Sunday, January 22, 2012

Sunday lunch

Napoli salad and sweeeet BBQ chicken pizzetta.

What a perfect day.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

the Last Supper

Whomever coined the phrase "all good things in life must come to an end", really knew it all.

Here is a healthy, delicious supper that C and I enjoyed on our last night together in Edmonton.  I am not going to go on and on about C leaving... I really don't want to get a  teary and sad.

So instead I will go on and on about the food instead.

I have this cookbook called frame>by>frame - quick and easy by Parragon Books.  It has beautiful photographs - which is imperative to a great cookbook.  And the recipes are all photographic, quick and easy with simple and healthy ingredients.  The recipe that gave me the inspiration for our Last Supper was the steamed chicken with chile & cilantro butter.  Of course the recipe was only an inspiration or a guide and we therefore made it our own with what we had on hand.

We have this enormous tub of dried wild mushrooms, and seeing that C loves mushrooms...
For a side we made a pilaf from a blend of brown and wild rice with the usual onion, garlic and these wild mushrooms.  It was actually really good!    The rice needed about 55 minutes so we enjoyed foie gras on crackers and a great heart to heart visit.

Once the rice was done we started the main.  While C sautéed the mushrooms, onion and garlic I started prepping the chile and cilantro butter and the chicken.  This recipe requires a bit of fussing but trust me.  The end result is great.

Start by mashing together; minced garlic, minced cilantro, minced red chile (or a healthy pinch of chile flakes) and a pinch of salt in a few tablespoons of softened butter.  Allow this to sit for a few minutes for the flavours to develop.

Prepare your steaming pan.  I used a metal vegetable steamer in a large straight sided saute pan with aluminum foil for a lid.  Pour enough water into the pan so it will not boil dry but it is not covering the bottom of the vegetable steamer.  Allow the water to come to a boil.

Slice a pocket in the thickest part of each chicken breast and fill with the butter mixture.  Place each stuffed chicken breast in a parchment bag or wrap in parchment paper.  If you are wrapping in parchment paper, be sure to close tightly as there will be a little bit of sauce at the end of cooking that you don't want to lose.

Arrange each packet on the vegetable steamer over the boiling water and cover with foil.  Steam for 18-22 minutes.  Try to keep the foil (or lid if you have one that fits) on tight through this time, as the more steam escapes the longer the chicken will need to cook.

For our vegetable sides we had baby carrots and a fresh green salad (not shown) with homemade dressing.

All was simple and perfect.



This dinner really marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one.  I am so very thankful to have had so many wonderful moments with C (& B too), I will remember and treasure each and every one of them.

C - at least we will have facetime, emails and airplanes.  :)



That's all for now.  See you in the kitchen.