The Easiest Best Chicken

This is one of my favorite ways to make chicken. It's super easy and super quick and is ridiculously good. 

What you'll need:

Chicken-   You can use either: (boring) boneless skinless chicken breast or (preferred) boneless skinless chicken thigh or (best) a combo of both. 

3-4 cloves of Garlic

Spices: Salt and Pepper and paprika

Herbs: rosemary or parsley or thyme (whatever you got really)

Chicken broth

Flour

Butter

First thing you do is put a non-stick pan or skillet on the stove on medium heat. Let it heat up for a while because you need that pan HOT. Next up, rinse the chicken pieces and pat dry with paper towel. Then you need to add some flavor to the chicken.  Pretty simple for this dish: salt, pepper, and paprika. Don't be shy with the paprika and pepper, this is the only time you can really add some big flavor to the chicken itself here. Once everything is good and seasoned dust the chicken with a little flour.

Next part, peel about 3-4 cloves of garlic and slice longways into big thin strips.

By now your pan should be really hot. Add about a tablespoon of olive oil and the garlic slices. The garlic will cook very quickly in the hot oil so watch it carefully. When it starts turning tan or light brown, remove the garlic pieces immediately from the pan and set aside. Do not allow the garlic to burn. If it burns, just start over with fresh oil and garlic. 

There should be plenty of (now garlic infused) oil left in the pan. Add the chicken pieces to the pan in a single layer. This is KEY: once you put the chicken in the pan, do NOT move them around. You will have soggy chicken if you mess with it. Go sit down or make a salad or wash some dishes....

After about five minutes, flip the chicken, and go back to whatever you were doing. Again, wait about 3-5 minutes, then check to make sure chicken is done. If you are using thighs, they should be about done after the 3-5, if using chicken breasts, maybe flip one more time to allow to cook all the way through....raw chicken is not good for you, so make sure its cooked thoroughly.

This is pretty much the what you want the chicken to look like when its done. When your chicken is good and cooked through, remove from the pan. Leave the pan on the heat.

Now the fun part: (be prepared because this part happens pretty fast) add about tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of flour to the hot pan. Use a whisk and stir the butter and flour together to work out the clumps. This is called a roux. It is the base of just about every type of pan sauce imaginable. The longer you cook the roux, the darker it becomes. For this recipe cook it for about 30-90 seconds, you are looking for color here, a dark tan or light brown usually works. Now add about 1-2 cups of chicken broth, some chopped herbs, and the garlic pieces. If the sauce looks a little thin, just cook it for another minute or two and it will thicken right up from the flour. 

Taste the sauce....a) because its good, and b) because you may have to add a little salt and pepper to make it better.

It should look like this:

Does it? Then you're done. Grab some plates. Serve it up and allow the praise to flow your way...

Roasted Acorn Squaw-sh Bread

I have been playing around with making bread for about a year now. I've tried many recipes trying to find a good whole wheat bread that also provided an interesting twist to it. I came across a recipe for a roasted acorn squash bread on the interweb and decided to give this one a try. I adapted the recipe to improve the flavor and texture and went for it.

And so, I give you: Roasted Acorn Squaw-sh Whole Grain Bread.

It came out as good as I could have hoped for a first try. The squash gives the bread a slightly sweet, delicious flavor and a moist toothsome texture. The flax seeds and flax meal, as well as the whole oats and only using whole wheat flour make a healthful product and a deep nutty flavor. Basically it is the bread I have always been trying to find.

One of our wedding gifts was THE KitchenAid Stand Mixer. It is basically the greatest tool ever if you are into making any kind of dough. If you do attempt this recipe; and I highly recommend that you do, you do not need a kitchenaid, but you'll be way happier and way more stoked if you do.

Roasted Acorn Squaw-sh Whole Grain Bread

Day before:

1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 cups luke war water

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

Mix together in a glass or ceramic bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave overnight.

Day of:

Roasted Squash

1 acorn Squash

2 Tbs. Butter

2 tsp Brown Sugar

4 Tbs. Maple syrup (I'm told it must be from Vermont)

Cut squash in half and place cut side up in a baking dish. Add half the ingredients in each and pour about an inch of water in bottom of baking dish. Bake about 45 to 1 hour or until squash is soft when pierced with a fork.

Bread Ingredients:

about 2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup mashed squash (above)

1 tsp yeast

1/4 cup water

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 flax meal

1/4 whole oats

1/4 water

2 Tbs flax seeds

Pour out the "day of" yeast mixture into the KitchenAid mixer bowl and add in the mashed squash, water, salt and yeast. Mix on low speed until smooth. Add in the flax meal, oats and flax seeds and mix until well blended.

Add in half the whole wheat flour and mix until smooth. Slowly add the rest of the flour a little at a time. When it becomes dough-like and hard to mix, pour out onto a flat surface and knead the dough for about 8 minutes. You may need to add more flour as you are kneading to get the right consistency, but you do want the dough a little on the sticky side.

After kneading, add a little oil to a large bowl and place kneaded dough in bowl. Fliup the dough ball over a few times to cover with oil, then cover and let sit for about 1.5 hours or until double in size.

Remove dough from the bowl and press down to release gas. Cut dough into 2 equal parts and shape into 2 round balls. Place the dough balls on parchment paper and cover with plastic wrap, allow to rest for about 1 hour, or until doubled again in size. 

Place a baking stone or pizza stone(if you don't have one use a baking sheet) into the oven and heat to 375 degrees. Also put a cast iron on the bottom rack of the oven, this will be used while baking to create steam in the oven to make a nice crust. Next, take an egg white and beat it until it's foamy. Brush the tops of the dough with the egg white and sprinkle with a little flax seed. Use a sharp knife and score the top of the dough with an "X". Place the dough on the baking/pizza stone. At the same time, add about 1-2 cups of water into the cast iron for that steam, and close the door. Bake about 30 minutes or until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped...you now have bread. Try to wait until it cools....then.....enjoy.

First Post!

Well. Here we go. First post of what we hope will be many. Congrats for finding the blog, hopefully you'll stick around and check back for more posts as this thing gets built. 

Cheers! and Enjoy!