Baked Crispy Chicken Breasts

We do like our chicken cutlets around here, but I don't fry very often. And they're a lot of work, turning and getting them just right. Last week I tried a baked version that came out great. I even used just egg whites rather than the whole egg to make it even healthier! Worked great--and the chicken came out wonderfully crispy. This served one adult and two children. Just increase the ratio of bread crumbs and seasonings for each additional piece of chicken you need, adding another egg white for every 2 more chicken pieces.

1/3 cup bread crumbs
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp garlic salt
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 egg whites
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
salt and pepper to taste

Mix the bread crumbs, parsley, garlic powder and garlic salt in a pie pan or other flat dish. Whisk together the egg whites and vinegar in another pie pan. Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray.

Dip the chicken into the vinegar and egg white mix, then the bread crumbs. If you like it extra crispy, dredge the chicken in flour, then dip in the egg mix, then the bread crumbs. Press the bread crumbs in. Lay the chicken pieces on the cookie sheet, spray with the cooking spray, and salt and pepper to taste.

Bake at 400 for 25-30 minutes.

Chicken Divan: Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

Most recipes I've seen for this chicken and broccoli casserole don't inspire me much. It seems to be a popular dish. I even have a stained recipe card from my grandmother containing her version, with a potato chip topping.

Tonight I saw one that used sauteed chicken breasts rather than cooked diced chicken, fresh broccoli rather than frozen (which I just happened to have on hand), and bread crumbs with some grated Cheddar cheese on top, rather than the crushed potato chips. It did still call for the ubiquitous cream of chicken soup, which you easily substitute your own homemade version of, although I ended up using a can of cream of mushroom soup instead. I roughly halved the original recipe, needing to only feed 3 tonight and used Colby cheese rather than the Cheddar.

1 Tbs oil
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups fresh broccoli
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/8 tsp curry powder
2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated Colby or Cheddar cheese
a few dabs of butter or butter spray

Heat the oil. Salt and pepper the chicken breasts and saute until done, turning in the pan to cook evenly. Cut each breast into half or thirds.

Cook the broccoli in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then drain.

Spray or oil a 9x9 pan. Put the broccoli in it. Put the cooked chicken on top of it.

In a small bowl, mix together the soup, milk, mayonnaise, curry powder, lemon juice, and pepper. Spread over the chicken and broccoli. Sprinkle the cheese on top. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top of that. Spray the crumbs with butter spray or dab a few bits of butter on top.

Now, the great part of this. You can cover and refrigerate until ready to bake for dinner. Uncover and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or so. If you haven't had to refrigerate it, 20 minutes will probably do just fine.

Quick Winter Vegetable Soup Pickup

I made a simple vegetable soup last night, using up some odds and ends in the frig. It tasted good--it almost always does without much effort. But as I walked out through the garage to feed the dog while it was simmering away, I saw a few leftovers 12 ounce cans of V8 juice that the kids had once had a taste for, then lost. I grabbed one on the way back in and added it to the soup and it really perked it up! Delicious! I do use soups throughout the winter as an easy way to get a variety of vegetables in our diet. I often, but not always, make them with chicken broth, keeping quart bags of homemade broth in the freezer for just this purpose. Tonight I used turkey broth, since that's what I had on hand.

2 Tbs oil
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 rutabaga, peeled and chopped
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 quart turkey broth
1 12 ounce can of V8 juice
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp celery seed

Heat the oil and saute the carrots and onion about 5 minutes. Sometimes I add garlic to this; tonight I didn't. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer a half hour or longer, until the vegetables are all soft. Remove the bay leaf before serving.

The list of other things I might have added to this is nearly endless. A can of beans, spinach or chard or other greens, leftover chicken or meatballs for a heartier soup, a can of corn, turnips, potatoes or rice or barley or pasta, red pepper, leftover bits of vegetables... If I hadn't had a lemon on hand, I might have added 1/2 cup of white wine to perk it up.

Get creative and use up those odds and ends. Sometimes I keep a container in the freezer for soup odds and ends like this and just dump it all in a quart of broth. It always comes out good and almost always comes out great!

Banana Coconut Muffins

This is from How to Cook Everything. I decided to make the batter into muffins, rather than a loaf. Somehow the kids like quick breads better as muffins rather than sliced from a loaf. Go figure. The coconut adds a delightful flavor and a bit of texture.

1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
3 very ripe bananas, mashed together
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour (up to 1/2 cup whole wheat flour)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup grated coconut

Cream together the butter and eggs, then mix in the ripe bananas and vanilla.

In a small bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar together, then add to the wet ingredients and mix just until all is moistened. Add the walnuts and coconut.

Spoon the batter into muffin tins and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or so, until done. Alternately, pour into a buttered bread pan and bake about an hour.

Roasted Beets and Simmered Beet Greens

I don't recall ever cooking beets before, but I do love to eat pickled beets! Still, when the doctor suggested I add some beets to the diet to increase our iron intake, I was all game to try something new. I found the easiest, most delicious way to cook them!

Wash them and cut the greens off about one inch above the bulb. Wrap each bulb in foil and bake at 400 F for an hour or more, depending on size. You should be able to stick a knife into them easily. You can apparently leave them in the foil until you want to deal with them, but I instantly unwrapped them, let the steam go off for a bit, peeled them, chopped them, cut them in chunks and sauteed in a bit of butter for a few minutes. Mmmmm!

For the greens, I took the part I'd cut off and washed them thoroughly. Then I cut the stems apart from the leaves, as they'd take longer to cook. I brought a small pot of water to boil and threw the stems in for 5 minutes, then added the leaves and cooked another 3 - 4 minutes. After draining, I put them in a bowl with a bit of butter and served with some fresh lemon wedges, like I would chard.

We all liked the beet roots better than the greens, but I probably should not have served them both on the same night. However, both children at them up readily enough, although the red root ends were the favorite. They're very sweet actually and the red color could be a novelty for younger kids, if you're trying to widen the vegetable horizons. Just be careful with clothing and such--they do stain!

Baked Breaded Chicken Breasts

This is certainly one of those easily modified recipes. Basically, take some boneless skinless chicken breasts, moisten them, then roll them in seasoned bread crumbs. In this case, I went very healthy and just used egg whites and a bit of balsamic vinegar, but in the past I've used whole eggs and soy sauce, eggs and water, eggs and milk, etc. for the moistening ingredient. Sometimes I soak the chicken in buttermilk first, which I do love. I seasoned the bread crumbs with garlic powder, garlic salt, and parsley tonight. Sometimes I throw in some grated Parmesan cheese for chicken cutlets, other times some cumin and chili powder for Chinese Chicken Salad

You can pound the chicken, bread it and fry it. If you're not good at pounding, slice a still-slightly-frozen chicken breast into thin pieces before breading and frying. Or you can bake the whole boneless skinless chicken breasts at 400 F for about half an hour. If you opt to bake them, spraying the breading with a bit of Pam or olive oil first adds to the crispness factor, which we like.

For 2 chicken breasts (actually two halves of course), mix the following in a pie pan or shallow dish:

• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 tsp dried parsley
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp garlic salt
• pepper to taste

In another pie pan or shallow dish, whisk together:

• 2 egg whites (or 2 whole eggs if you don't care)
• 1 Tbs balsamic vinegar

To make the chicken extra crispy, I dredged the breasts in flour, then dipped in the egg mix, then pressed into the bread crumbs. I put them on a cookie sheet and baked at 400 for about half an hour.

Goes great with roasted beets, beet greens, and baked potatoes.

One Fantastic Meal: Chicken, Beets, and Banana Muffins

I won't post all the recipes here in one post, as I think it's easier to print them out if I do it separately, but I made the most fantastic dinner tonight. And it's not just me saying that--my kids said it as well!

My eldest had a physical recently and turned out to be slightly anemic. One of the foods the doctor recommended was beets. Now me, I love pickled beets but I'm not sure I've eaten them any other way, other than when the Russian girlfriend of my brother brings her beet salad to Christmas. (And I eat pickled anything so the beets in that case are really just a vehicle for the vinegar.) But I saw fresh beets at the store and bought a bunch and cooked both the beets and the greens up for dinner tonight.

I also baked a couple of breaded boneless skinless breasts, which worked out well with the beets. I threw a couple of potatoes in as well, so I had everything in the oven (except the beet greens) at 400, which worked great. I cooked the beet greens on top of the stove, and then threw some banana coconut muffins into the oven at 350 when I pulled everything else out. They were done by the time we were ready for dessert, and we'll enjoy the rest of them at breakfast tomorrow.

So the menu was:

• Roasted foil-wrapped beets
• Beet greens
• Baked breaded chicken
• Baked potatoes
• Banana coconut muffins

I was the only one that actually ate a potato, so I'll use the others for fried potatoes for breakfast or dinner one day soon.