Tag: pasta

Chicken Parmesan

I’m always trying to think of new ways to incorporate chicken into our dinners.  This obviously isn’t a new recipe, but I hadn’t made it in several months (Steve is not the biggest Italian food fan like I am).  I originally found this recipe on the Food Network Website as one of Emeril’s delicious dishes.  It’s my favorite Chicken Parmesan recipe so far because of the melty cheese and the fact that you finish cooking the chicken in the oven, so it has a wonderful crispy outside, but is totally moist and juicy on the inside.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
  • 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • 1 egg
  • 2 Tbsp milk
  • spaghetti or linguini pasta (you can determine the amount you want)
  • shredded or sliced mozzarella cheese
  • about 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra for sprinkling on top at the end
  • your favorite marinara sauce
  • extra virgin olive oil

Preheat your oven to 400° and position the rack to the middle position.  Bring a large pot of water to a boil for your pasta.

Trim excess fat off of chicken.  If you like your chicken a little thinner, you can either butterfly the breasts or pound them out a little flatter.  If you do, just make sure you adjust your cooking time since a thinner chicken breast will cook faster.

Here’s the seasoning I used first on the chicken breasts.  I got it at Sam’s Club, and I think you can find it at any major grocery store.  It’s just a mixture of several different spices.  You can also make the seasoning yourself — just Google Emeril’s Original Essence recipe and you should be able to find it pretty easily.

Lightly sprinkle Emeril’s seasoning on both sides of the chicken breasts.

Prepare your assembly line starting with the flour.

Add the egg and milk to a bowl and whisk together.

Your final step in the chicken coating assembly line will be the bread crumbs.

You can certainly just use bread crumbs, but I like adding some grated Parmesan cheese to mine.  I use about equal parts bread crumbs and cheese.

Mix the cheese and bread crumbs together so that it’s all evenly distributed.

Take your seasoned chicken breasts and coat both sides with flour.

Then dunk the flour covered chicken into the egg and milk mixture.

Then finally, thoroughly coat the chicken in the bread crumb and cheese mixture.  Try to make sure not to leave any wet spots.

Heat some extra virgin olive oil in a medium skillet over medium high heat and add the chicken breasts.

Cook about 4 minutes on the first side, then turn and cook 1 – 2 minutes on the other side.  If you butterflied or pounded out your chicken breasts so they would be thinner, you may want to only cook them for about two minutes on the first side and about one minute on the second side.  I let mine get a little dark, so you want them to be a little more golden and not so dark brown, but that’s what happens when you try to cook, clean, and take pictures at the same time.  Time can get away from you!

Spoon marinara sauce over chicken breasts.

Then add a generous helping of mozzarella.  You can add a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese too if you want.

Place entire skillet into the oven for about 4 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and chicken is cooked through.  Switch the oven to broil for about 1 – 2 minutes to start to brown the cheese.

While your chicken is cooking, add the pasta to the boiling water.  Spaghetti doesn’t take very long to cook and you want it to be al dente, or still have a little bite to it.

When you take the chicken out of the oven, the cheese should be nice and melted.

Drain your pasta, and add it back to the hot pot along with some olive oil to keep it from sticking.  Then add marinara sauce and stir to coat completely.

Add pasta and chicken to your plate and enjoy the crispy outside of the chicken breading combined with the juicy inside.  Just perfect!!

 

Cheesy Pesto Pasta Bake

It’s been a while since I posted a new recipe, so I thought I’d post the recipe for the pasta dish I made for Elizabeth’s bachelorette party.  This is a trusty Rachael Ray recipe (love her), and you can find the original recipe HERE on the Food Network website.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • 1 pound of your favorite pasta (I used penne)
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, 2 turns of the pan in a slow stream
  • 3 large cloves garlic
  • 1/2 small to medium yellow onion
  • 1 (28-ounce) can crushed Italian tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup, 10 to 12 fresh basil leaves, torn into small pieces
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 cup store bought basil pesto sauce
  • 1 cup ricotta cheese
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
  • 1/2 pound shredded mozzarella

Start by bringing a pot of water to a boil.  Salt the water and add your pasta.  And while you’re at it, preheat your broiler.

Next, finely chop the garlic,

And half of the onion.

Saute in a large skillet until soft and tender.

Next, add the crushed tomatoes to the onions and garlic.  The recipe says to use a 28 oz can, but I didn’t have one, so I used two 14 oz cans.  Same thing, right?

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Since it has already been established that I do NOT have a green thumb, I bought some fresh basil at the grocery store; but if you are like my mom and can pretty much grow anything, go ahead and use your own freshly grown basil!

Tear about 10 – 12 leaves (or 1/2 a cup) into small pieces and drop into your sauce.  Trust me, you’ll want to use fresh basil, not the dried stuff.  It’s SO worth it!

Stir the sauce around so that the basil wilts into the sauce.  Turn your heat down to low and let simmer for a few minutes.

Next, spoon your pesto into a medium bowl.  You can definitely make your own pesto, but I’m lazy, and store bought pesto seemed like the easier option.  Plus I was in a huge time crunch since I had to make this dish in pretty much less than half an hour.  I know….excuses, excuses.

Next add the ricotta cheese.  Now, I’ve used ricotta cheese before in lasagna and such, and it never really looked quite like this.  The ricotta I was used to was a lot more liquidy and not so stiff, but this is what I bought, so this is what I was gonna use.  Stir that around so that it’s completely combined.

Next add your parmesan cheese.  This isn’t quite 1/2 cup, but like I said….I was in a time crunch, and I didn’t feel like searching through the pantry for another bottle of cheese when this one ran out.

Drain your pasta and add to a baking dish.

Stir in your pesto/cheese mixture and make sure it completely coats the pasta.

Pour the tomato basil sauce over the pasta.

Sprinkle shredded mozzarella alllllllllll over.  Now….remember my time crunch?  By this time, I was already about 3 minutes late, and they live about 15 minutes away.  And I still had to stick this under the broiler for about 5-7 minutes, so that means, I didn’t have time to take a picture when it was all finished.  So just imagine that this has been under the broiler for 5-7 minutes and that the top is all nice and bubbly and golden brown.  Looks great, doesn’t it?!

This recipe got rave reviews at the party, so I know you’ll love it!

P.S.  I was 20 minutes late to the party.

Lasagna

I’ve never been much of a lasagna fan, but after seeing this recipe on The Pioneer Woman website, I decided to give it a try.  It’s actually fairly easy to make, and it tasted GREAT!!  So if you are a person that likes lasagna, I suggest trying this recipe on for size….or taste.

Here’s what you’ll need:  (I halved this recipe since I was only making it for 2 people.  We still ended up having over 3 servings left and we were STUFFED!)

1 1/2 lbs ground beef

1 lb hot breakfast sausage

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 cans (14.5 oz) whole tomatoes (you can use diced tomatoes if you don’t want such big chunks in your meat sauce)

2 cans (6 oz) tomato paste (I used tomato sauce since I realized I was out of tomato paste at the exact moment when I needed to add it to the skillet)

4 tbsp dried parsely

2 tbsp dried basil

2 tsp salt

3 cups lowfat cottage cheese

2 whole beaten eggs

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 lb sliced mozzarella cheese

1 package (10 oz) lasagna noodles (I used whole wheat lasagna, but you can use whatever you want.  Unfortunately I didn’t have any 5 net carb Dreamfields lasagna)

Preheat oven to 350°.  Add beef and sausage to a large skillet and cook over medium-high heat.

Add garlic to the meat.  I grated my garlic over a microplane, because I think it blends more evenly, and the flavor can saturate the meat more so than if I just chopped it very finely.

Brown the meat and stir to thoroughly combine.

Drain most of that lovely fat.  Can’t you just feel it clogging your arteries just by looking at it?

Add tomatoes, tomato paste (or sauce in my case), basil, 1 tsp of salt, and 2 tbsp of the parsley.

Stir until thoroughly combined, and let simmer for about 20-30 minutes.  I chopped the tomatoes up with my wooden spoon as I stirred.

In a medium bowl add the cottage cheese….

…egg…

…Parmesan cheese…

…and the rest of the salt and parsley.

Stir until thoroughly combined and set aside.

Meanwhile, drop some lasagna noodles into a large pot of boiling water and cook to “al dente” (still has a bite to it).

Now it’s time to assemble the lasagna.  Start by laying the lasagna noodles in a baking dish.  Overlap the noodles as you go.

Spoon half of the cottage cheese mixture over the noodles.

Lay a layer of cheese on top of the cottage cheese.

Spread half of the meat sauce on top of the cheese.  Then repeat the process all over again, ending with a meat layer on the top.

Liberally sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top of the meat.  And if you’re like me….throw a handful of cheese in your mouth.  Yum!

Pop it in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until it’s all bubbly on the top.

After struggling to keep the square of lasagna you just cut on your spatula and not all over the counter, place it on a plate and eat!  Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!