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an everyday life

Tag Archives: Chicken

Chicken Casserole

16 Saturday Jan 2010

Posted by Janell in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

≈ 4 Comments

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Chicken, Everyday Life, In the Kitchen, Raising Children, Whining

It’s funny how likes and dislikes go topsy-turvy as we age.

As a child, one of my least favorite meals was any sort of chicken stew dish.  Maybe it’s because Mom didn’t serve this much at home.  So ‘my’ chicken casserole derives from a recipe in a Martha White cookbook, one purchased during the early days of second marriage.  The recipe quickly became a family favorite except for the ‘icky’ mushrooms.  I compensated by slicing and not chopping to make the mushrooms easy to pick out, though eventually, most of the kids grew to like them.

The phrase ‘most of the kids’ means four.  We began married life with the two girls from my first marriage.  And then we didn’t waste time adding two boys to the mix.  In less that two years, my husband went from a quiet, sedate bachelor existence to family circus mayhem with four under the age of 10 — surely these are grounds for growing saints… or for becoming insane.

Just like any new U.S. President in office, my new husband turned prematurely gray from the stress of his new family responsibilities.  Our eight-to-five jobs were easy in comparison.  Who knows but maybe this was part of the reason neither of us seriously considered putting our careers on hold to stay home with the children.  Being the business professionals we were, we invited a sassy southern lady into our home and paid her well to help us raise our children while we were away at work.  Nanny Tellie was part of our family for five years.

A divorced grandmother who hailed from Mississippi, Tellie never bothered to mince words.  If she thought she could improve the state of our family with the wisdom of her years, she was quick to dish it up.  With four children and two stretched-at-the-seams parents, we offered plenty of areas for Tellie to point her finger at and shake her stern head toward — as she muttered under her breath —  Humph, Humph, Humph.

But like most people, Tellie had more strengths than not.  She was dependable; she arrived a little early; she was rarely ill and fairly flexible in working overtime.  And as a bonus, Tellie did light housework and all of our ironing.   But best of all, Tellie was a steady influence in our children’s lives while my husband and I were running in and out the revolving door.  She was good to all our children, though clearly, her favorite was our oldest son Bryan.

In addition to all of this, Tellie was a fabulous southern cook.  Though she didn’t cook for us often, it was a treat when she did.  My second biggest mistake during our Tellie-years was not paying Tellie to cook dinner for our family and hers.  My first was not buying  Tellie a copy of the Martha White cookbook that she enjoyed looking at — I should have a made a special trip to the store the very day she asked if she could clip the mail-order coupon at the back of the book.

My life is full of ‘should-haves’ and ‘wish-I-would-haves.’   As I recollect our years with Tellie, I wish I hadn’t let Tellie’s constant nagging cloud my vision of all the good she brought into our lives.   And surely there is a lesson in this story for us all — for whining and nagging surely shows us at our worst — and its value is questionable in helping others to dig deep for their best.

In honor of the best of Nanny Tellie, I share this adapted Martha White recipe with you.  Serve it over rice, in the best tradition of most good southern dishes.  And in memory of Tellie’s worst…. remember to hold the whine.

From my life to yours.

Chicken Casserole

Serves 4    60 minutes (another 60 minutes plus to pre-cook chicken)

Stew

1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup sliced mushrooms (diced cooked carrots may be subsititued)
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup whipping cream
2 to 3 cups cooked shredded chicken (3 half-chicken breasts, baked or boiled)
1 Tbsp parsley
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

In a large sauce pan over medium high heat, cook vegetables in butter until softened.  (Note, if using carrots instead of mushrooms, cook separately and add cooked carrots to cooked celery and onion.)  Gradually add flour and stir for about a minute.  Gradually add broth and cream — boil for 1 minute — sauce should be thickened.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  Pour stew into a greased casserole dish.

Buttermilk Biscuits

1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp shortening
1/2 cup scant (less 1 Tbsp) buttermilk

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.  Cut in shortening with a pastry blender until mixture resembles course crumbs.  Add buttermilk and stir only until dough leaves sides of bowl.  Do not overwork.

Turn dough out onto floured surface.  Gently knead or pat dough a few times — then roll into 1/2 inch thickness.  Cut into biscuit with either 2″ inverted floured glass or even with a sharp knife — biscuits don’t have to be round.

Place biscuits on top of stew and place casserole into a preheated 400 degree oven.  Bake for 25 minutes or until biscuits are golden brown. Cool 5 to 10 minutes before serving over rice.

Savory Baked Chicken

02 Friday Oct 2009

Posted by Janell in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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Tags

Chicken, College Sports, Cooking, Easy Meals, Family Humor, In the Kitchen, Raising Children, Savory Baked Chicken

To my eternal good, my husband’s first wife discarded her marriage vows for greener pastures.  But liking my husband’s last name so much, Cathy wore her first married name through two subsequent marriages and divorces.  While I don’t know what subsequent husbands thought about her last name souvenir, I can report that husband number one simply shrugs his shoulders and laughs;  Mr. West is glad she found something about him worth keeping.

Thankfully, when wife number one vacated my husband’s life, she left behind a few recipes worth keeping.  This baked chicken recipe is one.  It takes less than an hour to prepare from start to finish, which makes it a perfect meal to whip up after a day at work or school.  We keep it just as simple with the sides — a package of Lipton’s Butter Noodles and maybe some green beans or English peas.

All our kids enjoyed this meal. My husband began preparing it in our early days of marriage, before the boys came along.  Since hubby beat me home from work by an hour, he’d have supper on the table when I walked in the door.  Ohhhh, the memories.  It was a fine arrangement but for the girls; they were use to my cooking, such at it then was.  And being kids stuck in their comfortable groove, there was much gnashing of teeth about their new step-dad’s exotic style of cooking.  To their way of thinking, it was a scary world of Crab Quiche and dishes with ucky mushrooms compared to Mom’s kid friendly fried bologna sandwiches and fried potatoes.  So it’s saying a lot that my girls love this baked chicken recipe from their first bite — well, once my man got smart and ditched the mushrooms.

The meal grew to become our oldest son Bryan’s favorite meal — and when O.U. housing asked all the parents of  incoming freshman for their child’s favorite taste from home, this is the recipe they got from us.  With a grin, I think I called it “Bryan’s Savory Chicken.”  I figured the first Mrs. West wouldn’t mind since she’d taken the same liberties herself, when she wrote the recipe out for her own use way back when.  Our copy of the recipe still lives in a little home-made green binder that my husband received as his parting gift; in Cathy’s long hand written on notebook paper, there at the top of the page, bigger than Dallas, it says:  Cathy’s Savory Baked Chicken.  In parenthesis underneath Chicken, is the name (Brenda C——-.).  In Cathy’s life, it looks like some names were ditched while others are forever hitched.

And who knows but maybe you’ll want to hitch your own name to this recipe.  From my life — in a leftover sort of way — to yours.

Savory Baked Chicken

Serves 3 to 4      Preheat Oven to 400 degrees
 
1 pkg of chicken breasts ( three halves), sliced in half, leaving six thin cutlets
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp basil
6 Tbsp butter
 

Melt butter and add to 9×13 pan.  Combine dry ingredients in a bag or sack, and one cutlet at a time, coat chicken by shaking it until well coated.  Lay chicken in pan, than turn butter-side up for baking.  Bake for 30 mins at 400 degrees.

 
Meanwhile, make a sauce to cover chicken, for final 20 minutes of baking time:
 
4 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp flour
2 cups hot water with 4 tsp. chicken bullion (can use chicken broth and add salt to taste)
Optional:  Cooked sliced mushrooms, fresh chopped tomatoes and green onions)

In a skillet, melt butter over medium heat.  Stir in flour until bubbly.  Add hot chicken broth and cook until thickened.  After 30 minutes of baking, remove chicken from oven to cover with sauce.  Add vegetables if desired and return to oven for final 2o minutes of baking.   Can serve over rice.

Papa’s Greek Chicken & Potatoes

28 Saturday Mar 2009

Posted by Janell in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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Tags

Chicken, Cooking, Greek Food, In the Kitchen

The chicken is roasting in the oven; the potatoes are ready to go in.  It’s a quick meal — we’ll be eating in two hours, maybe a little more.

This meal brings to mind many surprise Sunday suppers from my childhood.  It was an unspoken rule of the house that mom didn’t cook Sunday nights.  We had little reason to complain, having enjoyed a big Sunday lunch—pot roast if we were home, as it was a meal that cooked itself while we were at church, or some huge fried chicken dinner if we’d gone to Granny’s house to visit family—then for supper, we’d eat something simple, maybe leftovers or a Western Egg Sandwich–another one of Papa’s specialties.

But some Sunday evenings, we’d arrive home to find this roasted chicken and potatoes waiting in the oven.  I think Papa liked to cook when he was home alone.  It filled the empty hours and made the house smell all lovely and homey, just like mine smells right now.  And who knows–perhaps after eating mom’s cooking all week, he was hungry for a taste of home.

After Papa’s death, Mom continued to make this meal, as I did in my own home when the kids were growing up.  Like a family tree, this one connects me to a past beyond my memory and maybe someday, to the future in the homes of my children and grandchildren.

If a recipe is good enough, it can survive in an unwritten state for years, as it’s handed down from generation to generation. But this one deserves to be in writing, so it can live on its own.

Papa’s Roasted Chicken & Potatoes

Serves 3 to  4

1 fryer, washed and dried (with paper towels)

½ cup butter

½ cup olive oil

6 medium potatoes, peeled and halved

1 lemon

Paprika, salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 350.  Rub chicken lightly with olive oil and season with salt, pepper and liberally with paprika.  Cut 2 T. of butter into small pieces and place all over chicken.  Set in baking dish (or cast iron skillet), coated lightly with olive oil, and roast in oven for 2 hours or until juices of pierced chicken thigh run clear.

Meanwhile, sauté potatoes in remaining melted butter and olive oil, in a cast-iron or other oven proof skillet, over low heat for 20 to 30 minutes until brown and crusty.  Set aside.  After chicken has roasted for an hour, put potatoes in oven and cook for a hour, until fork tender.  The chicken and potatoes will finish roasting at about the same time.

Take both out of oven and cover with foil, letting chicken rest for at least 10 minutes, then squeeze fresh lemon juice on both potatoes and chicken before serving.   Serve with a nice Greek salad and crusty bread.

Note:  Original recipe called for a cup of butter, rather than half butter and olive oil.  Also, potatoes were cooked around the chicken rather than in a separate dish.  I’ve made these two modifications to skinny it down – without sacrificing flavor.

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”

-- Thornton Wilder, "Our Town"

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