This morning, I received a message from my friend Tim. He accused me of being a slacker because I haven't updated my blog in a while. I can't even argue with that. He's right, I AM a slacker. I have about 6 recipes that I need to blog about, but i just can't get motivated to write. So when Tim offered to make Chicken Parm AND to blog about it how could I pass it up?
Soooo this post is brought to you by my friend Tim - thank you, tim for not being afraid to call me out ;p
First of all, I wanted to thank Angela for starting this blog. I do the cooking in my home (hey, it gets me out of cleaning) and I am starting to get tired of the same old dishes. Coming up with new ideas isn't really all that easy, especially when you have picky eaters in your home. Thanks to this blog, I have already added a few new items to my repertoire.
So before we did the grocery shopping today, I checked in to see what recipes Angela has tried lately. And that is when I found out I was on my own. Since Angela is on hiatus, it was up to me to find something new. I came across the Chicken Parmigiana, and decided that this was something plain enough for the kids, but still a little different than the norm. Plus, I have always wanted to venture out from Ragu and make my own spaghetti sauce. I love it when a plan comes together.
First, on to the nuts and bolts. This was an easy recipe that did not require many ingredients. Half of the items I already had (flour, sugar, salt pepper, olive oil, butter, onion, and parsley). The other items cost $18.25, not including the new $16 tenderizer (my other one broke, don’t ask). This would easily feed 5 people, so if you round up to $25, it is about $5 per person. Actually, we will have plenty of spaghetti and sauce left over after the chicken is gone so in the end, we will get about 8 to 10 meals out of this (assuming the kids don’t revolt from too many leftovers).
Now, I know what you are thinking (assuming that you are still reading). Yes, I did have parsley and onion already. The reason is that I always buy frozen chopped onions and peppers in the frozen food section and keep them in the freezer for just such an occasion. I’m all about easy and cutting onions is just too time consuming. At the end of the day, nobody will know that you used frozen onions (or peppers). As for the parsley, I had some leftover from the meatloaf recipe I tried recently. Somebody once told me that you can freeze leftover cilantro for future use (true story). So, I figured the same would hold true for parsley. It worked quite well and I think it was easier to chop up when it was frozen.
The only other areas where I may have veered off the path a bit is with the wine and cheese. I’m not much of a wine drinker and I didn’t want half a bottle of leftover wine. So after a quick call to my mother, I settled in on cooking wine. Ree stresses over and over to get “the good stuff” for the cheese. But since I like easy, I got grated parmesean. I did get the Buitoni brand, but I’m not sure if that counts as “good stuff.”
One thing I learned while trying these new recipes recently is that it is very important to read the whole recipe first. I also think it helps to measure and prepare all of your ingredients ahead of time. So, I took my time doing this and I think it really created a very stress free preparation. I even sat down a couple of times while cooking! It could just be that this was an easy recipe, but I cannot stress how important it is to do this.
Everything went well and it came out very good. Even the kids liked it! My wife Alethea told me she has never even had this dish before, which I didn’t even think that was possible. This definitely is going in the rotation. And now I have a sauce that I can make to impress my friends when I get tired of Ragu.
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