Parmesan Chicken, Provencal Tomatoes & Easy S'mores

Last night, my husband and I attended a musical (Bye Bye Birdie) at our local college. We invited our friends for dinner, before going to the show. I had already scheduled a hair appointment (much needed). Suffice it to say that I had neglected my hair color and cut a tad longer than I should have, so it took three hours before I could head home. I had no time to shop during the week and I had not settled on what to make for our dinner guests.

Fortunately, I had just received Ina Garten's Cookbook that I ordered from Amazon, yesterday. I took it with me to the hair salon to read:

Last month, I checked this book out from our local library and I decided that I wanted to add this to my collection of cookbooks. I realize that I've been posting a lot of recipes from Ina Garten-- and I can assure you that I have not become an obsessed fan of hers. I just find that I can relate to most of her recipes. Like Ina, I enjoy cooking and baking, and I try to buy the best quality ingredients possible. There are times, however, when I can't quite afford her pricey selection of liqueurs, because we don't drink a lot of cocktails. But, for the most part, the majority of her recipes are right up my alley.

I zeroed in on Page 82 for Parmesan Chicken and Page 116 for Provencal Tomatoes. Fortunately, I had almost all of the ingredients on hand and we love LOTS of sweet, red ripe tomatoes in our backyard. All I needed to do was buy fresh chicken and I decided to pick up asparagus.

Our dinner guests are very easy to please, so I didn't feel pressure on what to make. I also felt confident that this dinner would not be too much for my exhausted, mental state of mind, after a very hectic two weeks at my job. It's a good thing, because I arrived home at 4:00 and our guests were due to arrive at 5:30... and I did not have a dessert, nor did I have time to stop and buy one! Yikes!

Since I was racing the clock, I didn't take my usual step-by-step photos, but these recipes are very simple to make.

First the Parmesan chicken-- the chicken breasts were boneless and skinless (to save time), so I butterflied them. I covered the chicken with plastic wrap and pounded them thin. I grabbed three pie plates-- one was filled with flour, seasoned with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.
The second was filled with two eggs and a little water, then whisked.
The third plate was filled with panko crumbs. Ina uses bread crumbs (and I make my own), but I really like the crunchiness of panko crumbs. To the panko crumbs, I added freshly ground Parmesan (using my food processor, since I buy my Parmesan in chunks). I seasoned the crumbs with about 1 Tablespoon of homemade Italian blend (dried thyme, oregano, basil and a little marjoram). Like an assembly line, I dipped the chicken in flour, egg and crumbs and set them in the fridge.

My husband picked the tomatoes but I had only one large one and the rest were medium sized. No worries-- I cut them in half and removed the seeds and juice.

For the tomatoes, I decided to use the rest of my panko crumbs, instead of bread crumbs. I didn't have scallions, so I improvised and used shallots. My Italian parsley isn't growing back, so I grabbed curly parsley from the garden-- which is plentiful. (You can use dried herbs, too.) I had LOTS of leftover crumb filling, by the way, so they are in my fridge for quick meals this week.


I filled the tomatoes and preheated the oven to 400F.
NOTE: I didn't pay attention to how dry the crumbs looked. In retrospect, I think Ina missed an important step. I would definitely add olive oil or melted butter to the crumbs, to help them bind better. They were a little dry, in my opinion.

Last, I picked two fresh lemons from our tree and made Ina's lemon vinaigrette. Could it be any simpler? Lemon juice, kosher salt & pepper. I set a whisk and a bottle of extra virgin olive oil close by. I open up a package of fresh mixed salad greens into a bowl and chilled it.

I wanted to make garlic mashed potatoes, but the clock was ticking. Fortunately, I had purchased fresh asparagus so I used my fool-proof method of trimming them, seasoning them with kosher salt & pepper and drizzling them with olive oil. I set these on a baking sheet, lined with aluminum foil. I calculated that the asparagus would take about 10 minutes to roast, so I'd put them in five minutes after starting the tomatoes in the oven.

On a whim, I showed my husband how to trim a ripe cantaloupe into wedges and how to wrap thin slices of prosciutto (another refrigerator staple around each wedge). Whew! I had appetizers ready to go and the white wine was chilled. No photos, but they looked pretty and the combination of salty and sweet works very well. They disappeared fast.

My husband, bless his heart, helped by tidying up behind me and setting the table. I quickly changed my clothes and the doorbell rang at exactly 5:30pm.

I think that Ina's gift of entertaining helped me to pull off this dinner in a short time. I was able to chat with our guest for a few minutes, and then I was able to begin dinner. The tomatoes were put into the oven and I set up the stove to cook the chicken. I wanted to cook the chicken all at once, so I set my griddle on the stove and another large pan.

...I said a silent prayer of thanks that the rest of the side dishes would be cooked in the oven.

Using olive oil and unsalted butter, the chicken cooked about 3 minutes per side until golden...

Timing is everything, as my mother always preached to me. The asparagus were perfectly roasted in 10 minutes, and I squeeze a little fresh lemon juice on top. I added Gruyere cheese on top of the tomatoes and returned them to the oven for about 1 more minutes.

In the meantime, I drizzled olive oil into the season lemon juice and tossed it into the salad greens. Time to plate dinner-- 15 minutes after I started cooking!

I have to say, this looks pretty and impressive enough for company!

It is such joy, as many of you know, when dinner guests show delight in their eyes when I serve them a plate like this! Honestly, this was fast and easy-- and very delicious. I loved the freshness of the lemon vinaigrette and the salad greens, and the crunchiness of the chicken with the hint of Parmesan cheese. The tomatoes were outstanding, and roasted asparagus are always a big hit.

Still, I wanted to serve a dessert. Fortunately, I had purchased a box of LU Digestive Biscuits a couple of weeks ago. These can be a little tricky to find, but I found them at the grocery store where my son works. It was in the gourmet section. They're quite good, actually.


Ina, once again, inspired me with this easy version of S'mores. We made fresh coffee and I trotted off to the stove (again, thankful that it's a gas range). I simply melted marshmallows and put them in between two of these cookies..

We each ate just one of these, and they were ooey gooey wonderful and rich tasting.

How did I enjoy the musical? It was cute and the kids did a great job...but, by Act Two, my head was on my husband's shoulder and I was sound asleep!

I would venture that it's a safe guess that you'll be seeing more of Ina's recipe on my blog. This phase shall pass, but for now, Ina has rescued me by inspiring me with very simple recipes that never fail to please. OK, so I'm a huge fan of hers! Rachel who???

It's so good to be back in the kitchen, playing with new recipes!

More Cooking with Ina Garten - Spring Green Risotto

I want my life back! Seriously... for the last ten days I have been working really hard at my school site, and I made the mistake of over-committing myself last weekend by driving to faraway places. As a result of my crazy schedule, my family has been subsisting on what's in the freezer, restaurants and foraging for food. My poor babies!

Our students have settled back into school as of yesterday (yes, we start early but we end school on May 28th). I'm still exhausted, but I am already gearing up to feeding my family some home cooked meals. I have so missed visiting my regular blogs, and visiting new ones.

Today, I was supposed to post a blog with the Barefoot Bloggers. The recipe was for Ina Garten's Mango Banana Daiquiris. I so wish I could have made these, because I could use six or seven of these tonight! I hope that the Barefoot Bloggers will not excommunicate me from the group, so I am offering an alternative Ina Garten recipe that I did make before my life went into a tailspin.

I love risotto, and I don't know why I don't make this more often. I think of risotto as comfort food, and it's so versatile in what ingredients you can use. I always have homemade chicken stock in my freezer, and white wine is pretty much a staple in my fridge. I had purchased a lovely bunch of asparagus, and so I decided to make this dish that Ina had on her show a couple of weeks ago. I was intrigued by the addition of mascarpone cheese.

My dilemma was that I didn't have mascarpone cheese! I quickly surfed the net and I found several recipes on how to make my own mascarpone-- using cream cheese, sour cream and heavy cream. Once again, I usually keep these ingredients on hand, so I was in luck.

I think that this mascarpone substitute recipe is a winner, and much cheaper than the real
deal -- like a fraction of the cost!


The next step for me was to start a pot of water boiling and I blanched the fresh asparagus for 2-3 minutes. I wanted a bright green color and then I plunged the asparagus into an ice bath, to stop the cooking process...

Then I set them aside...

Then I got busy with the rest of my mis en place-- that would be "ingredient's prep". This is how I roll, because there is nothing worse than finding out you're missing a key ingredient and you've already started cooking! I didn't photograph the chives, because they are growing right outside my kitchen window!

I am thankful to have a lemon tree that is providing this beautiful zest. I decided to use only one lemon, instead of the two that Ina recommends. I read recipe reviews and many people said that two lemons was too overpowering-- you decide!

Risotto isn't hard to make at all! If you've never made risotto, just remember that you need to use Arborio or Carnaroli Rice-- because you want a starchy rice. Plain ole white rice just doesn't work. Trust me.

Traditional risotto uses chicken stock (heated up) and white wine. I had to adapt the recipe a
bit -- Ina's recipe uses fennel, but I didn't have any. Truth be told, I'm not crazy about fennel so I wasn't going to race to the store for any. I didn't have leeks, and I do love them. I did have shallots, so I decided to substitute with those. Either way would be great.

Using good olive oil and butter, I sauteed the shallots and then the rice-- and then I began adding the heated chicken stock a few ladles at a time, stirring constantly.

You can see that there is still some liquid left in the pan, but the rice has released a lot of starch. This is when I added my fresh lemon zest (from my wonderful lemon tree) and I seasoned the rice with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.

I don't like overcooked asparagus, so I only allowed 5 minutes of cooking time once I added the blanched asparagus, thawed peas, mascarpone cheese, fresh Parmesan and fresh chives (as opposed to Ina's instructions to cook this for 15 minutes).

The beauty of living in California is that I can make a spring risotto in late summer! As Ina would say, how good is that?

Now, that's comfort food! (Pssssssst, you can always serve this as a side dish)

I have missed my food blogger friends, and I cannot wait to see what all of you have been up to!

Ina Garten's Easy Cheese Danish

Hello everyone!

I've been so busy at work, that I've had no time to cook-- let alone to blog about anything at all. I work at a public high school, and it's registration time, and that means that I am racing non-stop. I have so many of my favorite blogs to visit, so I'll catch up within a week. I doubt my work pace will slow down until mid-August, so I might be a little scarce. I miss all of you, and I miss having the time and energy to be in my kitchen.

I did want to share with you an easy recipe I made last weekend. I'm not kidding about this being easy and versatile! It's not a low-fat recipe but once in a while, I crave a fresh cheese Danish pastry. I watched Ina Garten make this on Food Network a couple of weeks ago, and I decided this would make a nice breakfast treat with a cup of dark roast coffee. Wow! This is delicious!

Fortunately, I have recently overcome my fear of working with puff pastry. There's no mystery to it at all, folks. There are two ways I defrost puff pastry-- I either remove it from the freezer and cover it with a damp paper towel and wait about 30 minutes. Or, I put the box of puff pastry in the fridge (overnight) and I'm ready to go in the morning.

With this recipe, there's no rolling pin required. Just cut each sheet into four squares (be sure to flour your surface) and parchment paper makes life a lot easier.

The week before I made the Cheese Danish, I decided to use some of my homemade jams to make a simple puff pastry turnover. I decided to play around with different ways of folding puff pastry. I wanted to play with the sparkling white sugar I had recently ordered from King Arthur Flour...

I had recently made peach jam, so I decided to use this as a filling.

These were delicious-- hot out of the oven.

The following week, I decided to make the cheese filling for Ina's Easy Cheese Danish Recipe. I decided to follow the advice from many comments about this recipe. The suggestion was to make the cheese filling the night before, because other comments said that the filling was too runny if not allowed to chill properly. The filling consists of cream cheese, ricotta cheese, sugar, vanilla, and lemon zest. I also used one lemon, instead of two because reviewers said the lemon was a little overpowering. Before bed, I removed a box of puff pastry from the freezer and put it into the fridge to thaw.

The next morning, I was glad that I chilled the filling. It was delicious and not too lemony.

I filled the puff pastry with the cream cheese filling, and used an egg wash to seal the pastry. I had almost made raspberry jam, so I decided to see what would happen if I added some jam on top of the cream cheese filling...

It sure looks pretty!

Here's a Raspberry Cheese and Peach Cheese Pastry...

Each pastry got a sprinkling of sparkling white sugar and was baked at 400F for about 20 minutes.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

The plain cheese danish looked beautiful...

The raspberry jam kind of oozed over the edges and didn't look very photogenic. I think I didn't seal some of the flaps well, so they came apart. In retrospect, I should have folded it differently, since the jam is much thinner. Still, these tasted great! Overall, my personal favorite is the plain cheese-- but take your pick... just jam, just cheese or both!


Once again, Ina has given a simple recipe that I will use again and again. I think it would be easy to make these the night before and then when you wake up, just pop them into the oven.

These are a special treat, and they really are very easy to make. Your guests will think you are a genius. Your secret is safe with me.

Skillet Chicken, Broccoli & Pasta Dinner - Back to Work Cooking!

I'm back to my full-time job, so I need to readjust my style of cooking. While I was enjoying my month long vacation, I had the luxury of time when it came to choosing recipes for my weekly meal plan (yes, I do make one each week).

I need to readjust what I cook, because I want it on the table in 45 minutes, or less. Ideally, the meal won't take a lot of prep work and (if I'm lucky) I'll have leftovers to take for lunch the next day-- hence, more time in the morning to get ready to leave for work after dragging myself out of bed at the evil hour of 5:30am.

Before I discovered the world of Food Blogs, I used to buy quite a few cookbooks. One of my purchases came from America's Test Kitchen-- "Test Kitchen Favorites" from the Season 2007, with a DVD of all the shows included. I have to say that I enjoyed the cookbook and DVD-- and I think these would be a perfect gift for someone who wants to learn (or improve) their culinary skills.

I give thumbs up to many of the recipes in this cookbook-- they have never failed to deliver delicious meals. This skillet dinner is one of them. HOWEVER, the prep time took about 20 minutes to put together. I'm pretty skilled with a knife, so if someone is just learning how to chop, chop, chop-- then I'd say prep work can take at least 30 minutes. The plus side, though, is that once the dinner is underway in cooking, you can tidy up the kitchen.

Enough said-- on with the recipe:

You'll need boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch squares, sun-dried tomatoes, minced garlic, dried oregano (fresh is okay, too), red pepper flakes, chicken broth, broccoli, heavy cream (you could substitute half & half, I suppose but I haven't tested that theory), ziti (I used farfalle, because it's what I had), water, Asiago cheese (I only had Parmesan), and fresh lemon juice. I recommend that you do your mis en place ("mess in place"). Once your have all of your ingredients organized, the cooking part goes fast. Ready?

You'll use olive oil and you want to quickly sear the chicken. Be sure the chicken is patted nice and dry, or you'll just end up steaming the chicken. This takes 2 minutes, max. Set it aside in a bowl...

The nice brown bits from searing the chicken will give the chopped onion and garlic a nice flavor and a pretty golden brown... now it's time to cook the pasta...

Since this is a "skillet dinner", you'll be cooking the pasta in the skillet with chicken with water and chicken broth. Once the pasta water looks "syrupy" it's time to add the sun-dried tomatoes, broccoli and a little more water. The asiago or Parmesan cheese and lemon juice are on standby...

Give this a little stir...

Put the lid on and let this cook for 3-5 minutes-- just until the broccoli is tender and a pretty bright green.

Now, add the chicken and accumulated juices, the heavy cream and the cheese. Allow this to cook a few minutes until the sauce thickens a bit. This dish smells fragrantly delicious.

Off heat, add the lemon juice and season to taste with kosher, or sea salt (never table salt...yuck!) and pepper. As far as I'm concerned, this is far better than "Hamburger Helper".


This might not be a 30-Minute meal, but it's very tasty. It reheats well and you could even freeze leftovers for a fast "I'm too tired to cook, what can I defrost?" kind of meal.

I have a feeling I'll be making a few of those when the first day of school starts on August 12th starts-- it's the most hectic time of year at my job! But, I love the high school kids and I cannot say that my job is boring at all.

Rachael Ray-- I'm coming to pay your website a visit! I just wish you tone down your prattling, but I have to give you kudos for your 30-minutes meals! I'm on my way...