxious to try more of these "secret" recipes this week!!