Chicken Scarpariello on Sauteed Spinach with Pancetta and a Caramelized Onion Kugel Muffin with Spicy Pepper Sauce, Feta Crumbles and Rosemary

First off, let me begin by saying I know this is not traditional Italian-style chicken scarpariello, nor is this traditional Jewish food. Call it fusion cuisine, I guess. But it sure tasted good - the kugel might actually be better if you added some garlic, or a strong cheese, to the mixture prior to baking (in all honesty the kugel, while tasty, was slightly bland and I think some extra additions like garlic, cheese or herbs might jazz it up nicely). Remember, the kugel needs time to bake, so start it with enough time to make it and bake it so it's hot when the chicken is ready.

Anyway, I did cheat on this recipe in one respect - my spicy marinara came from a bottle, not from a recipe. Choose your favorite marinara sauce brand, or make your own - but I spooned Classico Spicy Red Pepper marinara on top of my kugel and it tasted darn good.

So, on to the directions! (Meal total: 2-3 hours, moderate effort)

Caramelized Onion Kugel Muffins

6 ounces egg noodles
1 stick butter (salted or unsalted, but remember which you used when adding straight salt, and adjust accordingly)
3 cups chopped onion (I use Walla Walla or Mayan sweet onions)
1.25 cups sour cream
1.25 cups small curd cottage cheese
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
0.25 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Boil the noodles in a pot of salted water until they are just al dente. Drain, rinse in cold water, and drain well again.

In a skillet, melt butter. Use a pastry brush to grease muffin cups with some of the melted butter. Add the onion to the skillet and cook, stirring periodically, until just beginning to caramelize. Transfer onions from skillet to a large bowl. Mix in noodles, sour cream, and cottage cheese. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs with salt and pepper. Then, add the egg mixture to the noodle/onion/cottage cheese/sour cream mixture, and combine well.

Scoop the mixture into the buttered muffin cups and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown. Let cool at least 5 minutes before serving. Use a knife to loosen the kugels in their cups, then pop out of the muffin tin to serve.

I suggest keeping them in the warming drawer if they finish before you're ready to serve dinner. You'll want marinara sauce, feta cheese crumbles, and a few sprigs of fresh rosemary for garnish when you serve them up.

Chicken Scarpariello for 2

2-3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced up into strips
1 cup all-purpose flour
salt
pepper
1 teaspoon oregano (fresh or dried, whichever)
4 tablespoons of olive oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
0.5 cup chopped onion
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 cup chicken broth
0.5 cup white wine (use whatever you want, but I disapprove of cooking with anything you wouldn't happily drink...)
juice of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons butter (salted or unsalted, but if you use salted, remember that fact when it comes to adding the rest of the salt, and adjust accordingly)
1 tablespoon flour
0.25 cup chopped parsley (fresh, but dried will suffice if you don't have fresh)

Preheat the warming drawer, and put one plate per person in the drawer, plus one for warming the chicken strips.

Season the flour with salt and pepper to taste. Rinse and dry your chicken strips, then dredge them lightly in the seasoned flour. In a heavy skillet, large enough to hold all your chicken pieces, heat up the olive oil. With the heat on medium, brown the chicken strips on both sides until brown and golden, with a touch of amber crispiness to them. Don't let the heat get too high or you'll set off your smoke alarm - olive oil burns at a relatively low temperature as oils go.
Once the chicken is nicely golden on both sides, remove to a plate and put in the warming drawer to keep it hot. Add the onion to the skillet, cooking until it is soft and translucent. Add the garlic. After a minute or two, when the garlic is browning and fragrant, add the wine. Stir, scraping up the brown bits from the bottom, until the wine is reduced by half. Add the chicken broth and bring the whole mixture to a boil. When it's boiling, add the rosemary. Then, put the chicken back into the skillet, and spoon the sauce over them so they're nicely covered. Put a lid on the skillet and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, remove chicken to a warmed plate and put it in the warming drawer. To the skillet, add the lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Add the butter and the remaining 1 tablespoon flour, stirring actively to prevent lumps. Add the parsley. Simmer it down until it is thick enough for your liking, adding extra flour or butter as necessary to achieve a consistency you like.

Sauteed Spinach with Pancetta

2 slices pancetta
4-6 handfuls of fresh spinach

Slice up the pancetta into small squares.

In a skillet, cook the pancetta bits until just beginning to crisp. Add spinach, and sautee until wilted and bright green.

To serve:
Pull the plates out of the warming drawer. Put 1 kugel muffin on each plate. Top with a spoonful of marinara sauce, some feta crumbles, and a sprig of rosemary.

Lay down a bed of sauteed spinach and pancetta. Put chicken strips on top of the spinach, and spoon sauce over the chicken. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Welcome (and Green Onion Latkes with Applesauce and Herbed Sour Creams)

Hi, I'm really bad at starting out diaries, blogs, and other time-continuous forms of writing - so I'm going to skip the complex preamble and just dive in. All the context you should need is that I am a 21-year-old woman, currently living and working in Seattle, usually attending college in Iowa, with a number of diverse talents and interests. Now, on to the interesting stuff!

So one of my hobbies is food art. I say food art, because just cooking is boring. I've only had to cook recently, since as a kid my mom took care of food, and in college the dining hall handles those sorts of things. That made it really clear to me why my mom always said she hated the question "What's for dinner?"...She hated it because food takes time, and money, and it is generally a nuisance to come up with solutions that are reasonable in terms of effort and cost.

This blog certainly won't answer all your questions, and the recipes on here will vary in terms of how expensive or labor-intensive they are. But in my humble estimation, most of them are quite good, and I will endeavor to make it clear how to achieve success (as well as indicating how tough or time-consuming a given recipe is).

For starters, let's look at the latkes I prepared last week as a tribute to the 50% of my cultural heritage that's Jewish. Latkes are: tasty, crispy and labor-intensive. Latkes are not: fast, easy or health food. That being said...here's how to make the dish displayed above.

Green Onion Latkes for Two with Applesauce and Herbed Sour Creams (labor intensive, about 2 hours total time)

For the latkes, you will need:
2 white potatoes
2 Yukon Gold potatoes
1 Mayan onion
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons matzoh meal
0.5 teaspoons salt
0.25 teaspoons black pepper
2 green onions, chopped
Canola oil for frying

For the sauces, you will need:
Applesauce
Sour cream
Fresh dill
Fresh chives
Fresh thyme

For the garnish, you will need:
1 Gala apple, finely sliced

In terms of equipment, you'll need:
Food processor
Sharp knives
Cutting boards
Frying pan
Box grater
Pot for boiling

To begin, make sure you've got everything. Next, put a pot of lightly salted water on the stove to boil. Put plates in your warming drawer.

While the water is coming to a boil, chop up your green onions. Put them aside.

Next, chop up your onion.

When the water is boiling, drop in your potatoes. Boil them for about 20 minutes, until tender.

Put the onion in your food processor until you have a nice onion puree. Put this into a cheesecloth or clean kitchen towel, and wring out the liquid. Put the onion into a bowl. Mix with 1 tablespoon of matzoh meal.

When the potatoes are tender, cool them briefly in a water bath. Then, take the two white potatoes and cut them into chunks. Put the chunks into the food processor and puree until smooth. Add this to the onion-and-matzoh mix.

Take the Yukon Golds and grate them into a bowl using the box grater. You want to be grating nice solid threads, so you'll get those delightful crispy potato threads around the edges of your latkes when you fry them. Add the grated Yukon Golds to the onion-potato-and-matzoh mixture.

Put this into a cheesecloth or clean towel and wring out the excess liquid, just like you did earlier with the onions. This will prevent your latkes from being mushy or slimy. When you're satisfied with how much fluid you've extracted, return the mixture to the bowl.

Add to the bowl the rest of the matzoh meal, the eggs, the pepper, the salt, and the chopped green onions. Mix everything up.

Now, make your sauces. Clean out your food processor. Drop a half-cup or so of sour cream into it. Chop up a few chives, add them, and blend it up. Taste; if you're satisfied, spoon into a ramekin or small bowl and set aside. If not, add more chives to taste, then set aside once you're happy. Clean out the food processor.

Repeat this operation using dill; then again for the thyme.

Slice the Gala apple into fine fans, as shown in the photo.

Now we're ready to fry! Put a plate with a paper towel on it within convenient reach of your stove. Pour some canola oil into a fry pan and heat it up. Scoop up about a quarter to half cup scoops of the latke batter, press them flat between your palms, and drop them into the oil. You'll probably be able to fit 3 or 4 at once into your pan. Cook them until they are showing crispy golden brown around the edges (1-3 minutes, depending how hot your oil is). When you see that golden brown, turn them over and fry for 1-2 minutes more, then spatula them out onto the paper-towel-lined plate. Put another paper towel on top of the latkes, and repeat the operation until you are out of batter.

Pull the plates out of the warming drawer. Quickly lay a fan of apple slices on each plate. Then, drop a tablespoon or so of each herbed sour cream onto the plate and garnish with the herb represented in that dollop. Put a dollop of plain sour cream on either end of the line of herbed sour creams. Spoon applesauce onto the plate in decorative pattern, and put three or four latkes on each plate. Serve hot.

Bon apetit!