Most nights in our house are like a mini episode of chopped. I open my fridge, see what I have, figure out what I can make with it, and that's our dinner. This is compounded by the fact that Mike and I share the grocery shopping responsibilities. He'll come home with whatever looked good at the store that day, and I get to figure out what to do with it.
I honestly wouldn't change this set-up for anything. Sure it's more stressful at times than having a set weekly meal plan or planning the meals in advance, but it's fun, provides variety, saves money, and gives us a chance to try new things. He brings home a bunch of beets because they looked good at the store that day and were on sale... cool, now I get to figure out what the hell to do with a massive bunch of raw beets. I've never cooked broccoli rabe before, but it looked good and was a good price, so he came home with it. Time to pull out the iPad and learn what the dickens to do with broccoli rabe. I tend to peruse Pinterest and other recipe websites (allrecipes.com, foodnetwork.com, etc.) for inspiration, but I usually end up throwing something new together and hoping for the best.
In last week's edition of our nightly Chopped Challenge, I created one of the most successful totally-winging-it dishes I've made so far. Mike said that it was better than a lot of dishes he's actually paid for in an Italian restaurant and if this were on the menu, he would have much preferred it instead. I'd say that's pretty high praise from one of my most honest critics. He said that the ingredient combination I chose reminded him of a supreme pizza, but in a fancy pasta dish. He just loved it, and that always makes me feel good. Feedback like that is one of the reasons why I love cooking! Truth be told, I trust him more than my own opinion on the dish because I was so sick and stuffy when I made it that I could barely taste anything, and hardly had an appetite at all. But that's neither here nor there...
This dish was very loosely inspired by one that I saw on pinterest. The pinterest dish was just chicken breasts, tomatoes, basil, garlic, over pasta. That's not quite a complete enough meal to me. I need more produce (and flavor) in my life, so either I wanted to add more veggies to the sauce, or we would have had side salads. Upon taking inventory of my fridge, I opted for more veggies in the sauce.
In this post, I want to tell you about the importance of a cooking term called "mise en place." In French, that means "put in place" and the concept is that you want to prep all of your ingredients ahead of time so that when it's time to start cooking, you're done with all the prep, you're just cooking and assembling. It helps improve the timing of your cooking - things are less likely to get over- or under-done because you're not rushing. Everything is prepared and timed perfectly, and it makes the whole cooking process go so much smoother. The key to doing this REALLY well is knowing what needs to be finished before you can begin any cooking, and what you can multi-task while other parts of the dish are cooking. It's not efficient for you to prep literally all of the ingredients, and then stand there for 4-6 minutes staring at a chicken breast waiting for it to brown with nothing else to do... there are things that need to be done before you can put anything on the stove, and there are things that you can do while the cooking is happening. But knowing the difference so that your timing goes smoothly is the key to a good mise en place, and it takes p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e.
So here's how the dish ended up coming together (I'll do my best to estimate some of the liquid ingredients... this is the problem with cooking the way that I do. No real recipes... Sorry.)
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Serves: 4
Recipe with images, notes, and tips comes first; consolidated recipe below.
Here's where the nightly Chopped Challenge came into play - the original recipe was literally just the chicken breasts cooked in olive oil, add tomatoes, garlic, basil, cook till the tomatoes form a sauce. Add a bunch of butter to thicken up the sauce, and serve over pasta. So I thought adding more veggies can't be a bad thing, let's start there - adds flavor and nutrients so it's a win-win. Well then it came time to add the butter for the sauce... and that's when I remembered that I was out. Totally out of butter. Knew I would run out during all the holiday baking (I buy butter from Sam's club and keep it in the freezer), and tried getting more but Sam's club was out of butter. Can you believe that? Completely out of butter. So I've been surviving on my last remaining stick which I just used up on another dish and forgot that I'd done. So... now what? I needed something to make a sauce. Then I saw the carton of heavy cream I had sitting in my fridge, also from holiday baking. What makes heavy cream different than milk? BUTTER fat!! If you shook heavy cream forever with a blender ball in it, you'd wind up with a lump of butter and some whole milk. Well I wasn't about to churn some damned butter, but I did hope that I could turn this "pan sauce" into a cream sauce, and the butterfat that's in the cream would do its job in thickening the sauce and giving that beautiful velvety texture that you're aiming for when you add a pat of butter to a sauce. Mission accomplished!! The cream mixed in with the pan sauce beautifully and made this delicious sauce - it's a very loose sauce, it isn't thick at all. But it clings to the pasta deliciously and flavors every bite without being too heavy or over-powering. You can hardly even see it because it's almost the same color as the pasta, but Success!
Do you play Chopped Challenge in your kitchen? What fun recipes have you come up with by doing that? Share your thoughts on this recipe or tell me about your own concoctions in the comments section!
I honestly wouldn't change this set-up for anything. Sure it's more stressful at times than having a set weekly meal plan or planning the meals in advance, but it's fun, provides variety, saves money, and gives us a chance to try new things. He brings home a bunch of beets because they looked good at the store that day and were on sale... cool, now I get to figure out what the hell to do with a massive bunch of raw beets. I've never cooked broccoli rabe before, but it looked good and was a good price, so he came home with it. Time to pull out the iPad and learn what the dickens to do with broccoli rabe. I tend to peruse Pinterest and other recipe websites (allrecipes.com, foodnetwork.com, etc.) for inspiration, but I usually end up throwing something new together and hoping for the best.
In last week's edition of our nightly Chopped Challenge, I created one of the most successful totally-winging-it dishes I've made so far. Mike said that it was better than a lot of dishes he's actually paid for in an Italian restaurant and if this were on the menu, he would have much preferred it instead. I'd say that's pretty high praise from one of my most honest critics. He said that the ingredient combination I chose reminded him of a supreme pizza, but in a fancy pasta dish. He just loved it, and that always makes me feel good. Feedback like that is one of the reasons why I love cooking! Truth be told, I trust him more than my own opinion on the dish because I was so sick and stuffy when I made it that I could barely taste anything, and hardly had an appetite at all. But that's neither here nor there...
This dish was very loosely inspired by one that I saw on pinterest. The pinterest dish was just chicken breasts, tomatoes, basil, garlic, over pasta. That's not quite a complete enough meal to me. I need more produce (and flavor) in my life, so either I wanted to add more veggies to the sauce, or we would have had side salads. Upon taking inventory of my fridge, I opted for more veggies in the sauce.
In this post, I want to tell you about the importance of a cooking term called "mise en place." In French, that means "put in place" and the concept is that you want to prep all of your ingredients ahead of time so that when it's time to start cooking, you're done with all the prep, you're just cooking and assembling. It helps improve the timing of your cooking - things are less likely to get over- or under-done because you're not rushing. Everything is prepared and timed perfectly, and it makes the whole cooking process go so much smoother. The key to doing this REALLY well is knowing what needs to be finished before you can begin any cooking, and what you can multi-task while other parts of the dish are cooking. It's not efficient for you to prep literally all of the ingredients, and then stand there for 4-6 minutes staring at a chicken breast waiting for it to brown with nothing else to do... there are things that need to be done before you can put anything on the stove, and there are things that you can do while the cooking is happening. But knowing the difference so that your timing goes smoothly is the key to a good mise en place, and it takes p-r-a-c-t-i-c-e.
So here's how the dish ended up coming together (I'll do my best to estimate some of the liquid ingredients... this is the problem with cooking the way that I do. No real recipes... Sorry.)
Ingredients
- 2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 2 large tomatoes
- 2 bell peppers (any color besides green)
- 10 oz. Cremini (or baby bella) mushrooms
- 3 cups fresh spinach, rinsed
- 4 large cloves of garlic
- 1/2 bunch fresh basil
- ~1/3 cup olive oil
- ~1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1 lb. pasta (we used spaghetti for this one, but any pasta works)
- salt and pepper to taste
- shredded Parmesan cheese to garnish
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Serves: 4
Recipe with images, notes, and tips comes first; consolidated recipe below.
We begin with our mise en place - for this recipe, we will prep all of the veggies and meat before even turning on the stove.
Dice the tomatoes and peppers to a relatively small dice, and about the same size. Slice the mushrooms.
Trim the chicken breasts and season the tops with salt and pepper.
Heat ~1/4 of the olive oil in a heavy bottomed skillet until shimmering. Add mushrooms (do not season yet). Cook over medium heat until just beginning to brown.
Heat a large pot of water to boil for pasta
Clear a space in the middle of the mushrooms and add the rest of the olive oil. Add the chicken breasts, seasoned side down - season other side of the chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Salt and pepper the mushrooms at this time (if you salt the mushrooms at the beginning, you'll draw moisture out of them and into the cooking liquid. This will cause them to steam rather than brown, and we want that beautiful brown color, so don't add salt until you're starting to see some browning, which means that the liquid has been evaporated rather than pulled into the pan).
Clear a space in the middle of the mushrooms and add the rest of the olive oil. Add the chicken breasts, seasoned side down - season other side of the chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Salt and pepper the mushrooms at this time (if you salt the mushrooms at the beginning, you'll draw moisture out of them and into the cooking liquid. This will cause them to steam rather than brown, and we want that beautiful brown color, so don't add salt until you're starting to see some browning, which means that the liquid has been evaporated rather than pulled into the pan).
(Chicken goes into the pan seasoned side down)
(Then you season the second side of the chicken once you've put it in the pan and before flipping)
Cook the chicken breasts for 4-6 minutes without disturbing, until beautifully golden brown on that one side (brown food tastes good!). Cooking chicken in olive oil always leads to splattering, so I like to put the lid on my pan but off-set it slightly so that the steam can escape. Once that side is done, flip the chicken breasts, and again do not disturb for another 4-6 minutes
Once the pasta water is boiling, add a handful of salt, and add your pasta. Cook according to the instructions on the pasta. When finished, do not rinse pasta in cold water, and do not add olive oil to prevent sticking. Adding olive oil to your cooked pasta lubricates the noodles, which means that your sauce won't stick to it either. And because this is a loose sauce (it's not very thick), you need as much help getting it to stick to your pasta as you can, so don't add olive oil when it's done cooking. This is why mise en place is important - you need to time it so that the pasta finishes cooking right as the sauce is finishing up so that you can plate everything right then.
This is where you can multi-task... while the mushrooms/chicken and water/pasta are cooking, mince the garlic and slice the basil into fine ribbons (called chiffonade). Set aside.
When the second side of the chicken is beginning to brown, add the tomatoes, peppers, spinach, garlic, and 1/2 of the basil. More salt and pepper now please. Replace the lid to help the spinach wilt down, and stir frequently to help break up the tomatoes and mix the juices all together
When the veggies have cooked down and a nice sauce has formed (about 5-10 more minutes), remove the chicken breasts and set aside on a plate
Add the heavy cream to the sauce in the pan and stir to combine. Heat for a few more minutes so the sauce can thicken slightly. Take one final taste, and adjust seasoning as necessary.
Here's where the nightly Chopped Challenge came into play - the original recipe was literally just the chicken breasts cooked in olive oil, add tomatoes, garlic, basil, cook till the tomatoes form a sauce. Add a bunch of butter to thicken up the sauce, and serve over pasta. So I thought adding more veggies can't be a bad thing, let's start there - adds flavor and nutrients so it's a win-win. Well then it came time to add the butter for the sauce... and that's when I remembered that I was out. Totally out of butter. Knew I would run out during all the holiday baking (I buy butter from Sam's club and keep it in the freezer), and tried getting more but Sam's club was out of butter. Can you believe that? Completely out of butter. So I've been surviving on my last remaining stick which I just used up on another dish and forgot that I'd done. So... now what? I needed something to make a sauce. Then I saw the carton of heavy cream I had sitting in my fridge, also from holiday baking. What makes heavy cream different than milk? BUTTER fat!! If you shook heavy cream forever with a blender ball in it, you'd wind up with a lump of butter and some whole milk. Well I wasn't about to churn some damned butter, but I did hope that I could turn this "pan sauce" into a cream sauce, and the butterfat that's in the cream would do its job in thickening the sauce and giving that beautiful velvety texture that you're aiming for when you add a pat of butter to a sauce. Mission accomplished!! The cream mixed in with the pan sauce beautifully and made this delicious sauce - it's a very loose sauce, it isn't thick at all. But it clings to the pasta deliciously and flavors every bite without being too heavy or over-powering. You can hardly even see it because it's almost the same color as the pasta, but Success!
Cut chicken up into pieces and add back to the sauce (I didn't do that for this version, but I wished I had. I just served the whole breasts, but next time I'll definitely cut it up first). To serve, pile pasta on the plate, spoon on some veggies, chicken, and sauce. Top with grated Parmesan cheese and some of the remaining chiffonade of basil. Enjoy!
- Prep all of the veggies and meat - dice the tomatoes and peppers to a relatively small dice, and about the same size. Slice the mushrooms. Trim the chicken breasts and season the tops with salt and pepper
- Heat ~1/4 of the olive oil in a heavy bottomed skillet until shimmering. Add mushrooms (do not season yet). Cook over medium heat until just beginning to brown
- Heat a large pot of water to boil for pasta
- Clear a space in the middle of the mushrooms and add the rest of the olive oil. Add the chicken breasts, seasoned side down - season other side of the chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Salt and pepper the mushrooms at this time
- Cook the chicken breasts for 4-6 minutes without disturbing, until beautifully golden brown on that one side (brown food tastes good!). Cooking chicken in olive oil always leads to splattering, so I like to put the lid on my pan but off-set it slightly so that the steam can escape. Once that side is done, flip the chicken breasts, and again do not disturb for another 4-6 minutes
- Once the pasta water is boiling, add a handful of salt, and add your pasta. Cook according to the instructions on the pasta.
- While the mushrooms/chicken and water/pasta are cooking, mince the garlic and slice the basil into fine ribbons (called chiffonade). Set aside.
- When the second side of the chicken is beginning to brown, add the tomatoes, peppers, spinach, garlic, and 1/2 of the basil. More salt and pepper now please. Replace the lid to help the spinach wilt down, and stir frequently to help break up the tomatoes and mix the juices all together
- When the veggies have cooked down and a nice sauce has formed, remove the chicken breasts and set aside on a plate
- Add the heavy cream to the sauce in the pan and stir to combine. Take one final taste, and adjust seasoning as necessary.
- Cut chicken up into pieces and add back to the sauce. To serve, pile pasta on the plate, spoon on some veggies, chicken, and sauce. Top with grated Parmesan cheese and some of the remaining chiffonade of basil. Enjoy!
Do you play Chopped Challenge in your kitchen? What fun recipes have you come up with by doing that? Share your thoughts on this recipe or tell me about your own concoctions in the comments section!
Looks great! Can't wait to try it.
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