Chicken Katsu

I'm starting to think I should just change the name of my blog seeing as how lately I've been cooking more from other blogs than anything else. But hey, better to post something than nothing, right?

Today's entry is chicken katsu, inspired by my love of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, and also from this blog that I bookmarked a while back. Chicken katsu is basically the Asian equivalent of chicken fingers, but served with rice and sauce. Yum.

In retrospect, I don't know why I even needed a recipe to follow since it's really just a thinly cut or pounded chicken breast, breaded with panko and fried. Although I will concede that I would not have known which brand of tonkatsu sauce to buy without guidance.

In any case, this turned out very very yummy - pretty close to my ideal comfort food. Troy declared it to be an almost dead-on imitation of the L&L version and even Miss Pickypants (aka our 2 1/2 year-old) ate a healthy portion dipped in sauce. Extra bonus points for being an extraordinarily quick meal to throw together. Now if only we'd had some macaroni salad...

I'm back! Well, mostly...

Sorry if it seems that I have fallen off the face of the earth in regards to updating this blog. Between all the traveling we've been doing this summer, and just the busyness of life in general, I have not been very good about keeping up. After spending almost 2 weeks in Iowa, I could not get my act together to do any sort of serious cooking, especially since we took another long trip to California just a few weeks later!

But I'm back now and slowing getting back into the swing of things. I have not had a chance to do any recipes from the Pepin book, but I have made a few other yummy things I thought I'd share.

First up are these amazing chicken enchiladas with a sour cream sauce, inspired by this recipe on my friend Jacki's blog. I made a few small changes: I cooked the chicken with a drained can of Ro-tel tomatoes and about 1/3 can of green enchilada sauce; then later when it came to making the sauce, instead of combining butter and cornstarch, I sauteed some chopped onions in butter and then added flour to make more of a traditional roux. I also added the rest of the enchilada sauce to the broth/sour cream mixture before adding it all to the roux to make the sauce. Troy declared these my best enchiladas ever! Sorry for the crappy picture - I grabbed my snappy cam since it was nearby and took one quick shot before we tore into them.


I'm also getting ready to throw a baby shower brunch for a friend in a couple weeks, so I've been playing around with some different ideas for the menu. Late last night, I decided to try out Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties! recipe for Sour Cream Coffee Cake. I realized at the last minute that she uses cake flour, not all-purpose, and of course I did not have any, but I decided to just go for it. I'll add that while I do love her recipes, they almost invariably call for ingredients that I don't normally have on hand. Grr.

In any case, even with the all-purpose flour (I also came up a teeny bit short on sour cream), the cake still turned out fabulous. I was nervous at first because it did not look like very much batter, but boy did that puppy rise! It looked very very pretty coming out of the oven.

And after I added the maple glaze.

It was soooooo good! Very moist, very tender, very tasty. I do wish that I'd mixed more of the crumble topping in with the batter though, as the inside seemed a bit barren, but other than that I have no complaints.

I also do feel compelled to mention that normally, when I make any kind of cake, I pretty much always alternate the wet & dry ingredients - in this case, the flour mixture and the sour cream - even when the recipe calls for you to dump it all in at once. But this time I decided to stick to Ina's instructions and added all the sour cream first and then the flour mixture (in 2 parts) and mixed till it was barely combined. I also resisted the urge to thin the batter out with some milk, as it was pretty thick. I'm glad that I followed directions (for a change, ha) because I think that's what helped keep the cake so tender. I think this is a definite keeper for the shower, and I will likely pick up some cake flour for the next run.

I also threw together a quickie little test appetizer: caramelized onions & goat cheese in a pre-baked phyllo shell. No real recipe, just sliced onions, caramelized in a pan with olive oil and a little bit of dried thyme and a splash of raspberry balsamic vinegar. Then I piled them into store-bought phyllo shells (found in the frozen section) and put a few crumbles of goat cheese on top. Baked them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 5 minutes, just to warm everything up.

They were good, but not great. I sort of added the balsamic vinegar on a whim, and I'm not sure it was the best idea. I think it took away too much from the sweetness of the onions. I think if I were to make these again, I'd probably omit the balsamic - or at least use regular, not raspberry, which was all I had. I'd also probably try to find vidalias or some other kind of sweet onion, and I'd use a lot more thyme as well, preferably fresh.

I had also never used the phyllo shells before and I didn't realize until I opened the box that they were already baked, and (according to the directions) ready to fill and serve. However, after tasting a couple filled tartlets, I realized they definitely needed to be baked again. The unbaked ones felt soggy in my mouth, even though I'd filled them just a minute or two before. Once baked, they stayed much crispier. I'm a bit on the fence as to whether these will make the brunch menu.

I'm thinking that it might be awhile before I get back to the cookbook, but stay tuned for other food-related adventures!

Spicy Ginger and Lemon Chicken

Ingredients:
1 tsp olive oil
1 chicken leg (8-10 oz.) with skin, back bones, and tips of drumsticks removed (about 6 oz, trimmed weight)
Dash salt
1/8 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp cumin
Dash dried thyme
Dash cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp all-purpose flour
1 strip lemon peel, removed with a vegetable peeler
1 strip orange peel, removed with a vegetable peeler
1 tsp chopped fresh ginger (washed, but not peeled)
1 small clove garlic, peeled
1/4 c. sweet apple cider
1/4 c. water

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan until it is hot by not smoking. Add the chicken leg and brown it over medium heat, turning occasionally, for 10-12 minutes.

2. Add the rest of the ingredients, bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook gently for 15 minutes. Serve with the natural cooking juices.

I doubled this and all the other recipes so that there would be enough for both Troy and I. More on other changes below.

Cheats & Changes:
Again, I used my microplane to zest the orange and lemon rather than peel big hunks off. I also used a tablespoon of garlic ginger paste (I keep a jar handy in my fridge at all times; you can find it at most Indian grocery stores) in lieu of the fresh chopped ginger. I suppose I could have left out the garlic cloves, but in my book you can never have too much garlic.

Also, I'd like to mention that the directions on the chicken are a bit vague. In the accompanying photo, there's a chicken leg quarter, not just the leg, and it has the skin on it. I decided to split the difference and I used a quarter, but took the skin off. T actually prefers white meat, so when I saw they had split fryers at the store, I opted to buy that so we'd have the best of both worlds. I cut the chicken into two pieces, removed the skin and backbone, as instructed, and I left the wing on the breast, but removed the wingtip. Frankly, we're both rather big eaters, so there's no way that one measly chicken leg would have cut it. But because I used a bone-in chicken breast, it took a little bit longer to cook, I'd say closer to 20 or 25 minutes.

The verdict:
Love, love LOVED it! The flavor was really well balanced - hints of ginger, citrus, spice, and a little bit of sweetness from the juice, but not overtly apple-y. This dish was super easy to prep and make and will probably go into my regular repertoire. T loved the flavor as well and devoured his portion. I was concerned that the breast might dry out, but it stayed super tender and juicy.

And have I mentioned the sauce? This dish made its own sauce (the aforementioned "natural juice") which was simply heavenly. There was a ton of it, which I spooned very generously over everything on my plate: the chicken, the rice and even the broccoli. I think it made everything better.

Portion size was perfect for the one meal, but in the future I'll likely make a lot more since we like leftovers. Oh, and even though it's dark meat, with the skin removed and very little cooking oil needed to sear it off, this is a pretty diet-friendly meal too. Extra bonus!

Oh and here's a picture of Troy's chicken breast, in case you're curious. I removed the skin from the breast, but left it on the wing.