Chicken Cacciatore for the Instant Pot

Tonight Jeff made the Chicken Cacciatore recipe from the allrecipes website. It was quite tasty. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo. It pretty much looked like the photo on the website.

He mostly followed the recipe, but he substituted a can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato sauce instead of the extra-large can of tomato sauce. He also used a can of cider instead of wine because he didn't have an open bottle. It was delicious. 

We definitely wouldn't mind having this recipe again. I'm not sure we would change anything the next time around.

Instant Pot Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup

Jeff has gotten a job at Intel so I (Sharon) need to start doing some of the cooking. It's been at least ten years since I've done any cooking and I'm not terribly good at it but I can usually manage to follow recipes, so I just need to find recipes I like. 

This post is the start of my effort to document my attempts at cooking recipes I find on the internet and how they turned out and what we would change next time, assuming we like the recipe enough to try it again. This information is mostly for me as the blog is a pretty easy way to keep track of past efforts.

Anyway, today I made my first pot of Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup. The original recipe was published on allrecipes, but I also archived a copy at Google docs, in case it gets pulled down. It calls for the soup to be made on the stove, but I wanted to cook it in the Instant Pot so we did our best to translate the recipe.

It doesn't feel right to plagiarize the original recipe; just click on one of the links above to see all the details. We had to make a few changes by necessity: 

• We didn't have orzo pasta so we used elbow macaroni. 
• We also didn't have any bay leaves, so we omitted them. 
• We used a blend of homemade chicken and homemade vegetable broth.
• And we had to use frozen spinach.

We heated the oil in the Instant Pot on the Sauté setting and then added the onion. After a couple of minutes, we added the carrots and celery and let it saute for a few minutes. Then we added the garlic and other spices and let it cook briefly before adding about three quarts of homemade chicken and vegetable broths. (We used a blend of them because that's what we had in our refrigerator.) 

We stirred in the dry pasta and then pressure cooked it for 5 minutes before adding the chicken and lemon and then we set it on Slow Cook until lunchtime. Shortly before lunch, we took off the lid and stirred in defrosted frozen spinach. It had a few minutes to come up to temperature before we actually served it up for the meal.

Overall, we really enjoyed the soup; the pasta seemed a little overcooked, but we can remedy that problem in the next pot. The recipe made 8 servings so we'll be having it a few more times in the next week. 

We served it with Asiago bread that Jeff made. Also amazing.

Next time, I'll try making these changes:

• Try skipping the pressure cooking entirely and go straight from sautéing to slow cooking.
• Substitute Herbes de Provence for the thyme and oregano.
• Add the dry pasta at the same time as the chicken. 

I expect I'll probably make it once a month from now on, whenever we have leftover chicken.

Noom: Elephant Dialogues--Fried Chicken

Fried Chicken

🏇Rider: Hey, Elephant? We get to have Fried Chicken!
🐘 Elephant: Mm. I.Love.Fried.Chicken! 😋
🏇I know you do. That will be nice
🐘 Do we get a whole bucket? 🤭
🏇We get to choose how much we can eat. To meet our goals, let's have some great sides: corn on the cob, tortilla soup, and Coleslaw.
🐘 All that with a BUCKET OF FRIED CHICKEN? 😋
🏇Well, the first bite is the best. Let's just have one piece, and plan to really make the most of it.
🐘 But, I.LOVE.FRIED.CHICKEN! 😬
🕵️‍♀️ Observer: There is anxiety.
🏇I know you do. Isn't it great that with Noom we can have some?
🐘I guess so 🤔
🏇How about I let you pick if you want to start with the chicken, or end with it.
🐘Hmm 🤔
🏇While you think about it, let's go for a walk.
🐘🚶‍♀️

Inspired by a post by Molly: I’m making homemade fried chicken at the request of my visiting son.
My inner elephant is soooo excited! (It loves fried chicken!) I’ll have coleslaw and corn on the cob on the side. And I have some homemade tortilla soup to have alongside to take the edge off my hunger.
Ideas for how chat with the elephant?

BBQed Butterflied chicken burrito

First, butterfly a chicken.

Then broilify the chicken on a bed of aromatic veggies.

Once the skin is nice, roastify it in a 350 degree oven until done (I ended up at an internal temp of 160).

Broil some pineapple chunks.

Then sautee them with some onions.

Add the chicken, shredded, and some BBQ sauce. 

Serve on a toasted tortilla with some sour cream rolled into a burrito. 

Chicken Soup

We have been fighting off colds so it seemed like a good time for some simple chicken soup.

A couple carrots, a leek, a potato, some leftover roast chicken and some good homemade chicken stock and a little water. Oh, and bacon.

While the carrots and leeks were sautéing in some bacon drippings. I diced and par-boiled the potato. Then into the pot with the diced chicken and diced, frozen, pre-cooked bacon.

Once I had a little browning I added some stock and equal parts water. Simmer and serve with salt and pepper.

Butterflied chicken broiled and roasted

One more recipe from Cooking for Geeks (p. 206 if you are following along on the Home Edition). The tricky thing when roasting a bird is that there is an inside and an outside. And you'd really like to get a little browning, but not-too-much on the outside and also thoroughly cook the inside, but not-too-much.

This approach changes the topology of the bird so that the outside becomes the top, and the inside becomes the bottom. And you can use different heat and technique on each.

In this case broiling the "top" and then flipping and baking at 350 until done. Flipping turns out to be a little tricky since the skin is apt to come off.

Next Time: As it turned out, I needed some combination of more heat or more time (or to replace my d*&!% probe thermometer that broke). I had assumed that since I had a smallish bird (4 pounds) it would take less or close to the 25 minutes called for. But the meat didn't really get fully cooked. I also managed to broil it a little too long. Checking as it cooks is a good idea. I was just a little too distracted with other things at the time.

So, this is one I want a redo on once I get a new probe thermometer. 

Stuffed chicken thighs

Had a first go at chicken thighs stuffed with a spinach parmesan stuffing.

Overall, I liked how the chicken turned out. It produced a lot of sauce, so it would have been good to serve over something that could use the sauce (rice, pasta, steamed veggies, ...).  I also think it would have presented better sliced in 3 or 4 slices to show off the stuffing.

Roast Chicken part To-matillo

I used the dark meat and broth from the Roast Chicken we made the other day to make some tomatillo soup.

• Brown the dark meat from one roast chicken.
• Set aside and shred.
• Saute an onion and some garlic.
• Add some diced tomatillos, roast carrots, and red pepper. 
• Add four cups chicken broth.
• Heat to a simmer and simmer 15 minutes.
• Process in batches in food processor.
• Reheat and add shredded chicken.
• Before serving add herbs (basil and parsley).
• Add a dollop of sour cream.

Serve. 

It was very tasty and pretty easy.

Next time: Actually process the soup in batches rather than seeing soup leak out around the sides of the food processor. 

Roast chicken

I got a nice looking whole chicken roaster from Natures. I don't recall ever actually roasting a chicken so I decided to try an simple whole roast chicken recipe.

I coated the raw chicken with a mixture of salt, sugar, and Powder Douce.
I let that rest in the fridge for a day.
Then stuffed the cavity with 5 crushed garlic cloves and 5 sprigs of fresh rosemary from the garden.
And roasted in a preheated 500 degree oven for 15 minutes.
Then down to 450 for 15 minutes.
There were no drippings to speak of. so after about 15 more minutes at 425,
I basted with 1 Tbs of melted butter.
Then 15 more minutes.
The temp probe wasn't up to 180 yet, So it took 10-15 more minutes for the temp to read 180.
Then out of the oven to rest for 20 minutes.

After removing the wings, I cut it in half lengthwise and served each half on a plate.
That was a lot of food!
We ate most of the white meat, but ended up not touching the thighs and drumsticks.
We took the meat off them and put it in the fridge for tomorrow.

With the carcass I am working on stock, based loosely on an Alton Brown recipe.

Summer dinner party

We had a couple friends over for dinner on the day our CSA basket arrived. Let's see what I concocted...

Left to right:

• Cold salad of tomatoes, cucumbers,  mozzarella, and basil tossed with sesame seed oil, lemon juice and white balsamic vinegar. 
• Roasted Italian Trombolino Squash sautéed with collard greens, beet tops, and toasted pecans, topped with sour cream and peach salsa. 
• Pan fried chicken breasts drizzled with a reduced port sauce. 
• (not pictured) Corn with butter and grains of paradise or long pepper. 
• (not pictured) Watermelon. 

Overall, I was pretty happy with the meal. In particular, the squash and greens was a nice experiment. I like the pale yellow color with the deep greens. Our guests seemed to have fun experimenting with grains of paradise and long pepper in grinders at the table. 

Kookoolan Farms

Just a quick note that someone recommended I check out Kookoolan Farms. Seems like a great source for pork.

Signing up for a Meat CSA

I'm defrosting the freezer right now so we can stock up on the summer harvest. And so we can get some more meat.

We are soon going to get our first box from Deck Family Farms with:

• 10lbs of Grass fed beef; 50% ground, 12% steaks, 38% everything else; ribs, roasts, stir-fry, & stew
• 5lbs of Pasture Raised Pork; bacon, sausages, shoulder, chops, ham.
• 2lbs of Pasture Raised Spring Lamb
• 8lbs of Pasture Raised No Soy! Roasters
• 1 dozen eggs

Looking forward to the variety.
Need to figure out what to do with lamb...