Algorithm Chicken

 

Photo: AllRecipes user Rebecca Lepore

Although one purpose of this blog is to push us to leaf through the pages of the several dozen cookbooks we own, frequent readers will notice that we are just as likely to seek our inspirations online. 

It seems that it is not only our human readers who have noticed our patterns -- the algorithms were quick to provide assistance yesterday. I went to All Recipes at midday on a Friday. The timing suggests a user seeking an easy meal; the fact that it was me suggests that I'm looking for yet another way to prepare an item that is a staple of our weekly dairy delivery. The fact that it was either one of us suggests that a listicle is in order. This led the ghosts in the machine quite inevitably to put these words front-and-center on the AllRecipes screen: 

12 Top Chicken Breast Dinners That Use 5 Ingredients or Less

I scrolled through the list until I found two that seemed likely candidates: recipes we would both like and without breading because I've been kind of overdoing that option lately. I sent both links to Pamela and her exact words were "Both look yummy!"

I chose Balsamic Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breasts, a recipe whose title is almost the entire recipe. I followed the recipe almost exactly as written, reducing the balsamic for about 15 minutes instead of 10. I did assemble the dish pretty much as directed, though it was not very pretty (hence the stolen photo above) and I did not believe the toothpicks would make it any more so.

Because I was using our oven as an air fryer at 400F for some potatoes to go with this, I decided not to bake the chicken in the oven, but rather to use an indispensable cast-iron skillet with a lid as a Dutch oven. Starting out a bit hot and then keeping the heat minimal worked well for this; it was cooked properly in 35 minutes.

I regretted not noticing the recipe's suggested inclusion of sautéed mushrooms -- it was written as an afterthought, and not included on the ingredients list.

We both agreed that this was as delicious as it was easy. I liked it as much as Pamela did, even though she is by far the bigger feta fan. We will definitely be making it again, perhaps with a flavored balsamic.

Lagniappe

I am certain that the runner up will be featured here very soon.

National Grilled Cheese Day

 For this year's celebration (we seem to manage this one fairly often), we found a recipe whose name practically is the recipe: Blackberry Bacon Grilled Cheese. Anybody who knows how to make a grilled-cheese sandwich need only add these details:

• blackberry refers to blackberry jam
• bacon refers to crispy bacon, cooked before assembling sandwich
• cheese refers to Swiss cheese (I used a nice, soft, lacy Swiss)
• sliced, fresh jalepeños are the only component (aside from cooking butter) not implied in the title
• grilled refers to sourdough bread (which was hard to find in these days of supply-chain challenges)

We had only Canadian bacon on hand, so I substituted that. It was leaner and less crispy than South-of-the-49th Bacon. This somewhat lighter alternative made for a nicely balanced sandwich.

Photo: Lemon Tree Dwelling

The recipe is accompanied by photos that are far superior to any I could have taken of these somewhat messy sandwiches. The recipe itself helps me to understand why so many people whine about overlong, meandering food-blog posts. 

Nothing in the author's discussion of this recipe related at all to the recipe, unless the reader is aware of the coincidence between National Grilled Cheese Day and National Only-Child Day. 

Easy Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken: Têm

 This was the title of a recipe Pam read to me as we made the Friday mid-day transition from "we have plenty of food so we don't need to shop for dinner" to the making of an actual plan.

My response was, "I like every word of that title!"

She then read the ingredient list, answering herself with "Têm!" after every word. This is a bit of family lore, dating back to my dissertation travel in Rondônia in 1996. A neighbor who enjoyed sharing a lot of foods with me invited me to cook a big meal in his kitchen. I would need ingredients that I had not yet seen in the area. As I asked him about each thing I would need to make a chicken and pasta dinner, he would nod solemnly and pronounce "Têm!" -- "They have it!" This sounds so much better in Portuguese, so it is how we share the good news that what we need is on hand. (That meal, by the way, became a minor legend. During a return visit in 2000, people would stop me in the street to ask me if I could cook for them again.)

But I digress. We had everything mentioned in the title of Easy Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken, plus the additional ingredients: lemon, pepper, and above all: bacon.

This is another recipe that it is taking me longer to describe than it might take a reader to prepare. I began by putting the rice on to cook as a side dish, and then following the recipe almost to the letter. I used a splash of lemon with the ground pepper, since our jar of lemon-pepper was in the other kitchen. And I used some nice fresh mozzarella, which I shredded/crumbled. The only thing I will do differently next time is to put the bacon on earlier in the process; the thick slices we use could not really crisp in 10 minutes. 

Lagniappe

When I don't think a dish will make for a good photo, sometimes I take a photo of the ingredients, or of the dish in progress. Other times I will poach a photo from the recipe website. In this case, just trust me: this is more delicious and easy than it is photogenic. It just looks like melted cheese at the end. The website has 70 photos. I scrolled through half of them before I concluded that there are a lot of ways to make this look ugly.