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| Yes, Aunt Candy did take a bite of bread before I could take the pic... |
Last week we suffered a plumbing disaster that closed our home for business for almost a week. I will not share all the dirty details of the dilemma but I will just say that we had no drainage whatsoever which prevented us from showering, using the commode, doing laundry or washing dishes. Feel free to read the full account here but this story is just about a fantastic meal that came out of the train wreck we were experiencing.
We were unable to wash dishes so cooking was not really an option. Since we had to eat and bathe, however, we were invited to Chris’s Aunt and Uncle’s house for dinner and a shower Friday night. Chris offered to cook which was the least we could do for their hospitality. As dirty and stressed out as we were, one might think she kept things simple. Chris is not one to make things easy on herself though and she chose to use this opportunity to get experimental in Aunt Candy’s kitchen.
Her brain-fart of an idea was this: ask each of her coworkers to suggest an ingredient. After compiling her list she would create a meal using each of their suggestions. It was an idea born out of too many reality cooking channel shows and I was not quite sure why this of all weeks seemed like the time to attempt this. I know better than to question her big ideas, though, so I just said “prosciutto”.
Coworker Connie said chicken, Robert said zucchini, Amanda suggested cream cheese and Molly said Greek yogurt. Veronica suggested watermelon but they are out of season and expensive so her pick did not make the final meal. Aunt Candy bought the ingredients and we took our filthy bodies to their house to see what Chris might make out of this menagerie of ideas.
I have no idea what I would have done with this list of ingredients but I am pretty sure I would have grilled some chicken and hoped nobody would come to work on Monday asking how well their idea contributed to our meal. Chris is better than that though, and that is why I write this blog.
Her idea was to marinate the chicken in the Greek yogurt and stuff it with the cream cheese and prosciutto. The zucchini would find a home in a risotto which is my favorite side item to just about everything. When she told me this I went from skeptical to starving in 3.7 seconds.
Enough rambling… let me tell you what she did….
The Marinade
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| Chicken covered in marinade love... |
¾ Pound of Greek yogurt
½ Lemon, squeezed
Small bunch of mint leaves, julienned
Three cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
Fresh chopped chives (couple of tablespoons)
Salt & Pepper
Mix it all up and let it sit so it “starts to make love each other”
The Stuffing
6 Ounces of cream cheese
Prosciutto (chopped)
Squirt of lemon “to loosen it all up”
Tablespoon of chives
Salt & Pepper
Little squirt (or a splatter, “whichever you prefer”) of Worcestershire Sauce
Mix it all up and let it sit so it “starts to make love each other”… this is officially a food orgy in my Aunt’s kitchen. Weird.
Cook the Chicken
After the above love making goes on for a bit, you can put it all together. Spend your time waiting with a glass or two of wine or some love making of your own… but not if you are at your Aunt and Uncle’s home and your six-year-old is waiting for dinner. That would be wildly inappropriate.
Let us move on…
Butterfly “big flippin’” chicken breasts
Cover your breasts in the marinade. The chicken, I mean.
Put the stuffing inside the chicken and then fold it back together as if you never butterflied it in the first place.
Cook at 350° for about 30 minutes
Risotto
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| Veggies waiting for the risotto... |
Start simmering about five cups of chicken stock. Chris’s was homemade but use what you can buy if you do not have homemade chicken stock laying around. We do, because Chris is awesome. I digress…
Zucchini – chop up a bunch of half moon slices out of two zucchinis
Three tablespoons of finely diced onions
Two cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
Sautee the veggies in a bit of olive oil until zucchini is golden
Add 2 cups of Arborio rice
Add tablespoon of butter
Maintain medium heat and stir in chicken broth one cup at a time. The trick here is to keep stirring as the risotto absorbs the moisture of the broth. Keep stirring and adding broth until the risotto reaches the consistency you like.
When risotto is done, pimp it out by stirring in about ¼ cup of grated parmesan or romano cheese and a tablespoon of butter
Finish The Chicken
When the chicken is just about done, cover it with some slices of prosciutto
Kick on the broiler for a minute or so to put a nice brown on things
Remove the girls and let them rest
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| Adding prosciutto makes everything better |
The Result
Considering we could not use our own kitchen, eating away from home was a foregone conclusion. Since we had already eaten at our favorite restaurant the previous evening, nothing we could purchase at any local dining establishment would be up to par with what Chris cooks up on any given night. Had we eaten out, anything would have been a disappointment and added to our plumbing-induced stress by forcing us to part with our limited funds for a meal that was inferior to what Chris cooks at home.
Thank God for Chris’s family and mad-kitchen skills.
This meal was an absolute knockout. The chicken was cooked to perfection and the marinade and stuffing did things to my taste buds that no mortal chicken could ever dream of. I would have been totally content with the chicken breasts and the flavor explosion that it treated me to but Chris had to go and add one of my favorite things in the universe… risotto.
I could honestly eat risotto by itself three meals a day. It may be generally used as a side item but I have stronger feelings for it than that. I love risotto and I especially love Chris’s risotto.
All in all, this was exactly what I needed Friday evening. Chris took a few random ingredients and created kitchen magic. In turn, she changed me from a stressed out dirty guy to a completely satisfied customer of my favorite chef in the world. She gives good kitchen wherever she goes and I am one lucky man as a result. Thanks, Baby!
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| YUM. |
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