Chicken Cutlets

I’m just guessing but I’m thinking Chicken Parmesan came about when someone like me made too many chicken cutlets.  You can turn them into pretty good chicken sandwiches (why else would they sell frozen breaded chicken patties?) and even Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches.

But I think the classic dish for leftover chicken cutlets has to be Chicken Parmesan. A while back I had made too many chicken cutlets and froze the extras.

Chicken Parmesan from Leftover Chicken Cutlets

Tonight I used up the last with some fantastic Chicken Parmesan. I thawed the leftovers just enough to separate them, then laid them in a shallow baking dish. I put a slice of mozzarella cheese on top of most of them, poured some reheated marinara sauce from the freezer on top, like this or this.  I topped with some grated Parmesan cheese and baked at 350 F for 25-30 minutes.

During that time, I made a small Caesar salad and cooked up some angel hair pasta.  A perfect combo and a great way to use up some of my frozen assets.

Updated to add: The drawing is over and we have a winner. Thanks!  But go check out Erin’s web site and/or buy the book and/or get your library to buy a copy. Lots of good frugal recipes.

I was so excited to receive a copy of this cookbook to review: The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare

I’ve been following Erin Chase’s blog 5 Dollar Dinners for some time. I track my overall food budget, and used to track it even more carefully than I do today. That’s why I started CheapCooking.com. But I love the idea of setting a “do not exceed goal” for dinner, the highest cost meal for most of us.   She set that price based on what she felt were reasonable goals for a healthy dinner for her family of four where she lives, basically $1.25 per person for dinner, and her overall goal of less than $300/month for her family of 4.

Obviously, your own goals may vary, depending on where you live and how many you are feeding. But the idea of setting a goal for dinner is a great one, as I think most of us spend more on dinner than other meals. And having an overall monthly target lets you vary a bit week to week, as special occasions arise. Certain months you may stock up a bit more based on sales and other months, hopefully, come in a bit under.

Living in the San Francisco bay area, I find myself drooling over her sale prices. But don’t let your own circumstances derail the idea. Track your prices. Stock up on sale prices.  Use coupons where they make sense. Have a great repertoire of recipes that you can use for healthy balanced meals.  Where I live, there are no stores that double coupons, for example, but I bet you can cut your grocery bills substantially by following her guidelines, even without using coupons, and you will find some great recipes to add to your regular favorites.

Just the day after I received this book to review (meaning I didn’t pay for it, but that did NOT influence my review here, I would have bought it regardless so was thrilled to get a review copy! And if I get a review copy of a book I don’t like, I generally just don’t review it…), my youngest asked for spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  We had two extras for dinner that night if I recall, and I still ended up with leftovers.

I had everything I needed in my freezer and pantry. I have a great meatball recipe handed down from my Italian ex-MIL but opted to follow Chase’s recipe so I could do a good review. The major differences would be fresh garlic over garlic powder  (I grow my own garlic so count it as nearly free at this point since you replant it every year but did cook this up with garlic powder just to test the recipe) and if I want to splurge I use a mix of ground pork, ground veal and ground beef. You can sometimes find this at reasonable prices but I use pure ground beef when I cannot and used that the night I made these.) I think the key is good Parmesan, which is cheap on a per serving basis since you need very little for maximum flavor.

I also make my own breadcrumbs whenever we have bread going stale, so always have a stash in the freezer.

Italian Meatballs

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning (or use some basil and oregano)
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (splurge here I say!)
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbs olive oil

Mix all the ingredients together and form into 1 inch balls. You can use a small cookie scoop if you prefer but I find the meatballs stay together better if you “pack” them a bit with your hands. I use my KitchenAid 5-qt. Stand Mixer to mix stuff like this. but then form the balls with my hands.

Preheat the oven to 350 while you’re forming the meatballs (and perhaps making the sauce!).

Heat a skillet with 2 Tbs olive oil and brown the meatballs over medium heat, turning periodically to brown evenly for a few minutes. Then put the meatballs in a lightly greased baking dish and bake at 350 for 15-20  minutes.

Serve with your favorite spaghetti or marina sauce (see below) and 1 pound cooked spaghetti. This will serve far more than 4 in my house, but we love leftover spaghetti and meatballs for lunches or leftover spaghetti and sauce in meatball sandwiches as well.  (Just toast some bread or rolls, preferably with some garlic and butter, then load up some meatballs and sauce, top with some provolone or mozzarella cheese and broil a few minutes.)

Marinara Sauce

• 1 28-ounce can of crushed or pureed tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 Tbs dried basil
• 1 Tbs dried oregano
• 1 Tbs dried rosemary
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

I grow rosemary year round so used 1 tsp fresh chopped rosemary instead.

Combine everything and simmer at least 15 minutes, longer is good too. Just stir now and then and leave it at a very low simmer.

Store the sauce for a week in the refrigerator or 6 months in the freezer.

If you can grow any or all of the herbs and garlic that cuts the cost significantly and improves the flavor.

Review Recap

The girls love my normal meatballs and sauce recipe but declared this really good, as did our guests.  I do think meatballs are better with some ground pork and/or veal but that might knock it out of your budget. For pure ground beef, these are delicious! And I think if you had 1/3 each of ground beef, pork and veal, you’d have a killer recipe.

I  play around with marinara sauce so much I don’t know that I have a “normal” but this is a great one. You might think about adding some fennel if you’re into a stronger Italian flavor but that’ s purely a matter of what you’re used to.

I’ve gotten pretty good at reading recipes over the last 18 years of cooking and can say that most of these recipes read well, even if I haven’t cooked them all. Some are very similar to some of my old favorite recipes and others are new but sound great.

I served this meal with some garlic bread and a Caesar salad. I did use a store-bought dressing but made the croutons from a leftover hot dog bun (coat with some butter and sauteed in a bit of  butter with some herbs).

Updated to add: If you’d like a chance to win a copy of the cookbook, which just hit the stores today, post a comment. I’ll randomly draw a winner on December 29.

If you don’t win, you can buy this from Amazon by following this link: The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare or look for it in your local bookstore or ask your library to buy a copy.

Stracciatelle Soup

This was originally a totally ad hoc soup but it has become a family favorite. I make a soup of broth, tiny pasta and carrots (we call it Frog Eye soup, after the pasta) but then one day I had started making that and decided to turn it into a meal and added some spinach and meatballs, then read about stracciatelle soup somewhere so added the eggs.

When my daughter came home from school today feeling a bit sick she asked for it for dinner.  I normally use chicken broth but had turkey broth in the freezer now so that’s what I used. I luckily had a large supply of baby spinach leaves in the frig that I’d bought a few days ago.  Last time I made meatballs, I made some regular size and some tiny ones thinking of this soup, so used the last of the tiny ones up tonight.  I love having building blocks in the freezer like this. (I used the rest of the tiny meatballs in some baked ziti earlier.)

• 6 cups chicken or turkey broth
• 1/2 cup tiny pasta (pastina or anci de pepe, our favorite)
• 1 tsp fresh parsley, chopped
• 1/2 tsp dried marjoram
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
• 1/2 pound spinach, sliced thinly (julienne or chiffonade I think is the “proper” term)
• 1/2 pound of small tiny meatballs (or large if that’s all you have!)
• 2 eggs
• grated Parmesan cheese at the table

Bring the broth to a simmer and add the pasta, parsley, marjoram, carrot, spinach and meatballs. Simmer, covered partially, until the pasta is done (about 9 minutes for my frog eye balls) and the meat is heated through (if you started with frozen, as I did, it seemed to be done just fine in 9-10 minutes).

In a small bowl, whisk together the two eggs, then pour into the broth while stirring. If you stick a wooden spoon or a fork up against the bowl and pour across it, it breaks the eggs into smaller streams which is what you want. Stracciatelle means “rags” and that’s what the eggs look like as they cook in the broth, similar to Egg Drop Soup if you like Chinese food.  I suspect most cuisines have a similar soup with eggs in it.

Try to get the eggs in a thin stream and stir the soup as you pour. Stirring with a whisk would probably help but I just now thought of that!  Anyway, you want strings of egg. Put the lid on, turn the heat off, and let the soup sit a few minutes while you set the table, then dish up!

Serve with some grated Parmesan cheese for those that like it.

Pure comfort food yet full of protein and vegetables.

Chicken cutlets are a favorite around here. I vary them now and then but our absolute favorite is how I prepared them tonight.   The variations I’ve done over the years include pounding rather than slicing thinly, eggs and water for the binding rather than eggs and soy sauce and lemon juice, not marinading at all, skipping the flour and marinade and going straight for an egg and water dip then the breadcrumbs, using storebought Progresso breadcrumbs instead of the Panko breadcrumbs (which make for a crispier coating, especially combined with the marinade, then flour, then egg, then breadcrumb dip I did tonight. So if you don’t have everything, improvise. It’s always good!  This version is a bit more crispy with the double coating and Panko crumbs.

• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced thinly or pounded into thin pieces
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
• 1 egg beaten with a splash of soy, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a spoonful of water
• 3/4 cup bread crumbs or so, seasoned with 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese and some herbs (I used an Italian blend tonight that was meant to go in some olive oil for a dipping sauce. I succumbed at a Foodie store then wondered what to do with them when I got home. This is a great use!  As are homemade croutons.)
• oil for frying

I usually make these with the frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts so just slice them thinly when they’re partially defrosted. If you start with fresh chicken, pound until the pieces are thin and probably cut into smaller pieces. I don’t know, we find them more appetizing when they’re cut into smaller pieces rather than one big huge piece.

Marinade in some buttermilk and refrigerate. If you don’t have buttermilk you can use plain yogurt. If you don’t have either you can skip this step but I do like the flavor it seems to add.

When you’re ready to cook, pull the chicken out of the refrigerator while you prepare a few pie pans or other small flat dishes with:

• flour and salt and pepper in one
• egg, soy sauce, lemon juice and water (or just egg and water) in another
• breadcrumbs seasoned as desired in the third (the Parmesan cheese is really good!)

Heat enough oil to cover 1/2″ inch or so in a large frying pan.  Test by throwing a pinch of flour in. When it sizzles, the oil is ready.

Use two forks to move the chicken pieces from buttermilk to flour, flipping to coat both sides, then to egg, flipping again to coat both sides, then to breadcrumbs, flipping again to coat both sides. From there, set into the hot oil and cook, turning once, a few minutes per side depending on how thick your pieces are. (Pull one out and cut it in half to test for doneness.

Later you’ll gain a feel for how “done” chicken cutlets feel when you poke a fork through them.) Lift up and let as much oil drain as possible.   Then drain on paper towels and keep warm while you finish whatever else you’re serving.

Tonight I made a boxed pasta mix actually, request of my youngest who came grocery shopping with me.

I also served this with a very simple cucumber and tomato salad. I’m growing both cucumbers and tomatoes in the garden so something similar to this is showing up a lot these days on our dinner table.   Chopped cucumbers and tomatoes and in this case green onions with a simple dressing of about:

• 1 Tbs honey
• 1 Tbs rice vinegar
• a pinch of salt
• pepper to taste

This dressed about half a long cucumber, peeled and sliced, and 1 roma tomato.

We’re figuring on using the leftover chicken cutlets in some chicken salad of some type for lunches.

Dom DeLuise died today. I have two of his cookbooks, Eat This .. It’ll Make You Feel Better and Eat This Too: It’ll Make You Feel Better. Both have some great recipes and are fun to read besides.

So after hearing he died I decided to alter my dinner plans and cook something from one of his cookbooks tonight for dinner. I settled on the Egg Croquettes because they are like nothing I have ever even heard of, let alone eaten. I liked them. Different, but good. One child at them happily, the other didn’t like them. (This is the one that used to be totally adventurous so it’s funny how they change through the years!)

A simple supper anyway, nothing too spicy or complicated or demanding. I’ve made chicken croquettes and potato croquettes before but these were my first egg croquettes!

• 4 eggs, beaten together
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup grated cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 3 Tbs olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 -2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup peas (frozen or canned or fresh)
• 1 cup of rice cooked in 2 cups of chicken broth

Heat the oil in a frying pan and start the onion and garlic cooking over medium low heat while you mix the eggs, bread crumbs, cheese and parsley in a bowl.  When the onion and garlic are soft, add the tomato sauce, water and peas. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer.

Meanwhile start the rice cooking. Bring the chicken broth to a boil, then stir in the rice, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

Use a soup spoon to drop the egg “dumplings” or croquettes into the simmering sauce. Drop them around the pan so they are not touching. Do not stir them!  Cover and cook over low heat 25-30 minutes.

Serve the croquettes and sauce over the cooked rice.

Serves 4.

cheese and spinach stuffed shell

These were good! The girls protested the spinach a bit, but ate them up. It’s funny because they would each happily eat spinach alone as a side dish. I don’t really like cooked spinach so liked it this way.

I started with this recipe from Karen Cooks. I used half a small onion instead of shallots and stuffed more shells than she allows for. But her count of 15 was about perfect for an 8×8 dish. I just froze the extra (about a dozen). Maybe my shells were smaller.

We each ate 2-3 shells with a Caesar salad and some sliced carrots on the side so this was more than enough to feed 6 by my count. I predict the leftovers will be delicious and if I didn’t have a lunch appointment tomorrow would be looking forward to them! I’ve been getting good lunches at home lately, between the Chicken Curry in Coconut Milk I made the other night and half a leftover burrito from lunch in Berkeley on Sunday.

• a box of large shells (but you may have too many)
• 1 10-oz box of frozen spinach
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• 1/2 a small onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 15 oz container ricotta cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup grated Parmesan
• 2 cups grated Mozzarella (divided)
• 1 26 oz can of tomato sauce (I like the Hunts brand when it goes on sale)

Bring a large pot of water to boil and cook the shells according to the lesser time on the directions. Drain and rinse with cold water. If you overcook them, they’ll fall apart as you’re stuffing them. Believe me.

Meanwhile, thaw the spinach. Heat the oil in a skillet and cook the onion until soft, a few minutes, then add the garlic and cook another minute or two. Squeeze the spinach to remove the excess moisture and add to the pan and stir to mix up, then turn the heat off and let it cool.

In a small bowl, mix the Ricotta, 1 cup of the Mozzarella, and the Parmesan along with the eggs. When the spinach mix has cooled off a bit, stir it into the cheeses.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Pour half the sauce into an 8×8 pan. Use a large spoon to fill each shell with the cheese and spinach mixture. Lay them in the pan as you go. If you have extras, you can freeze for another day, as I did. Pour the rest of the sauce over the shells when you’re done, then top with the leftover Mozarrella. Bake uncovered for half an hour or so.

When I was looking through the Scarpetta cookbook, I spotted Marino’s Breakfast Bagel Sandwich and noted it mentally. Then when I went shopping the prosciutto just about jumped into my shopping basket. NOT cheap cooking. But very delicious.

I bought some onion bagels, prosciutto, and Swiss cheese. Split the bagels in half and toasted one half, then buttered it. Topped it with a slice of prosciutto and a slice of Swiss cheese and ran under the broiler for a minute or two.

Youngest declined to even consider them this morning and went with her usual egg salad sandwich for breakfast. I made mine and it came out from under the broiler right as my eldest came downstairs. She looked at it and said “What is that?” I told her and offered it. She took it and said “Oh, this is REALLY good!” I made myself another sandwich from the bottom half of the bagel.

And I said not  cheap cooking, but I think if you compared it to a box of sugared cereal, you’d find it not that outrageous on a per serving basis and probably more nutritious. Not healthy either, but I’d rather eat this than what a lot of people seem to eat for breakfast!

But tomorrow it’s probably back to homemade granola and yogurt. Well, maybe the next day. I have enough prosciutto and bagels for at least two more of these!

This is essentially how my ex-MIL taught me how to make meatballs and they are very good! You can bake them in the oven if you’d rather. I was stovetop intensive yesterday so just cooked them in a skillet. I used some in the lasagna and froze the rest for other uses later, like Meatball Soup or Italian Wedding Soup.

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 pound ground beef (lowfat)
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 4 eggs
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
• salt and pepper to taste (say 1 tsp of each)

Mix all the ingredients together. I like to use my KitchenAid mixer.

This time I formed the meat mixture into very small meatballs, think the size of a grape. I heated 1 Tbs of oil in a large skillet and dropped the meatballs in as I formed them, periodically turning them and shaking the pan. Cook until done, remove to a plate lined with a paper towel, then start all over until they’re done.

If you’re making meat sauce (Sunday Gravy) you can just brown them and let them finish cooking cooking in the sauce. Drop them in and let them simmer for 30 minutes or so.

Otherwise cook them all the way through. Just cut open to test when you think they’re done. Flash freeze. (Put them on a cookie sheet and freeze.) Then bag them and freeze them.  Flash freezing them means you can just pull out as many as you need at a time later. Much easier to deal with than a clump of meatballs!

I somehow ended up with a great dinner (and then breakfast) based on two cookbooks based on fictional families, The Sopranos Family Cookbook: As Compiled by Artie Bucco and Food To Die For: Secrets From Kay Scarpetta’s Kitchen.

First, was the Sunday Gravy from The Soprano’s cookbook, modified only slightly to make smooth sauce rather than chunky. I put the whole tomatoes in my VitaMix and blended them up. You could also chop with scissors or just leave them whole and let them fall apart a bit as they cook.

• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 1 pound meaty pork spareribs
• 1 pound veal stew meat
• 1 pound Italian sausage
• 1 pound meatballs, preferably made from pork and beef
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• 3 28-oz cans pureed tomatoes or whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 cups water (use the cans to rinse out all the tomato juice!)
• salt and pepper to taste
• fresh basil, 6-8 leaves torn or chopped into small pieces

Heat the oil in a heavy pot large enough to hold everything. Brown the pork, turning now and then, about 15 minutes. Take the pork out and put it on a plate. Brown the veal, about 10-15 minutes, turning periodically, then take it out and add it to the plate. Brown the sausage, 10-15 minutes, then take it out and add to the plate.

Drain the excess fat, leaving about 1 Tbs in the pot. Cook the garlic one minute, flattening and turning now and then to flavor the oil. Take the garlic out and discard it.

Add the tomato paste, tomatoes, water, salt, pepper, and basil leaves. Stir until the paste is mixed in well.  Add the meats back in. Bring to a simmer, partially cover, and cook for 2 hours or so. Stir periodically.

Add the meatballs and cook another half an hour. If the sauce becomes too thick, add some water. If it’s not thick enough, take the cover off the last half an hour.

At this point, you can serve take the meats out and serve the sauce over cooked pasta, with the meat as a second course or alongside. Or make lasagna with the sausage and meatballs and sauce and save the pork and veal for another meal.

I made lasagna.

I hadn’t made pizza in a while and decided to try a new sauce last week. I started with this one, dubbed the  Ultimate Pizza Sauce.  It seemed like it would be way too thick as written but I was especially intrigued by the fennel seed. Unfortunately, after I started making the sauce I realized I had no fennel seed so I need to make it again. I bought the fennel seed my last trip to the grocery store but thought I’d post this as I made it, since it was quite good even without the fennel. I used way more sauce than the original recipe called for, but cooked it down.

• 2 Tbs oil
• 1 Tbs butter
• 1/2 an onion, chopped very finely
• 1/4 cup celery, chopped very finely
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 15-oz cans tomato sauce
• 2 6 ounce cans tomato paste
• 2-3 Tbs grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh basil
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 bay leaf
• (and 1 tsp fennel seed if you want to try that!)

Heat the oil and butter in a saucepan large enough to hold all the tomato sauce without spattering too much. Add the onion, celery, and garlic and saute 5-10 minutes over low until very soft. Add the tomato sauce and tomato paste and stir until smooth.

Add all the rest of the ingredients and stir while bringing to a simmer. Turn it down to a very low simmer or it will spatter all over. Cover partially and cook at least half an hour, longer if you’d like. (I think I ended up at about 45 minutes to an hour.)

Take the bay leaf out and spread the sauce over your favorite pizza dough. I like to prebake my pizza just a few minutes before spreading sauce.