Lazy Chicken

This is one of the easiest dishes I have ever made. All you need is chicken (you don't even have to thaw it!) and whatever spices you have in your kitchen. Prep time is practically nil, and then you just let the chicken hang out in the oven for an hour.

It's the same idea as jerk chicken. Mix a bunch of spices together, apply like a dry rub, and bake. 

Lazy Chicken

from Tasty Kitchen

Ingredients

2 pounds chicken (frozen, thawed, fresh, what-have-you)
6 tbsp assorted spices and/or herbs (I used chili powder, garlic powder, lemon-garlic chicken seasoning, ground ginger, oregano, salt, pepper... and probably a few other things)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Line broiler pan with aluminum foil, and cut slits to allow fat to drain.
3. Place chicken on pan, and top with spices and/or herbs. Pat it down like a dry rub.
4. Bake for an hour, until cooked. THAT'S IT!

Wacky Depression Cake

 

Notice anything missing from the ingredients I used to make a Chocolate Wacky Depression Cake? There's no eggs, no milk, and no butter! And yet, this is the moistest (most moist?) cake I have ever made. It keeps for days, and is not too sweet while still being chocolate-y. And yes, it calls for vinegar. Trust me, it all works out in the oven.

Chocolate Wacky Depression Cake

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup cocoa powder
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 cup water

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together by hand. Add all the wet ingredients until well combined.
3. Pour into a 8×8 pan which has been prepared with non- stick spray.
4. Bake for 30 minutes until done.  Allow to completely cool before serving. Top with frosting, a little powdered sugar, or leave plain. It's all good!

Recipe from Savory Sweet Life.

Quick & Easy: Gnocchi with Alfredo Sauce

I've never been a pasta person. I skip spaghetti, pass on the lasagna, ignore ravioli... I don't even partake of macaroni and cheese. I'm a texture eater: I don't like anything too squishy, or slimy, or chewy, or grainy, or chunky. Something about pasta has always turned me off. And not only the texture of pasta, but the tomato sauce. In high school, on a school trip to Europe that included Spain, France, and Italy, I lied on my permission slip and wrote that I was allergic to tomatoes. So for the entire trip, while my classmates enjoyed authentic Italian pasta that was probably more delicious than anything I'll ever eat again, I was served white pizza. As my French teacher told a waiter when I tried to order grilled cheese off the kids' menu, "Elle est tres difficile."

I like to think I've grown out of my picky-ness, at least somewhat. At my friend Rachel's house last summer, I actually put some of the gnocchi and red sauce on my plate. Just a little bit, and I made sure to cover it with a pound of parmesan cheese. To my surprise, I liked it! Squishy little potato balls, and I went back for seconds.

So now gnocchi is the one pasta I know how to make. And it's incredibly easy: add the gnocchi to a pot of salted, boiling water. When they start to float, they're done. The end! Even I can do it. I can even open a jar of pasta sauce to eat it with. Unless, when I go to the fridge to grab the jar, it turns out the jar expired in April 2010. So what do you do when you have cooked gnocchi and no pasta sauce? Make alfredo! We had on hand some heavy cream, some butter, garlic, and of course the parmesean cheese. That's basically all alfredo sauce is. Combine the ingredients until it tastes good, then eat. Yum!

Pork with Camembert Sauce

Fancy but easy.

Ingredients

1 lb pork medallions

1 tbsp butter

3 tbsp dry white wine

3/4 c whipping cream/crème frâiche

1 tbsp fresh herbs (marjoram, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc)

4 oz. Camembert cheese (or Brie or other creamy cheese)

1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

Pepper

Serves
2-3 people

Directions

1. Melt butter in frying pan over medium-high heat, then add the meat. Cook, turning once, for about 5 minutes. Remove and keep warm.

2. Meanwhile, chop herbs.

3. Add wine to the pan drippings, and bring to a boil, scraping the bottom of the pan to get all the porky goodness. Stir in the cream and herbs and bring back to a boil.

4. Add the cheese and mustard, as well as any juices accumulated from the meat. Stir until the cheese melts, adding more cream/seasoning as needed. Try not to eat the sauce by the spoonful.

5. Serve over the pork and enjoy!

Recipe from Cook's Encyclopedia of 30-Minute Cooking; photos from me.

Printable version of this recipe

Tyler Durden Chicken

This recipe is from All Bower Power. It's called Tyler Durden Chicken because in their version, they make it super spicy. My version is less spicy, and kind of changes every time I make it.

Let's start off with this:

Normally, I would never be suckered into a product packaged in individualized portions. Why not just buy generic store-brand chicken breasts, then wrap them in plastic wrap myself? But this was on sale, you guys! And it was calling out to me and me single-mouth household. This is a serious issue around here, because when you are only feeding one person, you have to go through ingredients before they spoil. So while something could serve a family of four or five for one meal, at my house it means having the same thing for lunch and dinner every day for a week. With this 'perfect portions' chicken, I can pull out just one serving to defrost at a time, and the rest can stay frozen for weeks. Also it was on sale. Did I mention that already?

Back to Tyler Durden Chicken:

Ingredients
Chicken
Butter
Seasoning
Garlic (real or powdered)
Cayenne/Red Pepper/Chili Powder/What have you
Orange Juice

Directions

1. Toss some butter in a pan and get it going. Meanwhile, chop up your chicken into bite size pieces.

2. Add your chicken to the pan. I like to add my seasonings at this juncture - salt, pepper, chicken seasoning, garlic powder, cayenne, or whatever you like.

3. After the chicken cooks for a minute or so, pour in the OJ. I pour about 2/3rds of the way up the chicken.

4. Cook that sucker on medium high. Stir it occasionally.
5. Let the orange juice cook down until it's nice and goopey. This may take awhile. If you are impatient, start with orange juice concentrate instead of regular orange juice. I've found a good balance is partially watered-down concentrate, but either way will work. You're good to go when it looks like this:

You can serve it with rice, or a salad, or you can be lazy like me and eat it alone. Enjoy!

Easy As Chicken Pie

Here's a great throw-it-together recipe that I came up with. I even entered it into a recipe contest. A few of the commenters there despaired that it was 'not cooking' and that 'you might as well just buy a frozen chicken pot pie from the supermarket and call it a day.' But then others chimed in that they appreciated the easiness of the recipe, and while it may not be health food, it's damned delicious!

Ingredients
1 deli rotisserie chicken
1 can condensed chicken soup
1 can condensed potato soup
1 bag frozen vegetables (optional)
1 can refrigerated biscuits or puff pastry or pie shell

Directions
1. Shred the chicken from the deli and place into pie pan. Save the carcass for stock and make chicken stock!
2. Combine both cans of soup with one cup of milk or water, then pour over chicken. If you want to add thawed frozen vegetables, go for it.
3. Place biscuit dough/puff pastry on top of the pie mixture.
4. Bake until the biscuits/puff pastry are ready (about 20 minutes at 375 degrees)
5. Eat!

Two Shrimp Recipes

If I knew how easy it was to cook shrimp (especially with frozen, pre-cleaned shrimp!) I would have started years ago.



Chipotle Lime Shrimp
serves 4

Ingredients
1 chipotle chili in adobo (chopped)
2 teaspoons adobo sauce
1 teaspoon cumin (toasted and ground)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 lime (juice and zest)
2 tablespoons cilantro (chopped)
1 pound shrimp (peeled and deveined)

Directions

1. Mix the chipotle, adobo sauce, cumin, brown sugar, lime zest, lime juice and cilantro in a bowl and and let marinate for 20 minutes.
2. Skewer the shrimp.
3. Oil up the grill and grill the shrimp until cooked, about 2-3 minutes per side.

Orange Chipotle Shrimp
serves 4

Ingredients
1 pound shrimp (peeled and de-veined)
1 orange juice and zest
1 tablespoon chipotles chilies in abode sauce (chopped)
1 tablespoon oil
3 tablespoons cilantro (chopped)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Marinate the shrimp in the orange juice and zest, chipotles, oil and cilantro for 15+ minutes.
2. Remove the shrimp from the marinade and season with salt and pepper.
3. Skewer the shrimp and grill or fry in a pan for 1-3 minutes per side.

Recipes and photos thanks to Closet Cooking